The Last Execution (6 page)

“Wait!” he says. “I know one!”

He looks about, confused. The hand does not respond. So he just starts telling his tale:

“It must have been four or five years ago. Dad was well—or at least better—and we had a week's work digging up shrubs and roots from a field. It was hard work. The soil was bad. It was more sand than soil. The roots were buried deep, they were tough as rope. The shrubs clawed at our arms till they bled, the sand kept getting in our eyes; we could barely see what we were doing. . . .”

The boy stops. The fly is still in the cell; its black body has just crossed the ray of light from the window. He continues:

“Even so, I was watching a boy playing in the meadow below. He was playing so carelessly, so recklessly; he'd be no use to anyone back home. He was throwing stones, leaping and hopping in the meadow; he was not a boy who had to work. It was unfair. I envied him. I felt like running him over. Just to stop his games! But there was no time. We were working hard. I wanted to cry. I was tired, I was mad at him. We worked till it got dark, and then I couldn't see whether he was still in the meadow.

“We slept in the farmer's barn. He gave us some food to eat. Dad went to get it for us. He had to shake me awake when he came back.

“ ‘Here,' he said. ‘Eat.'

“We ate in silence. Then he told me what he'd heard in the farmyard. That something had happened to the neighbor's daughter. A heap of fieldstones had slid down and buried her.

“ ‘She's dead.'

“She was crushed and suffocated under a pile of stones. We finished our meal in silence. There were bits of meat in the gruel.

“Dad said: ‘We should be grateful.'

“ ‘Yes, Dad.'

“Dad checked the straw on the floor and carefully lowered his back to the ground. I could see it in his face.

“ ‘Good night, Niels.'

“ ‘Good night, Dad.'

“I closed my eyes, and I think I fell asleep, but then I suddenly opened my eyes again and sat up. Dad didn't move, but now I understood: That was his sister! The boy in the meadow—
his
sister was dead. He had not been playing in the meadow at all. He just hadn't wanted to go home. He'd have given the world not to think about her being dead.

“I thought about the boy some more. A shiver ran down my spine, as if I'd seen a ghost: Perhaps he didn't dare go home because it was his fault. I saw him standing there: on a pile of stones, arms stretched wide, like a king; his little sister standing down below, looking at him, giggling. . . .”

Niels stopped telling his story. He closed his eyes, as if trying to remember what came next.

“The next day Dad's back couldn't work anymore, and they didn't want us lying in the barn, so we moved on. . . . End of story.”

Someone coughs. Niels can hear a bustle of activity outside. That life is being lived.

His father's back grew steadily worse. The boy recalls the odd memory here and there. He was used to disapproving looks, but now it was his father's bad back that made people stop and stare; now it was the sight of his father that prompted the most furrowed brows. Niels longed desperately for the days when he had been the one—a frail little boy—they looked down on. He had been the object of their scorn; that was easier to bear. Not his dad; he could have sobbed.

One day he came close to knocking a farmer down to the ground, beating him up, for a comment he'd made, so mean. Another day Niels went to fetch some water, and on his way back he passed by two laborers. He could not help but overhear their words.

“There's barely more than a few grains of sand on that old man's spade,” said the one.

“Perhaps he should try spading with his back—it's stiff  'nough to dig a ditch with!”

The two men snorted with laughter. The boy forced himself to keep walking.

He handed the water to his father. His father drank.

“Ahh,” he said.

The boy turned his back.

“What's the matter?” the father asked.

“I'm not thirsty.”

The father could not walk far. He tired quickly. And he was sick. He threw up on the roadside. The boy stood and watched: He was so thin, his back so bent. He looked like a sheet of paper folded in half.

The boy supported his father. He provided food. But he felt it to the bone when his father gripped his arm. His hoarse voice:

“We will not steal!” he said. “No matter what: We won't do it!”

The boy shook his head. Motioned with his head again. Then he said: “No, Dad.”

His father loosened his grip.

“And remember: You're going home to your oven.”

Always this fear of the workhouse. It rooted in the boy; the sight of a uniform sent him running.

The boy never stole. He collected apples. Apples that would have rotted on the ground. And he played games. Boys' games. He practiced throwing. With stones. One, two, three stones. One of the stones veered off course and hit the branch of an apple tree. The boy collected only those apples that had fallen to the ground. Then he took them to his father. No America.

Niels remembers one day his father could not get his back up off the floor. He lay in a shed, a hand under his back and a bottle in the crook of his arm. The boy was desperate. He talked about his mother. If only she had lived.

“Imagine Mum hadn't been ill,” he said.

“There's no point, Niels.”

“Yes, but wouldn't that have been good?”

“Forget it.”

“No. Wouldn't it?”

“I don't know.”

“No, but I do.”

The father took a sip from the bottle without looking at the boy.

“Don't you ever think about her?” asked the boy.

“No,” answered the father.

“I do. All the time.”

“Don't.”

“I can't.”

“You have to.”

The last words came out hard. They both fell silent. Then the boy said:

“It's not your fault, Dad.”

“It's nobody's fault,” he said.

“Then you do think about her!” he cried.

The father did not answer, just closed his eyes. He looked as if just moving his eyelids hurt.

The fly is back on the hand. Silent. Through the window the boy can see a cut of bleak blue sky.

He can see the road ahead, there, where he met the girl.

He was sitting in the middle of a field. His father's back was bad. They had found a place to rest under a clump of trees. There he lay. Niels sat in the field.

There was a boy like a statue in a field.

He had not said so out loud, but that's what he was doing once more: waiting for the one who would not come.

“Ha!” was all the girl said.

He had not heard her come. The sun blinded his eyes. He had to shield them with his hand.

“The scarecrow moves!” she laughed.

Niels got to his feet.

“This is our field,” he said.

“Is that so?” the girl answered. “And I'm carrying this basket for the sake of it.”

“Aren't you too busy to stand here talking to me?” he asked.

“I've been told to watch out for beggars!”

Her cheeks were red. He wanted to say something really smart, but when he opened his mouth, nothing came out.

“You're the worst beggar I've ever met,” she said.

“My father is very sick,” he said. “I think he's going to die.”

Even Niels was surprised. The last bit he hadn't meant to say out loud. The girl watched him closely.

“Where do you live?”

He was about to lie, rattle off his lines, but he just shrugged instead. The girl shifted the basket from one hip to the other. Then she pointed to a meadow between a stretch of forest and a field.

“Tonight,” she said, and left.

Niels was there, in the meadow, before the sun went down. He waited. Before him there was a path that split in two. Finally, he saw her coming down one of them. He waved. She did not wave back. She was carrying a bowl of soup.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Do you have your father's eyes?”

“No. My mother's.”

“Is she sick too?”

“No, she's fine,” he said.

“Tomorrow night,” she said, turned, and left.

The boy hears the warden locking someone into the prison. He cannot hear any talk, only steps on the stones. He feels a brush of hope before it disappears, and a family is standing by the cell. They're staring at him. Their faces are red, their boots are wet.
There must still be snowdrifts outside
, thinks the boy.

It is only once the mother spits.

The brother says:
You child murderer!

The sister hisses:
We will be standing in the first row to see the blood gush from your neck!

That
he understands: This is the boy's family.

They damn him to Hell, and they keep on damning him. Outside, the dog begins to bark; perhaps it's afraid they'll hurt him. But it doesn't matter. They have every right to call him whatever they please. Damn him to wherever they please.