The Last Execution (9 page)

So he kept talking. One day she cut him off. She stood up. He could see the tears in her eyes.

“Can't you see what you mean to me?”

“Yes, but the stable is going to be—”

“No, Niels. If you had the slightest idea what I feel for you, you wouldn't say another word.”

A tear slipped down her cheekbone. She turned, and left. He remained sitting where he was, staring at his hands, till it became too dark to tell the one from the other.

“One day when I was waiting for her, I looked down at my hands,” he recalls. “I mean, really looked at them. And then I understood. That it was already too late.”

His mind continued on this track, but he did not want to think at all.

So he hid. He could see her sitting there, where they liked to sit. He could see her fussing with her hair. He could see her looking out for him. Heard her call. But he stayed hidden. He did not answer. He waited till she could wait no more. Till she had to go back to her work on the farm. Then he jumped up. He went to the spot where her body had flattened the grass.

“Why did you hide?”

It was Niels who asked, Niels who replied.

“I guess I don't believe.

“What don't you believe?

“Me.” Then he walked the other way. To the forest.

Just as he came out on the other side, he saw the dog. The boy looked around for a weapon. But it just stood there. As if it had been waiting for him. Then he noticed it was missing a leg. When he walked on, the dog limped after him. He tried to get rid of it. He was afraid it was vicious. But every time he turned, the dog was there. Incredible how fast it could move on just three legs. Then he waited.

Thereafter they were inseparable. It followed him everywhere. They ate together. Slept tucked up close together. For weeks. Months.

Also that night in the barn. It was very cold, the ground was frozen, there was ice on the beams above. It was difficult for the boy to unclench his hands. So he made a fire.

Just a small one
, he thought.
Just till we warm up a little
.

He could feel the warmth of a body bigger than a dog's. From a woman . . .

It was the dog that woke him. Sparks must have flown several meters, landing on the pile of old horse blankets. The barn was on fire. Flames licked up the rear wall. They were already so big. There was no way to stop them. If you came anywhere near, your eyes and face burnt. It was impossible to breathe.

PUUUFF!
And the fire licked up into the roof. The boy and the dog slipped out, just as the rear of the barn collapsed, sending a million myriad embers into a black sky. The boy stared in horror at these powers destroying a barn in no time at all. He thought about the river.
Mississippi
. If only the river ran
here
—with all that water—perhaps something could have been done! Perhaps the flames could have been stopped. But now it was hopeless. The boy stayed standing where he was. He remained standing, did nothing, till he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder.

The boy hears the warden talking to someone. A door being opened and closed.

He looks at the fly, at the hand, at the fly again. At a patch of sun on the floor.

That's odd
, he thinks.
The moment you let go of the stone, it's too late to change your mind. But if you don't say or do something, it is also too late.

And so it was. Both the one way and the other. He should not have let go, and he should have said it.

He could have put down the stone and said to that little boy:

“I'm going to America.”

T
he sun feels almost warm; it makes the cobblestones shine wet and black. There are two hours till the boy is to be executed on Gallows Hill, and the priest, standing at the church door, has always felt it so fitting for a church to face the prison door.

He is thinking about one of his parishioners, a woman who came by and said if it had been
her
child that knave had murdered, she'd have clawed his eyes out herself.

The priest looks at the prison. Could the devil's finest work be hidden behind those walls?

He steps over the cobblestones, calmly picking his way through little islands of gritty snow and ice. He raps his knuckles rhythmically on the door, for just as he told that woman this morning, God will be the ultimate bond between offender and justice, for sure.

The warden opens the door. His mouth is full of food. The priest makes no comment, but the warden cuts a guilty glance at the baked omelet and bread that are lying on the table.

“A girl came by with it,” he explains. “But I thought the lad won't get much use out of it, now that he's going to be . . .”

The warden jerks his head sideways, red in the face, his beard clotted with bits of food, but the priest just motions toward the cell, so the warden walks ahead to open the door.

The boy is sitting on the bed. How can such a little body harbor so much evil? The priest stops to think for a moment. Should he be intimidated? Should he be afraid?

The priest is not afraid. He sits down next to the boy and asks whether they should fold their hands in prayer. The boy shakes his head. The priest looks down at one of the boy's hands and understands: the boy cannot fold his hands. So he asks if he should pray for them both. The boy does not answer.

The priest prays. He talks about sin and punishment. And forgiveness.

Then he talks about the boy's offense. Gives the deed its proper name. The priest cannot glean any response from the boy. Perhaps the boy is dim-witted.

“Haven't you been to church before?” asks the priest.

The boy shakes his head.

“Ever?”

“Not as far as I can remember . . .”

The boy is not dim. That much the priest can see. He is scheming. Stalling. But the priest is ready. He asks:

“And why not?”

The priest braces himself, thinks,
Now the hour of evil is come; now it comes like fire.

“We were chased away,” replies the boy.

“From church?”

“From every place there was life.”

“Why?” The priest is still wary.

“They probably thought we had come to beg.”

The priest was expecting a vicious, full-frontal attack. Perhaps it will sneak up from behind—a calculated ambush?

“Who is ‘we'?” he asks.

“My father.”

“Your father,” says the priest. “And where is your father now?”

“He's dead.”

The priest sees the distortion in an otherwise expressionless face. He feels a brush of doubt. Till he understands.
'Tis for my sake. Now God is testing me!
The priest chooses his words carefully.

“And you didn't come to beg?” he asks.

The figure on the bed shakes its head.

“Then why did you come?” asks the priest.

The boy opens his mouth but does not answer. Then he shakes his head. He mumbles:

“I don't know.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don't know,” repeats the boy.

“No,” says the priest. “But do you know why I'm here now?”

The boy shrugs his shoulders, and the priest lays a hand on one of them. “ ‘Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it. . . .' ”

“But I am not a boy.”

“What are you, then?” asks the priest, expecting the worst. He can feel a shiver run up his arm, and he looks down at the boy's deformed and discolored hand. Is evil forcing its way out?

“I don't know,” he answers. “I just want to be me.”

“Perhaps ultimately there is only one who can know for sure. . . .”

You are a lamb
, thinks the priest compassionately.
A sick, three-legged little lamb
.

On and on, over and again, the priest tries to get the boy to surrender. To confess. Repent. Break down. The priest holds on, but the soul of this boy will be neither poked nor pierced.
Is it because I can't reach him?
he thinks.
Is this evil in distilled form? Or have I got him after all? Is silence the only defense against God Almighty?
But by and by the priest thinks
: I don't know who he is. He is neither boy nor man. What is he?

Finally the priest gets up to go. Is this a victory? Half a victory?

The priest is nearly out the door when it comes.

“That story about the paralyzed man . . . ,” says the boy.

“When the Son of God, Jesus, heals the paralyzed man?”

The boy nods. The priest smiles. He will welcome the boy to the fold.

“Luke, chapter five, verses twelve to twenty-six,” he says.

The boy does not answer.

The priest opens the Bible and reads. He reads about Jesus healing the leper, about how this attracts crowds from far and wide—from Galilee, Judaea, and Jerusalem. They want Jesus to cure all sorts of diseases. Some men arrive with a paralyzed man on a bed, but there are too many people crowding round Jesus, so they cannot get to him. But they crawl up onto the roof, remove some tiles, and lower the paralyzed man down into the crowd in front of him. Jesus tells the paralyzed man to get up, take his bed, and go home—which he does at once. The people have seen miracles—they believe Jesus to be the true Son of God!