He would have to be killed, there was nothing for it. The noise alone warranted such measures, and I say this with full understanding that it is generally considered taboo to kill a guest. Probably this is why people will generally endure a good deal of suffering from those who visit their homes, which forbearance in other settings would hardly be natural. Imagine sitting quietly as the fellow at the next table in a cafe slurps his soup, your admonishing glances having done nothing but elicit a stare in return, the impudence of which allied itself with the slurping noises in a sustained effort to rend your soul into tatters. At the least you’d feel impelled to shoot the son of a bitch in the kneecap, and no doubt all who witnessed it would stand and applaud the act.
“He had it coming, really he did”, they’d tell the officers, who’d doff their caps and bid you a good day as they filed out of the restaurant with the limping offender in cuffs.
But with visitors to one’s home it is a different matter entirely. Shoot such a bore at the dinner table and friends, family, and other guests will look upon you with horror; it’s likely they will even have the indecency to question or castigate you over the deed. One or two might be so shameless as to provide assistance to the man until help arrives.
With guests there are considerations, illustrating once more what a monstrous burden custom can be. We endure our guests. And this strange social custom mandates that we persevere through just about every conceivable predation of a visitor. The person might bray like an ass when laughing, tap his nails incessantly on the table, display teeth while talking that would make a horse think twice before leaving the barn, leer lecherously at the womenfolk and household pets, endorse Twain or Sartre or otherwise offend your sensibilities, and, no matter how egregious the behavior, you cannot slice the person’s throat. It’s forbidden to so much as break an arm or a leg. Through it all the expectation is that you will wear the smile of a streetwalker and nod vacuously at every last jejune thing he might utter. We are tyrants to ourselves in this regard, onerous and cruel.
It may be time to reevaluate the taboo, and such an analysis might begin with a proper definition of just what a guest is. Incidentally, the first appearance in English of the word “taboo” was in the journals of the explorer James Cook, whose demise at the hands of Hawaiians who decidedly did not view him as a guest may well be instructive.
In any case, there is precedent of course for violating the sanctity of the guest-host contract. Though we cannot give this an exhaustive treatment here, one good example would be the decapitation by Genghis of emissaries sent to him by an enemy. (Not being entirely dismissive of proper etiquette he extended the kindness of having their heads returned to their master).
All the same, such things must not be done lightly. It may be that we should kill guests only as a second or third option. We are not beasts.
But the infernal noise! I will not say that a proper counting of the holes in the vent and the striations in the ceiling requires silence, or anything close to it. Whether the traipsing up and down the stairs by morbidly obese guards or the repetitive clicking of handcuffs by the same, the prisoner in the hole is accustomed to a variety of unpleasant sounds. Many of these are made by his fellow prisoners, who from their respective cells scream, giggle, cry, kick the door, grunt or, on rare occasions, even speak respectfully in conversational tones with their neighbors. I once lived next to a fellow who revelled in his flatulence; it tickled him no end. Every time he farted he’d lose himself in laughter, outrageous guffaws that a child might emit on seeing something terrible befall an elder sibling. He was immediately placed in a ledger, maintained by the curmudgeon who exists in the dark corridors of the mind of everyone subjected to solitary confinement, under the heading: TO BE DISPATCHED MERCILESSLY AT THE EARLIEST OPPORTUNITY. His delight in the noises made by his body was offensive, utterly ridiculous and unbecoming a grown man. (In his defense, I did develop over time an appreciation of the expressive nature of his gas, which seemingly had a very jocular personality. The guy farted good humor).
No, if loud and obnoxious noises precluded the counting of various cell features, pacing to and fro, chronic onanism, or any of the other pastimes on which the prisoner in solitary relies, he might as well pack it all in and call it a day. But there are certain noises, at certain times…
There was a lady–I rend the bounds of decency with the use of this word; what a mouth she had on her!–who on occasion would make her rounds on some tier in some hole in some prison or other, somewhere (these places really are all the same). She called herself a “Psych Associate”, which in the nomenclature of prison officials is someone who ostensibly works to improve the mental health of inmates but in fact helps keep Andersen’s “well built machine” running without too many cracks showing.
“How are you doing?” This was her great offering, to each man in his cage. Many hadn’t been outside in years, the sun and wind and moon having become fond memories rather than the diurnal companions they once were, and the best she could muster was a rote question that under the circumstances could only be considered obscene. There were two tiers in that section of the unit, 15 cells to a tier, thus I heard the inquiry 30 times; and there was something in her voice and in the question that thrust itself deep into the soul and left it in fragments, each of which was plucked from the ground and raised to the thing’s face that it might peer at it with an intense perversity and say “I know you, well do I know you, and it is because I have studied you so long that I am able to visit upon you with just my voice all the darkness you ever wrought in this world.”
And so it did, and so she did, time and again. And even the victory I achieved, in seeing her resentment at my resentment of her presence–displayed through a contemptuous wave of the hand when she arrived at my door with her question–was a Pyrrhic one because for a good while after she left I paced the floor resenting her resentment of my resentment.
It may be said that the prisoner is a collector of aggravating noises, if an unwilling one. The hobby pursues him, and brings vexation rather than pleasure. There have been occasions over the years when I would have exchanged an appendage for a good pair of ear plugs. Even my nose, which I’ve always considered a handsome thing, would’ve been sacrificed had it bought an hour of peace. And the source of the noise at present was causing me to consider trades that would put me at a greater disadvantage, perhaps even one that would curtail or prevent the aforementioned onanism. This is desperation talking here, the sort that induces the burning of bridges and the chanting of death songs.
We hear many things in our childhood, dozens of which stick with us through the years. A couple of them may even be true. One thing I learned early on was that every time a fly lands it vomits. I not only accepted this, I began to imagine great piles of stomach matter ejected onto my arm, a dresser, the kitchen counter–wherever a fly might land became suddenly in my mind a landfill of vomit. I have questioned this a time or two over the years, but never enough to look into it because it suits me fine to fancy the pests guilty of such a dreadful act. And now there were landfills all over my cell, mountains of vomit so large I couldn’t even see them, the effluvia from which conducted at great speed all the abominable noises the little bugger was making. The fiend could play, I will give him that. The variety of sounds he produced with his instruments was astounding.
“You want your rec, Pedersen?”
These words, and the homely mound of sallow skin with the beady eyes and wispy moustache in my window, pulled me from my homicidal ruminations.
“You up for a swap today?”
The fleshy lips in the mound arranged themselves into a grimace, which I knew only from long acquaintance with this guard was actually a smile.
“We’ll see what we got.”
Three days a week one was given the opportunity to go to the “outdoor” recreation area, a hallway roughly thrice as long as one’s cell and a few feet wider. What made it “outdoor recreation”–something prison officials in Ninth Circuit states are required under the law to provide to inmates in long-term solitary confinement–was the screened slit along the back wall that permitted fresh air into the corridor. If one crouched down and pressed an eye to the screen a patch of sky was just visible. Let it never be said that prison administrators have no sense of humor, further evidence of which could be seen in the dip bars attached to a wall. These were placed a foot and a half from the ground, rendering them useless even to a midget.
But when you live in a concrete box the prospect of spending time in a larger box can seem appealing. If nothing else, there is the walk to and from the recreation room. Of course, this brief stroll is also a deterrent for many prisoners because it is made while wearing handcuffs and a leash, a hand on each arm from two disgruntled guards with all the charm of a whore serving the last client of a long day.
Other factors come into play. The prisoner may have saved a pile of beans from lunch or a boiled egg from breakfast, to consume following his afternoon exercises, and if he leaves his cell there is a good chance it will be searched by malicious creatures who poke, prod, and/or pilfer what few personal effects he might have. As well, the dust and muck from their boots often leave tracks across the forest path, the mountain meadow, or whatever it is the prisoner fancies the cell floor to be as he races his thoughts back and forth across it throughout the day. And the odors they bring with them! The cologne, the sweat, the shampoo, the foul breath, and these from the ones who smell good–better by far to stew in one’s own stench.
And then there is the possibility of procuring more food. The personalities of prison guards run the gamut, but one thing that is consistent among the demographic is laziness. They will begrudge all activity required of them, and additional energy expenditure is viewed with great hostility. Any colleague who suggests or engages in such activity inspires considerable suspicion.
Years ago at the Washington State Penitentiary there was an officer assigned to the recreation yard who, every now and again, would waddle a lap around the track. This was the cause of great stress for her partner, who would have much rather sat in his chair for a full hour than just 50 minutes. There must have been meetings about her apostasy, because in time she abandoned her relative industry.
The lassitude can sometimes benefit the prisoner. It is a simple task to handcuff a man and escort him 20 or 30 feet to a locked shower stall, and return in a half hour to take him back to his cell; but to many guards the prospect alone is wearying. Occasionally they will offer an extra breakfast or lunch to the inmate if he will refuse his shower or recreation. I have smelled like a mountain goat for far longer than I care to admit in exchange for a few sandwiches. Pride is hardly a worthy opponent of hunger to the poorly-fed man in solitary.
It can be difficult to ascertain precisely when the guest-host compact commences. Generally the matter is straightforward, but ambiguity arises on those occasions when the presence of someone or something uninvited has been tolerated long enough that it is not unreasonable for the person or thing to invoke guest rights. I’d made this mistake with the demonic little Paganini, and he knew it because where initially his buzzing had a certain modesty to it, a diffidence borne of existential uncertainty–which, though it cannot be said to have evinced respect, at least feigned as much respectably–now he was unrestrained by all but the profound joy derived from the noise he created.
It is understood that a fly will make noise, just as one understands that dogs bark, cows moo, and birds chirp, tweet, and caw–all well and good. But this fellow was building a monument to buzzing, an imposing crenelated edifice each merlon of which comprised myriad little buzzes; and in those moments when I was on the cusp of imbibing the restorative waters of reverie, as I paced the four steps and a turn allotted me by fate, an arrow from one of the dipterous archers atop the monument would come buzzing its way into my soul’s core and remind me that much of the joy in this world comes at the expense of another.
I do not know how a fly produces noise–I suppose I ought to. Perhaps it’s caused by friction when it rubs its proboscises together, or its legs. Maybe its wings are the culprits. But this was no ordinary fly. He was possessed of a prodigious talent and at his disposal was a vast array of instruments capable of producing the most extraordinary sounds, and he employed every one of them to great effect. I became putty in the hands that he did not have, and if I am being honest I must confess that he unmanned me. I became a groveling little girl before the abominable music of this fly, a creature broken in mind and spirit capable of nothing but walking back and forth like an automaton in my little cage, bereft of any human feeling at all that was not connected to misery and aggravation at the cacophony produced by legs or proboscises or I knew not what smaller than the most minute hair on my body. And as I alternately paced or swept the floor or abused myself in an onanistic frenzy I was ever conscious that, whatever else I might do, I would kill the author of my anguish in the most gruesome fashion imaginable, guest-host compact or no. What else would be appropriate?
There are occasions during a lengthy stretch in solitary when whatever kind spirit may exist in the universe whispers to one’s heart a secret message of hope and strength, letting one know that everything will be okay; that if one can just hang on things will work themselves out for the good. This may be conveyed by a ray of yellow-gold streaming through the window, or by the silver light of the moon that one senses when there is no window in the cell other than the portal of imagination. However it comes its arrival is welcomed by the prisoner, the rare gift from a miser. This fly, on the other hand, was a harbinger whose message foretold great suffering and torment, rescinding all previous communications that did not comport with it. And how he danced and skipped as he conveyed it!
Yes, I would have to kill him–either that or abandon all my dignity, which these days was at a premium. I flung a shower sandal at the thing, but it must have hit a parapet because it fell harmlessly to the floor as the archers unleashed another fusillade in my direction. Several more such attempts resulted only in more fusillades, each containing a greater number of arrows of noise louder than those preceding them and capable somehow of piercing even deeper into my soul.
I feigned writing a letter and when the jester had waltzed Matilda onto my desk I snatched the precious sheet of paper–one often has limited access to writing materials in the hole, another charming aspect of the environment–and slammed it with great force over my tormentor, only he’d tripled his triple time and was cutting the rug near the desk’s edge by the time the paper made contact.
After much pacing, the throwing of a book, a toilet paper roll, and the raggedy plastic husk that passed for a pillow, it became clear that the sadist was cunning, and really my attempts on his life had hardly done justice to the formidable mind I was up against. A subtle stratagem was needed.
“This was all we had, Pedersen”. The wispy moustache was back in my door window, and a small plastic bag was tossed through the cuff port. I’d agreed to smell like a goat an additional two days for a packet of peanut butter and two slices of bread, but I was hungry enough that I didn’t mind so terribly.
As I sat there cross-legged on the concrete munching my sandwich, I noticed that I was nearly eye-level with the little monster, which had landed atop the stool bolted to the floor before my desk. I perceived that he was staring at me reproachfully, this erstwhile maggot, and in that moment it was doubtful that I would ever see him dead because he exuded such confidence and sublimity of character, such a grandeur of the soul, that it seemed as though I was dealing not with a fly but with the latest manifestation of something of great beauty that had been passed down through the ages; indeed, a rare noble thread of existence that had used previous generations to prune from itself what few blemishes it might have and to redouble, time and again, its unqualified magnificence. The spirit that moved Cu Chulainn’s hand was the same that built those wings, and if that was the case I was in some kind of trouble. A nap was in order.
“You will note that even in my present state, after all your atrocious behavior, even now am I capable of magnanimity.” Carefully I sprinkled crumbs from my sandwich onto the stool.
“Eat up, villain. You will need the nourishment later, I assure you.” And so saying, I wrapped around my head the old towel that I used to block light and sound while sleeping, and fell into dream.
There is a creek that strolls blithely through the town of my youth, mostly along a relatively straight path but wandering this way and that as befits people and creeks who understand that they’re always where they ought to be. Nothing ever disturbed this little stream’s equanimity, particularly on a summer day when its surface coruscated in golden beams spilling from an afternoon sun whose generosity must’ve been inspired at least in part by the leisurely waters–what a picture it will make if I bestow a few extra rays on this canvas, it seemed to say.
The damned thing about doing time is that, if one does enough of it, the stunted creatures who warehouse human souls for a living will eventually worm their way into one’s dreams. It wasn’t enough for them to take life as one knew it, to put a man in a concrete box that they might watch him with all the perverse fascination of a child predator observing schoolyard activity, scrutinizing and recording every conceivable aspect of his existence; no. They must also have one’s fantasies. The nepenthe of sleep becomes instead a reminder of just how far one has fallen.
I have sat eating cookies with my mother during nocturnal wanderings, in the apartment where we lived when the world still held promise–a song filling my heart with every bite–when suddenly I was filled with the profoundest dread that something terrible would befall me if I did not make it back to prison in time for the afternoon count. And I have gallivanted the city sidewalks, ones I might have owned for all the confidence I felt as I walked along deriving great pleasure from the bright fabrics of a woman’s dress or the aromas wafting from a nearby restaurant, when turning a corner I saw that everything–the cobblestoned avenues, the ornate fountains, the handsome faces, the reverie itself–all was encircled by fences and concertina wire that stretched toward the purple and silver dream skies.
And so it was, as I floated with eyes closed on an inner tube in the golden stream of youth, feeling more than hearing the susurrant mingling of leaf and wind in the trees along the shores, that my tranquility was disturbed by a horrendous screeching from above. Upon opening my eyes I saw that every other tree had become a guntower, through the windows of which leaned uniformed rhesus monkeys using bullhorns to issue orders that were unintelligible to me no matter how hard I endeavored to understand them. On I floated, and with each guntower I passed the screeching increased in pitch and intensity and as it did so I redoubled my efforts to comprehend it because in my heart there was great fear that if I did not follow their orders then soon they would descend upon me, dozens of the chattering monkeys in their ill-fitting uniforms and steel bracelets and colossal batons whose tumescence would have shamed Priapus, and drag me away to that place of misery and privation that sits like a gargoyle in the shadow of everything good and happy and free, ever watching and waiting.
But fathom their discordant speech I could not, and descend they did, and as clouds of tear gas turned the sun a fierce orange and rust brown I began to flail about in panic, the sounds leaving my throat as indecipherable as the monkeys’ own language. O Great Eternal Jester, let me get back, just this once would you turn elsewhere for your pleasure and let me find my way back into the sun…
But the only hands extended to me were those that grabbed and pulled and squeezed; and, when I thought to pluck from the creek’s bottom a jagged rock with which I might strike some of those hands, the rage and pepper spray blinding me ensured that every swing missed its mark, pitiful as the gurgling noises pouring from me like so many gumballs from a broken jar.
Soon I could hear, through the chatter and the gleeful howls, a hissing sound that scattered first several monkeys, then all of them, gesticulating wildly as they waded toward either shore as quickly as the slippery rocks would allow. Confusion opened the heart’s door once again to fear when a stream of warm air hit my arm and I realized that one of my errant swings had pierced the inner tube, which as it deflated was spun very quickly in tight circles by the waters of the creek that had been gathered by dream and twirled like a liquid top into an eddy of terrifying depths. Round and round I went in the dark waters, frantically clinging to the useless strip of rubber, and as I descended further into the vortex I saw that the foam at the whirlpool’s lip had become a ring of the uniformed monkeys holding one another’s hands as they skipped and danced in the direction opposite my spinning. And before I fell into the void and all had once again become utter darkness, as it must have been in the beginning, I sensed that I was on the verge of grasping the monkeys’ speech. This seemed a great discovery to me because as they danced and skipped they sang, and I knew somehow that their song was responsible for the spinning, the confusion, the darkness itself.
Ah, let there be a ray of light, just a single golden thread…But there was only darkness, the eternal pitch, and on I spun.
Lying there on the cold floor looking up at the ceiling I thought how strange it was that just a few inches of concrete could alter one’s existence so profoundly. What was it in the end, after all, but the same rubble and dust that one had seen time and again in pictures of war-torn cities, or while walking on a summer afternoon along a sidewalk in poor repair? Mere dust particles, and yet they hid the stars and the colors of the world from me.
Rising to my feet the creaking of the food trolley as it rolled down the tier let me know it was dinnertime. On occasion I would fancy in the sound of those wheels the arrival of a rail cart that carries souls lost in the darkness of this misery mine back to the surface and the light. But it only ever brought grey and brown textured vegetable protein masquerading as meat.
Back and forth my feet carried me, from the slab of concrete that was my bunk to the steel door, back and forth and neither sight nor sound from the winged monster. As the wheels drew nearer to my cell I made to scratch a spot on the outside of my forearm that had bothered me since I awoke, and there I found what was left of the fly, done in by a flailing limb.
The trolley came and went and back and forth my feet kept on, faithful myrmidons no matter how sore they might get. As they carried their master over hills and through forests, I began to hear the falling of water droplets and saw that my sink had a drip. There was no rhyme or reason to it either, but rather a staccato madness whose anti-rhythm suggested from the beginning that this was no ordinary drip. Such an infernal noise I had never heard…
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