It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light,
like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard.
We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with
double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet
by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking
water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars,
with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due
to be hanged within the next week or two.
One prisoner had been brought out of his cell. He was a Hindu, a puny
wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick,
sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the moustache
of a comic man on the films. Six tall Indian warders were guarding him
and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood by with rifles
and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a chain through
his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tight to
his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on
him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while feeling him to
make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still
alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite unresisting,
yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly noticed what
was happening.
Eight oāclock struck and a bugle call, desolately thin in the wet air,
floated from the distant barracks. The superintendent of the jail, who
was standing apart from the rest of us, moodily prodding the gravel with
his stick, raised his head at the sound. He was an army doctor, with a
grey toothbrush moustache and a gruff voice. ĪFor Godās sake hurry up,
Francis,ā he said irritably. ĪThe man ought to have been dead by this time.
Arenāt you ready yet?ā
Francis, the head jailer, a fat Dravidian in a white drill suit and
gold spectacles, waved his black hand. ĪYes sir, yes sir,ā he bubbled.
ĪAll iss satisfactorily prepared. The hangman iss waiting. We shall proceed.ā
ĪWell, quick march, then. The prisoners canāt get their breakfast till
this jobās over.ā
We set out for the gallows. Two warders marched on either side of the
prisoner, with their rifles at the slope; two others marched close against
him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing and supporting
him. The rest of us, magistrates and the like, followed behind. Suddenly,
when we had gone ten yards, the procession stopped short without any order
or warning. A dreadful thing had happened ö a dog, come goodness knows
whence, had appeared in the yard. It came bounding among us with a loud
volley of barks, and leapt round us wagging its whole body, wild with glee
at finding so many human beings together. It was a large woolly dog, half
Airedale, half pariah. For a moment it pranced round us, and then, before
anyone could stop it, it had made a dash for the prisoner, and jumping
up tried to lick his face. Everyone stood aghast, too taken aback even
to grab at the dog.
ĪWho let that bloody brute in here?ā said the superintendent angrily.
ĪCatch it, someone!ā
A warder, detached from the escort, charged clumsily after the dog,
but it danced and gambolled just out of his reach, taking everything as
part of the game. A young Eurasian jailer picked up a handful of gravel
and tried to stone the dog away, but it dodged the stones and came after
us again. Its yaps echoed from the jail wails. The prisoner, in the grasp
of the two warders, looked on incuriously, as though this was another formality
of the hanging. It was several minutes before someone managed to catch
the dog. Then we put my handkerchief through its collar and moved off once
more, with the dog still straining and whimpering.
It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare brown back
of the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound
arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the Indian who never
straightens his knees. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place,
the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves
on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each
shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.
It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means
to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside
to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting
a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive
just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working ö bowels
digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming ö
all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when
he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth
of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls,
and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned ö reasoned even about
puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing,
feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden
snap, one of us would be gone ö one mind less, one world less.
The gallows stood in a small yard, separate from the main grounds of
the prison, and overgrown with tall prickly weeds. It was a brick erection
like three sides of a shed, with planking on top, and above that two beams
and a crossbar with the rope dangling. The hangman, a grey-haired convict
in the white uniform of the prison, was waiting beside his machine. He
greeted us with a servile crouch as we entered. At a word from Francis
the two warders, gripping the prisoner more closely than ever, half led,
half pushed him to the gallows and helped him clumsily up the ladder. Then
the hangman climbed up and fixed the rope round the prisonerās neck.
We stood waiting, five yards away. The warders had formed in a rough
circle round the gallows. And then, when the noose was fixed, the prisoner
began crying out on his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of ĪRam! Ram!
Ram! Ram!ā, not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help, but
steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. The dog answered
the sound with a whine. The hangman, still standing on the gallows, produced
a small cotton bag like a flour bag and drew it down over the prisonerās
face. But the sound, muffled by the cloth, still persisted, over and over
again: ĪRam! Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!ā
The hangman climbed down and stood ready, holding the lever. Minutes
seemed to pass. The steady, muffled crying from the prisoner went on and
on, ĪRam! Ram! Ram!ā never faltering for an instant. The superintendent,
his head on his chest, was slowly poking the ground with his stick; perhaps
he was counting the cries, allowing the prisoner a fixed number ö fifty,
perhaps, or a hundred. Everyone had changed colour. The Indians had gone
grey like bad coffee, and one or two of the bayonets were wavering. We
looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and listened to his cries
ö each cry another second of life; the same thought was in all our minds:
oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable noise!
Suddenly the superintendent made up his mind. Throwing up his head he
made a swift motion with his stick. ĪChalo!ā he shouted almost fiercely.
There was a clanking noise, and then dead silence. The prisoner had
vanished, and the rope was twisting on itself. I let go of the dog, and
it galloped immediately to the back of the gallows; but when it got there
it stopped short, barked, and then retreated into a corner of the yard,
where it stood among the weeds, looking timorously out at us. We went round
the gallows to inspect the prisonerās body. He was dangling with his toes
pointed straight downwards, very slowly revolving, as dead as a stone.
The superintendent reached out with his stick and poked the bare body;
it oscillated, slightly. ĪHeās all right,ā said the superintendent.
He backed out from under the gallows, and blew out a deep breath. The moody
look had gone out of his face quite suddenly. He glanced at his wrist-watch.
ĪEight minutes past eight. Well, thatās all for this morning, thank God.ā
The warders unfixed bayonets and marched away. The dog, sobered and
conscious of having misbehaved itself, slipped after them. We walked out
of the gallows yard, past the condemned cells with their waiting prisoners,
into the big central yard of the prison. The convicts, under the command
of warders armed with lathis, were already receiving their breakfast. They
squatted in long rows, each man holding a tin pannikin, while two warders
with buckets marched round ladling out rice; it seemed quite a homely,
jolly scene, after the hanging. An enormous relief had come upon us now
that the job was done. One felt an impulse to sing, to break into a run,
to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering gaily.
The Eurasian boy walking beside me nodded towards the way we had come,
with a knowing smile: ĪDo you know, sir, our friend (he meant the dead
man), when he heard his appeal had been dismissed, he pissed on the floor
of his cell. From fright. ö Kindly take one of my cigarettes, sir. Do you
not admire my new silver case, sir? From the boxwallah, two rupees eight
annas. Classy European style.ā
Several people laughed ö at what, nobody seemed certain.
Francis was walking by the superintendent, talking garrulously. ĪWell,
sir, all hass passed off with the utmost satisfactoriness. It wass all
finished ö flick! like that. It iss not always so ö oah, no! I have known
cases where the doctor wass obliged to go beneath the gallows and pull
the prisonerās legs to ensure decease. Most disagreeable!ā
ĪWriggling about, eh? Thatās bad,ā said the superintendent.
ĪAch, sir, it iss worse when they become refractory! One man, I recall,
clung to the bars of hiss cage when we went to take him out. You will scarcely
credit, sir, that it took six warders to dislodge him, three pulling at
each leg. We reasoned with him. "My dear fellow," we said, "think of all
the pain and trouble you are causing to us!" But no, he would not listen!
Ach, he wass very troublesome!ā
I found that I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing. Even
the superintendent grinned in a tolerant way. ĪYouād better all come out
and have a drink,ā he said quite genially. ĪIāve got a bottle of whisky
in the car. We could do with it.ā
We went through the big double gates of the prison, into the road. ĪPulling
at his legs!ā exclaimed a Burmese magistrate suddenly, and burst into a
loud chuckling. We all began laughing again. At that moment Francisās anecdote
seemed extraordinarily funny. We all had a drink together, native and European
alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a hundred yards away.
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