One Hand Clapping by Lise Leroux

Author:Lise Leroux [Leroux, Lise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 1999-04-23T23:00:00+00:00

Wallflower

GIUSEPPE

For I’m not so old, and not so plain,

And I’m quite prepared to marry again.

WILLIAM SCHWENCK GILBERT

‘Guardia!’

Giuseppe’s voice bounced along the dark prison corridor, pinging off the cell bars and trailing off into silence.

‘Sentinella!’

He was getting tired of yelling into space. Why wouldn’t they come?

‘I demand knowing where my son Cecilio is! Why no you let him come see me? Many weeks pass… He come see me if he could. Where…?’

Giuseppe pounded his bars with frustration. He’d continue yelling in his broken English and causing uproar until someone came. They had to come eventually. He knew the guards could hear him. There were microphones in all the cells to register voices above a certain decibel level. In case of a prison disturbance. Ha! He hoped he was disturbing someone’s lunch.

As Giuseppe curled his hands around the thick steel bars, he winced at the arthritis that the prison damp was exacerbating. His fingers felt thick and disobedient, with hot twinges of pain circling around the knuckles, searching for a convenient place to settle. Drawing in his breath, he opened his mouth ready for a fresh bout of yelling.

Suddenly, a voice rasped at him in Italian from the cell to his right, ‘Shut up, will you? I can’t even eat my bloody lunch in peace.’

Giuseppe was stunned. A woman’s voice. And she spoke Italian! Hello. He was delighted. He wished he could see her. There weren’t any chinks in the walls: the concrete was as solid as you’d expect in a prison. All the cells had three walls of dark grey concrete and a fourth made up of floor-to-ceiling steel bars. No privacy whatsoever. All you could see through the bars were slices of concrete wall opposite. The cells were staggered so that none of the prisoners could see or communicate visually with each other. The prison powerheads must have assumed that if the prisoners couldn’t see, they couldn’t foment unrest. Well, they’d failed this time. The opportunity to foment unrest with the prisoner on his right was irresistible.

‘I didn’t realize this was a co-ed prison.’

‘You don’t realize much, if your bellowing about son-loss is anything to go by,’ the woman responded.

Giuseppe was stung. ‘I haven’t lost him.’

‘No?’

‘He hasn’t been to see me in weeks. Something’s wrong. I know it.’ His voice tightened with frustration. ‘I don’t know if he’s being prevented or… maybe he couldn’t choose.’

‘Choose what?’

‘Nothing.’

The woman sniffed and clattered what sounded like her metal cup on to a lunch tray. ‘Suit yourself.’

Giuseppe retreated back into the darkness of his cell and perched miserably on his bucket. If he balanced carefully on some folded-up pads of toilet paper over the rim, sitting wasn’t too bad. You just had to avoid the sharp edges shredding your buttocks into spaghetti. It made a change from sitting on the cold floor. It would be easier just to up-end the damned thing, but then all the contents would slime over the floor. The indignity of it all. He was too old to be sitting on floors or tiptoeing around his own waste products.

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