Page:The Jail, Experiences in 1916.pdf/80

 which can be expressed only with difficulty and imperfectly in our native language. It is clear that our forefathers did not go in for imprisoning to such a degree as to create a jail vocabulary, and when we were imprisoned, it had been created by a highly cultured nation, the Germans. We have jail traditions, it is true, and extensive ones, but we lack a terminology.

So we went out for exercise. It was in that tiny courtyard where I once saw the Russian officers walking. Perhaps two, perhaps three hundred square metres. The windows of the rooms pour out all their stench upon it, the feet slip in the coughed-up phlegm and spittle. Here close on two hundred were walking, of all ages, all nationalities, all religions, old men and jail-birds who had scarcely left school, Jews from Poland and Jews from Vienna, soldiers of all possible units, thieves, robbers, murderers and we, guilty of treason. Defence-corps men with fixed bayonets guarded us, as we walked in threes and fours, and high above our heads was the scanty blue of the morning sky and upon it flitted a number of black points, swallows who probably were also out for exercise.

"Dušek, is it possible; this dirt, this stench, this company, all this because of four poems?"

"What do you expect? Austria…"

Across a low wall dividing us from the other large courtyard, we looked at the tower.

"That window with the flowers is where Kramář is kept. Rašín is yonder" said Dušek pointing. We went on moving round a small ellipse. The blue haze from cigarettes and the gray haze from cigars mingled and rose like the smoke from the scene of a fire. People were talking, gesticulating, standing still, laughing, brawling. Only a few walked along like shadows with their heads bowed to the ground—perhaps they did not want to show their life's misery. I