by Howard Fast
“I forgot one thing which my comrade remember me. As I said before, the Judge knows all my life, and he know that I never been guilty, never—not yesterday nor today nor forever.”
He finishes, and a terrible hush settles over the court. In his dream of it, it seems to the Judge that the hush lasts for an eternity, but actually it is no more than seconds. The clerk interrupts it. Precise and business like, he rises to his feet, points to the second condemned man, and demands,
“Bartolomeo Vanzetti, have you anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed on you?”
A bridge of silence connects this brutal question with Vanzetti’s answer. When he first rises to his feet, he says nothing, but instead looks about the courtroom, at the Judge, at the District Attorney, at the clerk, and at the spectators. His calm is almost inhuman. Slowly, undisturbed and dispassionately at first, he begins to speak, saying,
“Yes. What I say is that I am innocent. That I am not only innocent, but in all my life I have never stole and I have never killed and I have never spilled blood. That is what I want to say. And it is not all. Not only am I innocent of these two crimes, not only in all my life I have never stole, never killed, never spilled blood, but I have struggled all my life, since I began to reason, to eliminate crime from the earth.
“Now, I should say that I am not only innocent of all these things, not only have I never commited a real crime in my life—though some sins but not crimes—not only have I struggled all my life to eliminate crimes, the crimes that the official law and the official moral condemns, but also the crime that the official moral and the official law sanctions and sanctifies—the exploitation and the oppression of the man by the man, and if there is a reason why I am here as a guilty man, if there is a reason why you in a few minutes can doom me, it is this reason and none else.”
Here, Vanzetti pauses—and seems to be groping in his memory for words and images. Then when he resumes his speech, the Judge is at a loss to understand what Vanzetti refers to. Only as Vanzetti goes on, does the aged, gaunt figure of Eugene Debs emerge from his words and enter the courtroom.
“I beg your pardon,” Vanzetti says, gently now. “There is the most good man I ever cast my eyes upon since I lived, a man that will last and will grow always more near and more dear to the people, as far as into the heart of the people, so long as admiration for goodness and for sacrifice will last. I mean Eugene Debs.
“That man had a real experience of a court, of prison and of jury. Just because he want the world to be a little better he was persecuted and slandered from his boyhood to his old age, and indeed he was murdered by the prison. He know our innocence, and not only he but every man of understanding in the world, not only in this country but also in the other countries, they all still stick with us, the flower of mankind of Europe, the better writers, the greatest thinkers of Europe, have pleaded in our favor. The scientists, the greatest scientists, the greatest statesmen of Europe, have pleaded in our favor. The people of foreign nations have pleaded in our favor.
“Is it possible that only a few on the jury, only two or three men, who would condemn their mother for worldly honor and for earthly fortune; is it possible that they are right against the world, the whole world has say it is wrong and that I know that it is wrong? If there is one that should know it, if it is right or if it is wrong, it is I and this man. You see it is seven years that we are in jail. What we have suffered during these seven years no human tongue can say, and yet you see me before you, not trembling, you see me looking you in your eyes straight, not blushing, not changing color, not ashamed or in fear.
“Eugene Debs say that not even a dog—something like that—not even a dog that kill the chickens would have been found guilty by American jury with the evidence that the Commonwealth have produced against us.”
Now Vanzetti pauses—and stares into the Judge’s eyes before he continues. This is the part of the dream that becomes a nightmare—even though at the time it happens, the Judge remains cold and collected as Vanzetti cries,
“We have proved that there could not have been another Judge on the face of the earth more prejudiced and more cruel than you have been against us. We have proved that. Still they refuse the new trial. We know, and you know in your heart, that you have been against us from the very beginning, before you see us. Before you see us you already know that we were radicals, that we were underdogs.
“We know that you have spoke yourself and have spoke your hostility against us, and your despisement against us with friends of yours on the train, at the University Club of Boston, on the Golf Club of Worcester, Massachusetts. I am sure that if the people who know all what you say against us would have civil courage to take the stand, maybe your Honor—I am sorry to say this because you are an old man, and I have an old father—but maybe you would be beside us in good justice at this time.
“We were tried during a time that has now passed into history. I mean by that, a time when there was a hysteria of resentment and hate against the people of our principles, against the foreigner, and it seems to me—rather, I am positive of it, that both you and District Attorney have done all what it was in your power in order to agitate still more the passion of the juror, the prejudice of the juror, against us.”
“The jury were hating us because we were against the war, and the jury don’t know that it makes any difference between a man that is against the war because he believes that the war is unjust, because he hate no country, and a man that is against the war because he is in favor of the other country that fights against the country in which he is, and therefore a spy. We are not men of that kind. The District Attorney know that we were against the war because we did not believe in the purpose for which they say that the war was done. We believe it that the war is wrong, and we believe this more now after ten years because we understand it better day by day—the consequences and the result of the war. We believe more now than ever that the war was wrong, and I am glad to be on the doomed scaffold if I can say to mankind, ‘Look out; you are in a catacomb of the flower of mankind. For what? All that they say to you, all that they have promised to you—it was a lie, it was an illusion, it was a cheat, it was a fraud, it was a crime. They promised you liberty. Where is liberty? They promised you prosperity. Where is prosperity? They have promised you elevation. Where is the elevation?’”
“From the day I went in Charlestown Prison, the population of Charlestown Prison has doubled in number. Where is the moral good that the war has given to the, world? Where is the spiritual progress that we have achieved from the war? Where are the security of life, the security of the things that we possess for our necessity? Where are the respect for human life? Where are the respect and the admiration for the good characteristics and the good of the human nature? Never as now before the war there have been so many crimes, so many corruptions, so many degenerations as there is now.”
A pause now by the man in the court—the man in the Judge’s dream, who speaks and pleads; and the Judge twists and turns and whimpers in his sleep. Yet he must listen again—and again.
“It was said,” Vanzetti continues, his voice now the voice of a judge and not of a condemned felon, “that the defense has put every obstacle to the handling of this case in order to delay the case. I think it is injurious because it is not true. If we consider that the prosecution, the State, has employed one entire year to prosecute us, that is, one of the five years that the case has lasted was taken by the prosecution to begin our trial, our first trial. Then the defense make an appeal to you and you waited. I think that you had the resolve in your heart when the trial finished that you will refuse every appeal that we will put up to you. You waited a month or a month and a half and just lay down your decision on the eve of Christmas—just on the evening of Christmas. We do not believe in the fable of the evening of Christmas, neither in the historical way nor in the church way. You know some of our folks still believe in that, and because we do not believe in that, it don’t m
ean that we are not human. We are human, and Christmas is sweet to the heart of every man. I think that you have done that, to hand down your decision on the evening of Christmas, to poison the heart of our family and of our beloved.
“Well, I have already say that I not only am not guilty of these two crimes, but I never commit a crime in my life—I have never steal and I have never kill and I have never spilt blood, and I have fought against the crime, and I have fought and I have sacrificed myself even to eliminate the crimes that the law and the church legitimate and sanctify.”
Now, in the Judge’s dream, Vanzetti’s voice rises, fierce—awful, and searing the sleeping man like a hot iron.
“This is what I say: I would not wish to a dog or to a snake, to the most low and misfortunate creature of the earth—I would not wish to any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not guilty of. But my conviction is that I have suffered for things that I am guilty of. I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I am an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian; I have suffered more for my belief than for myself; but I am so convinced to be right that if you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other times, I would live again to do what I have done already.
“I have talk a great deal of myself but I even forget to name Sacco. Sacco too is a worker from his boyhood, a skilled worker, lover of work, with a good job and pay, a bank account, a good and lovely wife, two beautiful children and a neat little home at the verge of a wood, near a brook. Sacco is a heart, a faith, a character, a man; a lover of nature and of mankind. A man who gave all, who sacrifice all to the cause of liberty and to his love for mankind; money, rest, mundain ambitions, his own wife, his children, himself and his own life. Sacco has never dreamt to steal, never to assassinate. He and I have never brought a morsel of bread to our mouths from our childhood to today—which has not been gained by the sweat of our brows. Never.
“Oh, yes, I am a better babbler than he is, but many, many times in hearing his heartful voice ringing a faith sublime, in considering his supreme sacrifice, remembering his heroism, I felt small—small at the presence of his greatness and found myself compelled to fight back from my eyes the tears, and quench my heart trembling to my throat to not weep before him—this man called thief and assassin and doomed. But Sacco’s name will live in the hearts of the people and in their gratitude when the District Attorney and your bones will be dispersed by time, when your name, his name, your laws, institutions, and your false god are but a dim remembering of a cursed past in which man was wolf to the man.…”
With those words, Vanzetti stops speaking. The impact of his last sentence is like a hammer smashed into the center of the silent courtroom. Now Vanzetti looks directly at the Judge, and his eyes are a huge and frightening part of the Judge’s present nightmare.
“I have finished,” Vanzetti says. “Thank you.”
The Judge raps suddenly with his gavel, but there is no disorder, no sound for him to still. He lets go of the gavel and sees that his hand is trembling. He pulls himself together and says with forced firmness.
“Under the law of Massachusetts the jury says whether a defendant is guilty or innocent. The Court has absolutely nothing to do with that question. The law of Massachusetts provides that a Judge cannot deal in any way with the facts. As far as he can go under our law is to state the evidence.”
“During the trial many exceptions were taken. These exceptions were taken to the Supreme Judicial Court. That Court, after examining all the exceptions—that Court in its final words said, ‘The verdicts of the jury should stand; exceptions overruled.’ That being true, there is only one thing that this Court can do. It is not a matter of discretion. It is a matter of statutory requirement, and that being true, there is only one duty that now devolves upon this Court, and this is to pronounce the sentences.”
“First the Court pronounces sentence upon Nicola Sacco. It is considered and ordered by the Court that you, Nicola Sacco, suffer the punishment of death by the passage of a current of electricity through your body within the week beginning on Sunday, the tenth day of July, in the year of our Lord, one thousand, nine hundred and twenty-seven. This is the sentence of the law.”
“It is considered and ordered by the Court that you, Bartolomeo Vanzetti—”
Vanzetti now leaps to his feet and cries out, “Wait a minute, please, your Honor. May I speak for a minute with my lawyer?”
“I think I should pronounce the sentence,” the Judge continues. “Bartolomeo Vanzetti, suffer the punishment of death—”
Sacco interrupts him now with a sudden fierce cry, “You know I am innocent! That is the same words I pronounced seven years ago! You condemn two innocent men!”
But the Judge has gathered his nerve and his wits by now, and he goes on calmly,
“—by the passage of a current of electricity through your body within the week beginning Sunday, the tenth day of July, in the year of our Lord, one thousand, nine hundred and twenty-seven. This is the sentence of the law.”
And then the Judge adds, “We will now take a recess.”
And today, in the early evening of August 22nd, the day finally set for the execution after several delays, he woke up from his nap with those words of his echoing in his ears, We will now take a recess. He woke up and realized that someone was calling him for dinner. Actually, it was remarkable how little disturbed he was. He suddenly had an appetite for food, and he realized with pleasure and relief that the day was already drawing to an end. When once it ended, this whole matter would be settled forever and soon forgotten. At least he consoled himself with this thought.
Chapter 14
THE LONGEST and most lonesome pilgrimages come to an end, and this day the Professor of Criminal Law had traveled across the universe and back. In the farthest reaches of space, he had gazed for brief moments at the deepest secrets of life, and what he found was bitter and unsettling. He had forgotten home and children, and when he ate, the food became coarse and tasteless in his mouth. He ate with the Attorney for the Defense, who had come into town for a last word or two with the men who were going to die. This attorney had stepped out of the case, in the hope that new legal aid might influence the Governor, but now he had come to Boston to speak once again with Bartolomeo Vanzetti. He had asked the Professor of Criminal Law to come with him to the death house in the State Prison.
“I am afraid,” said the Professor of Criminal Law, saluting the dark companion at last. It had pursued him the whole day, and now stalked by his side. “I could not face Vanzetti.”
“Why?” asked the Attorney. “It was not you who condemned him.”
“No? But I’m not so sure of that any more. Do you remember the statement that Vanzetti made on the ninth of April, after the Judge passed sentence?”
The Attorney nodded, and the Professor added, with some embarrassment, “I would like to quote it to you. I have committed it to memory and have been carrying it around inside of me like a stone tied to my heart. I don’t want to seem over-melodramatic, but this morning I faced the President of a great university—you know who I mean—and later, I saw a colored working man, beaten terribly because he walked on the picket line in front of the State House, and this and other things have been most unsettling. I need to see this thing clearly. I ask myself what Vanzetti meant when he said, ‘If it had not been for these things, I might have live out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have die, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words—our lives—our pains—nothing! The taking of our lives—the lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler—all! That last moment belongs to us—that agony is our triumph.’
“What strange and brooding words those are, and how many times I have asked myself what they mean. I am not sure that
I know. Two men are going to die, and from now until the end, I will not lift my hand to prevent it.”
“You cannot prevent it, my friend,” the Attorney said. “You must understand that you and I can do nothing anymore.”
“Is that the whole fruit that we suck on?” the Professor wondered. “The juice is sour, then. I am just a Jew and not even native to this land; but no one drags me into a police station and beats me until I am blind with blood. Yet all this black working man did was to walk on the picket line. I have done more. I bearded a great man of the old blood of this land, and practically called him a liar whose hands were dirty with blood—but no punishment came to me. Suddenly I see that the punishment is reserved for the oppressed, as Vanzetti calls them, and we smile about that, the quaintness of the term, but we are putting these two people to death because they are radicals, and not for any other reason. The mighty have been challenged, and for that challenge, a shoemaker and a fish peddler must pay with their lives. So why such a commotion, such a sound of voices? So many have died in silence, and you and I never raised a hand to do one damn thing about it. Now we try to heal our consciences, but a month from now we will live just as comfortably among the rich and the mighty. I will pay the small price of being fired out of the university, but in private practice I will make twice as much money—and my clients will be those who murdered Sacco and Vanzetti. Yet I try to’ say that my own hands are clean—”
The Attorney listening to him was a middle-aged man, a Yankee of sober honesty and deep integrity, who had come into the case, not for money or fame, but because his irascible conscience led him into it; and now, for all that this kind of an outburst made him somewhat uneasy, he listened respectfully and thoughtfully. “I never accepted their views,” he said. “I am a conservative man, and I never made a secret of that. But I don’t whet my appetite with the smell of blood. They are being murdered, and it only fills me with shame that this should take place. But maybe, somehow, there is still hope. Come with me to the jail—do come.”