The Prisoner (1979) (6 page)

S
ome days it was:

‘Good morning, Number Six. And how are we today?’

He looked up at the starched white length of the nurse. Her face was lean, unblemished and plain. A stiff white cap sat on her hair. Her eyes were intense, almost maniacally cheerful.

‘Did we sleep well last night?’ She thrust a thermometer in his mouth before any reply was possible.

‘We’re certainly sulky today. Why is that?’ She took his pulse. ‘And our bowels—have we moved our bowels yet this morning?’

‘Hello, mate.’ The man on the next bed waved a red, freckled arm. ‘What you here for?…Don’t feel like talking, eh? I can understand that. Makes you miserable, don’t it—the flu? I’m not really too sick, myself. But I figured, I got to do time, I might just as well do it as easy as I can. Of course, they aren’t exactly stupid, get me. It ain’t all that easy to put one over on them. But it can be done. I et soap myself. Made me sicker than a dog. I puked all over. Really something. Of course, I’m fine now, but they don’t know that. Made ’em think I’m sicker than I was.’

‘Breakfast, sir.’

Oatmeal, a poached egg, orange juice, two vitamin pills, one penicillin pill, one aspirin and two tablets he didn’t recognise.

‘Now me, I’m in for bombing a synagogue. Can you imagine that? For nothing more than trying to run those Jew bastards out of town. I say we don’t need none of them in this Village. Hell, they use Christian babies in their services, don’t they? Always lording it over everyone else, pretending to be so smart and so persecuted. I mean, they make their money off us, don’t they? They exploit the working class, don’t they? We gotta show ‘em we’re through with that, don’t we?’

His lungs were dry and his lips were cracked with thirst. A fever burned behind his eyes and his face was hard as stone. There was no strength in his chest or arms; they seemed empty and bloodless.

‘And how is the patient today?’ The doctor took his pulse, glanced at a chart. ‘Yes, yes. Very good. A touch of the flu. Nothing serious. You’ll be right as rain in a day or so.’ He looked at the chart again.

‘Well…humm…uh-huh.’ He left.

‘Hello, Number Six.’

‘Number Seven!’ He was astonished. ‘But—’

‘How did I get here?’ She grew thoughtful. ‘I don’t know. I heard you’d been arrested, and I asked them if I could see you. I didn’t know you were sick too.’

‘Yes.’

‘What—’ She looked around the sunlit infirmary. ‘What are they going to do to you?’

‘Kill me, they say.’

‘Kill you? Do they do that?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Do you—’ She shook her head. ‘It’s hard to know what to say. Do you think they will?’

He looked into her eyes. ‘I hope not.’

She smiled. ‘I hope not either. But—’ she shivered—‘this place seems less and less real all the time. How do you stay sane?’

He was sorry the question was suspect. Suddenly he felt weak. ‘It isn’t easy.’

‘I’m sorry. You look tired. I’d better go. Perhaps they’ll let me come again.’ She looked around at the room. ‘Has this place always been here?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Amazing,’ she said, and left.

They brought him lunch.

‘I tell you, mate, it was a hell of a night. Them Hebes come running and screaming out of the place. Some of them was on fire and the women was mad to find their babies. And them kids, them kids were the best of all. They were crying for parents and some of ’em were so terrified they ran right back into the fire. Man, it was something to see.’

‘A call for you, sir.’ An orderly stood by his side, a plug-in phone in one hand. He fitted the cord into a plug.

‘Hello? Number Six?’ The voice was cool, young, vaguely familiar. ‘It’s Number Five Sixty-nine; remember me?’

‘Yes.’

‘I called your home and they transferred me here. Where exactly are you?’

‘A prison of some sort. An island in the bay.’

‘Yeah, I seen ’em putting it up. Funny, isn’t it, them doing that? Well, we ain’t gonna stand for it. We’re all on your side.’

‘How kind.’

‘I mean, it’s an unfair deal what you got, mate. You was innocent. Number Twenty-four told me all about it. This law’s crazy, man. We tried to talk to someone. We tried to get through to Number Two. But nobody would give us the time. They said they was too busy. So we’re gonna make your case known. We’re gonna make people aware of this. If they won’t listen to us when we ask polite, we’ll force them to listen, get me?’

‘I get you.’

‘Well, I just wanted you to know. It’s funny, in a way—them letting me talk to you.’

‘I had that feeling myself.’

‘Okay then, ’bye.’

‘Goodbye.’

The receiver clicked off.

A
nd some days it was:

‘And then mate, we took the little vixen, well…she didn’t go back to her German momma exactly the way she came. I mean, hell, it wasn’t nothing to what the Jerries did to some of them Polack women. Why one time…’

The smoke from the man’s cigar cut his lungs with a sharp, stabbing pain. Ceiling and walls boiled with colour. There was a dull pressure in his eyes and his ears rang dully.

‘You, Number Six. We’ve come for you.’ Two guards stood at the foot of the bed. ‘Come on, get up.’

The words made a kind of dim, fevered sense. He could almost remember what they were. They had come to see him about something. Yes, they had definitely addressed him. He had heard them say, ‘Number Six’. The words had roared distantly in his ears. ‘Number Six,’ they had said. ‘We have come for you.’ Now why had they done that? Thought moved reluctantly through his mind.

‘The doctor says you’re better today. We’re moving you to a safe place.’

Moving? Today? He could not make sense of the words. His head was a blazing, flaming agony and he was only dimly aware of his body.

‘Don’t give me that. I ain’t falling for it. They’ve tried that one before.’

The two men took him by the arms and lifted him from the bed to his feet.

‘Come on. Get up. We ain’t so dumb as you think.’

They let go of him and he collapsed.

‘Ah, come on. Get up.’ One of them kicked him in the side. He felt the blow dimly.

He was lifted again and carried out of the room. He never remembered anything more.

G
ood afternoon, Number Six.’
The television woke him and he came slowly to consciousness, eyes burning and dry, throat parched, lips cracked, tongue stale.

A group of men appeared on the screen. Soldiers in uniform, carrying rifles and surrounding:

Number 157, head down, stumbling forward, hands chained behind his back. A priest walked at his side, reading from a book.

The soldiers led him to a post, lashed him to it.

He was crying, face swollen with fear. He closed his eyes and bowed before the priest.

The priest touched a hand to his head, made the sign of the cross.

The soldiers put a blindfold over his eyes, stepped away.

The priest followed.

‘Ready!’
He heard the call faint but clear.

‘Aim!’

There was a pause.

‘Fire!’

The after silence was loud and sharp.

B
ut today it was:

‘FREE HIM NOW! NOW! NOW! FREE HIM NOW
—’ The cry was deep and loud and threatening.
‘FREE HIM NOW! NOW! NOW
—’ It had the rhythmic inevitability of a freight train roaring past in the night.
‘NOW! NOW! NOW
—’ The faces of the protesters (young, long-haired, lank and angry) smouldered with resentment.
‘NOW NOW NOW
—’

‘Your advocates, Number Six.’

‘Your rebels, Number Two.’

‘They are trying to save your life, after all.’

‘I’m flattered.’

‘It won’t do you any good, you know.’

‘I hadn’t expected it to.’

‘You’re really a fortunate man you know. If you hadn’t caught cold when you did, you’d be dead by now. This is probably the first time in your life you’ve ever been thankful for the flu.’

‘NOW! NOW! NOW!’
They were on the steps of the Village Hall, fists raised to the blank grey windows. A line of guards stood before the doors, arms linked, faces bewildered and uncertain.

‘And why,’
an announcer’s voice crackled from the speaker,
‘are you doing this, Number Five Sixty-nine?’

‘Cause it’s unfair, man.’
His thick blond hair stirred in the wind. He looked strong and righteous.
‘Number Six didn’t do anything. He didn’t know anything about that dope. The courts proved that. It was left there by the guy who lived in the house before. Number Six is innocent. He should go free.’

‘I see.’
The newscaster was in his thirties and had close-cropped hair.
‘Well, why are you marching on the Village Hall?’

‘Because we’ve tried to talk to these people, with Number Two particularly. And they’ve refused to reconsider the case or even to speak to us.’

‘And what do you plan to do if the police block the way?’

‘Then we’ll break through.’

‘You’re willing to use violence.’

‘If they won’t listen to anything else.’

‘But isn’t it true that Number Two himself made a personal plea for
—’ The sound cut off.

‘An amusing situation, really. This young man thinks he can intimidate us.’

‘What will you do?’

‘That’s right. You won’t be around to see it. Will you, Number Six? That’s too bad. I’m afraid we haven’t made a decision yet. But we will and it will be an effective one. We have our ways, as you know.’

He said nothing.

‘And yet, Number Six, you might still save yourself. You have only to co-operate and be set free.’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘Don’t be too hasty. Is this secret more valuable than your life?’

‘Apparently.’

‘Then I wish you luck with it. Tomorrow is your execution.’

It seemed likely, then, that whatever they were going to try, they would try tonight.

H
e was standing before the window, looking out at the phosphorescent surge of the waves.

‘Number Six.’

‘Yes, Number Seven.’ He had almost been expecting her.

She hesitated in the doorway, silvered lenses catching the light. ‘You’re not surprised?’

‘To see you? No. You were too good to be true. Out of place, even here.’

Her mouth moved in a smile. ‘Well, I’m close to true, you know.’

‘Everyone always is.’

‘The Colonel sent me.’

‘The Colonel?’

‘Colonel Schjeldahl, your superior.’

‘My
former
superior.’

‘Whatever, Number Six. I’m here to help you.’

‘And how am I to take that?’

‘Any way you want.’ She took off the glasses and put them in the pocket of her coat. The Colonel wants you back. He has a project you may find tempting.’

‘Is that the price of freedom?’

‘Would you pay it if it were?’

‘No.’

‘He wants you to destroy the Village.’

‘He does? Why?’

‘Let him tell you.’ She reached in her coat and produced a squat little gun. ‘Here, I had to break in. There’s a helicopter waiting on the roof.’

‘From the Colonel?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about radar?’

‘It’s been taken care of. Our men are on staff tonight.’

‘Our men?’

‘Ask the Colonel, I haven’t time to explain now.’

‘Why is everyone always in a hurry just as things become most interesting?’

‘Isn’t life always the most interesting when the most is happening?’

T
hey went slowly round a corner. He held the gun in a hand. A guard sat by a door.

The man looked up, the meaty pockets of his eyes creasing with apprehension.

‘Be seeing you.’ He squeezed the trigger. A jet of vapour hissed from the nozzle and shot up around the guard.

The man opened his mouth, straightened, and collapsed.

‘It works.’

‘Didn’t you think it would?’

‘Should I?’

‘Think whatever you like, Number Six.’

He opened the door and they were out in the face of the wind.

The ocean was on one side, a stone wall on the other. Yellow light shone from windows above their heads and fell down against the flaggings. The night was black, and through it they saw the stationary lights of helicopter blades.

‘Your
men are on duty tonight?’

‘It’s a faction. Don’t you understand, a faction. The Colonel’s group is opposed to those who maintain this village. They have tried to have it phased out for years. But the men in charge have a great deal of influence. No one knows why. Maybe they like power.’

‘What does he want me to do?’

‘There are three directors. Collectively they are Number One. If they are removed the Village can be declassified and its prisoners released.’

‘Removed?’

‘Killed.’

‘And where are we going?’

The cabin light came on and a man in a blue flight suit waved at them.

‘To that unpronounceable place you chose to retire.’

‘It’s easy to pronounce.’

‘Your car is at the hotel. We’re to get in it and drive to London.’

They were almost at the helicopter. The pilot had switched on the engine and the blades were beginning to rotate.

‘We’re on Aran Island, you’re sure of that?’

‘Positive.’

‘The north coast of Ireland?’

‘Yes.’ She brought out some keys. He took them. ‘To your car.’

‘Be seeing you,’ he said, and shot her with the gas.

H
e stood in the foggy Welsh morning and lifted his arm to look at his watch: the hands stood frozen at six.

The watch began to run.

The second hand swept forward and down. The works began to tick. He knew with a cold, sharp certainty that it actually was six: that their power extended even this far. He dropped the arm, lifted his shoulders to settle his jacket, and stepped forward on to the path.

Gravel crunched and popped underfoot as he went around the hotel to the drive.

He had glimpsed the emerald of his car from the air (moment’s shock of recognition marring the landing as he brought the helicopter down, stirring up a fine wet lather from the golf course green). And now, as he moved through the misty, silent dawn its dew condensing on his face, he felt a terrible unease to know it stood there, defying logic in the chill reality of the day.

He turned the corner and saw it, shining and sharp, the long, clean lines of the
Flamberge
body, so much like the Rolls-Royce of MGs; the jaunty yellow hood, the green carriage, the polarised windscreen, the driver’s door open and ready: engine running. He went round to the side and looked down at the interior. Yes, it was his, even to the scar of Janet’s cigarette on the passenger seat, the tape in the player as he’d left it:
Surrealistic Pillow.

The keys glittered, trembling with the low throb of the motor—gold chain hanging from them, his initials, J.D., on the fob. He reached in his trouser pocket: there was only the starched vacancy of the cloth at his fingertips. Yet those keys on that very chain had been there. He’d been given them as he climbed in. How, then, had they come here in the sun-filtered reality of the morning?

He looked across the sparkling lawn to the whitewashed façade of the hotel. It was silent and empty; nothing stirred behind the dark, shadowed windows. Yet he knew that this was the most popular resort in the Kingdom. And even it (as real and incontrovertible as the familiar tooling of the car here at his side) held a faint suggestion of unreality, like a set not yet in use.

Building (sharp and solid in the pearly light), air, shrubbery, worn stone fences: these were of the world he knew. Surely there was nothing sinister or harmful in them.

He turned his head and looked right, down the road. It wound up away from the grey-gabled houses of the village beyond. This much was familiar. This was real. This was the home he had chosen for his retirement.

‘It’s easy to pronounce,’ he’d told the girl. And it was. Portmeirion, on the Pembroke coast of Wales, second home of Coward, Shaw, and Russell. As real as it was easy to pronounce. And, weirdly, less real—for this was the world he’d left: the mad Disneyland of the village.

Somewhere, a cock crowed, and he stepped into the car, settling back against the seat, and swinging the door shut. He closed a hand on the gear stick, shoved in on the clutch, and let the engine rev. It gave a deep, full-throated roar, and he smiled, shifting into first and rolling forward over the drive and out on to the road.

The wind whipped in against him as he picked up speed, and he stared out through grey, polarised glass at green fields, hilly and rough.

The tarmac angled up, climbing the mountains, and he looked into the rear-view mirror, catching, for a moment, the reflection of the resort behind, its grey gabled spires the last visible reminder of the Village so far behind.

It dropped behind and was gone.

Then there was only the wind, the mist, and the roar of his exhausts in the primordial stillness of the dawn.

For, if he could not really trust this engine, at least he did not mistrust it. It felt right, as perfectly tuned as when he’d driven it last. This, then, was where he would let reality take hold: here, in this car, on this road, in this world he knew to be real.

Something in the harshness of the land, the strength of the rock, the preternatural silence of day, suggested a deeper, older, stronger reality than any they might alter or create. For the first time in two years, he let himself feel that there might be, outside himself, a place as secure and inviolate as that within.

The sun rose, a bloody disc behind the enshrouding fog, evaporating the dampness from his clothes, and the sleepy mutterings of birds, the bawings of sheep, the vague lowing of cattle woke to a clear, bright day.

He reached into a pocket and closed his fingers on a cigar, bringing it to his lips. He changed hands on the wheel, slid a hand into the other pocket and found the lighter.

The tart smoke filled his mouth. He let it out, changed hands again, propped his arm on the door, and relaxed.

There was much to decide, and his mind felt eager for it, ready and straining as if released from some ponderous weight. The question of reality (for all his determination) still plagued him, though he could no longer consider the green farmlands passing by a dream. The day (slender trees, blue sky, wind, car beneath him, the smooth grey surface of the paving) was too vivid, too real, too complete for illusion.

He rejected the possibility (not allowing himself to know that in illusion he might necessarily do the same).

He must, in any case, assume he saw a pattern behind their pattern, saw somewhere close to the truth. He had only one question: Where in reality would he find an answer to explain their madness? That he could predict them seemed a small enough victory if he could not understand them. He must see not only their design, but its source; otherwise he could at best counter them, never win.

He was, of course, even without that knowledge, still at an advantage. They could not control everything, he had to believe that. The reality of wind and storm, these (surely) could not be faked. They must count, ultimately, on his own self-betrayal: that he would become inundated by trivia and collapse from exhaustion.

Certain things were obvious. (A post stood at the corner of the road. Its faded iron sign read:
SHREWSBURY,
38. He turned right with it and came down a levelling of the mountain into a valley.) The girl: she was fake, this much was easy to see. His escape was part of their plan. Only this present freedom was not faked: this was the real world, they could not be in control of it. He was free at last, and he must not miss his chance.

It was not so important that he remain free as that he reassure himself of the things freedom held. He must put his finger on the pulse of reality once and for all, that they might never shake him again.

He would have to see Janet, of course. She, at least, was the one thing on which he could depend. She and his mind. With so few weapons he would conquer.

He took a final puff of the cigar and flung it into the wind. The road dipped and the speed of the descent rushed through him, wind blowing back against his face, cooling the perspiration from his brow.

The miles swept by as the road rose and fell, curving past thatched-roofed houses, tall hedges and rocky fields, running south and east towards London.

He kept his foot on the accelerator until the last possible moment, then, just as he nosed down the ramp into the garage, he pressed in on the clutch, pulled back on the gear shift and then pressed forward: down-shifting. The engine roared sending high, whining echoes along the grey concrete walls and into the dimness below. Then the car levelled and he reduced speed, emerging on a vast level lot that shone harshly beneath a few fluorescent lights.

There were other cars around him, parked in neat, civil service rows, and he rolled forward, towards a gate. The gate guarded a steel-link cage. Before it, just to the side, and level with his right arm (as he pressed the clutch, the brake, and shifted into neutral, coming to a stop), was an orange box with a slot in front.

He took a hand from the wheel, bent towards the glove compartment and thumbed the latch. The card was there: on a pile of maps, exactly as he’d left it.

He picked up the card, leaned to the right and inserted it in the slot. As it went in, the interior lit and the box began to hum. When the card was fully inside it pressed back against his fingers and the light went out. The box clicked once and the gate began to rise.

He put the card back in the glove compartment, shut the panel, and settled back, shifting into first. The wheels bumped on to a steel platform caged on two sides with steel links: the front and rear were open. When he was just inside the gate dropped back, and as he braked to a stop, the lift rattled and sank with a hiss of compressed air.

He felt a tense anticipation of the coming meeting and sensed that one more erosion in him. He was being immersed in an illusion so great it seemed to be reality itself. That was the core of their game: to create the illusion of illusion where only reality existed, and the illusion of reality where only illusion existed. For on the day he should readily fail to distinguish the two, their game would be won.

(An empty lot opened at his feet, rose, passed.)

He could not believe they had not seen that flaw: he had only to wait. So complex an illusion could not be maintained without error. And the moment they slipped he would know where reality lay. Proof lay on every hand (like substance within illusion) as solid and real as the chimes of Big Ben.

It was as if, in their determination to undo him, they sought not to ensnare him, but to subvert him. How else was he to explain it? Surely they saw the truth as easily as he.

(Another level, its Euclidean geometry vacant and empty, gaped, and closed.)

If they knew him, why did they labour so long against him when he gave them not even the satisfaction of his anger? Why was he thought a fit subject for their purpose? Unless it was in his very intractability that their desires lay: an awful perversion of reality in which their actions had no motives, their madness no object—destruction without reason.

He was finally (in the concrete reality of the lift, sinking below level after level of empty, shadowy lot) convinced he would defeat them.

The platform moved past the interface between floors and he saw the flat, stained surface of the bottom lot.

The lift came even with the floor and stopped. Compressed air sighed, became silent. The metal gate lifted.

Something seemed to tug at the muscles of his neck. He turned his head: there was a camera mounted in the rear corner of the cage.

He looked down at the dash, shifted into first, pressed in on the accelerator and shot down the aisle towards a set of double doors in the far wall. He braked and swung left, switching off the engine.

He dropped the keys into his pocket, swung open the door, put a foot to the floor and stepped out. He strode directly to the metal doors, twisted his wrists out, seized the two handles, flung them wide behind him as he went forward into the room.

There was a square desk set in the middle of the floor: an intercom on its surface. A thin clerk with dark hair and dark eyes sat behind the table. There were four doors in the wall behind him.

The young man looked up. His chapped lips parted:

‘Zed M Seventy-three!’ he said in astonishment.

‘I wish to see the Colonel.’

‘Yes, Zed M Seventy-three. Right away.’

The young man pressed a button and spoke: ‘Zed Em Seventy-three to see you, sir.’

The reply was low, tinny and indistinguishable.

‘Go right in, sir. It’s through—’

‘I know the way.’ He walked around the desk to the left hand door. It slid aside as he approached. He went down a panelled corridor and turned right. A plaque on the door read
PRIVATE
. He rapped perfunctorily and let himself in.

The Colonel (for just a moment he had a sensation of utter wrongness) stood at the other end of the room adjusting the curtains on a night-time view of Piccadilly Circus and the jungle at its feet. The Colonel turned (and the feeling vanished beneath his need to know: how much truth was to be found here?), bushy hair and cotton-fluff eyebrows luminous in the shadow. His skin was smooth tan, liver-spotted, his eyes old and tired.

‘Zed Em Seventy-three.’ Eloquent brown eyes looked out from beneath tangled brows. ‘I am pleased to see you.’

The old man limped up to him and stopped, gaze searching and intent. Then he sighed and turned his head, staring out at the metropolis below, ‘Zed Em Seventy-three,’ he said wearily, ‘you are suspicious. That place’—the words were bitter—‘has had its effect, even upon you.’

He followed the Colonel’s gaze through the window to the smoky lights of the cars and the harsh neon of the marquees. And, with a numb start, like the beginning of fear, he remembered where he was, how far below ground. (The illusion had been so real he had not stopped to question, had had only that moment’s unease for warning.)

The old man’s head jerked around. He smiled. ‘How do you like my toy?’ He was proud. ‘Never could abide these underground rooms. You remember? I asked to be moved upstairs from the beginning. But Housing refused, said they were hard put enough for space even with all these new excavations. So I demanded this.’ His hand indicated the false window and he grinned. ‘A television screen connected with a camera on the roof. It makes me feel less cooped up.’

Images (had they seemed like buildings, cars, streets only the instant before?) moved across the pane/screen: flickers of light, suggestions of motion, darkness in irregular patterns. He seemed to be looking down the very centre of the maze to a place where, like an unanswered question, only blankness lay. Was this credible, or was it not? He could not escape the knowledge that, before the Village, he would not have paused to wonder.

‘Interesting,’ he said.

The Colonel’s eyes grew thoughtful, sad. ‘You’ve not come back as you went, that much is certain.’ He shook his head and made his way to the opposite side of his desk. He drew out a high backed leather chair and sank down. ‘Take a seat, Zed Em Seventy-three.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ He brought a plastic stool up to the desk.

The Colonel continued: ‘They’ve changed you. You’re tense and run down. You’re no longer a healthy, thinking animal. You’re apprehensive, nervous, suspicious.’ The old man’s eyes sought his and locked. ‘Do you think you’re up to killing?’