Robert Coover - Public Burning

“Well, I’m afraid the Rosenbergs haven’t given you the press in their letters that you deserve,” I said as we crossed over the railroad tracks I’d just come up on from the city. We were walking toward the river, the Death House was down there, almost on the edge. Why hadn’t the Rosenbergs mentioned the river in their letters? The sounds, the smells, the images of freedom it offered up? “I suppose you’ll be glad to get rid of them.”

“Not this way,” said the Warden simply but firmly, and I felt the back of my neck flush. He could be very direct when he wanted to. Like Grandma Milhous.

“I mean, the nuisance, the, uh, constant pressures…”

“We can’t complain. They’ve been cooperative for the most part and in their own way they’ve tried to add to the life of the prison. They seem to be people who above all want to be liked and who have a very strong sense of community values. They don’t exactly fit in, but they work hard at it. They’ve kept their cells clean, almost homelike, and have been almost overeager to please. Their one real problem has been…well, something we’ve not had much experience in dealing with.”

“The argumentation. The bookishness…”

“How’s that? Bookishness? No, I don’t know what they write in their letters about that, but they don’t read very much. Less than most of our prisoners, to tell the truth. We’ve provided them with plenty of books and magazines, but they don’t seem to do much reading. In fact they don’t do much of anything for any length of time, but then this is typical of a lot of our condemned prisoners.” We seemed to be in some kind of courtyard or exercise yard, surrounded by tall buildings. There were trees, flowers, rose trellises, a huge birdbath, prisoners walking around in double file, chatting with each other, laughing, looking bored. Most of them were Negroes. J. Edgar Hoover’s crime statistics flashed to mind. “No,” sighed the Warden softly, “the problem has been their habit of behaving in what they probably think of as, well, symbolic ways — you know, acting like they’re establishing historical models or precedents or something. Very strange sometimes. It’s thrown us off more than once and we haven’t always reacted the way we should. We don’t think much about history and ideological conflicts and long-range notions about the destiny of man in a place like this. We’re just ordinary working people, it’s about all we can do to get from one day to the next. So they tended to get in a certain amount of trouble at first, more than they deserved probably, doing things we just didn’t understand. But we’ve caught on to most of it now, and it’s not so bothersome. In fact, it’s almost predictable…”

“Yes, I know…” That’s the difference between us and the Socialists, I thought. Our central idea is to look for what works in an essentially open-ended situation; theirs is what’s necessary in some kind of universal and inevitable history. Free individual enterprise versus the predestined structure, social engineering. Surely the Rosenbergs could be talked out of such crap. I tried to remember the arguments Uncle Sam had used on me. The purification of politics, he’d said, is an iridescent dream. Government is —“Eh? How’s that—!?”

“I said, like they’re on stage or something.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, the way they act, the things they say — or rather how they say it…”

“Yeah. Yeah, I was, uh, thinking the same thing myself…”

“I remember when they first came here. We always ask prisoners when they arrive what led them to commit their crimes. Most of them just shrug or tell us to screw off — pardon the expression — or grunt something about being brought here on a bum rap. But the Rosenbergs made very formal and peculiar replies, almost like they were speaking to a vast audience, though in fact there were only eight or nine of us standing around, and not paying much attention at that. Mrs. Rosenberg was the first. They said she was very cheerful on the ride up, chatting about the spring weather and what not. She was wearing a pink blouse and a plaid skirt, a light coat with a kind of furry collar, a black hat — she looked like most any lady here on the streets of Ossining. But when she reached the Administration Building, her whole style changed. That’s when I first got the feeling about her being on a stage — when she stepped out of the car it was like seeing someone come out from behind the, you know — what do you call them?”

“The wings.”

“Yes. We asked her the question and she clasped her hands and with just the faintest trace of a smile said: ‘I deny guilt.’ Funny, that smile. I can still remember it. She seemed to be trying to say she forgave us for what we were unjustly doing to her. She seemed proud and sure of herself, yet frightened at the same time, squinting as though she’d just been brought out of light into darkness.”

“She’s got a lot of talent.”

“Mr. Rosenberg came up later. He looked more costumed. I remember a red tie he had on, one with some kind of leafy pattern in it, and he had a clean white handkerchief folded crisply in the breast pocket of his suit. A new suit, I think. We asked him: ‘To what do you attribute your criminal act?’ And he stood very stiffly like a soldier at attention, yet somehow disrespectful at the same time — you couldn’t keep your eye off that absurd white handkerchief in his breast pocket: ‘Neither I nor my wife is guilty,’ he said. Just like that.”

“Their lawyer probably prompted them.”

“Unh-hunh. Well, if he did, he did a good job of it. I’ve seen a lot of prisoners come here, but I don’t think I remember the arrival of any of them more clearly than these two.”

“Maybe you were keyed up, waiting for it, all the publicity…”

“Could be. I don’t remember. But I do know I didn’t feel it until they actually came through the gates. It was as though they were bringing some outside presence in with them. And it was true, you know — they were. I’m not the only one who remembers what they said. It’s been repeated everywhere, it’s part of history now.” He sighed, gazing off toward the river, which was now right in front of us. A sheen on it put down by the sun. We were facing into it, and it made the distant Cat-skills hazy and miragelike. There was a big greenhouse down there on the river bank on the other side of a heavy wire fence, a gun tower half-concealed behind it as though playing hide-and-seek. The greenhouse reminded me that I’d been meaning to bone up on farming methods for my Midwestern campaign visits. “It’s funny, isn’t it, Mr. Nixon?”

“What’s that?”

“How billions and billions of words get spoken every day, like all these we’ve been speaking on the way down here, for example, and for some reason — or for maybe no reason at all — a few of them stick, and they’re all we’ve got afterwards of everything that’s happened. Of course, you’re more used to that than I am, you’re probably always thinking of what the lasting impression is going to be…”

“What? I mean, yes!” A direct quote. Was he mocking me? “Part of the public life, Mr. Denno. You get used to it.”

“I don’t think I ever could. I can’t imagine ever saying anything that would be remembered. Or that I’d want to be remembered. The Rosenbergs have been just the opposite. Talking and acting like characters out of Aesop’s Fables or something.”

“Knowing that Aesop is around to write it down, you mean.”

“Yes,” laughed the Warden. “Right…”

We angled left. “Tell me, is there anything…uh, between them?”

“And kind of real intimacy, you mean?”

“Yes, well. Like that. I sometimes get the feeling that all of that, uh, heartthrob stuff has just been part of the, you know, the same show. Public-relations gimmick, you might say…”