9009/Chapter 5
9009, standing before his loom, watching through the threads the clacking shuttle speed from side to side, felt a yellow patch of light, which all day had been crawling slowly along the cement floor, strike his rough brogans at last. This told of the ending afternoon, and immediately a number sprang in his mind. 1760! In a few more hours, he would have remaining to serve only 1760 days. 1760—if he held his copper.
He had held it for six months, or, more exactly, for 184 days. Each night he added one day to the time that had gone; each night he subtracted one day from the time yet to be served. These calculations had become a mania with him. He would reduce to days his original sentence, then to days his copper, then his original sentence minus his copper, then his original sentence minus his copper minus the days served, and thus, by a laborious and circuitous path, would arrive to his result—the number of days remaining to be served—with a pleasant sense of surprise.
He had kept rigidly to his line of conduct. He had communicated with no man—convict, trusty, or guard. He had spoken only once, to his cell-mate.
“What makes your face so black?” he had asked in a sudden access of childish curiosity.
“I work at the emery wheel in the foundry,” the little striped man had answered.
“And what makes you cough that way, so dry and hard like?” 9009 had continued.
“It’s the emery dust a-cutting away me lungs,” said the little man.
“Umph—that’s what’s the matter with your eyes,” said 9009, looking at the drooping lower lids, showing red. Then, remembering, he had returned to his determined silence.
The yellow patch of light detached itself from the feet of 9009 and began to crawl toward the wall to his left; he watched his shuttle speeding with tireless movement from side to side. There were a hundred looms in the room; they stood in rows, with a scant four feet between the rows. The shuttle of each, flashing along its groove from side to side, snapped sharply into place at the end of each oscillation. “Clack-clack-clack,” they went. The whir of the wheels and the smooth slide of moving parts united in a silken fabric of sound; above this, rang the clacking chorus, multitudinous, incessant, like the gossiping tongues of many women. 9009 hated it.
At either end of the long, high room, an iron-barred cage hung from the ceiling. In each cage stood a blue-clad guard, holding his rifle loosely, as though waiting to use it. Two other guards walked the floor of the room. 9009 feared these. They went about quietly, armed only with small canes. They reported infractions of rules and misbehaviour; upon them depended the standing of every convict. One of them was Jennings, the sallow-faced guard with the white-gray eyes. Occasionally, feeling a presence, 9009 glanced behind him; at such a time it was always Jennings that he saw. The guard’s face was heavy, expressionless; in his eyes was no light. Lying in his bunk at night, 9009 would often see these eyes.
Among the machines, bearing a basket filled with threaded shuttles the garotter moved incessantly. Whenever the garotter came near, 9009 would look unconsciously across the aisle at the red-striped convict, who stood there at his machine sullen and motionless, his arms folded, his face turned down toward the lower roller upon which slid the finished cloth.
For six months 9009 had seen the garotter bear his basket of threaded shuttles, back bent, walking silently. Prison pallor had smeared the thug’s face with its coat of gray. This had begun the first morning, when, in spite of his pleadings, he had been assigned to this work. 9009 remembered the grayness and the sweat that had come into the face then. These had never left the face. Always when he came to this part of the room, they were there—a grayness, as of death, and little drops of sweat, as of fear.
The red-striped convict never looked up when the garotter came to his loom, bearing the basket of shuttles. He stood with folded arms, his eyes upon the winding cylinder, almost at his feet, and his face was like a mask. It was like a mask of stone. And it expressed patience, a patience stony because infinite, a patience counting upon the future with absolute assurance.
The garotter always approached the loom of the red-striped convict from behind and from the left—though he must go out of his way to do this. His bearing changed then. He tiptoed on the balls of his feet, and his eyes never left the red-striped convict, standing there arms folded, head lowered, with an impenetrable and slanting expression. It was strange, the way the strangler held his eyes on the other. Even when, having reached the loom, he dropped his basket and transferred the shuttles to the empty basket on top of the loom, he did not move his eyes. His eyes remained motionless while his face, his head, his whole body moved about them. When he stooped to his own basket, his face was turned up; when he reached above into the red-striped man’s basket, his face was turned down; always, whatever might be the position of his body, his eyes, fixed, were upon the red-striped convict, standing there, motionless and impenetrable.
Once the garotter, groping for the upper basket, had dropped the shuttle into the loom, tearing the warp. The red-striped convict had rushed toward one of the pillars, to press the button signalling for the stopping of the machinery; and to the brusque movement, the garotter had shrunk back and cried aloud. Jennings had smiled.
The yellow square of sunshine had reached the wall to 9009’s left, now, and was beginning to climb it; in a few moments the Scotchman would press the button which stopped the machinery. Then 9009 would march back with his fellows to the dining-hall, and he would have passed his one-hundred-and-eighty-fifth day still holding his copper. He saw the garotter approaching with his basket of shuttles. He looked toward the red-striped convict, standing there with folded arms, his eyes downcast upon the loom’s lower rollers. Something new, suddenly, had come into the man’s face.
It was something impalpable, yet fairly screaming with meaning. It lay behind the mask, far back in the dull eyes. Something couchant there for days had moved; it had gathered itself and crouched, now, quivering. And in the mask had come a new heaviness, a heaviness that was a satisfaction, almost a satiety. But the man still stood motionless, his arms folded upon his breast, his face turned down.
The garotter came toward him; and, as it always did, his walk changed; he bent forward, touching the floor with the balls of his feet only, his eyes upon the red-striped convict. He stopped—and he did not see what was in the other’s downcast, averted eyes, the thing crouching in ambush there. He laid down his basket; he grasped a handful of shuttles—and his gray face was turned upward as he bent. Then the red-striped convict turned upon the garotter.
The strangler’s eyes widened, and into them came a great horror. Still bowed down, he looked up into the eyes of the other; little drops of sweat welled out upon his gray forehead; his bent limbs strove to straighten———
And then the red-striped convict sprang. And as he sprang 9009 saw his right hand go up from his waist-band and flash above his head clutching a long heavy knife of gray-brown steel. The garotter was still striving to rise, and as he strove, the red-striped convict was upon him. He was upon him like a boy playing leap-frog. His two hands, with a crunching sound, sank into the garotter’s shoulders; his two legs twined themselves about the garotter’s thick neck. The knife in the right hand rose, fell, rose again, fell, rose again, fell; it moved up and down like a swift piston; the heavy blade stabbed and stabbed. And 9009 saw the red-striped convict’s face. The mask had dissolved; the distended nostrils breathed and the eyes blazed joy as the red-barred arm plunged up and down, accurately, as if working in a groove, and the red-barred knees crushed the thick neck between them.
The guards’ rifles bellowed from the cage overhead. They flashed; their crash filled the long, high room. They crashed again—the red-striped convict and the garotter became a still huddle in the midst of a widening pool on the gray concrete floor.
The looms hummed and purred and the hundred shuttles beat their clacking measure. The striped heap stirred, then was still again. The red-striped convict lay on his back, his knees still gripping the garotter’s neck. His upturned face now held no stony mask; its lines had distended in an expression of peace, of great satiety.
Beats of rapid footsteps sounded on the concrete. The machinery came to a stop in a big silence. Smoke wreaths were still hovering overhead as from the lips of an idle smoker; the tang of powder reached 9009’s nostrils. Suddenly he realized; realized fully and completely what had happened. A heavy hand fell on his shoulder, grasping it like a vise, and whirled him around where he stood. He faced the sallow guard with the gray-white eyes; and the guard was half-smiling———
“You dog,” said Jennings; “what do you mean by letting a man kill another and saying nothing!” His voice was thick, but his lips showed a sort of satisfaction. 9009 felt anger choke him; he threw back his head and looked square into the lightless eyes; his lips parted in a snarl. And then he thought of his copper, and swallowed hard, keeping silent.
“You go to the head of the line to-night,” ended Jennings, and turned toward the bodies.
Two guards were tearing the legs of the red-striped convict from the garotter’s neck. It took two to do it. Another picked up something from the huddle of bodies. It dripped as he raised it. 9009 looked at it keenly. It was long, and heavy at the back. It was a file, a rasp file, sharpened to an edge and a point. Files, then, could be obtained and made into this.
The guard, holding it at arm’s length, carried the weapon away.