The place from where I use to phone every evening,
in a small, heated L-shaped room,
with booths all around that look like cells,
and well decorated, each one with a prisoner hanging
and clutching to the receiver full of finger prints;
in the place from where every evening I phoned,
with this tall man with a thick, red beard,
who speaks loudly and can be heard from outside;
there was this man not quite in his right mind,
who used to make some money going round the cells
and selling cards with a few cents in them
that he used to find and collect after we had left;
some people used to try to avoid him/slip past him
and keep their pockets under strict surveillance;
some people were really quite afraid of him,
and others didn’t give a damn about him;
some others liked to answer his questions,
they would invent things to keep the conversation going
and in this way they freed themselves temporarily from their own imprisonment.