Regiment of Women by Thomas Berger Page A

confirming it when I asked you before. I was hoping you gave them the wrong name. My heart really fell when I heard you confirm it now.”
    â€œYou think he’s been picked up?”
    â€œIt’s simple to find out,” said Harry and went to the steam-pipe and tapped at some length. Then he listened to the brief reply. He shook his head in admiration.
    â€œThose fellows know more about this jail than the superintendent, I’ll bet.”
    â€œWell?”
    â€œOh, sure,” said Harry. “Charlie’s in a cell near them.”
    Cornell lowered his head to his knees. He had not wanted certainty. He had asked for it in that hypocrisy by which one hopes to delude fate.
    â€œLife has been pretty rotten to him,” he said to his lap. “He was once a streetwalker.”
    â€œThat’s only a misdemeanor,” Harry said in an automatic, official kind of voice.

    [The female hyena] is dominant over the male…. She is larger, stronger, takes leadership. And as if to emphasise the irregularity she has through natural selection developed false testicles, masses of fat; and her attenuated clitoris hangs down in excellent imitation of a penis .
    R OBERT A RDREY , 1972

4
    C ORNELL COULD NOT get to sleep. The narrow cot, the thin mattress, the sour odor of the blanket, the memory of the greasy mess of the third feeding, were scarcely conducive to rest, nor was his recurrent guilt about Charlie. But he was kept awake by thoughts of Harry.
    As Cornell had prepared for bed—a splash of cold water on the face, a wetted finger for a toothbrush—Harry as usual did nothing about himself. Harry did not visibly wash and yet looked clean; had not eaten all day and yet seemed healthy; had been generous, warm, tender—and aggressive, cold, hostile. He was a mercurial type. You never knew where you stood with him.
    The cell had got chilly and damp, or perhaps it had always been like that and Cornell took notice only when he was faced with the period of compulsory repose. After the trays from the final serving had been handed out through the slot, Harry informed him that the light would shortly be extinguished and the cell kept dark for seven hours.
    Cornell shivered, went to the steampipe and felt it: dead-cold iron.
    Harry spoke sharply: “What are you doing?”
    â€œIt’s cold in here.”
    â€œLet that pipe alone,” said Harry. “Gillie and Randy will think it’s a message.”
    â€œI just felt it,” Cornell said. “I didn’t tap.”
    â€œJust get away from there.”
    Cornell’s hand went to his hip. “Listen here—” He did not intend to take orders from a rapist. But then his basic reason overcame his pride. It made no sense for them to be at each other’s throats within this narrow enclosure. He dropped his hand and smiled.
    But Harry leaped across the cell and seized the bosom of Cornell’s dress.
    â€œDon’t you ever talk to me in that tone,” Harry cried. “You little punk!” Though he was considerably shorter than Cornell, he pulled Cornell in close, then thrust him away.
    Amazingly enough, this attack did not threaten Cornell’s control. He astonished himself by going limp. He was operating on some sort of instinct.
    â€œWhen I tell you something I don’t want any lip,” Harry said furiously. He pulled Cornell in again, nose below his cellmate’s chin. “Get that and get it good, buster.”
    â€œYes, ma’am.” Having blurted this unthinkingly, Cornell remembered the source of his instinct: years before, he had had a teacher who handled him similarly.
    Harry roared: “You fresh punk.” He brought up his knee and drove it at Cornell’s groin, but owing to the difference in their heights, he struck too low—a miscalculation the teacher had never made, nor for that matter Dr. Prine, who often employed this technique in her therapy.
    Still