Against All Hope. Armando Valladares
to take their bags and bundles up and to find a place to sleep in the cells. Boitel, Carrión, and I watched all that as though dumbstruck — that absurd world where everything seemed to have some strange “otherness” about it. “How those cursed wretches shout!” — that was one of Carrión’s favorite phrases; he had taken it from Don Juan Tenorio by Zorilla, and Alfredo would repeat it whenever it most seemed to fit, like now, when the yelling and screaming threatened to drive us all crazy.
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Silence; I implore you!” That was the voice of Lorenzo, the major of the building, a six-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound mulatto who had been a motorcycle officer in the police force of the previous regime. By secret ballot, the prisoners elected a kind of internal government they called the Mandancia, a half-joking argot word that might be translated “Board of Directors” or “Boss-ship.” It was the responsibility of the Major to appoint those who would be in charge of the daily operation and maintenance of the building — cleaning, serving the mess, and other tasks. The Major was the man who dealt directly with the guards and who brought us any messages or orders they wanted sent to us. At the beginning of 1959, the ex-soldiers of Batista’s army sent to that prison had to tolerate Mandancias made up of common prisoners and imposed on them by the garrison. Those Mandancias collaborated with the garrison, of course; suffice it to say that the common prisoners had portraits of Fidel Castro in their cells and enjoyed the protection of Prison Headquarters. Within a few months, thanks to the efforts of a man named Beruvides, one of the Air Force pilots who was imprisoned there, the military managed to oust common prisoners from leadership. The first groups of political prisoners had not yet arrived; the only prisoners kept there then were ex-officers and soldiers from Batista’s army.
“Well, let’s go up,” said someone in the group, and we picked up our duffels and began to walk over toward the stairs.
We had to pick our way through long ranks of pails and every other imaginable kind of container, set out in the prison yard in meandering files like the course of some strange river. We soon found out why: Water was rationed in the prison. Each man was allowed five liters of water per week. That was the only water for drinking, for washing your face, for bathing, for washing clothes. Naturally, it wasn’t enough. The reason for this rationing was that the installations which supplied the prison with water were being repaired. The trucks they used now to deliver water belonged to another agency, and they couldn’t be relied on. On this particular occasion, nine days had elapsed since the last delivery. We were informed of all this when we asked one of the “veteran” prisoners where we could get some water. One of the men, who had been a patient in the National Psychiatric Hospital, knew Boitel, and he had invited us into his cell to rest for a few minutes. He lived on the first floor. He told us he’d ask around to try to find us a little water, but that there would be very little of it. That same afternoon, the militia had said, the tank truck would be arriving, but hardly anyone believed it. The prisoners hoarded their water like the real treasure it was.
The man who finally shared some of his water with us was an old fellow who lived alone in one of the cells on the first floor. When Boitel’s friend asked him to give us some, he peered at us keenly and took a pail covered with cardboard out from under his cot. We saw that there was a little water in the bottom.
“I don’t drink much, very little, you know, and that’s why I still have some left.” He gave us each a sip. I became even thirstier — I realized I could have drunk down the whole pailful.
We made our way on up to the sixth floor. The men who had arrived the day before had managed to get empty cells, so they took many of us in. The traffic on the stairways never stopped — cots were moved from one floor to another, from one cell to another. The cells had two of these beds, which prison slang called “airplanes.” I never managed to find out why, though probably they called them that because they folded up like wings. The frame was made of tubing to which a piece of canvas or burlap was sewn. They were held to the wall by two steel eyebolts sunk into the concrete, and hung by two chains attached higher up, so they were cantilevered. They could be taken up during the day, and were opened out only when they were going to be used. Having one of those canvas “airplanes” in good condition was the height of luxury for a prisoner.
Carrión, Piñango, Boitel, Jorge Víctor, and I, with a few more friends, had stayed together through all the bustle of the move. We were utterly exhausted when we finally managed to reach the sixth floor. In prison one has dozens, hundreds, of friends, but there is always a smaller group with whom you spend most of your time. Those are the ones with whom you share not only most of your hours but that necessity to communicate as well, which for some prisoners is more important than all the rest. Jorge Víctor was a quiet type; he hardly spoke, and he gave the impression of being solid and equable, as he in fact was. He had been studying to be a priest, and it always seemed as though he were wearing an invisible habit. He was an extraordinary companion, and Carrión joked with him all the time. He had been detained the same morning the rest of us had. Jorge Víctor immediately plunked down on the floor, impassive, and in a while the rest of us followed suit. We each found a spot in that square cell, took out our blankets, and settled down to sleep as best we could. The next day we’d try to find some mattresses, get our hands on some “airplanes,” and stake out our own cells, but meantime, in spite of the discomfort of the tiny cell with its unfinished floor pocked with holes, we almost immediately sank into deep sleep. The last few days had exhausted us.
Carrión woke us up just a few minutes after we had fallen asleep. There was a rat running around all over us. Rats were another of those things that were to keep us company as long as we were in jail. It wouldn’t be a prison without rats, but they were insignificant on Isla de Pinos, compared to what we would see in the future.
As a matter of fact, events of all sorts conspired to keep us from getting any sleep to speak of that night. In the early hours of the morning, a screaming and crying and infernal noise woke us up with a start. We got up and looked out over the railing. We could see the entrance bars from where we were standing; the spectacle appeared to be from some strange hallucination. They had finally brought the tank truck of water. But what they did was stick two four-inch hoses through the bars and open the valves — the precious liquid was being poured out onto the ground, and the first prisoners, half asleep, were running down the stairs screaming “Water!”
Prisoners rushed frantically down the stairs into the prison yard, carrying pails, cans, jars — anything that would hold water. Hundreds of men were filling their containers as their turn came in the snaking lines. They were running down the stairs like demons, yelling and screaming. Above that howl Major Lorenzo’s thundering voice could be heard: “Stay calm, gentlemen, stay calm!”
But those men were no longer civilized beings; they acted like a herd of thirst-maddened animals that suddenly get wind of water nearby and break into stampede. They ran up and down the stairs; some of them, more agile than the rest, swung from the railings and jumped from floor to floor like monkeys, running the risk of falling headlong into space.
“Please, gentlemen, let’s act like human beings!” Lorenzo kept crying, shirtless but still wearing his dark glasses. I don’t think he ever took them off. He was up next to the bars beside the hoses. The volume of water the hoses spewed out was enough to fill the containers immediately, and as the hose went from one pail to another gallons and gallons of water were wasted. There was already a great pool in the prison yard. Someone was running and slipped and fell ... but men kept on running down hallways and stairs.
I stood there looking at all that as though I were hypnotized, until a prisoner ran along behind us with a plastic pail.
“Hey, you guys, get a move on or you won’t get any water!” And those words of his woke us up. It was true, and we were very thirsty. We picked up our pails and took off running; we hurtled down the stairs. I felt that I was going through my initiation, that I was becoming just another prisoner, just another one of those men.
8
ANIMAL PROTEIN
At five o’clock in the morning, a cornet’s, reveille called us to the headcount,