The Wild Palms: [If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem]

by William Faulkner

  That was the second time he almost got it. But it escaped him again. But he was not trying yet; it was still all right, he was not worried; it would return when the time was ready and even stand still to his hand. Then one night he was allowed a bath and a barber (they had taken his razor blades away from him) came early the next morning and shaved him, and in a new shirt and manacled to an officer on one side and his court-designated lawyer on the other he walked through the still early sun, up the street where people—malaria-ridden men from the sawmill swamps and the wind- and sun-bitten professional shrimpers—turned to look after him, toward the courthouse from the balcony of which a bailiff was already crying. It was like the jail in its turn, of two storeys, of the same stucco, the same smell of creosote and tobacco spittle but not the vomit, set in a grassless plot with a half dozen palms and oleanders again too, blooming pink and white above a low thick mass of lantana. Then an entry filled yet, for a while yet, with shadow and a cellar-like coolness, the tobacco stronger, the air filled with a steady human sound, not exactly speech but that droning murmur which might have been the very authentic constant unsleeping murmur of functioning pores. They mounted stairs, a door; he walked up an aisle between filled benches while heads turned and the bailiff’s voice still chanted from the balcony, and sat at a table between his lawyer and the officer then a moment later rose and stood again while the gownless judge in a linen suit and the high black shoes of an old man came with a short quick purposeful stride and took the Bench. It did not take long, it was businesslike, brief, twenty-two minutes to get a jury, his appointed lawyer (a young man with a round moon face and myopic eyes behind glasses, in a crumpled linen suit) challenging monotonously but it just took twenty-two minutes, the judge sitting high behind a pine counter grained and stained to resemble mahogany with his face which was not a lawyer’s face at all but that of a Methodist Sunday School superintendent who on week days was a banker and probably a good banker, a shrewd banker, thin, with neat hair and a neat moustache and old fashioned gold-rimmed spectacles. “How does the indictment read?” he said. The clerk read it, his voice droning, almost drowsy among the redundant verbiage:

  “.……against the peace and dignity of the State of Mississippi.…… manslaughter.……” A man rose at the far end of the table. He wore a suit of crumpled, almost disreputable, seersucker. He was quite fat and his was the lawyer’s face, a handsome face, almost noble, cast for footlights, forensic shrewd and agile: the District Attorney.

  “We believe we can prove murder, Your Honor.”

  “This man is not indicted for murder, Mr Gower. You should know that. Arraign the accused.” Now the plump young lawyer rose. He had neither the older one’s stomach nor the lawyer’s face, not yet anyway.

  “Guilty, Your Honor,” he said. And now Wilbourne heard it from behind him—the long expulsion, the sigh.

  “Is the accused trying to throw himself upon the mercy of this Court?” the judge said.

  “I just plead guilty, Your Honor,” Wilbourne said. He heard it again behind him, louder, but already the judge was hammering sharply with his child’s croquet mallet.

  “Dont speak from there!” he said. “Does the accused wish to throw himself on the mercy of the Court?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” the young lawyer said.

  “Then you dont need to make a case, Mr Gower. I will instruct the jury—” This time it was no sigh. Wilbourne heard the caught breath, then it was almost a roar, not that loud of course, not yet, the little hard wooden mallet furious against the wood and the bailiff shouting something too, and there was movement, a surging sound of feet in it too; a voice cried, “That’s it! Go ahead! Kill him!” and Wilbourne saw it—the gray buttoned coat (the same one) moving steadily toward the Bench, the face, the outrageous face: the man who without any warning had had to stand the wrong sort of suffering, the one suffering for which he was not fitted, who even now must be saying to himself, But why me? Why? What have I done? What in the world can I have done in my life? coming steadily on then stopping and beginning to speak, the roar cutting short off as he opened his mouth:

  “Your Honor—If the Court please—”

  “Who is this?” the judge said.

  “I am Francis Rittenmeyer,” Rittenmeyer said. Now it was a roar again, the gavel going again, the judge himself shouting now, shouting the roar into silence:

  “Order! Order! One more outbreak like this and I will clear the room! Disarm that man!”

  “I’m not armed,” Rittenmeyer said. “I just want—” But already the bailiff and two other men were upon him, the smooth gray sleeves pinioned while they slapped at his pockets and sides.

  “He’s not armed, Your Honor,” the bailiff said. The judge turned upon the District Attorney, trembling too, a neat orderly man too old for this too.

  “What is the meaning of this clowning, Mr Gower?”

  “I dont know, Your Honor. I didn’t—”

  “You didn’t summons him?”

  “I didn’t consider it necessary. Out of consideration for his—”

  “If the Court please,” Rittenmeyer said. “I just want to make a—” The judge lifted his hand; Rittenmeyer ceased. He stood motionless, his face calm as a carving, with something about it of the carved faces on gothic cathedrals, the pale eyes possessing something of the same unpupilled marble blankness. The judge stared at the District Attorney. It (the District Attorney’s) was the lawyer’s face now, completely, completely watchful, completely alert, the thinking going fast and secret behind it. The judge looked at the young lawyer, the plump one, hard. Then he looked at Rittenmeyer. “This case is closed,” he said. “But if you still wish to make a statement, you may do so.” Now there was no sound at all, not even that of breathing that Wilbourne could hear save his own and that of the young lawyer beside him, as Rittenmeyer moved toward the witness box. “This case is closed,” the judge said. “The accused is waiting sentence. Make your statement from there.” Rittenmeyer stopped. He was not looking at the judge, he was not looking at anything, his face calm, impeccable, outrageous.

  “I wish to make a plea,” he said. For a moment the judge did not move, staring at Rittenmeyer, the gavel still clutched in his fist like a sabre, then he leaned slowly forward, staring at Rittenmeyer: and Wilbourne heard it begin, the long in-sucking, the gathering of amazement and incredulity.

  “You what?” the judge said. “A what? A plea? For this man? This man who wilfully and deliberately performed an operation on your wife which he knew might cause her death and which did?” And now it did roar, in waves, renewed; he could hear the feet in it and the separate screaming voices, the officers of the Court charging into the wave like a football team: a vortex of fury and turmoil about the calm immobile outrageous face above the smooth beautifully cut coat: “Hang them! Hang them both!” “Lock them up together! Let the son of a bitch work on him this time with the knife!” roaring on above the trampling and screaming, dying away at last but still not ceasing, just muffled beyond the closed doors for a time, then rising again from outside the building, the judge standing now, his arms propped on the bench, still clutching the gavel, his head jerking and trembling, the head of an old man indeed now. Then he sank slowly back, his head jerking as the heads of old men do. But his voice was quite calm, cold: “Give that man protection out of town. See that he leaves at once.”

  “I dont think he better try to leave the building right now, Judge,” the bailiff said. “Listen at them.” But nobody had to listen to hear it, not hysterical now, just outraged and angry. “They aint hanging mad, just tar-and-feathering mad. But anyway—”

  “All right,” the judge said. “Take him to my chambers. Keep him there until after dark. Then get him out of town.—Gentlemen of the jury, you will find the prisoner guilty as charged and so bring in your verdict, which carries with it a sentence at hard labor in the State Penitentiary at Parchman for a period of not less than fifty years. You may retire.”

  “I reckon ther
e’s no need of that, Judge,” the foreman said. “I reckon we are all—” The judge turned upon him, the old man’s thin and trembling fury:

  “You will retire! Do you wish to be held in contempt?” They retired. They were gone less than two minutes, hardly long enough for the bailiff to close and then open the door. From outside the sound beat on, rising and falling.

  That afternoon it rained again, a bright silver curtain roaring out of nowhere before the sun could be hidden, galloping on vagrom and coltlike, going nowhere, then thirty minutes later roaring back, bright and harmless in its own steaming footsteps. But when, shortly after dark, he was returned to his cell the sky was ineffable and stainless above the last green of twilight, arching the evening star, the palm merely murmuring beyond the bars, the bars still cool to his hands though the water, the rain, had long evaporated. So he had learned what Rittenmeyer meant. And now he learned why. He heard the two pairs of feet again but he did not turn from the window until the door had opened then clanged and clashed to and Rittenmeyer entered and stood for a moment, looking at him. Then Rittenmeyer took something from his pocket and crossed the cell, the hand extended. “Here,” he said. It was a small box for medicine, unlabelled. It contained one white tablet. For a moment Wilbourne looked down at it stupidly, though only for a moment. Then he said quietly:

  “Cyanide.”

  “Yes,” Rittenmeyer said. He turned, he was already going: the face calm outrageous and consistent, the man who had been right always and found no peace in it.

  “But I dont—” Wilbourne said. “How will my just being dead help—” Then he believed he understood. He said, “Wait.” Rittenmeyer reached the door and put his hand on it. Nevertheless he paused, looking back. “It’s because I have got stale. I dont think good. Quick.” The other looked at him, waiting. “I thank you. I do thank you. I wish I knew I would do the same for you in my turn.” Then Rittenmeyer shook the door once and looked again at Wilbourne—the face consistent and right and damned forever. The jailor appeared and opened the door.

  “I’m not doing it for you,” Rittenmeyer said. “Get that out of your damned head.” Then he was gone, the door clashed; and it was no flash of comprehension, it was too quiet for that, it was just a simple falling of a jumbled pattern. Of course Wilbourne thought. That last day in New Orleans. He promised her. She said, Not that bungling bastard Wilbourne, and he promised her. And that was it. That was all. It fell into the quiet pattern and remained just long enough for him to see it then flowed, vanished, gone out of all remembering forever and so there was just memory, forever and inescapable, so long as there was flesh to titillate. And now he was about to get it, think it into words, so it was all right now and he turned to the window and, holding the open box carefully beneath and pinching the tablet in a folded cigarette paper between thumb and finger he rubbed the tablet carefully into powder on one of the lower bars, catching the last dust in the box and wiping the bar with the cigarette paper, and emptied the box onto the floor and with his shoe-sole ground it into the dust and old spittle and caked creosote until it had completely vanished and burned the cigarette paper and returned to the window. It was there, waiting, it was all right; it would stand to his hand when the moment came. Now he could see the light on the concrete hulk, in the poop porthole which he had called the kitchen for weeks now, as if he lived there, and now with a preliminary murmur in the palm the light offshore breeze began, bringing with it the smell of swamps and wild jasmine, blowing on under the dying west and the bright star; it was the night. So it wasn’t just memory. Memory was just half of it, it wasn’t enough. But it must be somewhere he thought. There’s the waste. Not just me. At least I think I dont mean just me. Hope I dont mean just me. Let it be anyone thinking of, remembering, the body, the broad thighs and the hands that liked bitching and making things. It seemed so little, so little to want, to ask. With all the old graveward-creeping, the old wrinkled withered defeated clinging not even to the defeat but just to an old habit; accepting the defeat even to be allowed to cling to the habit—the wheezing lungs, the troublesome guts incapable of pleasure. But after all memory could live in the old wheezing entrails: and now it did stand to his hand, incontrovertible and plain, serene, the palm clashing and murmuring dry and wild and faint and it the night but he could face it, thinking, Not could. Will. I want to. So it is the old meat after all, no matter how old. Because if memory exists outside of the flesh it wont be memory because it wont know what it remembers so when she became not then half of memory became not and if I become not then all of remembering will cease to be.—Yes he thought Between grief and nothing I will take grief.

  Old Man

  One of the Governor’s young men arrived at the Penitentiary the next morning. That is, he was fairly young (he would not see thirty again though without doubt he did not want to, there being that about him which indicated a character which never had and never would want anything it did not, or was not about to, possess), a Phi Beta Kappa out of an eastern university, a colonel on the Governor’s staff who did not buy it with a campaign contribution, who had stood in his negligent eastern-cut clothes and his arched nose and lazy contemptuous eyes on the galleries of any number of little lost backwoods stores and told his stories and received the guffaws of his overalled and spitting hearers and with the same look in his eyes fondled infants named in memory of the last administration and in honor (or hope) of the next, and (it was said of him and doubtless not true) by lazy accident the behinds of some who were not infants any longer though still not old enough to vote. He was in the Warden’s office with a briefcase, and presently the deputy warden of the levee was there too. He would have been sent for presently though not yet, but he came anyhow, without knocking, with his hat on, calling the Governor’s young man loudly by a nickname and striking him with a flat hand on the back and lifted one thigh to the Warden’s desk, almost between the Warden and the caller, the emissary. Or the vizier with the command, the knotted cord, as began to appear immediately.

  “Well,” the Governor’s young man said, “you’ve played the devil, haven’t you?” The Warden had a cigar. He had offered the caller one. It had been refused, though presently, while the Warden looked at the back of his neck with hard immobility even a little grim, the deputy leaned and reached back and opened the desk drawer and took one.

  “Seems straight enough to me,” the Warden said. “He got swept away against his will. He came back as soon as he could and surrendered.”