A Witness to an Execution

Meurseualt woke up with the stars in his face. Sounds of the country-side were drifting in: smells of night, earth, and salt air were cooling his temples. For several days leading up to his execution, he had experienced agonizing feelings of uncertainty that, maybe, his appeal would be heard, his execution stayed and he would be released, or that something would go wrong. He had imagined up his own laws and amendments that would give he, ‘the condemned man’, a second chance. That was he thought, the most important thing in the world a second chance. And why not? Even 1 out of 1,000 would be enough. The authorities could come up with a concoction, or a rifle that only worked maybe 9 out of 10 times. But, that’s not how it works. The trouble with the guillotine of course was that it was final, fool proof, a forgone conclusion with a 100% success rate. The only hope a condemned man had would be that the device worked the first time. That really was the brilliance of it though; getting down to the heart of the matter, the machine itself was the secret of good organization. The condemned man is coerced, rather than forced into a moral collaboration. It was in his best interest that everything go off without a hitch so to speak. Another deliberation that would have to be discarded was the grandiosity of the event. There was no scaffold to climb he found out. He had seen in books and movies depicting the French Revolution images of the scaffold and the towering device, throngs of spectators and the like. In reality however, he had come to discover that there was no scaffold, no stage. The machine was actually quite anti-climactic, about the height of a man, a bit taller actually, with a rather narrow blade no longer than a kitchen cutting board. And you approach it the way you would approach a man as well, with gentility. The machine itself was actually made of plastic that was very hard but light and tinged a mauvish soothing manilla color. It was quit clinical really. It did not really appear very imposing, all one knew was that they didn’t want to meet the business end of it. How easy it would be to disassemble he thought, and loaded into a van or a truck and then discarded somewhere. A pitiful machine. But it was there none-the-less to be used. This was not a pageant in a brutal anachronistic world, but a machine that had been perfected over the centuries to reach its logical modern form. Quaint, disoposable, clinical, humane, fool proof. He lay on his cot staring up at the ceiling listening, smelling, breathing.


From that hour Meursault ceased to fight against his destiny.

“when some one is seeking”, “it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, Garcin, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose.”

“I do not understand,” said the Chaplain. “How do you mean?”
What do you believe in? what faith, doctrine, code do you uphold?

I have always distrusted doctrines and teachers.

I can accept that, but have you not yourself, if not a doctrine, certain thoughts? Have you not discovered certain knowledge yourself that has helped you live? It would give me great pleasure if you would tell me something about this.

There shone in Merseault’s face the serenity of knowledge of one who is no longer confronted with conflict of desires, who has found salvation, who is in harmony with the stream of events, with the stream of life, full of sympathy and compassion, surrendering himself to the stream.

Meursault said: ”Once, many years ago, I heard a voice that told me to go and buy a pack of cigarettes, even though I was not old enough and did not smoke. I went anyway, because the prospect of getting away with it was very appealing to me. Not too hard, but just very pleasant to wage my own act of personal anarchy. I stopped after I got out ot the store in the parking lot and looked at a pool of water that had an oil streak in ti. I was taken by the reflection of ht eclouds in the water vs. in the oil slick. In the oil slick it was all stretchy looking. I liked what I saw in the water better. So, I lit a match in my pocket and tossed it onto the slick in the pool of water. It fizzled out. So then, I took another lit match from my pocket, and struck it again to light one of my new cigarettes. I gazed sharply at the end of it, burnging on the end of my mouth. I could picture myself doing something really bad ass, as like beating up a bigger person, or getting an enema of methamphetamine. I was wincing in the light of the sun, and the humidity was unbearable. Then I heard the voice again, and I saw a frog by the dumpster just as it was hopping out of sight. But it wasn’t just any kind of frog. It was yellow with spots. It was very shocking, I followed the path I thought it may have taken, but it was impossible. The voice started laughing, and I suddenly felt a shiver in my spine. It was I believe, the ghost of a past life, a ghost that lived long ago, but not too long, maybe a few hundred years or so. I wanted to know what it was then, because it was definitely something, but I have come to realize that I am a ghost as well. That is what I was born to be. I AM a ghost made flesh. Not a real person. The dream of a odd noisy entity that wanders around making noises, and not caring too much about what is going on as long as I can maintain complete control. I don’t care to call an attitude like that something that can be encapsulated in a doctrine, or philosophy, or canon, or whatever one might want to call it. it was a voice. Just, a human voice that was very quiet, yet clear and persistent. I don’t know why or how I can explain how it makes me do what I do, but it has never steered me in the wrong direction. I never knew how finite my life was until last night, now I feel light. I feel liberated, I feel like I can manage everything. I CAN take control! I can do WHAT I want, but not this time. I take what I can get, and am greatful for the control that I can exercise in the world. It wasn’t much, but I belelive it will do for now. for what I have left is extremely manageable. No responsibilities, no problems to deal with next week, or tomorrow, or this afternoon. It’s finally done. I can stop, I can just drop everything because it doensn’t really matter anymore. what matters now is that I am alive still. That I have not perished, am not perishing now, but am breathing, speaking, blinking, and breathing with you here my friend.”

I’d call that Buddhism if I knew better I suppose.

That’s the closest thing I can think of, but Buddhism, it’s so much work. And it still isn’t a guarantee. A sure fire solution. I’ve rather enjoyed the ride up to this point to be quite honest. I fucked plenty of women, I lived a very exciting life that was driven by anger, jubilation, revenge, desire. In the time in which I’ve been here, I’ve been very dark, believing that my deeds had caught up with me, and that I would end up somewhere after death worse than this somehow. I was born into, and then settled into, a world designed by fear. Physically and emotionally. But here, it is dead. There is no fear because there are no consequences. There is no human energy here, Only silence. The absence. It is you and I that are filling it at this moment as we speak.

Merseault paused gazing happily at the Chaplain with his hands clasped and his shoulders hunched leaning forward slightly, then resumed speaking.

If you could find any dependable source of power in you, it comes from a simple realization that you must ultimately accept then you can begin to count how many times you have found it before, and it will start to make sense, then it will be over. It’s hard to put your finger on faith and fate, but there they are. You can listen to them or not, but they do have a voice, they are compassionate, and not always forgiving, but constant. It’s tenor is harsh magenta, camphor colored glass. I know how my mind stretches to make room. In here, it is a thousand miles wide. I am alone or with company, depending on how far I want to see. I feel peace here like I have never known, or could hope to know again in this life time.

Serendipitously, just after he had finished this last statement, the wondrous peace he had described was blasted away by sirens announcing departures from a world that now and forever more meant nothing to either of them. For the first time in a long time, he thought about maman. “I feel now, Father, as if I finally understand why my mother had taken a fiancé, why she had played at beginning again, starting over. Even there, in that ‘Home’, where lives were constantly fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all over. Nobody had the right to cry over her when she passed. It would have been, contrived. Treacly and sentimental in the wrong sort of way. She was ready to start over and live it all again once she realized how really manageable it was in the end. No urgency, no rush, no holding on to anything. Just, peace, contentment. And I feel ready to live it all again too. As if that blind rage at the trial had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time so that this cloudless morning, alive with signs and stars, I may open myself to the gentle indifference of the world. For I find it so much like myself-like a brother really-I feel that I have been happy and that I will be happy again. I am eager for everything to be consummated upon my departutre, so that my return will be fresh. When I come back, I only hope that I will remember sooner than I have now in this life, so that I may feel less alone.”

A key turned in a door at the end of the hallway. Thick boots were lightly tapping the concrete floor, a creaky hinge echoed in the distance and the light tap became like a horse hoof clapping along to the center of the universe and deliverance. Merseault leaned into The Chaplain’s face but the Chaplain no longer saw the face of his friend whom he had come to know and love in that cell. Instead he saw other faces, many faces, a long series, a continuous stream of faces-hundreds, thousands which came and disappeared and yet all seemed to be there at the same time, which all continuously changed and renewed themselves and yet which were all Meursault. He saw the face of a fish, of a carp, with tremendous painfully open mouth, a dying fish with dimmed eyes. He saw the face of a newly born child, red and full of wrinkles, ready to cry. He saw the face of a murderer, saw him plunge a knife into the body of a man; at the same moment he saw this criminal, bound, and his head cut off by an executioner. He saw the naked bodies of men and women in the postures and transports of passionate love. He saw corpses stretched out, still, cold, empty. He saw the heads of animals-boars, crocodiles, elephants, oxen, birds. He saw Krishna and Agni, Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene, the first man and woman before paradise was lost. He saw all of these forms and faces in a thousand relationships to each other, all helping each other, loving, hating, destroying each other and become newly born. Each one mortal, a passionate, painful example of all that is transitory. All these faces rested , flowed, reproduced, swam past and merged into each other, and over them all there was continually something thin, unreal and yet existing stretched across like thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, shell form or mask of water and this mask was Meursault’s smiling face which the Chaplain touched with his lips at that moment. This smile that he kissed of Meursault was exactly the same as the delicate, impenetrable, perhaaps gracious, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand fold smile of the statue of the Buddha he had seen in the textbook. It was in such a manner, the Chaplain knew, that the Perfect One smiled.
Self and others, wounded deeply by a divine arrow which gave him pleasure, deeply enchanged and exalted Garcin stood yet a while bednding over Meursalut’s peaceful face which he had just kissed, which had just been the stage of all present and future forms. His countenance was unchanged after the mirror of surface he smiled peacefully and gently, perhaps very graciously, perhaps very mockingly exactly as the stature had smiled. Merseault was leaning into Garcin’s face when he spake thus:














It was the voice in the ashram,
and then in the tree house
when I was a boy that told me
where to find the emerald
and I have seen it,

and you will see it as well
if you walk a while with me
through the dark
until there is light,
and then deeper
into the night as well
after.

You will not know
how to find it
until you see it
there before you
in a moment that

happens

only once in a single life,
and when you do see it,
you will know
IT has found YOU
rather than the
other way round,

and the small sparkling
shaft that it reflects
will not illuminate
the darkness around you,
but rather fill your heart
until the life within it

flows from your eyes,
and your mouth
and your fingers too,

for when you see that light
and know it was your birthright,
there will be so much joy
and life that wells with in
that it will spill forth
from you and drown
the dark.






And you will know,




and I will know too,








that we are both








together,



and




finally…






free.






















































































































Meurseault leaned back to his upright posture and closed his eyes. The Chaplain bowed low. Incontrollable tears trickled down his face. He was overwhelmed by a feeling of great love of the most humble veneration. He bowed right down to the ground, in front of the man sitting there motionless whose smile reminded him of everything that he had ever loved in his life. After a few moments, the key turned in the door of the cell and the guards stood still for a moment but went unnoticed by the two men in the cell. Then one of the guards approached Meurseault like a boy would approach a beautiful naked woman and put his hand on his shoulder unsure exactly of what to do with it. He cleared his throat and Meurseualt opened his eyes and placed his left hand ontop of the guard’s crossing his chest and took a deep breath, then removed it and stood of his own accord leading the way out of the cell.
And so he went away. Garcin watched him with great joy and gravity he watched him, saw his steps full of peace, his face glowing, his form full of light. He watched him go with the guards out of the cell.
“So much like myself” he thought-“so like a brother really.” As they brought him into the courtyard while the executioner was preparing the machine, the guard asked Meursault if he had anything he wanted to say. Meursault’s reply came instantly. “I have only one last wish, to be greeted by a large crowd of spectators ready to greet me

with cries of hate.”