Франц Кафка - The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man - Essential Stories

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.”