Hard Rain Falling - Don Carpenter [65]
“And it works, too,” said the tall prisoner. “This is a very humane place. We all get equal treatment, and we are all simply desperate to get out of here and never come back. There is no coddling, and money is not king, and a prisoner who does not cooperate is placed in isolation to brood over his antisocial behavior. And the rest of us, according to the depth of our imagination, just sit here and go out of our minds. But quietly, of course. When I came in here, I was a mild socialist. I suppose I dreamed of a world in which all men received equal treatment before the law, and the function of the law was to see that everyone received equal treatment. Perhaps I even dreamed that in a mildly socialist world, we might even stop murdering each other’s children, since there would be nothing to gain from it. I have been in here two weeks now, and when I get out I’m going to make a very formal ceremony of going down and registering as a Republican. I have been in here two weeks, and like all the rest of us I have been stripped, absolutely stripped, of every single emotional and intellectual value, every basic urge, every desire; everything that distinguishes me as a human being from other human beings, or even from other animals. My privacy is gone, my pride is gone, I have no status, nor is there any way to get any status in here. My sexual urges, as weak as they are, have no possibility of satisfaction. My other appetites have been reduced to the point where I eat, drink, sleep, crap, piss, scratch, and yawn all for the same thing—the mere satisfaction or rather, reduction, of a primal itch I’d be better off without. Which has all made me realize that I do not want your supper, because it is just like my supper. And I had always thought that this would be a good thing! `Remove,’ I said to myself, `the impetus to private ownership, and you have made the first giant step toward removing the causes of injustice in the world. There would be no greed if there were no possessions, no jealousy, no envy, perhaps even no hatred.’ “
The tall prisoner laughed. “What a dream! I’ve been in here two weeks, and already I know that I would give my right arm for something to be jealous about, for something I desired enough to steal, or even kill for. I feel dead; even though I know I’ll be out of here soon, I can’t really believe it, and even the quality of my daydreams has changed to the point where I now realize that everything I dream of and desire could cause that same desire in another man, and that I might have to fight another man to get it. Even my wife. Do you see? Suppose I loved my wife: Couldn’t somebody else love her, too? And then wouldn’t we have to fight over her? And if we fought, wouldn’t one of us have to lose? And if one of us lost, wouldn’t he be the victim of injustice? Because by what right does he lose the object of his desires?
“You see, I’ve always dreamed of a world in which this wouldn’t happen. And here it is, right here in the tank. A perfect socialist utopia, in which those desires which cause conflict are satisfied by being lopped off. Just think what it would be like if some evening one of us, just one of us, got something extra for supper? Wouldn’t we all be excited! We’d all scheme and dream about how we could get it away from him. Say, a banana cream pie. We would lust after it passionately, because it would be the only thing in the tank to lust after; and we would dream of getting one of our own somehow. We would look up to the fellow who had it, admiring and hating him at the same instant, kissing his ass and wanting to murder him, just so we could be the one with the banana cream pie. And if I were the one with the extra something, wouldn’t I be in a terror for fear somebody would take it from me, or simply murder me just because I had it! But at least we’d