Free The Unseen by Nanni Balestrini Page A

lights are switched off the atmosphere of earlier evenings returns with sleeping bags being unrolled and people lying down only this time no one wants to talk or sing to tell stories and make plans to roll joints and make love this evening everyone has a stick or a bar besides their sleeping bag I see Valeriana sitting against a pillar smoking her eyes fixed on the angled shadows on the cross vaults I go up to her with China and I see her eyes are glistening what’s wrong Valeriana shit all this work for fuck all I liked this place we’ll never find a place as nice as this maybe if we occupy some broken-down hut right out in the wilds maybe then they could let us have it but a place like this that they don’t even know what to do with no way are those bastards going to let us have it
    from time to time someone who’s on guard comes back inside for the changeover it’s bitterly cold outside it’s not too warm inside either any more we put the sleeping bag down and I slip inside just as I am the floor is hard but I’m tired and it feels comfortable enough all the same China takes off her man’s tweed jacket she rolls it up and puts it under my head we’ll be more comfortable like that she says and she slips in too China isn’t sleepy and she sings to herself I’m a wild boy hear what I say ain’t nobody better groovin’ tonight don’t you ever stand in my way or you’ll be in trouble alright eyes closed I say they’re already standing in our way we’ll be lucky now if we don’t get into trouble but China goes on sometimes it’s rough on me if I misbehave like you see but even in jail I could fight and I liked to go out on the town every night
    11
    After that first retaliatory sally was driven off with that charge of plastic explosive on the ground floor the guards outside the prison didn’t make another move also because there was a moment when a comrade at a high window displayed a lovely bright orange ball something like two kilos of plastic and that bright orange ball up there was enough to bring down the entire prison and so they understood that that first explosion was just a warning that a lot worse could happen if they persisted and then from time to time one of the captured guards was also displayed at the big corridor windows with a knife at his throat as proof that they were alive and to tell those down below not to try anything
    the captured guards had been split into small groups and every half hour they were moved into different new cells there were precise shifts a whole system of half-hourly moves had been worked out in advance so that from outside no one could ever tell which cell there were guards in so that there was no chance of trying anything to free them the ones in charge of the negotiations kept us up to date minute by minute about how things were going they said that taking part in the negotiations on the other end of the ’phone as well as the prison administration and the guards’ commanding officers there were also politicians representing the ministry of justice and the government and that they seemed to be stymied by the seriousness of the situation they were taking time but they also seemed willing to negotiate
    when it started getting dark shifts were set up to maintain a watch on what was happening outside to keep an eye on what was happening around the prison from the big windows with the armour-clad defences particularly the guards who were patrolling along the periphery walls that were only twenty or thirty yards from the prison or even closer the prison was all brightly illuminated in the yellow glare of the searchlights and from the second floor where we were you could see on the other side of the periphery wall a large number of jeeps cars armoured cars vans the cars with blue lights on their roofs going round and the jeeps with their headlights on going round the prison and in the shadows now and then