The Third Day, The Frost (21 page)

‘What’s it matter to you anyway?’ I screamed.
‘You disgusting filthy heap of shit! What are you helping them for?
You’re a traitor. At least we tried. At least we did the best we
could. I don’t care if I do die, I’d rather be dead than end up a
complete and utter arsehole like you.’ I was standing and
screaming, aware that little flecks of spit were flying out of my
mouth and hitting his red shocked face. Not that I cared about
that. Then the guards were in the room, grabbing me and throwing me
onto the floor.

Soon after that I was marched back to my cell.
It was dawn, and great grey clouds were being lit by a stormy grey
light. I walked along with my head back, my eyes as wide as I could
make them, marvelling at the vastness and wildness of it all. I
didn’t know how many more skies I would see. In my cell, there was
no trace of nature at all, so this couple of minutes was very
precious, something to be thought about and relived for hours to
come. All my life I’d been surrounded by sky and earth and trees
and to be cut off from them now, to be cut off so suddenly and
completely, was very hard.

The Slaters had a Japanese lady visit them a
couple of years back. She was about twenty-three, twenty-four. She
told them that until her trip out to Australia she’d never seen the
horizon. Twenty-three years old and she’d never seen the horizon!
It was a modern-day horror story. I’d realised then how lucky I
was.

Chapter
Twenty-five

I sat in my cell in a state of expectation,
waiting for the next summons to Major Harvey. I was all tensed up,
unable to sleep, though I felt unbearably exhausted. Breakfast came
and I ate it and then made myself go through the exercises that I’d
decided on the day before. But already, less than twenty-four hours
after making those resolutions, I found myself struggling to keep
them.

All day I waited for the summons and all day
it failed to come. Around midafternoon I dozed off at the desk, my
head on my arms. When I woke, my head felt heavy and achey, and my
left leg had gone numb. I felt worse instead of better.

Tea arrived, brought on the tray by the same
group of three women. I was starting to notice the different guards
now. The one who carried the tray each time was the shortest of the
three. She was a plain-looking dumpy woman with a flat face and
sparse black hair. She looked about forty. Her uniform was the
least adorned of any of the guards; no stripes, and only one small
badge sewn to the left shoulder, so I suppose she was pretty junior
in rank. Despite her plain looks she had a kind face. I thought
that in her own country she was probably a cleaner or a maid, the
same job that she was doing here, except that now she was in
uniform. The two women at the door, with guns drawn, were younger
and slimmer. They looked like sisters. One seemed nervous, as
though she thought I might attack her at any moment. The other, the
officer, was more confident, more relaxed. She always watched me
with interest, like she was curious about me.

So this time, when the woman put the tray
down, I tried making a joke. I was already desperate for human
company, for warmth, for friendship. I didn’t want to be their
enemy. I waved at the tray and said, ‘What is it this time, a Big
Mac?’ The woman carrying the tray looked startled, then gave a
little smile and shook her head. ‘No, no, no Big Mac,’ she said.
The officer laughed out loud. The other one just looked even more
nervous, as though making a joke was really, a kind of attack. They
went out again, shutting the door, but I felt encouraged by my
first attempt to be friendly, warmed by that moment when we’d
laughed together. I ate my tea in a slightly better spirit.

I’d been thinking, of course, of ways of
making a dramatic escape. At one stage I’d thought of telling Major
Harvey that there really were New Zealand commandos, and I’d take
him to them. Then, when I was out in the open air, I’d wait for an
opportunity to grab a gun or something, or run away. One of the
many problems with that was I could hardly escape from the prison
and leave my friends inside.

I told myself it would have been easier if I’d
known definitely that I was going to be killed. Then I’d have done
anything, even staged a suicide escape attempt, because I’d have
had nothing to lose. But while there’s life there’s hope I guess,
and I couldn’t bring myself to accept that my execution was such a
certainty.

Another escape method would have been to take
a hostage. Hold a knife to a soldier’s throat and make her lead me
to the front gate and let me out. There were a few problems with
that too, one of them being the fact that the only weapons they’d
given me so far were plastic forks.

After tea I did my exercises again. For one
thing, I wanted to wear myself out physically, so I’d have more
chance of sleeping when the lights were turned off. So I did more
aerobics, flinging my arms out, kicking my legs, chanting songs to
myself. This time I just ignored the camera.

When I was pretty puffed I sat on the bed. I
realised that what I wanted most was something to read or, failing
that, something to write on. I decided to try getting the guards’
attention. I was curious to see what would happen and, again, I
didn’t have much to lose. So I went to the door and banged on it
with my fist. The door was so thick and heavy that I couldn’t make
a loud-enough noise. So I tried shaking it, which didn’t work
either, as it was too solid, too well fitted. Then I yelled for a
bit, first at the camera, then through the door. I wondered if my
friends could hear any of this. I hadn’t seen or heard a glimpse of
them since we’d entered our separate cells. But it didn’t seem
likely that anyone would hear me as my voice sounded so muffled,
even to me. It was frustrating, and a bit scary. I felt so cut off,
and wondered what would happen if there were a fire in the prison.
It wouldn’t be a healthy place.

I yelled for ten minutes. There wasn’t much
else to do; it helped pass the time. Just as I was about to give up
I heard the locks start to rattle. The door swung open and I found
myself looking at the two younger women who were always there when
my meals were brought. One was standing well back, with a gun
trained on me. The second one, the officer, who’d laughed at my Big
Mac joke, was right at the door, and she spoke. To my surprise her
English was very good.

‘Stand against the wall.’

I went back a few paces but she waved me
further, till I was touching the furthest wall from the door. Then
she came in a couple of steps, though her buddy stayed out in the
corridor.

‘Now,’ she said. ‘I teach you correct ways.
You want guard, you press button there.’ To my surprise she showed
me something I’d never noticed: a white button beside a ventilation
panel close to the door and up high. I felt sorry for short
prisoners. She continued: ‘Then you go to back wall, you stand
there and wait, OK? You understand?’

I nodded. I understood.

‘Some things you not allowed. You not allowed
make noise. You not allowed read books. You not allowed make mess
in room. You not allowed make names on walls. OK? You
understand?’

I nodded again. No making names on walls.

‘Can I have a shower?’ I asked.

‘Sorry, no shower. Maybe tomorrow.’

‘Can I see my friends?’

‘No, no friends. Maybe tomorrow.’

‘Can I get a toothbrush?’

‘Toothbrush, yes, OK, I bring.’

‘And soap?’

‘Yes, yes, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap,
towel, all those things, I bring.’

‘Can I have some paper, and a pen?’

‘What for?’

‘Um, I want to, I want to write …’

I was trying to think of some good lie that
would satisfy her, but I couldn’t think of anything, so ended the
sentence, rather lamely, with the truth. ‘I don’t know, I’ll go
crazy if I don’t have something to do.’

There was a silence while she considered my
request. It was obviously outside the guidelines. But then she made
up her mind. ‘OK, pen, paper, OK. That all now?’

‘Yes, thank you. Thank you very much.’

It was two hours before the things she’d
promised arrived, but it was very exciting to get them. They were
brought in by a different guard, one of the ones who’d marched me
off to meet Major Harvey. It was like Christmas. I pored over each
item in turn. The toothbrush was blue, with twenty-eight clumps of
bristles, nine rows of three plus one at the tip. The soap was
small and yellow, the size of a matchbox, with a strong, unpleasant
smell. The toothpaste was Colgate, in the familiar red, green and
white colours, but apart from the word ‘Colgate’ nothing else on it
was in English.

I also scored a thin frayed lemon handtowel
with a green stripe running across it at each end, a
vinegar-coloured comb, and a cheap plastic disposable cup. So many
possessions! I felt rich.

The most important things, though, were the
paper and pen. There was just one sheet of paper, lined, very thin,
and a cheap blue ballpoint pen that ran dry on almost every
downstroke. It was frustrating but it was better than nothing.
Suddenly the long empty night that stretched ahead wasn’t so long
or empty any more. I sat at the desk and in tiny writing, filling
the paper as slowly as possible, I wrote a letter to my parents. I
knew the chances of their getting it were as good as those of bark
in a bushfire, but it was something I wanted to do, so I did
it.

Next day there was still no call from Major
Harvey. After being in such demand from him it seemed that now I
wasn’t wanted at all. The morning dragged by, a minute at a time.
Breakfast was delivered with a joke from the older lady. As she put
down the tray she said, ‘No Big Macs today, I sorry,’ and we both
laughed. There was no sign of the shower I’d been promised though,
and when I pressed the button late in the morning and asked for one
I was given the brush-off very quickly. It was the same officer
who’d brought me the paper and pen, but today she seemed
unfriendly, uninterested. With so much time to think, I wondered if
maybe I was going to be executed soon, and she was distancing
herself from me, like I would have done in her situation.

Lunch came and went, and the afternoon passed
even more slowly than the morning. I wrote a poem on the back of
the piece of paper and decided I’d start a short story that
evening. My writing was so small I could hardly read it myself, but
I still had three-quarters of one side left. I did my physical and
mental exercises again, but my head felt stuffy and my whole body
was slow and lethargic. I wondered even more about my future. To
die would be such a terrible, unthinkable, unfair thing. But to be
locked up in a cell like this for years and years, maybe decades
... that would be completely unbearable. I suspected these people
weren’t like us. I didn’t know much about them, but I guessed
they’d think little of throwing people into a cell and forgetting
them. At least in our system you got a proper trial and you knew
what was going to happen to you – usually, anyway. Maybe Major
Harvey thought our country had become too slack, but I knew which
set-up I preferred.

Nothing else really happened and I got more
and more depressed as the evening ground on. I couldn’t wait for
the lights to go off so I could get some sleep, but when they did
and I lay down I didn’t seem able to sleep at all. It was a
miserable rotten night; I probably only slept for two or three
hours and I did quite a lot of silent crying – silent because I
didn’t want to give the guards the satisfaction of knowing how deep
I was sinking.

Despite the warning about ‘making names on
walls’ I used the top of the biro to make some little scratch marks
on the base of the bed, to show how many days I’d been there. If I
was going to be there for ten years I didn’t want to lose count of
the days.

If I’d known then that there would be no real
change in my routine for the next week I’d have been even more
depressed. But seven little scratches had been added in the shiny
white paint before anything interesting happened. The only
highlights were two showers that I was allowed to have in a little
shower room in our maximum-security block; the grudging gift of
another sheet of paper halfway through the week; and the
middle-aged lady who brought my trays in and out giving me a packet
of chewing gum one day and telling me I was a ‘brave girl’.

Her kindness moved me very much.

I spent a lot of time thinking about the other
five and wondering how they were doing. I was so afraid for them. I
could picture Homer, frustrated and angry, walking round and round
the tiny cell, banging his head against the wall, quickly going
crazy. I thought Fi would be like a heron suddenly locked in a
cage, sitting there timidly and in her mind’s eye still seeing the
sky and the hills and the wild places. Robyn I didn’t know about.
She seemed to have been cracking up again in the last few weeks.
Sometimes, if I hadn’t seen evidence of it for a while, I forgot
just how angry and depressed she could get.

I thought Lee would be a danger both to
himself and the guards. I pictured him getting more resentful by
the hour, sitting in the middle of the floor brooding, and then
suddenly leaping at a guard’s throat in a fit of madness. And
Kevin, in my imaginings, would be a mess. I couldn’t see how he
would occupy his mind for all these weary hours. He relied on other
people so much for his interests, not seeming to have ideas of his
own. He needed lots of action, things happening around him all the
time, or he quickly became bored. These cells weren’t made for
people like Kevin.

They were the mental pictures I developed as I
thought about my friends. But I thought about many other things
too, of course. The poem about God carrying the person along the
beach. My family and the people of Wirrawee. I started to
understand why they had become so depressed and sour, locked for
month after month in the Showground.

I thought more than anything about death; my
own, how much warning I would get, how I would face it, what it
would feel like, and what would happen to me afterwards. I did a
lot of thinking but I also became very sullen. I couldn’t help it.
I so badly needed to breathe fresh air, to see the sky, to do
physical things. I even thought about suicide but the irony was
that even if I’d wanted to commit it there was no possible way of
doing it.