Killing Meme

Well, it’s time to show that Kim’s not the only one who can post examples of great Western artistic and literary works. Today we’ll let those who may be inclined read an excerpt from a Nobel Prize-winning novel! Usually the Nobel is awarded to an author for a body of work, but in this case it’s pretty widely acknowledged that the prize was awarded to the author on the basis of this novel alone — it’s that powerful. I’ll bet most of you have never heard of it, too.

But first, a detour. Benjamin of Reasonablenut hit me with the “what constitutes a killing offense” meme — specifically, what crime committed against you & yours would cause you to take the law into your own hands.

Well, in my case, I will say that several years ago, my closest male friend and I  (I don’t want to get any more specific about him than that) made a pact that in the event anyone did something really nasty to either of our daughters (he’s since had a son as well, and I’m sure this applies to that little guy too; we’re not sexist types who think daughters deserve special protection more than sons) we’d each assist the other in doing what needs to be done. Our wives know of this, of course, but in the tradition of In the Bedroom (great movie, by the way), they’d not be directly involved in the resolution. 

I’m talking, speaking as a licensed attorney (and therefore an officer of the court), about assisting the lawful authorities with prosecution, trial and conviction of the suspect, of course, and doing our best to assist the authorities with obtaining the death penalty. Good heavens, what did you think I was talking about?

Now, I’ve never been an eye-for-an-eye fellow. Nope, where me & mine are concerned, ten to one’s more like it; I don’t have much sense of proportion. Nemo me impune laecessit.  An example: when the above friend & I were in law school, gangs of bicycle thieves routinely drove up from the San Francisco Bay Area in vans to steal all of the bicycles at the dorms from the racks outside. One night, we were hit. In the heated discussions thereafter, we determined that if we ever caught these thieves in the act, appropriate punishment would be to shatter their elbows and knees, carve the word THIEF into their foreheads down to the bone, and leave them someplace where they’d be found (alive) within a few days. Ah, the hot-bloodedness of youth.

If you hadn’t guessed, students at our campus really treasured their bicycles. I still own a bicycle, but I wouldn’t feel such a harsh punishment to be appropriate in such a situation anymore. For one, the bicycle is no longer such a central and critical part of my daily existence as it was then. And, as a licensed attorney (and therefore an officer of the court), I’ve come to understand the importance of leaving justice in the hands of the proper authorities, you see.

Children, of course, evoke much stronger feelings than mere items of property such as bicycles. Years ago, when my friend and I made the above pact, we were envisioning such crimes against our children as kidnapping, rape or molestation, mutilation or murder, or the like. Given my sense of proportion, it should not come as a surprise that to me, the appropriate question is still not whether the death penalty is appropriate in such circumstances — if you don’t think that’s a given, that tells me something about you. No, it’s what kind of death.

Of course, as a licensed California attorney (and thus an officer of the court), I should point out that under California law, there’s only one lawful kind of death — lethal injection by the State after proper conviction and exhaustion of all appeals, many years down the line. Yes, that truly satisfies my sense of proportionate justice for such crimes against my child.

Oh well. For legal and personal reasons, I’ll say no more on this, other than that as a licensed attorney (and thus an officer of the court), Gosh darn it, I just can’t think of any situations where I could bring myself to kill a criminal in cold blood, even if he’d just kidnapped, raped, molested, mutilated or murdered my child. Sorry I couldn’t help you there, Benjamin.

Instead, back to our literary feast! Entirely irrelevant and unrelated to the above digression, I shall now present an excerpt from Ivo Andric’s Nobel Prize-winning The Bridge on the Drina, in which what’s described below is the appropriate punishment for a saboteur under the reign of the Ottoman Turks.  Some barbarians might say that it’s good for other crimes, as well. I, of course, am simply appalled at this savage depiction that mars Andric’s otherwise fine novel, and would never consider infliction of such horrific pain and suffering on another human being to be justified, etc., etc., even if he’d just kidnapped, raped, molested, mutilated or murdered a child.

(Do not click below if you are easily, or even not-so-easily, disturbed by graphic imagery, no matter how literary.)

Radisav [a peasant and the criminal saboteur] bent his head still lower and the gipsies came up and began to strip off his cloak and his shirt. On his chest the wounds from the chains stood out, red and swollen. Without another word the peasant lay down as he had been ordered, face downward. The gipsies approached and the first bound his hands behind his back; then they attached a cord to each of his legs, around the ankles. Then they pulled outwards and to the side, stretching his legs wide apart. Meanwhile Merdjan placed the stake on two small wooden chocks so that it pointed between the peasant’s legs. Then he took from his belt a short broad knife, knelt beside the stretched-out man and leant over him to cut away the cloth of his trousers and to widen the opening through which the stake would enter his body. This most terrible part of the bloody task was, luckily, invisible to the onlookers. They could only see the bound body shudder at the short and unexpected prick of the knife, then half rise as if it were going to stand up, only to fall back again at once, striking dully against the planks. As soon as he had finished, the gipsy leapt up, took the wooden mallet and with slow measured blows began to strike the lower blunt end of the stake. Between each two blows he would stop for a moment and look first at the body in which the stake was penetrating and then at the two gipsies, reminding them to pull slowly and evenly. The body of the peasant, spreadeagled, writhed convulsively; at each blow of the mallet his spine twisted and bent, but the cords pulled at it and kept it straight. The silence from both banks of the river was such that not only every blow but even its echo from somewhere along the steep bank could be clearly heard. Those nearest could hear how the man beat with his forehead against the planks and, even more, another and unusual sound, that was neither a scream, nor a wail, nor a groan, nor anything human; that stretched and twisted body emitted a sort of creaking and cracking like a fence that is breaking down or a tree that is being felled. At every second blow the gipsy went over to the stretched-out body and leant over it to see whether the stake was going in the right direction and when he had satisfied himself that it had not touched any of the more important internal organs, he returned and went on with his work.

From the banks all this could scarcely be heard and still less seen, but all stood there trembling, their faces blanched and their fingers chilled with cold.

For a moment the hammering ceased. Merdjan now saw that close to the right shoulder muscles the skin was stretched and swollen. He went forward quickly and cut the swollen place with two crossed cuts. Pale blood flowed out, at first slowly then faster and faster. Two or three more blows, light and careful, and the iron-shod point of the stake began to break through at the place where he had cut. He struck a few more times until the point of the stake reached level with the right ear. The man was impaled on the stake as a lamb on the spit, only that the tip did not come through the mouth but in the back and had not seriously damaged the intestines, the heart or the lungs. Then Merdjan threw down the mallet and came nearer. He looked at the unmoving body, avoiding the blood which poured out of the places where the stake had entered and had come out again and was gathering in little pools on the planks. The two gipsies turned the stiffened body on its back and began to bind the legs to the foot of the stake. Meanwhile Merdjan looked to see if the man were still alive and carefully examined the face that had suddenly become swollen, wider and larger. The eyes were wide open and restless, but the eyelids were unmoving, the mouth was wide open but the two lips stiff and contracted and between them the clenched teeth shone white. Since the man could no longer control some of his facial muscles the face looked like a mask. But the heart beat heavily and the lungs worked with short, quickened breath.

…

[O]n that open space, raised a full eight feet upright, stiff and bare to the waist, the man on the stake remained alone.

— From The Bridge on the Drina, by Ivo Andric

(1892-1975, winner of the 1961 Nobel Prize for literature)