‘You’ll not die. You’ll get out alive. One day it will all be over,’ she said. Her perfume, mixed with her female smell, rose into my nostrils: flowery, musky. I had forgotten the last time a woman had stood so close to me. Sometimes, in our cell, when the wind blows from the female prison, we’ll catch distant sounds of female screams and shouts and even laughter. That is the closest we ever come to women. Only when the wind blows, at the right time, in the right direction. Her hands on mine, her smell, her presence, acted like fire on some huge, prehistoric glacier locked deep in my chest. And when her hand touched my head and the back of my neck, I wept.

When the superintendent returned, my sobbing face was buried in Janice’s ample bosom. Her hands were on my head, patting, consoling, like a mother, all the while cooing softly, ‘One day it will finish.’

I pulled away from her. She gave me her handkerchief.

‘What is going on? Why is he crying?’

He was standing just within the door – his voice was curious, with a hint of jealousy. I wiped my eyes; I subdued my body’s spasms. He advanced slowly into the room and went round to his seat. He remained standing, his hairy hands resting on the table.

‘Why is he crying?’ he repeated to Janice.

‘Because he is a prisoner,’ Janice replied simply. She was still standing beside me, facing the superintendent.

‘Well. So? Is he realizing that just now?’

‘Don’t be so unkind, Muftau.’

I returned the handkerchief to her.

‘Muftau, you must help him.’

‘Help. How?’

‘You are the prison superintendent. There’s a lot you can do.’

‘But I can’t help him. He is a political detainee. He has not even been tried.’

‘And you know that he is never going to be tried. He will be kept here for ever, forgotten.’ Her voice became sharp and indignant. The superintendent drew back his seat and sat down. His eyes were lowered. When he looked up, he said earnestly, ‘Janice. There’s nothing anyone can do for him. I’ll be implicating myself. Besides, his lot is far easier than that of other inmates. I give him things. Cigarettes. Soap. Books. And I let him. Write.’

‘How can you be so unfeeling! Put yourself in his shoes – two years away from friends, from family, without the power to do anything you wish to do. Two years in CHAINS! How can you talk of cigarettes and soap, as if that were substitute enough for all that he has lost?’ She was like a teacher confronting an erring student. Her left hand tapped the table for emphasis as she spoke.