The Last Execution

by Jesper Wung-Sung

  “Precisely!”

  “They are wrapped in a blanket of some kind. It’s just the two of them.”

  “Yup!”

  The painting hung on a wall somewhere. Somewhere he had been.

  The boy moves closer to the prison rails. He fills his good hand with water, moves slowly toward the light, whistles softly, reaches up, and lets the water flow out of the window. A bark in reply. He hopes this means the dog is drinking. He repeats this three times.

  The fourth time, he lets the water run over his own scorched lips. The water burns down his throat. Then he sits down again.

  Something else comes to mind. It surprises him that he can remember something like this. What he remembers is: If you pour a bucket of water into one end of the Mississippi, it takes a year for the water to reach the other end.

  He says: “One year is a long time.”

  He sees the almost infinite succession of days snake before his eyes.

  He sees the road before his eyes; he links up with the girl.

  “Now he’s thinking about the girl again!” exclaims the fly. “Will he never be the wiser? Hasn’t he burnt his fingers often enough?”

  The hand is buzzing, as if it’s enjoying itself immensely. It’s buzzing like a beehive.

  Then he remembers what happened one autumn night, when they had walked along a country road, he and his dad, dead tired. They froze. They were hungry. The boy could feel it, and it gnawed at him: the sweet desire to give up, just to lie down for a while. He didn’t say it, but he thought: Let me lie down in front of the workhouse. He would never say it out loud, but it seemed as though his father could sense it.

  “Just a little farther, my boy.”

  He rested a hand between his son’s shoulder blades.

  “Just over that ridge, Niels,” he said. “There lies a barn so fine! Just for us. You wait and see!”

  If those large blue-red hands could have transformed themselves into a pair of wings, they would have.

  As he and his father came over the ridge, the sky was red. A fire so big was burning. It was someone’s farm. And as they came down the slope, they could see them: the family. They stood together and watched their home burn down. The boy wanted to stop, but his father urged him on.

  “It’s hard enough as it is,” he said, and walked right past them.

  Now the boy realizes he is crying, and that he’s been crying a long time.

  “This is not who I am,” he says.

  It is six hours till the boy is to be executed on Gallows Hill, and as the winter sun wedges itself between the houses on the market square, the master carpenter arrives with a very long rod.

  He casts a long shadow before him, and he feels the anger right into the tips of his fingers, which are tightly clasped around the measuring rod. Had it been his business that lad had set on fire, he would have severed his head from his shoulders himself—with his very own saw!

  The sound of his heavy steps prompts a dog to come around the corner, stop, and whimper softly. Well, at least the remains of a dog. The master carpenter casts the three-legged cur a sidelong glance.

  “Shoddy workmanship,” he mumbles.

  He can’t help but see the dog in this way. As if it were a chair. Arsonists, child murderers, and three-legged mongrels! Isn’t it about time the town council did something about the state of affairs? The town is a three-legged chair about to topple!

  The master carpenter spits a glob into the dog’s coat. It is so dirty, it could be all the same. The dog doesn’t move. But as the master carpenter takes a swing at it with the rod, it bolts—with surprising agility for a crippled cur.

  But now the master carpenter stops in mid-stride, smiling to himself, as a thought strikes him. The solution: a legion of men armed with rods. Instead of a council that just sits around arguing about trivialities, eating lavish dinners, and failing to make decisions about anything at all. He sees himself as their leader. How they march up and down the streets. Sees how they drive thieving boys, beggars, and malformed creatures out of town. The plan is as simple as it is ingenious. Cash on demand. A blow with a stick is a language that everyone can understand. Now he can see the children of the town before him, cheering as they advance through the town, their rods held up high.

  It’s not the sound of the warden opening the cell door to let him in, but perhaps it is the sound of the lock turning in the second door that triggers it: The idea of an army of rod-bearing men disappears, his anger dissolves in an instant, and in its stead the master carpenter feels a rush of fear. Is the world really on the brink of ruin? Is the Day of Judgment upon them? And will the murder of a master carpenter be the next grain of proof the townsfolk can talk about?

  The master carpenter feels the tension in his neck. How his muscles cramp. He is a big man—bigger than most—with muscles well accustomed to use. The warden is hardly the smallest of men either.

  There are two of them, and he’s just a lad, thinks the master carpenter, as they walk down to the prison cell.

  When he sees the boy, his fears are checked at once. He imagined him to be somewhat bigger. Bulkier. Older. He is not big. He is thin—surely due to a lack of food—but also due to a slender frame. Not a dimension that should give rise to alarm.

  And yet he feels a certain unease: That lad standing there. There is something amiss. But you couldn’t see it if you were to meet him on the street. Could you? Perhaps that’s it. That he is neither child nor man, but something else entirely. Something or other. You would think they were born without parents! Could this be the core, the ruin of the entire town? Is that—there in the prison cell—merely one out of a horde of unruly miscreants that roam the town like hardened criminals?

  Yet in the midst of this muddle there is one thing that still makes sense: money! The master carpenter’s trepidation disappears as he thinks of his fee. Coffin and price. In the lad’s case there’s certainly room to make a profit. He gets a fixed price on the coffin—irrespective of size—so here there’s timber to be saved!

  Now the warden asks the condemned to rise. He complies without a word, albeit somewhat slowly. It is just a boy, thinks the master carpenter. But still the warden keeps a wary eye on him as the master carpenter marks off his dimensions on the measuring rod.

  That’s odd, thinks the master carpenter. This is usually when the condemned react. When they realize he is taking measurements for their coffin. Then the ax and the earth, the hungry mites and the insects, become clear and near as day. Some break down and cry, others begin to scream and shout, call him names; a few just cling to the rod, as though it could prevent them from dying. On one occasion the condemned man refused to let go—no matter what—and the rod broke. But of course he got his head chopped off as planned. He was simply buried in a coffin spied to size.

  This boy is different. He stands still in silence. Even holds his breath, as if he is loath to be a burden.

  A fly lands on the rod; now the master carpenter spots the boy’s hand. It looks bad. As if it had been crushed under a pile of logs, as if wild horses had trampled all over it. Oh well, not too mashed and swollen to be stuffed in a box. The master carpenter has all the measurements he needs, and he is keen to leave before he can have any regrets. But as he turns to go, the boy opens his mouth after all.

  “Pardon me,” he says. “May I ask you something?”

  The master carpenter doesn’t answer and he ducks behind the prison bars.

  Then the boy asks: “Why does a raft not sink?”

  The master carpenter waits to see the warden turn the key in the lock so he can answer without regard to the condemned’s reaction.

  “It’s a question of weight and displacement,” he answers. “And buoyancy.”

  The boy seems to think this over for a moment before he asks: “What kind of wood should you use?”

  “The harder, the better,” answers the master carpenter.

  “The harder, the better,” repeats the boy.

  “
So the water can’t get into the wood,” explains the master carpenter.

  Now the boy looks at him for the first time. The master carpenter feels a pang as the boy lifts his head.

  “Thank you,” says the boy.

  Then he drops his chin down to his chest again.

  As he steps out onto the town square, duly marked-off rod in hand, the master carpenter catches a glimpse of the three-legged dog, which is limping round the corner.

  He thinks of the strange circumstance, that someone who has burnt to the ground a barn that was made of a lot of timber is soon to end in a coffin that is made of a few planks of wood. He falters a moment, looks uncertain of the direction to take, when he is struck by the thought underlying his first: What kind of life is this? He stops short, seized by exhaustion.

  It is not a memory that the master carpenter immediately recognizes as his own, but now it manifests itself like a perfect joint: He can’t be more than a young lad; he is in a tavern; it must be a celebration of sorts. He is sitting on the floor, watching a game of cards. It is a young man with white teeth who catches his attention in particular. He is winning. Every time he rakes in the pool, he smiles, almost apologetically. From his vantage point on the floor, the lad regards the young man with admiration; he roots for him silently. The young man wins again and again. But then, watching askance from below, the lad is inattentive for a moment—his gaze must have wandered off—and he sees merely the tail-end of a brief scuffle: The winner and an elder player are standing at their seats; the young man is smiling as the elder drives a knife into his belly. It is this that the master carpenter now remembers so clearly: the look of wonder in his face the moment the young man feels it. The moment he dies. The bareness.

  It is only when the master carpenter sees the trader on the square that he can move again. He sees the trader busily loading a cart with goods that are surely meant for sale on Gallows Hill this afternoon. It helps to watch him arrange the apples in such a manner that the bruised and spoiled sides of the fruit are hidden from view, whilst the shiny, color-radiant surfaces are turned to face the potential customers. Only then can he move again.

  He hurries off. Work is calling. The master carpenter tries to think about the good price he’ll get for the coffin. Even so, he is strangely sad. Strangely spent. He doesn’t mean to, but he starts thinking about the dog, that pathetic three-legged cur. He imagines that he takes it home. That he feeds it. He constructs a leg of wood, just for him. And the dog is exceedingly grateful, never to leave his side. He looks down to his side—there—where the dog, perchance, would stand.

  One town’s many mouths, a chorus fair,

  Whilst a head that still doth stare

  Rolls to the ground

  Without a sound.

  Sing a song,” suggests the fly.

  It is five hours till the boy is to be executed on Gallows Hill, and now he is talking to the fly, which is sitting on his hand.

  “A song?” asks the boy. “What kind of song?”

  “How about the one, ‘where ancient barrows lie between hop and apple orchard’. That one’s so mouthwateringly good!”

  “I don’t know that one. . . .”

  “Then recite a poem: ‘When the night is still and mild . . .’ ”

  “I don’t know that one.”

  “You’re utterly impossible! So tell a story!”

  “What kind of story?”

  “Just start anywhere!”

  “I . . . I can’t.”

  The boy leans back, and the fly takes off. He sees its black body in the light of the cell window. Then it’s gone. Perhaps it flew away. It could be sitting on a wall someplace. The boy has an idea:

  “Wait!” he says. “I know one!”

  He looks about, confused. The hand does not respond. So he just starts telling his tale:

  “It must have been four or five years ago. Dad was well—or at least better—and we had a week’s work digging up shrubs and roots from a field. It was hard work. The soil was bad. It was more sand than soil. The roots were buried deep, they were tough as rope. The shrubs clawed at our arms till they bled, the sand kept getting in our eyes; we could barely see what we were doing. . . .”

  The boy stops. The fly is still in the cell; its black body has just crossed the ray of light from the window. He continues:

  “Even so, I was watching a boy playing in the meadow below. He was playing so carelessly, so recklessly; he’d be no use to anyone back home. He was throwing stones, leaping and hopping in the meadow; he was not a boy who had to work. It was unfair. I envied him. I felt like running him over. Just to stop his games! But there was no time. We were working hard. I wanted to cry. I was tired, I was mad at him. We worked till it got dark, and then I couldn’t see whether he was still in the meadow.

  “We slept in the farmer’s barn. He gave us some food to eat. Dad went to get it for us. He had to shake me awake when he came back.

  “ ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Eat.’

  “We ate in silence. Then he told me what he’d heard in the farmyard. That something had happened to the neighbor’s daughter. A heap of fieldstones had slid down and buried her.

  “ ‘She’s dead.’

  “She was crushed and suffocated under a pile of stones. We finished our meal in silence. There were bits of meat in the gruel.

  “Dad said: ‘We should be grateful.’

  “ ‘Yes, Dad.’

  “Dad checked the straw on the floor and carefully lowered his back to the ground. I could see it in his face.

  “ ‘Good night, Niels.’

  “ ‘Good night, Dad.’

  “I closed my eyes, and I think I fell asleep, but then I suddenly opened my eyes again and sat up. Dad didn’t move, but now I understood: That was his sister! The boy in the meadow—his sister was dead. He had not been playing in the meadow at all. He just hadn’t wanted to go home. He’d have given the world not to think about her being dead.

  “I thought about the boy some more. A shiver ran down my spine, as if I’d seen a ghost: Perhaps he didn’t dare go home because it was his fault. I saw him standing there: on a pile of stones, arms stretched wide, like a king; his little sister standing down below, looking at him, giggling. . . .”

  Niels stopped telling his story. He closed his eyes, as if trying to remember what came next.

  “The next day Dad’s back couldn’t work anymore, and they didn’t want us lying in the barn, so we moved on. . . . End of story.”

  Someone coughs. Niels can hear a bustle of activity outside. That life is being lived.

  His father’s back grew steadily worse. The boy recalls the odd memory here and there. He was used to disapproving looks, but now it was his father’s bad back that made people stop and stare; now it was the sight of his father that prompted the most furrowed brows. Niels longed desperately for the days when he had been the one—a frail little boy—they looked down on. He had been the object of their scorn; that was easier to bear. Not his dad; he could have sobbed.

  One day he came close to knocking a farmer down to the ground, beating him up, for a comment he’d made, so mean. Another day Niels went to fetch some water, and on his way back he passed by two laborers. He could not help but overhear their words.

  “There’s barely more than a few grains of sand on that old man’s spade,” said the one.

  “Perhaps he should try spading with his back—it’s stiff  ’nough to dig a ditch with!”

  The two men snorted with laughter. The boy forced himself to keep walking.

  He handed the water to his father. His father drank.

  “Ahh,” he said.

  The boy turned his back.

  “What’s the matter?” the father asked.

  “I’m not thirsty.”

  The father could not walk far. He tired quickly. And he was sick. He threw up on the roadside. The boy stood and watched: He was so thin, his back so bent. He looked like a sheet of paper folded in half.

&nb
sp; The boy supported his father. He provided food. But he felt it to the bone when his father gripped his arm. His hoarse voice:

  “We will not steal!” he said. “No matter what: We won’t do it!”

  The boy shook his head. Motioned with his head again. Then he said: “No, Dad.”

  His father loosened his grip.

  “And remember: You’re going home to your oven.”

  Always this fear of the workhouse. It rooted in the boy; the sight of a uniform sent him running.

  The boy never stole. He collected apples. Apples that would have rotted on the ground. And he played games. Boys’ games. He practiced throwing. With stones. One, two, three stones. One of the stones veered off course and hit the branch of an apple tree. The boy collected only those apples that had fallen to the ground. Then he took them to his father. No America.

  Niels remembers one day his father could not get his back up off the floor. He lay in a shed, a hand under his back and a bottle in the crook of his arm. The boy was desperate. He talked about his mother. If only she had lived.

  “Imagine Mum hadn’t been ill,” he said.

  “There’s no point, Niels.”

  “Yes, but wouldn’t that have been good?”

  “Forget it.”

  “No. Wouldn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No, but I do.”

  The father took a sip from the bottle without looking at the boy.

  “Don’t you ever think about her?” asked the boy.

  “No,” answered the father.

  “I do. All the time.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have to.”

  The last words came out hard. They both fell silent. Then the boy said:

  “It’s not your fault, Dad.”

  “It’s nobody’s fault,” he said.

  “Then you do think about her!” he cried.

  The father did not answer, just closed his eyes. He looked as if just moving his eyelids hurt.