The officer quickly recovered. “I did not want to upset you,” he said. “I know it’s impossible to make you understand what it was like then. In any event, the machine still works and is effective in and of itself. It is effective even though it stands alone in this valley. And in the end the corpse still slips unbelievably smoothly into the pit, even if there aren’t, as there once were, hundreds gathered like flies all around it. At that time, we had to erect a sturdy fence around the pit. It was torn down long ago.”
The traveler wanted to avert his face from the officer and looked about aimlessly. The officer assumed that he was marking the desolation of the valley, so he seized his hands and turned him around to meet his gaze and asked: “Can’t you just see the shame of it?”
But the traveler said nothing. The officer left him alone for a little while and stood absolutely still, his legs apart, hands on his hips, staring at the ground, then he smiled encouragingly at the traveler and said: “I was right beside you yesterday when the commandant invited you. I heard him, I know the commandant, I immediately understood what his intentions were. Although he’s powerful enough to move against me, he doesn’t yet dare do it, but he certainly intends to subject me to your judgment, the judgment of a respected foreigner. He has calculated carefully: This is your second day on the island, you didn’t know the old commandant and his ways, you’re conditioned by European mores, perhaps on principle you object to the death penalty in general and such a mechanical method as this one in particular; besides, you can see that executions are pathetic and have no public support here, even the machine is badly worn—now, taking all this into consideration (so thinks the commandant), isn’t it quite possible that you would disapprove of my methods? And if you do disapprove (I am still speaking as the commandant), you wouldn’t conceal this fact, for certainly you have confidence in your own tried and true convictions. Of course you have seen and learned to respect the peculiarities of many other peoples, and you probably wouldn’t condemn our proceedings as forcefully as you would in your own land. But the commandant has no need for all that. Just letting slip a casual little remark will suffice. It may not even reflect your true opinions, so long as it serves his purpose. He will be very clever in his interrogation, of that I am sure, and his ladies will circle around you and prick up their ears. You might just say: ‘Our judicial system is quite different,’ or, ‘The defendant is questioned before he is sentenced in our country,’ or, ‘In our country the condemned man is informed of his sentence,’ or ‘We haven’t used torture since the Middle Ages’—all of which are statements that are as true as they seem self-evident to you, innocent enough remarks that don’t malign my methods in any way. But how will the commandant take them? I can picture him, the good commandant, hastily shoving his chair aside and rushing onto the balcony, I can see his ladies streaming out after him, I can hear his voice—the ladies call it a booming, thunderous voice—and so now he speaks: ‘A renowned scholar from the West, charged with investigating the judicial systems of all the countries in the world, has just pronounced our traditional system of administering justice inhumane. After receiving the verdict of such a distinguished person, I can naturally no longer tolerate this procedure. Effective immediately I therefore ordain…,’ and so on and so forth. You would like to recant: You never said what he is asserting; you never called my methods inhumane, on the contrary you regard them, in keeping with your deep insight, as the most humane and worthy of humanity; you also admire this machinery—but it’s too late; you’ll never get to the balcony, which is already crowded with ladies; you’ll try to draw attention to yourself; you’ll want to shout but your mouth will be covered by a lady’s hand—and both I and the work of the old commandant will be finished.”