Free Men in Prison by Victor Serge Page A

subterranean vault—impossible that this pale light should come from the free sky over the city! A buried city, peopled with shades.
The House of the Dead,
someone called it.
    The same seedy sempiternal scribblers are working in a sort of glassed-in cage at the crossroads where all these inner avenues come together. Vague silhouettes in front of a grilled window. To the right, splashing sounds from the showers, naked forms, clouds of steam, the tired voice of a turnkey:
    “Will you get the fuck under there … Get the fuck out in the hall.”
    A guy emerges, still dripping, wearing his shirt, arms full of clothes: gray tweed suit, soft felt hat, detachable collar, duds of comic elegance.
    “Are you deaf? Move on there!”
    In front of me the blue-black nape of a neck bobs up over rounded shoulders, and I hear:
    “Carder, Pierre-Paul-Marie … What’s the matter, one name isn’t good enough for you? … thirty … Under a warrant from Examining Magistrate Billot … Charged with intentional homicide …”
    The clerk recording these details looks like a Gavarni caricature of an old Foreign Legionnaire. Beard specked with tobacco flakes,
képi
over one ear.
    “Intentional Homicide.” The administrative term makes the murderer standing there smile. The clerk-registrar writes a beautiful round hand: the “H” is surrounded by a winged flourish. I wonder: Is it stone or sponge under that greasy
képi?
    “Cartier, Pierre, Twelfth Gallery, Division Twenty, Cell Number One.”
    A broad winding staircase, on which barred windows cast a strange green glow, for the leaves of old linden trees rustle against this corner of the prison.

    3 My heart to my mother,
My head to Deibler,
My body into clay.
H. ready for the blade.

FOUR
Architecture
    I KNOW OF ONLY ONE PERFECT AND IRREPROACHABLE WORK OF ARCHITEC ture in the modern city: prison.
    Its perfection lies in the total subordination of its design to its function. A modern prison is as different from an old crenelated castle— whose every loophole and battlement betrayed the need for defense against the surrounding countryside or town—as today’s all-powerful capitalist society is unlike the absolute monarchies of olden times, so limited in their real power. Set up in the center of town, or in the suburbs, a modern prison feels totally secure. Behind its thin walls, its frail buildings spread out in a star-shaped pattern. Only the barest minimum of thick walls, barred windows, metal doors and purely decorative battlements has been retained from the convent or fortress of yesteryear. Its perfection is revealed at first glance: It is impossible to mistake it for any other kind of edifice. It is proudly, insularly,
itself.
The design is almost invariable. There is only one opening in the outer wall, around which the guardroom, the registry, and the administrative offices are gathered. Inside the wall, the cell blocks, arranged in a star, converge on a central hub. Within each cell block, the narrow galleries running along in front of the cells rise tier upon tier over a wide corridor. Each stretch of wall is like a beehive honeycombed with rectangular cells. From any point along any gallery, as from the corridor, nearly the whole beehive enclosed in one of the branches of the star is visible. From the center of the hub, a single man can keep his eye on the whole prison without difficulty, and his glance can ferret into the most remote corners. Maximum ease of surveillance is ensured with a minimum of personnel. The lines are simple, the plan faultless. Uniform daylight comes down through the glassed roof, getting grayer and grayer as you get closer to the ground floor: This solves the problem of daily lighting with a maximum of thrift. The emptyspaces between the branches of the star are used as exercise yards for the inmates.
    A modern city has no forum. It contains no circuses for the diversion and amusement of its throngs of people. It provides no day nurseries. Nor does it