the prisoner

by JB Malory

The rains had been falling for six days. Several sections of the ancient prison’s labyrinthine basement had flooded, forcing the warden to shuffle prisoners to the upper floors, putting five men in cells meant for four. Uncertainty hung in the air, and a cramped, oppressive tension made the inmates yearn for a rare glimpse of the outside world.

In the transformed hall of the warden’s house, a single prisoner, free of his shackles but tethered by the ankle with a symbolic silken cord and dressed up in gray woolen pants and a black wool sweater, watched Riddenhour speaking animatedly to two men in rain-soaked evening wear, the warden’s long, distended torso casting a kinetic shadow across a large oil painting depicting the prisoner’s own scarred and swollen face. A hundred eyes in the hall-turned-art gallery trained on the prisoner, waiting eagerly for him to tremble and weep or cry out and collapse to the floor in terror. The portrait of the prisoner would be considered grotesque in its attention to detail of the bruising on the cheeks, the sunken, frenzied eyes, the advanced tooth decay under a torn upper lip. The prisoner knew too that up close, each brush stroke contained violent anguish, as if the painter were the one suffering and not the subject. The warden touched the surface of the painting and the prisoner flinched. The warden looked over in the his direction, then stroked the surface almost maliciously where the prisoner’s throat receded in black shadow around his Adam’s apple, pointing out a certain detail to the two men who in turn snuck glances toward a main door that led from the gallery out to the flooded parking lot as though they expected rioting inmates to storm in and begin taking hostages. The warden paid them no mind and went on gesticulating with an air of pedantic salesmanship, the effort causing sweat to drip down his cheeks and beneath his chin, which he wiped away with a silk handkerchief pulled from an inner pocket of his black tuxedo. With an excited sweep of his arm, the warden took in the art exhibition as a whole, all twenty-five paintings, including a row of ten smaller works—a study of a mangled hand in various poses and contortions—and the forty or so people who had come in gowns and dinner jackets for the exhibition opening at his residence at the prison. Calling in favors once owed to his father, he had all but begged these people to attend the opening, but it was their curiosity about the prison and the chance to glimpse one of its inner chambers that had brought them there, and an effete fascination with the warden’s curatorial perversity. The two men in wet evening wear shared another knowing glance when the warden turned away. The prisoner could not hear what was being said over the relentless din of the many voices in the room and the rain beating against the tall windows.

The prisoner’s silk tether allowed him to move about in a thirty foot radius. A conspicuously placed guard watched him from the corner of the room, his powerful hand stroking the nightstick at his side and drawing hungry looks from guests giddy for a tryst with totalitarianism. The prisoner’s basement cell with the mildewed easels and worktable, the twin bunkbeds and their stained mattresses, the sink crusted in paint, smells of ammonia and turpentine, the single window that faced onto the muddy prison yard, the caged florescent lights under which Tuschinzki had painted him so many times: all of it was far from this social order of boredom, expendable income and self-indulgence. The prisoner, fearful of the warden but even more disturbed by the cannibal tribe of bourgeoisie voyeurs, advanced from the center of the gallery toward the wall of windows, his movements followed by the guard’s gaze and the curious gazes of guests sensing the potential for violence. His cord dragged against a worm-scarred king’s table, disturbing a stack of glossy brochures on which the title of the exhibit was written: Bodies in Distemper, Paintings by D. Tuschinzki, and the words: “Curated by Markus Riddenhour.” Of the twenty-five paintings lining the walls of the improvised gallery, it was the series of hands that loomed in his periphery no matter which way he turned, as if the room itself were a giant zoetrope animating the advance of their inflicted traumas.

The rain had nearly delayed the exhibition opening, but the flood waters never breached Muller and Tuschinzki’s cell. As long as the rain subsided soon, there would be no further disruptions, and Muller would be expected to begin producing paintings in earnest, paintings he knew must differ from Tuschinzki’s in order to avoid suspicion. He arrived at the window and looked out onto the night between iron bars. The guard moved within a few feet of him, the tap of his nightstick against his trouser leg matching the loping rhythm of the rain. The prison was an old place, its grounds stained by the offal of three centuries of patchwork modernization. The worn marble floors and arched stone ceiling of the warden’s weather-beaten brick mansion, with its peeling Roman columns and cracked slate roof that connected to the prison’s main entrance gate, dripped with the humidity of abandoned hope, the condensation fogging the upper panes of the tall, easterly windows. Smells of mildew, wet wool and decay permeated the hall. Outside, the massive wall of the prison rose forty feet into the mist, extending from the wrought iron gate for half a mile in either direction. Orange light from lampposts in the street beyond reflected on the wall’s crown of razor wire and in oily puddles along the asphalt beneath. Infectious moss and lichen grew in patches, and many gashes in the skim coated wall revealed the brick beneath where dark mold scabbed uneven grout lines and gave the false impression of vulnerability. Constructed over thirty decades of eccentric stewardship, the prison was too large for Muller to comprehend the complexities of its many hidden corridors, blood-stained interrogation rooms, forgotten cisterns, and caverns of the past. Prisoners passed rumors of caches of stolen goods, aborted escape tunnels and nefarious recesses where assassinations were carried out beyond the glass eyes of the out-of-date security cameras, but from within, the entire edifice seemed both impervious and dilapidated. Sinking into its sins, it buckled on mysterious, claustrophobic axes like a great tomb, the hallways and rooms tilted inward like a machinist’s vice on a ransacked factory floor. Muller’s focus shifted to his reflection in the window, where the portrait of his tortured, swollen face on the opposite wall overlayed with his own mirror image and the two became one for a brief moment. He turned away, hoping no one had observed the blending of reflections.

At the far end of the room, the two men parted company with the warden, their closed umbrellas leaving a trail of rain water on the marble floor as they joined the line for the bar. Exasperated by his efforts, his mouth rigid, Riddenhour lingered before a painting of Muller’s nude torso, the chest lacerated with illegible hieroglyphs, the arms pinned back in shadow. Behind the torso, nearly lost in the savage brushwork, the handle of a knife protruded from the layered darkness. Muller mechanically touched his own chest, tracing the scars beneath his sweater but resisting his futile need to read the symbols. They were one of many messages from Tuschinzki that he would never decipher, the scripture of a broken prophet carved in mortal flesh. A swell of excited voices in the gallery-hall seemed to jostle the warden from his contemplations. Muller clasped his hands nervously behind his back, hiding his injured right hand inside the left. He took a step back but his tether restrained him. The guard ceased tapping his nightstick and watched attentively.

During the winter months, the endless corridors of the prison echoed with the lowing of human suffering. Before the opportunity to be Tuschinzki’s assistant, Muller had spent a year sunken in apathy, his days wasted futilely vying for a bed in the minuscule infirmary, shivering with fever, his lungs wet with infection, he became weak and subdued, a paper mache effigy crumbling inward under the weight of a fragile membrane. Sour milk and moldy bread left him forced to choose between perpetual discomfort and starvation. He spent his days and nights prone on stained sheets, his body decaying around the last vestiges of his delirious mind. It was under such conditions that the warden had come to him with an offer.

Halfway across the gallery, the warden stopped to accept congratulations from a trio of guests comparing cigars that they displayed in leather cases. As the warden accepted a cigar from a thickset man in glasses, he held Muller with his gaze, pinning him against the windows. Riddenhour had been the warden at the prison for ten years. Only the arrow-straight nose, the receding, almost-transparent blonde hair, and the icy, cynical eyes gave any clue into the depths of cruelty behind his facade of indifference. Before his father had insisted he fulfill his duty as heir-apparent to the prison wardenship, Riddenhour had fantasized of being an influential presence in the art world. As a young man, he moonlit as a gallerist to an important collector in the city that surrounded the prison, but success never materialized and he acquiesced to his father’s will. While many at the prison incurred Riddenhour’s wrath—the violence of which was either in his nature or was a reaction to his conditioning as the son of a merciless father—the warden remained aloof from its daily operations and, like a bored prince, preferred to watch his kingdom from afar, only troubling himself when something of particular interest caught his attention. His interest was peaked when a chance to fulfill his art world dreams presented itself: A small group of inmates passed their time at the arts and taught these skills to other prisoners, producing small paintings and drawings that they traded to a local merchant who in turn sold them to curious residents of the city at inflated prices. Excited by what he saw, the warden offered rewards for exceptional work, and he soon amassed a large collection of art from a handful of talented inmates. It was the work of one particular inmate, George Tuschinzki, for which the warden held a particular affinity. Tuschinzki, an erratic, highly skilled painter serving a lengthy sentence for assault and battery, became the warden’s prized possession.

“Muller enjoys the discomforts of the suffering artist, as one might expect from the protege of George Tuschinzki.”

Riddenhour stood before the prisoner, watching him closely. The thickset man with glasses had accompanied the warden and now loomed at his side, a half smoked cigar hanging between his purple lips.

“Such a tragedy, when someone close to us dies in such a way,” the strange man said. “How long ago was it?” His eyes, bloodshot from the cigar, lingered on the silk cord that coiled like a discarded noose beneath the prisoner’s feet. His bloated neck squeezed tightly from his stained collar, though his thinning dark hair was meticulously combed so that the scalp beneath shone like ivory under the spotlights. Clasping his soft, tobacco-dyed hands over his belly, he turned an ornate gold ring on his index finger with the thumb and middle finger of the opposite hand.

“Two weeks ago,” Muller said. He repositioned his own hands behind his back, once more covering the mutilated right hand with his left.

“Muller is an accomplished painter in his own right. In fact, I’ve had my eye on him for some time,” Riddenhour said, acknowledging the tension between the prisoner and his guest with a knowing smile that stressed the limits of his taut face.

Muller flushed, the scars on his face turning scarlet.

“Mr. Vanguard is an important collector, if you are lucky, he will find an audience for your work. Tell him what you have been working on.”

Muller flexed his ruined hand, which he suspected the stranger could see in the reflection in the window behind him, but he dared not turn to look.

“The show next fall,” the warden prompted. He nodded to the other man, “Muller is to have his first solo exhibition next fall. We expect great things from him, he may well outperform his mentor.”

The prisoner closed his eyes to block out the white gallery walls.

His mind returned him to the dark concrete cell he had shared with Tuschinzki during the past eleven months. He saw himself before the low, metal sink cleaning paint brushes in icy water and placing them into a rusted bucket, the brushes pointed toward the florescent light overhead. Through the bars of the narrow window, the roof of the prison’s west wing garroted a waning moon.

Behind him, Tuschinzki lumbered back and forth in the cramped cell, his gravel voice a staccato of vitriol:

“People cannot be trusted with knowledge. They only use it for terrible things. Better if no one knows anything. That is why the duty of the artist is never to tell the viewer what to think. We tell them what to think about, that is all. They will never understand a thing, most of them are only looking for ways the art can benefit their vanity. They think art will make them more impressive, more desirable, more intelligent.”

“Who are you referring to?” Muller said. His fingers were white with cold, but he kept the water running. Tuschinzki held a long pallet knife in one hand, which Muller could hear tapping against his wrist in an angry rhythm.

The artist grunted with contempt.

“Riddenhour, naturally. And the millions like him.” He paused. “You included. Whatever your agenda, Muller, it will amount to nothing, I assure you. Then, you will stupidly ask, why bother making art? Because for the artist, the joke is on the audience: they will never know this, but art mocks them, it insults and humiliates them; it shows the audience for the cowards they are, and it proves the artist all-powerful. That is how the true artist gets his satisfaction. Sadism is the artist’s friend, not masochism.”

Muller knew what Tuschinzki looked like in that moment without turning to face him: the pallet knife in his knobby fist; his greasy, gray hair tucked behind his ears; red-rimmed eyes magnified behind glasses held together with wire on a broad nose inflamed by years of paint fumes and poor ventilation; his filthy tunic stained brown with sweat and paint. Tuschinzki could be about to strike him or collapse into his arms in tears.

Muller turned off the water and slid the last brush into the bucket with the others.

“Come here, Muller,” the voice of Tuschinzki said, almost melancholy now, as if a terrible but necessary duty were to be performed.

“We must prepare you for today’s session.”

 Muller closed his eyes, shaking. 

“Not your face, I have something new in mind. Put your hand here, on the table.”

Tuschinzki’s gnarled fingers grabbed his sleeve and pulled him down.

Muller screamed as the pallet knife rose above his master’s head and swung downward.

“Muller? We are talking about the fall exhibition.”

The warden glared.

“Of course,” said the prisoner. He flexed his ruined hand behind his back again, the one that Tuschinzki had destroyed so many times. The one that would never hold a brush or a pencil again. “Things are coming together. I have plenty to work with, inspiration.” He thought of Tuschinski’s drawings hidden away inside the slit in the mattress. He would need to complete them and add his own personal touch in order to make them his own. It would take time to train himself to paint and draw with his left hand.

“We’ll have to get you an assistant to help you.”

Muller stiffened. A cocktail glass shattered on the marble floor and someone laughed too loudly. The prison guard tensed and drew a step closer to Muller, his hand white-knuckled on the nightstick.

“No,” Muller blurted, then regained himself: “Is that necessary?” His cell had been quiet these past weeks without Tuschinzki. There was no muttering from the upper bunk, no crashing around in the night, no being shaken awake in the pre-dawn to mix paint for some quickly-aborted whim followed by hours of tantrum and insults.

“I’m sure it is,” said the warden, his voice hardening.

The man with the glasses watched the prisoner closely, seemingly absorbed in the scene playing out before him. The warden paused, and without warning put his hand on Muller’s arm and squeezed, as if he were going to pull the injured hand out from behind his back. Instead he released him just as quickly.

“Let us get you a drink, Mr. Vanguard. I will tell you about some of my other artists-in-residence.”

 He led the man away toward the bar. Alone, Muller looked at the large portrait of himself across the room.

“I’m afraid,” Tuschinzki muttered, tilting his head to look up at his assistant. The artist groaned, his breath ragged and uneven. The warden’s men had tortured and interrogated him for nearly eight hours this time, but Tuschinzki had given no indication of surrender: he simply refused to paint. He lay in Muller’s lower bunk, a strange reversal of roles. His eyes were swollen shut, and dried blood flaked at the corners of his mouth. Muller smoothed the frayed woolen blanket around the helpless man’s shoulders. It was like seeing an older version of himself laid out on his own deathbed. He took a rag and wiped gently at the blood around Tuschinzki’s split lip.

“I don’t want to die, Muller. But I am tired. My art is dead, killed by those bastards,” he whispered. His eyes shifted wildly beneath his swollen eyelids. “You must realize, Muller, we live in the last days of art. All art is coming to a close. We outcasts no longer have leisure time to create.” His voice was raspy, thick with phlegm. “Only the bourgeoisie have enough peace and spare time to make art, and everything they make is dead at its core. They understand nothing of the human condition. They are afraid to face the truth: that they are responsible for the destruction of the creative experience. Powerful fools like Riddenhour have always wanted to control the aesthetic world, and now they do. Only the joke is on them: art is a lost cause.”

Tuschinzki fell silent. His jaw worked beneath his bruised cheeks, neck veins black like tar. His pulse beat there, slow and feeble, hardly perceptible.

For some time Muller sat next to the unconscious artist, the once terrifying man an ash husk in the diffuse blue of a breaking dawn that infiltrated the cloudless night and snuffed out the stars. Somewhere in the city beyond the prison walls, a tram bell chimed and metal wheels squealed along tracks in the cobblestone. One year of sleeping on the lower bunk with Tuschinzki above him: the fear he had grown so accustomed to was slow to fade, but the man before him was an invalid, he would not survive the day.

Tuschinzki’s breathing slowed. Under the artist’s head, beneath the sweat-stained pillow, Muller had hidden one of the folders of sketches stolen from his mentor. He reached to pull it out, but Tuschinzki stirred. He waited for the man to become still, then he slid his hand under the pillow and took out the folder. The pages were tattered, the cover soft with use. Inside were scores of drawings Tuschinzki had made over the years and had presumed lost or stolen by the the warden and his guards. Mysterious figures cluttered each page in fantastical, maximalist fantasy worlds, such a departure from the brutal and overwrought realism of Tuschinzki’s oil paintings, they still used the same heavy lines and frenzied strokes that identified the artist’s work. Muller crossed the cell and held the folder toward the dawn light.

“William.”

Tuschinzki was sitting up on the edge of the bed, his bruised legs hanging over the side of the mattress. His head hung like dead weight so that his unwashed hair brushed against his knees. His exposed shoulders and chest were swollen with burst capillaries.

“You must lie down,” Muller said, moving toward the man, but Tuschinzki held up a hand.

“Why do you tolerate me? Why don’t you strike back?”

Muller retreated back beneath the window.

“You are an artist too. You don’t need me. Don’t you want that?” Tuschinzki slumped over further, his body collapsing in on itself.

“Why do you tolerate me?” he muttered again.

“I was put in this cell with you. I want to survive, so I obey,” said Muller, his voice trembling.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must answer me, Muller.”

“I don’t know why.”

Tuschinzki fell forward, and Muller rushed to catch him, then laid him back onto the pillow and lifted his legs into the bed. He covered him with the blanket.

On the horizon of the prison roof through the window, the sun began to crown as if pulling itself up from a sprung trap with its last gasp of strength.

Muller reached up to the top bunk, gripped the fringes of the pillow there in either hand, then, bending over the wan, hollow face of the artist, placed the pillow tenderly over his face. Tuschinzki did not struggle, but a hand rose from the blanket and danced about in the air as if miming the final, ethereal strokes on his masterwork before final judgment.

The noise in the gallery had grown louder, a group of revelers entered and were making their way boisterously toward the bar. A woman shrieked with laughter as she slipped on the wet marble floor and fell into the arms of a drunk young man. Another man took her wet coat and drew her close under the guise of helping her keep her balance. The man kissed her and she did not resist, then he raised his laughing mouth from her lips and demanded a glass of champagne.

“Look at this, will you, Muller. Suddenly, these people want to know me, I’ve already been invited to a dozen parties and gallery openings. Too bad Tuschinzki isn’t here to enjoy his success.”

The warden had returned to Muller’s side.

Muller said nothing. Without realizing it, he had tangled his feet in the silk cord that tethered him to the room and nearly tripped himself up.

“He was a great artist,” Riddenhour said distractedly. The group of rowdy guests danced about the room, laughing louder as they filled champagne glasses from a bottle surrendered by the overwhelmed bartender.

“I think so. Yes,” Muller replied quietly, but his voice was lost in the din.

The outer door at the far side of the hall crashed open and a rain-drenched prison guard rushed up to another guard who was stationed in the entry way. The two men whispered, then the second guard broke off and hurried over to Riddenhour. He spoke quickly in the warden’s ear. The guard assigned to Muller, excited by the possibility of more entertaining duties for his underutilized aggression, stepped forward but the warden held him back. Several guests near the entrance had begun arguing and were putting on their jackets, apparently alarmed by something they had heard. An older man in a gray dinner jacket called out across the gallery, and a woman, hearing her name, broke off her conversation and looked about anxiously. More guests were hurrying across the gallery toward the coat check attendant who fumbled with the tickets being thrust at him. Only the group of young new arrivals remained oblivious, apparently too drunk to notice the commotion.

Cursing, the warden hurried toward the door. The guard attached to Muller stood menacingly before him, challenging him to attempt an escape.

“There seems to be more flooding. I overheard a guard mention the artist’s cell is taking in water. Would that be referring to your cell?”

The thickset man with glasses stood beside the prisoner, his back to the excitement at the far end of the room. Wind from the east shook the windows and renewed the rhythm of rain against the glass. Earlier that evening, while the guards had waited for him to change into the clean clothes they had brought him, Muller had been sure to check that Tuschinzki’s sketches were safely inside the upper mattress. Guests continued to clear out of the gallery, but the strange man and his smoke-stained eyes showed no sign of leaving.

“I’d like to shake you hand.”

Muller tensed as if he had been threatened.

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Shake your hand? Is it so surprising to you? So that I can say I shook hands with the great painter Muller before his rise to fame, of course. I have many friends who will be jealous.”

The man grinned, and something ferocious lay hidden behind his glasses.

The gallery had fallen silent. The warden had not returned.

Outside, in the muted night, a car horn honked. Someone called out, and there was a sound of glass shattering on the asphalt.

The heavy set man placed the nub of his cigar between his teeth and held out his right hand. His wide face was intent.

“I know about your hand,” the man said. “I won’t say a word to Riddenhour. In fact, it will amuse me to see his downfall, though I worry for you. Things could end badly.”

Muller shifted. The bartender was packing up his cocktail glasses, hurriedly wiping each one as he arranged them in boxes. Muller’s guard, apparently bored by the turn of events, leaned against the window sill, peering occasionally from underneath the brim of his cap.

Still the heavy set man watched him, his chest rising and falling eagerly. He searched the prisoner’s face with the same hunger of earlier. His hand, suspended between the two men, moved up and down miming the handshake they would inevitably have. Then, without warning, he dropped his arm and stepped back in disgusted.

“Very well, then,” the man said angrily, his face reddening. “Good riddance. I know what kinds of things happen in a place like this.”

As quickly as he had appeared, the man stomped off toward the exit and vanished.

The tinkling of glasses echoed in the great hall, then the bartender ducked into a supply closet.

The possessed eyes of the large portrait, the one of Muller’s anguished face, surveyed the gallery. The rest of the paintings loomed on the walls, deformed mirrors reflecting Muller’s suffering into infinity.

The prisoner was alone with the guard, who dozed against the window. He looked again at the series of hands—his hand!—depicted with such callousness for the suffering he had endured.

The wind died away.

Muller raised his two hands before his face. He drew the mutilated right hand toward his mouth, pursed his lips as if to kiss it, then recoiled.

As if struck by lightning, he dashed across the room. His shadow expanded across the gallery wall, blotting out the paintings of his hand. He reached out to pull one down, but his tether was too short; his foot yanked out from under him, and he fell to the marble floor.

“Muller. There you are.”

The warden stood over him beaming, as if they together could appreciate the paintings now that the guests had left.

“I have good news, your quarters were not damaged. I will have you returned there at once.  Interestingly, one of my guards found a portfolio of Tuschinzki’s final works hidden inside his mattress. I’m sure you will be interested to see them. I’ll arrange for you to have it once I’ve given them careful study.”

The prisoner looked up at the warden silhouetted against the spotlights. The sound of falling rain filled the room as if the stone ceiling had given way and the entire prison had surrendered to the flood. A single drop fell from somewhere high above and stained the silk cord that bound him.

Photo of JB Malory

BIO: JB Malory is a writer and musician based in the Hudson Valley region of New York. Since 2008, JB has released music and toured with the post-punk/industrial band, Pop. 1280. His writing has appeared in BlazeVOX, Fixator, Ephemeras, Terraform, Unlikely Stories, Expat Press.