(From _The Atlantic Monthly_)
After the usual breakfast he was taken downstairs, given a bath, a
fresh suit of civil clothes, and brought to the office. Here he was
presented with several documents and a five-dollar bill.
The warden got up from his desk, ‘I see by your papers, Joe, that you
have been here twelve years. Well, you have been a good prisoner;
good-bye and good luck to you.’ They shook hands.
He was led through the yard to the gate. The moment had come. He
stepped through. Again they shook hands before the gate was closed
behind him and locked--locking him free.
He carried his hat in his hand as he started along the road and down
the hill. He was confronted by a fresh, bracing breeze and a most
bewildering sense of vastness--a vastness bathed in light. His eyes
blinked, and his steps were short and hesitating.
On top of the high gray wall a guard, rifle in hand, walked in the same
direction. ‘Good-bye, Joe,’ he shouted. ‘How does it feel to be free?’
* * * * *
How does it feel to be free? To be confined, bottled-up, held in check,
restricted, controlled--and suddenly turned loose upon a dizzy world!
A gray mist has surrounded it all. Imagine yourself completely
enveloped as though your life had been becalmed by a fog. A fog through
which it is difficult to see. Only overhead can you see a tiny
circular opening through which the bright sky shines like a sparkling
jewel. Soon you discover that the mist has hardened about you. The fog
has encased you completely, except for that far-away opening overhead.
You examine the walls and find that they are composed of long narrow
ribbons of gray celluloid hung from what appears to be a small hoop in
the sky. No--you have more space than that. Your walls are round, but
you have ten feet from side to side. And every side is alike. From the
sky to the ground your life is encased in a celluloid tube made of cold
gray ribbons, and you are unable to see what is outside of yourself.
But when you examine the walls closer you find that the strips are made
entirely of little squares, and each square has a queer design. You had
not noticed them at first, but everywhere you look and as far up as you
can see you find the little squares. Then on examining them closer you
discover that each square is a separate little picture in which you
yourself appear! Each square a frozen moment of your life. Each picture
a tiny recollection dimmed and made gray by that rapid piling-up--that
multiplication called the Past.
Frozen memories in miniature. As though the ribbons were discarded
cinematographic records--records of your discarded past--complete and
shameless.
There are different scenes of long ago; some are comforting and some
are horrid. At some you tarry, but others you are happy not to see at
all. Those high up are hard to see, though some seem clear and fairly
distinct. You make vague guesses at what they are, and some you are
sure you recognize. It is like a game. The forgotten past hangs over
you as high as you can see, and a circle of light comes through from
the sky.
The whole thing is quite natural, and at first you see nothing very
strange about the affair; a little odd, perhaps, or maybe like a
dream; but it does not seem very startling until suddenly you discover
that the sequence is wrong. Why should it be wrong? Why do the scenes
not follow one another as they happened? Why is this thing all
helter-skelter?
You try to select and arrange, but the task is enormous. Here and there
and everywhere are pictures that you have not included and some that
you would like to--if you could only cut them away with a penknife.
Yes, cut little toy-windows so you could see clearly outside--the
outside world--the real world that at present you can see only by
looking through your own experiences, and see dimmed by the shadows of
past images. But you have no knife that could sever. And it would not
help.
Oh, how tired you are of it all! How dreary, how oppressing, how
monotonous! Days are gray and nights are gray. You are tired of
yourself--the constant repetition of yourself. If you could only run
away. But the cylinder is light, airy, and nimble. It rotates as you
run. You are imprisoned in this strange thing called life--life dreary
and gray--surrounded by cameos and smudges of black.
The sequence is wrong. You try to escape. The walls are pliable, and
with pressure could yield. You wedge a hand through, and another; you
work a foot through, making still another opening, but at no time can
you manage to get your body through. Then, too, where would you go? You
give it up; and in time you are resigned and engage in that restful
play of thinking back and of looking out at the real world through the
lightly tinted squares.
You see the world--the real world that is made of kisses and snow. Of
fire, milk, dreams, straw, water, tobacco, and children. You watch the
real world that is built solidly of things that do not last--built
firmly of vital sparks that cannot endure.
Every now and then you discover a new square or two added to your
walls. Something that happened only yesterday; but what was in its
place before you are unable to tell, try hard as you may.
In a year many different pictures have presented themselves. In three
years a fair number are new; in six, three-quarters are added pictures;
but in twelve hardly any of the old remain and these seem greatly
dimmed. A comforting dimness. Time makes all things restful.
In the outside world you can see children playing. They are playing
with matches, lighting old brooms and paper, and running across the
fields with trailing flames and shooting sparks. They had never done
this before.
You watch closely. They are putting fire to the whole business!
Suddenly a flash, a puff of smoke, a blaze of light, and there you
stand on a hill confronted by real colors and a free, bracing breeze.
In the distance the frightened children are running and you hear one
whimper, ‘I did not know it could burn.’
Everything is sky and land. You are surrounded by a vastness bathed in
light.
You blink at the glamour of it all, as with hesitating steps you wander
down the road to--The station is a mile away. Here a train comes from
somewhere and can take you to--exactly where you do not know, but it
can take you there. You must go!
That is how it feels to be free.
* * * * *
At the station Joe changed his five-dollar bill to buy a ticket and a
plug of chewing-tobacco. The train carried him home--to the city of his
former life.
Here the streets are paved with stone. Square next to square, with
hardly a crack between. Cruelly mortised by man for the benefit and
convenience of his fellow men. Long lines cemented together so that mud
and dirt are not tracked about--tracked into the little pigeonholes
called homes.
Joe reached home all right. His wife had been dead a number of years
and his children had all grown up and married. Old memories were quite
dim. He hardly knew them, and they certainly did not recognize him; but
it was all very pleasant.
In the evening they all had supper together--that is, after the babies
had been put to bed in one room. The table was dressed as in a movie,
the room was bright with lights, and everything was merry.
A steaming chicken was brought on and the oldest son stood up, removed
his coat, and rolled up his cuffs before carving. ‘Now, dad, I’m going
to cut for you this-here leg, first and second joint,’ and, pointing
the knife at him, ‘also a good big chunk of the white meat. Mollie,
dish the gravy.’
They spoke about the comic strips in the illustrated newspapers, about
recent screen-dramas, about dance records for the phonograph, about
everything that amused them. The checkered past was carefully avoided.
They were all quite intelligent and they said they understood.
Joe had a nice home. He could stay about the house and just ‘rest up.’
The children had seen all kinds of reunions in the movies, and would do
their best to make him happy. They gave him a room to himself, a warm
pair of carpet slippers, a pipe with a yellow stem and fancy gold band,
a pair of cotton-flannel pajamas, razor blades, and everything that a
male mortal needs for comfort.
But Joe spent a most uncomfortable night. The large meal did not agree
with him and kept him awake. The rushing light of morn came blaring
into the room. He looked about. Small photographs hung on the walls.
There were scenes of Niagara Falls, Yellowstone Park, and of big trees
in California. Little gray squares dotted the walls--views that Joe had
never experienced.
It was all very natural that Joe should be a bit uncomfortable at
first. The children said that they understood, and that it would take a
little while for him to feel really at home.
Joe proceeded to make himself comfortable. He tried the carpet
slippers, but found them loose, soft, and uncomfortable. The pipe was a
nice thing, too, though he did not really enjoy smoking. The pictures
he removed from the walls, and then he drove nails on which to hang his
coat and pajamas. He greatly distrusted the closet, where it was dark
and where mice perhaps were free to wander.
He amused himself by collecting old bits of wire that he found on old
picture-frames and in the basement of the apartment house. It gave him
great pleasure to send the wire down the neck of a bottle and watch the
odd twists and coils it would make in the bottle--as though it were
life itself going through its many painful convulsions. He kept the
bottle on the open fire-escape in front of his window.
Just as soon as Joe found that the friendliness of his children was
quite genuine he proceeded to make himself really comfortable. He
brought up some thin boards to slip under the mattress of the cot.
This made it much firmer. He nailed up the closet door and painted the
rods of the fire-escape black, under the pretext that its former color
showed the dirt too much. At night he had several times been bothered
by a notion that there might be rats about and that his cot was too
low. This he soon fixed by bringing up some old wood from the basement
and raising the cot so that it resembled an upper berth in a cabin. He
was careful to eat very little meat and kept closely to a diet of soup
and hot cereal. Day by day he was feeling more comfortable. Now only
one thing more needed his attention. The room was too large! Too large
for one person. This he remedied by rigging a pole across the room
and hanging down a heavy curtain dividing the space in half. It also
divided the window. Now all seemed cozy.
By this time the bottle on the window was packed tight with bits of
wire. He carried it down to the basement and broke it over an ash can.
The heavy wad of iron wire was freed from its container. It was nothing
but a rusty solid mass, the same shape as the bottle that now was
scattered in fragments.
He turned it in his hand and examined it closely. Was it an experiment
that had failed? Did he imagine that the tough springy wires would jump
back to their former state once freed? No. It was a rusty solid mass,
brown as a cough mixture and shaped like a bottle. If he had a label he
could paste it on and mark it--‘Free!’
He brought it back to his room and carefully put it in its place on the
window. Then he climbed up on his cot.
Outside it rains, and outside it snows, and then the sun sings forth
and dries up the long lines of pavements made of stone cunningly
mortised. From his cot he can see a tiny bit of sky--a small bright
opening far away. Now and then a figure walks across a neighboring
roof and reminds him of the man on the high wall who held a rifle in
his hand and shouted, ‘How does it feel to be free?’ From his cot he
can see glimpses of the outside world--the real world that is made
of kisses and snow. But between him and the great outside is the
window-ledge upon which stands that rusty, packed-together wad of wire,
shaped like a bottle.