They were curious to know who I was, how long I was condemned to solitary, and why I had been so condemned. It was a great day, for the two lifers had become three.
To my surprise—yes, to my elation—both my fellow-prisoners knew me as an incorrigible. I had much to tell them of prison events and of the outside world. As they told me, news occasionally dribbled into solitary by way of the guards, but they had had nothing for a couple of months. The present guards on duty in solitary were particularly stupid.
How we talked that night! Sleep was very far from our eyes. In the morning the guards reported much tapping during the night, and we paid for it; for, at nine, came Captain Jamie with several guards to lace us into the torment of the jacket. Until nine the following morning, for twenty-four straight hours, laced and helpless on the floor, without food or water, we paid the price for speech.
Oh, our guards were brutes! Hard guards make hard prisoners. We continued to talk, and, on occasion, to be jacketed for punishment. Night was the best time: we often talked all night long.
Night and day were one with us who lived in the dark. We could sleep any time. We told one another much of the history of our lives, and for long hours Morrell and I have lain silently, while Oppenheimer slowly spelled out his life-story. They called Jake Oppenheimer the “Human Tiger.” But I found in Jake Oppenheimer all the cardinal traits of right humanness. He was faithful and loyal. He was brave. He was patient. He was capable of self-sacrifice. And he had a splendid mind. A lifetime in prison, ten years of it in solitary, had not dimmed his brain.
Morrell, a true comrade, too had a splendid brain. And here at the end of my days, reviewing all that I have known of life, I think that strong minds are never docile. The stupid men, the fearful men—these are the men who make model prisoners. I thank all gods that Jake Oppenheimer, Ed Morrell, and I were not model prisoners.
Chapter VI
To be able to forget means sanity. To remember everything means obsession, lunacy. So the problem I faced in solitary was the problem of forgetting. When I gamed with flies, or played chess with myself, or talked with my knuckles, I partially forgot. What I desired was entirely to forget.
There were the boyhood memories of other times and places. Sometimes solitary life-prisoners resurrected and looked upon the sun again. Then why could not these other-world memories of the boy resurrect?
But how? Hypnotism should do it. But first I must tell how, as a boy, I had had these other-world memories.
Let me narrate just one incident. It was up in Minnesota on the old farm. I was nearly six years old. A missionary, returned from China to the United States, spent the night in our house. It was in the kitchen just after supper, as my mother was helping me undress for bed, and the missionary was showing photographs of the Holy Land.
I cried out at sight of one of the photographs and looked at it, first with eagerness, and then with disappointment. It seemed most familiar. Then it seemed strange.
“The Tower of David,” the missionary said to my mother.
“No!” I cried with great positiveness.
“You mean that isn’t its name?” the missionary asked.
I nodded.
“Then what is its name, my boy?”
“Its name is…” I began, then concluded lamely, “I forget.”
“It doesn’t look the same now,” I went on after a pause.
Here the missionary handed to my mother another photograph.
“I was there myself six months ago, Mrs. Standing.” He pointed with his finger. “That is the—”
But here I broke in again, pointing on the left edge of the photograph.
“That name you just spoke,” I said, ”was what the Jews called it. But we called it something else. We called it… I forget.”
“Listen to the youngster,” my father chuckled. “You’d think he’d been there.”
I nodded my head, for in that moment I knew I had been there, though all seemed strangely different. My father laughed, but the missionary handed me another photograph.
“Now, my boy, where is that?” the missionary quizzed.
And the name came to me!
“Samaria[24],” I said instantly.
“The boy is right,” the missionary said. “It is a village in Samaria. I passed through it. That is why I bought it. And it seems that the boy has seen similar photographs before.”
This my father and mother denied.
“But it’s different in the picture,” I said, while my memory was busy reconstructing the photograph. The differences I noted aloud and pointed out with my finger.
“The houses were about right here, and there were more trees, lots of trees, and lots of grass, and lots of goats. I can see them now. And right here are lots of men walking behind one man. And over there”—I pointed to where I had placed my village—“lots of tramps. And they’re sick. Their faces, and hands, and legs is all sores.”
“He’s heard the story in church or somewhere—you remember, the healing of the lepers,” the missionary said with a smile of satisfaction. “How many sick tramps are there, my boy?”
I announced:
“Ten. They’re all waving their arms and yelling at the other men.”
“But they don’t come near them?” was the query.
I shook my head.
“They just stand right there and yell like they’re in trouble.”
“Go on,” urged the missionary. “What next? What’s the man doing in the front of the other crowd you said was walking along?”
“They’ve all stopped, and he’s saying something to the sick men. And the boys with the goats have stopped to look. Everybody’s looking.”
“And then?”
“That’s all. The sick men are heading for the houses. They aren’t yelling any more, and they don’t look sick any more.”
At this all three of my listeners broke into laughter.
“And I’m a big man!” I cried out angrily. “And I have a big sword!”
“Christ healed those ten lepers,” the missionary explained to my parents. “The boy has seen some famous paintings.”
But neither father nor mother could remember that I had ever seen famous paintings.
“He will certainly become a good Bible scholar,” the missionary told father and mother after I had kissed them good-night and departed for bed. “Or else, with that imagination, he’ll become a successful fiction-writer.”
Well, back to solitary. By self-hypnosis, which I began successfully to practise, I became able to put my conscious mind to sleep and to awaken and loose my subconscious mind. My method of mechanical hypnosis was simple. Sitting with folded legs on my straw-mattress, I gazed fixedly at a straw which I had attached to the wall of my cell near the door where the most light was. I gazed at the bright point. At the same time I relaxed all my will and gave myself to the swaying dizziness that always eventually came to me. And then I closed my eyes and fell unconscious on the mattress.
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