Το γράμμα της Βάλερι

Μετά τη σύλληψή της η Evey Hammond βρίσκεται σε ένα σκοτεινό κελί μόνη και βασανισμένη. Μοναδικός της σύντροφος είναι ένα γράμμα γραμμένο πάνω σε χαρτί τουαλέτας πριν από πολλά χρόνια από μία κρατούμενη. Την Βάλερι.

Το παρακάτω απόσπασμα προέρχεται από το έκτο τεύχος του V For Vendetta. Συγγραφέας ο Alan Moore και εικονογράφος ο David Lloyd.

...and then they take me somewhere else... and they off the blindfold... and there's a cell... and there's a rat.

Only now I don't mind the rat... because I'm no better... It's dark and I cry for a long time...

Later, waking up. Oh God. I remember. They cut off my hair... What woke me? A noise... rustling...

There's a rat.

I get up. It's almost light and I can see the hole in the wall.

There's something sticking out of it...

Not a rat...

Toilet paper?

But why...?

There are five pages, written in pencil. I look at the bottom of the last page first. Her name is Valerie...

I know every inch of this cell. I know every pitted indentation in the rough plaster like I know my own body.

I don't know where I am.

I know it gets dark and then light; That I wake, then sleep; That time passes measured in hair growing back beneath my arms where they won't let me shave...

I don't know what day it is.

I know that there's a woman who wrote me a letter on toilet paper. I know she's alone. I know that she loves me. I don't know what she looks like.

I read her letter, I hide it, I sleep, I wake, they question me, I cry, it gets dark, it gets light, I read her letter again...

...over and over...

Her name's Valerie...


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"I don't know who you are. Please believe. There is no way I can convince you that this is not one of their tricks. But I don't care. I am me, and I don't know who you are, but I love you.

I have a pencil. A little one they did not find. I am a woman. I hid it inside me. Perhaps I won't be able to write again, so this is a long letter about my life. It is the only autobiography I have ever written and oh God I'm writing it on toilet paper.

I was born in Nottingham in 1957, and it rained a lot. I passed my eleven plus and went to girl's Grammar. I wanted to be an actress.

I met my first girlfriend at school. Her name was Sara. She was fourteen and I was fifteen but we were both in Miss. Watson's class. Her wrists. Her wrists were beautiful. I sat in biology class, staring at the picket rabbit foetus in its jar, listening while Mr. Hird said it was an adolescent phase that people outgrew. Sara did. I didn't.

In 1976 I stopped pretending and took a girl called Christine home to meet my parents. A week later I enrolled at drama college. My mother said I broke her heart.

But it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us. But within that inch we are free.

London. I was happy in London. In 1981 I played Dandini in Cinderella. My first rep work. The world was strange and rustling and busy, with invisible crowds behind the hot lights and all that breathless glamour. It was exciting and it was lonely. At nights I'd go to the Crew-Ins or one of the other clubs. But I was stand-offish and didn't mix easily. I saw a lot of the scene, but I never felt comfortable there. So many of them just wanted to be gay. It was their life, their ambition. And I wanted more than that.

Work improved. I got small film roles, then bigger ones. In 1986 I starred in "The Salt Flats." It pulled in the awards but not the crowds. I met Ruth while working on that. We loved each other. We lived together and on Valentine's Day she sent me roses and oh God, we had so much. Those were the best three years of my life.

In 1988 there was the war, and after that there were no more roses. Not for anybody.

In 1992 they started rounding up the gays. They took Ruth while she was out looking for food. Why are they so frightened of us? They burned her with cigarette ends and made her give them my name. She signed a statement saying I'd seduced her. I didn't blame her. God, I loved her. I didn't blame her.

But she did. She killed herself in her cell. She couldn't live with betraying me, with giving up that last inch. Oh Ruth. . . .

They came for me. They told me that all of my films would be burned. They shaved off my hair and held my head down a toilet bowl and told jokes about lesbians. They brought me here and gave me drugs. I can't feel my tongue anymore. I can't speak.

The other gay women here, Rita, died two weeks ago. I imagine I'll die quite soon. It's strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and I apologized to nobody.

I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish. Except one.

An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.

I don't know who you are. Or whether you're a man or a woman. I may never see you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss you.

Valerie

X
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I know every inch of this cell.

This cell knows every inch of me.

Except one.