They took Feldman back to his cellblock, walking openly through the corridors, Feldman himself actually setting the pace, the outraged stride of brisk business, of one challenged, leading his accusers to the place where his side of the story would be verified (having decided to show assurance, making not warden’s mouths this time but Feldman’s faces).
A hundred men, it seemed, were waiting for them. Prisoners from other cellblocks stood in the cement court between the cells. Doors were open, just as they had been in his dream, and the convicts had pulled their cots out onto the apron of the cells, where, lolling on them, they seemed like sleepless tenants before their apartment buildings on a hot night. There was a peculiar intimacy of emergency about the scene, of shifted rhythms and lives suddenly changed by, say, a power failure. Even Feldman could feel the good will, the fresh democratic air of the place, the sense of some newmade first-name basis. Bags of potato chips were broken out, cups of soda shared. Only Feldman they stared at with a fixed, rote stoniness. (Now he had slowed down, letting the others lead him. He would soon be with leaders, and the thought of this was not unpleasant. He sensed them before he saw them — suspicioned before he heard it their special articulateness, imagining labor leaders, officers commissioned in the field, and counted on the edge of natural aristocracy in them.) As he went by the men in the corridor he triggered their silences, set off their concentration, so that at last it seemed only he himself could be heard, moving like fire along the fuse of their attention. They brought him finally before a dozen or so men at the end of the cellblock. It was immensely interesting to see who was in on his fate, as though his life had been a mystery or detective story, and now, just before the end, he was to be regaled with solutions, satisfy curiosity in a last sumptuous feast of truth.
But there was no time to savor the irony of his various betrayers. “Get him dressed,” one of them said, and Feldman felt himself deftly turned by the young convict at his side, elbow-urged back up the corridor they had just come down, and guided to his cell.
“Put on those clothes,” the convict said. “We’ll stand in front of the bars.” The deputies with whom he had come from the canteen lined up across the front of his cell, blocking him from the view of the other prisoners. Feldman turned toward his cot and saw neatly laid-out there the suit in which he had come to the prison, the very suit which he had got the buyer to bring him for his trial. Next to it was his white shirt, freshly laundered, and on top of that his tie.
“Wash in the sink before you put that stuff on,” the young convict called over his shoulder. Feldman undressed, and standing over the tiny sink, soaped and scrubbed his body, then rinsed himself off and looked around for a towel. “Dry yourself with the fool suit,” the young convict said. “Okay. Now get dressed.”
He put on the fresh clothes. A bad sign, he thought uneasily. He wasn’t superstitious; it had nothing to do with the fact that he had already been found guilty in this suit. The clothes themselves were ominous, as if dressing him like this were to give him everything they ever would of the doubt’s benefit. All his respectability in his pressed suit, his fresh shirt mustering his innocence, his carefully knotted tie virtue. He knew that everyone out there had once worn clothes like these, trusted hopefully in their telling neatness, thrown themselves impeccably upon the mercy of the court. (It was just this that he feared about justice, its conscientiousness about small things, all its zealous, meaningless courtesies. It appointed lawyers and served up gourmet last suppers, final cigarettes from the warden’s own pack and provided spiritual counsel that would meekly accept any insults. Patiently it abided last words and proffered blindfolds. He bitterly considered all its Greekey gifts.)
His captors escorted him back to the men at the end of the cellblock, and leaving him to stand before them, divided smoothly on either side like spear carriers in opera. Feldman faced his judges — he assumed they were his judges — indifferent now to their identities; his curiosity soured, how they figured in his fate, or that they did, was without solace for him. It was a random collection. He recognized two from the Crime Club, the sluice robber and the man who made up peoples’s names for petitions. Bisch was there, and Harold Flesh. He saw the Fink who had given him his first pass, and Ed Slipper. Two of the men had once approached him to tell him their troubles, and two others he had oversold in the canteen. Three were prisoners with whom he had once shared table assignments. The librarian was there, and the convict who had stepped on his heels as they filed out after assembly. (But where were the folk heroes he had anticipated and depended on?) A few of these men had almost no connection with his life, the three with whom he had sat silently at meals; and to these he turned now, comforted somewhat by the exiguousness of their thin dealings.
“Well?” one of them said. The voice was loud, as if to make up for the rule of silence in the dining hall. Its surly clarity frightened him. “Well? What is it?”
Panicking, Feldman threw himself at once upon their mercy. “I did this bad thing and that bad thing,” he said, raising his voice. “One bad thing and then another. Then I found Christ, and Christ saved me.”
“All right, stow it,” another of his table partners said, coming forward. “These are the ground rules. Court’s in session till a verdict, but we’ve got to be out here in three days. These are the cover stories: an epidemic’s broken out, and they had to shut us off from the rest of the prison. There’s a riot up here, and the warden’s closed off the area until it can be brought under control. We took no hostages except a few trusties, so the strategy is to starve us out. Neither story will be used unless it’s absolutely necessary. We stand to lose if it is. Somebody kicks back at the capital, and Warden has to throw them a few heads. It’s a risk all around, but if we’re out in three, nobody has to know anything. Let’s get on with it.”
“Get his cot for him,” the librarian said.
“Somebody get Feldman’s cot up here,” the sluice robber said. “Jesus Christ, why wasn’t that ready?”
“All right, no sweat. It takes a minute. He can stand for a minute, can’t he?” the Fink said.
“Check,” said the first table partner. “More ground rules. You ever sit in on a kangaroo court, Feldman?”
“No sir.”
“Well, it ain’t anything difficult about it. We try you. And either we find you guilty or we don’t. We make up our mind on the evidence. You remember your other trial, don’t you?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well, think about that one. That’ll give you an idea. Except we ain’t lawyers, so since you ain’t being prosecuted by lawyers, you ain’t entitled to a lawyer to defend you. You defend yourself as best you can. Any man here wants to speak up for you, he can. Questions?”
“Rather an objection.”
“Pretty early for an objection.”
“Well, it’s just that you say anyone who wishes to speak up for me can.”
“That’s correct.”
“Yes. But don’t you get parole credit for bringing me to trial?”
“What’s in it for us ain’t your business. You wouldn’t be here this evening if you’d minded your business.”
“I simply wished to point out that though you say you’re willing to hear testimony in my behalf, there’s nothing in it for anybody who might want to give it.”
“What’s your question?”
“That’s an objection, a demurrer.”
“Pretty early for an objection, too soon for a demurrer. If you have a question I’ll hear it.”
“May I have a change of venue?”
“No.”
“No more questions,” Feldman said.