Salman Rushdie: Shalimar the Clown

Most of the men under sentence of death were sent to the East Block or the “North Seg”-the original death row, where the gas chamber was located-but those who were classified Grade B Condemned-the gang members, the men who had been involved in stabbings while in prison, the ones other inmates wanted to see dead in a hurry-had to stay in the A/C, where there were almost a hundred solitary confinement cells, on three floors. The classification committee decided that Shalimar the clown was a Grade-B prisoner because of the potentially large numbers of enemies he might find in the prison population. There were about thirty-five men in the North Seg and over three hundred in the East Block and violence and rape were commonplace and anything could be a weapon, a pencil stub could put out a man’s eye. The men were let out for yard in groups of sixty or seventy and this was a dangerous time. If a fight broke out a guard might start shooting down into the yard and the risk of being hit by a bullet bouncing off the concrete walls was not small. The accommodation in the A/C was unpleasant even by the standards of death row but for a long time Shalimar the clown opted not to participate in yard. He remained in his cell, doing push-ups or strange, slow-motion, dancelike exercises for hour after hour or, for further hours at a time, simply sitting cross-legged on the floor with his eyes closed and his hands lying open on his knees, with the palms upturned.

His room was ten feet long and four feet wide and contained a bed made of a plate of steel and a stainless-steel sink and toilet. Twice a month the prison issued him writing paper, toilet paper, a pencil and some soap. He was not allowed to have a cup. He was given a container of milk for breakfast each day and if he wanted coffee he had to hold this container out through the tray slot and the guard would pour hot coffee into it. When the guard’s aim was poor Shalimar the clown’s hands were scalded, but he never cried out. The A/C was filled with the noises of a hundred condemned human beings and their smells as well. The men shouted and raged and made obscene remarks but they were also full of philosophy and religion and there were some who sang, The days are coming when things will get better, First we must overcome the stormy weather, and some who spoke fast and rhythmically in a kind of jailhouse rap, I pace back and forth in a straight line, Thinking of nothing, trying to burn Time, The darkness cloaks the brightest of days, The chill in the bones is here to stay, and many who called out to God, Although I still sit in my cell, my new home, for hours and days upon end, I know in my heart that I’m never alone, ’cause Jesus is now my best friend. The life of Shalimar the clown had dwindled to this, but he never ranted, nor did he sing, nor did he speak fast and rhythmically, nor did he call upon God. He took what was given to him and waited, when William T. Tillerman abandoned him and walked away he heard all around the voices of death row’s most hated inmates telling him, man, took me four years to find an attorney to get my appeal lodged, that ain’t nothin’, motherfucker, took me five and a half, there were men who had waited nine years or ten, waited for justice they said, because many of them still protested their innocence, many of them had studied up and knew the statistics, the percentage of exonerations on death row was high, far, far higher than in the rest of the prison community, so God would help, if you trusted in God he would send down his love and save you, but in the meanwhile you just had to wait, you just had to hope your number didn’t come up when some election-happy governor wanted a condemned man to fry.

On the wall of his prison cell a previous inmate had chalked a chemical equation: 2NaCn + H2SO4 = 2HCN + Na2SO4. This, Shalimar the clown realized, was the true sentence of his death. “You don’t need to worry about no ten years, pretty boy,” one of the guards taunted him. “Brutha, in yo’ case we hear ev’thing gonna be expedite. ”

This turned out not to be true. The months lengthened into years. Five years passed, more than five years, two thousand slow, stinking days. The fabric of the prison was crumbling and so were its inmates. A rainstorm brought down chunks of the perimeter wall, injuring guards and prisoners. The men on death row grew older, fell sick, got stabbed, got kicked to death, got shot. There were many ways to die here that were not covered by the equation on Shalimar the clown’s cell wall. After the third year he chose to come out of his cell and allow himself to be strip-searched and go outside wearing only his underwear and participate in yard and let what had to be come to pass. On the first day there were clumps of men staring at him, challenging him. He did not try to stare anybody down. He leaned against a wall and looked up at the giant green chimney stack sticking out of the gas-chamber roof. After the gas chamber was used the poison gas, the hydrogen cyanide, HCN, would be released into the atmosphere through this pipe. He turned his eyes away.

Men were playing cards at the two card tables. Other men were going one on one under a basketball hoop. He went to the chin-up bar and when he had completed one hundred chin-ups the basketball players stopped playing. When he had completed two hundred the poker school broke up. When he had completed three hundred he had everyone’s attention. He dropped to the floor and went back to lean against the wall. People noticed he wasn’t sweating. One of the most important Bloods came up to him. He was a big three-hundred-pounder and he was holding a sharpened plastic blade that had fooled the metal detector. The gang lord leaned toward Shalimar the clown and said, “No strongman stunt gonna save yo’ terroris’ ass now.” Shalimar the clown’s movements seemed unhurried but as a result of them the Blood King was in a painful armlock and Shalimar the clown had the plastic blade at his throat and before the guards could shoot he had pushed the Blood King away and tossed the blade into the yard toilet. After that he was left alone for a year. Then six men jumped him in a coordinated attack and he was badly beaten and fractured two ribs but he broke three men’s legs and blinded a fourth. The guards held their fire. Wallace, the officer who had taunted him four years earlier, told him, “Only reason we didn’t gun you down was, we waitin’ to see you choke in that ol’ gas cooker over there.”

He had found a lawyer, a man named Isidore “Zizzy” Brown who was handling the cases of several of the poorest A/C inmates, and was one of the hundreds of death-row attorneys resident in the San Quentin area. There were meetings from time to time in the visitors’ cage. At these meetings Shalimar the clown did not appear to be especially interested in the appeals process. One of the other inmates warned him during yard that his lawyer had a bad reputation. Apparently he had acquired his nickname by falling asleep several times in court. On one such occasion the judge had remarked, “The Constitution says everyone’s entitled to the attorney of their choice. The Constitution doesn’t say the lawyer has to be awake.” Shalimar shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter,” he said. Five years passed and finally Brown told him an appeal date had been set. “Let it pass,” said Shalimar the clown. “You don’t want to appeal?” the attorney asked. Shalimar the clown turned away from him. “It’s enough now,” he said. That night when he closed his eyes he realized he couldn’t see Pachigam clearly anymore, his memories of the valley of Kashmir had grown imprecise, broken beneath the weight of life in the A/C. He could no longer clearly see his family’s faces. He saw only Kashmira; all the rest was blood.