Theseus Has Sailed into Hell
The details of my imprisonment are few. It hardly seems necessary to state them, since I’ve been here less than an hour - in fact, only a matter of minutes. I didn’t see the prison when I came in - it must have been dark, for I don’t remember ever walking Into any building as huge as this one must be. The network of corridors cross and re-join each other, up stairs, ramps, out along terraces, forming a pattern of rooms far into the sky above and around me. My cell, however, is not in the basement; there is one small barred window, though it’s placed too high in the wall for me to look through. By the vague yellow light that comes through the window, I imagine it looks out on an enclosed courtyard. Then, stretching into the ground in all directions from beneath the floor of my cell are other cells and narrowing halls. In a building this size, one could find all the room one could possibly need to live in the air ducts or, for that matter, in the spaces between the walls.
I recall my interrogation. At first I thought I was speaking directly to the man, then I realized, looking about me, that he appeared not to have heard, as there was a wall of glass between us. There was wire embedded in the glass, and tables and panels had been pushed up against it, so there was left, really, only a small window through which I could watch him.
The way sound is carried through the prison is unique to a building of this dimension. If I scream, for instance, the noise slips under the door, travels down the corridor, across a room with many windows, round and round circular flights of steps, moving out and across a vast chamber, where part of it (but part only) is lost in the tapestries hanging there, out into one of the other wings, yet even here the velocity is only beginning to fade, down another long hail, now back another side of the courtyard until the noise is confused in a series of small rooms and concealed staircases and dies out, just before it has returned to me again. No shout, however loud, has yet found its way back to me.
Or, if there is some other noise from across the building - hoof beats, for instance, which sound like rain running down the outside wall into the courtyard, or a noise like someone shouting, slowly and carefully, “The cure for Heaven,” - of course it makes no sense and when this sound reaches me, I never begin to try to answer; if there is some other noise it comes from far below - a basement of one of the other wings - through a kitchen with a faint smell of burn and soap, down a hail - doors onto it are never opened; sometimes the meow of a cat or a bird whistling, just one or two notes, a door slamming, the sound when it reaches here moves confusingly from wall to wall and fades there with me - it should be easy to locate me. That other person must know the plan of the building, by listening, as I do to where the sounds go and constructing the necessary rooms around them.
Then a small trickle of water appeared under the door. Slowly, flowing and stopped by bits of dust, feeling its way round them, it crossed the room until it reached the opposite wall under the window. A small puddle formed, the tension broke and the water ran along the wall into a corner, where it must have found a crack I didn’t know was there, and flowed out of the cell. I watched it for a long time; soon there was a curious thumping almost directly below me, or below my door - the noise I felt rather than heard - it was only a dull tapping by the time it had gone down the hall below, mounted the stairs and come down my corridor to my door. I slept and when I woke up the floor of the cell was wet, the water wasn’t running out any more but collecting in the cell. Soon it was up to my ankles. I made a gentle almost inaudible rippling if I moved about. When it reached my knees, walking was difficult, so I sat on the table. The water rose until I was standing on the table with the water at my ankles again, then my knees, my waist, then over my shoulders. Finally it lifted me off from the table and I was swimming in the cell. Nothing except me would float, though the furniture is all made of wood. I tried to dive down to see if the table was fastened to the floor, but I had under-estimated how deep the water was by then, for though I swam strongly downwards to nearly the full extent of my breath, the table was still many feet below me in the dark water. Nearer and nearer the window I floated as the water slowly filled the cell. There must have been some terrible flood; the entire building would be under water. Every one had been lost and I, In my turn, will he pressed against the ceiling and drowned. At last I had floated high enough to grasp the bars of the window in my hands and pull myself towards them through the water. And what I saw! A countryside, green and quiet, a few cows grazing a long way off, a woodlot, brambles growing over stone fences. I looked down on this from far above, I was in a tower. The walls must have gone straight down; I couldn’t see any other part of the building or any courtyard below. I wouldn’t drown - how could the water possibly fill up that countryside, especially to the height of the tower? Elated I pulled myself closer to the window. The movement caused the water to splash against the sill and dribble out, until, as the water kept rising, a tiny, steady stream flowed out between the bars and down to the ground far below.
Page(s) 5-7
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