Relation of My Imprisonment (6 page)

Father, in a sarcastic tone signifying disapproval: We hear lately that you have allowed your attention to wander. We suppose that this is a result of some wonderful understanding you have recently come by, an understanding which supercedes our own. Perhaps you believe your new perspective unique, and if not unique, then perhaps you think it valid and ours invalid. For we, after all, are but the dead, and you are the living.

Uncle: My brother wishes to advise you, he loves you, so do not be afraid or abashed before him, merely give him your attention.

Father, angrily: He has no choice but to give me his attention! He is asleep and dreaming, and thus we have taken it from him! That is how bad a pass things have come to!

(Is this what is meant by grace? I wondered.)

Uncle: Listen to the man, he is your father, you are without wisdom, he is dead. Do not be frightened or abashed, he forgives you, he understands, you do not, he is dead and you are among the living. Fear only the living.

Father, more calmly: Fear the living, indeed. And fear even more your loss of contact with the dead. Go, return to your coffin, find yourself a gate, a wicket, and pass through it to the ground of faith that makes life endurable because honorable, honorable because honoring the dead. The coffin is your gateway. There is no other possibility for your return to honor. Expect, without it, to disappear utterly, utterly! If you will not honor the dead while you are among the living, you will be without honor yourself when you are among the dead! This is your last chance for redemption. It is your only chance for redemption.

Uncle, soothingly but with urgency: Believe him, nephew, believe him. Do not resist any longer.

Whereupon the images spun and twirled about before me, and I came awake in my cell to the glistening light of dawn, and I felt freshened in my heart, and I determined that moment to set about that very day to obtain a coffin to replace the one I had given away. I felt joy in my heart for the first time in months, and I could barely keep myself from leaping about my cell.

My first thought was that I would request my wife to search out and deliver a coffin for me, but then I realized that I would end up incriminating her and possibly some others in the crime, for such it was now, a crime. Therefore, I determined to build my own coffin in my cell and to begin the construction that very day. And when I had eaten breakfast in the dining hall, I rushed out and ran down the stairs to the chief jailor's office to request the necessary materials and tools for the building of a coffin.

For the first time in many months, as I spoke to Jacob Moon, I did not consider the manner of my being perceived. I let myself show plenty of cheek and high spirit, just as I felt it, and boldly I asked him to make certain materials and tools available to me as soon as they could be requisitioned and delivered (it was not at all uncommon for the prisoners to request materials and tools not unlike these, for many of them were engaged in such diverse projects as building sailboats, carving furniture and making paneling for their cells, and other items). The list of materials: thirty-two linear feet 1" by 12" pine board; 1 pint cow-glue; 2 flat steel hinges & screws for same; 6 sheets misc. grades sandpaper; 3 lbs. cotton batting; 5 yards red velvet cloth, or approx. if not available; 1 box upholsterer's tacks; 1 quart clear varnish. The list of tools: claw hammer; plane; square; handsaw; wood chisel; screwdriver; sablehair paintbrush. I cannot now remember if I listed anything more, but I think this was all.

Jacob Moon, after he had read my list, directly asked me what I wished to do with these materials and tools, for his requisition form was required to show the proposed purpose for all such materials and tools as were requested by prisoners or anyone else. He pointed to a particular paragraph on the lengthy form, which did indeed assert that not to indicate thereon in detailed language the precise use to which any materials or tools requisitioned by the office of the chief jailor from the central supplier for all prisons, whether that use be specifically for the personal deployment of the prisoners or for prison maintenance or for the use, personal or otherwise, of the chief jailor, was to violate the law and to be subject to dismissal and possible prosecution by the office of the chief of prosecution. I saw, therefore, that Jacob was merely doing his job and that he had no personal desire or need to expose or confound me, and in fact, if I had been willing to tell him that I wished to have these materials and tools for the purposes of building a coffin, he would simply have filled out the requisition form appropriately and sent it on, even though he knew as well as did I myself that to request materials for the building of a coffin was to bring upon my head probable banishment from the land and possibly worse as soon as the form were received. In fact, I am sure that Jacob had not even the slightest curiosity or other interest in why I had suddenly asked for these materials and tools; he only wanted the form to be filled out as close to properly as possible.

Therefore I informed him that I did not wish to lie to him or otherwise deceive him, but I wanted to have these materials and tools for the purpose of building myself a coffin so as to pray and contemplate the dead, as I had been trained and given to do since childhood but the which in recent months had been denied me, with certain awful effects on my spirit and mind and, as I saw it, also on my destiny. I did not, however, believe that he, meaning my jailor, ought to declare on his requisition form that my purposes were as I had just described to him, for if he did so, it would doubtless go ill for him as well as for me. The offices of the chief of prosecution would think him joking, and they are not known for their enjoyment of jokes when it comes to such somber matters as the laws against worshipping the dead, and thus they would prosecute him for inappropriate levity, a mild form of heresy, to be sure, but one punishable by law none the less.

When my jailor had come fully to understand my analysis of the situation before him, he informed me that, therefore, he had only one recourse, which was to deny me my request for a requisition, and to warn me that he was by law compelled to restrict and forbid all evidences of worship of the dead, which meant that no coffins were allowed inside the prison, except as required by regulations of the sanitation and medical services administration for the transportation out of the prison of the corpse of any prisoner said to have died by infectious disease. John Bethel, his predecessor, by his example of leniency in these matters, had set a bad example, said Jacob Moon, but in his later trial and punishment, had set a good example. His fate will always stand before the jailors who follow, Jacob told me, as a clear warning of the consequence of leniency in matters concerning the laws against the worship of the dead. For that reason, I will not permit you to build a coffin or to have one brought in here for you by one of your secret brethren or your wife or Gina, and I will not let you use anything as a substitute for a proper coffin, such things as packing crates, wardrobe closets and other such enclosures as you people in your extremities of fervour have been known to employ, unless, of course, you are said to have died of an infectious disease

There was no more to be said about it. Therefore I returned to my cell, disappointed, certainly, but full of a strength and clarity that I had not enjoyed for months, for now 1 was properly engaged with the task properly before me, the which I had previously refused to heed, the task of attending to the dead. I was back at the old business of setting up the proper rites, sacraments and artifacts, and the effects on my spirit were immediately felt by me and manifested to everyone, so that no longer was there any demeaning confusion over how I should relate my divided self to the distinct, contrasting realities around me, for no longer was there any contrast between them, or them and me. I had joined them.

W
HAT now follows is a description of how a great many of the imprisoned, both at my prison and at others across the land, who had no coffin came to have a coffin, and also what further was created thereby. It is, in addition, a description which must be taken as a type, revealing a type of worldly process, in the same sense that sacred scriptures are well known to reveal through types the more general events and processes.

It sometimes is forced to come out that the solution to a simple problem cannot but be complex. My problem was surely simple, that of a need to obtain a coffin, so as thereby to have followed the instructions and heeded the warnings of my beloved ancestors, instructions and warnings which, once heard, must be followed hard upon with dedicated acts of obedience. Mere suggestions and hints from the dead must be taken as absolute commands. In spiritual matters such as this, disobedience implies nothing more or less than a lack of understanding. And equally it is assumed that whoever properly understands the commands of the dead will be incapable of disobeying them. This is a necessary closure and must be accepted as such, if what is to follow will not be meaningless.

As said, my problem was a simple one. And though at first I had thought the solution would also be simple, it was not to be so. After considerable pondering upon my problem, it came to me that because Jacob Moon had been compelled to prohibit me from building my own coffin, I was now required to have one brought in to me ready-made. To be sure, he was compelled by law to prohibit me as well from importing any coffin or from utilizing any substitute as I might find among my incidental furnishings, but by disobeying him in these matters I would not, as in the former proposed solution, implicate an innocent man in my crime. I was therefore free to ignore his latter pair of prohibitions, and this thought filled me with jubilation, and I grew impatient for my wife and her cousin to arrive so that I could unfold these thoughts to them.

Upon their arrival at my cell, and after I had explained to them that henceforward I would not compel them to participate with me or with the jailor Jake (as they had come to call him) in the foul acts of sensual gratification, those spirit-soiling celebrations of life to which we had become habituated, I related to the two women the nature of my dream and the warnings and instructions I had received from my father and uncle. They both seemed greatly relieved and pleased with my obvious recovery from the disease of sensuality that had debilitated our wills for so long, and even Jacob Moon, when I had opened my experience of the dream to him, and my consequent resolution, seemed somewhat relieved and in a clear way impatient to get back downstairs to his office where, as I knew, he had a massy pile of paperwork awaiting his attention and signature. My wife's cousin, Gina, indicated that she was already late for a prior appointment in the city, and afterwards, when she had taken her leave, I related to my wife my most recent conclusion, that I was compelled by circumstance and the law to order and have shipped to me a ready-made coffin from some coffin-maker among our brethren outside.

As she is an extremely intelligent woman, she quickly pointed out to me that I would not be free to have a coffin shipped if anyone were able by examining it to determine that it was indeed a coffin, for to manufacture and distribute such items, as I more than any man must know, was a crime. In my excitement at the prospect, I had forgotten this obstacle. After a moment of dismay, however, I started up again with pleasure, for my wife suggested to me that I could surely receive a wooden cabinet or trunk, if one could be made and shipped to me, and especially if it were properly fitted out as a cabinet or trunk, so that any postal authority or prison examiner looking for contraband would, on inspecting it, conclude that the object was nothing more harmful to the common weal than a cabinet or trunk. She imaged such an object for me, pointing out that it could be made according to my specifications for a coffin, with the skin of it hinged and set with brass handles and with short legs attached to the base so as to resemble what is commonly called a hope chest and often used by young women for storing up their dowry of linens and clothing against the day when they marry (for that reason are they called hope chests). She further pointed out that it would be necessary to fill the chest with numerous items of cloth, linens, blankets and garments, &c, or the inspectors and surely my wiley jailor would discover the deceit, for they would know that I, as an impoverished prisoner, could not own sufficient items so as to require such a large chest for their storage.

This last observation by my wife, however, filled me with despair again, for I saw that no one would believe that I, of all prisoners, was the legitimate recipient of such a lavish gift as a large wooden chest filled with expensive items of cloth. My poverty was well known, for my calling had been publicly forbidden to me, and it was also well known that my wife and five children had been forced as a consequence to throw themselves upon the kindness of strangers and the few among the brethren who dared to be seen aiding them. How could a man, people would ask themselves, who cannot afford to feed and clothe and house his own wife and children, suddenly provide himself with a large hand-made wooden chest stuffed with blankets, coats, hand towels and warm undergarments?

My dear wife saw my despair and with reluctance conceded that the ruse would not be taken, though at first she had seemed to view the expense of such a gift as not especially dear or difficult to finance, even. By so much was she conscious of my need that she had difficulty making herself aware of the practical considerations. But I had swiftly itemized for her clarification the costs of such a chest and its necessary contents, as I knew any inspector would be able to do immediately upon opening it and examining it for contraband, an itemization, in fact, he would be required by law to make, so as to fix the shipping and delivery charges, and then she realized how incriminating (of me, my presumed poverty) it would be. It would be as if a starving mouse were suddenly revealed to own a cupboard full of cheese, she lightly said to me, in a characteristically generous attempt to dispel my gloom with humor.