The Long Day's Dying by Alan White

Author:Alan White
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Helmut came forward and sat on the fourth side of the table on the other corner of the bale on which I was sitting. He rubbed his wrists.

Tom Cooper picked up a straw, and handed it to him.

‘Just in case you don’t know how to go about it,’ he said, ‘if you vote for the proposition, you put the straw into the hat unbroken. If you vote against it, you snap the straw with your thumb as you put it in.’

‘The secret ballot,’ Helmut said.

‘That’s right – the weapon of democracy.’

‘Without which neither the Star Chamber, the Spanish Inquisition, nor even Nazism could have begun.’

‘I could give you a quotation about motes and beams,’ Tom Cooper said, easily, ‘but I haven’t been reading the Bible much of late.’

He put the hat, folded, onto the table. With his left hand he drew it towards him, and then put in his straw. He passed the hat to me, and I put in my straw. I passed the hat to Helmut, and he put his hand inside it, containing his straw.

‘Let me make certain of this,’ he said. ‘If I leave the straw in here intact, it means you will kill me. If I break it, it means you will try to take me back with you.’

‘That’s right,’ Tom Cooper said. ‘The proposition on which we are voting is, shall I kill you.’

Helmut withdrew his hand, then gave the hat to Cliff. Cliff blatantly held his straw between the tip of his thumb and his finger, at the end, and dropped it into the beret, unbroken, with no attempt at concealment. He smiled at Helmut while he did this, a supreme gesture of dumb insolence.

He handed the hat back to Helmut, who took it still folded, in both hands.

‘Now tip it over,’ he said, ‘and shake the straws onto the tabletop.’

Helmut slowly did so, and then withdrew the beret to reveal them.

Three were broken, one was unbroken.

I looked quickly at Tom Cooper, and saw him look at Helmut.

‘The one thing about democracy,’ Helmut said, blandly, ‘is that it can be adapted to meet any situation.’

I was almost stunned with admiration for him. He had beaten us fairly and squarely again. I had put my straw in unbroken. Regretfully, I had decided to take my chance on getting through our lines without him to help me. I was also quite certain that Tom Cooper had decided to do the same thing. But, in keeping his hand inside the hat, Helmut had taken the opportunity to break both my straw and that belonging to Tom Cooper.

Already he understood that Tom Cooper would not go back on the ballot, would not destroy what he believed in, the right of a man to express his thoughts, without fear, in private.

He knew Tom Cooper to be incapable of revealing how he had voted, or of asking me how I had voted. Of course, he was taking a chance – a chance that Cliff might rebel and shoot him out of hand.

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