An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (i can read book club .TXT) 📕

In this, to be sure, were no such small and gloomy cells as those which characterized the old, for there the ceiling was low and the sanitary arrangements wretched, whereas in the new one the ceiling was high, the rooms and corridors brightly lighted and in every instance no less than eight by ten feet in size. But by contrast with the older room, they had the enormous disadvantage of the unscreened if not uncurtained cell doors.

Besides, by housing all together in two such tiers as were here, it placed upon each convict the compulsion of enduring all the horrors of all the vicious, morbid or completely collapsed and despairing temperaments about him. No true privacy of any kind. By day⁠—a blaze of light pouring through an overarching skylight high above the walls. By night⁠—glistening incandescents of large size and power which flooded each nook and cranny of the various cells. No privacy, no games other than cards and checkers⁠—the only ones playable without releasing the prisoners from their cells. Books, newspapers, to be sure, for all who could read or enjoy them under the circumstances. And visits⁠—mornings and afternoons, as a rule, from a priest, and less regularly from a rabbi and a Protestant minister, each offering his sympathies or services to such as would accept them.

But the curse of the place was not because of these advantages, such as they were, but in spite of them⁠—this unremitted contact, as anyone could see, with minds now terrorized and discolored by the thought of an approaching death that was so near for many that it was as an icy hand upon the brow or shoulder. And none⁠—whatever the bravado⁠—capable of enduring it without mental or physical deterioration in some form. The glooms⁠—the strains⁠—the indefinable terrors and despairs that blew like winds or breaths about this place and depressed or terrorized all by turns! They were manifest at the most unexpected moments, by curses, sighs, tears even, calls for a song⁠—for God’s sake!⁠—or the most unintended and unexpected yells or groans. Worse yet, and productive of perhaps the most grinding and destroying of all the miseries here⁠—the transverse passage leading between the old death house on the one hand and the execution-chamber on the other. For this from time to time⁠—alas, how frequently⁠—was the scene or stage for at least a part of the tragedy that was here so regularly enacted⁠—the final business of execution.

For through this passage, on his last day, a man was transferred from his better cell in the new building, where he might have been incarcerated for so much as a year or two, to one of the older ones in the old death house, in order that he might spend his last hours in solitude, although compelled at the final moment, none-the-less (the death march), to retrace his steps along this narrower cross passage⁠—and where all might see⁠—into the execution chamber at the other end of it.

Also at any time, in going to visit a lawyer or relative brought into the old death house for this purpose, it was necessary to pass along the middle passage to this smaller one and so into the old death house, there to be housed in a cell, fronted by a wire screen two feet distant, between which and the cell proper a guard must sit while a prisoner and his guest (wife, son, mother, daughter, brother, lawyer) should converse⁠—the guard hearing all. No handclasps, no kisses, no friendly touches of any kind⁠—not even an intimate word that a listening guard might not hear. And when the fatal hour for anyone had at last arrived, every prisoner⁠—if sinister or simple, sensitive or of rugged texture⁠—was actually if not intentionally compelled to hear if not witness the final preparations⁠—the removal of the condemned man to one of the cells of the older death house, the final and perhaps weeping visit of a mother, son, daughter, father.

No thought in either the planning or the practice of all this of the unnecessary and unfair torture for those who were brought here, not to be promptly executed, by any means, but rather to be held until the higher courts should have passed upon the merits of their cases⁠—an appeal.

At first, of course, Clyde sensed little if anything of all this. In so far as his first day was concerned, he had but tasted the veriest spoonful of it all. And to lighten or darken his burden his mother came at noon the very next day. Not having been permitted to accompany him, she had waited over for a final conference with Belknap and Jephson, as well as to write in full her personal impressions in connection with her son’s departure⁠—(Those nervously searing impressions!) And although anxious to find a room somewhere near the penitentiary, she hurried first to the office of the penitentiary immediately upon her arrival at Auburn and, after presenting an order from Justice Oberwaltzer as well as a solicitous letter from Belknap and Jephson urging the courtesy of a private interview with Clyde to begin with at least, she was permitted to see her son in a room entirely apart from the old death house. For already the warden himself had been reading of her activities and sacrifices and was interested in seeing not only her but Clyde also.

But so shaken was she by Clyde’s so sudden and amazingly changed appearance here that she could scarcely speak upon his entrance, even in recognition of him, so blanched and gray were his cheeks and so shadowy and strained his eyes. His head clipped that way! This uniform! And in this dreadful place of iron gates and locks and long passages with uniformed guards at every turn!

For a moment she winced and trembled, quite faint under the strain, although previous to this she had entered many a jail and larger prison⁠—in Kansas City, Chicago, Denver⁠—and delivered tracts and exhortations and proffered her services in