“Prison Amnesia” by George Toles

Maybe this bit was being filmed, and he might have a chance to make a real impression, when others discovered he was far braver and resourceful than they supposed. The man was impatient for his answer….

Len woke up in his jail cell, having once again forgotten what he was in for. His fellow inmates no longer answered him when he inquired what his crime had been. The screws were inclined to treat everything he said to them as a joke, so for the time being selective amnesia would be his lot. He assumed his crime was something really bad. He was treated like a pariah. He couldn’t at the moment recall whether he felt less like a pariah when he had lived outside the wall. Perhaps he had a nice assortment of friends in his years of freedom, but for now he couldn’t put any names to faces with confidence. The words “wrongly convicted” blazed forth in his mind as he shaved. Was this the true state of affairs, or mere wishful thinking? He had seen a movie where a convict was shaving while a voice-over kept repeating wrongly convicted. Strange that he could remember the movie but not his own criminal record. Len decided to concentrate on the positives in his potentially beneficial memory shortfall. His cell had an austere simplicity that one might call beautiful. And it was tidy. He had by no means always been this tidy. Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations was lying on his bunk. He didn’t know how much of it he’d read but perhaps he was well along in it, deeply engaged, and up to the book’s demands. The story might come back to him at any moment, and lift his spirits. Didn’t Dickens have a gift for comedy? As he entered the prison cafeteria he couldn’t help noticing the presence of a film crew. Was he mistaken to suppose they were making a movie about a jail break? Come to think of it many of the prisoners who weren’t willing to greet him seemed vaguely familiar to him as actors. Possibly they were all following the Method, and were pretending to be as tough and unapproachable as possible. Wait. Was there at least a small chance that he too was an actor, and that he was involved in this project? As he ate his oatmeal and brown sugar, someone leaned over and whispered that the jail break was scheduled for 8pm. “Are you in or out?” If this was a movie scene being referred to, he was clearly in. If it was an actual prison escape, he wasn’t so sure. He could still remember that many people got killed in these poorly arranged schemes. Maybe they were inviting him along as a prime patsy. Or maybe this bit was being filmed, and he might have a chance to make a real impression, when others discovered he was far braver and resourceful than they supposed. The man was impatient for his answer, and had had begun to scowl. Decisions, decisions.

“Prison Amnesia” originally appeared in George Toles’s Status Update. To subscribe, visit here.

George Toles is Distinguished Professor of Film and Literature at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of A House Made of Light: Essays on the Art of Film, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Curtains of Light: Theatrical Space in Film. Toles has written or co-written the screenplays for numerous feature films made by Canadian director, Guy Maddin. These include Archangel, Careful, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, The Saddest Music in the World, Brand Upon the Brain, My Winnipeg, and Keyhole. He also wrote the story and original screenplay for Canada’s first stop-motion animated feature film, Edison and Leo. His Status Update (At Bay Press, 2021), illustrated by Cliff Eyland and edited by Thomas Toles, collects the mini-narratives that the author has been posting on Facebook every day since 2009. A second collection, entitled All the People in My Head, will be published by At Bay Press in 2024.