“You will be put to death.” Scene from upcoming volume of short stories.

This is a late draft from the opening scene of “Gullotine.”

The cell was dark and damp. The dirt floor was covered with dried rushes. Dirty, decomposing. Decomposing. There was no bench, no chair, no low stone bed. The prisoner sat huddled in one corner, where he had collected together some rushes to make a faux cushion to sit upon. It made the floor a bit warmer, but the cold emanating from the nearby walls seeped through his thin garment like rain-soaked freshly dug turf. At least it was warmer now that it was April—much better than the winter, where it gets so cold in the center of Paris.

His excrement was piled in the far corner of the cell, a largely psychological attempt to remove himself from the stench and possible diseases he might contract. The guards tossed a bucket into his cell every few days, for him to collect his defecation with his hands and fill the bucket, which they then removed. He was unable to wash his hands (or any other part of him), except when they delivered his food once a day. This invariably consisted of a hunk of cheese, a thick slice of bread, and a bowl of water on a board. Since he also needed the water to drink, he avoided washing his hands until he had finished eating. This required eating with one hand—the hand he didn’t use for his toilet—and saving enough water to wash himself. These meager attempts at hygiene and health had little effect on the urine-and-shit smell of the cell, or on his health. He felt constantly filthy, but the ritual made him feel like he had some control over his miserable life.

The heavy wooden door to the cell, reinforced with iron, had a small opening three-quarters of the way up—just large enough for a guard to look in and check on him, or to pass the board through. There was no window, but a faint, indirect light came through the window in the door from the torches that lined the walls of the prison. He had only seen that hallway once, seven weeks ago, when he had been brought here. He was pretty sure it had been seven weeks. He had been making little scratches, each time he was fed, on the floor of the third corner. He assumed they corresponded to days, though he did not have cycles of light and dark known for sure.

To an outside observer, it would appear that he was simply curled up in the corner, hugging his knees, staring out into the cell, unmoving. Every few moments, his head moved slightly. This outside observer might assume that he had lost his mind, or was in such a stupor from the beatings and the conditions. Maybe he was reflecting on his crimes. Perhaps he was wondering what would happen to him.
In reality, he was engaged in a mental exercise. The cell was made of stones, cut into roughly rectangular shapes. The stones appeared to be a dirty white-gray color, but without more light he could not be sure. The first row of blocks were laid end to end, and he could see the mortar that had been slopped between them when the prison was built. Some of it was crumbling, but the stones were so close together, and so deep, that his investigations had revealed that there was no chance of digging one out. Besides, what he knew of the prison told him that even if he did, there would be so many more obstacles beyond this cell that it would be a futile effort anyway.

The next row of blocks was laid on top of the others, but staggered so that each block was sitting half on one below, half on the next one below. The result was that no mortar line ran straight up the wall, a standard building device to add stability. The third row was back in line with the first row, and this alternating pattern continued to the ceiling, which was made of thick wood beams, covered by more stones, and, he assumed, another cell above that.

His mental exercise consisted of counting the blocks. He began at the top wall opposite the door and counted across. On the alternating rows, where the builders began with a half-block, he counted one half. Once finished with one wall, he began on the wall to its left, then on the wall to its right. To count the blocks of the wall in which the door was set, he had to crawl to the center of the cell and look back at it. He used to stand and count, but he was so weak these days that he simply sat. He wasn’t sure if he was sick or if the paucity of diet was affecting him. He had performed this exercise many times.

Occasionally, he lost count when his mind wandered. When this happened, he forced himself to start over each time until he finished counting the entire room. Sometimes he came up with different numbers, slightly off by one or two from a previous counting. Then he knew he had made a mistake. Usually, the number came to 321 and a half, so he was pretty sure this was the correct number. It was a mind-numbing exercise that took him out of his environment, out of his condition, and into a world dominated by the order of exact counting.

He was in the midst of his exercise when a noise at the door startled him to reality. Someone had inserted keys in the door. The door swung open.
“Prisoner! To the far wall!”

He knew this routine. It was the same every time they brought the shit bucket. But it had only been one day. Did he miscount? Were they altering the routine to throw him off?

He rose slowly and hobbled to the far wall and stood facing the door, as required. The door opened the rest of the way, and he saw his guard, but no bucket. Instead, standing beside the guard was another man. His livery and the gilded sword betrayed that he was an officer of some importance, not a common jailer. As if to punctuate that fact, the man’s face cringed at the stench. “_Merde!” _he said with a turn of his head. He recovered quickly: a trained soldier.

“Nicolas Pelletier,” spoke the officer. “I am Antoine Brissot, the official representative of Charles-Henri Sanson, the High Executioner of France. I am here to inform you of your sentence,” he said, in a formal voice with his chin slightly raised. “For the crimes of highway thievery which you have committed, tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock you will be put to death.”