34
PARTISAN REVIEW
he had frequently gone without food for several days at a time or
restricted himself to a single meal a day, when he felt his health
succumbing to prison-damp. Having now developed a cough-the
inflammation of an old prison affliction-he had cut off food for a day,
then limited himself strictly until he felt his health improving. Not that
he put much faith in
fast~,
or went nearly so far as Bapu had gone
in regulating his diet. It was quackery at its best, and he had never
hesitated to jeer at Bapu during the latter's nut period, for example,
or when the old man had cut out beans, taking a vow as fervent as
the one whereby he had bound himself to chastity. But, since prison
food was abominable, no one stood to suffer from abstaining, and in
a few days Satya felt quite well again. Nevertheless, he did not
resume his full diet.
He did not know what was driving him to it-or if he knew,
he would not admit it to himself. However, he had soon cut out
food entirely, and was no longer fasting, but had gone on a hunger
strike.
He expected to gain nothing by it. And for that matter, he was
not starving in protest. The protest he should have had to make was
so great, no sacrifice would have expressed it properly. Besides, he
had lost all interest in the life of the prison, and
if
there were any
conct".ssions to be won, they no longer concerned him.
The: first two days his hunger was intense. But even then he did
not inquire what drove him to it, or what purpose he could expect
it to fulfill .
If
there were anything he need know, he would learn
from hunger itself. For the rest, he tried to determine how he should
bear himself in relation to it, and whether he should
try
to conceal his
starvation from the authorities.
He turned back all his food, leaving the dishes untouched at the
door and drinking only a little water. On the third day the author–
ities, thinking apparently that the food was offending him, offered
him delicacies. Several excellent dishes were shoved in through the
door: baked eggplant, a rhubarb soup, a bowl of nut meats, a plate
of fruit . Satya hesitated. By rejecting these dishes he would indicate
that he had gone on a hunger strike. He wondered whether
it
was
advisable to let the jailers know, and-he feared that whatever reasons
he might have for doing so, vanity would be among them. Therefore
he let it appear that he had yielded to temptation. He scraped the
plates clean, hiding the food in a comer of the cell and returned the
empty dishes. The next morning when he was let out for exercise, he
went to the sewer under the paving stones and threw the food away.
