The Old Religion
Page 12
“White-into-black, and black-to-grey,” he thought.
“The paint, and the chipped margin, are not various. But the iron is. That is because it is not man-made; for, try as we might …”
The moonlight made its usual flat and long shadows on the infirmary wall. “As they are moved to the right, it is turned morning,” he thought. “And today will be hot. All of these people have been told by their God that it is a praiseworthy act to want me dead. Am I in a dream?”
The panic rose in him. It was checked by the thought: “It was the stock quotation—that was the print so small it would have been difficult to read by moonlight,” and then he surrendered into madness for a while.
The scar
His throat healed with a speed which surprised him.
Under any circumstance, he thought, I would have been pleased with my resiliency, but coming as it did, however, in the midst … Well, he thought, I was meant to live, in this instance, and that is the truth of it. Had I been meant to die I would have died. And spring, no doubt, and summer have much to do with the process, for is it not true that the sap, that the emotive instinct, that the urge to mate, that everything, in short, is quickened in the spring; and why should we think ourselves exempt?
His scar itched with a force he’d described to himself as intolerable until he reflected he could tolerate it, and that it signaled his life—that he still lived, and that he was healing.
We wish for philosophy, he thought. It will not come, and when it comes, no doubt, we reflect it cost us too dear.
Or I could be miserable, he thought, and lie here reflecting on my misery—which is an equally supportable position.
As an exercise, he began to enumerate and to attempt to embrace his troubles.
By which it will be seen, he thought, if my content (he would not dare to think of it as happiness) is the accident of a momentary amnesia of my plight, or …
He listed his troubles to himself, feeling foolish, both for squandering a moment’s peace and as their bulk was, to him, almost comic.
For who could credit it, he thought, a man who lately fretted over …? He searched for a triviality from his late life with which to taunt himself.
And I know, he thought, that that mechanism to dispel my rage is close at hand, and it is this:
Perhaps I was the murderer.
With this thought, his play was ended, and he fell from philosophy to depression so swiftly as to erase the memory of his investigation.
Nothing remained but rage and fury.
Perhaps I killed her. What was to have stopped me? Nothing at all. Who was to know? I could have killed her, and no one the wiser. And I had the opportunity, and the motive, as they say, if I am that beast, if I am that invert, and would I not be, if I had killed her?
Then the one event, if I had misremembered it, could make it right. If I had killed her, if I could avow the fact, then it would all come right. I would be saved. And that is what the Rabbi meant when he talked of the Christian Outlook.
Then I would be saved.
How would that be? How would that alter one, if I walked down the street a member of that Community? If I confessed?
… But, again, how could that be, if I had killed the girl, he wondered, how could it be that a man would merit his neighbor’s love more as a murderer than as a Jew?
In the transition to sleep, he balanced the two opposites.
Is there a rendition of events in which I am not a murderer? Is there a version in which I am not a Jew? And how can it be that I do not seem able to shed that identity?
Perhaps they’re right, and it is a “blood guilt”—whatever that may be. And they claim they can make atonement for their sin by some “confession of faith”; but I cannot; for if I embraced them, they would not embrace me, however far I would go. Though their savior was a Jew … and if I were to see before me … He pictured himself in robe and sandals, in a desert scene, on a hill, preaching.
… To see before me those who were troubled, those who were confused, those who … those who were …
The breeze smelled to him of dates, of “sand,” of the East.
He closed his eyes and saw a deep burnt orange—the color, he thought, of peace.
Each breath was a joy. He could feel it descend to his belly. It thrilled him. In his nostrils, in his throat.
He woke coughing blood, and rolled on his side, groaning.
The blood trickled from his mouth onto the sheet and pooled on the sheet.
He nodded, slowly, in a colloquy with himself, as if to say, “Yes. That’s true; yes, I know that’s true.”
The ride
They took him by force from the prison hospital. Twelve men in three cars. They made him lie on the floor of the first sedan, a bag over his head, and drove through this town and that for the better part of the night.
They talked curtly, and in abbreviated phrases, of their object and their destination, and then the time would pass, and they would lapse, forgetful, into a normal speech, and revert to their everyday subjects—the crops, or town life, or such—until one or the other would remind the group of their errand.
Well past dawn, they stopped and took him from the car.
They took the bag from his head and showed him the tree, and he nodded at the sizable crowd which had gathered, and which answered his question as to whether the drive was a planned or an improvised event.
They moved to re-cover his head, and he asked them to stop, and removed his wedding ring. He asked that it be returned to his wife.
One of the men stretched out his hand in a noncommittal way, and Frank gave him the ring.
They covered his head, and they ripped his pants off and castrated him and hung him from the tree.
A photographer took a picture showing the mob, one boy grinning at the camera, the body hanging, the legs covered by a blanket tied around the waist.
The photo, reproduced as a postcard, was sold for many years in stores throughout the South.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Jew Accused
by Albert S. Lindemann
The Leo Frank Case
by Leonard Dinnerstein
A Little Girl Is Dead
by Harry Golden
With thanks for
the kind assistance
and encouragement
of Anita Landa