It was just about this time that I nearly got myself shot for attempted
murder. I was so used to the darkness that I found electric light
rather trying to the eyes, and therefore turned the racket upwards
toward the ceiling in order to have but reflected light. A little
later in came the warder. He saw the upturned bracket, and lifting
the hilt of his sword, hit me sharply over the head. In a flash I was
on him. I had raised my fists on each side for a smashing blow on his
temples. He was unable to get away, for he was so short that my arms
could have nailed him as he tried. He saw there was no escape, and the
sight of my face blazing with fury and wretchedness made him drop his
sword. I relished that moment, I gloated over it. I kept my fists going
backwards and forwards nearly touching his temples, but never quite.
I tried to imagine the agony in his rabbit-like mind, waiting for the
crushing blow to fall upon him, and wondering what it would feel like.
Suddenly he turned a sickly green. His hat was knocked all on one side.
I saw beneath his uniform a fat little vulgar bourgeois, incapable of a
thought outside the satisfying of his own senses. He turned from green
to a pasty yellow. He glanced piteously up into my distorted face.
I drove him back towards the door, growling and hissing at him, my
fists going like a steam hammer on each side of his head. His agony
became worse. His eyes flew from one side to the other, like a rabbit
looking for escape. His little pointed flaxen beard wobbled and, such
was his panic, so did his stomach. Suddenly my mind changed, and taking
him by the shoulders, and putting my knee, as far as it was possible,
into his belly, I pushed him backwards, and he sat down violently and
disconsolately in the passage outside, his sword underneath him, and
his hat rolling away into the darkness. I slammed the door, and after
a time he got up and locked it. I knew nothing would happen to me, for
he was not permitted to hit me, but had I hit him back, I gasp to think
of the number of years I should now be doing.
This, the third prison I had been in, was the worst. Physically it was
slightly better: there was more space, light, two good meals a day, but
the very last drop of individuality was taken away from you. It was not
permitted even to arrange the bowls on the shelf as you liked. I never
saw daylight, for our exercise took place at half-past six in the dark.
It was now the 20th of January. I had been arrested in the early days
of October. Since then I had been residing in a lavatory. I found it
dull.
Despite the warder's announcement that nobody ever came there for less
than three or four months, I was suddenly taken away again after five
days, and Black Maria drove me back once more to the Polizeigefängnis
of the Alexanderplatz. I was too miserable by now to care where I was
sent or what they did to me. I was beginning to lose the power of
appreciating anything--whatever its nature. I found some new arrivals
at Alexanderplatz. The place was full as usual with neutrals who were
under suspicion: Dutch, Swedes and Danes. One Dutchman had been there
for seven weeks in solitary. I was just reaching the final depths of
despair when, one night, just as I had got my first foot into bed, the
door was flung open, and into the gloom a voice shouted "'raus."[6] I
"raused" timidly and in my nightshirt, and was told to dress quickly. I
did so, surmising I was to go to another prison. I began to feel quite
numb, and I no longer hoped for anything. Downstairs in the bureau a
very pleasant policeman took charge of me, and after having signed the
receipts for the acceptance of my carcase, he made the usual remark,
"Kommen Sie mit," and off we went. I thought it odd that we should go
alone: they usually fetch the criminals in batches. "Where are we going
to?" I asked. "Ruhleben," he said.