Robert Coover - Public Burning

“You have no moustache!” shrieks a child’s voice, shrill and sudden, making people jump. “What happened to your moustache? You look different!” The wire-rimmed glasses are gone, too, the patterned neckties, the padded shoulders…. “You must come home!” screams another little voice. “Every day there is a lump in my stomach, even when I go to bed!” The crowds in the Square glance up at the night sky in search of the voices’ source, clutch their programs tightly in their sweating hands, edge forward on their seats if they have one, stretch up on tiptoe if not, striving to see what’s happening up there on the stage.

The two guards, joined now by the prison attendant who brought in the bucket, have turned Rosenberg around, away from the chair, to face the people out in Times Square. He stands there, fragile and rubbery-limbed, staring chalkily out at all the shadowy multitudes staring back, but either he sees nothing out there, being blind with fear, or disbelieves what he sees. His T-shirt hangs loosely on his softly heaving chest — his little boys have T-shirts like that, too, they’ve been wearing them in all the photographs, only theirs have DODGERS stamped on them. “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies,” the rabbi says, as gently the guards press the prisoner Julius Rosenberg down into the brown-stained oak-and-leather chair. He does not resist; but he does not help them either. His body continues to function, but at some remove from his mind, as though he has already disowned it, while keeping it operative like some kind of visible metaphor for his anguish: not quite real any more, but something to be admired and pitied at the same time. Against their will, the people in fact admire and pity it, even as they fear it: this frailness — the Phantom’s last weapon!

The official Executioner comes out of his alcove to help the three prison attendants, as together, like a team of efficient airline stewardesses, they belt Julius Rosenberg in for his execution: chest, groin, legs, arms — he seems to want to sit upright and must be pushed back into the slight recline of the chair. The chest straps are tightened and secured, but still he cranes his head upward. His hands, clenched tightly in his lap as though holding on to something precious, must be pried apart by the four men and forced into the leather straps on the chair arms. His long slender fingers, scratching for a grip, seize on the ends of the chair arms and squeeze till the knuckles go shiny white. “Thou anointest my head with oil,” says the rabbi gravely, as indeed one of the guards dips his finger into a jar and slaps a dab of conductive paste on the little bald patch, freshly shaved, at the back of the condemned man’s head. He winces like a child shrinking from the cool touch of the alcohol-soaked cotton swab that precedes an inoculation.

“My cup runneth over,” continues the rabbi, but his voice seems to be fading, overtaken now by another voice, a woman’s, small but resonant and musical, riding in over the goodness and mercy shall follow like descant variations on a plainchant: “… sitting here and fighting for breath in an ever-narrowing circle of tightening time — oh darling, what a ghastly farce we are compelled to endure! I can’t believe it yet!” Not a majestic voice, but sweet and lyrical, the sort of voice one hears in church on the Sabbath singing Gounod’s “Ave Maria” or “En Kalohenu” or joining in on the “Alleluia Chorus.” In accompaniment, high above the Square on the Roof of the Astor, the lonely bugle grieves…. “I feel so inadequate in the sight of your need! If only I could truly comfort you, dearest one, but I can only sit here and weep bitterly for you and the children and our devastated lives — oh my God, I’m so unhappy!” The prisoner’s canvas-slippered feet are lifted onto the footrest and locked into place. He looks like a seasick traveler being tucked into a deck chair. A guard stoops and rips open a pantleg, which has been previously slit, then sewn together loosely so it wouldn’t flap indecorously on the last walk, and rubs in more of the same ointment used on the head. Metal electrodes with wet sponges are attached by the Executioner to these two oiled-up places. “… My heart aches for the children! I looked at my photo of Mike with his hair falling down over his forehead and his tie awry, and thought I should burst with longing! The horrible idea that we may never be with them again drives relentlessly through me and my brain reels, picturing their terror — oh Julie, how greedy I am for life and living…!” The prisoner’s head is forced back against the leather headrest and strapped in. His eyes are squeezed shut and he is breathing rapidly, his teeth bared. The song that the trumpeter is playing is “Ciribiribin.” “What shall I do? I am lashed by the most tremendous kind of longing! Oh, I love you so very dearly — kiss me goodnight, the way you used to, my dear husband! How much dearer to me you are than you have ever been…! ” His eyes blink open momentarily as though for a last look as the leather hood is fitted over his head and then dropped down over his face — but the hood, far from muffling the voice, seems to amplify it…. “How precious were those last few hours I was permitted to spend with you! It is when you cross the distance that separates us and call out your cheery greeting that I come alive and know that I am still my own self and not some fantastic being from another realm! How happy I am then — the very air changes and the heaviness lifts, and the will to live and work and fight is mine! There comes to me such an abiding sense of faith and joy, such a sure knowledge of the rich meaning our lives hold, my heart sings its refrain, ‘I am loved, I am loved!’ and within me there begins to develop the profoundest kind of belief that somehow, somewhere …” Two of the guards exit, the third returning to his place by the wall. Warden Denno steps out, glances perfunctorily at the straps and connections, then up at Executioner Francel, who nods and returns to his alcove. “… I shall find that courage, confidence and perspective I shall need to see me through the bottomless horror, the tortured screams I may not utter, the frenzied longings I must deny! Your faith alone builds my confidence, restores me to my rightful place in my own eyes…’ Executioner Francel positions himself before his switch. He moves with the deliberate precision of a man who knows what he is doing. “… Then, after you were gone, the loneliness closed around me — it’s all so strange without you! Oh bunny dear, hold me close to you tonight, be strong for me I need you so to be strong for me…!” The Warden raises his hand. Francel grasps the switch, wrapping his hand firmly around the big handle. “Whatever might be involved, I love you dear one, as I love my very own life! I kiss you good night with all my heart, draw you close into loving—“

Julius Rosenberg’s body is straining suddenly against the straps as though trying to burst from the chair. Air hisses from his lungs. His neck thickens as though swallowing something whole. The leather straps creak and there is a staticky crackling whine in the Square reminiscent of the classic mad-doctor movies — only more close up. The loose clothes flutter and his limbs shake. Greasy yellow-gray smoke plumes from the top of his head like a cast-out devil. Then, abruptly, the whine stops. The body falls back into the chair, limp as a rag. There is a deathly breath-held silence in Times Square. Before it can be broken, the Executioner methodically pulls a switch a second time and again the body leaps from its seat to heave and labor against its shackles. By the time the third charge is delivered, there are still a lot of gaping mouths and bulging eyeballs out front — some of the Holy Six in particular, close enough to smell the smoke, are looking a little green around the gills — but on the whole, the worst is past: they’ve seen it now and know what to expect. Most of them anyway — some have closed their eyes, a few have turned away. Mamie Eisenhower, for example, is whispering something over her shoulder to Georgie Patton’s widow, and seems to have missed the whole thing. Her husband’s eyelids have already started to droop, as they always do when his part is over; he crosses his arms and legs, lifting his right ham into Herb’s lap, and glances dismally down the row at Joe McCarthy, who, having caught a deep wheezing breath and crossed himself, now uncorks a hip flask and takes a long reviving snort. Irving Saypol sits cool as custard, erect yet relaxed, his long bespectacled face betraying no emotion whatsoever, his assistants Lane, Cohn, Kil-sheimer, and Branigan doing their best to emulate him. Judge Kaufman is partly screened by his long-necked wife, leaning across in front of him to whisper with Mamie Eisenhower, but behind her short-bobbed hair, his thick lips have pulled back to reveal the gap in his upper incisors, and there is a tic popping away in the thick white pouch of flesh in front of his left ear. Some of his jurors still seem a bit shaken as well (is this what they voted for?), and G-man Hoover’s bulldog scowl looks more like a case of severe heartburn right now than mere righteous indignation, but for the most part the picture is one of a general release from tension with each successive charge, a return, in the words of Warren Harding, to normalcy. The best index of this is the behavior of all the children out front: fascinated by the first two jolts, they are now bored by the third; they squirm in their seats as Julius’s body whips and snaps in its bonds, covering up their ears against the crackling whine, asking “What’s history?” and complaining that they want to go home or go see Mickey Mouse or use the toilet.