Toulon Township High School - Tolo Yearbook (Toulon, IL)

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Spring, Nineteen Thirty-two 31 some fat, some short, some long, some round, some oblong, and quite a few of the women’s necks are pretty. Very pretty indeed. “Then the old devil shook his finger in my face and predicted, mind you, predicted that the communist government would fall in ruins and as for me! Well, I would die by the rope also. Because, he said, that I’d die as I lived—by the rope. I told him he was crazy and I promised him I’d hang three thousand people before the end of the year. He laughed in my face and told me I’d never live to do it. Bah!’’ His listeners laughed until they held their sides, at the amusing way Marchoski told the tale. But Sonia bowed her head on her arms and sobbed softly. Sonia, the beautiful, they called her. Even the hardened veterans shook their heads and wondered why she ever married Marchoski, and why she still worshipped him with a dog-like devotion in spite of everything. Finally she arose and staggered out of the hovel. Marchoski did not venture to look up as she passed him. His eyes were glued and narrowed into merciless slits on a handful of greasy cards. After a while he rose too, and sauntered out. In spite of his apparent bravery regarding the old man, the old blacksmith’s prophecy of that morning bothered him. As he mushed through the inky blackness of the street where the blood of thousands of innocent victims still mingled with the wet and mud and a few blades of grass, he was thinking of the threat. He shrugged his shoulders, threw up his head and muttered, trying to throw off the dark thought, “I must be getting childish, letting an old lunatic’s ramblings bother me.” But the next day the thought still persisted, even though he tried to become interested in his prisoners’ expressions as they mounted the scaffold. The cold, drab, and dull winter passed and spring came: then summer. With the summer came stifling heat and famine. Meanwhile the executioner’s victims increased day by day, so that it seemed as if Mar-choski’s vow to the long dead blacksmith was to be fulfilled. Marchoski well deserved the name of the most heartless hangman that Moscow had ever had. The hot relentless summer heat and the long close nights had taken their toll on him. He stood at his post of duty this morning with his huge eyes bloodshot, his thick lips almost purple, and his hair and beard long, matted and unkempt. Clang! Clang! sounded the prison gates and six weary hopeless men stumbled across the court yard toward the gallows. “Six!” shouted Marchoski. “Don’t you see that I must have nine for today? Tomorrow is the last day of grace that is left me to fill my promise. I should have ten tomorrow, but if I am three short today, that means I must have three more tomorrow. You lunkheads, dummies and open-mouthed idiots! Go out and find me three more. Get children if

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30 +■ Spring, Nineteen Thirty-two TDniree TTHncDonssimid] +--------------------—■— ------------ One dull, dreary, slushy, hopeless, gray day, which was typical of the spirit of Russia, following the rise of the communists to power, Alexander Marchoski, the hangman of Moscow, clumped his way through filthy, iniquitous streets to a cafe in that city, where nightly a handful of his fellow rebels gathered. In that rude den, stale with tobacco and liquor, he found refuge as twilight came. Roughly and boisterously his companions greeted him. “Well, friend,” as Marchoski slowly lowered his huge frame into a dilapidated chair, “how did your noose go today? Very many aristocrats to stick their proud necks into it?” Marchoski’s livid, puffy features were drawn in a black scowl, but suddenly they broke into a leering grin. “Not so good, and yet not so bad,” he replied in his guttural voice. “My day was saved by an old man —a peasant blacksmith. He used to be considered wealthy before the communists came to power, and while the aristocrats held full sway. I knew him when I was a child. He lived in the same village that I did.” A heart-rending moan of agony turned every face quickly in the direction of Sonia, Marchoski’s wife. She sat apart in a corner from the sotted group of women, who occupied the disagreeable den. Her eyes were frozen with horror to her husband’s face. Falteringly words came from her numb lips. “Alexander, it wasn’t your old friend Paul, the blacksmith ? Your friend and my friend?” “Of course,” came the brief reply. “You hanged him with your hands?” “Yes, my hands. Look, you fool! Look, my hands!” And he thrust his huge hairy, grimy paws under Sonia’s beautiful face. “Tragic, isn’t it? Ha! Ha!” and Marchoski threw back his ragged unkempt head, and laughed like a wild animal, showing his yellow ugly snags, which he called teeth. “Comrade, do any of these condemned people have anything to say before they go to their deaths ?” asked one lean-jawed ragged man. “Oh, once in a while. For instance this old fool just this morning asked me if I didn’t ever hate to hang around twenty men a day. Imagine! Of course you know what my answer was. I laughed in his old, wrinkled face. Then he said that those who are so sure of themselves fall hardest, and he said I would be hangman of Moscow only a year and maybe less. He asked me if I didn’t ever feel any mercy. Mercy, the idea! I don’t know what the word means. I told him it gave me great satisfaction to see them come up and stick their necks in the noose. And you know it is rather amusing to notice how different necks are. Some skinny,

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32 +■ Spring, Nineteen Thirty-two you can not do any better!” he roared in a voice like thunder. “Sorry, sir,” said one of the guards, shrugging his shoulders, “but every nook and corner of the city has been searched and these are all that can be found. Nearly all of the condemned have served their sentence. Tomorrow there will be less than ever, as we can not find any offense to pin on them, either straight or crooked. Nearly everyone is obeying the communist rule and those that refused have long ago been put to death.” Blind rage so shook Marchoski that he was hardly able to put the poor wretched souls of the six men out of their misery. That night Sonia had to bear the brunt of Marchoski’s bitter disappointment in kicks and harsh words. The next day dawned bright and sweltering without promise of relief. Marchoski’s head seemed to him as if it would split open. The ugly threat that a dying man had made recurred in his mind often and like lightning. Marchoski had to admit now that he was afraid of the calm old man’s threat, and also he happened to remember the old saying that dying men see more clearly into the future than they ever did while living on this earth. “How many prisoners today?” Marchoski asked one of the guards briefly. “Eleven,” was the equally brief answer. The eyes of Marchoski slowly widened in horror as if seeing something in the world beyond. Then they quickly narrowed. “Eleven ?” he shouted. Then he whispered, “Eleven!” “I must have another—another victim,” he said as much to himself as to the guard. “How long before the doomed hour ?” “One hour.” “I will be back by then with another victim, making my death list reach three thousand, the promised number,” he informed the guard. After wandering around for a while in the narrow streets he turned his footsteps toward home. “Sonia,” he called into the cool darkness of his domain. “Sonia.” After a pause a soft voice answered him. “Yes, Alexander.” “Go to the well and get me a drink,” he ordered, while the figure three thousand kept running through his brain. Three thousand! Because Sonia was tired she did not hurry and this so enraged Marchoski that he was across the room in one big stride, and had her by the shoulders shaking her as a dog does a rat. “When I speak to you I want you to do as I bid in a hurry. You’re not dumb are you?” he demanded, still brutally shaking her. Sonia’s face turned slowly white and her black eyes snapped. “You beast! You murderer! Take your murderous hands off me. You, who would kill your best friend! Get out of my way before I kill you. Do