Part 2

A harmless looking old man with white hair and beard attracts every one's attention by the ferocity of his deed. He has killed his own daughter, a school teacher, as she was coming out of school surrounded by her young pupils. Nobody seems to know the reason for his act. The judge has just sentenced him to the electric chair, and he appears the least concerned of all as they search his cell for hidden weapons and put an extra guard to watch him for the night. An Italian priest hears his confession in his cell. When asked the reason for his inconceivable act he answers slowly that he prefers his daughter's death to her life as a prostitute. "My life is in the hands of God," he whispers, as he folds his hands in prayer. In the morning he will be taken to Sing Sing.

IV

The trusties who clean up the floor and the cells and make up our beds are mostly short term prisoners from the penitentiary. In spite of his stripes, one of them looks like a Greek athlete; his dark, curly hair, powerful chin, strong nose, the muscles showing through the striped shirt at the neck and arms, excite the respect and admiration of his fellow prisoners.

My trusty is a weak-faced individual, who is always fawning for a tip with which to gamble with his companions upstairs. His wife had him arrested for non-support. Although quite competent to make a living and to support his wife and three children, he confesses himself unable to resist the lure of the games of chance. Imprisonment has not reformed him in the least; on the contrary, indeed, for now he can gamble to his heart's content!

The detective who arrested me on a warrant asks to speak to me, and gives as a pretext his friendship for me. He feels neither rebuked nor offended when he is told that I am careful to choose my friends among my equals. Quite modestly he admits being only a petty larceny detective, but he is now anxious to discover who and what is behind the political game played in my case. He leaves in disgust when advised to adopt Sherlock Holmes's method of deduction.

V

Next morning, handcuffed to a young prisoner and accompanied by a score of men, I am taken to a pen. The place cannot be described in decent writing, but I can safely assert that a more filthy, disgusting place does not exist in New York. The stench is so sickening that I suffer the rest of the day from a splitting headache.

After an hour's wait I am brought into the presence of a kindly faced probationary officer who asks me for addresses of friends who might write to the judge, and inquires for certain facts concerning my case which did not come out during my trial. She also begs me to write a letter giving these facts, so that she can show it to the judge before sentence is passed on me. The result is negative, as the judge has already made up his mind about my case.

The young man who was handcuffed to my wrist goes into court to get his sentence. He returns, pale, trembling, almost fainting, and can only whisper hoarsely that he is going to state's prison in the morning for four years.

Another companion in misery is an Italian waiting for trial. He is indignant, even furious, at his treatment by the District Attorney. His case is a record breaker; he has been brought up for the two hundredth time without being tried. This is done to wear him out and force him to plead guilty.

A lean, dark-haired, young man with unpleasant features, suspected of having murdered a pal, tells a story of a third degree at headquarters.

After two days and nights, passed in a cell without food and water, he says he was brought in to the presence of several masked detectives. Stripped to his bare skin, he was forced to stand on a metal rack with burning hot points until he attempted to jump off, when the whole gang of sleuths assaulted him, beat and kicked him, and forced him back.

Without rest or halt, questions were yelled at him in quick succession; when the answers did not come fast enough, they battered him unmercifully with their fists; when the answers were unsatisfactory, the vilest and foulest of insults were shouted at him, tauntingly, sneeringly, to arouse his anger and loosen his tongue.

No opportunity was given him to concentrate his mind. He was racked by a gnawing hunger, a parched throat, a delirious thirst; by painful stinging wounds of cut lips, bleeding teeth, two half closed black eyes and a constant hopping on the radiator to keep the soles of his feet from burning.

Then they tempted him by bringing a table covered with luscious, steaming food, sparkling drinks and expensive cigars. Like Tantalus, he was intercepted and derided when he attempted to partake of the food or the drink. Meanwhile the detectives ate and drank with relish almost under his nose; they drank to his health, and blew into his face the fragrant smoke of their cigars.

They continued this torture for several hours, until his body and mind could bear the strain no longer; and then he fell to the floor in a dead faint.

VI

At last I am told to appear before the judge who is to pass sentence on me. They handcuff me to a negro and we climb into the "Black Maria," an omnibus with facing seats, tightly locked, and with small holes for ventilation. A mob collects in the streets to witness our humiliation. The room in the court house is crowded with people. Several men are sentenced, one after another, in rotation. I espy some of my loyal friends there; they look pale and uncomfortable.

My name is called. I am freed of my handcuffs and I stand at the bar, facing the judge.

Instead of listening to the learned judge deliver his wise sentence, I am watching intently a lonesome fly buzzing in a vibrating aureole frantically round the top of his head. I am wondering what the judge had for luncheon. My absurd cogitations are suddenly interrupted by a phrase spoken in a louder tone than the rest of the sentence.

" ... Fornaro, that you be imprisoned for one year at hard labor in the penitentiary...." The fly stopped buzzing as the judge lifted his head to look at me.

My lawyer, K----, runs out. He is to try to get a certificate of reasonable doubt, which acts as a stay of sentence; otherwise I would be taken early in the morning to the penitentiary.

While these proceedings are going on, I am temporarily transferred to the old prison, which is full of crawling parasites. Luckily, however, in a few hours I am returned to my cell in the Tombs to wait until the certificate is either granted or denied. But the certificate is refused, of course, as I knew it would be, and as I think my lawyer knew it would be. It was a forlorn hope.

In the evening a letter is brought to me and I am asked to sign for it. It is written in Spanish and is an attack on Vice-President Corral of Mexico, who is accused of having furnished me with money to publish "Diaz, Czar of Mexico," and then of leaving me in the lurch. This piece of Spanish fiction is inspired by a bitter enemy of Corral in the hope of eliminating Corral as a Vice-Presidential candidate. But I refuse to sign the letter.

Another fairy tale comes directly from the District Attorney's office; I am told that they know that President Cabrera of Guatemala, a bitter enemy of Porfirio Diaz, has furnished me with $5,000 to publish my libelous pamphlet.

A friend arrives from Mexico and brings an oral message from Ramon Corral, who inquires if I have empowered an agent to negotiate the sale of my book for $50,000, as he doubts the statement. A letter is written advising the Vice-President that he is right in his surmise, and that the alleged agent is only trying to get money under false pretences.

A labor leader visits me offering financial help in my fight. As money will not be needed in the penitentiary, I suggest that an investigation might be started in Congress into the persecutions of Mexican liberals by American officials in this country. The promise is made and fulfilled seven months later.

VII

Two sisters of mercy come to see the prisoners during the hours of exercise; they distribute fruit, and walk freely and unconcerned among the men, who seem to think a great deal of them. One of them has kindly and intelligent looking eyes behind large, gold-rimmed spectacles, and speaks in the well modulated and authoritative voice of the woman of the world. Unlike other prison missionaries, they do not make religious propaganda by distributing tracts and pamphlets; their attitude is one of charity, humility and usefulness.

Protestant clergymen, rabbis, and even a theosophist, come to save us in spite of ourselves. Their attitude is one of aggressive virtue and militant religious contention--or contagion. A certain missionary is very indignant because I refuse to look at his tracts or listen to his childish twaddle; and finally becomes so arrogant and insulting that I have to order him away from my cell door.

THE PENITENTIARY

_"As long as a nation harbors a body of men authorized to inflict punishment, as long as there are prisons in which such a body can carry out these punishments, that nation cannot call itself civilized."_

_Message written on his prison wall, by Francisco Ferrer._

It was a clear December morning when, from the little boat which carried me across the river, I spied the outline of the penitentiary squatting on the lower end of Blackwell's Island. It was my first view of it and the impression made on my mind was so ominous and sinister that my heart almost sank within me as I entered the fateful gates.

"Hey, there! Where do you t'ink you are? Take dem gloves off!" shouted a tough, strong voice as I stood waiting in front of the office window, recounting my pedigree and giving up my private belongings for safe keeping. In the old prison, I found six new prisoners waiting in line.

Our hair was clipped by a convict barber, and we were ordered to divest ourselves of our civilian clothes and take a shower bath. While we were trying to dry ourselves with two small hand towels, prison underwear and striped suits were thrown at our feet.

The trousers were decidedly too long, the coat, and the rag--unjustly named a vest--both too short; a cap which came down to my eyebrows made up this uniform of degradation and infamy. Harlequin's costume never looked more ridiculous than our own, which was mended, patched and repatched from long use by generations of long-suffering convicts.

The prison authorities, I suppose, are to be commended for their thrift; but I cannot help feeling that by putting on those frayed and wornout caricatures of uniforms we are endangering our health.

In the photographer's house behind the shower baths we are "mugged"; our Bertillon measurements are taken, even to "beauty spots" and pimples, by a red-haired, freckled-faced young man. A sign twelve inches long, black, with white numerals, is hung round my neck over a black cotton coat, and I am told to look pleasant until the camera has focussed my profile and full face.

Sitting on benches, waiting for their turn, are a dozen prisoners. They are all old, white-haired, naked and shivering; old offenders, recidivists, tramps, bums, drunken louts; lean, pale, bruised, with anemic, unhealthy skins, red noses, fishy eyes, bloated faces, large hands, knotty, ungainly feet, purple with the cold.

A very old man attracts my attention by his immobility, his general paleness, and his extraordinary gauntness, which shows the perfect outline of his muscles, and reminds me of the statue representing San Bartolommeo in the cathedral of Milan, holding his whole skin over his arm like a bath robe.

Squint-eyed and almost blind, this old man, of more than the allotted span of seventy years, seems unable to recollect his name, occupation or social status.

"A bum, I guess," remarks the keeper.

It appears that he is deaf, and his neighbour nudges him with an elbow and shouts in his ear:

"Say yes!"

"Yes, sir!" hastily answers the old man.

These derelicts of society are going to the workhouse on Monday.

Later we are ordered to clean and wash the small glass panes in the windows of the main prison. Trusties in smart, new, striped clothes, with creased pants and caps, rushed by eyeing us with curiosity. "Whatcheh in fer?" "What did the judge hand yeh?" are the leading whispered queries.

A pungent, musty, sickening smell pervades the old prison, which is barely lighted by a dismal and gray reflection filtering through the small windows. An inscription on the wall shows the date of construction to be 1864. The cell where Boss Tweed died is pointed out to me.

Suddenly the electric lights are switched on and a bell starts ringing in a loud, metallic, persistent note, not unlike the subway starting bells. A heavy, automatic, dull noise in the distance announces the approaching footsteps of the convicts returning from work. In measured step, each gang followed by its keeper, more than a thousand men march past the head keeper's desk.

All the varieties of ages, figures, physiognomies, expressions, are illustrated to my astonished eyes. Young men with red cheeks and simple faces; strong men with bullet heads, broad shouldered, surly or impassive; fat men with wabbling bellies and cheerful faces; old men bent and hoary with age; slow and listless young men with effeminate gestures; a few cripples on sticks or crutches, and wobbling along behind the lines, a paralytic led by a companion. They all file by, stamping their feet in German military fashion.

At moments the order is given to slow up or stop, and the convicts continue to move the legs in rhythmic step, their bodies almost touching, and giving the appearance of an enormous centipede dancing a gruesome, macabre saraband.

Finely shaped heads are rare; it looks as if an almighty sculptor had left his handiwork unfinished, or purposely kept it in rude outline. Foreheads are either too bulging or too retreating, eyes too sunken or too protruding, noses too large or too small, mouths too sensual or too cruel, chins too powerful or too weak.

Smiling or frowning, aggressive or indifferent, surly or pleasant, all the different expressions and gestures are sketched out in violent chiaroscuro, and compose a cartoon worthy of a Frans Hals or a Michelangelo.

My eyes absorb the kaleidoscopic, ignoble, unbelievable pageant. As an artist I am fascinated, hypnotized by this fantastic procession of human zebras, slashed with broad stripes of gray and black, with the four prison tiers as a background, and the dark blue uniforms and gold buttons of the keepers adding a touch of color.

As a human being I am shocked and repelled by this grotesque, degrading parade.

Is this really the Inferno or only the last Judgment, I ask myself?

"Get in line, you loafer!" shouts a red-faced keeper, shaking his stick at me. Thus I am awakened from my dreams.

I

I am locked in the old prison for the night--my first night in the penitentiary.

A bed made of an iron frame with coarse canvas stretched across it, two cheap cotton blankets, a straw pillow, a large covered pail and a drinking cup, complete the total of my furniture. It is the simple life with a vengeance. The bed takes up the whole length of the cell; there is no room for walking except sideways from the bucket to the cell door. Sitting in a lateral position on the couch, with my back touching the wall, I can place my legs on the opposite wall only in a bended posture.

A tier man comes to the cell shouting "Water." While pouring it into my cup from a large can I peer at his face through the bars. His pale features, beaked nose, cruel mouth and yellow eyes make him seem like some tropical carrion-eating bird. I am so fascinated by his depraved and satanic look that I allow water from the cup to drop onto the floor.

He utters curses, "not loud, but deep," and returns to mop the floor.

I try to interest myself in an old magazine, but my mind seems unable to concentrate in a continued effort; I read, but my imagination wanders away in an interminable circle without beginning or end.

The cold is intense; the blankets, thin and gray, afford no protection. My whole body is shivering and shaking uncontrollably as if in high fever, my teeth rattle like castanets accompanying a Spanish fandango. I light a cigar and watch the smoke curl slowly, lazily across the cell until it appears like a veil between the ceiling and the floor and finally settles over my couch like a pale, transparent shroud.

Evidently there is no ventilation, but I continue to puff away, hoping to fumigate and kill the fetid odor in the cell.

Everything is still except for the occasional moaning of a sick man. Finally the electric light at the foot of the bed is extinguished, and I am left in the dark.

I turn into bed with all my clothes, including cap and shoes, trusting in this manner to warm myself and in the hope of forgetting my troubles in blissful sleep.

But there seems to be no rest for me.

As soon as a little heat radiates from my body, scores of bedbugs are attracted and start a vicious, incessant campaign. When I am deceived into sleep by a lessening of their attacks, I am awakened by the cold air under the canvas, which freezes my back and forces me to shift my position.

Horrible nightmares shake me with a start as soon as I am lulled into slumber. My throat is parched as if sand had been my last meal, and I pick up the tin cup to get a drink; to my intense despair the rusty, filthy cup has a leak, and all the water has trickled to the floor.

I dream that the cell, with its massive walls reeking with stench and humidity, is growing smaller, closing upon me like an accordeon, until the cell door is as small as a keyhole from which I get the last gasp of air; then instead of air, an endless cool, refreshing flow of water runs down my throat. But, unluckily, my intense thirst awakens me and I start toward the cell door calling for water in a faint, hoarse whisper.

A keeper silences me with a gruff, impatient voice: "Where in hell do you think I can get it?"

And I can hear the water dripping lustily from a faucet into a full barrel on the ground floor!

I try philosophically to force my thoughts into past and pleasant memories, but the present distress is so tyrannical and overpowering that all the physical, moral and intellectual suffering of the world seems to be centered within the few square feet of this dungeon. My via crucis has begun. I reflect with terror that my mind may not withstand the strain of uninterrupted agony, and suicide appears as an easy solution.

The absurdity of the impulse is evident, for my death in this filthy cell, like a rat in a hole, would delight those responsible for my presence here; and furthermore it would shock and sadden those dearest to me.

What is all my fortitude and philosophy worth if it cannot steady and concentrate my will at the most crucial, heart racking and desperate moment of my life?

Why should my trained mind crumble like a match box and be destroyed under physical torture, mental distress and moral humiliation?

Is not suffering the greatest of all tests, necessary, purifying and regenerating? Why not wait patiently and courageously for the day of reckoning, worthy of the gods on Olympus?

I count my heart-beats to get an idea of the passing of time. The minutes seem to have frozen on the fountain of time; they drip laboriously as if each and every one of them represented eons of memories and experiences; as if each was attempting to demonstrate that in the accounting of eternity they were as significant as centuries. In a supreme physical effort of my will I grip the bars and grit my teeth to stop the impending and foolish disintegration of my mind. The waves of despair, the racking pain, the insane delirium are slowly beaten back into submission, like a defeated army. The imagination is disciplined, the will has thrown the switch and illuminated the real inward self, as I stand watching, through the steel bars, the windows on the opposite wall. I feel calm, serene and strong.

Of a sudden, as if to illustrate my state of mind, out of the gray, blue mist, a large, luminous, rose disk slowly arises beyond the opening.

The sun, the glorious sun! Silently it looms up, magnificent through the haze, like a mirage announcing the advent of better things and more hopeful days.

The same sun I had seen arise in India, Egypt, Italy, Mexico, in many frames of classical and tropical beauty; but never has it seemed to me so divine, so perfect, so precious as on that awful morning.

II

At 6 A. M. a quick, metallic carol announces a new day--and a Sunday. With a clanking noise and in swift succession the cell doors are unlocked and on every tier the whole line of convicts walks along the galleries and down to the ground floor, to a long iron sink, divided into small dirty tubs that are filled with murky water.

Our ablutions are performed in rapid military style; those not strong or nimble enough to get near the crowded trough, before the command, "Back out," is shouted, have to return to their cells half-washed or dirty. Sometimes a laggard insists on finishing his washing; and then an angry voice assails him rudely: "Come on, you God damn bum, didn't yeh hear me? Back out!" And a guard "fans" him over the back with a club, pushing and shoving him all the way to the galleries, as a reminder to quicker obedience.

Back at the cells, every man stands at attention behind the door with hands on the bars, waiting for the keeper to count the men until he orders, "Close," and with a deafening noise every iron door bangs in unison. Then after a short rest the bell rings for breakfast, and we march into the mess hall.

What a depressing, fantastic assemblage there unfolded itself before my eyes! Row after row of cropped gray heads, the black and gray stripes, moving unceasingly in a rippling pattern, giving the semblance of an enormous, ghostly, shivering tiger skin. The faint light from the barred windows forces the tonality to a low pitch and adds to the vagueness, uneasiness and consternation of my mind.

The benches and narrow tables seat fifteen to twenty in a row; and the two mess halls over a thousand convicts.

Breakfast is served in dented low pans, filled with potato and corn beef hash, alternating every other day with oatmeal and syrup. The rusty tin cups are half filled with an unsweetened, brownish, transparent concoction called coffee, which the convicts long ago nicknamed "bootleg."

But the bread, made of wheat and cornmeal, is very good. The raising of the hand is the signal for an additional slice of bread, which is distributed by a convict, and when it reaches you it has usually been handled by ten or fifteen different, not to say unclean, hands.

The men eat voraciously and in great haste, coughing, chewing, smacking their lips; grunting and snorting like pigs with their snouts in the trough. My poor appetite is not improved by their disconcerting exhibition, and my portion is quickly swallowed by my neighbours.

On both sides of the hall we are watched by keepers standing against the wall, or perched on high stools, swinging their sticks.

On my right there is a goodnatured-looking keeper with a bullet head and sleepy eyes; on the other hand a small, wiry, thin-faced, long-nosed, white-mustached keeper, with wicked eagle eyes, who uses not only the foulest of language, but also his stick, on the slightest provocation.

After the "feed" comes the bucket parade. Each man carries his own bucket into the yard behind the prison building, facing the Brooklyn side. The Queensboro bridge on the north, with two feet on the island uniting Brooklyn and New York, appears gigantic on the horizon.