FullReads

MR. Y.
[Very interested].

You–did?

MR. X.
Yes–I did. Perhaps you wouldn’t like to take a murderer’s hand?

MR. Y.
[Cheerily].

Oh, what nonsense!

MR. X.
Yes, but I have not been punished for it.

MR. Y.
[Intimate, superior].

So much the better for you. How did you get out of it?

MR. X.
There were no accusers, no suspicions, no witnesses. It happened this way: one Christmas a friend of mine had invited me for a few days’ hunting just outside of Upsala; he sent an old drunken servant to meet me, who fell asleep on the coach-box and drove into a gate-post, which landed us in the ditch. It was not because my life had been in danger, but in a fit of anger I struck him a blow to wake him, with the result that he never awakened again–he died on the spot.

MR. Y.
[Cunningly].

And you didn’t give yourself up?

MR. X.
No, and for the following reasons. The man had no relatives or other connections who were dependent on him. He had lived out his period of vegetation and his place could soon be filled by some one who was needed more, while I, on the other hand, was indispensable to the happiness of my parents, my own happiness, and perhaps to science. Through the outcome of the affair I was cured of the desire to strike any more blows, and to satisfy an abstract justice I did not care to ruin the lives of my parents as well as my own life.

MR. Y.
So? That’s the way you value human life?

MR. X.
In that instance, yes.

MR. Y.
But the feeling of guilt, the “restoration of balance?”

MR. X.
I had no guilty feeling, its I had committed no crime. I had received and given blows as a boy, and it was only ignorance of the effect of blows on old people that caused the fatality.

MR. Y.
Yes, but it is two years’ hard labor for homicide–just as much as for–forgery.

MR. X.
You may believe I have thought of that too, and many a night have I dreamed that I was in prison. Ugh! is it as terrible as it’s said to be behind bolts and bars?

MR. Y.
Yes, it is terrible. First they disfigure your exterior by cutting off your hair, so if you did not look like a criminal before, you do afterward, and when you look at yourself in the mirror, you become convinced that you are a desperado.

MR. X.
It’s the mask that they pull off; that’s not a bad idea.

MR. Y.
You jest! Then they cut down your rations, so that every day, every hour you feel a distinct difference between life and death; all life’s functions are repressed; you feel yourself grovelling, and your soul, which should be bettered and uplifted there, is put on a starvation cure, driven back a thousand years in time; you are only allowed to read what was written for the barbarians of the migratory period; you are allowed to hear about nothing but that which can never come to pass in heaven, but what happens on earth remains a secret; you are torn from your own environment, moved down out of your class; you come under those who come under you; you have visions of living in the bronze age, feel as if you went about in an animal’s skin, lived in a cave, and ate out of a trough! Ugh!