My Heart Laid Bare Part 14

Trying to speak, his lips moving numbly, inaudibly.

Could it be possible, he saw what he believed he was seeing?

Or were these dream figures: Abraham Licht in the guise of an elder Englishman, with built-up putty cheeks and a subtle realignment of ivory-white, bushy eyebrows; and Elisha with eyes outlined in black, his skin tinted a warm olive-magenta-brown and a dazzling white turban wrapped about his head . . . he, too, lifting a warning finger to his lips, that Thurston say not a word.

Thurston stared. Stood paralyzed. Perhaps his instinct was to rush moaning into his father's arms-or to shrink back against the damp windowless wall, in terror of such apparitions. The elder Englishman Shaw was addressing him in a clipped, formal voice, extending his almost-steady hand that Thurston, the condemned prisoner, might shake it, saying, "Mr. Schoenlicht, thank you for agreeing to be interviewed. We have come to speak with you on a matter of extreme urgency, son-life, and death. Yours."

THE CONDEMNED MAN.

Neither Abraham Licht nor Elisha can bring himself to consider Have they arrived too late to save him? Is he lost, his mind shattered? For more than an hour in the squalid, dim-lighted cell, trying to communicate with Thurston, Thurston-no-longer-Thurston, as a domesticated dog, injured, or terrified out of its senses, is no longer dog but a feral creature, its brain altered, even its eyes altered, like Thurston's eyes strangely dilated, the iris near-black. Thurston, or is it Schoenlicht, a man condemned to death, and a man reconciled to death, scratching frenzied at lice visibly crawling on his neck and arms, scratching with blackened, broken nails, his breath fetid, his unwashed body giving off a stench as strong as the diarrhetic waste clogging the soil pipe.

Patiently the snowy-haired Englishman asks, Do you understand, son?

Do you understand?

And will you follow the plan?

I command you, son: to follow the plan.

(A fleet, furry creature with bristling whiskers scuttles along the edge of the oozing wall.) (One of the lunatics in the cellblock begins to howl.) . . . The potion, Katrina's medicine, "enchanter's nightshade" it's called . . . here in this vial: take it, son! . . . to be hidden away (in this crevice in the wall, in the shadows) and taken on the morning of 29 May . . . precisely a half hour before the execution is scheduled. Yes? Do you hear? Do you comprehend? Nod your head, son, if you comprehend. You will take this vial, hidden here, see where I've hidden it, and on the morning of the execution you will swallow its contents a half hour before . . . before it is scheduled to occur . . . so it will seem, as they march you into the yard, and you come into sight of the gallows, you will be struck down into a comalike state, and beyond into a mimicry of death . . . your breath and heartbeat too faint to be detected . . . your blood pressure so low, all your bodily warmth will be secreted deep inside you . . . your fingers and toes stiff and icy-cold . . . your skin giving off the clammy radiance of death.

And our enemies will believe you have been frightened to death.

And disappointed to be cheated of their pleasure in watching you die a hideous death at the end of a noose!

For the attending physician, an old fool, pompous but affable, with whom "Elijii" and I have become acquainted, will p.r.o.nounce you dead, of cardiac arrest. For we will require his unwitting cooperation in our plan.

For now you are no longer alone-a "condemned" man.

For now it is us, your family, against them, our mortal enemies.

For now it is the strategy of The Game: our stakes are your life: we will triumph!

Do you doubt, children? You must never doubt.

UNKNOWN TO ABRAHAM Licht and Elisha, the prison chaplain, an impa.s.sioned, excitable, garrulous elder man not unlike Abraham Licht in the power of his person, has been "ministering unto," as he calls it, the condemned sinner Christopher Schoenlicht, for weeks; leading the youth in tearful, groaning prayers and verses out of Jeremiah vehement in their confusion, and seductive: A noise shall come even to the ends of the earth, for the LORD hath a controversy with the nations, he will plead with all flesh; he will give them that are wicked to the sword, saith the LORD. And beyond that, the rhapsodic prophesies of Saint John the Divine in which madness and poetry conjoin yet more seductively.

For it is given.

For it is just.

To die as G.o.d bids.

To die as G.o.d and the State of New Jersey bid.

Mute, his brain numbed by terror, exhaustion, sleepless nights and inedible food, food crawling minutely with maggots, his body torn by explosive bouts of diarrhea, vomiting, fever and convulsive chills, that he is, or was, a Licht, has become remote to him as a rapidly fading dream, for is all of life not a dream? a hallucination? a vision arrayed before us by Satan, G.o.d's perpetual enemy through time? So the sinner murders, but it is sin that murders. So the soul ravages itself, but it is in the service of salvation. For the meek shall inherit the earth. For the first shall be last, and the last first. Verily I say unto you.

Christopher Schoenlicht, sinner. Mute in his own defense. For there is, or was, nothing to say. He would not speak the name of the true murderer, for he could not. And knowing, sensing, despite his confusion, and his navete regarding the law, that both he and the true murderer would be tried for the death of the woman, for there would have been no distinction between them: brothers by blood, brothers by the soul.

And there was sin. His spirit encrusted, festering with sin.

Even as his earthly, sin-ridden father proclaimed there can be no sin yet Christopher, once Thurston, knows there is sin.

For what is The Game but sin?

For what is The Game but Satan's strategy, to blind the sinner from his salvation?

He lapses into a waking sleep. He shouts, springing to his feet to grasp the bars of the animal cage, and shake them-but they are unmovable, as if set in stone. His body is on fire with the bites of demon-insects. A flaming snake is coiled in his bowels, writhing and thrashing. His eyes bulge out of his head, rivulets of tears and sweat conjoined. Then, by a miracle, the chaplain is beside him, not shrinking from kneeling with him on the filth-encrusted floor, for here is a man of G.o.d, here is a true believer (fondly mocked by prison guards and by the more hardened of the condemned men) defiant in the face of mere earthly disgust. Grasping Christopher Schoenlicht by his shoulders, shouting into his face, Verily I say unto you! With men it is impossible, but not with G.o.d: for with G.o.d all things are possible. The man of G.o.d and the condemned sinner shouting together, singing, laughing. Hallelujah. Hallelujah!

And in this way he became, he exulted in, as a snake may be said to exult brainlessly yet luxuriantly in its skin, the murderer of . . . but he has forgotten the seductress's name.

A wh.o.r.e, like any wh.o.r.e of Babylon, Noph, Tahpenes, those wicked cities of the plain that have broken the crown of Thy head.

Clutching at him, his young maleness. Kissing him freely and lasciviously in the secret and forbidden places of his body. The wh.o.r.e, the female. The woman old enough to be his mother. The lewd drifting eyes, the mouth hungry for his maleness. And the repulsive hairy mouth between her fattish legs that s.n.a.t.c.hed hungrily too: squeezed, plunged, bit: drawing him, his name unknown, down to sin.

Whether Christopher, or Thurston.

Thurston, or Christopher.

Did it matter which of them? it did not, for Satan named them both.

He accepts this fate. Yet weeps, racked with agony. Kneeling and clutching at his hair, yanking it out in handfuls. Enraged suddenly, pushing away the woman's caressing hands, his strong forearm suddenly locked beneath her chin, her piercing cries, her panicked struggle, now the moment of bringing his arm back, jerking it deftly back, as he'd once seen his brother Harwood snap the neck of a mangy dog that had been trailing them about and would not go away and what a sensation to feel the delicate bones snap and to feel Death convulse in his arms.

So, it was I.

Was it?

ABRUPTLY, THREE DAYS before his execution, the condemned man refuses to allow the prison chaplain back into his cell. For I am saved, as much as I will be saved.

Christopher Schoenlicht, the most "publicized"-"notorious"-"notable"-of the half dozen condemned inmates. Is this young man something of a mystery, even to the veteran guards? Even to the veteran warden? And to the prison physician, required by law to examine him or to make a pretense thereof, to declare him, as the morning of his death rapidly approaches, in "fit condition" to be hanged?

Tall, cadaverous, bearded youth. He's silent, or sullen. Or struck dumb. Never entirely well, his stomach shrunken and his skin the color of aged ivory, always a fever, always mucus glistening at his nostrils, yet he's spared the waves of pneumonia, malaria, Asiatic cholera, b.l.o.o.d.y flux that periodically rage through "The Wall" and eliminate, as in a dramatic display of Darwin's famed principle of survival of the fittest, of which, in days long ago and only faintly remembered, Abraham Licht spoke approvingly, the weakest of the men. And G.o.d saw that it was good, and it was good.

The condemned man's age is given as twenty-five. The file for him will note that he has no (known) family, no (known) past record, no (known) history. A possible victim of amnesia, one observer has speculated. No, declares another, a victim of mental illness. But no, insists another, simply a hardened criminal, a subspecies of human being, caring no more for his own worthless life than for the life of the woman he murdered.

And G.o.d saw that it was good, and it was . . . good.

The Game is never to be played as if it were merely a game: but what The Game is, or was, he no longer knows.

ARE YOU LISTENING closely, Thurston?

Will you follow my instructions?

. . . taken to the prison morgue . . . and from there, by arrangement, to a Trenton funeral home . . . for Lord Shaw will see to it, you won't be buried in a pauper's grave . . . then to Manhattan where you will be given clothes, money, identification papers, all that's required . . . to get to the Canadian border near Kingston, Ontario.

The snowy-haired ruddy-cheeked English gentleman continues to speak, now daring to grip Schoenlicht's unresisting hand, squeezing the fingers tight to bid him hear, understand, obey. Even as his mind shakes itself free. Beating and thrumming. Moths' fluttering wings, the scuttling of rats and giant hard-sh.e.l.led beetles here in the sewer pipe; the marsh, acres of swampland, marbled clouds reflected in a pool of standing water, a face suddenly reflected . . . a boy's face . . . but whose? . . . he can't see, eyes blinded by tears.

Thurston?

You will follow my instructions?

And we will be united again in Ontario, no later than June 4.

TALL, SWAYING ON his feet, breath shallow and panting and eyes sunk in fatigue, this is Thurston, isn't it? . . . allowing Abraham to grasp his hand in parting, allowing Elisha, eyes bright with tears, to embrace him . . . for they are brothers, unlikely as it seems. For what is a man's mere skin, set beside his soul? Thurston's fingers have closed about the precious little vial but his eyes evade Abraham Licht's fierce gaze.

I will, I must. Renounce Satan and his ways.

Murmuring aloud, "Yes, Father."

He doesn't come to the cell door after the guard has locked it, to watch his visitors walk briskly away.

THE GUILTY LOVERS.

(BUT, AS THEY are not precisely lovers, need they feel guilt?) Millicent, bold and reckless, pretty spoiled Millicent, would inform Father of their love at once, because it is so pure and n.o.ble a love; and beg his permission for them to be lawfully wed. Elisha, less certain of Abraham Licht's response, and made rather more subdued than elated by the discovery of his love for Millie, cautions her repeatedly to wait.

At least until Thurston is free, and safe in Canada.

At least until Father is himself again.

IN THIS PRECARIOUS spring, as May rapidly flies past, they walk together a great deal, in secret, but rarely allow themselves to touch. Kisses are forbidden now, except in certain circ.u.mstances: chaste greetings, ceremonial farewells. If they are observed speaking together in low urgent whispers in the manner of plotting lovers they are not in fact speaking of that (which is to say, their alarming desire for each other) but, perhaps, about Thurston and what will become of him in Canada . . . or what Elisha might recall of Millie's mother ("Tell me anything you remember," Millie begs) . . . or what Millie might recall of her early childhood in Muirkirk, when Elisha was away . . . or the fortunes of Harwood, the prospects of the youngest children, the likelihood of Father's marrying again ("Though in actual fact I doubt that he has ever been married at all," Elisha says).

Regarding Thurston-Elisha is confident, or seems so, that the plan will work: for Father has seen to every detail, and will even be present at the "execution," as Lord Harburton Shaw. But Millie, drawing slightly away from him, will say only in a faint voice, "Oh Elisha, my darling-my dream has prepared me for the worst."

THE INGRATE SON.

CONDEMNED MURDERER STRUCK DEAD.

BEFORE GALLOWS AT "THE WALL"

Witnesses Reported "Shocked"

This, the banner headline for the New York Tribune for 30 May 1910. Tall lurid black letters like a shout.

For it happened that, before a small crowd of witnesses including the distinguished English prison reformer Lord Harburton Shaw, the young man convicted of having murdered Manhattan socialite Eloise Peck apparently fell into a swoon at the very sight of the tall ugly gallows at the State Correctional Facility, and died within minutes despite the attempt of an attending physician to revive him.

What a spectacle! What guilty horror pa.s.sed through the gathering! The execution ritual was hastily aborted and all witnesses save prison authorities were ushered out of the yard and urged not to make further inquiries. It would subsequently be reported in a terse statement by the prison warden that the convicted murderer Schoenlicht had died of "severe cardiac arrest"; for the first time in the history of the notorious prison at Trenton, a man had cheated the gallows minutes before he was to be hanged. As an indignant Lord Shaw told New York reporters, "Witnesses were more shocked and shamed, it seemed, that the means of 'punishment' was so cruel as to frighten a man to death, than they would have been had the poor lad been hanged." For some weeks a controversy raged in the Post and other New York and New Jersey newspapers over the "cruelty" or "justice" of hanging, or of any form of capital punishment. Lord Shaw was a hero to some, an interfering foreigner to others; in his zealous wake, a campaign for execution reform was begun by several Christian organizations to which Lord Shaw was rumored to have contributed generous sums of money. He was said, too, out of pity for the young murderer who'd died of fright, to have arranged for a private burial for him, to spare him "the final ignominy" of a pauper's grave in the untended cemetery behind the Trenton prison.

Unfortunately, the idealistic Englishman departed the United States to return to England, unless to sail to Australia, in pursuit of his cause, in early June; and disappeared from the controversy.

"What? What do you mean-vanished?"

"Only, sir, that he-it-is not here. As you can see."

"But he-it-must be here. A corpse cannot rise out of his coffin and walk away, surely. I insist that you and your a.s.sistants search the premises more thoroughly."

"Sir, you can be sure that we've done so. More than once, from bottom to top, sir. But he-it-the remains of 'Christopher Schoenlicht'-is gone; and good riddance, we say. And this was left behind, sir, pinned to the satin lining of the casket-"

An envelope upon which the name LORD SHAW was hastily scrawled in pencil.

With shaking fingers Lord Shaw took the envelope, strode out of Eakins Brothers Funeral Home on South Street, Trenton, and, in the street, where his valet Elijii awaited him behind the wheel of a small truck with an open, tarpaulin-covered rear, read aloud this enigmatic message: "Thurston & Christopher-forgive.