Read Online Sweet Nothing by RICHARD LANGE - Free Book Online Page B

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