Pauper's Purgatory

The area was overcrowded, clearly not meant in its design to hold the number of incarcerants that were forlornly in some instances, belligerently in others, held together in its fastness. Besides himself there were five other men. The men did not exchange civil pleasantries with one another for there was nothing civil about their surroundings. Some of the faces he took pains to avoid looking directly at were devoid of expression, others incapable of controlling the expressions of their passions.

It was the most wretched of environments, quite beyond anything he could possibly have imagined heretofore. His nightmares - and he’d had a few before this time of absolute purgatory - were unmatched by the reality of his presence in this place. The inmates exchanged nothing, not daily greetings nor their names; not the state of their feelings, nor the helplessness they all felt, at their presence there.

There had been a number of encounters in the month he’d been there. One of the men, a large, skulking figure of a man with a perpetually angry visage, had lunged at another, a young man with bulging biceps who felt he had the right to mock the sloppily loping gait of the other. And who, for his troubles, was given a lesson in, if not civility, then that silence is the better part of braggadocio when in such confined quarters.

He had been set upon in such a brutal manner as to have taken him completely by surprise. His assailant had brutally assaulted him, taking him completely off guard, so that his vaunted physical strength availed him little against the other equally physically endowed, but obviously owning superior strength owing to his dementia. The younger man had been so badly beaten, stomped upon, that his head resembled a mash of red potage. The guards, when they finally intervened - and it took three of those burly fellows - rescued him from certain death.

The maimed and horribly injured man was no longer in the cell, another had been put within in his place. And although his blighted assailant was still with them in the confines that held them all so sturdily, he was now well secured, in chains so that he could no longer move beyond a few inches of the manacles that held him, by one wrist, and the opposite ankle, to the stanchions that were securely pounded into the stone floor.

Although the cell might have been sufficiently commodious for perhaps four inmates, with the five men and two women held within it, there was hardly room for the inmates to move about as freely as they needed to. The attainment of any kind of physical exercise quite impossible, without colliding with someone else determined to move their bodily parts about lest they become stiff from disuse.

The men did tend to move about, quietly, purposefully - to relieve the tedium and their deep anger at their situation - in circular paths, yet careful to avoid confrontations.

The women occupied two distinct corners of the cell. He found it peculiar that they did not seek comfort in one another’s presence. Instead, the women did seek out one another’s eyes and they used those contacts to glare hatefully at one another. As though each found the other’s presence disgustingly appalling, an affront not to be taken lightly, as though one was the innocent party, there through no fault of her own, while the other was an indelible symptom representative of the fallibility of Eve’s fall from grace.

Though both had been taken off the streets, as affronts to civil decency, plying their trade openly, raucously, as social deviants through their utter depravity in their attempts to attract the attention of low-down reprobates, the scum of the streets.

The women were scantily dressed, their hair bedraggled, faces smudged with perspiration-laden dirt. And were it not for their obvious bodily contours so attractive to the men there, they would be thought of as hags. The odours emanating from them no less wickedly assaulting than those from the men. Stinking of uncleanliness and suppurating open sores, and the less than fastidious manner by which all of those present cleaned themselves after using the pots for their daily evacuations.

One, the younger of the two, had somehow availed herself of a sharp implement which she kept concealed in the folds of the skirt of her dress. The older one, with remnants of bright cosmetics still on her face, sneered at the younger one.

But both huddled in their separate corners, and at times sobs of desperation could be heard from one or the other of the women. He felt badly for them, even though they were beneath the notice of a God-fearing, upright man with personal responsibilities and an entrenched sense of social obligations. He hadn’t been raised to either use or to scorn such women of the street. Harlots were not spoken of in the circles in which he had been raised. They were merely one of those facts of life, like lice, to be avoided if at all possible.

Their presence bothered him not one whit. He might feel offended at the thought of what they represented, the kind of low vices that were a scourge on society and an offence against God, but he also acknowledged, as an intelligent man, that they were themselves victims of society. He had many other thoughts, however, to consume his time and none of them brought comfort to him.

Needless to say, it bothered him horribly when he heard the muffled and stealthy movements during the night, the soft tones of the women attempting to beg off the attentions of the men whom they no longer had any power to deny for there was no refuge for them that they could take shelter within.

He had heard the younger one weeping, for although she had something resembling a weapon, she was easily overpowered without having wrought too much damage to any of the men who took their turns with her. The older woman as well seemed to try to persuade the men ravenous in their lust when dark fell, but her persuasions did her no more good than the desperate lashings of the other woman.

Little wonder they sat so despondently in the corners throughout the daylight hours, heads hanging low, fingers restlessly pleating the fabrics of their long skirts, mumbling to themselves as though they too had succumbed to lunacy. Little wonder indeed if they did, although it was clear they were in their right minds, minds that desperately clung to some future time when they might be released and breathe the freshness of the air of freedom, and get on with their lives. Whatever their futures were comprised of. He suspected that their futures offered them little hope, that they would cycle from the streets back into the same situation time over time, until physical disorders and death took them.

As for the men, they were the obvious detritus that any society anywhere in the world produces. Born of poor women - likely the very same sort of women that were there in the cell with them - who were unable to provide for their offspring, leaving them to grow into a childhood of poverty and endemic maladies, and if they were fortunate - or unfortunate as the mind’s eye saw it - grow to an early embittered adulthood un-endowed with any education other than the brittle street smarts it took to teach them how to survive against all odds.

None of them had any reason to trust any other human being. For no other human being ever looked on any of them with even a modicum of compassion. Theirs was a life of survival, and petty crime was the only technique which they mastered to overcome the lack of imagination which might steer them into another direction entirely. They were incapable of comprehending another kind of existence, one that might preclude theft, assault, and murder.

It hardly seemed to matter that he, with his reserved manner and tender sensibilities, unused to the rough displays of street life shared these unlikely accommodations with the kind of riff-raff he’d scarce ever noticed as he went about his daily business. But here he was, taken into custody and placed within the sere, stark confines of the institution he and his family had rarely made much note of, despite its direct view of the little cottage in which they lived.

He could, in fact, if he raised himself sufficiently on the balls of his feet, peer out the narrow barred windows in the grey stone walls and make out the cottage which he had taken for his family. At night he could see light in their abode, as candles were ferried from room to room. It tore at his heart to know that Fiona was alone, on her own, with their two infant daughters.

At the back of his mind was the gnawing question: how long would he be kept in this place? No one had informed him of the length of time he had been committed for, although the reason for his being placed there was evident enough. He had lost his employment when his employer had been bankrupted, and had been unable to find alternate employment at a time when the town was undergoing difficulties.

He had defaulted on his fiscal responsibilities. The message he had sent back home to London in desperation to his family who could hardly afford to spare funds that they were themselves not generously endowed with, would scarcely have had time to result in anything to enable him to avoid gaol.

But here he was, eating thin gruel twice each day, with a thin slab of stale bread thrown to them, along with rank water in tin utensils, to still the pangs of hunger. Each of the men there, let alone the two women, seemed to suffer from one ailment or another. Their eyes were red and rheumy, their lips cracked, their facial skin horribly wrinkled as though they were desert dwellers having to cope with the incessant ill effects of direct exposure to enervating heat, a ruinous sun and unceasing hot winds, sucking the spirit of life and the moisture of their very carcasses to leave but a semblance of humanity in their sallow, sorrowing faces and their shambling presence.

He was the tallest among them, and well shaped, having had advantages that they had not. He had been well brought up, in a genteel environment, albeit one of poverty, the son of an
Anglican priest in a small town outside London. He'd not wanted to follow in his father's footsteps; the vicarage did not hold any attraction for him, nor the respected, but ill-paid profession.

How many times since was it that he had berated himself for having believed the stories that went the rounds of opportunities to be had overseas, in North America?

“What, abandon us?” cried his parents, alarmed at the very thought that their sole child might be lost to them forever. And he, seeking to reassure them, that he and his new wife would be far better off where opportunity beckoned, and isn’t that what his parents visualized for him?

“We’ll never have the opportunity to see our grandchildren!” his mother wailed, as his father shrugged helplessly, glum with the realization that nothing they could say or do would dissuade him from his chosen course.

And his wife, dear trusting Fiona, believing in him, trusting him, telling her own parents that when they made their fortune they would most certainly return.

That long, miserable sea voyage they had undertaken. Hoping to save a little more money to enable them to find a house immediately on arrival in Montreal he had paid for steerage accommodation. He hadn’t imagined the difficulties, the crowded conditions, the lack of space, of clean air to breathe, the stench overpowering them of human feces, vomit, uncleanliness and rot. The food they’d taken with them had staled and then run out well before their passage was over, and he’d had to hand over money they could ill afford in greater measure than planned in any event, to those who had experience and knew well what was involved and measures to be taken to ensure they had sufficient of what they required victualizing themselves.

And then it was over. They’d arrived. At a busy seaport, with bustling dock workers - many looking very similar to those with whom he now shared this cell - lofting and heaving the trunks and possessions of those other hopeful immigrants who had gambled with fate and left the poverty of their homeland to confront the opportunities of a brave new world.

Once all the confusion settled into some semblance of order and they’d found what they sought; a good sound position for him as an accountant with a well established import firm owned by a kindly expatriate who took him on trust, and helped them find adequate accommodation, the future began to look as though it might unfold as they had anticipated.

They were comfortable enough, although their accommodations were not in an area they might have preferred. But this was a new place, a raw town where everyone was starting anew, and relations were often strained between the English and the French. Because of those strained relations he began to entertain thoughts of travelling elsewhere, to York, if he could put together enough savings to fund that trip. Intervening, however, were two charmed events, the birth of their two children.

He had begged the guards to give him news from outside. His words were rare for his fellow inmates, but he steeled himself to beg the guards when they appeared with food, to let him know what was happening. Did they know when he might be discharged? Had they any idea how long he was destined to remain there? Was there anything he could possibly do to find out on his own?

He called upon their humanity; how might it be with them if they too lost their employment and found themselves likewise incarcerated? Their stony-faced disinterest made him even more fearful. There was no one to whom he could appeal.

And his thoughts turned to what he had repeatedly seen during the night hours that so fearfully concerned him.

No, not the furtive movements that culminated in groans and wheedling persuasions, the shrieking imprecations of hellfire that often followed. He had inured himself against all of that. It had nothing to do with him.

Little Edie, their baby girl, had been taken ill before he’d been taken away. Marched directly across the street into the great yawping bowels of this prison they knew was there but hardly knew what it represented, apart from protecting society from miscreants, robbers, murderers who lived short and nasty lives. What did they know then about the dregs of society being joined by those whose misfortune flung them into the company of those dregs?

He had watched, night after night in the distance, as the candle flame he knew represented Fiona, moved to the tiny second floor of their cottage where the two bedrooms were; theirs and that of the children. When he realized that the candle remained in the children’s room throughout the length of the night, he well understood that their baby had taken a turn for the worse.

And he well knew that his wife hadn’t the wherewithal to pay for the services of a physician. He knew that Sarah would tenderly nurse their child back to health. Hadn’t it happened countless times before, when their little girls had succumbed to one childish ailment after another?

He felt certain that his employer, although unable to keep employing him, would look in on Sarah when he could. Their cottage had been rented for the year; he’d been able to pay the rental on their arrival in Montreal.

How Fiona eked out of their scant savings sufficient to ensure she could feed herself and their children he had no idea. But he trusted she would somehow, God willing, manage. He imagined that his message had got through to his parents and by return passage, what they could afford to spare had come through to help support his wife.

Night after long night he would rouse himself to move his way carefully through the dank, dark cell until he stood before that narrow window. And it was only on the night that there was no candle, not seen through the downstairs window, nor in the upstairs window, that he truly despaired.

But no one could answer the questions burning through his mind, leaving him in an abyss of terror.