No music.
No television.
No clocks.
Each day an endless journey to the boundary of his sanity.
Who betrayed you?
Every Sunday he was taken from his cell, escorted up the long stairway and into a small yard, confined on all sides by a twenty-foot-high wall. He knew it was Sunday because of the church bells. On the other side of the wall, cars drove past, mothers walked with their children, groups of men shouted on their way to the football match. Life went on.
Summer ended.
Fall.
The brief Marseille winter.
Spring.
A year passed.
Who betrayed you?
Another Sunday.
Finally, one hour outside. Sun on his face. The smell of grass. Of exhaust. Of the world in which he’d once lived.
A man was standing in the yard. A prisoner. Pale as chalk. Wild hair going gray, falling past his shoulders. Once a strong man. Broad beamed. Rangy. A face carved from stone. A man who refused to yield his dignity.
“My name is Paul.”
“Simon.”
They looked at each other and Simon could see by his expression that they shared a wretched condition.
“How are you, my son?” said Paul.
“Better now,” said Simon. And for a reason he did not know, nor could later explain, he approached the old man and hugged him, holding him close until his muscles weakened and he could hold him no longer. “Better,” Simon repeated.
“Me, too,” said Paul. “I thank you.”
The men walked to a corner of the yard, as far from the guard as they could get.
“How long?” asked Paul.
“A year,” said Simon. “I think. What month is it?”
“September.” Paul smiled. “I think.”
“And you? How long?”
Paul didn’t answer. He merely shook his head. Too long.
The guard appeared and ordered Paul inside. “Listen for me,” he said as he was led away.
That afternoon, as Simon lay on his cot, hands behind his head, staring at a monstrous centipede that had emerged from a crack in the ceiling, asking himself if he were hungry enough to eat it, he heard a tap, tap, tap coming from the wall. It was a new sound, divorced from the pinging of the generator and the buzzing of the light bulb and the stomping of the guards’ feet as they walked up and down the stairs.
Tap, tap, tap.
