From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [316]
He let part of the breath out. “The first time I was in I thought I was goin to suffocate to death. It was all I could do to keep from startin to yell. If you once start to yell you’re gone. Dont start to yell. You’ll still be yellin when they come to take you out. Or until you get hoarse and lose your voice. And then you’ll still be yellin inside. Even then.” He stopped.
“Yes,” Prew said. “What else?”
“If you can sleep a lot, that helps, but some guys its hard to sleep because you see the bunk aint really a bunk. Or a cot. Its ten or twelve iron pipes hung lengthwise from a wall on two chains and course theres no mattress nor blankets on it.”
“Yes,” Prew said. “Is that all?”
“The Malloy says you can beat all that if you can control your mind. I never can,” Angelo Maggio said. “The Malloy can control his mind to stop thinkin. I cant do that. I’ve pick up a few little tricks that help some, but I cant do that other. One way I learn myself was count your breaths off: pull in eight, hold four, let out eight, hold four; that way helps that feeling how you are suffocating.”
“All that happens to you every time you’re in there?” Prew said.
“Another thing, I get hungry. They give you one slice of bread and a tincup of water three times a day.
“(The Malloy,)” Angelo Maggio said parenthetically, “(says he never eats a thing when he goes in there. He drinks the water but he dont eat nothing. He says if he dont eat nothing he dont get hungry after the first day; also, he says, that helps you to control your mind.)
“I never been able to do it,” he grinned sheepishly, “I awys get hungry and eat the bread, and that makes me hungrier. The worst thing I got to keep my mind from thinkin about is chickens and turkeys—you know how they hang them up roasted in the delicatessens?—and steaks and frenchfries, and bread and gravy.”
Angelo Maggio grinned apologetically. “I’m only tryin to lay it out for you. You got to remember it aint near as hard as it sound.”
“Yes,” Prew said.
“I get to seein all kinds of food, big meals all laid out on a big tablecloth with silverware and glasses and candles and all that like in the magazine advertisements. I’silly, ain’t it?”
“Yen,” Prew said. “I like to eat too.”
“Another thing is sex,” Angelo said delicately. “You want to stay away from thinking about women too. You see they strip you and put you in there naked and you get to thinkin about women you come all apart at the seams and be floggin your meat all a time which ony makes it worse instead of relievin it and makes you get wilder. Berry does that sometimes. It happen to me onct.” Under the coat of the gray rock dust he blushed deeply.
“What the hell do you think about?” Prew said tightly, “for Christ’s sake?”
“Well,” Angelo Maggio said, “thats the catch. According to The Malloy you dont think about nothing. The Malloy says he can lay in there for three or four or five days, or however long he’s in, without thinkin a single thing. He says he read it in some Yogi books when he was a lumberjack up in Oregon one time, how to do it. Some old guy working up there had them who use to be a Wobbly. Malloy says he tried it but he never could do it until he got in the Black Hole. You concentrate on a black spot inside your head in front of your eyes and whenever a thought starts to come in your mind, you kind of push it away from you, sort of, and dont think it. After a while, you do it long enough, they stop coming and all you see is just light, kind of.”
“Jesus Christ!” Prew said tightly. “I cant do stuff like that. You mean he goes into trances like them mediums and talks to dead people and all that kind of stuff?”
“Nah,” Angelo said sheepishly, “nothin like that, nothing supernatural. Its just mind control. A way to control your mind.”
“Can you do stuff like that?” Prew asked incredulously.
“Nah,” Angelo said. “He tried to teach me, but I couldnt cut it. Maybe you could, though.”
“Not me; not that kind of stuff.”
“You never know till you tried it. I tried it.”
“What do you do?”
“Me? I got two ways. I alternate them. One