Richard Lange - Sweet Nothing

“Did they beat you?” I said.

“No,” he said. “It was a stone thrown from the crowd.”

Hearing footsteps on the stairs, I quickly moved the lamp away from the door and closed the feeding slot. The commander appeared out of the shadows. I was expecting Pascal, the guard who watched over the prisoner at night.

“Pascal is refusing his watch,” the commander said. “The details that came out at the trial have apparently enraged him. I need you to stay on until midnight, when I’ll relieve you myself.”

“Fine, sir,” I said. “If someone would only go around and let my wife know.”

“I’ll send a man right away, and also arrange for your dinner,” the commander said.

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“We’ll be rid of this vermin soon enough,” the commander said. “Another week or two.”

“Yes, sir.”

A few hours later I heard someone else descending. This time it was Pascal, along with two other guards from another section of the prison. They carried clubs and breathed cheap brandy.

“Step aside,” Pascal said. “We mean to take the bastard.”

“By whose order?” I said.

“By order of the citizens of Bordeaux,” Pascal said. “There are hundreds of them at the gates, demanding satisfaction.”

“Satisfaction isn’t justice,” I said.

“Unlock the door,” Pascal said.

“I won’t,” I said. “And neither will you.”

One of the other guards, a sadistic oaf called Dédé, sprang forward and brought his club down on my shoulder with all the strength of his drunken righteousness. The blow shook me to my toes and drove tears into my eyes, but I stood my ground. Dédé raised his club to strike me again and would have cracked my skull if Pascal hadn’t stopped him, saying, “Enough, man. He’s one of us, after all.”

“No, he isn’t,” Dédé said. “He’s a damned coward.”

The oaf backed away but looked as if he was waiting for any excuse to continue the beating.

“This scum doesn’t deserve your mercy,” Pascal said to me.

“I’m a guard, and he’s my prisoner,” I said. “It’s simply my duty to see that he comes to no harm.”

Pascal blinked twice and squinted at me, then turned for the stairs. “Let’s go,” he called to the others. They followed reluctantly, Dédé muttering over his shoulder, “You’ll answer to the people for this.”

As soon as their footsteps faded, I sank to the ground, my left arm numb, my collarbone throbbing. This was too much for me. If they returned, they could have him, and the devil take them all. It was just me and the rats, though, until the commander arrived and sent me home for the night.

WHERE ARE MY footmen this morning? the prisoner asked.

The trial’s over, I replied.

And the verdict? the prisoner asked.

Death, I replied.

What a pity, the prisoner said.

IT TOOK NEARLY a week for the guillotine to be transported down from Paris and erected in the square in front of the fort. The prisoner remained calm until the last day, when a final, furious storm of lunacy left him more lost than ever. I looked in on him at noon and found him pacing his cell. At one he’d stripped off his clothing. At two, he was abusing himself most frantically.

“Tell me about your children,” he called out when he sensed me at the feeding slot. “Little girls? Little boys?”

Revulsion like I’d never known nearly doubled me over, and it was as if I were the first man uttering the first word when I shouted, “Enough!”

“Do you bathe them in the evening?” he continued. “Kiss their little—”

“Another word, and I’ll kill you,” I said.

“Me? Your dear cell mate?” he said. “I think not.” He thrust his free hand through the slot. “Come, brother, let me touch some soft part of you. The underside of your forearm, your eyelids, your tiny cock.”

“Enough!” I roared again and laid the hot lantern glass against his grasping fingers. When he pulled them back in pain, I slammed shut the slot and moved off down the corridor, where I begged God to help me douse the fire of my outrage with the blessed waters of compassion.

THE COMMANDER REQUESTED I come in early the next day to assist him in readying the prisoner for execution. The prisoner spent his last hour alone with a priest, and then, at dawn, the commander and I entered the cell. We bound the prisoner’s wrists, and the commander cut away the collar of his tunic. Because of the awfulness of his crimes, he was not to be allowed to enjoy the light of his last morning. It was left to me to place the black hood over his head. As I pulled it down, just before it covered his face, I sent him a thought— I’ll pray for you —but he wouldn’t look me in the eye.

THAT WAS THE last I saw of him. A trio of soldiers led him to a waiting wagon, which carried him out to the guillotine. I was told he went to his death quietly. The blade fell, the crowd that had gathered to watch cheered, the body was carted away.

The priest returned to the pit shortly after the execution. I sat where I always sat, staring into the empty cell and trying to work up the strength to prepare it for its next occupant.

“You were his guard?” the priest asked me.

“Yes, Father,” I replied.

He handed me an envelope. “He asked me to give this to you,” he said.

Inside was the list of the Wolf’s victims from the newspaper. At the top of the page the prisoner had scrawled the words Ma Confession, and next to every name, those of the known dead and those of the missing, he’d written, Oui .

I passed the list to the commander. He was pleased, elated even, and told me the rest of the day was mine, a reward for outstanding service. I climbed out of the pit, left the prison, and wandered the early-morning streets in a daze, unused to the bright sunlight and the raucous exuberance of the city coming to life. Women shouted from window to window across narrow alleys, shop owners joked as they set up their sidewalk displays, and children, everywhere children, their joyous voices ringing out like the songs of unseen birds.

I eventually found myself on the steps of Saint-Michel and collapsed there like a weary pilgrim. I’d lived in the shadows of its blackened stones and jagged spires since birth. As a boy I used to imagine that the church was God’s armored fist and the tower beside it His sword. One felt safe with something like that always so close. Safe. Oh, how I longed to be a boy again.

Perhaps if I talked to a priest, I thought, he’d have some words of reassurance about the thickness of the walls between worlds and how one can wrestle evil without being infected by it. I wouldn’t have believed anything he said, but it might’ve provided temporary solace, like a soothing balm for a wound that can never heal.

I couldn’t bring myself to enter the church just then, however, to return to darkness and heavy silence no matter how sanctified, so I continued to sit on the steps and marvel at the many tiny delights the morning brought my way. The swifts darting so skillfully among the chimneys, the sound of a teacher calling her students to class, the smell of bread from an old woman’s basket. And then, both ashamed and unashamed, I bowed my head and wept.

THE SUN HAS NEVER felt as good as it does when I finally step out of that jailhouse and into a beautiful Friday morning, the air smelling a little like jasmine, a little like the ocean; happy weekend smiles on all the faces in the windows of a passing bus; and the mountains sitting right there, like they sometimes do, looking close enough to touch.

I’ve only been locked up for forty-eight hours, but this bit was worse than any of the others because it was so unexpected. The cops broke into the little casino Kong runs in the back room of his bar, saw the slots and the craps setup, and before you know it, I was being yanked out of my seat at the poker table and slammed against the wall, and when they ran my license, up popped a couple of speeding tickets that had gone to warrant. Two years I’d managed to fly under the radar, and just like that, I was back in the system.