1.11 A Soak

I am delighted to no end to discover that Digger and I won't have to scrub each other's back after all: Cellblock C has two private bathrooms.

My neighbor drops his boxer shorts to his ankles then kicks them up and snatches them in midair before popping into the bathroom on the right.

The young guard standing there shuts the door after Digger. Checking his watch, he makes a notation with chalk on a small slate hanging on the wall and sets a kitchen timer on the door the bathroom.

Turning to me, the guard asks me for my number.

"Number six," I answer resolutely.

Bewilderment flashes across his face. "Number Six?"

"Yes, I'm Number Six."

"No, no, no. Not your number, your cell number? What's your cell number?"

"Sorry. Cell Number Twenty-four."

The guard ducks into a supply room of sorts adjacent to the bathrooms. A moment later, he emerges holding a razor with a label that says: "C-24".

Considering all the indignities you are forced to endure when tossed in jail, I find it amazing that they would go to the trouble of providing a clean razor blade. Far be it from me to look a gift horse in the mouth, though, I tell the guard thanks and take the razor.

A shave is just what I need to start feeling human again. I've got my grandfather Jiddo's beard: three days without a shave and I start looking like the Missing Link. Wrap my head in a red and white checked keffiyeh and I could pass for a hashish farmer in the Beqaa.

A timer rings and shortly a middle-aged man covered in tattoos emerges from the bathroom on the left, toweling himself off.

You’d think there would be far more men in their early twenties populating the cells of Japanese jails, but the vast majority of jailbirds I’ve seen so far are in their forties and fifties.

"Twenty-four, it's your turn. You've got fifteen minutes. The timer will ring once when there's five minutes left. When you've finished taking your bath, refill the tub with hot water by turning the red handle there on the left. Got that, twenty-four?"

"Yes."

"Right. On you go, then."

"Thank you."

I drop my boxers, and, after folding them neatly and placing them in a plastic basket on the floor with my other things, step into the bathroom.

"Top off the bath when you're done," the guard says again, closing the door behind me.

The bathroom is an unremarkable room--a rectangular box, encased in black concrete. A single low-watt light bulb, covered with a blackish-green sheen of mildew, hangs from a ceiling. There's a showerhead at chest’s level and a faucet closer to the floor. The bath itself is a perfect cube, filled to the brim with piping hot water.

I give my body a scrub down using one of the half bars of soap and hand towels I had the good sense to bring with me from the cell. Without the antidandruff and conditioning shampoos or moisturizing shaving gels I've long grown used to pampering myself with, I have to make do with the soap to also shampoo and shave.

After rinsing myself off, I climb into the tub. The water is scalding hot, more appropriate for soft-boiling an egg than resting your weary, defeated bones in. Worse yet, the detritus of the dozen or so inmates who have also lowered their hairy arses into the very same bathwater floats on the surface: hairs, scabby bits of skin, dandruff, and, most disquieting of all, congealed sperm.

Just above the bath is a large window that looks out onto a clump of trees in the courtyard. It's not much to gaze upon as you bathe, but better than nothing.

Across the courtyard, beyond the trees, is Cell Block D, the first floor of which houses what appears to be the kitchen, a barber and other facilities.

Inmates in the same white t-shirts and gray caps as Gilligan form two lines, at the head and tail of which are guards. One of guards barks out an order causing the prisoners to start counting off, voices full of vigor. God only knows where they get their enthusiasm. Another order and the prisoners begin marching in line, arms flapping in unison like army recruits in boot camp. Then, with a "Forward-ho!" they march out of sight.

The buzzer rings, meaning me I've got five minutes to wrap things up.

I climb out of the bath, rinse off with cold water, and dutifully refill the bath for the next person.

When I step out of the bathroom, the kid with the shaved head from Cell 25 is standing butt-naked in the corridor, clutching his toiletries with his left hand, his dingdong with the right. He bows humbly to me, then to the guard, then bows again as he steps into the bathroom after me.

I towel off and put on the fresh pair of regulation underwear and tank top. I feel like about thirty-two bucks fifty. This is an improvement: I was feeling like shit when I woke up.

There's a scale on the floor, and stepping on it, I weigh myself. 75kg. In the Free World, which includes only two countries beyond the shores of the United States--Myanmar and Liberia--where the phenomena of the natural world continues to be measured in river pebbles and bits of colored ribbons, I weigh 165 pounds.

© Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

The first installment of No.6 can be found here.

No. 6 is now available on Kindle.