It was the great prison--Moabit. A huge central hall surmounted by a
dome, with wings going in all directions and the end of each wing
connected by another great building, each with six storeys of cells,
and each of these with its iron balcony with glass flooring. There
was noise, and clanging of doors everywhere. I was told to stand at
the commencement of one of the wings, just off the dome. There was a
huge clock, and I noticed it had a bell attached to it. At any rate,
I thought, I shall hear the hour strike. The number of my cell, I
can remember it now, was 1603, "the year Queen Elizabeth died," I
remarked to myself, as it was unlocked, and I went in. It was a larger
cell than I had hitherto had--about fourteen feet by six. There was
electric light and a table and seat that folded down from the wall.
The window was, as usual, above my head, but this time it was made of
frosted glass. There was a horrid suggestion of permanency about the
place that made me feel rather bad. I asked the warder who gave me
my prison underclothing--I was allowed to keep my own suit--whether
one was always in solitary here, and for how long one came. "Immer
im einzelhaft"--always in solitary,--and for three to four months
and upward, he said. "Never less?" I asked. "No, never," he replied.
"Come with me," he continued, and I was taken down into the very
bowels of this terrible edifice, till, finally, I joined a vast squad
of criminals. He left me. We then filed down devious passages once
more, and finally were led into a vast room with about two hundred
and seventy showers in it. When bathed, I was locked into a large,
bare cellar just opposite, and here I was soon joined by two others,
one an elderly middle-aged man of about fifty-six, and the other an
evil-looking devil of about thirty-four. They sat down on the bench.
I was walking up and down. They were an interesting couple. They
were about to be examined by an Untersuchungsrichter, or examining
magistrate, and the younger one was coaching the other in what to say.
The elder seemed too numbed to agree or disagree, though he seemed to
have a tendency towards the truth, which the other promptly suppressed,
but just sat there, his hands on his knees, seemingly deaf. Once the
younger strode up to him threateningly as if to hit him. He ground his
teeth and swore that by God, if the old man were to say that he'd ----.
Then he tried a different tack; he argued, he elucidated, he showed the
simplicity of his ideas, and how, above all, it would help themselves.
When the young one became bellicose I had felt no inclination to help
the old man. Why, I knew not. I think I felt that nothing, least of all
truth, should stand in the way of man's salvation from that place, and
that if the old man hadn't got enough gumption to tell what seemed to
be a few well-concocted lies, well, he ought to be made to, since it
involved the fate of the younger man, who was not yet reduced to the
state of an incapacitated jelly. It was the same old story: Fate had
beaten the old man, but had not succeeded in persuading the young one
that he also was beaten; the young one refused to acknowledge it. It
was blind instinct that told him to lie, though he knew with clever
lawyers against him, and, worst of all opponents, the law, the chances
of his getting through to freedom were remote. I had noticed hitherto
that it was always the young men who felt the strain most, seemed most
conscious of the inhuman cruelty of prison, and I was to find out later
that it was generally the young ones who recovered easiest. Sometimes
the older ones don't recover. A man I was to meet later was afflicted
with sudden decay of the optic nerve, and is now gradually going blind,
purely as a result of solitary.
The door opened suddenly, and they were taken out, and as they passed
me I saw the younger and villainous one look at the old man, in a
manner in which threats, prayers, and above all, the desire to instil
the wish to live were all inexpressibly mixed. They passed. I never saw
them again. I often wonder where they are. There are lots like them.
I was taken back to my cell. I was now sinking fast. I saw little hopes
of recovery. I was quickly becoming a broken-down creature, and though
physically I should have lasted out for years, mentally I saw there was
a crash not far ahead. I had seen it happen with other men before. As
it was, mentally I was fast becoming a species of cow. I would stand
for hours at a time, leaning my head into the corner, my hands in my
pockets, staring at the floor. I would find that for hours I had been
saying to myself "My dear sir"--I always called myself "my dear sir"
when talking out loud,--"you really must make an effort to get out. I
mean it's simply too stupid to spend the best years of your life in a
box like this. Use your wits. Do something. Go on, you juggins, get
out somewhere. Think!" and so on, from twelve till three. I became
absolutely impersonal, and found it difficult to have likes and
dislikes about anything. I absolutely forgot what flowers smelt like.
Milk I could not imagine. Fruit, tobacco, fish, were mere names to me.
I had forgotten what they were. I could not understand the meaning of
the term "red."
Though I longed to be free, I felt that human beings would be perfectly
unbearable. I no longer considered myself as one. I felt perfectly
decorporealised: I was merely a mind contemplative and a poor one at
that. And yet I longed for their company. I still kept up my nightly
habit of repeating a few verses from any poem I could remember, and
after the light had gone out--for here there was electric light--I
would rise solemnly in the dark, and make the most fiery speeches to
the Cambridge Union--poor Cambridge Union. I would then proceed to
oppose my own motion, pick holes in it, show up the proposer as an
impostor and a charlatan. A seconder would then arise, who with all
the sarcasm of a Voltaire would rend the immediate speaker adjective
from substantive, verb from adverb, until quivering with the laceration
received, the latter would be thrown, a bleeding proposition, into the
waste deserts of verbosity.