Dada 163

I was unwise to even consider a possibility of release. For just one moment I had pictured myself in freedom, standing behind a double rank of policemen outside the prison walls, an onlooker who had come to attend the final show. Who could go home and be free afterwards. The thought flooded my mind with a wild exultation like the wind that blew down from the mountains in the north. But it was stupid to let my imagination run away with me like that. A moment later I was shivering myself and had to wrap myself in a sheet. Even my mouth seemed to tremble. Another fancy of mine was to frame new laws that clearly stated that when you meant to do something that was when you should be punished. If you didn’t, you could not be found guilty. Your crime had to be pre meditated. It would give the criminal more of a chance that way. It might only be a dogs chance anyway and they would soon clean that up but as rule there should be a slip in the knot one time out of a thousand. It would give anyone who was going to die that slim hope of release, like the amnesty for a president’s birthday or a Sultan’s anniversary. Materials such as the rope, the garrotte or the guillotine don’t give a chance to anyone only the justice of a death ordained. These are deaths indeed. I didn’t know about the rope but maybe they would just start again if the knot slipped. Say the knot kept on slipping. They could call this ‘an act of god’ and let you live and y the spirits flood and pour back into those areas strangled. The pain of those channels squeezed tight then filling up again with blood and air might initially torment you but at least you were alive. Any condemned man needs to have this hope in his system, otherwise, what was the point. They might as well take you out and shoot you in the yard and let your parents pay for the bullet like they do in China. If it came to this, the condemned had to collaborate mentally with the system of his accusers so that all would pass off without a hitch in this tricky business of death. It could turn nasty was the unspoken thought. In return he would be ‘given’ respect. Give me Russian roulette any day, with two gulps of freedom between each bullet and even more precious my time and the sky between court room and prison van.