CRIMINAL-37 by AUBREY CHINGUWO

 Guest Writer's Profile.

Name: Aubrey Chinguwo

Pen-Name: Aubrey Chinguwo

Genre: Short Stories/Poems

Profession: IT Expert

Location: Lilongwe, Malawi

CRIMINAL - 37 

By: Aubrey Chinguwo

 

It is a fallow period of sunshine on a Thursday of 2011 at Zomba Maximum Prison. August should be the month if the fallibility of the human memory can in the least be trusted. The sun hangs timidly in the sky, bathing the day to full glow, and in small pauses sending bright rays of sunlight through the small gaps of the metal bars high above. 

 

Silence has fallen upon Cell 4, where an inmate by the name Criminal-37 is banging his head against the wall. We are all in shock, but knowing C-37, none of us reacts. 

 

C-37’s place is at the far left corner of the cell. Here, places aren’t free. They are bought with food or a favour. However, C-37 got his with nothing in return by opting to be a mystery. And he is the only prisoner with a gathering of woody poles with rusty springs and cushions of an old sofa, with a stack of books beneath that make up his bed. 

 

No one cares about him. Talking to C-37 is like talking to silence herself. He made peace with a lonesome world. 

 

At thirty-seven, his appearance is gawky, with his skin pallid. His white T-shirt is stencilled with words that read, ‘C-37’s battle less won’. His dreadlocks hang down his elbows and they smell of wet mice. 

 

We know him by no other name but C-37. We hear from the prison warders that even the police didn’t get his real name. So at court they had to call him ‘Suspect-37’ until he was proven guilty and given a sentence. That’s when he changed name from Suspect-37 to Criminal-37. No one has ever comprehended the logic behind the naming. 

 

We also hear that C-37 is very educated, possesses a bachelor’s degree in Arts and Humanities from Chancellor College with a distinction. He is a highly esteemed intellect, they say. 

 

So, this morning, as we await the doors to be opened, C-37 shocks us by banging his head against the wall. He goes on to shock us the most when we hear him talk. This is the first time we have heard C-37 talk. Some of us joined C-37 many months ago but no one to ever have joined him can claim to have heard a word from him. 

 

"Somewhere down there, somewhere down there... It rattles," he exclaims, saying there is an animal moving in his ears, causing violent pain he can barely endure. 

 

Soon, it appears the animal has given him some rest. Everyone is still taken by surprise. Here in prison, when you want to talk to fellow jail mates, you just need to clap hands thrice, and with that you lend everyone’s attention. C-37 seems to know that very well. 

 

So, C-37 is excited today. Wow! 

 

“It is beautiful outside. It is beautiful up there,” C-37 starts. “My dear cellmates, I killed a man who married and abused a young girl, and surprisingly the community had his support.” 

 

All the noise of the cell dies to sepulchral silence. We cannot speak, neither can we laugh while C-37 is speaking; a man whose next course of action is highly unanticipated. 

 

“It was on a day like this a year ago when I killed him and buried him in my garden not way off from my house. I killed Brenda’s husband with his own knife.” 

 

C-37 has grabbed our attention by the neck; his opening statements have pulled everyone’s ears towards him. We all remain in our contorted positions with fear of what he may bring further. Now we know why he is in. Murder of highest degree, it is. 

 

“Now, people are busy spreading lies of me being mentally ill. They say I am living the last days of my life in this prison solo; talking to myself, reading books, writing controversial poetry, spending lengthened hours of sleep, thinking and laughing, all alone. 

You call that madness?! No, people, it’s absolutely not!” 

 

C-37 breaks into laughter. He then shouts, “I killed him because of her!” 

 

There is still silence from the audience. 

 

Suddenly, C-37 gets angry. “… and they say that’s murder! Men of law, where are you?”  

 

He aggressively walks among fellow inmates who are attentively listening, reaches for the steel door that can only open from outside, and thumps it repeatedly with his hands. 

“Challenge me, where are you?” The noise made out of it leaves everyone shaking. 

 

His eyes are now half-open from the paint peeling from the door. He grabs someone’s shirt from a hanger and uses it to clean the eyes. Now he can still see us, his audience rather. 

 

“I believe you can hold your breaths from your positions,” C-37 says as he walks back to his place. He then bursts into laughter again, the kind that can shake a cockroach off the ceiling. 

 

A minute later, C-37 goes into a long talk. 

 

“It recurs to me that there are many ways I could start telling this story other than with the dead man in the garden. I could start with the day I appeared in court answering murder charges. I could also start by telling my experiences here in prison - the daily agitation of lost reputation, and the rapists and thieves within that I have refused to befriend even one; the open toilets and the queues; the cries at night from fellow inmates. 

 

But the memory of Brenda is very strong. It brings with it irreparable disaster. How well she stood in her school uniform yet being a Form One dropout, and how painfully she explained to me what her husband had been doing to her, and how she desperately wanted the marriage to end and continue with school. You see comrades, her parents had married her off at 16 to a divorced man who was almost the size of her father.” 

 

C-37 is now conquered with untreated depression. 

 

“It was at my home where I met Brenda. She had just picked a quarrel with the old man on conjugal matters. Since the man’s return from Mozambique, she said she felt a lot of pain and excused herself, saying she couldn’t take him in anymore. So late one night, Brenda was standing on my doorstep, asking me if I could keep her for a night since the village authorities had denied her concerns and called her a disgrace to her husband. 

 

Inmates, Brenda is really some rare material. She stands well in hips that nearly form a weather balloon, the kind of stature which seems to harbour all the poetry, all the dreams, all the hopes and happiness of the world. And this day, she was putting on a school uniform skirt that was a bit tight across the hips.” 

 

C-37 pauses, and soon gives away to tears as he pulls out the girl’s photograph from one of his books. “I didn’t do anything with her. As beautiful as she is, her parents had married her off when she was still doing school. She was suffering in silence. An innocent girl… imagine housemates…” 

 

There is pain in C-37 as he stares at the photo. Most notably in his tone, he is telling the truth. 

 

“That muscular, heavily-bearded lunatic came the following morning uttering insults, saying I was too thin to be protecting his wife who was 17. He came bare-chested and fuming with fury, his muscles tightening as if for a drilling-down, and his height equaling the door-frame of the kitchen entrance. His deserted big head, planted at the top of his unusual body, and that looked like a circle some Bwandilo prostitutes had sat on and squashed, was gleaming with perspiration and revenge. But he smelt of fear, like a fox that knows it’s dying. I killed him, and I am not regretting.” 

 

Now, everyone is eager to know what happened next. It is like he is playing a movie in which he does all the unthinkable. 

 

“That time, I had sent Brenda to a grocery to buy bread, having advised her not to go home sooner until the matter was reported to Victim Support Unit. It was before she had returned from the shopping that her husband showed up to my doorstep. 

 

A fight erupted. I overpowered him. With his very own knife I stabbed him right through his left chest. After a few minutes of writhing in pain and bleeding profusely, he dropped cold. Motionless. Dead. Oh, man, I had just killed a man. 

 

As fast as I could, I pulled him to the corner of my garden, dug a grave and buried him. 

All this happened while his little wife was still away. 

 

Then what? Something mysterious happened at the dead man’s burial site. An animal went through my ear, and the fallout has been unexpectedly immense. There in my ear, somewhere down there, is the small animal; a bedbug, maybe, or a centipede. It still makes strange noise, and seemingly growing in size each time I think of Brenda and her dead husband.” 

 

For the first time, one cellmate in the crowd keenly enquires: “So brother, was it the fallout of this animal doing mess in your ear that got you caught?” 

We all maintain our eyes fixed on C-37, waiting for his answer. 

 

C-37 is now crying again, this time in terrible anger and desperate tone. He suddenly jumps, loses his balance, clutches at nothing and pours clumsily on the rough surface. 

Then he raises his voice. “I went inside to rest. My head was terribly weak, and even more terribly I felt like it was going to split into thousand pieces.” 

 

“And then there was a tap at the door. It was Brenda. I struggled to lift myself awake. I shouted to her, ‘push the door open!’. The words reverberated in my own head, making total chaos. The animal was enjoying itself; dancing, maybe swimming in the pool of water I desperately poured minutes ago. 

 

It was still a beautiful day, just like today. I saw Brenda running through the undergrowth towards the garden, screaming, her hands flapping like wings of an injured bird. And…” 

 

The door is opened. It’s time for everyone to go out and have fresh air. C-37 is silent now. The entire jail is silent too. No one goes out. All eyes are on C-37. 

 

“Continue, brother,” a voice from the other side urges him. And some more voices follow. 

But C-37 stays silent, as if he hasn’t been talking. 

 

We watch him walk to the toilet inside. He stops upon the entryway. “What had I told her about her husband!” Now, he is angry again. “But I just killed the right man. She was just a young girl that was supposed to be in school.”