Robert Coover - Public Burning

When Francel has opened the switch and the body has collapsed for the third time, the two prison doctors walk over and rip the T-shirt down the front. Dr. McCracken puts his stethescope to the bared chest, nods to the others, and, wiping the sweat from his upper lip with the back of his hand, says: “ I pronounce this man dead.” Whereupon, Julius Rosenberg, taking Judge Irving Kaufman and the U.S. Department of Justice with him, enters the record books as the first American citizen ever executed by a civil court for espionage. More records are set to be broken when Ethel Rosenberg takes her turn in the chair, but this one belongs to Julius alone, and, as such things appeal to Americans, it is duly cheered — less enthusiastically up front, where the disquieting presence of Death can still be felt like a sticky malodorous fog, more warmly as it spreads out toward the periphery, traveling like a happy rumor, merging finally into a drunken exultant uproar out at the far edges, where everyone is having a terrific time without exactly knowing why.

Guards unbuckle Rosenberg’s corpse, offering the public a quick sensational glimpse of his blue tongue, wildly distorted facial muscles, and fractured eyeballs, then they heave the sacklike thing up onto the white-sheeted gurney, grunting as they work. While the cadaver is being wheeled offstage to the autopsy room, the attendant who brought in the ammonia bucket mops up the puddle beneath the electric chair and sponges off the soiled seat, working with self-conscious fastidiousness, aware of all the eyes upon him. The audience with gentle good humor applauds him — he smiles sheepishly, wiping his hands on his pants, and ducks back to his position beside the wall, stage left.

Cecil B. De Mille, meanwhile, using the Paramount Building as a kind of giant magic lantern, the Claridge Hotel as a screen, has commenced to project Uncle Sam’s documentary film on the Rosenberg boys, the idea being to augment the pathos (Americans, as he knows, go ape over sentiment) and to restore a certain monumentality to the event, a bit diminished by the actual human size of the principals and the loss during the blackout of the larger-than-life pageant icons — but they are running behind now with the executions, the Sabbath is rushing up on them, and so hardly has the film faded into the initial first-reel prison encounter between parents and children, the littlest son greeting his mother with “You look much smaller, Mama!” (“No, it is you who are growing bigger!”), when Rabbi Koslowe’s voice can again be heard down at the echoey far end of the Last Mile, gravely reciting, as cell doors clang and steps once more approach, the 15th Psalm: “Lord, who shall abide in Thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in Thy holy hill…?”

Yet, though it begins much the same as the one before, this is, as the people soon realize, no mere repeat performance — no, this is a true second act, a topper, they can feel it, even before Ethel Rosenberg has made her appearance through the Dance Hall door: something very different is about to happen! Maybe it’s simply because she’s a woman — it’s a rare thing to watch a woman being put to death, Uncle Sam was probably thinking of that when he set up the order; or maybe it’s the way they walk this time, the rustling of starched skirts, the click of hard heels coming down the corridor; or the flickering images on the Claridge perhaps, the little Rosenberg boys up there, several stories high, playing horsey on their parents’ backs; or David’s provocative description, recited by the rabbi but chosen by Ethel, of a citizen of Zion: “He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour!” This is not a prayer, it is an accusation! She is challenging them all, just as she challenged the press and public with her defiantly political Death House letters, or the President with her unyielding mercy pleas, or the Judge with heated quotations from Shaw’s Saint Joan: “You damn yourself,” she told him, “because it feels grand to throw oil on the flaming hell of your own temper! But when it is brought home to you; when you see the thing you have done; when it’s blinding your eyes, stifling your nostrils, tearing your heart, then — then — O God, take away this sight from me! O Christ! deliver me from this fire that is consuming me!”

By the time they pass under the SILENCE sign and into the heat and stench and glare of the Death House stage, Rabbi Koslowe has moved on to Ethel’s second selection, the 31st Psalm: “… Thou hast set my feet in a large room. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in trouble: mine eye is consumed with grief, yea, my soul and my belly!” But if Ethel Rosenberg — driving force behind the Master Spy, willing slave of a conspiracy against all humanity, and typist for the Crime of the Century — is consumed by grief, it is not obvious in the way she makes her entrance, walking buoyantly between two white-frocked prison matrons, her hands clasped in front of her, her head held high and her eyes sparkling, her face lit with a serene smile, declaring by her very presence that, unlike Shaw’s Saint Joan, she will not be burned offstage — indeed, even had this been the plan, she would not have allowed it.

She is dressed simply in a green cotton dress with white polka dots and loafer-type terrycloth slippers, her hair close-cropped on top, a tiny creature, just five feet tall, pert, full-breasted, and disturbingly pretty, with none of the puffy puckery-mouthed sag of the newspaper photos — maybe it’s the haircut, the loose springlike dress, the color in her cheeks; probably, though, it’s just her commanding style. There are some out in the audience who have been feeling they’ve seen all there is to see the first time around — you just plug them in, they twitch and jerk awhile and shit their pants, then you unplug them and cart them off, ho hum — and who have become a bit restless, distracted, looking ahead already to the Bobo Olson-Paddy Young bout to follow, laying their bets, getting into arguments, or else, especially if they’ve got their kids with them, contemplating the quickest route out of the pack-up — but Ethel’s entrance has changed all that. She’s got every one of them on the edge of their seats or the balls of their feet. President Eisenhower sits hunched forward, his eyes wide open for a change, and Mamie too is watching now. Vice President Nixon is white as a sheet, gripping the seat of his chair, sweating profusely. Julius shared his terror with them all, and so they were able to sympathize with him, get inside and suffer what he suffered, then survive — but Ethel is insisting on being herself, forcing them to think about something or someone other than themselves, which is both disquieting and exciting. She gazes around the set and out into Times Square with a kind of fierce delight, enjoying what she sees, meeting each of her accusers with a bold steady stare, smiling at the people beyond, daring them all to watch and listen…. “For I have heard the slander of many,” reads the rabbi, “fear was on every side: while they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away my life!” Her husband’s voice enters almost as though, with a flick of her short curls, she has cued it— “It’s the warmth and comradeship of decent people, it is the compassionate heart of good people and the fraternal solidarity of mankind — this is what is really worthwhile and this is what is good in the world!” —but at the same time, though her lips remain closed in their gently taunting smile, her own voice is present, too: “All my heart I send to all who hold me dear — I am not alone — and I die ‘with honor and with dignity’—knowing my husband and I must be vindicated by history!” Joe McCarthy is grinning broadly in frank admiration, and even Darryl Zanuck seems impressed. “Let the lying lips be put to silence,” reads the rabbi, “which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous!” She has not only stolen the atom bomb— she has stolen the Bible as well!