Trafika Europe 8 - Romanian Holiday

Solenoid

one of the walls. He put his ear against it andheard them better: clear, intelligent, repeated elaborate series of knocks at certain intervals. Amazed, the prisoner believed he had had one of the hallucinations that accompanied his miserable incarceration. But the following day at the same time he heard the series of knocks in the wall again and then again, day after day. He learned the series of sounds by heart and started to write down what he heard on the section of the wall hidden by the bed. Now and then the alternative sounds became more complicated, as if new “words” were introduced into the code by the neighbour beyond the wall. It took the prisoner months toguess thefirst connections

in the secret web of the knocks, then years tomaster their language. Eventually a dialogue was established, as the prisoner started answering in the same code he wrote down in an invented graphics with half- moons, spur gears, crosses and triangles scribbled on the wall). The neighbour, he now understood, was giving him the details of an escape plan of breath taking courage and incredible simplicity. One night, after having finished all preparations, the prisoner escaped upon strictly following the instructions. Years later, when he was rich and famous after having invented a fake biography, he asked permission to visit his former prison in order to finally meet the one he

85