Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/319

 CHAPTER XXX

MY MOTHER

HE prison destroys a man, poisoning him slowly day by day and hour by hour. Its action is like that of a swelling river in spring, when it imperceptibly carries away bit after bit of its covering of ice. The observer on its banks will only understand what has happened when the ice, which has thus been softened from the top and undermined from the bottom, suddenly breaks up with a roar and a splash, churning the whole stream into mush and foam, till the current seizes the disintegrating fields and carries them down to the all-devouring sea.

The same process of undermining the human strength goes on in prison, where man, at the critical moment, breaks up in the torrent of despair and slips down into the irresistible current that sweeps him along to an unknown deep. Will it be suicide, an explosion of hate or sheer, engulfing madness? No one knows nor can anyone foretell the answer.

I remember with oppressing vividness just such a period in my own prison life, when despair fastened itself upon me and I felt with every fibre of my soul the utter uselessness of my life. All my surroundings were absolutely foreign to me and had for me a dull, yellow mantle of indifference and fatigue; while all with whom I came into contact were likewise alien, not understanding me and living lives that were equally incomprehensible from 307