The electrocutioner's tale

Reading about the death of the hangman Nata Mallick – and the fact that West Bengal doesn’t yet have anyone to replace him (or anyone who wants to replace him?) – I was reminded of a short story I used to love: Stanley Ellin’s “The Question” (a.k.a. "The Question My Son Asked"), which is anthologised in one of the many horror/suspense collections I devoured as a child.

Set sometime in the 1950s or 1960s, this is a tale told in the first person by a state executioner – the man who pulls the switch for the electric chair. At first he appears a bit defensive about the real nature of his profession – his insistence on calling himself an “electrocutioner” seems like a subterfuge – but then we see that he’s really quite proud of what he does. He doesn’t have much time for the anti-capital punishment position, which he feels comes from people psychoanalyzing things too much, creating complexities where there are none – to the extent of claiming that there is no such thing as a criminal at all, only “sick people” who can be cured. Our narrator, on the other hand, believes that when someone commits murder or rape he is no longer in the human race, and he has to be exterminated the way any dangerous wild animal would be. A jury finds this person guilty, a respected judge sentences him to the chair, most people approve of the verdict … and then someone has to be found to do the actual dirty work – to pull the switch. Why should this person become a social outcast when he’s merely acting as society’s instrument?

But the problem the executioner faces now is that his own son doesn’t want to continue in the family profession. This is a difficult thing to accept for a “simple” man who feels that “if more people believed in tradition, you wouldn’t have so much trouble in the world today”. They argue. And then his son asks him a question.

Though my first and second readings of “The Question” were separated by nearly 20 years, I remembered every detail vividly when I revisited it. Even at a time when I wasn’t consciously thinking about writing styles or narrative structures, I was very impressed by how this story initially seemed to be about one thing and then turned into something else altogether; how my ideas about the narrator vacillated; how it led up to its surprise ending, the tone going from sombre, almost melancholy, to dark and twisted; and how this surprise ending didn't necessarily overturn everything that preceded it (even if that's how it seems at first). It's a wonderfully skillful tale.

I’m transcribing the final few sentences here for anyone who’s curious. SPOILER ALERT: if you ever plan to read this story (and it won’t be easy to get hold of, given that much of Ellin’s work seems out of print), skip over this:

He looked at me, puzzled. “Is that all it is to you?” he said. “A duty?”

“Yes.”


“But you get paid for it, don’t you?”


“I get paid little enough for it.”


He kept looking at me that way. “Only a duty?” he said, and never took his eyes off me. “But you enjoy it, don’t you?”


That was the question he asked.


You enjoy it, don’t you?


You stand there looking through a peephole in the wall at the chair. In thirty years I have stood there more than a hundred times looking at that chair. The guards bring somebody in. usually he is in a daze; sometimes he screams, throws himself around and fights. Sometimes it is a woman, and a woman can be as hard to handle as a man when she is led to the chair. Sooner or later, whoever it is is strapped down and the black hood is over his head. Now your hand is on the switch.


The warden signals, and you pull the switch. The current hits the body like a tremendous rush of air suddenly filling it. The body leaps out of the chair with only the straps holding it back. The head jerks, and a curl of smoke comes from it. You release the switch and the body falls back again.


You do it once more, do it a third time to make sure. And whenever your hand presses the switch you can see in your mind what the current is doing to that body and what the face under the hood must look like.


Enjoy it?


That was the question my son asked me. That was what he said to me, as if I didn’t have the same feelings deep down in me that we all have.


Enjoy it?


But, my God, how could anyone not enjoy it!