Chapter 16

Prison time is slow time, sometimes you'd swear it's stop-time, but it passes. It passes. George Dunahy departed the scene in a welter of newspaper headlines shouting SCANDAL and NEST-FEATHERING. Stammas succeeded him, and for the next six years Shawshank was a kind of living hell. During the reign of Greg Stammas, the beds in the infirmary and the cells in the solitary wing were always full.
One day in 1958 I looked at myself in a small shaving mirror I kept in my cell and saw a forty-year-old man looking back at me. A kid had come in back in 1938, a kid with a big mop of carrotty red hair, half-crazy with rem orse, thinking about suicide. That kid was gone. The red hair was half grey and starting to recede. There were crow's tracks around the eyes. On that day I could see an old man inside, waiting his time to come out. It scared me. Nobody wants to grow old in stir.
Stammas went early in 1959. There had been several investigative reporters sniffing around, and one of them even did four months under an assumed name, for a crime made up out of whole cloth. They were getting ready to drag out SCANDAL and NESTFEATHERING again, but before they could bring the hammer down on him, Stammas ran. I can understand that; boy, can I ever. If he had been tried and convicted, he could have ended up right in here. If so, he might have lasted all of five hours. Byron Hadley had gone two years earlier. The sucker had a heart attack and took an early retirement.
Andy never got touched by the Stammas affair. In early 1959 a new warden was appointed, and a new assistant warden, and a new chief of guards. For the next eight months or so, Andy was just another con again. It was during that period that Normaden, the big half-breed Passamaquoddy, shared Andy's cell with him. Then everything just started up again. Normaden was moved out, and Andy was living in solitary splendour again. The names at the top change, but the rackets never do.
I talked to Normaden once about Andy. 'Nice fella,' Normaden said. It was hard to make out anything he said because he had a harelip and a cleft palate; his words all came out in a slush. 'I liked it there. He never made fun. But he didn't want me there. I could tell.' Big shrug. 'I was glad to go, me. Bad draught in that cell. All thetime cold. He don't let nobody touch his things. That's okay. Nice man, never made fun. But big draught.'
Rita Hayworth hung in Andy's cell until 1955, if I remember right. Then it was Marilyn Monroe, that picture from The Seven Year Itch where she's standing over a subway grating and the warm air is flipping her skirt up. Marilyn lasted until 1960, and she was considerably tattered about the edges when Andy replaced her with Jayne Mansfield. Jayne was, you should pardon the expression, a bust. After only a year or so she was replaced with an English actress - might have been Hazel Court, but I'm not sure. In 1966 that one came down and Raquel Welch went up for a record-breaking six-year engagement in Andy's ceil. The last poster to hang there was a pretty country-rock singer whose name was Linda Ronstadt.
I asked him once what the posters meant to him, and he gave me a peculiar, surprised sort of look. 'Why, they mean the same thing to me as they do to most cons, I guess,' he said. 'Freedom. You look at those pretty women and you feel like you could almost ... not quite but almost step right through and be beside them. Be free. I guess that's why I always liked Raquel Welch the best. It wasn't just her; it was that beach she was standing on. Looked like she was down in Mexico somewhere. Someplace quiet, where a man would be able to hear himself think. Didn't you ever feel that way about a picture, Red? That you could almost step right through it?'
I said I'd never really thought of it that way.
'Maybe someday you'll see what I mean,' he said, and he was right. Years later I saw exactly what he meant ... and when I did, the first thing I thought of was Normaden, and about how he'd said it was always cold in Andy's cell.
A terrible thing happened to Andy in late March or early April of 1963. I have told you that he had something that most of the other prisoners, myself included, seemed to lack. Call it a sense of equanimity, or a feeling of inner peace, maybe even a constant and unwavering faith that someday the long nightmare would end. Whatever you want to call it, Andy Dufresne always seemed to have his act together.
There was none of that sullen desperation about him that seems to afflict most lifers after a while; you could never smell hopelessness on him. Until that late winter of '63.
We had another warden by then, a man named Samuel Norton. The Mather brothers, Cotton and Increase, would have felt right at home with Sam Norton. So far as I know, no one had ever seen him so much as crack a smile. He had a thirty-year pin from the Baptist Advent Church of Eliot. His major innovation as the head of our happy family was to make sure that each incoming prisoner had a New Testament. He had a small plaque on his desk, gold letters inlaid in teakwood, which said CHRIST IS MY SAVIOUR. A sampler on the wall, made by his wife, read: HIS JUDGMENT COMETH AND THAT RIGHT EARLY. This latter sentiment cut zero ice with most of us. We felt that the judgment had already occurred, and we would be willing to testify with the best of them that the rock would not hide us nor the dead tree give us shelter. He had a Bible quote for every occasion, did Mr Sam Norton, and whenever you meet a man like that, my best advice to you would be to grin big and cover up your balls with both hands.
There were less infirmary cases than in the days of Greg Stammas, and so far as I know the moonlight burials ceased altogether, but this is not to say that Norton was not a believer in punishment. Solitary was always well populated. Men lost their teeth not from beatings but from bread and water diets. It began to be called grain and drain, as in Time on the Sam Norton grain and drain train, boys.'
The man was the foulest hypocrite that I ever saw in a high position. The rackets I told you about earlier continued to flourish, but Sam Norton added his own new wrinkles. Andy knew about them all, and because we had gotten to be pretty good friends by that time, he let me in on some of them. When Andy talked about them, an expression of amused, disgusted wonder would come over his face, as if he was telling me about some ugly, predatory species of bug that has, by its very ugliness and greed, somehow more comic than terrible.

　　对坐牢的人而言，时间是缓慢的，有时你甚至认为时间停摆了，但时间还是一点一滴地渐渐流逝。邓纳海在报纸头条的丑闻声浪中离开了肖申克。史特马接替他的位子，此后六年，肖申克真是人间地狱。史特马在位时，肖申克医务室的床位和禁闭室的牢房永远人满为患。
　　一九五八年某一天，当我在牢房中照着刮胡子用的小镜子时，镜中有个四十岁的中年人与我对望。一九三八年进来的那个男孩，那个有着一头浓密红发、懊悔得快疯了、一心想自杀的年轻人不见了。红发逐渐转灰，而且开始脱落，眼角出现了鱼尾纹。那天，我可以看到一个老人的脸孔很快会在镜中出现，这使我惶恐万分，没有人愿意在监狱中老去。
　　一九五九年初，史特马也离开了。当时不少记者混进来调查，其中一个甚至以假名及虚构的罪状在肖申克待了四个月，准备再度揭发监狱里的重重黑幕，但他们还未来得及挥棒打击时，史特马已逃之夭夭。我很明白他为什么要逃跑，真的，因为如果他受审判刑，就会被关进肖申克服刑。真是如此的话，他在这里活不过五小时。哈力早在两年前就离开了，那个吸血鬼因心脏病发而提前退休。
　　安迪从来不曾受到史特马事件的牵连。一九五九年初，来了一个新的典狱长、新的副典狱长和新的警卫队长。接下来八个月，安迪回复了普通囚犯的身份。也是在那段时期，诺曼登成了他的室友，然后一切又照旧。诺曼登搬出去后，安迪又再度享受到独居的优惠。上面的人尽管换来换去，但非法勾当从未停息。
　　有一次我和诺曼登谈到安迪。“好人一个，”诺曼登说。很难听懂他的话，因为他有兔唇和腭裂，说话时唏哩呼噜的。“他是好人，从不乱开玩笑。我喜欢跟他住，但他不喜欢我跟他住，我看得出来。”他耸耸肩，“我很高兴离开那儿。那牢房空气太坏了，而且很冷。他不让任何人随便碰他的东西，那也没关系。他人很好，从不乱开玩笑，但是空气太坏了。”
　　直到一九五五年，丽塔·海华丝的海报都一直挂在安迪的囚房内，然后换成了玛丽莲·梦露在电影《七年之痒》中的剧照，她站在地铁通风口的铁格盖子上，暖风吹来，掀起她的裙子。玛丽莲·梦露一直霸占墙面到一九六〇年，海报边都快烂了，才换上珍·曼斯菲，珍是大胸脯，但只挂了一年，便换上一个英国明星，名字好像叫海莎·科特，我也不确定。到了一九六六年，又换上拉蔻儿·薇芝的海报。最后挂在上面的是个漂亮的摇滚歌星，名叫琳达·朗斯黛。
　　我问过他那些海报对他有什么意义？他给了我奇怪和惊讶的一瞥，“怎么？它们对我的意义跟其他犯人一样呀！我想是代表自由吧。看着那些美丽的女人，你觉得好像几乎可以……不是真的可以，但几乎可以……穿过海报，和她们在一起。一种自由的感觉。这就是为什么我总是最喜欢拉蔻儿·薇芝那张，不仅仅是她，而是她站立的海滩，她好像是在墨西哥的海边。在那种安静的地方，一个人可以听到自己内心的思绪。你曾经对一张照片产生过那样的感觉吗？觉得你几乎可以一脚踩进去的感觉？”
　　我说我的确从来没有这样想过。
　　“也许有一天你会明白我的意思。”他说。没错，多年后我确实完完全全明白他的意思……当我想通时，我想到的第一件事就是诺曼登当时说的话，他说安迪的牢房总是冷冷的。
　　一九六三年三月末或四月初的时候，安迪碰到了一件可怕的事情。我告诉过你，安迪有一种大多数犯人（包括我在内）所缺乏的特质，是一种内心的宁静，甚至是一种坚定不移的信念，认为漫长的噩梦终有一天会结束。随便你怎么形容好了，安迪总是一副胸有成竹的样子，大多数被判终身监禁的囚犯入狱一阵子以后，脸上都会有一种阴郁绝望的神情，但安迪脸上却从未出现过，直到一九六三年的暮冬。
　　那时我们换了一个典狱长，名叫山姆·诺顿。假如马瑟父子马瑟父子（IncreaseMather&CottonMather），父子俩均为十七世纪著名的公理教会牧师。有机会认识诺顿，一定会觉得十分投契，从来没有人看过诺顿脸上绽开笑容。他是浸信会基督复临教会三十年的老教徒，有一个教会发的襟章。他自从成为这个快乐小家庭的大家长以后，最大的创新措施就是让每个新进犯人都拿到一本《圣经·新约》。在他桌上有个小纪念盘，柚木上嵌的金字写着：“基督是我的救主”，墙上还挂了一幅他太太的刺绣作品，上面绣着：“主的审判就要来临。”这些字使我们大多数人都倒抽一口冷气，我们都觉得审判日早已来到，而且我们也都愿意作证：岩石无法让我们藏身，枯树也不会提供我们遮蔽。他每次训话都引用《圣经》。每次碰到这种人的时候，我建议你最好脸上保持笑容，用双手护住下体。
　　医务室的伤患比史特马在位时少多了，也不再出现月夜埋尸的情况，但这并不表示诺顿不相信惩罚的效力。禁闭室总是生意兴隆，不少人掉了牙，不是因为挨打，而是因为狱方只准他们吃面包和喝水，导致营养不良。
　　在我所见过的高层人士中，诺顿是最下流的伪君子。狱中的非法勾当一直生意兴隆，而诺顿却更是花招百出。安迪对内幕一清二楚，由于我们这时候慢慢成了好朋友，所以他不时透露一些消息给我。安迪谈起这些事情时，脸上总是带着一种半好玩、半厌恶的表情，好像他谈的是一些掠夺成性的丑陋虫子，它们的丑陋和贪婪，与其说可怕，不如说可笑。