Chapter XXII

My time grows very short. All the manuscript I have written is safely smuggled out of the prison. There is a man I can trust who will see that it is published. I am writing these lines in the death cell. I must be kept alive for the hanging, or else will the public be cheated, the law blackened.

This is my last writing. Tomorrow morning the hour is set. I have lived so many lives. I am tired of the endless struggle and pain and catastrophe that come to those who wander among the stars.

I have just endured a visit from the Warden. He is quite different from the Warden of San Quentin. He was very nervous, and perforce I had to entertain him. This is his first hanging. He told me so. And I explained that it was also my first hanging. He was unable to laugh. He has no income outside his salary, his wife is an invalid. Really, the man told me almost all his troubles.

My last two years in San Quentin were very gloomy and depressing. Ed Morrell was taken out of solitary and made head trusty of the whole prison. This was Al Hutchins’ old job, and it carried three thousand dollars a year. To my misfortune, Jake Oppenheimer began to hate the world. For eight months he refused to talk even to me.

In prison, news will travel. Give it time and it will reach dungeon and solitary cell. It reached me, at last, that Cecil Winwood, the poet-forger, the snitcher, the coward, was returned for a fresh forgery. It must be remembered that it was this Cecil Winwood who concocted the fairy story that I had hidden the non-existent dynamite and who was responsible for the five years I had then spent in solitary.

I decided to kill Cecil Winwood. You see, Morrell was gone, and Oppenheimer had remained in the silence. I remembered back to the time when I was Adam Strang and patiently nursed revenge for forty years. What he had done I could do.

I can’t tell you how I came into possession of the four needles. They were small cambric needles. My body was very emaciated, and I had to saw four bars, each in two places, in order to make an aperture through which I could squirm. I did it. I used up one needle to each bar. I had been cutting my way out for eight months. But finally I got it, and I got out.

I regret greatly that I did not get Cecil Winwood. I had calculated well on everything save one thing. Here was the one thing I had not calculated on—myself. I had been five years in solitary. I was hideously weak. I weighed eighty-seven pounds. I was half blind. And I was immediately stricken with agoraphobia. I was affrighted by spaciousness.

The yard was deserted. Thrice I essayed to cross it. I leaned against the wall and cried. Then I had a chill, and shook as with an ague. To cross the yard was impossible for me in my condition. I started to skirt the yard.

The guard noticed me. I saw him, a huge, well-fed monster. The struggle between us can be easily imagined, but they say that I struck him on the nose with my fist.

For that I was sentenced to death.

I have lived many lives through the long ages. Man has made no moral progress in the past ten thousand years. I affirm this absolutely. Under his thin skin of morality, he is the same savage that he was ten thousand years ago.

“Thou shalt not kill”—piffle! They are going to kill me tomorrow morning. Dear friends, I who am about to die, salute you with—“Piffle!”

I ask you, where is that new morality finer than was preached by Christ, by Buddha, by Socrates and Plato, by Confucius and whoever was the author of the “Mahabharata”? Good Lord, fifty thousand years ago our women were cleaner, our family and group relations were more rigidly right.

I must say that the morality we practised in those old days was a finer morality than is practised today. Think of our child labour, of our police and political corruption, of our food adulteration and of our slavery of the daughters of the poor. We were clean, I tell you. We did not dream such depths of depravity. Yea, so are all the lesser animals of today clean. It required man, with his imagination, to invent the deadly sins. The lesser animals, the other animals, are incapable of sin.

I have never known cruelty more terrible, nor so terrible, as the cruelty of our prison system of today. In the old days we punished drastically and killed quickly. But we were not hypocrites. Lord, Lord, they only crucified Christ. They have done far worse to Jake Oppenheimer and me.

As Ed Morrell once rapped to me with his knuckles: “The worst possible use you can put a man to is to hang him.” I have little respect for capital punishment. Capital punishment is so silly, so stupid, so horribly unscientific.

My last morning. I slept like a babe throughout the night. I slept so peacefully that the guard thought I had suffocated myself in my blankets.

I have had my breakfast. It seemed a silly thing to do, but I ate it heartily. The Warden came with a quart of whiskey. Then they have put on me the shirt without a collar.

It seems I am a very important man this day. Quite a lot of people are suddenly interested in me.

The doctor has just gone. He has taken my pulse. I asked him to. It is normal.

I am the calmest man in the prison. I am like a child. The reporters have just left. Queer young fellows. Some show that they have been drinking. It seems easier to be hanged than to watch.

My last lines. It seems I am delaying the procession. My cell is quite crowded with officials and dignitaries. They are all nervous.

I can only repeat myself. There is no death. Life is spirit, and spirit cannot die. Only the flesh dies and passes. Spirit alone endures and continues to build upon itself through successive and endless incarnations. What shall I be when I live again? I wonder. I wonder…

Vocabulary

A

abandon – v покидать; оставлять

abdomen – n брюшная полость; живот

abhorrent – adj отвратительный; вызывающий отвращение

abide – v терпеть; выносить

ability – n способность, навык

aboard – adv на борту

abode – n жилище

abominably – adv отвратительно

abreast – adv не отставая, на уровне

absolute – adj абсолютный; обязательный; полный; совершенный; неограниченный

absolutely – adv безусловно; совершенно точно, абсолютно

abstract – adj абстрактный

abstraction – n абстракция

absurd – adj нелепый, абсурдный

abuse – v ругать; оскорблять; мучить

accompany – v сопровождать

accomplish – v выполнить, делать; достигать, выполнять

accord – n согласие, соглашение

account – n счёт; история; v объяснять

acrid – adj едкий

active – adj деятельный, активный

actor – n актёр

add – v прибавлять; добавлять

addition – n прибавление, дополнение; добавление

adherent – n приверженец

administration – n управление, организация; администрация

admirable – adj замечательный, прекрасный, достойный восхищения

admiral – n адмирал

admire – v любоваться; восхищаться

admit – v допускать; признавать(ся)

adulteration – n порча; разбавление

advertisement – n реклама; объявление

advice – n совет

adviser – n советник

aeon – n эра; (целая) вечность

afar – adv вдалеке

affix – v прикреплять

afford – v быть в состоянии; позволять

affright – v пугать

affront – n оскорбление

aforetime – adv прежде

afterward – adv потом; впоследствии; позже

aged – adj престарелый

aghast – adj потрясённый; ошеломлённый

agony – n мучение; страдание; агония

agoraphobia – n агорафобия

agriculturist – n земледелец

agronomy – n агрономия; сельское хозяйство, земледелие

ague – n малярия; лихорадка

alien – n чужестранец; adj иностранный

alms – n милостыня

aloof – adj сдержанный, суховатый; отчужденный

alter – v менять(ся); изменять(ся)

alternation – n чередование

amaze – adj изумлять; восхищать

amazement – n изумление

amend – v исправлять

anaesthesia – n анестезия; обезболивание

anaesthetic – n анестезирующее средство; adj анестезирующий; обезболивающий

ancestor – n предок, прародитель

anguish – n мучение; мука; страдание

animosity – n враждебность

ankle – n лодыжка, щиколотка

antagonism – n антагонизм

antelope – n антилопа

anxiety – n беспокойство; тревога; волнение

anxious – adj озабоченный; беспокоящийся; волнующийся; взволнованный

anxiously – adv озабоченно

aperture – n отверстие; проём; щель

apostate – n отступник; adj отступнический

apparel – n одеяние, наряд, облачение; v наряжать; облачать

apparition – adj (по)явление

appoint – v назначать; определять

appointee – n получивший назначение; назначенный

arbitrary – adj произвольный; случайный

archer – n лучник

argot – n арго, жаргон

aristocrat – n аристократ

armful – n охапка, большое количество; полный кулак

armour – n доспехи

array – v выстраивать

ashamed – adj пристыжённый; испытывающий стыд

ass – n осёл

assault – n нападение; v нападать; атаковать

assert – v утверждать; заявлять

astir – adj на ногах; взбудораженный

astride – adv верхом

astrology – n астрология

atonement – n искупление

atop – adv & prep на вершине; наверху

attendance – n присутствие; посещение; аудитория; публика; обслуживание

attitude – n отношение

audience – n аудитория; слушатели

auditor – n слушатель

august – adj величественный

augustly – adv величественно

aver – v утверждать