The Execution - Hugo Wilcken

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I said: ‘No, you don’t have to tell me anything.’ He insisted: ‘Yes, there’s something I have to tell you. It’s very important.’ I repeated: ‘No, you don’t have to tell me anything.’

      I walked him to Casualty. At the reception desk I filled in a form for him, then a nurse, an Irish woman, showed us to a dismal waiting room. I asked how long we would have to wait, she said she didn’t know. We sat there in silence for a moment, next to each other. The seats were made of orange plastic and the brown carpet had cigarette burns in it. I resisted the temptation to pick up and flick through one of the dog-eared women’s magazines that lay on a smoked-glass table, it didn’t seem the right thing to do. There was a young couple in the waiting room too, but then they left and we were alone. I was wondering when it would be opportune for me to leave too. Could I go now or should I wait until Christian had seen the doctor? Or should I drive him back home after he’d seen the doctor? Should I try to get hold of one of his relatives, his wife’s parents for example, or had the hospital already done that? It was a novel situation and I didn’t really know what was expected of me.

      Suddenly Christian started talking. Not about his wife, and not about the ‘important thing’ I’d stopped him telling me in the park, but about Jarawa. He said he thought this new campaign for his reprieve was a total waste of time. There was a peculiar violence to his voice and I was a little taken aback by this sudden outburst.

      I said: ‘I don’t agree, I don’t agree.’

      He shook his head: ‘He’s a dead man. They won’t stop now. It’s in the logic of things. They’ll kill him like the ones before.’

      ‘No. This is different, because the others had as much blood on their hands as their executioners.’

      Christian was watching me intensely as I spoke. My words seemed to ignite something in him: he started getting all excited and worked up. That’s not the issue, that’s not the issue, he said. Didn’t I see that it was no longer about saving one man or another? Didn’t I see that in the long term it was immaterial whether one man died or not, that the question wasn’t there, it was elsewhere? Not the death of one man … He ranted on for a while, stumbling over his words, but I didn’t really understand what he was driving at, or perhaps I simply wasn’t listening. I wondered why Jarawa’s fate suddenly seemed so important to Christian, when his wife had just died. Perhaps it was the dope, or maybe it had something to do with the shock.

      The nurse came out. At first Christian didn’t notice, though. He’d got so involved in his tirade and was staring at me in this very intense way. Finally she interrupted to ask which one of us was Mr Tedeschi. Christian went silent and the blood drained from his face again. He made a feeble signal with his hand, then got up and shuffled along behind the nurse. He somehow looked absurd. He looked like he’d just been called up to the headmaster’s office or something. He certainly didn’t look like his wife had just been killed.

      I glanced up at the ugly, functional clock hanging on the wall. It was ten to three. I wondered again whether I could go now. I wondered whether from here on, the hospital would deal with Christian, call his family, take him home, etc. But then the nurse came out again and asked me whether she could have a word with me. Without waiting for a reply, she sat down in Christian’s seat and leant towards me so that her knees almost touched mine. She had very dark blue eyes that were almost black, like Marianne’s. Was I a relative or perhaps a close friend of Mr Tedeschi’s, she asked me. I said I was a friend. Perhaps you’d like to know what exactly happened, she said. Then she started giving me all the details about Christian’s wife’s death – the failed brakes, the seat belt, and all the rest. I listened, then at one point said: ‘But should you be telling me all this?’ She looked at me with surprise. After a moment’s silence, she asked me if I knew Christian’s family at all, whether he had any brothers or sisters, were his parents still alive, and if so did I know how to get in contact with them, because ‘what Mr Tedeschi will need now is a lot of support from his family’. I told her I knew absolutely nothing about Christian’s family, only that he had no children. I see, she said, and looked at me sourly. I said I was sorry I couldn’t help her but she continued to frown. She was acting as if she’d been flirting with me and I’d rebuffed her or something. I almost felt like saying: ‘It wasn’t me who killed his wife.’ Finally she said thank you, then got up and left.

      I waited. Through the ventilators I could hear a doctor murmuring: ‘It shouldn’t hurt,’ and the reply: ‘It hurts, Jesus!’ I picked up a magazine and flicked through it, then started reading an article about wartime experiments on concentration camp detainees. There were photos as well. It was quite interesting, but finally it repelled me and I put the magazine down. I was tired. I even started to doze a little but then I heard shouts. It sounded like Christian’s voice. I heard a woman trying to remonstrate with him, but he cut her off with more shouts. A door opened somewhere. I heard the woman say: ‘Mr Tedeschi, Mr Tedeschi!’ Christian was shouting: ‘I won’t let you do it to me, why do you want to do it to me?’ After that there were footsteps, and the intermingled voices of two men: ‘No one’s going to make you do anything, no one’s going to make you do anything.’ A door shut, then opened, then more footsteps, then silence.

      A woman with an open white coat appeared in the waiting room. She looked to be in her mid-thirties, and had prematurely grey hair, which she made no effort to hide. Her face wore a vaguely troubled expression. Looking my way, she asked: ‘Are you Mr Tedeschi’s friend?’ I replied that I wasn’t exactly his friend, more his colleague. She appeared to think for a moment, then asked me to come into her office.

      I followed her down a corridor, then into a windowless, airless room. As I sat down, she began to speak in those modulated, ‘reasonable’ tones that only priests and doctors use. The problem, she said, is that Mr Tedeschi is extremely upset, naturally, and he’s not acting very rationally. We’ve given him a sedative and he’s lying down at the moment … What we really need to do is inform his wife’s relatives … Unfortunately, Mr Tedeschi was too upset to help us. I said: ‘I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you as well, since I don’t know any of his wife’s relatives.’ I added that I didn’t even know if her parents were dead or alive. I see, I see, the woman said. She seemed to ignore me for a moment and I wondered whether the interview was over. All of a sudden she continued: ‘But you did know Susan Tedeschi?’ I said I’d met her on two or three occasions, yes. She got out something from a desk drawer and handed it to me. It was an international driving licence, in the name of Susan Tedeschi. I looked at the murky photograph. It certainly looked like Christian’s wife – a much younger version of her – but then again I don’t know if I’d have recognised it as her if her name hadn’t been on the licence. The doctor asked: ‘Is that her?’ I replied that I thought it was, adding that the driving licence was in her name, at any rate.

      The doctor then introduced herself, which seemed odd because normally you either introduce yourself at the beginning of an encounter or not at all. After we’d exchanged names, she started talking about Christian’s wife again. She spoke very slowly, as if to a child or a foreigner. She said the problem was that as Mr Tedeschi was ‘incapacitated’ for the moment, they really needed someone to identify the body. Since Mrs Tedeschi’s maiden name was Smith, it was going to take a while to track down her family. Would I perhaps be prepared to ‘step in’? Before I had the chance to respond, she quickly added: ‘Perhaps I can get you a cup of coffee?’ I replied: ‘No, I never drink coffee in the afternoon.’

      There was an uncomfortable pause. I was starting to feel a little sticky on account of the heat and the stuffiness of the room. I was also wondering whether I should tell the doctor that Christian had already had a joint before they’d given him the sedative. But in the end I said nothing. The doctor continued: ‘It would only take a minute or two. We can go right now if you like, and get it over and done with immediately.’ I couldn’t think of a reply so I remained silent. I didn’t particularly want to identify the body, nor could I think of any reason why I shouldn’t. The doctor sensed my hesitancy: ‘I saw her myself when she came in. I can fully assure you she looks perfectly all right. You’ll just have to see her face for a couple of seconds, that’s all. Her eyes will be closed. She sustained no head injuries whatsoever.’

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