At times a doomed one may attempt during the last days and nights to take his own death. He will for instance try to crush his head against the cell wall or to dive head first from the bed to the floor and thus be rid of his thoughts on the cement, as of a hard rain. But it is not allowed; after all, it’s not a sacrifice which is demanded but an execution which concerns others too and in which each one must play his ascribed part. It is a matter of mutual responsibility. Steps are therefore taken to prevent the suicide of the weak-hearted. Those whose lives in reality ceased existing with the death sentence are kept alive in bright cells permanently lit, and day and night a warder keeps watch through the barred aperture in the door. There are days and there are nights. . Once the candidate has been chosen his person and his cell are frisked for any concealed weapon or means of release. But apart from that he lives his last days like a king. The meal of the convicted may be ordered to taste, even fried chicken.
He swore that they’ll never string him up alive, that he will do himself in. His cell is searched. In the ink vein of his ballpoint pen they find a hidden needle. A dark needle, blue at present, which was to be introduced into the upper arm from where, theoretically, it could accomplish the short trip to the heart where with a flashing snake of pain it would perforate that organ-organism the way the god Krishna (an incarnation of Vishnu) long ago pinned down the snake Kaliya with his lance: a short ultimate journey. He doesn’t know that his needle has been discovered so that he retains the illusion that he himself may freely decide when to abrogate his life during the fatal week. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. He will die in another way before the final sunrise.
It would however have been better and more effective had he smuggled in a razorblade at the beginning. He could have done so with the pretence that he wanted to cut out pictures to stick them on a sheet of paper. He could then spend such an inordinately long time doing so that the guardian will end up forgetting about the blade. This little silver-fish he should then break in two, washing the one half down the toilet bowl; the other part he hides on his body at all times. The last evening he wishes all the warders a good night and lies down in his bunk with an extra blanket over him and his back to the door. He has one hand under his head on the pillow and pulls the blanket up to his chin. Then he would have to work quickly, for the convicted is not allowed to sleep with his hands below the blankets during the last week. With the broken blade he slices through the large vein in the crook of the arm, in the valley of the shoulder, in the armpit; a clean cut several centimetres long. His hand stays under the ear; the arm thus remains flexed so that the wound, the bearded and sighing mouth, may peacefully continue bleeding under the blanket — like the mysterious, sweetish smell of a tropical flower in the night. He rests with his body to the wall so that the blood may gather on the floor between the bed and the wall. When they arrive then the next morning to wake him for the final exercise, the body is already all of marble. . Or — an alternative — he could have pulled with the fingers, his tongue as far as it would go, closed his teeth over it, and then have tapped lightly with one hand against the lower jaw. In this way the lower teeth break through the tongue close to its roots. Nothing can save you from that blooming. Or he might even have swallowed the tongue. Fool!
From the land of Coast his mother arrives with her grey hair and her black back. Together with the preacher she visits him daily — but she of course is behind a glass partition since contact visits are not permitted. Death is contagious. When she prays, her hands, the knuckles and the joints, are so tightly clasped that it must be a tiny god indeed who finds asylum in such hand-space, a god like an idea worn away over the years, rubbed small, like a seed.
He stands in his cell under the bulb-eye from the ceiling, talking to his warders. One warder expects him to make shit at the last because he caught him doing exercises that final night. The pointing day is a silver-fish in a big bowl of liquid as murky as blood, in a dark house where night yet resides.
Monday comes with a cold persistent drizzle, an unheard-of way of raining in the Heartland in the summer. But apparently, so it is speculated, strong winds were blowing over the ocean from the Coast and a penetrating rain fell there. This strange weather is brought to the Heartland by the wind from the east — from the Coast therefore.
His last wish is that his eyes should be donated to the blind jeweller. His eyes are of a shiny green colour, like the stones jewellers sometimes mount on silver for a bangle or a gorget. It is not known whether eyes too have memories — who can say for sure where sensory memories are situated? When one leaves one’s eyes to someone, doesn’t it in a way mean the grafting of one person on another? But an eye cannot be grafted — only the cornea under favourable circumstances. And, in any event, his last wish cannot be honoured since there is not sufficient time to comply with the required formalities in duplicate and triplicate.
When the day comes he is up early. He will not see the dawn because the forbidden place where fruit will be hung on the trees of knowledge of good and of evil is in the very same building. Neither the knife of day nor the cape of night are known there. Some detectives come to enquire whether he might not be amenable, for old times’ sake, to admitting his culpability for a series of unsolved murders. He pretends to be exclusive — as if each man were an exception. He will take many dead with him to the rot-hole. It is suspected that he may have polished off up to fifteen victims. . He is led down the tunnels by officers and a soul-stroker. The song has already taken the Unwhites up, through the same corridors, ahead of him. At last, after whiling away so many months in the waiting rooms and the outer sanctums, purified and prepared, he will now enter the secret and sacred circle. Another hell is to be wiped out; a new one may be opened. Cause and effect continue. But he is no longer the man he was eighteen months ago.
In the preparatory room he greets the warders one by one by hand. The lines in the hand-palms are laid over one another; there is a touching, a crossing, a knotting of fingers. Night-flies meeting, parting. He claims he will meet them all again “up there”. Here there is the aroma of sweetness although the night is icy-cold. He is given his blood and shackles. Now he is the minotaur.
The mother is already waiting on her knees in the undertaker’s hall where the box with the rests, the shell of the sacrifice of atonement, will be brought: at her request the family will take care of the burial. What the gods don’t wish to eat will be fed to the earth. There is no more room between her hands. From her body something like a bleeding bubbles up, the reminiscence of a foetus, and breaks in her throat like the dark cooing of a dove.
He stands underneath the tree. Upwards, higher than the ceiling and than the roof ridge, is heaven; peace blue; stars have been incinerated by the light. A fish mirrors. The hangman, who has been leaning his head on folded hands, comes to adjust the rope, the umbilical cord. Exactly behind the ear the knot must lie, where the marrow, consciousness, the wire of light, grows into the skull. He follows to the last the cool movements of the executioner. The eye-flap is turned down. It is dark.