have? A fly lands atop my nude body. I can feel his little feet as he walks across my s to m a c h . T he n he f l ie s away. Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Buzz. He circles me. I am happy it is there. Something else alive is in the cell with me. I close my eyes and I wait for the fly to land on my body and instead of tiny feet walking across my body, I feel the sharp prick of a needle. A guard hits me in the ass with an injection. “This will make you relax,” he tells me. What was it? What did he shoot into my body? When I was a Ph.D. student, I remember my professor telling the class “ the prisons in the United States of America are just another form of Nazi concentration camps. America has more of its people locked up in prisons than any other country in the world. . The professor went on to tell us how, in the United States of America, they injected syphilis into unknowing prisoners ( . . .telling the prisoners, all of them black, they were giving them shots to prevent co ld s .. .). THEN THE PR ISON O FF IC IA LS WATCHED AS ONE BY ONE THE PRISONERS SLOWLY AND PAINFULLY DIED—never knowing they were nothing more than subjects for medical research. Being able to move my head only so far from side to side, I am forced to stare up at the ceiling. Cracks in the ceiling become abstract paintings. The abstract paintings become movies of make believe animals, things, places. . . . Hours. Hours pass by. Time passes until the iron door clangs open and in walks the psychiatrist. He orders the guards to release me. They do. Once again I am free. To be able to stand is a new sensation. I stare at the bed and it turns into a butterfly; inside me a beautiful sky opens and opens. My feet want to do a silly little dance—but, just being able to shuffle walk is—for me—an effort. I want to scream. I remain quiet. The guards have a way of controlling prisoners. As always torture and stark brutality win o ve r . . .over what? I scream. It is a silent scream. I am the only one who is able to hear it. Finally I understand the march to the gas chambers in collective silence. I know these guards could kill me and I would be too afraid to scream out. What is happening? What is happening to me? Why am I letting it happen? Somewhere I read about this process. My mother, my father, all my relatives told me it could never happen again. But again. . . . And . . . . When I get out of the isolation room, the first thing I do is go see the prison chaplain. I tell him what happened to me, and he tells me about a man he knew locked in an isolation cell. The man said he was going to kill himself and that nobody could stop him. So—when the guards put him in the isolation cell, he chewed off his tongue, picked his tongue up from off the floor, stuffed it back into his mouth, then choked to death on it, trying to swallow it. “ Nobody can stop anyone,” the chaplain tells me. “ If they want to kill themself, they’ ll find a way to do it, no matter what.” I start walking to my cell. How could he do it? I ask myself. A prisoner tells me (who cleans the isolation cells) that the man wrote with blood all over the isolation cell. One word. Over and over and over again, on the ceiling, on the floor, on each of the four walls. The word: HELP. “ How thick were the letters on the walls?” He holds up one hand and makes a space about two inches thick. Then it comes to me: the prisoner wrote on the walls with his severed tongue. He had to. If he did it with his fingers the letters would have been much thinner. My mind says—yes; my heart says—no. This horror story is too horrible, it has gone past the believable to the unbelievable, where a writer writes knowing he is going to lose most of his audience through disbelief. It is a point no writer wants to go beyond. To write is to attempt to communicate to as many people as possible, but—for me— many people is not my concern: I am thinking about only one person—one prisoner—the way one man chose to die, and truth as I see/hear/feel it. And that’s all that matters. And so I go. I go beyond: Dhe inmate has the look of a man who has once gone totally insane. He glares at life with unfeeling eyes—as if all the feelings he once had died and somehow he went on living. His right eye keeps closing half way—then opening again. “That could beafirst chapter for abook. Medical experimentation on Jewish prisoners in the year of 1984 and in the country of the United States of America-that’s ahook, if ever therewas one.” “You should talk about what happens here.” He shakes his head from side to side. “ It is no use. You know what I mean? No one would ever believe it. Are you listening to me? The worst insanity is sanity itself. You know what I mean? Are you listening to me?” “ Look, I am a prisoner like you. And I write. Perhaps, if someone wrote it down—then something may happen. Who knows? Anyway, if nothing else, writing about this hell-hole is a way of passing time in here.” “ They experiment on prisoners in this prison and the U.S. government puts up the money. Can you believe that?” “ I have worked as a journalist, and nothing can surprise me anymore. And, for the most part, what is not written is more believable than what is.” “ Me—I fought in a war. . . and I end up in prison. They make a big deal out of the concentration camps and medical experimentation on Jewish prisoners. Over and over again they tell us how horrible all that was. Now, forty years later they are still experimenting on Jewish prisoners—here, right here in America—and the American people are just like the Nazis in Germany. They pretend that it is not happening here. They drive by the prisons without giving them a second glance. Who was it who said ‘history repeats itself’?” “You are telling me that they have medical experimentation on prisoners here?” “ Telling you. Fuck, telling you. I will show you what they did to me.” We walk into a washroom and he exposes himself to me. Then he takes a piss. The piss is dark red. I stare at his testicles. They are the size of grapefruits. “ They took me into this room and then they zapped my balls with radiation.” “ Radiation?” “Yeah. Radiation. Now I shit and I piss blood—and they tell me not to worry. But, I have been passing blood for a long time now. And I am worried. But, they will not do anything for me. Nothing. They will not do anything for anyone. That's the way it is in here. There’s no help for us and no one cares about us or what happens to us in here. I tell you no one cares.” “ That could be a first chapter for a book—I mean, what you are telling me. A writer needs what they call ‘a hook’ to make a book interesting. Medical experimentation on Jewish prisoners in the year of 1984 and in the country of the United States of Ame rica-tha t’s a hook, if ever there was one. “ I am going to write about you—and what you are telling me. What happened to you. How you are shitting and pissing blood and how your testicles are swollen to the size of grapefruits.” nam now directed to go to a psychologist’s office. The psychologist is not a prison staff person—he comes in from the outside. He is everything I dislike about psychological counseling: he has a “ NICE” tonal quality of his controlled voice; he has NICE facial expressions; his body language is relaxed and non-threatening; his choice of words too is, for the most part, neutral—all this NICEness appears to be nothing more than packaged psychology wrapped in a NICE outer wrapping, whereby the basic human exchange is just not there. Nevertheless, I make my leap into the unknown and try to reel in my big white whale from out of the cement floor I find myself staring at. I do not want him to accept my truth as his truth; I only wonder if he is able to accept a “ living truth” and give a basic human response to it. I get a sick gut feeling: knowing the need for outside confirmations of one’s writing is the death of “ realistic writing.” “Well, I told you what happened to me. Now—I want to know. How can that torture help me? How?” “You should not have told them what you told them. You have to learn who you can be honest with,” the shrink tells me. “ That’s no answer. I want to know how that torture can help me? Why won’t you answer that?” “ Guards are just that—guards. The guards would probably kill you—if they were told to do it,” he tells me, with no emotion whatsoever in his voice (he says KILL in his that’s-the-way-it-is voice). “And, of course, you want me to trust you—now, right now. But, how do I know it will not happen again? How do I know you will not call the guards and. . . ?” " . . . I would not do that to you. You can trust me.” “ That’s what the guy behind the desk said. He told me I could trust him.” "He said that?” He shakes his head. Then he hits me with: “ I am just doing my job.” “ Those are the words Adolf Eichmann used: ‘ I WAS JUST DOING MY JOB.’ I d id not come here to hear Ado lf Eichmann dialogue.” He talks. He goes on talking. The only thing I can remember is something about my “ self-esteem.” I need to build up my self-esteem. I want to ask him—did making me lie chained spread eagled and nude in my shit and piss for days on end—did that help build up my self-esteem? I want to ask him—if he thinks the guards would kill a prisoner, and by telling me he thinks that that could happen—if that helps build up my self-esteem? I want to ask him about the horror of knowing Jewish prisoners are being used fo r medical expe rimen ta t ion whereby their testicles are deformed and they are shitting and pissing blood. The psychologist seems to be more out of touch with the reality of the prison than I am. “ I don’t think you know what happens outside of this room,” I tell him. “ I’ve worked in Corrections for nineteen years now.” “And you consider this tiny windowless room, and you and I talking to each other—you consider this to be part of the prison—a reality of the prison?” “ I know what you are feeling. I know what you are going through,” he tells me. I listen to him. Not knowing what to say. “ I have this theory. I made this flow chart. You are at the anger stage.” “ Flow chart? Anger stage?” I ask him. “Yes. You are angry that you are in here—inside this prison—but, this anger stage will pass. You will be in the acceptance stage next. Sooner or later you will have to accept the fact that you are here. I have this theory on the criminal mind. This flow chart of the criminal mind. All prisoners go through these stages once they enter prison. Anger. Acceptance. Denial. Refusal. A refusal to accept the consequences of their acts.” I look at him. I look at his face—I mean I try to peel off (one by one) the layers of buffer zones he seems to be hiding behind—and I see a man trained to rationalize horror (the guards will kill you) wearing a psychological death mask of intellectualism, and I know it is of no use—no use at all. So, I do what mankind has been doing for thousands and thousands of years: I agree with him. He loves this. He smiles his YES, YES, I KNOW, I KNOW SMILE. Now he’s talking about the criminal mind—again. “There is a need for criminals to be sterilized. The criminal mind cannot just be allowed to reproduce generation after generation. The passing on of this genetic trait has to be stopped.” “ Is that why this prison has the medical experimentation called The Heller Project? And the next man waiting to see you—the inmate out in the hallway, waiting outside your door—he’s pissing and shitting blood. That’s part of the Heller Project that no one wants to look at.” “The Heller Project and prisoner experimentation happened a long time ——_ „ ago. “ That man—outside your door—he has testicles the size of grapefruits. He’s standing out there right now. Do you call that a long time ago?” . “All of what you are talking about is old news. Nobody cares about that now.” “Old news? Nobody cares about that now? If it is old news why then during Open Line—you know that talk show on the radio—where people call in. . .I heard this lady caller ask this guy running for governor—she asked him about prisoners being experimented on. This guy is running for governor and of course he pretended he didn’t know anything about prisoner experimentation—or the Heller Project.” “You are Jewish. You are. Right?” “What does that mean?” “Well, are you?" “Yes. I am. Now what?” “Jewish people react in a certain way to situations. Different than any other race of people.” “And what does that mean? Are you telling me Jewish people all have a sort of concentration camp view of life? As if we feel victimized by any negative circumstance we find ourselves in. We all are supposed to have this persecution complex—right?” ’ “What I mean to say is that Jewish people are more sensitive to situations that could be called dehumanizing.” “ So, Jewish people react more to situations like that?” “Of course they do. Just look at the Civil Rights Movement. All of the top Civil Rights lawyers are Jewish.” “What does the fact that I am Jewish have to do with when I walked into this prison, they stripped me nude, chained me down spread eagled, and forced me to lay in my shit and piss for days on end? That’s what they did to people in the medieval times. This is 1984. You are part of the system that did that to me. How can you accept things like that are happening now—right here—today—in this prison? How can you accept that?” “ I do not accept it.” “ But you are a part of it. Just by your being here—that makes you a part of it. You work here. You make your money by coming here. To this place. What kind of a person does that make you? You make your money off other people’s miseries.” “ I told them I want out. I told them I want to leave. I do not want my contract renewed.” “ Thank god for that. You have to be the ga rbage men of the p sycho log y profession.” “That’s enough. You can go now.” I start walking to my cell. I think about the prisoner who bit off his tongue. I stop walking. I slip my tongue between my teeth. I bite down ever so slowly. My tongue becomes something new in my mouth: an object of inner intense pain. And there too, there is the taste of fresh blood. I stop. Something inside me cries out: H-E-L-R I have seen the world HELP scratched with fingernails into the walls of gas chambers. What has happened? What is still happening. . . and. . . why? Writer Al Israel Rose lives in Portland. He was recently awarded Mr. Cogito Magazine’s first Human Rights award. This is the first chapter of a book-in-progress. Artist Carel Moiseiwitsch lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. 38 Clinton St. Quarterly—Spring, 1987
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz