William Styron: The Collected Novels: Lie Down in Darkness, Set This House on Fire, The Confessions of Nat Turner, and Sophie's Choice

by Styron, William

  Cobb spoke again. “Have you anything to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced against you?” His voice was tremulous, feeble, dead.

  “I have not,” I replied. “I have made a full confession to Mr. Gray and I have nothing more to say.”

  “Attend then to the sentence of the court. You have been arraigned and tried before this court and convicted of one of the highest crimes in our criminal code. You have been convicted of plotting in cold blood the indiscriminate destruction of men, of helpless women, and of infant children … The evidence before us leaves not a shadow of doubt but that your hands were imbrued in the blood of the innocent, and your own confession tells us that they were stained with the blood of a master—in your own language, too indulgent. Could I stop here your crime would be sufficiently aggravated … But the original contriver of a plan, deep and deadly, one that never could be effected, you managed so far to put it into execution as to deprive us of many of our most valuable citizens, and this was done when they were asleep under circumstances shocking to humanity … And while upon this part of the subject, I cannot but call your attention to the poor misguided wretches who have gone before you.” He paused for an instant, breathing heavily. “They are not few in number—they were your bosom associates, and the blood of all cries aloud, and calls upon you as the author of their misfortune. Yes. You forced them unprepared from time to eternity … Borne down by this load of guilt, your only justification is that you were led away by fanaticism.”

  He paused again, gazing at me from the awful and immeasurable distances where not alone his eyes but his dying flesh and spirit seemed to dwell, remote as the stars. “If this be true,” he concluded slowly, “from my soul I pity you, and while you have my sympathies I am nevertheless called upon to pass sentence of the court … The time between this and your execution will necessarily be very short, and your only hope must be in another world. The judgment of the court is that you be taken hence to the jail from whence you came, thence to the place of execution, and on Friday next, November eleventh, at sunrise, be hung by the neck until you are dead! dead! dead!—and may the Lord have mercy upon your soul.”

  We gazed at each other from vast distances, yet close, awesomely close, as if sharing for the briefest instant some rare secret—unknown to other men—of all time, all mortality and sin and grief. In the stillness the stove howled and raged like a tumultuous storm pitched in the firmament between hell and heaven. A door flew open with a clatter. Then we ceased looking at each other, and outside a human roar went up like thunder.

  That evening as Hark talked to me through the cracks of the jail wall, his voice came pained and laborious and with a sort of faint gurgle or croak, like a frog’s. Only Hark could have lived so long.

  He had been shot through the chest on that day in August when they broke us up. Time after time they had carried him to court on a litter and they were going to have to hang him roped to a chair. The two of us would be the last to go.

  Dusk was coming on: as the cold day lengthened, light began to drain away from the cell as from a vessel, turning the corners dark, and the cedar plank I was lying on grew as chill as a slab of stone. A few leaves clung to the branches outside and through the gray twilight a cold wind whispered sharply, and often a leaf would flicker to earth or scuttle through the cell with a dry rattling sound. Every now and then I listened to Hark, but mainly I waited on Gray. After the trial he had said that he would come again this evening, and he promised to bring me a Bible. The idea of a Bible kept me in a greedy suspense, as if after a day’s long thirst in some parched and burning field someone was about to fetch me brimming pails of cool clear water.

  “Oh yes, Nat,” I heard Hark say beyond the wall, “yes, dey was lots and lots of niggers kilt afterwards, w’ile you was hid out. And warn’t our niggers neither. Dey tells me roun’ about a hundred, maybe lots mo’. Yes, Nat, de white folks come down like a swarm of golly-wasps and plain long stomped de niggers ev’ywheres. You didn’ know about dat, Nat? Oh yes, dey was plain long stomped. White folks dey come fum all over ev’ywheres. Dey come a-gallopin’ down from Sussex an’ Isle of Wight and all dem other counties an’ run de niggers clean into de groun’. Didn’ make no nem’mine dat dey didn’ fight fo’ Nat Turner. If’n he had a black ass, dey fill hit full of lead.” Hark was silent for a while and I could hear his thick, tortured breathing. “After you was hid out I heerd tell of some ole free nigger dat was standin’ in a field up somewheres aroun’ Drewrysville. Dese white folks rode up an’ stop dere. ‘Is dis yere Southampton?’ dey holler. Nigger he say, ‘Yassuh, boss, you done jes’ passed de county line over yondah.’ ’Pon my soul, Nat, dem white folks shot him dead.” Again he was silent, then he said: “I heerd tell of a nigger name of Statesman livin’ down aroun’ Smith’s Mill what ain’t even heerd of de ruction, bein’ slow in de head, you know? Anyways, his massah he powerful exercise’ an’ mad an’ he take ole Statesman out an’ tie him to a tree an’ shoot him so full of holes you could see de sun shine th’ough. Oh me, Nat. Some sad stories I done heerd all dese months in jail …”

  I watched the wintry gray light stealing softly away from the cell, thinking: O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken and do; defer not, for thine own sake, O my God, forgive me the blood of the innocent and slain … But it was not a prayer at all, there was no echo, no understanding that it had reached God’s almighty hearing, only the sense of its falling away futile on the air like a wisp of smoke. A shudder passed through my bones and I clasped my arms around my legs, trying to still their shaking. Then as if to blot out this new knowledge, I broke in upon Hark, saying: “Tell me, Hark, tell me. Nelson. Tell me about Nelson. How did he die? Did he die brave?”

  “Why sho he die brave,” Hark said. “Hung ole Nelson back in September. Him and Sam together, standin’ up straight as you could pray for, both dem. Dey tells me ole Sam wouldn’ die right off, flew off’n dat hangin’ tree an’ jes’ jiggle dere like a turkey gobbler a-jumpin’ and a-twitchin’.” Feebly, softly, Hark began to laugh. “Reckon dat li’l ole yellow nigger was too light fo’ de rope. Dem white folks had to yank on old Sam’s feet afore he’d give up de ghost. But he died brave, though, him an’ Nelson. Didn’ hear no mumblin’ nor groanin’ when dem two niggers died.” He paused and sighed, then said: “Onliest thing ole Sam was sad about was dat we didn’ cotch dat mean sonabitch Nat Francis dat owned him. Cotched his overseer and two chillun but not Nat Francis. Dat’s what give Sam a misery. I seed Nat Francis in de cou’troom de day dey tried ole Sam. Jesus jumpin’ Judas! Talk ‘bout a mad white man! Oo-ee, Nat, he let out a howl and jump straight over de railin’ an’ like to strangle dat Sam befo’ dey could haul him off. I heerd tell Nat Francis like to went clean out’n his head after we finished de ruction. Got him a gang of folks an’ rode from Cross Keys to Jerusalem, shootin’ down ev’y nigger in sight. Dey was a free nigger woman name Laurie, wife to old John Bright live up Cloud School way, you know? Well, dey took dat woman an’ leant her up ’longside a fence and druv a three-foot spike right up her ole pussy like dey was layin’ out a barbecue. Oh me, Nat, de tales I heerd tell dese months and days! Dey was two white mens I heerd about, come up from Carolina, has actual got dem a real bunch of black nigger heads all nailed to a pole and was out to git dem some mo’ till de troops grabbed holt ’em an’ run ’em back to Carolina—”

  “Hush,” I broke in. “Hush, Hark! That’s enough. I can’t bear no more of that. I can’t bear such talk no more.” I tried not to think, yet even as I tried could not help thinking, scraps of prayer afloat turbulent and spinning in my brain like twigs upon a flood: O spare me, that I may recover strength. Before I go hence. And be no more.

  I heard footsteps in the passageway, and suddenly Gray appeared at the door with the boy Kitchen, who noisily threw open the latch. “I can’t stay but a minute, Reverend,” he said as he stepped into the cell and sat himself down across from me slowly, with a soft weary grunt. He looked exhausted and uns
trung. I noticed that he was carrying nothing with him, and I felt my heart sink like a stone; even before I could start to protest, though, he had begun to speak: “I know, I know, that durn Bible! I know I promised to fetch you one—I’m a man of my word, Reverend—but I run into a patch of difficulty, all unforeseen. The vote was five to one agin it.”

  “What do you mean, Mr. Gray?” I exclaimed. “What vote? Mr. Gray, I ain’t asked for much—”

  “I know, I know,” he put in. “By all rights any man condemned to death should have the fullest spiritual comfort, be he black or white. And this afternoon when I petitioned the court for a Bible for your own personal use, I brought this fact out in the strongest terms. But like I say, Reverend, I run into a bit of difficulty. The majority of the Justices didn’t cotton to this idea in any way, shape, nor form. In the first place, they felt very strongly about the moot point in—and the general tenor of—the community feeling as it stands, namely, that no nigger is to be allowed to read or write anyhow. In the second place, and on account of this, since no nigger about to be hung in this county has ever been allowed to have a Bible, why then, they couldn’t make an exception in your case. So they took a vote. Five to one against your havin’ a Bible, with only the Chief Magistrate in favor—Mr. Jeremiah Cobb, who’s about to cash in hisself, so I guess he’s got good reason to be soft on matters pertainin’ to spiritual comfort.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry about that, Mr. Gray. It’ll be right tough on me without a Bible.”

  Gray was silent for a while, a queer quizzical look on his face. Then he said: “Tell me, Reverend, you ever heard tell of a galaxy?”

  “A what?” I said. I was barely listening. I cannot describe my misery and desolation.

  “A galaxy. G-a-l-a-x-y. Galaxy.”

  “Well, sir,” I replied finally, “I may have heard that word used, but I can’t rightly say I know what it exactly means.”

  “Well, you know what the sun is,” he said. “The sun don’t move around the earth, a great big ball up there. The sun is a star. You know about that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said, “it seems to me I did hear about that. There was a white man in Newsoms told some of the Negroes that, long time ago. He was one of those Quaker men.”

  “And you believe it?”

  “I used to think it was right hard to believe,” I said, “but I’ve come to believe it. By the Lord’s grace all things can be believed.”

  “Well, you know the sun is a star, but you don’t exactly know what a galaxy is. That right?”

  “No, I don’t know,” I replied.

  “Well now, in England there’s a great astronomer name of Professor Herschel. Know what an astronomer is? Yes? Well, there was a big write-up on him not long ago in the Richmond newspaper. What Professor Herschel has found out is that this here star of our’n that we call the sun is but one of not thousands, not millions, but billions of stars all revolvin’ around in a great big kind of cartwheel that he calls a galaxy. And this sun of our’n is just a piddlin’ little third-rate star swimmin’ around amongst millions of other stars on the edge of the galaxy. Fancy that, Reverend!” He leaned forward toward me, and I could smell the sudden apple-sweet perfume of his presence. “Fancy that! Millions and even billions of stars all floatin’ around in the vastness of space, separated by distances the mind can’t even conceive of. Why, Reverend, the light we see from some of these stars must of left there long before man hisself ever dwelt on earth! A million years before Jesus Christ! How do you square that with your Christianity? How do you square that with God?”

  I pondered this for a moment, then I said: “As I told you, Mr. Gray, by the Lord’s grace all things can be believed. I accept the sun and the stars, and the galaxies too.”

  “Hogwash!” he exclaimed. “Christianity is finished and done with. Don’t you know that, Reverend? And don’t you realize further that it was the message contained in Holy Scripture that was the cause, the prime mover, of this entire miserable catastrophe? Don’t you see the plain ordinary evil of your dad-burned Bible?”

  He fell silent, and I too said nothing. Though I was no longer either as hot or cold as I had been that morning—indeed, for the first time that day I felt a tolerable comfort—my throat had gotten dry and I found it difficult to swallow. I closed my eyes for a second, opened them again: in the cold, pale, diminishing light Gray seemed to be smiling at me, though perhaps it was only the dimness of the twilight which blurred and made indistinct the configurations of his heavy round face. I felt that I had only faintly understood what Gray had said—grasped the barest beginnings of it; finally I replied in a dry voice, the frog still in my throat: “What do you mean, Mr. Gray? I fear I don’t quite follow. Evil?”

  Gray leaned forward, slapping his knee. “Well, Je-hoshaphat, Reverend, look at the record! Jes’ look at it! Look at your own words! The words you rattled off to me for three days runnin’! The divine spirit! Seek ye the kingdom of heaven! My wisdom came from God! All that hogwash, what I mean. And what’s that line you told me the heavenly spirit said to you when you were about to embark on this bloody course of your’n? For he who knows—What?”

  “For he who knoweth his Master’s will,” I said, “and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes, and thus have I chastened you.”

  “Yeah, hogwash like that, what I mean. Divine guidance. Holy will. Messages from up above. Durndest slop ever I heard of. And what did it get you? What, Reverend?”

  I made no reply, even though now I had begun to understand what he was trying to say. I stopped looking at him and thrust my head into my hands, hoping that he would not find it necessary to go on.

  “Here’s what it got you, Reverend, if you’ll pardon the crudity. It got you a pissy-assed record of total futility, the likes of which are hard to equal. Threescore white people slain in random butchery, yet the white people still firmly holdin’ the reins. Seventeen niggers hung, including you and old Hark there, nevermore to see the light of day. A dozen or more other nigger boys shipped out of an amiable way of life to Alabama, where you can bet your bottom dollar that in five years the whole pack of ‘em will be dead of work and fever. I’ve seen them cotton plantations. I’ve seen them rice layouts too, Reverend—niggers up to their necks in shit from day clean to first dark, with a big black driver to whip ’em, and mosquitoes the size of buzzards. This is what you brung on them kids, Reverend, this is what Christianity brung on them boys. I reckon you didn’t figure on that back then, did you?”

  I was silent for a moment, considering his question, then I said: “No.” For indeed, to be most truthful, I had not figured on it then.

  “And what else did Christianity accomplish?” he said. “Here’s what Christianity accomplished. Christianity accomplished the mob. The mob. It accomplished not only your senseless butchery, the extermination of all those involved in it, black and white, but the horror of lawless retaliation and reprisal—one hundred and thirty-one innocent niggers both slave and free cut down by the mob that roamed Southampton for a solid week, searching vengeance. I reckon you didn’t figure on that neither back then, did you, Reverend?”

  “No,” I said quietly, “no, I didn’t.”

  “And furthermore, you can bet your sweet ass that when the Legislature convenes in December they’re goin’ to pass laws that make the ones extant look like rules for a Sunday School picnic. They goin’ to lock up the niggers in a black cellar and throw away the key.” He paused, and I could sense him leaning close to me. “Abolition,” he said in a voice like a whisper. “Reverend, single-handed you done more with your Christianity to assure the defeat of abolition than all the meddlin’ and pryin’ Quakers that ever set foot in Virginia put together. I reckon you didn’t figure on that either?”

  “No,” I said, looking into his eyes, “if that be true. No.”

  His voice had risen to a mocking, insistent monotone. “Christianity! Rapine, plunder, butchery! Death and destruction! And misery and
suffering for untold generations. That was the accomplishment of your Christianity, Reverend. That was the fruits of your mission. And that was the joyous message of your faith. Nineteen hundred years of Christian teaching plus a black preacher is all it takes— Is all it takes to prove that God is a God durned lie!”

  He rose to his feet, moving briskly now, his voice softer as he spoke, pulling on his dingy gloves. “Beg pardon, Reverend. I’ve got to go. No offense. All in all you’ve been pretty fair and square with me. In spite of what I said, I reckon a man has to act according to his own lights, even when he’s the victim of a delusion. Good night, Reverend. I’ll look back in on you.”

  When he had gone Kitchen brought me a pan of cold pork and hoe cake and a cupful of water, and I sat there in the chill dusk, eating, watching the light fall and fade away against the gray sky to the west. Presently I heard Hark on the other side of the wall, laughing softly. “Dat man sho give you down de country, Nat. What dat man so sweat up about?”

  But I didn’t reply to Hark, rising instead and shuffling the length of the chain to the window.

  Over Jerusalem hung a misty nightfall, over the brown and stagnant river and the woods beyond, where the water oak and cypress merged and faded one into the other, partaking like shadows of the somber wintry dusk. In the houses nearby, lamps and lanterns flickered on in yellow flame and far off there was a sound of clattering china and pots and pans and back doors slamming as people went about fixing supper. Way in the distance in some kitchen I could hear a Negro woman singing—a weary sound full of toil and drudgery yet the voice rich, strong, soaring: I knows moon-rise, I knows star-rise, lay dis body down … Already the dusty fall of snow had disappeared; a rime of frost lay in its place, coating the earth with icy wet pinpricks of dew, crisscrossed by the tracks of squirrels. In chilly promenade two guards with muskets paced round the jail in greatcoats, stamping their feet against the brittle ground. A gust of wind swept through the cell, whistling. I shivered in a spasm of cold and I closed my eyes, listening to the lament of the woman far off, leaning up against the window ledge, half dreaming in a half slumber of mad weariness and longing: As the heart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God. Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me …