Night arrived with its own special effects.

The weak bulb in the cell came on at dusk, which was before supper in the winter and after supper in the summer. Following the evening meal, silence settled quickly enveloping the cell block like a dense fog. In the dim yellowish light, the quiet seemed much deeper than in the daytime. I could imagine each prisoner sitting in his cubicle contemplating his fate or thinking of home and family. Barely audible was the swishing sound of soft-soled shoes, as the guards made their rounds, peering into the little observation windows. Now and then I'd hear a random cough or sneeze. But, to me, these seemed far away. However, there was one sound which carried with it more meaning than any of the few to be heard. Though faint at its origin, it permeated the stillness like a swiftly spreading disease, reaching into every cell. It was a sigh — a heavy sigh of loneliness and despair — from deep inside someone.

It was devastating. I never learned to ignore it.

Sometimes I was able to end the day mulling over an amusing incident. One of these had to do with the naming of a guard.

To properly use the latrine, the prisoner needed a particular item — again, paper. Unlike the hospital, this institution did seem to have an adequate supply. However, to call it paper was a really loose application of the term.

On college field trips, I had seen the paper-making process, which, as I recall, consisted, in part, of a series of vats. The first contained a thick mulch which was broken down in each succeeding stage to the last one in which the mixture was considerably thinner. This final material was then dried and rolled into sheets.

The paper we used looked as though it had been manufactured in a one-stage refining process. The coarse mulch was then dried, rolled and cut into four inch squares. Of course, this simplified product contained many of the impurities which would have been removed by the omitted stages. Most of these foreign objects were things that looked like milkweed fuzz and very recognizable sticks. The sticks were the hazard. If the user was not cautious, he could really do himself bodily harm! When given some paper, it was prudent to examine each square carefully, and to remove splinters and twigs. By following this practice, I was able to avoid becoming impaled in a most sensitive area.

Each time I was taken to the latrine, I was given three or four squares of paper. I was supposed to return the unused squares, but I didn't volunteer. If the attendant forgot to ask, I kept the extras. I squirreled away several sheets, intending to find some other use for them. I tried paper airplanes, but that didn't work. I tried a couple of other things and met with the same degree of success. Unhappily, I discovered this paper had no use, except the one for which it was intended, and then only with extreme care! I decided to return the ones I'd saved — all four.

On one “special” evening latrine hop, the attendant gave me four squares. I used two. Upon returning to my cell, and finding the attendant to be momentarily distracted, I quickly slipped the four extras from beneath my mattress. I handed these to him along with the two I hadn't used that evening. He noticed the unusual thickness, so he counted them, coming up with the magic number — six!

He'd given me four.

He'd seen me use two. (He'd peeked.)

Now I'd presented him with six.

He looked at me, then back at the papers in his hand, then back at me.

Shaking his head, he gave up and closed the door.

His name — More Stupid.

Feelings are measured relatively. What goes unnoticed in one set of circumstances, can be very meaningful in another setting.

Over a short period, my days began and ended more pleasantly because of my neighbor; the one on the right. The one on the left was nothing when it came to comradeship. He had a dry cough which took some getting used to. It was quite audible because we shared the light bulb set in the hole. He didn't communicate. He just coughed, and not in code.

Conversely, my neighbor in the cell on my right was a friend. Every morning when the bell rang, he'd run his tapping knuckles along the wall against which we both slept. He initiated this primitive level of communication, and I readily replied. In the evening, the same greeting was exchanged, but in reverse. (Morning the tapping would run from the front of the cell to rear as we got up. Evenings it would run from rear to front as we lay down, head toward the front of the cell.) Because our heads were close to a common wall, we could easily hear the signals which were not heard beyond the cell.

When the tapping started, I made a determined effort to read some message and to establish a code, but I failed. Next, I tried to identify him as either Occidental or Oriental. This took some time beccause I had to use the crack in the door when he passed and when a guard was not there. I finally succeeded, and of course, he was Oriental, which explained the inability to converse by code.

At least we could have some fun. I tried to teach him the shave-and-a-haircut routine, but I was not a good teacher or he was not an interested pupil, so that, too, spun in.

We did have one “conversation” which, though it was only about six taps in length, spoke volumes.

Across the cellblock, in what had been my short-time residence, now resided a Chinese prisoner. Early one morning, prisoners in the area were suddenly awakened by the shouting of a guard who had probably just looked in the observation window of cell 38. His calls brought the other guard on the run. One threw open the cell door and together they dragged the prisoner into the corridor amidst the clatter of pieces of a broken clay wash basin. The prisoner was subdued on the floor, his heavy breathing clearly audible, only a few feet from me.

Not many moments passed before the female prison doctor arrived. I could hear her voice coming from near the floor as she knelt to work on her patient. While she administered first aid, one of the guards quickly toured the cell block, dropping the flaps over the observation windows. These flaps were rolled up every night so the guards would not have to raise them each time they looked into a cell.