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An armchair in one corner, by the large front window with the thick curtains drawn. Next to it a large bookcase. Dictionaries, encyclopaedias, an atlas. Gormenghast and Ulysses, Tolstoy and Kerouac, Pratchett and Adams. All well-thumbed and in order.
The news was on. A newsreader was telling the nation of a major food shortage somewhere in central Africa. A report came on from a correspondent in the field, his short-sleeved shirt pimpled with sweat and flies, holding his microphone like a burning torch in some unknown cave.
Pictures. More pictures. Children, their arms stick-thin, not enough energy to swat away the flies that crawled over them as they would a dead man. A small girl, about six years old, was cradling her baby brother in her arms. He was crying, wailing. Today’s photogenic atrocities.
The shot cut back to the newsreader. A man, in his late forties maybe. Suit, white shirt, tie with a wide knot. Short hair and too-straight teeth. A telephone number blinked into existence on the screen beneath him. His face was set in seriousness. He told his audience of a number they could call to make donations toward the aid operation. A phone stood next to them on a small table, quiet and lonely.
“Terrible.”
It was one of the figures on the sofa. A woman’s voice.
“Christ, yes. It makes you grateful, doesn’t it?”
There were a few seconds of contemplative silence.
“Pass the T.V guide.”
The woman leaned over to the coffee table, picked up a flimsy magazine, and handed it to the man.
“There you go, love.”
The man studied it.
A hand reached out to the remote control.
The screens are grinning more scenes at me. Confused. No matter how long no matter how hard or deep I don’t know how I am here. How I came to be here. This place radiates contempt for its prisoners. I think a little. There are other people. There must be other people, rows of cells, towering up to an empty heaven and down to a gridlocked hell. You decide that there must be other people here, in other cells like this, like mine. That’s what I decide. That’s what I choose to believe.