Struggle: Grip of steel
Шрифт:
Openly not accepting the will of the prefect is considered an act of sabotage
Tikhomirov continued to hold this piece of paper in his hands, reading it, and didn't even blink an eye when he finished doing so:
– Most of these measures have in fact already been approved by me, Mr. Prefect. There are no superfluous words here, except one. In the last paragraph, the word "open" is still superfluous. If in the previous paragraph we believe that one should not be against it even in thought, then we should also consider sabotage a crime even in thought. Whether we know about it or not, we must consider it a crime.
Gora looked at the paper, then at Tikhomirov, then shook his head slightly affirmatively:
– Yeah. You're right. The word "open" doesn't belong here.
Inquisitor
This cell was even smaller than the one he'd been sitting in a few days ago. This one contained only a bunk and a garbage bucket. It seemed to him that the warders had something special to do with buckets – you couldn't just take them out, or cover them with something, or even fill them with water at first. They are inviolable except when you defecate in them. I guess that's what it looked like in their heads.
It was a punitive isolation cell, where prisoners who violated something flagrantly or repeatedly were sent. The priest had violated several times – he was wearing clothes that were not according to the regulations. He had one button undone on his collar and one on each sleeve, plus his sleeves were rolled up. He was reprimanded the first time, and sent to the detention center the second time.
Of course, he tried to convince them that there was no malice in it. That the button on his collar was undone because otherwise the collar squeezed his throat and it was hard to breathe. And the sleeves don't button up properly at all. And that the whole prison uniform was too small for him. In response, he heard that it was not a problem for him to button up, that he sometimes did so during inspections, that it was the same with the sleeves, and that all these were gross violations of discipline.
And again he tried to say that, indeed, technically he could zip it up, but not for more than a couple of minutes while the inspection was going on. And that he was only doing it so that his actions would not be seen as malicious, which they were not.
He was once again told that there was a malicious intent to return everything back to the wrong position after the inspection had left, and that if he did not understand it in a good way, he would have to understand it in a bad way and sit in the isolation center.
With a garbage can, and two square meters of free space. That's all you can count on, Your Eminence Samoh.....
Not a few hours later, the same mentally ill person, who could shout day and night without tiring, was moved to the cell opposite him. And once again, in addition to the acrid stench of his own feces and urine, the sound accompaniment from the room opposite was added.
On the first such day Samokh did not fall asleep, and spent the whole next day in endless efforts to stay awake, pecking his nose at every minute. From time to time the warden looked into the cell and tapped the bars with his baton, on the one hand insinuating that he could see everything, and if you covered your eyes a little longer than the blinking time, he would immediately report a violation – a prisoner in the SHIZO was sleeping at the wrong time. On the other hand, such attention gave Samokh some confidence – he continued to realize that the whole damn structure of the prison administration was probably designed around him to get something out of him. That realization kept him from extinguishing his sense of self-importance to those around him-so necessary when there were no rights to anything.
This one, too, he fell asleep. There was no strength for anything, and even the shouts from the cell opposite eventually merged into such a background that it ceased to disturb him. He dreamt this time of his drill of unspoken resource and of Rambanhr, who is at the head of it. They had beaten Guzokh to a pulp to begin with, then they had taken out some chums from the BSS and shot them, then they had brought in Ananhr herself and started mocking her, calling her an upstart and a whore working her sweet spot. It was impossible to see her reaction or even her face properly in the dream. At those screams the dream ended, Samoh woke up and heard that they were screams from the cell across the hall. And it was so easy to feel the presence of the Church's combat unit near him…
A day later, the punishment days in the SHIZO were over, and Samokh was taken back to his regular cell, where there was a broken toilet bowl with shit in it and, of course, a swarm of flies over it. This day he was not supposed to leave the cell except for the evening formation and rotation, and if it were not for the constant companion from the cell opposite, who had also been released from the isolation cell and brought back. Apparently, he was treated the same way as the holy bucket in the SHIZO – he could not be touched, changed, paid attention to by the warders, and in general the only thing that could be done with him was to move him from one place to another, and in strict accordance with the location of the Metropolitan. And if the bucket was ordinary for obvious reasons, this unicum was undoubtedly dug out of some other prison and placed in this one, so that a famous person would not be bored.
At the evening inspection, where Samokh, believing that it was not necessary to arouse another hatred of him by unbuttoned buttons, decided to be a little patient and put everything in visible order before the cameras were opened. Of course, he looked like a clown in clothes several sizes smaller than his own. And in spite of the fact that there were no remarks to him during the inspection, fifteen minutes after the inspection, several prison officers broke into the cell in an urgent order, who recorded another malicious systematic violation in the uniform, which entailed, of course, a new transfer to the SHIZO. The second in a row.
Nothing had even had time to change, including, of course, the bucket of slop, which stood in the same place as before. There was no doubt about who would be brought to the chambers opposite in a few minutes. And moreover, if it had not happened, Samoh would have thought that something even more terrible was being prepared. So when the cutthroat appeared, it already calmed him down in a way.
This night I didn't even sleep that badly, though I didn't dream about anything. There was no strength at all, as before, so the process of sleeping was equal in an instant – I closed my eyes and opened them almost immediately. The warden tapped on the bars with his key, a traditional way of getting up in the morning for the isolation ward.
And it was somewhat surprising that Samokh had not been taken to any interrogation or other investigative measures. He was being held here simply to bring him to a certain condition, and, assuming that it had not yet been reached, was waiting for his time.
The second visit to the SHIZO was not so long – only one day. And the Metropolitan was taken back. But this time not to his cell, but to a double cell, where at first there was no one. In addition, the cell had a heavy steel door with a window that opened to serve food. The toilet worked, too, and it seemed that these conditions were much better than before. Samoh even thought that they had simply had enough of bullying him, and finally gave him a break, so that he could redouble his strength in the new stage. But he was wrong.