Time-expired

I

Prisoner Willi Kufalt was pacing up and down his cell. Five paces forward, five paces back. Five paces forward again.

He stopped for a moment under the window. It was opened slantwise, as far as the iron shutters allowed, and through it he could hear the shuffle of many feet and the intermittent shout of a warder: 'Keep your distance! Five paces apart!'

Section C4 were having their recreation period, walking round and round in a circle for half an hour in the open air.

'No talking! Get it?' shouted the warder outside, and the feet shuffled on and on.

The prisoner walked to the door, stood beside it and listened; not a sound in the whole vast building.

'If Werner doesn't write today,' he thought, 'I must go to the chaplain and beg to be taken into the Home. Where else can I go? My earnings won't come to more than three hundred marks. And they'll soon be gone.'

He stood and listened. In twenty minutes recreation would be over. Then his section would go down. He must try to grab a bit of tobacco before that. He couldn't be without tobacco for his last two days.

He opened his little cupboard and looked inside; of course there was no tobacco there. He must rub up his plate too, or Rusch would be on to him. Polish? Ernst would get some for him.

He put his coat, cap and scarf on the table. Even if it was a warm bright May day outside, scarf and cap were compulsory.

'Well, only two more days of it. Then I can dress as I please.'

He tried to imagine what his life would then be like, but could not ... 'I'll be walking along the street, and there'll be a pub, and I'll open the door and say: Waiter, a glass of beer ...'

Outside, in the Central Hall, Rusch, the chief warder, was knocking his keys against the iron grille. The noise echoed through the entire building and could be heard in all 640 cells.

'He's always making a row, the old bastard,' growled Kufalt. 'Something upset you, Ruschy? ... If I only knew what to do when I come out. They'll ask me where I want to be sent ... and if I haven't got a job, my earnings here will be handed over to the Welfare Office, for me to draw a bit every week. Nothing doing! I'd sooner pull off a job with Batzke ...'

He looked abstractedly at his jacket, the blue sleeve of which was adorned with three stripes of white tape. This meant that he was a 'category three' man, in other words a prisoner whose conduct promised 'permanent improvement and continued good behaviour on release'.

'And how I had to crawl to get them! And were they worth it? A bit of tobacco, half an hour more recreation, wireless one evening a week, and my cell not locked in the daytime ...'

True: the cell doors of category three men were not locked, merely left ajar. But it was a strange sort of favour; he was not to push the door wide when he chose, go out into the corridor, or walk even a couple of steps along it. That was forbidden. If he did that, he would be degraded. The point was that he knew the door was open; it was a preparation for the world outside where doors are not locked ... a gradual acclimatization, devised by an official brain.

The prisoner stood under the window again and wondered for a moment whether he could climb up and look out. Perhaps he would see a woman across the walls ...

No, better not — save it up for Wednesday.

Restlessly he picked up his net and made six, eight, ten meshes. As he did so it occurred to him that he might wangle some polish as well as tobacco from the nets orderly — he dropped the wooden needle and walked to the door.

For a moment he stopped and wondered whether he should try. Then an idea came into his mind: he quickly unbuttoned his trousers, went to the bucket and laid his morning egg. He tipped some water over it, closed the lid, did up his trousers, and grasped the bucket in both hands.

'If he catches me, I'll say they've forgotten to empty my bucket today,' he said to himself; and pushed the door open with his elbow.

II

He glanced over his shoulder at the glass cubicle in the Central Hall, where, like a spider in its web, the chief warder usually sat and watched all the corridors and all the cell doors. But Kufalt was in luck; Rusch was not there. In his place sat a senior warder who was reading a newspaper, bored by the whole business.

Kufalt tiptoed along the passage to the toilets. On his way he passed the nets orderly's cell and paused for a moment; there was a quarrel going on inside. One, an oily voice, he knew; it was the nets instructor. But the other ...

He stood and listened. Then he went on.

The toilets were a hive of activity. The orderlies of C2 and C4 had slipped in to have a smoke.

And somebody else was there.

'That you, Emil Bruhn? You must be finishing your stretch too, pretty soon?'

Kufalt tipped his bucket into the sink as he spoke.

'You filthy scumbag! Can't you see we're smoking?' said an orderly angrily.

'Shut up, you scab,' retorted Kufalt. 'How long have you been in, eh? Six months? And talking about filthy scumbags! You ought to have stayed outside if you couldn't do without a flush and plug. Shut your face! I'm category three, I am — any of you got a smoke?'

'Here, Willi,' said little Emil Bruhn, giving him a whole packet and some cigarette papers. 'You can keep it all. I've got plenty till Wednesday.'

'Wednesday? Are you getting out on Wednesday? Me too.'

'Are you sticking around this town?'

'No way. With all the prison officers about! I'm going to Hamburg.'

'Got a job there?'

'No, not yet. But I'll sort something out, through my relations ... or maybe the chaplain ... I'll manage.' And Kufalt smiled a rather thin smile.

'I've got a job already. I'm starting here in the timber works. Nest boxes for hens — piecework. I'll earn at least fifty marks a week, the manager says.'

'Too right,' assented Kufalt. 'You've been at it for nine years.'

'Ten and a half,' said little fair-haired Bruhn, and blinked his watery blue eyes. He had a round, good-humoured head, rather like a seal. 'It was eleven years really; only they gave me an extra six months' probation.'

'Jesus, Emil, I would not have taken it! Six months as a gift — and how long will you be out on probation?'

'Three years.'

'You're a bloody fool. If you so much as smash a window when you're pissed, or get rowdy on the street, you'll have to serve your six months. I'd have served the whole time out.'

'Yes, but, Willi, when you've done a ten-and-a-half-year stretch ...'

'They were all on at me, the governor, and the schoolmaster and the chaplain, to apply for probation. But I'm not such a fool. When I come out on Wednesday, I'm in the clear ...'

'But your application was refused,' butted in one of the orderlies.

'Refused? I didn't make one; you'd better get your ears cleaned out.'

'Well, that's what the storeman's orderly told me.'

'Oh, did he? And what kind of bastard do you think he is? He kicks the kids' behinds and pinches the...