Anders Roslund - Three Seconds

The crackling again, whether it was the wind or labored breathing into a sensitive microphone.

"Lennart?"

It was breathing.

"You'll do it. Or you'll lose your post. You've got two hours."

He was lying on the iron bed with his eyes shut. I'm very sorry, I have no idea who you are. The people who were supposed to open the door and lead him back to reality had declared that he didn't exist.

He was officially condemned to ten years' imprisonment.

If those in the know denied it, if the people who had arranged a fake trial and produced a criminal record, if they denied it, there was no one else who could explain.

He wouldn't get out. He would be pursued to the death and no matter how much he ran and how long he managed to stay hidden, there was no one there on the other side of the wall who would open the door and help him out.

It was windy out in the prison yard, warm air rebounding off the concrete wall and coming back with even less oxygen. The prison's chief warden walked briskly and wiped his damp forehead with his shirt sleeve. The main door to solitary confinement was locked and he rattled through his keys. It wasn't often he visited the dismal corridor that was the temporary home of those who couldn't conform even with the country's most serious criminals.

"Martin."

The wardens' room was just inside the door and he nodded to three of his employees, Martin Jacobson and two temporary wardens, youngsters whose names he hadn't learned yet.

"Martin, I'd like to talk to you for a moment."

The two temps nodded; they had heard what he hadn't said and went out into the corridor, closing the door behind them.

"Hoffmann."

"Cell 9. He's not looking good. He-"

"He's to go back. To G2. By tomorrow morning at the latest."

The principal officer looked out into the empty corridor, heard the big ugly clock on the wall ticking, the second hand filling the room. "Lennart?"

"You heard right."

Martin Jacobson got up from the chair by the narrow desk that was largely used as a place to put cups, looked at his friend, colleague, boss. "We've been working together here for… a good twenty years. We've been neighbors for almost as long. You are one of my only friends in here, and out there, one of the few people I ask over for a Sunday drink." He tried to catch the eye of someone who wasn't there.

"Look at me, Lennart."

"No questions."

"Look at me!"

"I'm asking you, Martin, this time, no goddamn questions."

The gray-haired man swallowed, in surprise, in anger.

"What's this all about?"

"No bloody questions."

"He'll die."

"Martin-"

"This goes against everything we know, everything we say, everything we do."

"I'm going now. You've got an order. Do it."

Lennart Oscarsson opened the door; he was already on his way out.

"He punched you, Lennart… is this personal?"

It tightened. And when he moved, every step ached, a shooting pain from his cheekbone down.

"Is it? Is it personal?"

"Just do as I ask."

"No."

"In that case, Martin, do as you are ordered!"

"I won't do it. Because it's wrong. If he's going to be moved back. then you're going to have to do it yourself."

Lennart Oscarsson walked toward Cell 9 with two huge holes in his back. He could feel his perhaps best friend's eyes, staring, and he wanted to turn around and explain the order that he himself had so recently been appalled by. Martin was a wise friend, an experienced colleague, the sort who had the courage to speak up when someone who should know better was wrong.

An unconscious hand to the back of his jacket as he approached the locked cell, brushed over the fabric, by the holes, the eyes, trying to get rid of them. The temps with no names were close behind him and stopped by the door, keys jangling as they looked for the right one.

The prisoner was lying on the iron bed, naked except for a pair of white underpants. He was resting, trembling, his torso as white as his face. "You're going back."

The pale body, he didn't look like much, but only a couple of hours ago he had punched him hard in the face.

"Tomorrow morning. Eight o'clock."

He didn't move.

"To the same unit and the same cell."

He didn't seem to hear, to see.

"Did you hear what I said?"

The chief warden waited, then nodded to his young colleagues and to the door.

"The books."

"Excuse me?"

"I need the books. It's my legal right."

"Which books?"

"I've asked for two of the five books that I have the right to have. Nineteenth Century Stockholm. The Marionettes. They're in my cell."

"You're going to read?"

"The nights are long here."

Lennart Oscarsson nodded to the wardens again-they should close and lock and leave the cell.

He sat up. Back. He was going to die. Back. He was dead the moment he went back into the same unit, hated, hunted, he had broken one of the first prison rules, he was a snitch, and you killed snitches.

He got down on his knees in front of the cement toilet bowl, two fingers down his throat, he held them there until he started to puke.

Fear had sucked everything out of him and he spat it out, he had to get rid of it. He stayed on his knees and emptied himself, emptied out everything that had been, everything that was inside him, he was on his own now, the people who could burn him had burnt again.

He pressed the button.

He wasn't going to die, not yet.

He had kept it pressed in for fourteen minutes when the hatch in the door opened and the warden with the eyes shouted at him to goddamn take his finger off.

He didn't turn round, just pressed even harder.

"The books."

"You're going to get them."

"The books!"

"I've got them with me. Chief's orders. If you want me to come in, take your finger off the button."

Piet Hoffmann spotted them as soon as the door opened. His books. In the guard's hand. His chest, the pressure that had been there, making him shake, was released. He relaxed, wanted to collapse, wanted to cry, that was how it felt, released and he just wanted to cry.

"It smells of puke in here."

The guard peered into the cement hole, started retching, and moved back.

"It's your choice. You know that no one cleans in here. That smell, you'll just have to get used to it."

The warden gripped the books in his hands, shook them, flicked through, shook them again. Hoffmann stood in front of him but felt nothing, he knew that they would hold up.

He had sat on the iron bed for a long time holding the two books from Aspsås library close by. They were intact. He had just been down on his knees and emptied himself, now, now he was calm, his body felt soft, he could nearly bend over again and if he rested, if he slept for a while, he could refill it with energy, he wasn't going to die, not yet.

He had woken gleaming with sweat, fallen asleep again, dreamed in fragments and without color, the sort of sleep that is shallow and black and white and far away. He had woken again and sat up on the iron bed and looked at the floor and the books that were lying there for a long time-he wouldn't lie down again, his body was screaming for rest, but as sleep rook more energy than it gave he chose to stay sitting where he was and wait as the dawn turned into morning.

It was quiet, dark.

The solitary confinement corridor would sleep for a few more hours.

He had emptied himself yesterday of the fear that got in the way and had to be gotten rid of, the smell still stringent in the air around the cement hole. He had emptied himself and now there was only one thing left, the will to survive.