PARTISAN REVIEW
601
Haunches against his heels, he starts dancing around the bike Cossack–
fashion, kicking one scrawny leg after another, his left arm high above his
head, banging a tom-tom on the fenders with the hammer in his right hand. "I
just have to fix this"-Hyde gives the rear fender a terrific smash with the
hammer, making a big dent-"then I'll get my other jeans and a sweater from
upstairs. ..."
"Don't come!" Jekyll bellows.
"Listen, buddy," Hyde snarls, picking up a huge pair of tongs. He yanks
out the front wheel spokes one by one. "I can take a train if I want to. It's a free
country."
Jekyll snatches the black cape offthe hook, runs at Hyde, throws the cape
over him, and seizes the bicycle chain lying on the floor. Hyde is struggling like
a hen as Jekyll hits him once, twice, three times-trying, unsuccessfully as it
turns out, to kill him with it-while, at the same moment, Utterson is picking up
the phone with the long cord in his bedroom in Oyster Bay to dial the police.
Utterson stands at the blackboard in the Study House. Jekyll sits on the
edge of his cot in a dank cell . He's already spent two months in solitary. Jekyll is
in solitary, not because his crime, attempted murder, is so serious, but because
one week after being put in jail he participated in a prisoner's strike for better
food: the strike turned into a riot, and two guard hostages had their throats cut.
Jekyll , conceding that it was his duty to make common cause with the mostly
black and Puerto Rican prisoners, so much less fortunate than he, finds himself
punished more sevet'ely than anyone. ,He is maltreated by the guards, and
suspected by his fellow-prisoners who had elected him their spokesman in the
parleys with the negotiator from Albany, of having been too intransigent,
thereby making it easier for the Governor to order the National Guard to storm
the west wing, during which assault thirteen prisoners were shot down, includ–
ing all the principal leaders of the riot except Jekyll.
It's very cold, the coldestJanuary in years. Jekyll thinks it is still December.
Anyway, December or January, no let-up in the unremitting freezing spell is
predicted. Technically, the prison can claim to be heated; regular deliveries of
coke are made, and the coke shovelled into furnaces. But the heat doesn't filter
down to Jekyll or to any of the other cells on the floor where prisoners in
solitary are lodged. He minds most that his nose is always cold. Also his feet.
The prisoners are issued slippers when they arrive at the prison-real leather,
Jekyll noted with surprise, though cracked, worn, and a size too big. But they
aren't allowed to wear socks. Jekyll, who was once a physical fitness buff and
who now weighs one hundred and forty pounds, is extremely weak. 1fUtterson
moves around too much on the platform, Jekyll will topple over.
