The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man: Essential Stories

IN THE PENAL COLONY

“IT’S A UNIQUE PIECE of equipment,” said the officer to the travelling researcher, looking over the familiar machinery with an air of admiration. The researcher seemed to have taken up the commandant’s invitation only out of politeness; he’d been asked whether he’d like to witness the execution of a soldier who’d been sentenced to death for disobeying and insulting a superior officer. Even in the penal colony there didn’t seem to be much interest in this execution. At least, there was no one else here with the officer and the researcher in this steep, sandy little valley enclosed by bare cliffs, apart from the condemned man himself, a stupid-looking, slack-jawed individual with scruffy hair and a dirty face, and a soldier who was holding a heavy chain attached to smaller chains that restrained the condemned man at his wrists, ankles and neck, and that were also connected to one another with an even smaller set of chains. The condemned man looked as submissive as a dog, as if they could have let him wander around the slopes on his own, and would have only needed to whistle for him when they wanted to start the execution.

The researcher wasn’t especially interested in this machine and paced up and down behind the condemned man, almost visibly indifferent, while the officer made the final preparations, first creeping under the machine’s foundations, which were dug deep into the earth, then climbing a ladder to inspect its uppermost parts. These jobs could have been left to a mechanic, but the officer performed them with great zeal, whether because he was a particular fan of the machine, or because there was some other reason why the work couldn’t be entrusted to anyone else. “All right, it’s all ready to go,” he finally called out, and climbed down off the ladder. He was very out of breath, with his mouth hanging open, and he’d stuffed two ladies’ handkerchiefs into the collar of his uniform.

“These uniforms are really too heavy for the tropics,” said the researcher, rather than asking about the machine as the officer had expected.

“True,” said the officer, washing his oily, grease-covered hands in a bucket of water, “but they’re a symbol of home; we don’t want to lose our connection to it. — Now have a look at this machine,” he added immediately, and dried his hands with a cloth while he pointed at it. “Up to this point, I’ve had to do some of the work by hand, but from now it’ll run automatically.” The researcher nodded and followed the officer, who tried to cover himself for all eventualities by saying: “Of course, problems can come up. I hope there won’t be any today, but you can never say for certain that they won’t. After all, the machine has to operate non-stop for twelve hours. But if problems do come up, they’re always very small things that you can easily fix.

“Wouldn’t you like to sit down?” he asked in the end, then reached into a jumble of wicker chairs, pulled one out and offered it to the researcher, who felt he couldn’t say no. He found himself sitting at the edge of a pit and threw a quick glance into it. The pit wasn’t very deep. On one side, the earth that had been dug out was banked up into a rough wall; on the other side stood the machine. “I don’t know,” said the officer, “whether the commandant has already explained the machine to you?” The researcher made an ambiguous gesture; that was all the officer wanted, because now he could explain the machine himself. “This machine,” he said, taking hold of a crank handle and leaning on it, “was invented by our old commandant. I worked with him on the very first trials and was involved in everything until it was completed. But the credit for inventing it is all his. Have you heard much about our old commandant? No? Well, it’s not an exaggeration if I tell you that the whole way the colony is organized is his work. When he was on his deathbed, we, his friends, already knew that he’d made the colony’s structure so self-enclosed that his successor, even if he arrived with thousands of plans of his own, wouldn’t be able to change anything of the old man’s, at least not for many years. And our prediction has been borne out; the new commandant has had to recognize that fact. It’s a shame you never met the old commandant! — But,” the officer interrupted himself, “I’m rambling while the machine stands here waiting in front of us. It consists, as you can see, of three parts. The lower part is called the bed, the upper part is called the engraver and this part suspended in the middle is called the harrow.”

“The harrow?” asked the researcher. He hadn’t been listening closely; the sun was far too strong in this unshaded valley and he found it difficult to gather his thoughts. It made the officer seem more impressive for carrying on in his tight parade uniform, weighed down with epaulettes and strung with braid, eagerly explaining his work while still making small adjustments here and there with a screwdriver. The soldier on guard looked to be in a similar condition to the researcher. He’d wrapped the chain holding the condemned man around his wrists and was leaning on his rifle, letting his head slump down on his neck and paying no attention to anything. The researcher wasn’t surprised; the officer was speaking French and he was certain that neither the soldier nor the condemned man could understand what he was saying. So it was all the more striking that the condemned man was nevertheless trying hard to follow the officer’s explanation. With a kind of sleepy tenacity, he looked wherever the officer was pointing; when the researcher interrupted with a question, both he and the officer turned to look at him.

“Yes, the harrow,” said the officer. “It’s a fitting name. The needles are arranged like the spikes on a harrow and that’s how the whole thing operates, albeit just in one spot and with a much higher degree of sophistication. You’ll see what I mean in a moment. The condemned man is laid down here on the bed. — I want to describe the machine before I start the process. Then you’ll have a better sense of what’s going on. Also, one of the cogs in the engraver is badly worn; it screeches very loudly when it’s moving and you can hardly hear yourself think over the noise; unfortunately, it’s very difficult to get replacement parts out here. — So, this is the bed, as I was saying. It’s completely covered in a layer of cotton wool; you’ll soon see why that’s needed. The condemned man lies face down on this layer of cotton wool, naked of course; there are restraints for the hands, the feet and the neck—here, here and here—to keep him in place. Here, at the top end of the bed, where the man, as I mentioned, lies face down, there’s a block of felt that can be easily adjusted to slip into the man’s mouth. It’s there to stop him screaming or biting through his tongue. You see, the man has no choice but to take the block into his mouth, because otherwise his neck would be broken by the restraints.”

“This is cotton wool?” asked the researcher, and leant forward.

“Yes, absolutely,” the officer said with a smile, “feel it for yourself.” He took the researcher’s hand and moved it across the bed. “It’s been specially prepared, that’s why it looks a little different than usual; I’ll come on to what that’s for later on.” The researcher had been slightly won over by the machine; shielding his eyes against the sun, he looked up at the top of the apparatus. It was a big construction. The bed and the engraver were the same size and looked like two dark troughs. The engraver was about two metres above the bed; the two parts were connected at the corners by brass poles that shone in the sunshine. Between the two troughs, the harrow was suspended from a steel chain.

The officer had hardly noticed the researcher’s previous indifference, but he certainly picked up on his growing interest and paused his explanation to give the researcher more time to examine the machine. The condemned man copied the researcher; since he couldn’t put his hand over his eyes, he squinted up at the top of the machine.

“So the man lies there,” said the researcher, then leant back in his chair and folded one leg over the other.

“Yes,” said the officer, pushing his cap back on his head and wiping his hand down his overheated face. “Now, listen carefully. Both the bed and the engraver are equipped with their own electric battery; the bed needs one for itself, the engraver’s is for the harrow. As soon as the man is tightly fastened, the bed starts to move. It vibrates by making tiny, rapid movements from side to side, and up and down. You’ll have seen similar equipment in mental hospitals; the difference is that with this machine, every movement has been precisely calculated; each one has to correspond precisely to the movement of the harrow. And it’s the harrow that actually carries out the sentence.”

“What is the sentence?” asked the researcher.

“You don’t know that either?” said the officer in astonishment, and bit his lip. “Excuse me, please, if I’ve been getting ahead of myself in the explanation; I’m very sorry about that. You see, the commandant used to give the explanation himself; the new commandant has given up that honourable duty; but the idea that he would fail to explain sentencing to such an eminent visitor”—the researcher tried to fend off this compliment with both hands, but the officer insisted on using that phrase—“that he wouldn’t even tell such an eminent visitor, that’s something new, and it”—he had a curse on the tip of his tongue, but he pulled himself together and just said: “I wasn’t told, the fault isn’t mine. And as it happens, I’m the person best placed to explain our sentencing because, right here,”—he patted his breast pocket—“I’ve still got the old commandant’s original sketches.”

“Sketches by the old commandant himself?” asked the researcher. “Was there anything he couldn’t do? Was he really a soldier, a judge, a builder, a chemist and a draughtsman?”

“Yes, indeed,” said the officer, nodding with a fixed, pensive expression. He inspected his hands; they didn’t strike him as clean enough to touch the sketches, so he went to the bucket and washed them again. Then he pulled out a small leather portfolio and said: “Our sentence doesn’t sound particularly severe. The condemned man has the law he has broken written onto his skin with the harrow. This man, for example”—the officer gestured towards him—“will have inscribed onto his skin: Respect your superior officers!”

The researcher glanced across at the condemned man when the officer pointed at him; his head was lowered and he seemed to be straining his ears to try and understand at least some of what was going on. But the shapes he formed with his rubbery lips made clear that he hadn’t understood anything at all. The researcher had wanted to put several questions to the officer, but looking at the man, he just asked, “Does he know his sentence?”

“No,” said the officer, and was about to carry on with his explanation when the researcher interrupted him: “He doesn’t know his own sentence?”

“No,” the officer said again, paused for a moment as if to let the researcher clarify his reasons for asking that, then added: “It would be pointless to tell him. He’s going to get it written on his own skin.”

The researcher would have let it go, but he felt the condemned man look across at him; he seemed to be asking whether the researcher could condone the procedure he’d just had explained. So the researcher, who’d already leant back in his chair, shifted forward again and asked, “But that he’s been sentenced for something, surely he knows that?”

“Not that either,” said the officer, and smiled at the researcher as if starting to expect peculiar comments from him.

“No,” said the researcher, wiping his hand across his forehead. “So this man also doesn’t know whether his defence was successful?”

“He hasn’t been given an opportunity to defend himself,” said the officer, glancing off to the side as if he were speaking to himself and didn’t want to embarrass the researcher by telling him such obvious things.

“But he must have had some opportunity to defend himself,” said the researcher, and stood up from his chair.

The officer saw the danger that his explanation of the machine’s workings would be considerably delayed; he went over to the researcher, took him by the arm and pointed at the condemned man, who, now that he was plainly being discussed, stood to attention while the soldier pulled his chains taut. The officer said, “The way it works is this. I’ve been appointed judge here in the penal colony. Despite my youth. Because I helped the old commandant on all punishment-related matters and also because I know the machine better than anyone else. The principle on which I make my decisions is this: the defendant’s guilt is never in doubt. Other courts can’t follow that principle because they have more than one member and they also have higher courts above them. It’s not like that here, or at least it wasn’t under the old commandant. The new one, admittedly, has shown some signs of wanting to interfere in my court, but I’ve managed to hold him off so far, and I should be able to keep that up. — You wanted to have this case explained; it’s as simple as they all are. This morning, a captain reported that this man, who’s assigned to him as a steward and sleeps in front of his door, slept straight through one of his duties. You see, he’s supposed to get up on the hour and salute in front of the captain’s door. Hardly an onerous duty and certainly a necessary one, because it keeps him fresh both for his guard duty and as a steward. Last night, the captain wanted to check whether this man was discharging his duty properly and found him crouched down, fast asleep. He fetched his riding crop and hit him across the face. Instead of getting up and begging for forgiveness, this man grabbed his superior officer by the legs and shouted: ‘Throw away the whip or I’ll eat you.’ — Those are the facts. The captain came to me an hour ago, I took down his statement and wrote out the judgment. Then I had the man put in chains. It was all very straightforward. If I’d first made the man appear in front of me and questioned him, it would only have created confusion. He would have lied, and if I’d managed to catch him lying, he would have told different lies, and so on. This way I’ve got him and won’t let him go again. — Does that answer your questions? We’re running a bit behind, the execution should have begun already, and I haven’t finished explaining how the machine works.” He urged the researcher to sit back down in the chair, and continued: “As you can see, the harrow matches the shape of a person; this is the harrow for the upper body; these are the harrows for the legs. For the head, there’s only this little spike. Is that all clear?” He bent down to the researcher and smiled encouragingly, ready to explain in any amount of detail.

The researcher looked at the harrow with a wrinkled brow. The description of the judicial process hadn’t satisfied him. But he said to himself that, after all, this was a penal colony, that special measures were necessary here and that everything had to be handled in a rigorously military fashion. He also placed some hope in the new commandant, who was obviously trying, albeit slowly, to introduce a new system that went beyond the limited thinking of this officer. From out of this train of thought he asked, “Will the commandant attend the execution?”

“It’s not certain either way,” said the officer, who seemed to find this unexpected question painful, and his friendly expression turned into a grimace. “That’s another reason why we’ve got to get on with it. I’m sorry to say I’ll even have to cut short some of the explanation. But tomorrow, once the machine has been cleaned—the fact that it gets so dirty is its only failing—I could fill you in on the details later. But just the essentials for now.—When the man lies on the bed and it has started to shake, the harrow is lowered down to his body. It automatically positions itself so that the tips of the needles are only just touching him; once the set-up is complete, this steel chain locks to become a rod. And then the performance begins. Someone without the necessary background wouldn’t notice any difference between different punishments. It looks like the harrow is doing the same job each time. As it shakes, it jabs the tips of the needles into the body, which is also being shaken by the bed. And so you can view the sentence as it’s being inscribed, the harrow itself is made of glass. That caused us several technical problems, especially when it came to attaching the needles, but after many attempts we finally managed it. We left no stone unturned. And now anyone can look through the glass to see the sentence being written on the skin. Wouldn’t you like to come closer and see the needles for yourself?”

The researcher stood up slowly, went over and bent down to the harrow. “You see,” said the officer. “It’s actually a pair of needles repeated many times over. Each long one has a short one beside it. The long one inscribes and the short one sprays water to wash away the blood and keep the writing clear. The mixture of blood and water then runs down into these little grooves, which all lead into this drain, and that flows out of the waste pipe into the ditch underneath.” With his finger, the officer traced the route that the liquid had to follow. When he, trying to make it as easy as possible to visualize, cupped his hands beneath the waste pipe, the researcher lifted his head away from the machine and, with one hand out behind him, groped his way back into the chair. At that moment, he saw to his horror that the condemned man had also taken up the officer’s invitation to have a closer look at the workings of the harrow. He’d tugged the sleepy soldier holding the chain forward a little and was leaning down over the glass. The researcher could see him uncertainly trying to make out whatever the two gentlemen had just been inspecting, but because he hadn’t had it explained, he couldn’t make any sense of it. He bent over one part and then another. His eyes kept running across the glass harrow. The researcher wanted to shoo him away because what he was doing was probably punishable. But the officer held the researcher back with one hand, picked up a lump of earth with the other and threw it at the soldier. The soldier opened his eyes with a start, saw what the condemned man had dared to do, dropped his rifle, braced the heels of his boots against the ground and yanked him back so hard he immediately fell over, then stood over him as he writhed on the ground, jangling his chains. “Stand him up!” yelled the officer, because he noticed that the researcher was becoming unhelpfully distracted by the condemned man. The researcher even leant past the harrow, not paying it any attention at all, just to see what was happening to him. “Be careful with him,” the officer yelled again. He went around the machine, grabbed the man under the armpits himself and, with the soldier’s help, finally got him on his feet, even though he kept falling over again.

“So now I understand the whole process,” said the researcher when the officer came back to him.

“Apart from the most important thing,” said the officer, taking the researcher by the arm and pointing to the top of the machine. “Up there in the engraver is the actual gear train that regulates the harrow’s movements; and that gear train is configured to match the drawing of the sentence. As I mentioned, I’m still using the sketches made by the old commandant. Here they are,”—he took several sheets of paper from the leather portfolio—“Unfortunately, I can’t let you hold them yourself, they’re the most precious thing I have. But please sit down and I’ll show them to you from this distance, you’ll be able to see everything just fine.” He held up the first sheet. The researcher would have liked to say something complimentary, but all he could see were labyrinthine lines criss-crossing each other and covering the paper so thickly it was hard to see any white space at all. “Read it,” said the officer.

“I can’t,” said the researcher.

“But it’s perfectly clear.”

“It’s very elaborate,” said the researcher, dodging the demand. “But I’m afraid I can’t decipher it.”

“Yes,” the officer said, then laughed and put the portfolio away again. “It’s no primary school calligraphy, that’s for sure. You’ve got to spend a long time reading it. I’m sure you’d be able to see it in the end. Of course, the lettering can’t be too simple; after all, it’s not supposed to kill at once, on average it takes somewhere in the region of twelve hours; the turning point comes after about six. So there have to be many, many embellishments surrounding the script itself; the actual text only marks the body in quite a narrow band; the rest of the body is for the flourishes. Can you see now why the work of the harrow and the machine is so special?—Look at this!” He jumped onto the ladder, turned a wheel and shouted down: “Watch out, move to the side!” The whole thing started to move. If the wheel hadn’t screeched, it would have been magnificent. The officer shook his fist at the screeching wheel as though it were a surprise to him, then spread his arms apologetically towards the researcher and hurriedly climbed back down to watch the machine’s motion from the ground. Something only he noticed still wasn’t quite right; he climbed back up, reached into the interior of the engraver with both hands, then, instead of using the ladder, quickly slid down one of the poles and, to make himself heard, shouted excitedly into the researcher’s ear: “Do you understand the process? The harrow starts writing; once it has finished applying the script to the man’s back for the first time, the cotton wool tilts and slowly turns his body to the side, to present a new area to the harrow. Meanwhile, the raw areas are pressed against the cotton wool, which, because of the way it has been prepared, immediately stops the bleeding and prepares the skin so the script can be deepened. Then, when the body is turned again, the prongs at the edge of the harrow, here, rip the cotton wool off the wounds and fling it into the ditch, letting the harrow get back to work. Going back and forth like this, it inscribes the sentence ever more deeply over the course of twelve hours. For the first six, the condemned man lives in much the same way as he did before, except that he’s in pain. After two hours, we take the felt block out of his mouth because he won’t have the strength to scream any more. Also, here at the head end, we put a kind of warm rice porridge into this electrically heated pot, so that the man can lap it up with his tongue if he wants to. No one has ever passed it up. At least, I’ve never heard of anyone, and my experience with this is pretty extensive. It’s only after around six hours that he’ll lose his interest in food. I’ll usually be kneeling down here so I can observe this phenomenon. The man rarely swallows his last mouthful, he’ll just turn it over in his mouth for a while and finally spit it into the ditch. I’ve got to be careful, otherwise I’d get sprayed in the face. You’ll see how quiet the man gets in the sixth hour! Understanding starts to dawn on even the stupidest ones. It begins around their eyes and spreads out from there. It’s a sight that might tempt you to lie down next to him under the harrow. Nothing much happens from then on, just that the man slowly deciphers the script, he purses his lips as if he’s listening. You’ve seen yourself that it’s not easy to decipher the script by looking at it; our man deciphers it from his wounds. It’s a lot of work; it’ll take him another six hours to get it done. At that point, the harrow skewers him completely and tosses him into the ditch, where he slaps down onto the bloody water and the cotton wool. That’s the end of the execution and we, the soldier and I, shovel some earth over him.”

The researcher had tilted one ear towards the officer and was watching the machine with his hands in his pockets. The condemned man watched it too, but without understanding what it did. He crouched a little and followed the movements of the swinging needles until the soldier, at a signal from the officer, used a knife to cut through his shirt and trousers from behind so they fell off him; he tried to grab at the falling clothes to cover himself, but the soldier lifted him into the air and shook the last scraps of fabric off him. The officer paused the machine and in this new quiet the condemned man was laid down under the harrow. His chains were taken off and replaced with straps; at first, this seemed to strike the condemned man as an improvement. Then the harrow lowered itself a little further, because the man was comparatively thin. When the needles touched him, a shudder ran across his skin; the soldier was busy securing his right hand, but his left stretched out without knowing what for; it happened to reach in the direction of the researcher. The officer watched the researcher constantly from the corner of his eye, as if trying to see what impression the execution, which had been at least superficially explained, was making on him.

The strap for the man’s right wrist snapped; the soldier had probably pulled it too tight. The soldier held up the torn strap, asking for help. The officer went over to him and, his face turned towards the researcher, said, “The machine has lots of moving parts, it’s inevitable that something rips or breaks from time to time, but you can’t let that skew your overall opinion of it. A strap like this we can replace straight away; I’ll use a chain instead, even though that’ll make the bed’s motion a little less smooth for the right arm.” And while he fastened the chain, he added: “Our resources for maintaining the machine are very limited these days. Under the old commandant, I had an unlimited budget solely for repairs. We had a small warehouse where we kept all kinds of replacement parts. I admit that I almost got wasteful with it all, I mean before, not now, whatever the new commandant likes to claim; he’ll use anything as a pretext to attack the old way of doing things. These days he oversees the repair budget himself and if I put in a request for a new strap, I have to present the broken one as evidence it’s needed, then it’ll take ten days for a new one to arrive, and when it does it’ll be terrible quality and basically useless. As for how I’m supposed to keep the machine going in the meantime, that’s something no one bothers about.”

The researcher considered. Intervening in other people’s affairs is always a dubious proposition. He was neither a resident of the penal colony nor a citizen of the state to which it belonged. If he wanted to condemn this execution or even try to prevent it, they could have said to him: you’re a foreigner here, keep your opinions to yourself. He would have had no response to that; at most he could have added that he was a little surprised by his own behaviour, because the purpose of his travels was to act as an observer and in no way to try and get mixed up in other countries’ judicial processes. But in this instance it was very tempting. The injustice of the procedure and the inhumanity of the sentence were beyond doubt. Nobody could have suspected the researcher of having any vested interests, since the man was a stranger to him, not a compatriot of his and not someone who inspired any particular compassion. The researcher himself had arrived with letters of recommendation from the highest officials, had been welcomed here with the greatest respect, and the fact that he had been invited to watch this execution seemed to suggest that he was being asked his opinion of what was going on. That was all the more likely since the commandant, as he’d heard all too clearly, was no supporter of this process and seemed to be treating the officer with something bordering on hostility.

At that moment, he heard the officer give a cry of rage. He had just, not without effort, pushed the felt block into the condemned man’s mouth when the latter succumbed to an irresistible nausea, closed his eyes and vomited. The officer hastily tore the block from his mouth and tried to turn the man’s head towards the ditch, but it was too late, the vomit had already spattered the machine. “It’s all the commandant’s fault!” shouted the officer and started wildly rattling one of the brass poles in his fury. “They’re making my machine as dirty as a cowshed.” With trembling hands, he showed the researcher what had happened. “Haven’t I spent hours trying to make the commandant understand that prisoners shouldn’t be given anything to eat for a day before the execution? But no, this new mild approach means they have other ideas. Before the man’s led away, the commandant’s ladies stuff him full of sweets. His whole life, he’s lived on stinking fish and now he’s got to eat sweets! That’s not a catastrophe, I wouldn’t complain, but why don’t we ever get a new block, something I’ve spent three months asking for? How could you not be disgusted, putting something in your mouth that more than a hundred men have sucked and bitten on while they died?”

The condemned man was resting his head and looked peaceful; the soldier was busy using the man’s shirt to wipe the machine. The officer went over to the researcher who, suspecting something, stepped back a little. But the officer took him by the hand and pulled him aside. “I’d like to have a word with you in confidence,” he said, “That’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Of course,” said the researcher, and listened with his eyes lowered.

“This procedure and this execution you’ve been given the opportunity to admire no longer has any public supporters here in our colony. I’m its only defender, and the only one standing up for the old commandant’s legacy. I can no longer hope to develop the procedure any further, it takes all my strength just to preserve what we already have. When the old commandant was still alive, the colony was full of his supporters; I may have some of his powers of persuasion, but I don’t have any of his authority; as a result, all his supporters have gone underground, there are still lots of them, but no one admits to it. Today—that is, an execution day—if you go to the tea house and listen in, all you’re likely to hear is ambivalent chatter. Those are all supporters, but under the current commandant and given his current attitude, they’re completely useless. So I ask you: should the arrival of this commandant and the ladies who influence him mean that a life’s work”—he gestured at the machine—“is destroyed? Can you allow that to happen? Even if you’re a foreigner who’s only spending a few days on our island? Believe me, there’s no time to lose; they’re already concocting an attack on my judicial authority; they hold discussions I’m not invited to in the commandant’s office; even your visit today is typical of the whole situation; they’re cowards and so they prefer to send you, a stranger, in their place.—You should have seen how different the executions were in the old days! A day before the execution had even started, this valley would be full of people; everyone came to watch; the commandant and his ladies would appear early in the morning; the camp was woken with fanfares; I reported that everything was ready; the colony’s best people—not one senior official would miss it—arranged themselves nearest to the machine; this pile of chairs is a miserable remnant from that time. The machine would be gleaming, freshly polished: I’d use some replacement parts for almost every execution. In front of hundreds of pairs of eyes—the spectators would be standing on tiptoe all the way to the cliffs—the condemned man would be laid under the harrow by the commandant himself. The work that these days is done by a common soldier was assigned to me, the president of the court, and was considered an honour. And then the execution began! There was no screeching to disturb the smooth running of the machine. Some people didn’t even watch, just lay there in the sand with their eyes closed; but they all knew: justice is being done. In the hush all you could hear was the groaning of the condemned man, muffled by the block. These days the machine can’t even elicit any groans that the block won’t stifle; back then, the writing needles discharged an acid that we’re not allowed to use any more. Well, and then the sixth hour came around! It was always impossible to find room for everyone who wanted to watch from close up. The commandant, with his usual wisdom, ordered the children to be let through; for my part, I got to be there because of my duties; I’d often be sitting right there with a small child in each arm. How attentively we watched the transfiguration of their tormented expressions; how close we kept our own faces to the splendour of that justice, which was already fleeting in the moment it was finally achieved! What good times, old friend!” The officer had plainly forgotten who was standing in front of him; he’d put his arm around the researcher and rested his head on the researcher’s shoulder. The researcher was extremely embarrassed and impatiently looked past the officer to the others. The soldier had finished cleaning up and was pouring more rice porridge from a can into the bowl. As soon as the condemned man noticed this—he seemed to have completely recovered—he again began to slurp up the porridge with his tongue. The soldier kept pushing him away, because the porridge was meant for later on, but he didn’t seem to be behaving properly either as he scooped up the prisoner’s porridge with his dirty hands and ate it himself.

The officer quickly got a grip on himself. “I wasn’t trying to influence you emotionally,” he said. “I know it’s impossible to make someone now understand what those times were like. And after all, the machine’s work continues and it speaks for itself. It speaks for itself even if there’s no one else here. And at the end, the body will still make its strangely gentle descent into the ditch, even if there are no longer hundreds of flies gathering around it like there used to be. Back then, we had to put up a handrail around the ditch; it’s long gone now.”

The researcher wanted to turn his face away from the officer, and looked around aimlessly. The officer thought he was looking at the empty valley; he took the researcher’s hands, moved round to catch his eye, and asked, “So you can feel it, then, what a disgrace this is?”

But the researcher said nothing. The officer left him alone for a moment. With his legs wide apart, his hands on his hips, he stayed quiet and stared at the ground. Then he gave the researcher an encouraging smile and said, “I was standing nearby yesterday when the commandant invited you to watch. I heard the invitation. I know the commandant. I understood the point of the invitation right away. Although he is actually powerful enough to act against me, he doesn’t dare, and instead he wants to expose me to the judgment of a respected outsider like yourself. It’s very calculating of him; this is your second day on the island, you didn’t know the old commandant or his thinking, you’re imbued with European attitudes, you might even be a principled opponent of the death penalty and especially of this kind of execution by machine; moreover, you’re watching this execution be carried out without any public participation, sadly, on a run-down machine—and taking all these things together (this is how the commandant thinks), isn’t it very possible that you would disapprove of this process? And if you did disapprove of it (I’m still speaking about how the commandant thinks), perhaps you wouldn’t keep that to yourself, because you presumably have faith in your well-honed convictions. You must have seen many idiosyncrasies among many different peoples and learnt to be respectful, so you probably won’t speak out with full force against this process in the way you would at home. But the commandant doesn’t even need you to do that. If you just said something in passing, one careless phrase, that would be enough. It wouldn’t even need to express what you really think as long as it seemed to correspond to his ideas. He’ll question you with all the cunning he can muster, I’ve got no doubt of that, and his ladies will sit in a circle around you with their ears pricked up. You might say, for example, ‘In my country, the judicial process is rather different,’ or ‘In my country, the accused is examined before sentencing,’ or ‘Our prisoners are allowed to know their sentence,’ or ‘We have several punishments other than the death penalty,’ or ‘We only had torture till the Middle Ages.’ All these comments are absolutely correct, and to you seem like innocent, matter-of-fact statements that don’t touch on my work here. But how will the commandant react to them? I can see him now, the good commandant, quickly pushing his chair aside and hurrying out onto the balcony; I can see his ladies streaming after him; I can hear him talking—his ladies say he has a voice like thunder—and what he’ll say is: ‘An eminent Western researcher studying judicial systems around the world has just said that our traditional way of doing things is inhumane. Having heard this opinion from such a prominent expert, I can naturally no longer allow that process to continue. I hereby decree, with immediate effect, that…’ and so on. You’ll want to intervene, you didn’t say what he’s announcing, you didn’t call my process inhumane, on the contrary, because of your deep insight you think it’s the most humane and most dignified you’ve ever seen, and you also admire the actual machinery—but it’s too late; you can’t even get out onto the balcony, which is packed with his ladies; you want to raise a protest; you want to shout; but a lady’s hand holds your mouth shut—and I and the old commandant’s work will be lost.”

The researcher had to suppress a smile: so it would be that easy to complete the task he’d thought would be so difficult. He said evasively, “You’re overestimating my influence; the commandant has read my letter of recommendation, he knows that I’m not an expert in legal procedures. If I expressed an opinion, it would just be the opinion of a private individual, with no more weight behind it than anyone else’s, and anything I said would certainly count for much less than the commandant’s opinion, since, as far as I understand it, he has very far-reaching powers here in this penal colony. And if his mind is made up in the way you think, then I’m afraid the end has come for this process, regardless of any opinion from me.”

Had the officer understood yet? No, he hadn’t. He vehemently shook his head, glanced at the condemned man and the soldier—who both jumped and stopped eating the porridge—went up very close to the researcher, not looking him in the eye but staring at some point on his jacket, and said more quietly than before: “You don’t know the commandant; your view of him and all of us here is bound to be—forgive me for saying so—a little naïve. Believe me, your influence here can’t be overstated. I was happy when I heard that only you were going to watch the execution. That order of the commandant’s was supposed to hurt me, but now I’m turning it to my own advantage. You haven’t been distracted by any lying whispers or critical expressions—which would be unavoidable if there was a bigger audience for this execution—you’ve listened to my explanation, you’ve seen the machine and you’re about to watch the execution itself. You’ve probably already formed your opinion, but if you have any niggling doubts, I’m sure that watching the execution will put them to rest. So I ask you: help me with the commandant.”

The researcher didn’t let him go on any further. “How can I?” he exclaimed. “That’s impossible. I can’t help you any more than I could do you harm.”

“You can,” said the officer. The researcher noticed to his alarm that the officer had clenched his fists. “You can,” said the officer again, even more insistently. “I have a plan that is sure to work. You believe that you don’t have enough influence. I know that you do. And even if you were right, shouldn’t we try anything we can to preserve this procedure, even if it turns out not to be enough? So listen to my plan. For it to work, it’s important above all that for the rest of the day you give away as little as possible about what you think of the machine. If no one asks you directly, don’t offer any opinion; anything you do say has to be terse and ambiguous; you want them to get the impression that it’s hard for you to talk about it, that it has left you feeling bitter, that if you said something, you would have to lash out with all kinds of criticisms. I’m not asking you to lie; not at all; you should just give short replies like, ‘Yes, I saw the execution,’ or ‘Yes, I heard all the explanations.’ That’s it, nothing more. And after all, there’s more than enough reason for you to feel bitter, even if not in the way the commandant will assume. He’ll misunderstand completely and think that you agree with him. That’s where my plan comes in. Tomorrow, there’s a big meeting of all the senior officials, chaired by the commandant. As you’d expect, he has managed to turn those meetings into a piece of theatre. He’s had a gallery built for spectators, which is always full. I’ve got no choice about taking part in the discussions, even though they make me shudder with disgust. Now, there’s no doubt you’ll be invited to the meeting; if you stick to my plan for the rest of the day, instead of just inviting you they’ll be pleading and insisting. If, for some unforeseeable reason, you’re not invited, you’ll have to ask for an invitation; there’s no question that you’ll get one. So tomorrow you’ll be sitting in the commandant’s box, next to his ladies. He’ll keep glancing up to reassure himself that you’re there. After a few meaningless and absurd points of debate staged for the spectators—usually about developing the port, it’s always about port development!—they’ll start talking about the judicial process. If the commandant doesn’t move things in that direction, or doesn’t do it soon enough, I’ll make sure that it happens. I’ll stand up and make my report about today’s execution. Very short, just to say that it has taken place. My report isn’t usually like that, but it will be this time. The commandant will thank me, as always, with a friendly smile and then, he won’t be able to help himself, he’ll grasp the opportunity. ‘We’ve just heard,’ that’s what he’ll say, or something like it, ‘We’ve just heard an account of yesterday’s execution. I would just like to add that this execution was watched by the great researcher and judicial expert who, as you all know, is currently doing us the honour of a visit. This meeting today also has an extra significance because he has decided to join us. Shouldn’t we ask this great expert for his impressions of our traditional mode of execution and the legal procedure leading up to it?’ Of course there’ll be applause from all sides, a general consensus; I’ll be the loudest. The commandant will bow to you and say, ‘Then, on behalf of everyone here, please do tell us what you think.’ At that point, you step up to the railing. Make sure you place your hands where everyone can see them, otherwise the ladies will start playing with your fingers. — And now, finally, it’ll be your moment to speak. I don’t know how I’m going to get through the hours before it’s time. In your speech, you shouldn’t hold back in any way, be noisy with the truth, lean forward over the railing, shout, yes, shout your opinion, your unshakeable opinion, at the commandant. But perhaps you won’t want to do that, it’s not in your character, perhaps in your country people behave differently in these situations, that’s fine too, that’ll do perfectly, whisper your opinion so that only the officials right beneath you can hear it, you won’t even have to mention the lack of spectators at the execution, the screeching wheel, the broken strap, the disgusting block of felt, no, I’ll take care of all that, and believe me, if what I say doesn’t send him running out of the hall, it’ll force him to his knees till he has to pay homage: old commandant, I bow down before you. — That’s my plan; will you help me carry it out? But of course you will; more than that, you have to.” The officer grabbed the researcher by both arms and, breathing heavily, stared him in the face. He’d yelled the last few phrases so loudly that even the soldier and the condemned man had begun to pay attention; they couldn’t understand anything but they left off the food and, still chewing, looked over at the researcher.

His answer to the officer was never in doubt; he’d seen too much over his lifetime to have wobbled on this question; he was fundamentally honest and not afraid. Nevertheless, he hesitated for a moment under the gaze of the officer and the condemned man. But finally he said, as he had to: “No.” The officer blinked several times, but didn’t look away. “Would you like an explanation?” asked the researcher. The officer nodded silently. “I am opposed to this process,” said the researcher. “Even before you took me into your confidence—I won’t break that confidence in any way—I’d already considered whether I would be justified in intervening to try and stop this and whether an intervention would have even the smallest chance of success. It was clear to me who I should turn to: the commandant, of course. You’ve made that clearer still, but don’t think that you’ve confirmed what I intended to do, on the contrary, I’m deeply touched by your sincere conviction, even if I won’t be diverted by it.”

The officer stayed mute, turned to the machine, took hold of one of the brass poles and then looked up at the engraver, leaning back a little, as if he wanted to check that everything was in order. The soldier and the condemned man seemed to have struck up some kind of friendship; even though it was difficult because he was so tightly bound, the condemned man made hand signals to the soldier, who bent down to him; the condemned man whispered something; the soldier nodded.

The researcher followed the officer and said, “You don’t know what I’m going to do. Yes, I will tell the commandant what I think of this process, but not at the meeting, I’ll tell him privately; I also won’t stay here long enough to get pulled into a public debate; I’ll set off early tomorrow morning, or at least be on a ship by then.”

The officer didn’t seem to be listening. “So you didn’t find the judicial process convincing,” he said to himself and gave a smile like an old man hearing nonsense from a child and keeping his real thoughts concealed behind it.

“That means it’s time,” he said finally, and suddenly looked up at the researcher, bright-eyed, as if trying to communicate some request, some demand that he take part.

“What’s it time for?” the researcher asked uneasily, but didn’t get a reply.

“You’re free to go,” the officer said to the condemned man in his own language. The man didn’t believe him to begin with. “Yes, you’re free to go,” said the officer. For the first time, the condemned man’s face really became animated. Was it true? Was it just some passing whim of the officer’s? Had the foreign researcher secured his release? What was going on? These questions played across his face. But not for long. Whatever the reasons, if he was allowed to be free, he wanted to be free for real, and he began to pull at his restraints as much as the harrow would permit.

“You’ll tear the strap!” shouted the officer. “Keep still! We’re letting you out.” He signalled to the soldier and together they started undoing the straps. The condemned man laughed wordlessly to himself, now turning left to face the officer, now right towards the soldier, and not leaving out the researcher either.

“Pull him out,” the officer told the soldier. It needed to be done quite carefully because of the harrow. The condemned man already had some cuts on his back because of his impatience.

From that point on, the officer barely paid any attention to him. He went over to the researcher, pulled out his leather portfolio again, eventually found the page he was looking for, and showed it to the researcher. “Read it,” he said.

“I can’t,” said the researcher. “I already told you that I can’t read these pages.”

“Look closer,” the officer said, and stood next to the researcher to read with him. When that didn’t help either, he pointed with his pinkie finger, from high above the page, as if it must never be touched, and moved it across the page to help the researcher read the script. The researcher did make an effort, hoping that he’d be able to do at least one thing to please the officer, but he found it impossible. So the officer began to draw the letters and then finally he read them all out together: “‘Be just!’ is what it says,” he told the researcher, “Now you must be able to see it.” The researcher bent so far forward over the page that the officer moved it further away for fear he would touch it; although the researcher didn’t say anything else, it was obvious that he still hadn’t been able to read it. “‘Be just!’ is what it says,” the officer repeated.

“That’s fine,” said the researcher. “I don’t doubt that that’s right.”

“All right, then,” the officer said, at least partially satisfied, and climbed up the ladder holding the page in one hand; he very carefully placed the sheet in the engraver and then seemed to be completely reconfiguring the gear train; it was difficult work, the gears must be very small; sometimes the officer had to examine them so closely that his head disappeared entirely into the engraver.

The researcher followed this work from below; his neck grew stiff and his eyes began to hurt with the brightness of the sky. The soldier and the condemned man were busy with each other. The soldier used his bayonet to pull the man’s shirt and trousers out of the ditch. The shirt was horribly filthy and the condemned man washed it in the water bucket. When he put the things on, he and the soldier both roared with laughter, because the clothes were still cut through at the back. The condemned man seemed to feel obliged to entertain the soldier and he twirled around in his shredded clothes in front of him, while the soldier laughed so hard he sat on the ground and slapped his thighs. Nevertheless, they did try to restrain themselves a little because of the two gentlemen.

Once the officer had finally finished at the top of the machine, he took another look over the whole thing, smiled, flipped the engraver’s lid shut, climbed down, glanced into the pit, then at the condemned man, was satisfied to see that he’d fished out his clothes, went over to the water bucket to wash his hands, noticed the disgusting filth too late, was sad that he now couldn’t wash his hands, and—it wasn’t much of a substitute but better than nothing—plunged them into the sand, before standing up and starting to unbutton his uniform. The two ladies’ handkerchiefs that he’d stuffed into his collar fell into his hand. “Here you have your handkerchiefs,” he said and threw them to the condemned man. To the researcher he said in explanation: “A present from the ladies.”

Despite the evident hurry with which he took off his tunic and then undressed fully, he still handled every item of clothing with great care, even running his fingers across the silver braid on his jacket and shaking a tassel into place. What didn’t really fit with this carefulness, however, was that as soon as he’d finished folding a piece of clothing, he reluctantly tossed it into the ditch. The last thing he had left was his short sword and the belt it hung from. He pulled the sword out of the scabbard, snapped it, gathered everything together—the pieces of sword, the scabbard and the belt—and threw it all down so it jangled at the bottom of the ditch.

Now he stood there naked. The researcher bit his lip and said nothing. He knew what was going to happen, but he had no right to prevent the officer from doing anything he’d decided to. If the judicial process the officer was so devoted to really was about to be halted—possibly as a result of intervention by the researcher, something he still felt he had to do—then the officer’s behaviour was entirely correct; in his place the researcher would have acted no differently.

The soldier and the condemned man didn’t understand right away; they weren’t even watching to begin with. The condemned man was delighted to have the handkerchiefs back, but he didn’t get to enjoy them for long, because the soldier quickly snatched them out of his hand. The man tried to pull them back out of the soldier’s belt, where he’d tucked them in, but the soldier was on his guard. So they squabbled, half joking. Only when the officer was completely naked did they start to pay attention. The condemned man in particular seemed struck by a sense that a great reversal of fortunes was taking place. What had happened to him was now happening to the officer. Perhaps the process would be carried through to its conclusion. The foreign researcher had probably given the order. This was his revenge. Although he himself hadn’t been made to suffer to the end, he was going to be avenged in full. An expression of broad, silent laughter appeared on his face, and didn’t fade.

The officer, for his part, had turned to the machine. Although it had been obvious enough beforehand how well he knew its workings, now it was almost upsetting to see how lovingly he handled it and how eagerly it obeyed. He just put his hand near the harrow and it adjusted itself until it found the right height to receive him; he barely touched the side of the bed and it immediately began to tremble; the block of felt approached his mouth, it was clear the officer didn’t really want it, but his hesitation only lasted a moment, then he acquiesced and opened his mouth. Everything was ready except that the straps were still hanging loose down the machine’s sides, but it seemed they weren’t needed, the officer didn’t need to be restrained. Then the condemned man noticed the loose straps; in his view the execution wasn’t being performed properly if the straps weren’t done up; he waved at the soldier and together they went to strap the officer in. The officer had been stretching out his foot to kick the lever that set the engraver in motion; when he saw these two coming, he pulled back his foot and let himself be tied down. But now he couldn’t reach the lever any more; neither the soldier not the condemned man would be able to find it; and the researcher had decided not to move a muscle. It turned out not to be necessary; as soon as the straps had been tightened, the machine went into operation; the bed shook, the needles danced on his skin; the harrow swooped down and up. The researcher had been staring for a while when he remembered that one of the gears in the engraver should have been screeching; but everything was quiet, there wasn’t even a hum from the machine.

It was so quiet that he was able to take in what else was going on. The researcher looked over at the soldier and the condemned man. The condemned man was the livelier of the two, everything about the machine interested him and he bent down over it, or stretched up to see the higher parts, and he kept pointing his finger to show things to the soldier. The researcher found it painful to watch. He was determined to stay till the end, but he couldn’t have stood the sight of these two for long. “Go home,” he told them. The soldier might have been ready to leave, but the condemned man seemed to consider the order to be a punishment. He begged to be allowed to stay, bringing his hands together in supplication, and when the researcher shook his head and refused to relent, the condemned man got down on his knees. The researcher saw that orders would do no good here, he would have to go over and chase them away. At that moment, he heard a noise from the engraver. He looked across. Was the gear playing up after all? But it was something else. The engraver’s lid rose slowly and eventually flipped completely open. You could see the teeth on one of the gears, which lifted itself up until the whole wheel was in sight; it was as if some force were squeezing the engraver so that there was no space left inside for the gear; it kept turning until it reached the edge of the engraver, then fell, rolled a short distance in the sand and toppled over. But another one was already rising out of the top, and it was followed by many more, big, small, some practically identical; the same happened with all of them; each time it seemed that the engraver must now be empty, but then another especially numerous group of gears appeared, rose out of the box, fell to the ground, rolled in the sand and toppled over. Watching this, the condemned man forgot that the researcher had ordered him to leave; the gears fascinated him, he kept wanting to touch them, and called the soldier to help him, but then pulled his hand back in fright, because another gear popped out and scared him as it rolled closer.

The researcher, on the other hand, was deeply disconcerted; the machine was obviously shaking itself apart; its smooth operation was an illusion; he felt he had to take over since the officer could no longer look after himself. But he hadn’t been watching the rest of the machine while the gears were falling; now that the last of them seemed to have left the engraver, the researcher got another, worse surprise. The harrow wasn’t writing, only stabbing; and the bed wasn’t rolling the officer’s body, only lifting it trembling into the needles. The researcher wanted to intervene, maybe stop the whole thing: this wasn’t the torture the officer had wanted, this was simple murder. He reached out his hands. But the harrow was already lifting the skewered body to the side, as it usually only did after twelve hours. Blood was streaming from a hundred wounds (unmixed with water; the little tubes had also failed). And now the final stage also malfunctioned: the body didn’t drop from the needles, just hung over the ditch, pouring out blood, without dropping. The harrow tried to return to its original position but, as if noticing that it was still carrying this weight, it stayed above the ditch. “Help me!” the researcher shouted to the soldier and the condemned man, and took hold of the officer’s feet. He wanted to push from the feet while the other two pushed from the officer’s head, so they could slowly slide him off the needles. But the other two couldn’t make up their minds to come; the condemned man turned away; the researcher had to go over to them and force them to attend to the officer’s head. There, almost against his will, he saw the corpse’s face. It was like it had been in life (there was no sign of the promised redemption); what all the others had found in the machine, the officer hadn’t; his lips were pressed together, his eyes open, alive-looking, his expression calm and assured, and through his forehead protruded the tip of the big iron spike.

When the researcher, with the soldier and the condemned man following him, reached the first buildings of the colony, the soldier pointed at one of them and said, “That’s the tea house.”

On the ground floor of this building was a deep, low-ceilinged, cave-like room with walls and ceiling blackened by smoke. One whole side was open to the street. Although the tea house was little different from the colony’s other buildings, which, except for the commandant’s palatial headquarters, were all fairly run down, it still evoked a sense of history in the researcher and he felt the draw of a previous era. He walked up to it, followed by his two companions, went past the unoccupied tables that stood on the street outside, and breathed in the cool, musty air that came from the interior. “The old man is buried here,” said the soldier. “The priest wouldn’t let him have a spot in the graveyard. For a while, no one could decide where to bury him and eventually he was buried here. That’s something the officer definitely didn’t tell you anything about, because that’s what he was most ashamed of. A few times, he even came here at night and tried to dig up the old man, but they always chased him away.”

“Where is the grave?” asked the researcher, who couldn’t believe what the soldier was saying. Right away, both of them, the soldier and the condemned man, went ahead of him and pointed to where the grave was supposed to be. They led the researcher over to the back wall, where customers were sitting at a few of the tables. They were probably dock workers, strong men with gleaming black beards. None of them had a jacket, their shirts were tattered, they were a poor, beaten-down people. When the researcher came close, some of them stood up, pressed themselves against the walls and stared at him. “He’s a foreigner,” they whispered around the researcher, “he wants to see the grave.” They pushed one of the tables aside and underneath it there really was a gravestone. It was a simple stone, small enough to be hidden under a table. It carried an inscription in very small lettering; the researcher had to kneel down to read it. It said: ‘Here lies the old commandant. His followers, who are now nameless, dug this grave and placed this stone. There is a prophecy that, after a certain number of years, the old commandant will rise again and lead his followers from this house to wrest back control of the colony. Be faithful, and wait for him!’ When the researcher had read this and straightened up, he saw the men standing all around him and grinning, as if they’d read the inscription beside him, found it ridiculous and wanted him to share their opinion. The researcher acted as if he hadn’t noticed, gave out a few coins, waited until the table had been pushed back over the grave, left the tea house and walked down to the harbour.

The soldier and the condemned man were held up by meeting some acquaintances in the tea house. But they must have torn themselves away quickly, because the researcher was still only on the long set of stairs that led down to the boats when they came after him. They probably wanted to force him to take them with him. While the researcher spoke to one of the boatmen about being ferried across to the steamship, the two of them raced down the steps, silently, because they didn’t dare shout. But by the time they reached the bottom, the researcher was already in the boat and the boatman was pushing off from the shore. They could still have jumped into the boat, but the researcher picked up a heavy, knotted rope, threatened them with it and prevented them from jumping.