Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Write in the HISTORICAL genre (05/03/07)
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TITLE: Confinement and Release | Previous Challenge Entry
By
05/10/07 -
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He seemed so calm-none of the usual outcry and protests that most of the political prisoners showed. It was hard to believe this quiet man had persuaded so many with his words. Now he had few. The only sound a whispered song…or was that a hymn? I could vaguely recall the tune from my childhood, before Stalin’s time. It made me think of my grandmother, of the peaceful visits to our little village church in rural Russia, and of her now-forbidden prayers for me. The click-clack of the typewriter brought me back to stark reality.
He broke his silence when the interrogators came for him. As the cracking whips fell to the floor soundlessly, leaving bloody stains, Goretsky’s painful shouts were stilled… I thought he might have been dead. When he gave a groan, I turned the page and entered, “Will not renounce faith” under the date as I sighed over his stupidity.
The guards brought him out of his cell a week later. He was transferred to the water chamber. Here he sat on a stool surrounded by a pool of ice cold water. When he began to drift asleep, he would tumble into the water and would either drown or wake up abruptly. He was tired, shivering and pale from lack of sunlight. Yet there was something serene and relaxed about his face. He was not angry and abusive like most of the rest. He did not shout, swear or beat his fists against the bars. It was as if he was connected to another world that I didn’t understand.
After six days without sleep, they took Goretsky out of the water chamber. As the electric currents passed through his body, his screams resonated throughout the jail. I heard the explosive barking of the guards, the sickening thud of flesh on flesh. He looked at me as he passed by on the way to his cell. His eyes were ringed with dark circles but when his gaze met mine, his eyes were blue, clear and lucid. I heard the key turn in the lock, and the heavy tread of the guard’s boots.
The cells were quiet just then except for a slow humming. Which one of the prisoners would be fool enough to be the next victim of the electric shocks? It was Goretsky himself. I heard a love song of longing, of hope, of a land still unseen. Very un-Soviet. I thought of my grandmother again as I typed “Will not renounce” in his file.
The song is the final straw for the unsuccessful guards. They burst open his cell and swing the weakened man between them. Goretsky’s tune echoes through the concrete corridors. I do not know the song, but it sends a shiver up my spine. The guards carry him away to the dreaded room at the bottom of the corridor, with the chill floor that slopes toward the drain and the spattered concrete walls. Goretsky’s melody ends abruptly with a cacophony of bullets and a heavy thud. Silence. The only sound left in the prison now is the ting of my typewriter. Questions are now hammering in my head until I realize I can no longer think clearly. I close the lid of my typewriter. I am a KGB prison officer. I am entitled to an afternoon off every now and then. I think I will go and visit my grandmother.
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