He held a finger to his lips and then said softly, “None of the doors are locked tonight, Bentley. You might call it another malfunction.” He pushed the door shut and then set the animal on the floor. It sat and looked at me with a kind of bored curiosity; then it began scratching its ear with a hind foot. It was something like a dog, but smaller.
“The doors are locked at night by a computer; but sometimes the computer forgets to lock them.”
“Oh,” I said, still watching the little animal. Then I said, “What is it?”
“What is what?” Belasco said.
“The animal.”
He stared at me with great surprise. “You don’t know what a cat is, Bentley?”
“I never saw one before.”
He shook his head. Then he reached down and stroked the animal a few times. “This is a cat. It’s a pet.”
“A pet?” I said.
Belasco shook his head, grinning. “Boy! You don’t know anything they don’t \\each in school, do you? A pet is an amimal you keep for yourself. It’s a Mend.”
Of course, I thought. Like Roberto and Consuela and their dog Biff, in the book I had learned to read from. Biff was the pet of Roberto and Consuela. And the book had said, “Roberto is Consuela’s friend,” and that was what a friend was. Somebody you were with more than a person should be with anyone else. Apparently an animal could be a friend, too.
I wanted to bend down and touch the cat, but I was afraid to. “Does it have a name?”
“No,” Belasco said. He walked over and sat on the edge of my bed, still speaking only barely above a whisper. “No. I just call it ‘cat.’” He pulled a joint out of his shirt pocket and put it in his mouth. His blue prison jacket sleeves were rolled up and I could see that he had some kind of decorations that looked as if they were printed in blue ink on each of his forearms, just above the bracelets on his wrists. On his right arm was a heart and on his left the outline of a naked woman.
He lit the joint. “You can give the cat a name if you want to, Bentley.”
“You mean I can just decide what to call it?”
“That’s right.” He passed me the joint and I took it quite casually—considering that I knew sharing was illegal—and drew a puff from it and passed it back.
Then, when I let the smoke out, I said, “All right. The cat’s name will be Biff.”
Belasco smiled. “Fine. The beast has been needing a name. Now it’s got one.” He looked down at the cat, who was walking slowly around, exploring the room. “Right, Biff?”
Bentley and Belasco and their cat Biff, I thought.
DAY ONE HUNDRED FIVE
The prison buildings are, I believe, the most ancient structures I have ever seen. There are five of them, built of large green-painted blocks of stone, with dirty windows with rusted bars on them. I have only been in two of the five buildings—the dormitory with the barred cells where I sleep, and the shoe factory building where I work in the mornings. I do not know what is in the other three buildings. One of them, which sits a bit apart from the others, seems to be even older than the rest, and its windows have been boarded up, like the summer house in Angel on a String, with Gloria Swanson. I have walked over to this building during the after-lunch exercise period and looked at it more closely. Its stones are covered with a smooth, wet moss, and its big metal doors are always locked.
Around all of the buildings is a very high double fence of thick wire mesh, once painted red but now faded to pink. There is a gateway in the fence through which we pass to work in the fields. There are four moron robot guards at this gateway at all times. As we pass through on our way to work they check the metal bands that are permanently fastened to our wrists before we are let through.
I was given a five-minute orientation lecture by the warden—a large, beefy Make Six—when I first was issued my uniforms. Among other things he explained that if a prisoner left without having his wristbands deactivated by the guards the bands would become like white-hot wires and would burn his hands off at the wrists if he did not return to within the gates immediately.
The bands are narrow and tight; they are made of an extremely hard, dull, silvery metal. I do not know how they were put on. They were around my wrists when I awoke in prison.
I think it is near to wintertime, because the air outside is cold. But the field around the plants is heated somehow, and the sun continues to shine. The ground is warm beneath my feet as I fertilize the obscene plants, and yet the air is cold on my body. And the stupid music never stops, never malfunctions, and the robots stare and stare. It is like a dream.
DAY ONE HUNDRED SIXTEEN
It has been eleven days since I have written anything about my life. I would have lost count of the days if I had not thought to make a crayon mark on the wall every evening after supper. The marks are under the huge TV screen that fills up most of the back wall of my cell, and which my chair, bolted to the floor, permanently faces. I can see the marks now when I raise my head from the paper on the drawing board in my lap; they look like a design of neat gray stripes on the wall, under the TV.
I am losing interest in writing. I feel, sometimes, that if I do not get my books back or see any more silent films I will forget how to read and will not want to write.
Belasco has not been back since the first night. I suppose it is because the computer has not forgotten to lock the doors after supper. After I make the mark on the wall I always check the door and it is always locked.
I do not think of Mary Lou all of the time, as I once did. I do not think of very much at all. I take my sopors and smoke my dope and watch erotic fantasies and death fantasies in life-sized three dimensions on the TV and go to sleep early.
The same shows are repeated every eight or nine days on the TV, or I can watch Self-improvement and Rehabilitation shows from a file of thirty recorded BB’s that are issued to each prisoner at his orientation. But I do not play the BB’s. I watch whatever is on. I am not interested in watching television shows; I only watch television.
This is enough writing. I am tired of it.
DAY ONE HUNDRED NINETEEN
There was a storm this afternoon, while we were at work out in the field. For a long time the robot guards seemed confused by the wind and the heavy rain and they did not call to us when we found ourselves standing at the edge of the cliff with rain blowing on our bodies, staring at the sky and ocean. The sky would go quickly from gray to black and back to gray again. Lightning kept flashing in it almost constantly. And below us the ocean pounded and roared. Its waves would inundate the beach and slap heavily at the base of the cliff and then recede for only a moment before they would be back—dark, almost black, foaming, loud.
All of us watched, and no one tried to speak. The noise, of thunder and of the ocean, was deafening.
And then, as it began to quiet down a bit, we all turned and began to head back toward the dormitory. And as I was walking through the Protein 4 field and the rain, gentler now, was still hitting my face and my drenched clothing, I realized that I was cold and shivering and suddenly these words came into my mind:
And I fell down on my knees in the field and wept, dumbly, for Mary Lou and for the life that I had, for a time, lived, when my mind and my imagination were, so briefly, alive.