least ten years at hard labor.
Six years later, I was to enter one of these detention cells again, perhaps the same one. Nothing had changed: not even the greenish slime at the bottom of the earthenware jug. This time I was alone. On the second day, having procured pen and paper from the prison store— prizes of inestimable value for which you have to wait at least twenty-four hours in total idleness—I began to write a story. In prison it is a fundamental rule of mental hygiene to work at all costs, to occupy the mind. So I was writing; the Judas of the barred door was half-open; there was that peculiar silence of jails, peopled by a hundred lifeless sounds: bolts being drawn somewhere among the galleries, a patrol of guards making the rounds, mess tins being washed, a chow wagon rolling down the corridor … Suddenly the silence was broken by a soggy thud like the sound of a bundle of wash falling onto the tiles—and a strange cry, not very loud, but sharp:
“Ou-i-iiiiii …”
Like a bird whose neck is being wrung.
The sound of hasty steps resounded, not too loudly—the sound of guards wearing boots and the muffled, padding tread of trustees on the cleanup squad. The half-open Judas closed with a bang. I listened for a long time with that premonition of evil which comes so accurately toold prisoners that they no longer question it. I heard the footsteps multiply; whisperings; an unprecedented number of footsteps, now moving away; water splashing on the tile floor; rag mops swishing; an unusually lengthy washing-down. Soup was brought in. The silence continued. The Judas opened again; I glimpsed two civilians discussing something in low voices in the gallery: they were sizing up the height of the stories with movements of their hands …
The next day a trustee from the cleanup squad told me: “You know, one of ‘em took a dive from the third gallery almost in front of your door. Hardly made a sound.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know; an Italian, they say. A deportee. Maybe that ain’t so. But there sure in hell was a lot of blood, believe me: a whole bucketful, he made!”
The old trustees on the cleanup squad had done a good job sopping up the blood with their dirty rag mops: the tiles were as shiny as usual.
Once inside prison walls, the use of the familiar
tu
is practically a rule among inmates. At the house of detention, where crowds of transients are always coming and going—in that sudden physical indignity of arrest which is so much harder on new prisoners than on underworld “regulars”—the guards call almost everyone
tu.
Elsewhere, after a rapid process of classification by social categories, they reserve this vulgarly familiar address for inmates who command no respect or consideration. One of my first observations—the accuracy of which was confirmed many times later on—was that this use of the familiar form by guards to inmates, or by policemen to criminals, is an instinctive recognition of a common existence and a common mentality. Guards and inmates live the same life on both sides of the same bolted door. Policemen and crooks keep the same company, sit on the same barstools, sleep with the same whores in the same furnished rooms. They mold each other like two armies fighting with complementary methods of attack and defense on a common terrain. I have learned from long experience that, if there are any differences of mentality and morality between criminals and guards or policemen, they are generally, and for profound reasons, all to the advantage of the criminals. Even when it comes to everyday honesty, the comparison leads to that conclusion. Most of the guards and policemen I have run into were themselves thieves or crooks, sometimes pimps. An hour after my arrest, while Iwas reading the newspapers in the office of a sergeant of the Sûreté, I saw one of those professional finks, known as “plainclothesmen,” come in. (They are called plainclothesmen precisely because their
Six years later, I was to enter one of these detention cells again, perhaps the same one. Nothing had changed: not even the greenish slime at the bottom of the earthenware jug. This time I was alone. On the second day, having procured pen and paper from the prison store— prizes of inestimable value for which you have to wait at least twenty-four hours in total idleness—I began to write a story. In prison it is a fundamental rule of mental hygiene to work at all costs, to occupy the mind. So I was writing; the Judas of the barred door was half-open; there was that peculiar silence of jails, peopled by a hundred lifeless sounds: bolts being drawn somewhere among the galleries, a patrol of guards making the rounds, mess tins being washed, a chow wagon rolling down the corridor … Suddenly the silence was broken by a soggy thud like the sound of a bundle of wash falling onto the tiles—and a strange cry, not very loud, but sharp:
“Ou-i-iiiiii …”
Like a bird whose neck is being wrung.
The sound of hasty steps resounded, not too loudly—the sound of guards wearing boots and the muffled, padding tread of trustees on the cleanup squad. The half-open Judas closed with a bang. I listened for a long time with that premonition of evil which comes so accurately toold prisoners that they no longer question it. I heard the footsteps multiply; whisperings; an unprecedented number of footsteps, now moving away; water splashing on the tile floor; rag mops swishing; an unusually lengthy washing-down. Soup was brought in. The silence continued. The Judas opened again; I glimpsed two civilians discussing something in low voices in the gallery: they were sizing up the height of the stories with movements of their hands …
The next day a trustee from the cleanup squad told me: “You know, one of ‘em took a dive from the third gallery almost in front of your door. Hardly made a sound.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know; an Italian, they say. A deportee. Maybe that ain’t so. But there sure in hell was a lot of blood, believe me: a whole bucketful, he made!”
The old trustees on the cleanup squad had done a good job sopping up the blood with their dirty rag mops: the tiles were as shiny as usual.
Once inside prison walls, the use of the familiar
tu
is practically a rule among inmates. At the house of detention, where crowds of transients are always coming and going—in that sudden physical indignity of arrest which is so much harder on new prisoners than on underworld “regulars”—the guards call almost everyone
tu.
Elsewhere, after a rapid process of classification by social categories, they reserve this vulgarly familiar address for inmates who command no respect or consideration. One of my first observations—the accuracy of which was confirmed many times later on—was that this use of the familiar form by guards to inmates, or by policemen to criminals, is an instinctive recognition of a common existence and a common mentality. Guards and inmates live the same life on both sides of the same bolted door. Policemen and crooks keep the same company, sit on the same barstools, sleep with the same whores in the same furnished rooms. They mold each other like two armies fighting with complementary methods of attack and defense on a common terrain. I have learned from long experience that, if there are any differences of mentality and morality between criminals and guards or policemen, they are generally, and for profound reasons, all to the advantage of the criminals. Even when it comes to everyday honesty, the comparison leads to that conclusion. Most of the guards and policemen I have run into were themselves thieves or crooks, sometimes pimps. An hour after my arrest, while Iwas reading the newspapers in the office of a sergeant of the Sûreté, I saw one of those professional finks, known as “plainclothesmen,” come in. (They are called plainclothesmen precisely because their
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