C8 Pablo

At that time, I was already totally detached from the idea of going back to being that man with feelings and purposes. The jail has become my home. The inmates, my family. And the guards only colleagues that I had to endure. It was not an easy life, but for a man raised in the countryside and without any notion of a life in the big city, until I was very familiar with the place. In a way, it seemed that I had been born to be imprisoned, in one way or another.

"Well, considering that three are eating ants this morning, I would say that it's even quite normal," commented Júlio, a kitchen helper just like me, who at the moment was mixing a large sauce pan. "I don't know what you might be feeling differently, PS.”

"It's something like a feeling," I replied softly.

My companions laughed.

"The day you feel something other than your own stench, the world will be lost, PS," said Alefe, still containing the laughter.

"Unlike you, Alefe, I still take daily baths.”

"God forbid that cold water," he grumbled, containing a shiver. "I don't take a shower unless it is strictly necessary. Not to mention that having a good smell inside only attracts the needy deviated.”

" Has anyone ever tried to do something with you? "I asked in a low tone.

Alefe denied it with his head, frowning.

" But my cellmate wasn't very lucky. He ended up getting caught on one of the movie nights.”

Ah, the blessed nights when we were all gathered in a room and forced to watch a movie with moral lessons about not committing crimes. I always missed those sessions. The comfort of my cell was always better, with no noise, with no one lurking down my shoulders.

Some thought it was an act of revolt against the agents, but it was just self-preservation. It was never known what could happen to all inmates in a single enclosed space. I avoided everything that could make me vulnerable.

In addition to all this, there was that constant fear of being touched in other ways by gang leaders, who thought they were owners of the entire prison. There were rumors that even some agents resigned after being somehow "considering that they were always armed" forced to perform libidinous acts with the detainees.

The prison was a real chaos. There were no human rights there. It didn't matter how much the media romanticized our reality. The days when visits occurred were the most terrible for those who valued their physical integrity.

Men who were considered novices or without alliances with some faction, avoided asking their wives to make the visit, because most of them were threatened later to beg the women to offer their bodies to agents and gang leaders so that they would not be killed in the middle of the night.

Some refused, already aware of the consequence, because they simply couldn't stand that place anymore. The few who accepted, never again received visits from their women, and were killed anyway.

The world inside the prison was different, misrepresented. There was no law, there was no rule. In there, the less you talked, the longer you would live. The less I had to lose, the more time I would gain to have peace.

Some days were worse than others. The agents became bored easily and liked to play with the newly arrived inmates. It was torture. They were always looking for ways to torture us, after observing our behavior and finding out what our greatest weakness was.

One of the guards I hated the most and who, ironically, was always following my workday in the kitchen, knew that I had some weakness in relation to my lungs.

He knew that I slept and woke up coughing, that not all the blankets in the cell could warm me up and ward off the pressure of suffocation in my chest, and that's why he always carried buckets of water to wake me up.

There was only one time when he hit me with the water, and I spent days just vegetating throughout the prison, so weakened by chest pain and shortness of breath, that I could barely walk or eat. I've never had any medical help. I've never had any comfort.

That prison was divided by wings. It was said that each ward was specific to the type of crime committed, but everyone knew that in fact they only existed to separate inmates with money from those who were just trained, and from those who were common.

I was located with the worst of the worst. Those who gave up their studies when they realized that crime paid off much more. Those who killed and dismembered without pity. Those who made the mistake of bragging about their heinous crimes during a card game in a bar and were caught. I was the least likely to have done something serious, even so, some respected me for the mystery that involved my entire prison.

When each detaed arrived, the guard who accompanied him announced to everyone, in each cell, what kind of crime he had committed. There were days when the guard even left the cell of some prisoners open, and that of the newcomer, just to make sure he would have a body to collect the next day. In general, they did this for pedophiles, maniacs, and those who were too arrogant.

I have never had any participation in the death of any detause. In fact, even without believing much in a religion, I found myself praying for the soul of all of them, when I heard the screams and supplications rising through all the wings of the prison, as they were murdered.

The media always reported the deaths as suicide. Even when an inmate was killed by beating, each media note was described as if the inmate was fearing the prison or his trial, since not everyone "as well as me" had in fact been convicted.

I never knew if any of my prayers had any success. If any of those prisoners had gotten some kind of heavenly forgiveness. Some didn't deserve it.

I agreed with most of the murders, but after discovering that one of the possible pedophiles who had been arrested, in fact having been mistaken for another totally different man, I began to have a little more respect for the phrase: "Innocent, until proven otherwise."

But I didn't say anything out loud. Most of the time I kept myself as I did at that moment, in silence, just rambling about my life and my choices, about everything that had led me to that point. Those were times when I was at peace. I took refuge within myself to accept that reality, and live with it.

After two years, I was kind of not so afraid of prison. There was a little compassion every time I noticed the faces of those men. Some were destroyed with a few days of seclusion, others took a little longer to give in. Some didn't even have the chance to feel what the conviviality was like. There was nothing beautiful in jail, nothing romantic, and reality was always willing to hit us in the face.

I sighed as the men unleashed talking about the goods they had arrived to endure that month when most of the prisoners were sick. Luckily, my nose didn't run anymore, so I didn't have to stay so far from the pan to prepare the food.

But the itching in my throat, the feeling of tightness in my chest, and those chills from hell kept making me feel like I was going to fall at any moment.

I knew that only the inmates would feel sorry for me, and would drag my body somewhere warm for me to regain my senses, but the lack of medicine was terrible. I had money to buy it, but there was no medicine that would solve that flu.

And she had been extending for days. And I knew why. It was the cold, the mold, the terrible hygiene conditions... I would never recover while I was in prison.

There was no possibility of medical care, not until some urgency happened, so I was waiting for a fainting or something more serious to be able to receive a visit that would help me deal with the problem.

However, I didn't have to pass out, the visit came along with the announcement of a guard, saying that there was someone waiting for me.