“Yes, made from marble quarried right here at the prison…”
“Ah…”
As we went along, the Warden told me about the age and peculiar architectural features of the different buildings, the improvements made, prisoner capacity, the recreational and religious facilities, famous landmarks and prisoners of the past, basic prison industries, hospital services, ideas for the future. I took it all in, smiling or scowling as seemed appropriate, asking occasional questions, but all the time working out my strategy for breaking the Rosenbergs while protecting myself. “This is a much bigger place than I’d imagined,” I said, just as a back-up plan occurred to me: if all else failed, I could attach myself to the police cavalcade south to Times Square, and thus be seen to be bringing the Rosenbergs to justice myself, as it were.
There were guards everywhere — around the gates, up in the towers, along the stone embankment that climbed the mountain to the east, on patrol here in the compound. Most of them in short-sleeved shirts, ties but no jackets, less spiffed up than Purdy’s boys or the state troopers, but just as unfriendly. The Phantom would need one hell of a disguise to get through this army, I thought. In fact, I’d nearly lost my nerve again at the gate, I’d been half afraid one of them might get trigger-happy and let me have it, but instead I’d been whisked right through to the Warden. Doors clanking open and shut like applause. Easy as pie. Just a few gestures, the right word, a nod — there was a kind of sublanguage working here, just under the surface, shared by keepers and kept alike, and if you knew the code, life was relatively easy. I’d even lucked out and escaped the attention of the newsguys. A lot of them out there knew me, but they’d been distracted by that guy coming at me as I was coming in, the one with the magazine up in front of his fedora: it had turned out that that was David Rosenberg, Julie’s brother. He’d come up for a last farewell, but too late: visiting hours were over, they hadn’t let him in. And as he’d been ushered out, the reporters and photographers had swarmed around him, missing me. It’s moments like that that convince me I lead a charmed life, even though I don’t believe in such things.
“Well, I’m afraid the Rosenbergs haven’t given you the press in their letters that you deserve,” I said as we crossed over the railroad tracks I’d just come up on from the city. We were walking toward the river, the Death House was down there, almost on the edge. Why hadn’t the Rosenbergs mentioned the river in their letters? The sounds, the smells, the images of freedom it offered up? “I suppose you’ll be glad to get rid of them.”
“Not this way,” said the Warden simply but firmly, and I felt the back of my neck flush. He could be very direct when he wanted to. Like Grandma Milhous.
“I mean, the nuisance, the, uh, constant pressures…”
“We can’t complain. They’ve been cooperative for the most part and in their own way they’ve tried to add to the life of the prison. They seem to be people who above all want to be liked and who have a very strong sense of community values. They don’t exactly fit in, but they work hard at it. They’ve kept their cells clean, almost homelike, and have been almost overeager to please. Their one real problem has been…well, something we’ve not had much experience in dealing with.”
“The argumentation. The bookishness…”
“How’s that? Bookishness? No, I don’t know what they write in their letters about that, but they don’t read very much. Less than most of our prisoners, to tell the truth. We’ve provided them with plenty of books and magazines, but they don’t seem to do much reading. In fact they don’t do much of anything for any length of time, but then this is typical of a lot of our condemned prisoners.” We seemed to be in some kind of courtyard or exercise yard, surrounded by tall buildings. There were trees, flowers, rose trellises, a huge birdbath, prisoners walking around in double file, chatting with each other, laughing, looking bored. Most of them were Negroes. J. Edgar Hoover’s crime statistics flashed to mind. “No,” sighed the Warden softly, “the problem has been their habit of behaving in what they probably think of as, well, symbolic ways — you know, acting like they’re establishing historical models or precedents or something. Very strange sometimes. It’s thrown us off more than once and we haven’t always reacted the way we should. We don’t think much about history and ideological conflicts and long-range notions about the destiny of man in a place like this. We’re just ordinary working people, it’s about all we can do to get from one day to the next. So they tended to get in a certain amount of trouble at first, more than they deserved probably, doing things we just didn’t understand. But we’ve caught on to most of it now, and it’s not so bothersome. In fact, it’s almost predictable…”
“Yes, I know…” That’s the difference between us and the Socialists, I thought. Our central idea is to look for what works in an essentially open-ended situation; theirs is what’s necessary in some kind of universal and inevitable history. Free individual enterprise versus the predestined structure, social engineering. Surely the Rosenbergs could be talked out of such crap. I tried to remember the arguments Uncle Sam had used on me. The purification of politics, he’d said, is an iridescent dream. Government is—“Eh? How’s that—!?”
“I said, like they’re on stage or something.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, the way they act, the things they say — or rather how they say it…”
“Yeah. Yeah, I was, uh, thinking the same thing myself…”
“I remember when they first came here. We always ask prisoners when they arrive what led them to commit their crimes. Most of them just shrug or tell us to screw off — pardon the expression — or grunt something about being brought here on a bum rap. But the Rosenbergs made very formal and peculiar replies, almost like they were speaking to a vast audience, though in fact there were only eight or nine of us standing around, and not paying much attention at that. Mrs. Rosenberg was the first. They said she was very cheerful on the ride up, chatting about the spring weather and what not. She was wearing a pink blouse and a plaid skirt, a light coat with a kind of furry collar, a black hat — she looked like most any lady here on the streets of Ossining. But when she reached the Administration Building, her whole style changed. That’s when I first got the feeling about her being on a stage — when she stepped out of the car it was like seeing someone come out from behind the, you know — what do you call them?”
“The wings.”
“Yes. We asked her the question and she clasped her hands and with just the faintest trace of a smile said: ‘I deny guilt.’ Funny, that smile. I can still remember it. She seemed to be trying to say she forgave us for what we were unjustly doing to her. She seemed proud and sure of herself, yet frightened at the same time, squinting as though she’d just been brought out of light into darkness.”
“She’s got a lot of talent.”
“Mr. Rosenberg came up later. He looked more costumed. I remember a red tie he had on, one with some kind of leafy pattern in it, and he had a clean white handkerchief folded crisply in the breast pocket of his suit. A new suit, I think. We asked him: ‘To what do you attribute your criminal act?’ And he stood very stiffly like a soldier at attention, yet somehow disrespectful at the same time — you couldn’t keep your eye off that absurd white handkerchief in his breast pocket: ‘Neither I nor my wife is guilty,’ he said. Just like that.”