Chapter 6
In The Corridors
They go on shivering in the gloom. After a while they hear a clump-jangle, clump-jangle, and another gray-smocked functionary joins the three flics and the stern-faced middle-echelon female functionary. He’s bald and immensely tall and thin. There’s a hint of drab eyes at the bottom of the shadows that fill his bony eye-sockets. His cheek-bones protest sharply against his parchment-like skin. Three whistles hang from his neck. Attached to his belt is a great metal ring with dozens of big keys. On his left foot is a thick-soled orthopedic shoe.
The turnkey leads the way. He pitches and tosses like a rusty freighter in heavy seas. The orthopedic shoe makes a clumping sound, the keys a dull jangle. He turns into a corridor and the others follow.
Clump-jangle, clump-jangle, past obscure doors set in cracked walls covered with blistered gray paint and scratched graffiti, illegible in the gloom. There are no windows. Feeble light filters down from wicker-enclosed bulbs of thrifty wattage pitched at regular intervals and dangling from the ceiling. Sometimes a succession of bulbs are smashed or dead. When that happens the gaunt turnkey halts and folds to a squat and makes notes in a notebook on his knee, noting the number and location of the burst or dead bulbs for later administrative action. Then he unfolds to his full height and convoys them through the long zone of darkness, clump-jangle, clump-jangle.
Left turns, right turns, up creaking staircases, down creaking staircases with wobbly banisters. In certain staircases, rectifying obvious miscalculation, the last few steps are much higher or lower than the others. Max and Seymour stumble and sprawl several times. Sometimes the new corridors, turning, deviate from the normal ninety degrees and veer off at unconventionally acute angles. Without warning, and for no apparent reason, the ceiling of a new corridor swoops down oppressively low or soars to a fantastic height. The building-plan seems to have been slapped together on some unimaginably huge draftsman’s table by a stoned or stewed architect. Or perhaps – the notion will often occur to Seymour in the long time to come – by a trembling hand poorly commanded by a brain suffering from senile dementia.
The bare feet of the Chosen Five encounter grit and scraps of paper. Once, they turn into a howling corridor and a ferocious wind almost knocks them down, almost rips the towels off their shivering bodies. They cough and weep in the driven dust. Papers blow past them like panicked birds. Their shadows rock wildly as the overhead bulbs reel in the storm. Some of the bulbs strike the wall and expire with a feeble pop.
They pass by a cell. Shadowy silent figures are seated on the floor in attitudes of prostration.
Further on, behind certain of the closed doors they hear banging noises. The fists of other prisoners hammering for release or shutters banging in the high wind?
Half-asleep, the Five stumble forward, leaning against the wind. They have colorless unimaginative dreams in which they are walking down endless dusty windowless corridors with doors that never open and when they awaken out of the dreams it’s to endless dusty windowless corridors with doors that never open. The notion occurs to some of them that their case has already been judged, that they have already been exited and that this is what you do for all time when you are exited.
The notion doesn’t occur to Helen maybe because she still doesn’t care much about what’s happening to her personally. But she is concerned about Max, plodding alongside her. His features are set in an expression of intense suffering. Naturally Helen thinks the cause is metaphysical and that any second now he’ll sag to the floor again and howl unbearably at being dead.
Helen can’t know that Max has rejected the dismal testimony of the tag. He’s trying to figure out the real situation. His brain is working hard. It’s a novel exercise and hurts. That explains his expression of intense suffering.
One thing he’s practically 100% sure of now: Max Pilsudski hasn’t bitten the big one yet. The tag with that 2000 exit date is some kind of a brain-washing trick. Trying to make him think he’s gone nuts. Why? Who’s behind it? What are they after? Something somebody smuggled in his truck? He remembers the load: a thousand or so cases of Perrier mineral water. French too. Couldn’t be a coincidence. He doesn’t know what the hustle is yet. There are plenty of loose pieces in the picture, like that accident (or was it an accident?) and the plastic surgery job on his body and these other prisoners, if they really are prisoners. He’s sure though that the pieces will fit together at the end.
Max is terrifically relieved by the way things have simplified into the possibility of action. What he has to do is escape. This is the kind of set-up you can escape from, not like the other set-up they’re trying to make him buy. But he isn’t buying. He hasn’t bought it, hasn’t bought it, he keeps on telling himself.
They turn into a windless acutely-angled corridor. At the end of it they see a girl on her knees next to a pail, sponges, rags, a scoop and a bottle. Her scrubbing-brush moves in feeble inch-by-inch arcs. Clearly she’s daydreaming of more pleasant places than this. She looks up as they approach and the rhythm of the scrubbing-brush accelerates furiously in a foolish avowal of shirking. She’s very young. Her face is frozen in an expression of fright. Now she starts gasping for breath, probably to give the impression that she’s been scrubbing at that furious pace for hours. A pathetically transparent childish ruse. She looks like a child. Perhaps, though, the three-second burst of energy really has exhausted her. She’s very thin.
Turnkey speaks for the first time. His voice sounds like a rusty key turning in a rusty lock.
“Stupide,” he says. “You should be preparing the rooms for the new Arrivals.”
“Monsieur,” she replies in a tiny frightened voice, “nobody told me there were Arrivals.”
“You can see that there are Arrivals, five in all, two women and three men,” says the stern-faced middle-echelon female functionary. “Prepare the rooms immediately.”
The girl stares up at Seymour in dim-witted imploration, as though Seymour, despite his scanty loin-cloth and dazed expression and chattering teeth, somehow could exercise powers of intercession. “Monsieur, I swear nobody told me …”
The stern-faced middle-echelon female functionary cuts her short. “It is forbidden to talk to Arrivals. As you well know. You have been warned dozens of times. You will be reported if you do so again. Also if you are not gone immediately to prepare the rooms.”
The stern-faced female functionary’s hand moves toward one of the whistles. The girl wildly gathers up the rags and the sponges and the scoop and the bottle of cleaning liquid. She thrusts them clumsily into a plastic shopping-bag. She grabs the mop and the broom leaning against a wall.
In her haste she upsets the pail. The filthy water spatters on Seymour’s bare leg. She lunges at the pail, as if the spilled water could be undone, loses her balance and collides with Seymour. The freezing contact lasts a fraction of a second. She shrinks back, horrified, as a whistle shrills.
The stern-faced female functionary removes the whistle from her lipless mouth and commands: “Inspection!”
A pair of policemen drag the girl beneath a naked bulb. One of them twists her arms behind her back. The other grabs her stringy hair and pulls her head back, exposing her long skinny throat. Turnkey’s bony fingers pluck at the lids of her right eye, exposing her eyeball, white and gigantic, like a terrorized horse’s. He peers at it for a few seconds and steps back.
“Negative,” he reports to the stern-faced female functionary. The policemen release her.
“Oh, Monsieur,” she sobs, turning to Seymour. The stern-faced middle-echelon female functionary cuts her short.
“You will be reported, for the contact and for speaking a second time, although warned, to an Arrival. Your case will be judged.”
“Oh Madame, Madame, please don’t take the sea away from me. Leave me the dunes and the lighthouse, I beg you.”
Ignoring the plea, the female functionary pulls out a notebook and notes the transgression.
>
“Moreover, Toilets 34, 36 and 42 have been poorly cleaned, not for the first time. There have been more complaints. After you have prepared the rooms for the Arrivals you will clean those toilets again.”
The girl’s shoulders start shaking. She seems to be crying although there are no tears in her funereal eyes. She limps past them, gasping hard as though her shopping bag and mop and broom and scoop and empty pail weigh a ton. Despite his wet leg Seymour is glad for her that the pail is lighter now.
Turnkey leads the way past the spreading pool of dirty water. Dust has already settled on the moist swathes left by the mop. Or maybe she’s done as poor a job on the corridor as on the toilets and will be reported for that too.
Closely escorted by the silent flics, the Five trudge on, their pace regulated by the clunk-jangle of the pitching and tossing turnkey. More turns, left turns, right turns, more obscure staircases, long flights up, long flights down. More long corridors, some windy, most stagnant.
How long? How long?