Gods and Soldiers by Rob Spillman

course I did. S.O.S. It wasn’t apparent at first. I began to notice the repetition with the fifth poem. ‘Save my soul, a prisoner.’ ”
    â€œSave my soul, a prisoner” . . . The first time I put down the words, in the third poem, it had been non-deliberate, I was just making alliteration. Then I began to repeat it in the subsequent poems. But how could I tell her that the message wasn’t really for her, or for anyone else? It was for myself, perhaps, written by me to my own soul, to every other soul, the collective soul of the universe.
    I told her, the first time I wrote it an inmate had died. His name was Thomas. He wasn’t sick. He just started vomiting after the afternoon meal, and before the warders came to take him to the clinic, he died. Just like that. He died. Watching his stiffening face, with the mouth open and the eyes staring, as the inmates took him out of the cell, an irrational fear had gripped me. I saw myself being taken out like that, my lifeless arms dangling, brushing the ground. The fear made me sit down, shaking uncontrollably amidst the flurry of movements and voices excited by the tragedy. I was scared. I felt certain I was going to end up like that. Have you ever felt like that, certain that you are going to die? No? I did. I was going to die. My body would end up in some anonymous mortuary, and later in an unmarked grave, and no one would know. No one would care. It happens every day here. I am a political detainee; if I die I am just one antagonist less. That was when I wrote the S.O.S. It was just a message in a bottle, thrown without much hope into the sea . . . I stopped speaking when my hands started to shake. I wanted to put them in my pocket to hide them from her. But she had seen it. She left her seat and came to me. She took both my hands in hers.
    â€œYou’ll not die. You’ll get out alive. One day it will be all 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.
    â€œWhat 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.
    â€œWhy is he crying?” he repeated to Janice.
    â€œBecause he is a prisoner,” Janice replied simply. She was still standing beside me, facing the superintendent.
    â€œWell. So? Is he realizing that just now?”
    â€œDon’t be so unkind, Muftau.”
    I returned the handkerchief to her.
    â€œMuftau, you must help him.”
    â€œHelp. How?”
    â€œYou are the prison superintendent. There’s a lot you can do.”
    â€œBut I can’t help him. He is a political detainee. He has not even been tried.”
    â€œAnd 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