A Bad Man (27 page)
“I have this day sent to all administrative personnel,” the warden began, “formal notification of my intention to introduce a policy of remission in this institution. Early next week I shall be forwarding to the appropriate officials a detailed schedule of indulgences, which will then go immediately into effect.
“Now, as you know, paroles have, in the past, been based upon projections of a convict’s ability to adapt to the workaday world. Among the documents he has had to include in the dossier he builds for the parole board are letters from a prospective employer, character endorsements from members of the clergy, character endorsements from members of the secular arm, statements of reconciliation from members of his family and, if he’s to return to his old community, from his neighbors. It is on the basis of these, taken with his own pledges of good will, that the board makes it prognosis about the prisoner’s chances on the outside. I need hardly point out to you that such sentimental evidences as these would be of little consequence in a court of law. Of course the parole board also considers a convict’s record, his behavior during confinement, and makes, from hearsay, what it can of his present attitudes. But the poverty of these techniques is illustrated by the dramatic statistics that there is only a twelve-percent difference in the incidence rate of recidivism among parolees and those who are discharged only after serving their full sentences.
Twelve percent
.
“As you should be able to infer then, there is a distinct
tense shift
between the philosophy of punishment and the philosophy of pardon. A man is punished for a
fait accompli
; yet that same man, up for parole, is forgiven his past and granted his chance largely on the basis of a prediction—say rather a
hope
—about his actions in the future.
“It is this—this schism between past and future—which my policy of remission and schedule of indulgences seeks to adjust. Henceforward
my
recommendation to the parole board will be based upon my personal observation of a man’s
virtue
. ‘Warden’s Approval,’ formerly automatic like the principal’s signature on a diploma, now becomes the vital element in the parole process. The jerry-built letters of recommendation will still be required, of course, and sappy-hearted priests and social workers and wives who forget and sons whose hope exceeds their expectation will still be found to write them,
but these will be meaningless without my own recommendation
.’
The warden stepped forward onto the apron of the stage, at the length of the wire on his collar microphone. He took another step and must have broken the connection, for he tore the microphone from his lapel impatiently and dropped it to the floor. When he spoke, however, his voice still seemed amplified. “Now I would solicit your honor,” he said. “Now I would urge your virtue. Now I would inspire. You—” he called, “men with pencils, scholars of this place, ministers of my administration—hear me. Explain to them. Speak what I tell you. The tongues of Pentecost are upon me, and I would teach you prison business.
“And we shall prove here again, together, what crusaders traveling armed and East once proved, and what the old popes knew, and the hooded saints who stretched the rack, who turned its wheel, getting God’s awful leverage, and all those who once tied hate-knots on wrists behind backs and then tugged at the strappado, hauling at the lousy heretic’s flaggy self:
that virtue is as active a principle as evil, that cruelty is written off in a good cause, that there is no violence like an angel’s violence
.
“Let us pray.”
The man bowed their heads uneasily.
“Lord God of hooked scourge and knotted whip, of sidearms and sidecar, of bloodhound and two-way radio, vigilant God of good neighborhoods and locked Heaven—lend us Thy anger. Teach us, O God, revulsion. Remind our nostrils of stench and our ears of discord and our eyes of filth. Grant these men a holy arrogance and instill in them the courage to expose all bad men, to divulge their plans for jailbreak, their schemes of dirty escape in the back of a laundry truck. Give them the will to betray all wicked confidences, to publish secrets right and left. Bestow on them wakefulness, God, to collect the broken-talk dreams of their cellmates, and give them the memory to report
verbatim
whatever is spoken in anger behind my back or the backs of my guards. Move them to mar a friend’s plot, and to sing like canaries the hymns of their blessed betrayals. Instruct their tongues in delation and denunciation, and arrange it so that all charges brought against anyone anywhere may be made to stick!
“Transubstantiate now their prison garb into their chrisoms, for they would be Thy paracletes, and their very cells become as benefices in Thy penal see. Call on them to abjure and recant all blasphemy, in the
murus strictus
now and here and in the
murus largus
then and there. Admit them as successful spies to all infamous councils, and sustain the
endura
of their reputations, the ordeal of their betrayed confidences. Strengthen all stoolies to Heaven, O Lord, and make them to turn state’s evidence. Marry them to whores that they may correct them, and give them wicked children that they may chastise them. Have them to live at the scene of crimes near telephones.
“
But let their compurgations, if they would make them, fail in their mouths! Strike down all extenuators!
“Amen.”
“Amen,” said the men.
“This isn’t part of the prayer now,” the warden said. “The rest is off the record.” He winked. “We’re moving against the bad men.”
Feldman shuddered.
“Sometimes,” the warden said, “it isn’t enough merely to bring charges or to make sermons. There are—well,
you
know, you aren’t stupid—things that are done and there’s no recourse. There is…latitude. There are great nasty areas where one is still within one’s ‘rights,’
legal, snug as a bug
. Ask yourself.
How much time can a man be made to do for being himself?
Well, you see the problem. The bad men…Suppose—get that word, ‘suppose,’ I said—suppose they were
relaxed
to you? Listen to me.” He paused and wiped his forehead with his hand. Then he looked down at his shoes. “It’s embarrassing,” he said at last. “I’m no hinter, no intimator. Let’s not crap around with each other.
“I am calling for the infusion of the sacerdotal spirit! I need inquisitors’ hearts! You must be—you must be
malleus maleficarum
, hammers of witches, punishers and pummelers in God’s long cause. You must be warden’s familiars. We shall share the power of the keys. Despoil, confiscate, make citizen’s arrests. You know what needs to be done.
“We must invent terrible penances together. Rebuff the bondsman along with the bailee. Seek the alkahest of perfect punishment to dissolve the stony-hearted men. Bring your charges, bring them, please. Say ‘I know not whom to accuse, but here are the names of those I suspect.’ Imply. Implicate. Indict. What would you? Torture the witness? Force the confession? You’ve your immunities. I give you carte-blanche souls. Charge even the dead.
Yes!
Let us have exhumations. Bones to scatter. Visit plagues, visit poxes. Zealously, zealously, flagellate, spank. Interdict and preclude. Exorcise the
lamiae
, rout the
mascae
, bury the
incubi
. Ignite the dark conventicle. Hate heresies. Kiss not the toad on its posteriors nor lift the dog’s tail to make love. Don’t chew the Scriptures, nor piss on private property. Go straight, god-damnit!
Tapas. Tapas. Tapas
. If you would live forever, then think on sin until all scores are settled.
Talio. Talio
. Push them in cesspools.
Accusatio! Denunciatio!
Trust dreams, bad tastes in your mouths, hunches, first impressions. Bet long shots. Tribulations of the flesh. Trifle their hearts. Bread and water them.
Durus carcer et areta vita
. Be impeccable. You shall know them by their
kosti
and
saddarah
, their thread and shirt.
Haereticus indutus or vestitus. Poena confusibilus
. Crush the tergiversator, the vitiator, the equivocator!”
You got all that down? You got all that down, you good punctuators and spellers? Feldman wondered.
“Well,” the warden said cheerfully, “
well
. That felt good, I have to admit. It clears the lungs. A shout clears the lungs. Ah, there’s nothing like rage, men. It tones a man. But I tell you criminals, until you guys go straight you’ll never know what it feels like. Oh, you’ve your anger, I suppose, but you’ve never peaked to wrath or felt a fine fury. Guilt waters your whiskey and niggles your righteousness. Pikers, pikers, you nickled-and-dimed. Well, it stands to reason. You’re all debtors to doubt, uncertainty. There’s vacillation’s dreary falsetto in your tantrums. It amateurizes you, men. Try as you will, how can you hate a man with your gun in his ribs? Is a shooter e’er sore or a mugger e’er maddened? God damns and makes decisions and denotes, but the devil’s all contingency and connotation. There’s something listless in a crime of violence, something pale in a prisoner’s pique. So you lose wrath and make do with a lousy bitterness, settling for slurs instead of curses. Petulance, bitterness and the soured heart. Dyspepsia and low dudgeon and never the high decorum of an injured outrage or the sweet reason in a rich reprisal.
“Why, look around you! Who blooms here? Who’s got the health? Is the charlatan cheerful or the robber robust? Only your cuckold thrives, your murderer for morality. Sure, sure, only your criminal of passion, your redresser, your reparator—your strangles your stabber—only your gut-ripper and your castrator. There’s nothing like their strength unless it’s the fine fettle of the framed. Innocence. Innocence does it, self-defense does.
“Well, I’ll let you get back to your cells in a moment. I’ll lock you up. There are some night-shift personnel and their families outside that I’ve still got to talk to, but before I let you go I want to urge you again to think about what I’ve told you. I wish I could imagine that your malice toward bad men were predicated on your own good will, that you won’t just do what I ask merely to assure your paroles, but…well, I’m not naïve. I wasn’t born yesterday in a cabbage patch, I tell you, and I think I know the score. So I’m making it attractive, sweetening the pot.
“Yet—yet—yet a still small voice within me whispers that the time may come when you won’t be in it for the money, when you’ll vie for vengeance and strive for spite, your hearts swept by a lust for havoc and the will to afflict. You’ll get the hang of it, you hangmen. Trust me. Think—think—a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. In the meantime you’ve your own motives. So go back and size up your fellows. Don’t let them out of your sight. Take notes. Be suspicious. Watch in the foundry, in the print shop—
in the canteen
—the laborer’s labor. Does he love his work? When he whistles, is it a stirring march to set himself a fine pace, or is it a dreamy love song he hums to distract himself? The perfect crime’s imperfect. Sin leaves clues. Open your eyes, be alert. Stop, look and listen, for the world’s unsafe still. Earn your paroles. Time off for good behavior, everyone. Leave me with a remanence of corrupt men, I ask only that. Remember—rat and do worse, but leave no visible bruises.
Connote
injuries and stop short of murder, or we’ll both be in trouble.
“That’s that,” the warden said.
“That’s that,” the men said.
The warden nodded and they rose to leave. Guards came to prod them toward the doors. Someone shoved Feldman, but it was not a guard. It was his neighbor, a quiet convict from his own cellblock, stepping on his heels, jabbing him in the back.
They were marched to the rear-center door but then jammed together into the last few rows in order to let the night-shift personnel and their families pass into the auditorium first. While they were halted, the man behind Feldman leaned toward his ear. “You shit,” he whispered. “You mother-fucker kike bastard. Son-of-a-bitch cocksucker,” he told him softly. “Prick, fartass, scumbag, jerk. Fairy.” Feldman determined to ignore him, but the man’s mouth was almost in his ear. Once he felt the fellow’s lip brush against his lobe. He pulled his head away, but the man became bolder. He pinched Feldman’s back, first surreptitiously, then openly. Feldman moved forward and bumped into the man in front of him.
“Stand still there, you,” a guard said angrily, and smiled his sanction when the one Feldman bumped shoved him back roughly. Feldman stood still, enduring their pinches and shoves, the small talk of their marginal violence.
Meanwhile, the warden, still on the stage and able to see the temporary bottleneck at the doors, had begun to speak again, shouting a sort of recessional to them. “Not enough of you have been using Warden’s Forest in your free time,” he said. “I set this plot aside for your benefit, not my own. Yet when I look out on it from my office window I rarely see anyone in it. It’s not enough to reason that it’s winter and that the trees are all bare. Much can be learned from the cold. Much. What good does it do, men, to see the spring but not to suspect its sources? Little credit redounds to the gazer on fall’s fat spectacle.
“This is
your
copse, you robbers, and I want to see it used! Is that clear? All right, then. Move on out back there.” He began to clap his hands. “Virtue, virtue, virtue, virtue, virtue,” he cried. “Virtue, virtue.”
They started to march again, Feldman sliding out in a long first step to elude an anticipated shove or at least reduce its force. As they went up the aisle, he saw that his face had been the model for one of the gargoyles on the last panel of the Gothic siding.
Virtue, virtue, virtue, virtue, virtue, Feldman thought. Virtu, virtu, virtu, virtu, virtu, Vertigo!
E
legant Feldman, mandarin-robed, tasseled, the silken fringes of his belt like a very soft cat-o’-nine-tails—“To beat down grime. To punish all ordinary life’s shabby shit”—came up to the satinwood sideboard—“Get me breakfast, Innkeeper. See to the horses. Feed the postern, feed the coachman. Wenches, farewell. Here’s your health. Hey, nonny, nonny, with a hi and a ho and the rain it raineth every day”—and raised heavy silver lids; ladled, as if giving breakfast a downbeat, from the still-steaming chafing dish, goldenly scrambled eggs onto a thin white plate, smooth to the touch as cake icing. He picked, to go with the eggs, a sprig of lush mint, like a flower for a loved one, or a ceremonial herb for the gown of a bride, and carved a slice of ham, ruddy, scorched beneath its luscious glaze. He poured his coffee—black, for he admired the way it looked in the light cup, and loved to see the way it set off the steam. He brought his prizes to the table, already laid, and set them beside a napkin furled in its ring. He returned to the sideboard and hefted the viscous cocktails of jam and crystals of bright sweet jellies. He chose his toast, dark brown and crisp as bark, and took up a dish of butter pats jammed in a frozen choke of crushed ice. He lifted down a halved melon in its silver ring, its green meat pale as money.
