sirocco: all the oafs inside whom I had hated so lately as cattle and despised all my life as vulgarians, turned into saints, and even the things that were most disgusting about them – their stupid, repetitive jokes and their odious forms of chummy behaviour – got changed in my mind to the habits of angels. I pictured myself with them over and over again, with a bench pulled up to the stove and room being made for me at the warmest end: they gave me warm, stolen socks and oiled boots and fed me with mugs of hot coffee: in their brainless language they tried to tell me how much they shared my sufferings, and swore with their usual obscenities that I’d ‘be OK now, cocky’ and ‘snug as a cat’s arse’ and God knows how many other bits of nonsense of that sort, all so maudlin that I spent half my time in tears, loving the plain goodness of simple idiots. Some of the absurdities I imagined were beyond belief – everyone died for me, everyone loved me, everyone was a soul bringing me bowls of hot food, and everyone wondered how I could have survived such horrors and swore to do his piece in comforting and rewarding me.
It was about the fourth day without my glasses, and me in the middle of one of these ravings, when I found one hand all wet and saw that drops of rusty water werecoming from the brass tap. Next minute, the dirty drops turned into a trickle and the ice-block on the tap-head fell off. Two feet away, right under my nose on the staging, appeared my glasses, and no sooner did I put them on my nose than I was covered with sunshine. I was too amazed to know what was happening: outside, there was only snow as far as I could see and the whole prison camp lay in such humps of snow that it looked like squares of white mountains. But here in my greenhouse, icicles were running and falling from the roof and even the black ice under my feet was melting into filthy trickles. I couldn’t understand what was happening: it must have been about St Valentine’s Day, when words like ‘thaw’ and ‘springtime’ are impossible. But still the water ran from the tap, faster and clearer, and the sun shone brilliantly and clouds of vapour steamed up all round me. I was staring at the guard, plodding up the path on his beat in his snowy great-coat and furry hat, when suddenly I found myself thinking: ‘Are you crazy? Aren’t you in a greenhouse? Of course, it’s spring for you – that’s what a greenhouse is –where spring comes sooner.’ I was so astonished by this revelation that I dropped onto my chair and watched the tap-water running in streams all over the floor, though how I, of all people, who have known a greenhouse all my life, could find ‘revelation’ in something I had always known, must sound incredible. But very slowly, hopes that I had forgotten the existence of began to rise inside me – the ice might go, my clothes might dry, I might get my boots off. Finally, after an hour of this amazement, the most impossible thing of all happened: my body began to feel warm, and though I howled with pain and felt sure I could never stand coming back to life, I knew that the thaw was real and would go on, and that though I would be frozen again every night for weeks to come the ice would never work back into my bones again. I had the sense to turn the tap off and even to open my bundles on the staging to steam themselves dry before the sun went, but I was so hurt by the sharpness of the light and the speed at which the change had come that I spent the whole day fuddled in my chair and hardly moved until the light went and the steaming glass turned into sheets of ice again. I talk of the suddenness of it all, but it is possible that it had all begun to happen some days before and that I only woke up to it at this moment. It may have been the cause of all my beautiful dreams about the prisoners in the camp, which I think I would not have had if I had been freezing, because one doesn’t dream when one only wants
It was about the fourth day without my glasses, and me in the middle of one of these ravings, when I found one hand all wet and saw that drops of rusty water werecoming from the brass tap. Next minute, the dirty drops turned into a trickle and the ice-block on the tap-head fell off. Two feet away, right under my nose on the staging, appeared my glasses, and no sooner did I put them on my nose than I was covered with sunshine. I was too amazed to know what was happening: outside, there was only snow as far as I could see and the whole prison camp lay in such humps of snow that it looked like squares of white mountains. But here in my greenhouse, icicles were running and falling from the roof and even the black ice under my feet was melting into filthy trickles. I couldn’t understand what was happening: it must have been about St Valentine’s Day, when words like ‘thaw’ and ‘springtime’ are impossible. But still the water ran from the tap, faster and clearer, and the sun shone brilliantly and clouds of vapour steamed up all round me. I was staring at the guard, plodding up the path on his beat in his snowy great-coat and furry hat, when suddenly I found myself thinking: ‘Are you crazy? Aren’t you in a greenhouse? Of course, it’s spring for you – that’s what a greenhouse is –where spring comes sooner.’ I was so astonished by this revelation that I dropped onto my chair and watched the tap-water running in streams all over the floor, though how I, of all people, who have known a greenhouse all my life, could find ‘revelation’ in something I had always known, must sound incredible. But very slowly, hopes that I had forgotten the existence of began to rise inside me – the ice might go, my clothes might dry, I might get my boots off. Finally, after an hour of this amazement, the most impossible thing of all happened: my body began to feel warm, and though I howled with pain and felt sure I could never stand coming back to life, I knew that the thaw was real and would go on, and that though I would be frozen again every night for weeks to come the ice would never work back into my bones again. I had the sense to turn the tap off and even to open my bundles on the staging to steam themselves dry before the sun went, but I was so hurt by the sharpness of the light and the speed at which the change had come that I spent the whole day fuddled in my chair and hardly moved until the light went and the steaming glass turned into sheets of ice again. I talk of the suddenness of it all, but it is possible that it had all begun to happen some days before and that I only woke up to it at this moment. It may have been the cause of all my beautiful dreams about the prisoners in the camp, which I think I would not have had if I had been freezing, because one doesn’t dream when one only wants
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