Part I
CARLOS: No one, not the guards or the commandant can take that from me.
INTERLOCUTOR: But they can torture you, make you do things you would never dream of doing, like killing. With stones, with your own hands. Or raping your own daughter.
CARLOS: They try to break me by doing nothing. By letting me rot here. By neglect, not giving me food. By not seeing my sores or hearing the sounds of my sickness.
INTERLOCUTOR: Yes. And still you say they cannot take your freedom. You have no freedom here. In any sense.
CARLOS: They cannot take my words.
INTERLOCUTOR: They can rip your tongue out. Have you thought of that?
CARLOS: Yes, they can hurt me, deprive me, command me. But they can't take my choice, my own words from me. They can't even take what I have said to you. You will go out of here with my words engraved in your heart, if you have one.
INTERLOCUTOR: Whether I do or not, you will be here. A prisoner in your incommunicable words. Your choices, which I dare say place you in the most horrible of states. Look at yourself.
CARLOS: Is communicating so important? There are worse prisons than living confined in one's own words. Even those words that do not travel from these lips.
INTERLOCUTOR: This place then.
CARLOS: Yes, this place. And others. There are other jails with invisible bars and guards with keys they keep out of reach. They will never give them up, let you just borrow them for a moment to set yourself, shall I say it, free. Oh, there are guards and bars. And despair. Hopelessness.
INTERLOCUTOR: A prisoner then of words, and longing for what others have and you don't.
CARLOS: There is nothing that others have that I can't do without. Look at me. I am proof of that. I am still here. I am talking with you.
INTERLOCUTOR: And when visiting hours are over?
CARLOS: I have these silent words, the ones in here. The ones no one hears or can hear. In them there is no prison but total freedom. No one takes that from me, as long as I am sane enough to utter them, to manage with them, to imagine with them. As long as I am alive, my body not so dead that I cannot any longer.
INTERLOCUTOR: Grim. Very grim.
CARLOS: Ultimate salvation. The only one from here.
INTERLOCUTOR: Would your God could hear that.
CARLOS: I suspect he does.
INTERLOCUTOR: Then it is prayer, these words, this corner of your dim, residual life that is this freedom. You communicate with your God.
CARLOS: No. I just communicate. It is not important that anyone is there to listen, to hear me.
INTERLOCUTOR: And what do you say? Other than what you have said here today to me.
CARLOS: I am still here. I am me. Separate from you. Separate from all that is that I can see and feel in this place. Even the hopelessness. In that simple declaration, there is immense comfort and power. No one can touch or tamper with that.
INTERLOCUTOR: Except if you die, or they break your body. Is that what you call spirit?
CARLOS: A word. There are others.
INTERLOCUTOR: Have you confessed?
CARLOS: I have told them what they wanted to hear.
INTERLOCUTOR: Was it the truth?
CARLOS: Truth is what they wanted to hear.
INTERLOCUTOR: You are equivocating.
CARLOS: I need at least some amusement.
INTERLOCUTOR: At my expense. I don't understand this freedom of yours. I am wasting my time. There is nothing to tell those on the outside who are waiting for word from you.
CARLOS: I have told you what you can say. I have told you the essence. Freedom is precious. And nothing except total, thoroughgoing incapacity can snuff it out.
INTERLOCUTOR: I wonder if they will take hope from that.
CARLOS: They have their own prisons, their own jailers. They just need to recognize them for what they are. Tell them to look for the the guards, the commandants, the interlocutors. They are all around. And once you see them, declare for yourself and, through that, against them.
INTERLOCUTOR: People like me. I am one of them. A keeper. Someone who would take freedom from you.
CARLOS: Yes. You see that now.
INTERLOCUTOR: The one who questions would have you as he wants you. As without your freedom but submission to me, my words.
CARLOS: There are worse prisons than your words.
INTERLOCUTOR: I suspect there are.
[CARLOS is silent.]
INTERLOCUTOR: You are a different sort. Good bye. I suppose it is useless to say I hope to see you in better spirits.
CARLOS: Yes, but I could use some clean water and warm food.
INTERLOCUTOR: I am afraid I have no influence over such things.
CARLOS: My points exactly. Think positive thoughts. For me, if you like.
(Interlocutor falls silent.)
Part II
(Two armed guards in the yard ordered the inmates standing nearby to kill the two who had failed in their escape attempt. Carlos was one of those given a direct order to begin the execution. He refused and just stood there. Others took up stones and the horror ensued. The guards walked away when the two were dead and when those who had participated had hung their heads.)
INTERLOCUTOR: You could have been killed on the spot.
CARLOS: I know that. I wasn't. It was just chance.
INTERLOCUTOR: What made you refuse?
CARLOS: Killing is not in me, even for self preservation.
INTERLOCUTOR: But you knew what the alternatives were. Kill or be killed.
CARLOS: You forget. Chance saved me, gave me a reprieve. Till I don't know when, but a reprieve still.
INTERLOCUTOR: You know you will not leave here alive. No one does.
CARLOS: I know.
INTERLOCUTOR: You can be certain. And?
CARLOS: And knowing that, it was going to be then or anytime. Maybe even today. That certainty gave me a choice. I chose by not throwing a stone that the cause of my death might come right then from someone's heart, or some impulse in that moment of chaos and shock. But it didn't. I don't have control over others.
INTERLOCUTOR: So that's what your freedom is about. About knowledge that you accept about a fate now or later and choosing to accept that fate now or when it will be.
CARLOS: Yes, death's certainty. There is also no escape from here, where I know it will take place. I just don't know when. And if I accept that knowledge and that one unknown, my own unavoidable death every minute here, I gain a kind of dispassion, can I call it? I think of it as freedom.
Killing those inmates would have been horror for me. Choosing not to kill them and not suffer every minute since was the only possibility for me. And now that it turned out this way for however long it will, there is no change in my essential condition. I am here. I am alive, still. Death awaits me--still. I have a small range of choices, but the one about killing someone else, or killing myself, that is not one of them.
INTERLOCUTOR: But by refusing you might as well have asked them to kill you.
CARLOS: They didn't. They didn't maybe because they know I know. Waiting to die, anticipation and fear, is harder than dying. They think my waiting is worse than death itself. The guards are not so stupid. Or if they are, they didn't know what to do in the moment, and on that one day, they did what they did, spared me. The irony is no one is spared, ever. Maybe they knew that deep down somewhere. Or maybe they are so evil that my living under a death sentence that can be carried out by anyone at any time is a greater cruelty that they can inflict.
INTERLOCUTOR: So that leaves you where?
CARLOS: Here, of course. They put me here, now isolated from the others.
INTERLOCUTOR: Maybe they think this will increase your fear about what they will do to you.
CARLOS: I know there is no escape. We all wait till the end. And in that condition, I am free not to wait. Death will find me, or I will find death when the time comes. I have a freedom from the imprisonment of my own soul, or spirit if you prefer.
INTERLOCUTOR: Yes. You are a different sort.
CARLOS: You said that before.
INTERLOCUTOR: Did I?
CARLOS: You are wrong. I am no different. I have weak moments. But I've merely seen and accepted. I understand. And where there is understanding, or death, there is liberation from whatever is. And most days I can attend to other matters. You see, they cannot really control everything, appearances not to the contrary.
INTERLOCUTOR: This is my last visit.
CARLOS: Every moment is the last.
INTERLOCUTOR: Spare me your philosophy. Save yourself. At least try to.
CARLOS: Spare me your illusions. I prefer your questions.
(Carlos gets up from the corner and stands by the door as if he had just entered the cell. He takes a deep breath, and this time silently begins mouthing words no one can hear.)
__________
* Inspired by a visit to Terezín in the fall of 2009 and reading the novel, _The Shadow of the Wind_, by C. R. Zafon.
