For him there is no such grace because his like — the fellow condemns in his section, in his part of the prison, the pale ones, the Uncoloureds, people from the ruling class — don’t sing easily. Nor can he, like the others in the pot, be put in a communal cell — of course there are far more Unwhite candidates than Uncoloured ones. He must pray death (or life) all the way out of himself. The pastor is there to assist and to show him the words, for words are holes in which you must stick death. He will die in another way before he is dead. He becomes his own ghost. The eyes are deep and bright in the sockets. It gives his head the appearance of a skull. His quiff falls lank over the forehead. He sneers without any fear of the warders. Like the other seasoned prisoners — those who know the ropes — he wears his shoes without socks.
All hope is lost
Of my reception into grace; what worse?
For where no hope is left, is left no fear!
(blind Milton)
The minister. In fact a chaplain, and with a rank in the service. He is a small chap with an absolutely naked scalp, dressed in a modish tailored suit and shirted in flowers branching out over ribs, belly and the small of the back. He has red puffy bags under the eyes and, so one imagines, folds of white flesh around the midriff and in the groin. It is his task to prepare the soul, to make it robust, to extract the soul and wash and iron it, and then to let it be acquiescent. It requires a fine ingenuity because the soul is like smoke and so easily slips through the fingers. He spends much time on his knees and it is not good for the pants. He prays and emits suffocated sounds. Some vowels are stretched beyond measure, are pronounced in a placatory way as when a little child tries to make a big animal change its mind. When he prays he closes his eyes and holds the hand of the convicted. With eyes closed, when talking aloud, you move on another level. That which is there is not there. That which isn’t there is there perchance. Heaven grows behind closed eyelids. His order is a tall one. During the last week something crystallizes from the doomed, surreptitiously, and comes to cleave to the clergyman. It is the soul wishing to remain among the familiar living when the soma comes to nothing. Like a snail it is searching for a new shell. So the body becomes lighter. .
The executioner (bailiff, hangman, topper, rope expert, death artist) is a tall man in the sombre weeds of pious neutrality and with a melancholy countenance. His post or position is private and part-time. When, through resignation or death, a vacancy occurs, anyone — a pensioner for instance, or the father of numerous sickly children who needs a little extra income — can submit his application to the magistrate. He then tenders for so much or so much per head (at present, before devaluation, it is seven rands) for he is remunerated by the head. He must see to it, together with his assistant (if any), that the gallows remain in good well-oiled working order, for they are often made use of. When the pot is pointed out it is his duty to be the announcer and to make the necessary preparations. He is the tailor who will fit you out in a new life. On the fateful morning he is there bright and early. He reposes his head on interlaced fingers against the bars as if he were praying or dozing off. When the candidates are brought in under escort he makes them take up their indicated positions — warders are keeping them upright — and adjusts the nooses around the necks below the ears until they fit just right. Then he closes the eye-flaps of their hoods and presses with a pale finger the button activating the trapdoor. They then plunge twice their own height. The complete procedure seldom takes more than seven seconds. Up to seven persons can thus be served simultaneously, standing in line like bridegrooms before an altar. After the thrashing about the corpses remain hanging for ten minutes in the well. What has not snapped will be throttled. Thereafter the still warm and very heavy (because deadweight) corpses are pulleyed in, the handcuffs taken off, they are undressed, and lowered again. If the correct results were not obtained the whole process is repeated. When shudders and convulsions are no longer observed the limp cadavers are deposited in washing troughs and the doctor on duty makes an incision in the neck to establish which vertebra was broken — this information must be entered in duplicate. Bloodstains have penetrated the metal of the wash-basins. Bloodstains, crud, snot splotches also on the ropes and the hoods, and the cupboard where the coiled ropes are kept stinks of stale effluence. The burial takes place within a few hours. The clothes of the deceased are brought back into circulation in the gaol. After all, it’s state property. If for some or other reason a dead body must be preserved, there are modern shiny iceboxes for that purpose in the autopsy room. As all of this happens during the fresh and innocent hours, the vocation of hangman need not interfere with any other job; your executioner could be a teacher, a psychiatrist, a politician, a chicken farmer, publisher, or unemployed.
The gibbets. In other ages the pillory was erected prominently in a square or on a hilltop, and the complete ceremony was public and a joy for the birds, not so much for its deterrent effect but because it was such an intimate part of everyday life and death, and a rude form of amusement. We live in these days and no longer frequent or know one another. No longer are we animals with the snouts in the trough of death. Also, civilization has come over us. In our time the place of execution is a privileged one, where it is dark, behind walls, through passages, in the heart of the labyrinth. Few people know when the seeker has found it. It is there like some bashful god, like the blind and deaf and self-satisfied idol of a tiny group of initiates, for the satisfaction of an obscure tradition. And that which is intimate, like defecation, must be kept hidden from prying eyes. The artificial gloss of an insouciant existence must be safeguarded. Usually there is no trouble or unpleasantness during the execution. But it has happened that some of the damned refuse to fit the pattern and that they then, that last morning when the cell door was unlocked, threw a blanket over the officer’s head and tried to smash him against the wall, head first like a battering ram — so that he had to live for months afterwards with his neck in traction. And it has also happened that one flappie,1 in that fraction of a second when the trapdoor falls open, timed the moment exactly, and jumped on to the back of the man in front of him so that his fall was broken and he had to be hoisted back up, kicking, to die all over again. The blind shaft is as inevitable as the sunrise; the ritual leaves no room for any deflection or improvising. The last route is secure and actually no longer part of the personal hell.
The pilgrim, the candidate, is accompanied to the preparation room by a spiritual comforter and the officers. This place is called “the last room”, the departure hall. The nauseating sweet smell of death is already all-pervasive. Here he is handcuffed and a white hood is placed over his head. The flap above the eyes remains open until he has taken up his position below the gallows. Exceptionally it may happen that the spine and the neck break completely at the instant when the earth falls away below his feet and that the head becomes separated from the body, that the head alone remains suspended there. But that just happens in the case of candidates who are rotten with syphilis, and then mostly with female Unwhites. For this negligible probability, seen statistically, one can hardly provide in advance, in a scientific way, a solution. What occurs more frequently is that the male reprobate at the critical crossover reaches a benevolent, jetting orgasm. To beget a child is thus always a form of dying. What’s more, this final poke in the dark is fulfillment, at last a total embrace of the mother god. An influx and an unfolding. It is said: to die by the neck is to sodomize the night. . Precautionary measures are however taken with female executees. They get watertight rubber bloomers and the dress is taken in around the knees and sewn up. Nor will she afterwards be undressed like the men to be hosed down, but she’ll be buried just the way she is in her clothes. The reason being that the female parts — uterus, ovaries — are spilled with the shock of falling down the shaft.