The Last Execution

by Jesper Wung-Sung

  “JUST LIKE YOUR FATHER!!!”

  The boy’s body jerked upright.

  “Who says so?” The boy narrowed his eyes.

  The sheriff’s son laughed maliciously, spat. “Because that’s where people in your family always end up!” he yelled. “Including you! That is, unless you get your head chopped off first!”

  The boy turned his back on the yelling lad; if he could have, he would have turned his back on himself.

  The boy can see that the patch of sun has inched up the first bit of the wall. He can feel his body shaking, whether due to the fever or something else. Even so, the fly is back on the hand. Now it is the fly that whispers, the fly that says:

  “Yep, he left his dad in the workhouse.”

  It says this as if it were attending a tea party with the hand. Perhaps this is why he nods. Why Niels wants to tell the story himself. This is true: His father is in the workhouse. Unless he’s dead now.

  The boy stayed near town for several weeks. He left the dog in an old shed with a little food and water. He was scared out of his wits as he circled that place he knew as hell on Earth. One day he dared to go in. In to the people with the black-coin eyes. He posed as a town messenger ordered to collect blankets from the mite-infested loft. But the boy only got as far as the door. Not that anyone tried to stop him, he couldn’t bring himself to take another step; he had seen too much.

  He saw his father in profile in the far corner. He was sitting bent close to the wall, as if something written there would take the rest of his life to decipher. Hollowed cheeks, eyes dug deep into their sockets, impossibly thin; skin and sinew ready to slip off the bones, onto the floor. The boy could not move. He turned and went on his way before his father could see him.

  Every night in prison, Niels dreamt about people with black coins in their heads. Sometimes, they were unknown masses, lumbering toward him; sometimes it was his father, sitting on a chair, staring at him. Every day he split stones, and every day the sheriff’s son came out into the yard; the son loomed larger and larger in the boy’s mind with every word spoken, every insult, the spitting.

  “Someone like you will never have a real life!”

  He tried to ignore him. He thought he succeeded. But he didn’t.

  The little boy lounged against the wall with his hands in his pockets, like a regular lout.

  “Someone like you is just a burden!”

  The boy did not reply. He hammered into a stone, which split into four.

  “Your family is a stone round the town’s neck!”

  The boy could feel his whole body shaking.

  “That’s not true,” he mumbled. “You did good, Dad.”

  The sheriff’s son spat on the ground.

  “And your mother is Mad Martina!” he called.

  The sheriff’s son did not realize he had hit the spot. He was too busy spitting and thinking of something else to say. He took no notice of the effect his words had on the boy.

  The boy had never known his mother. He only knew she had black hair. Once, he had seen a picture of a woman and a child someplace, and he had imagined his mother to be someone like that. But he knew Mad Martina. He had seen her at the workhouse. That time he went to see his father. She was sitting in a window up in the loft. She called to him when he came, and called to him when he left. The boy looked up as he walked away. In that instant she lifted her skirts to expose her crotch.

  The boy had stopped cutting stones, but by the time the sheriff’s son realized how much he had riled the boy, it was too late. Niels had lifted the stone. The sheriff’s little boy swallowed his spit and ran. Niels aimed for the blond head, and threw. The stone struck with a speed and precision that surprised him. As if he had skimmed the water with the perfect pitch, which sent the stone flying from one riverbank to the other. The sheriff’s son was thrown to the ground at once. After a long moment the blood seeped out of the back of his head and colored the hair and yard dark.

  For some reason, in that very instant he remembered where he had seen that picture of mother and child: One night he had stood looking into the window of a house. The lights were on, but the living room was empty. The family must have been in another room, but there it was, the picture, as if the lights were lit for its sake alone. For the sake of mother and child.

  The boy cannot remember any more. Other than being beaten. Hard. Thrown onto a floor. Dragged away, and sentenced for murder. He never said a word to the judge or the other men.

  The boy is keeping an eye on the fly, which is back on the bread.

  “Do you fly because you’ve decided to fly?” he asks. “Or because you got a fright?”

  The fly trips over the hand. That’s odd, the boy thinks. It stays mum whenever he asks a question, but at all other times it never hesitates to speak its mind.

  “Or do you just fly?”

  He doesn’t want to think about the girl but he thinks of her now. About that day a fly landed on her lip, again and again. That day they tossed burs at each other. That day they ended up kissing each other, again and again. He thinks of her sitting in the field. How she tousled and fixed her hair afterward. In that way she always did: quick, quick, slow.

  Now the fly has landed on the hand again. It is up to something, trippling back and forth on the hand. It stops in midstep. Moves again, edges out onto the tip of what used to be a thumb. A good place to shout from. Then it declares:

  “Now the boy will die!”

  The hand does not answer. It doesn’t twitch a muscle.

  “Perhaps one of you would like to whistle a tune?”

  No one answers.

  “Okay,” says the fly. “If that’s the way you want to play it.”

  It rubs its hind legs together.

  “That calls for a showdown!” it shouts. “Rock, paper, or scissors!”

  And then it laughs. That’s how it sounds. Like a bubbly laugh. He does not know why, but the boy smiles.

  Then the fly takes off. It is lost to the eye against the dark walls, but twice it crosses the light ray—it seems to loop—before flying out the window. The boy is sure: He sees it duck through the rails and fly up into the sky, before he is blinded by the light. The fly is gone.

  The boy gathers up the bread. It is surprisingly warm. But then he realizes the bread is not warm; his hand is too cold.

  The boy sits motionlessly for a long time. He studies the bread carefully. It has a hard crust, brown on top and lighter down along the sides. The near-white grains in the bread, a few oval pockets of air. For a moment he thinks about the master baker or the apprentice, who must have baked it.

  The boy tries to gauge if he’s hungry. No, he doesn’t think he is. But what else could this feeling be?

  The boy moves over to the window. Here he pushes the bread through the bars. He is dizzy, grips the iron rails. He hopes to hear the dog bark, but hears nothing. He calls, but there is no answer. Perhaps someone has chased it away? Perhaps it has gone along its way? Animals have a sense telling them something is about to happen. It knows he will die soon. Perhaps it is already looking for a new companion?

  Then the boy hears a door being opened in the building. He hears talking, without being able to discern the words. But he can hear more than one person. Steps on the stones. Many steps. Perhaps five or six men. They are coming closer. The men.

  All at once his limbs feel tired, but he is very much awake.

  “Now they are coming,” the boy says to himself.

  There is no point in sitting down. This, too, he says to himself.

  He is ready.

  The sky bears the same blue as the eyes of innocence; the sun is shining like the well-dressed deputy of God on this winter’s afternoon, beckoning with the promise of early spring—’tis on its way, ’tis on its way—and now the boy is to be executed on Gallows Hill!

  The poet has arrived early, so he can stand in the front row. He is scribbling busily in his book. He towers over most of the crowd, a little unsure on his l
egs, as if he were an overgrown child looking for his mum. But he is reeling on his heels to take it all in. He sucks in impressions and images like marmalade pulls in flies.

  The poet twists his body, absorbs his surroundings, and bows his head. Then he buries his nose in his pages, filling them with wave after wave of painted words. The poet writes:

  The little children cannot be still; they snap up expectations and vibrations, as if we were attending a feast! As if royalty were expected. The entire town seems to be assembled here! Even a man-hating rat would feel lonesome in town today—“Bah! I’ll have to find another town to skulk in today!!”

  But is the execution the most important thing of all? Not necessarily so. People are many-sided beings. Folk turn to look in every possible and impossible way, with an eye for a pretty lass, a choice remark, a thrifty trade, or a quick fight. A swarm of birds, like a pointed arrow headed for milder skies, would think: “What is the entire town doing down there? I cannot make head nor tail of this crowd. That these beings should be the creators of grand buildings and lofty poetry is absurd. In an anthill there is order in chaos, but that down there is sheer madness! Head south, dear friends, head south!”

  The poet puts the notebook in his pocket, only to fish it up again immediately. His eyes are on stalks, yet buried in his head. He sees everything, feels everything. And writes. He stares, rakes it all in, and yet tunes ever inward: He is the metronome. The real music is composed by seismic interactions of the organs in his body. Is the heart hammering harder? Are the lungs keeping pace? Does the stomach contract? Does it hurt down below? What say you, blood? Does the liver object?

  He draws out to the right and finds a little mound to perch on. He is swept up by his scribbles; they fill the page with words, like children crowding in, covering the ground of Gallows Hill.

  The poet sees, absorbs, and writes:

  No man could falter on Gallows Hill today—not for lack of food and drink. Bread is on sale, and one particularly perilous temptation—raisin bread—is selling well. Ouch! And everything can be washed down with a drink, especially amidst the ale club of males, as you could call those men gathered around the well-stocked innkeeper, who is making sure you can find warmth in a brandy or a good, strong beer. Here the mood has been jolly for a good while; folk are happily falling in sync with a person they possibly know.

  A flock of children are engaged in a game so vicious it makes your head spin and your stomach churn: Call it a game one more time! Like Roman gladiators of former times, they seem to rip at one another savagely; to the eye of the observer, a genuine flensing of flesh, but for the zeal with which they fling themselves into the midst of their playmates. Threaded into one another like many-limbed monsters, they pull, tear, and claw away. That legs and arms don’t snap like pencils is a mystery. A single bloody nose (apart from red ears) is the only visible sign of injury. That they are obviously enjoying themselves—despite scornful, devilish laughter—is beyond all comprehension.

  The children’s wayward behavior makes the poet dizzy, but he’s still scribbling away, nose deep in his papers.

  All the while he is keeping watch for a particular young lady. The poet had met her at a dinner party the night before. She is the daughter of a famous painter, and sang so beautifully. Her performance was late in the evening. Johanna is her name. They’d only exchanged a few words, but there was a natural bond between them, the poet felt sure of it. The pale skin, those blue eyes—and she had read his work. I thanked her, and her cheeks darkened red.

  The poet gets up to look. The brandy plays its part in making his blood rush. As a rule, he does not drink much, but his bedeviled, ever-faithful companion—toothache—has followed in his wake. It’s a painful, merciless rendezvous, which is dampened somewhat by the strong drink, but Johanna—so fine, so light—would make it disappear completely!

  Now a ripple goes through the crowd. Brandy sloshes over his papers, and the poet must save what can be saved. Now? Yes. Now the condemned is coming!

  And now they form. Now the words flow:

  There’s the cart carrying the lad! It takes an eternity to get it up the hill. Gallows Hill may be one of the steepest of the land, but those are strong horses pulling, and a man of obvious experience is at the reins. No, the laborious progress is wholly due to the mass of people vying for a glimpse of the condemned: Niels Nielsen. Fifteen years old. Sentenced for murder and arson. Woe and cursed creaking!

  I’m afraid, thinks the poet in that moment the cart passes him.

  He has slipped too far behind. He wants to get closer to the scaffold, see what happens within when he sees it. Not too close, though. But perhaps Johanna is right up front?

  He tries to force his way forward and is immediately swept up by the thrust from behind. He makes a mental note: My feet have lost contact with the earth, so great is the number. Everything is shimmering in the sun. There is a slight smell of sulfur in the air, as if the hill led to a smoking volcano, not a scaffold. Beads of sweat are breaking out on my forehead.

  He can feel the heat and sweat—his own and that of the masses. People are packed like herrings in a barrel. The nausea rises slowly from his stomach. His arms are wedged to his sides; impossible to write anything down. But he has eyes on stalks, eyes embedded in his head.

  You cannot tell from looking at the fifteen-year-old boy that his head will soon be severed from his body. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was daydreaming. This cannot be said of the rest: The air is nearing boiling point—the masses swelling back and forth!

  And yet, some seats are reserved, like at a matinee viewing at the Royal Theatre. Amongst those in the front row are the murdered boy’s family. They are treated with a peculiar respect; there’s no pushing or shoving in their vicinity. A little circle has formed around them. From here they can look upon and yell at their boy’s murderer; especially mother and sister are spewing curses at the scaffold. Next to them the priest is standing in full formal dress. The mayor is also among those people who are standing closest to the scaffold, including a mother and father with their malformed child. The child seems oblivious to events. Her head lolls backward onto the nape of her neck, there are dabs of spittle around her mouth, but her parents are determined to let her drink the blood of the executed boy, in the hope of that miracle, which will restore the rightful dignity of their daughter’s neck.

  I can feel a ripple through my body, thinks the poet. All the while he sees:

  It only seems to agitate the crowd further that the condemned boy looks like a lazy apprentice who has sat himself in the corner to avoid the beady eyes of his master. Everyone is yelling and spitting on the lad. A raucous bunch of ruffians have forced their way to the front row, and those officers who—up till now—were posted at the scaffold in all their motionless glory are suddenly struggling to keep the masses at bay; their fine uniforms rumpled and clotted with spit in no time.

  The boy and the executioner seem to be the only ones taking the proceedings with any measure of dignified calm. The executioner is standing one meter behind the boy, eyes cast down. He is dressed in simple clothing. His hands are hanging down by his sides. Only the scuffle of his feet give him away: Let’s cut to the chase!

  The scaffold is made of a dark, weather-bitten wood—clearly secondhand material—but between the executioner’s feet there’s a glimpse of an altogether new, pale wood: a newly crafted coffin. To the right of the executioner lies the sack containing the heavy ax. It is an ax that has been passed down for generations; it has done this before. Up close, the boy’s face is surprisingly fine, as if he were made of porcelain. As if all the executioner need do is hold him up and drop him—and he’ll shatter in a thousand pieces!

  A verse occurs to the poet. He mumbles it out loud. To remember it better, taste it:

  “A town has many mouths to sate

  But only one man in a cape;

  Only one ax comes to bear,

  One head from its neck to pare.”
>
  A fly lands on the poet’s nose. Then it’s gone. He thinks: A messenger of joy—or horror. Of spring on its way, or the omen of a corpse—which it will tuck into soon! As the boy’s sentence is read, the poet thinks of all the horrendous sicknesses in this world. But when the executioner lifts the ax out of the sack, he is ready. I’m shaking, the poet thinks. He tunes his body to the world. What do you see? What do you feel? When the executioner braces his legs, raises his arms; now that he lets the ax fall.

  It is horrible! Quicker than a wink, the executioner severs head and neck. Blood pours out of the body like a Nordic waterfall! The head, however, rolls to the far edge of the scaffold, the staring eyes and yellow tongue are clear to see. No, the boy was not made of porcelain. And now there is a patent calm upon the faces of the sheriff’s family. You can see their thoughts rise up to their son with God in heaven, and down to the other in Hell, twisting in flames of eternal, tooth-splintering pain.

  Then the poet faints. He falls, and the children scream with laughter. The adults laugh too. The howl of pain shoots up from the base of his spine to the back of his head. He loses his notebook and pen, but finds them again in amongst legs and boots. The crowd gets him back on his feet.

  It is not the first time he feels like a foolish fowl. Thank goodness Johanna didn’t see me! he thinks. I wouldn’t get a moment’s sleep if she’d seen me!

  Tomorrow the poet will be on his way. He makes a resolution: First thing tomorrow morning I’ll look her up, that dear girl, and confess my feelings for her. If she feels the same, stay. If not, say adieu—and be away.

  When he sits in a hotel room somewhere in this world, he will write it all down and send it to her.

  Will she tremble and cry when she reads his words? Will she long for him when he is thousands of miles away? Or will he be forgotten? Will he be rubbed out from memory? Ah, who knows? To travel is to live!