I Am an Executioner (13 page)

But even still, every day seeing Margaret laying her thick bosoms down on the dirty bed cloths, even she was greasy and messy, it was hard not to help myself. Her hair was sprawling in the bed sheets going every swishy way, like oily silk curtains for the lovemaking. Oh, my God! The sour waftings from her warm pits and her potato breathings, everything, everything of dirty Margaret was so much appealing me. But she wouldn’t even look to my face. It made me to feel so lonely.

One consolation remained to me, that one thing would put some lively bubbles into the flat water of Margaret, even it discomfortabled me and confused me as to why. That is to discuss strange and hard things regarding that very thing which in the first place upsetted her, which is to say, my job.

One time watching the TV newses where the police cops was chiding against the rowdy sign-holders, Margaret shifted her head from the hangdog slouch and asked, “Was it you who hanged all the protesters who were executed some years back?”

I turned to Margaret then, little bit pleased but also little bit
worried. That time yet I wasn’t sure would she enjoy the answer yes or the answer no? Oh well, I head-or-tailed it, it came up honesty.

“Yes, Margaret. Fifteen of those fellows I had to hang space of one day. Tiring work, let me tell to you!”

“Fifteen!” she exclaimed, her face all jumpy. “How? How did you do so many?”

“Three by three I hanged them. It took me time till full evening.” (Meanwhile, advantaging myself of her distraction, I shuffled myself one small inch closer to smell her more nicely.)

Next day I was frying the meat in the oil for the meat salad, I blurted her, “You know that one time a bad raper was sitting in the death row, he gained up four hundred kilo. He was eating too much meat salad and drinking the oil for a drink! His family was paying extra to the cook, I think so.”

Margaret’s eyes popped up from beneath the hairs. “Oh, God. How can a rope hold such a heavy man?”

“Rope holding up is not the problem, Margaret. Rope is strong, but neck is not. At such a weight, his head is sure to rip off!”

Letting slip such a very vivid details, even I started to blush myself for what effects it might have on her. But only she elevated the eyebrows and bolted herself upright, waiting anticipationally. I knew she wanted to hear more, but I did not want to, somehow I felt squirmish to tell. I thought: Let her ask it.

And finally, she asked it: “Did it happen? Did you off his head like that?”

I sat next to her that time, and even she letted me to pat her back soothingly, as I thought in my mind of how to storytell it. “Oh, I worried very much, Margaret, trying to think of proper way to kill him. Can we not kill him the other way? I even asked to Warden. What if some name person is there in the viewing gallery and sees the off-tearing of his head? It will look very bad, won’t it? Bloody and so on. But law sentence is the law sentence, Warden reminded to me. It was written as ‘hanging,’
so it cannot be alternated. Anyway, I did not off his head finally. He died of heart attacks before I could drop him.”

“Hm,” she snuffed, as if my happy ending was too quick and bummed her. And then off she flumped back into the bed, no more talking, no more touching, nothing doing.

I wondered: Why is it she perks so strange to hear the most weirdest aspects of that very thing which also disgusted her, in other words, my job? In my life, my job is my duty, I don’t have shames and I don’t practice no regrets. But her questioning was making me to feel something queasy was there. And for a fair woman to express such an interest seemed somewhat disturbed and unwomanly. But very well, at least it was something in the positive ledger. Some certain tangible progresses thereby was being made in my wifely relations with my wife, so let it be. Such was my foolish thinking.

But in such a situation, what else was a man to do? How long could I crawl off to some corner and pull up Chummy’s good magazines? This was my everyday life.

Time moves so quickly sometimes. I realized one day, no more hours was left for magazine browsings, for idling death row chitchats with that little girl. In fact, Warden telled to me, “How long you going to stand there in idling chitchats? We going to execute in some two days.” And he clapped me the back of my cranium. “You did your preparations, man?”

The girl was sleeping that day under her scratchety woolen blanket, because always they are keeping the air condition too much. I thought: It is a solemn duty I must wake her up with, but if I keep up my natural cheerful nature, it needs not be so unpleasant. Beneath my arm I held the weighing scale, and around my finger rolled up a length of string to take the measure with. And so, with solemn and cheerful face, I unlocked the door. “Hey, hey, wake up, small madam!”

That girl did not stir. I seed she was deep in some nasty dream,
her face all wiggled up like angry dogs. I considered: Okay, better not to disturb her. Let her sleep, poor thing. But two days only and she will be dying, and I must preparate. Anyway, I can take her measure without awaking her.

Very quiet, I taked off her blanket. She was lying there total nakedness, that tiny girl. This how she sleeped in her home village, most likely. I taked that string and tied it round her big toe, and stretched it out to the top of her head.

Now I had the measure, okay. I put it into my notebook. Next, to weigh her. After that 400-kilo raper breaked the small scale Warden was keeping, my sister in Australia sended to me one pressure-sensitive battery-power electric scale. It was my pride and joy in the death row, while the batteries still was working. Even Warden liked to stand in it and see the number light up some fancy way.

I had put this new scale in the cellroom floor. But how to take her weight without awaking her? Okay, I lifted up that poor girl and curled her on top of the scale. What a light girl! What a light girl! She lay there flopped up on top of the scale like flounder in fishmonger’s shop, and still she did not wake or stir.

Okay, now I had the weight, I denoted it. With my mind, I calculated lengths of rope and so on. Still I had trouble to leave that girl. Anyway, some more questions I had to ask her, but she was sound sleeping.

I had to ask the prisoner, who is the next of kin? Who is going to come and take her after it is finished? Or what she preferred us to do with her, bury, burn, or et cetera? As I could make some allowances for the various religions.

All this I must ask to that girl, but how I’m going to ask it without awaking her? This was inside of my thought bubble when I looked down and seed her eyes was wide open now, blinking me calmly.

“Hello, small madam!” I smiled to her.

Again, she looked like she didn’t know what to do with my smile.

Now I felt little anxious. How to explanate? “You see, little she,” I began, “normally in life, tackling necessities and triviliaties of tying up the last scene can be postponed indefinitely. One is aware the coming-towardness of the ending, but since no time certain is fixed, there seems always some more time coming, even though we might not know the ending would hit our nose this minute. Not so here in the death row. Because date and time are fixed certain, indefinite eventuals become immediately necessaries. And so it is with you.”

I don’t know a single word if she understood.

“Okay, plainly: You have a mummy? You have auntie? Who is going to come pick up your deadened body?” I knew even I asked it, there was no happy answer here. Had that girl had any friendly person of useful caring benefit to her, he/she already would have arrived. And so I was not so much surprised when that girl’s face started tumbling minute I asked the question.

“Oh, there-there, little girl.” I was not used to her face showing so many emotionals. “I’m very sorry. But I can’t preventicate it and neither can you, isn’t it so? So why not try to be cheery?” But even still, the eye tears had started falling.

At my job, I am a professional. People grow sad on the death time, such is their nature. I am so steady and I care them. I leaned down and picked up that girl because she saddened me.

I sat her slippery bottom in my knee and stroked her comfortably, and she turned and looked in my face. She looked up at me like she knew something more than I did, and I felt that moment the first time that this little she was not so little as she looked.

What a queer feeling! I asked to myself how this girl had been surviving herself in the Regional Prison before coming to the death row? How she lived with so many of the older prisoners, and the rough-talking, badly uneducated regional prison guards? What had she to offer them?

In her eyelook, it appeared she already knew my thinkings. Like she is used to these ideas, and even she didn’t like to do it, she would do it no questioning. And so much she seemed
to expect it, the flat fish resignation in the eyes, that I began to feel discomfortable with myself, and my armpits started to give water.

Maybe it would be an okay to do with her? my mind asked to me. After all, when life is short, things go out of order. It is a way of caring her, in one way to think about it. And I could not help but consider that she will die two days hence and any shames would be dying alongside her.

To top it all, I had a wife in the home, yet I could not have her. She refused to give to me. I was a man without normal relations. But here is something soft that I could have and moreover she would give to me. Why not I do it?

This time it was only Warden’s imaginary voicecalls, and some faroff doorslamming that made me finally to see how badly I was thinking. I called that tiny girl some dirty names and pushed her to the ground and got little bit heated with her. “Who you think I was, that you can place me in such positions?” I asked to her. “Do I look like a man as to imagine such things? What if Warden seed me with a naked girl sitting me?”

I clanged the door on her and locked it. Then I left the prison in flusters and traveled home. I felt sorry to be so heated and rough to that girl. Inside of me gurgled a sea of agitation. I went straight to my bedroom and began shedding my clothings. Then I seed my wife Margaret. She was standing upright facing the mirror, staring her reflection like she is making herself so disgusting. Her brown hair was going down near the bottom.

“Hey, it is me, your husband,” I announced to her, even I knew she could see me plain as sunshine rays. “Talk me!” I said. My fluster was hot. “I am your husband. How long can you go on without talking me?”

I was thinking myself, I have to take off the feelings of that little child sitting inside my arms. I was thinking also that the only reasons I was put in such positions is that, here my wife
is standing and withholding it. Even my head spoke to me that she is my wife, after all, and no one else’s. Why shouldn’t I take it if I want it?

“This is how you treat of your husband?” I asked to her. “All day long, I work too hard. All I want is to love and care you, and you won’t even face-to-face and talk me? You won’t even say, hello husband, welcome to the home?”

Meantime I was walking closer and closer behind her. She stood facing the dressing mirror but not looking me. I became so close now I could feel her petticoats. I looked her face in the mirror and she was grinching her eyes hard as to keep it from seeing me.

I said: “I always am a good man. But what it makes a husband to feel like, if your behavior to me is not happysmiles, but crying? How it makes a husband to feel like, if you cannot even face-to-face me? Everything I does is to your benefits only. My life its own reward, is that it, Margaret? I can’t ask you for nothing, is that it? You know, in one day and some few hours I will be executioning that little girl? Do you think it makes me to feel good and happy to execution such a poor girl? But does I ever go on complaining? Does I ever lie on the bedcovers all mopey in my dirty clothings?”

When I mentioned of that girl, I saw that her breathing changed. I saw it, she was interested.

“What a light and little girl she is,” I said to her, remembering the feelings of the little one. “I hope we have enough the lengths of rope. We need a long lengths to snap such a light girl.”

And in the mirror, I seed Margaret’s eyes open little bit, like slits. And she was biting her lips and breathing with energy.

“A long rope?” she asked to me.

When Margaret asked me the question, I felt like I could not help it, I began putting my hands to her petticoats. I felt new determinations that day. I had no shyness about what I wanted, honesty was my best policy, so I began rubbing myself against
her clothings. “Oh, she will almost be hitting the floor, that is right.”

In Margaret’s slitty eyes I seed her interest; I seed, if I talked correctly now, I might have everything I wanted, minimum of fighting. It was hard for me to feel it in my stomach. It was too much exciting. I pushed her plush pillow. My own voice I could not control it. It came a whisper and sometimes it came shouting. “What you say, Margaret? I have to order her the last meals. I forgot to ask her what she likes. What is it I should feed to her?”

And now I looked in the mirror and saw my face was as disturbing as Margaret’s. The toiletries and powderings and shaving oils all was jumbling down from the dresser.

“Please, Margaret. What you say? I am your husband. What can you give to me? Power’s in your hands. I am a grown man and still I can beg, and still I can cry.”

Margaret very long time was silent. She was with one hand pushing back the mirror to keep herself upright there, and one hand trying to shove me back and keep down the petticoats. In the mirror her face was looking me directly.

“Can you take me there to see her?”

In the mirror, I seed her spitty mouth. I seed Catty’s tail flicking from the dark space beneath the bed where she was hiding and cat-staring us.

“Of course, Margaret, of course. I can do anything, anything, anything!” And mirror was shaking so that maybe it would drop in both our heads and end all the miseries.

“Take me tomorrow. Take me, I want to see her.”

She pushed her elbow backward, paining me sharply and creating some gap between me and her. She slipped downward through that gap and next thing suddenly she was on the farthest ends of the room. (It was too clever. There popped a realize bulb in my head: Maybe she had been watching movies?)