Birds in the Heart of Hell

Julio Grotten served sixteen years in a Mexican prison for a homicide he was ultimately acquitted of. While in a reintegration program in maximum-security Puente Grande in Jalisco – from which El Chapo escaped in 2001 – Grotten took part in creative writing and publishing workshops. His 2022 debut book, Noche de perros tristes, includes eighteen short stories that he wrote while “wandering the prison corridors searching for meaning in my life, bringing to light the monsters and angels of my nightmares.” Here are two of them, in translation.

Child’s Play

I am new to this unit.

My eyes open to a new and chilling branch of hell. Purgatory, some would say, as if sooner or later the punishment will end. But when? I don’t know. My eyes don’t see as you see. I see everything from within. I see the substance. What it really is, behind the masquerade of beautiful gardens, well-kept lawns, and the excessive neatness of the white buildings.

There are three invisible powers that subjugate us, torment us, crush us, and therefore dominate us: fear, hunger, and pain; and these three are subjected in turn to a devious diva: despair.

This morning, after the unavoidable ritual of hauling water for our daily subsistence, and showering, and eating a frugal breakfast, namely something horribly thin and watery that could be a menudo soup but isn’t, I join the inevitable queue to call you. There are fewer than thirty phone booths to accommodate eight thousand inmates who, by the way, are now “incarcerated people,” as if calling ourselves “people” would give us back the dignity that is taken away by subjecting us to such degrading situations. I am not referring to the just punishment that many deserve for transgressing the law, but to the zombifying condition of not being, of not having, of powerlessness. Anyway, I won’t say more, I just need to hear your voice.

It’s not yet fully dawn and the incarcerated people are already going from one place to another, dispersed, hyperactive, and stressed, like when someone violently tramples on the very center of an ant colony and the insects go crazy and run senselessly in all directions. Who has trampled our damn anthill? The hideous diva, of course.

This is how life is here. Always stressed, looking for something, anything, that generates a small dose of comfort, a shot of well-being or anything you can get with the three pesos you carry in your back pants pocket.

Little by little, the distance between the phone and me shortens, while I watch the wheels of this collective hell turn. In my restless mind, I take an x-ray of Hades and ask myself: Who the hell designed something so sinister? Suddenly, a tall, burly man who was talking on the phone screams heartbreakingly, as if in a grip of brutal pain and fury, as he violently slams the receiver and kicks the booth, letting fly pieces of plastic and metal and his own heart. A couple of incarcerated people approach him to try to control him, but he keeps shouting and kicking everything and everyone. No sooner do they attempt to touch him, but he knocks them down with powerful punches. The people in line moved away a little. The man is furious. His face is red with anger and pain from something I don’t understand but assume is terrible. Something they told him on the other end of the phone. Copious tears flow from his wild eyes, like a waterfall in a stormy dawn. And from his throat rises a roar, like that of a cornered, wounded lion. Others arrive, many others, to restrain him. He defends himself, breaking teeth; several ribs can be heard cracking as they splinter. His brutality is heroic, but in the end he is overpowered by the bestiality of a large crowd. I hear the heartbreaking howls of the fallen man. He was already broken before he slammed down the phone. The blows that knocked him down were more of a relief, a merciful anesthesia to ease the parting of his soul.

All around me rises a diabolical uproar that spreads over a carpet of sepulchral silence, the silence of those who are horrified at seeing spilled blood. I see hatred flashing in the eyes of those who beat him, as well as in many who watch the spectacle closely. There are different reactions among the others. Some clench their teeth and fists in impotent rage, in silence; others, frightened, tremble thinking that it could have been them on another occasion – I see one wipe away a furtive tear—and on the stone wall that surrounds us, a black bird contemplates us haughtily, as if that bloody ritual were a horrible offering to its honor.

The blows do not stop.

The fallen man can no longer be heard, nor does he move; but they do not stop beating him. The cruel spectators laugh and beg for more. Suddenly, the black bird squawks in the most terrifying way imaginable. They all stop, paralyzed by an icy horror they do not understand, which makes their spines tremble violently. The fallen man is dead. The black bird leaves, carrying the soul of that unfortunate man to a better hell. Everyone disperses. The queue dissolves and the phones are deserted. Only I remain motionless, still thinking that I have to call you. I have to hear your voice.

While they drag the body away, I dial your number. They are not yet out of sight when you answer on the second ring, as always. You were waiting for me. I hear your beautiful voice: “How are you?”

“Everything’s fine, my love,” I say. “Things are pretty good around here.”

“For real?”

“Yes, all fine. Prison life is child’s play.”

Photograph by pytyczech / Alamy Stock Photo.

The Bard’s Ritual

Everyone knows of him, though no one knows his name. He doesn’t speak. He only sings.

But for his terrible appearance, one might say he was an angel of God – although, who said angels are necessarily beautiful? He sings beautiful songs to heaven. Praise and worship. All in all, he is a creepy being, terrifying and sinisterly magical, like death.

I have been an inmate here for almost eight years, and from the first day I have seen him fulfill his ritual without fail. Those who have been here longer than me and say the same. Some say he is crazy, others that he is unreal, a ghost, an illusion … a bad dream.

Every morning, as soon as the cell doors open, the man emerges with his torn clothes blowing in the wind, like pieces of his life hanging from his skin, shreds of the soul he still treasures, which he does not want to tear away completely, because he has … hope?

In his right hand, a steaming mug of coffee; in his left, a hollow guitar, perfectly tuned and clean. He walks hurriedly, his face reflecting not anxiety but peace. He doesn’t smile. I don’t think he is happy. Nobody is happy in this place. But he has found a sort of peace, in a way that the rest of us can’t understand. An indescribable peace in the heart of hell.

There is a sacred place, a small oasis in the middle of the desert: the meeting place of the church of Christ, where all of us, at least once, have gone to prostrate ourselves and ask for help when the shit is up past our necks and we have no more tricks up our sleeve. Some braver ones go daily in the morning to pray. The bard arrives before everyone else. He does not enter, but stops in the corridor and, facing the sun, begins to sing in an unknown language, honoring the sovereign of the heavens, greeting the sun that the good God makes shine on the just and the unjust. Then, it seems that some kind of miracle occurs: all kinds of birds perch on the top of the walls and observe him in silence. Time itself seems to stop and listen to his song. The wind carries that song of love on its waves to every corner, and we prisoners listen to it. Like Paul and Silas in the Book of Acts.

I have seen this scene day after day, from different vantage points. I stare in my dirty disbelief. Some, upon hearing the singing, stop what they are doing and wander in their minds. With tears in their eyes, they evoke beloved faces that are no longer there, that have gone far away, as far as despair allows. We all love and miss someone. Many someones, perhaps.

The black bird flies over hell. Others who, even without understanding the words, sense their spiritual meaning, close their eyes and raise up in their own way a request, a plea, a prayer. A crumb of thought to the forgotten God who they know created them, even if they don’t recognize it. Pleasant aroma on golden wings.

The black bird perches on the wall. Others, the majority, roar like lions, burn with rage when they hear the song of the bard, because they do not find meaning in singing to a God who neither listens nor responds. They no longer know how to laugh or cry. They are rotten, and though they also know a remedy, they do not want to take it. Hate is delicious balm for their unfortunate souls. It takes courage to accept your reality, your need to ask for help. Blaspheming seems easier than believing.

The black bird squawks overhead. Then all the other birds join in the bard’s song, like an insane chorus that deafens and drowns out the cruel squawk of the bird of solitude. Everything vibrates. The wind roars and its waves carry that symphonic clamor far afield. We all, although some deny it, shudder at that event, because we cannot deny that something supernatural happens every morning with the song of that nameless bard.

Eight years, day after day, this scene occurs without fail. I see him defy torrential rain, hurricanes, biting cold, loneliness, hatred, and that damned sadness which punishes us so. He defies the pain that oppresses us. The bard sings. He keeps singing.

He worships and waits. What does he wait for?

His motivation is inscrutable to us mere mortals with natural eyes … but, I still observe him. I see everything.

The bard sings to a living God who hears him, who takes time to attend to his song and who, every morning, invests him with the power to touch the hearts of the inmates, and direct the birds’ praise in the very heart of hell. And sometimes, even the demons sing with him.

Source: Julio Grotten, Noche de perros tristes: Quebrantos y aventuras desde el penal de Puente Grande (Gorgona Editorial Cartonera, 2022). Translated from the Spanish by Coretta Thomson. Used by permission of the author.