It wasn’t an ordinary itch. It tore at his flesh like a troop of army ants shaving the meat off a carcass. Dragging his leg in a cast, he shuffled through the prison cell, howling. His leg had been in the cast for the past six months, ever since he threw a shoe at the tyrant. They battered his leg, put it in the cast, and battered it again when it mended. The cycle was to repeat until he apologized. He never did. They moved him to death row.
He had gotten used to the cast, but the itch was new. It had started only a week ago, like a splash of hot oil on delicate skin. Soon, it gnawed at his bones and slurped his marrow. “Take it off, cut it, cut it!” He rapped his manacles against the cell door. His defiance blurred, as did his memories of the revolution.
“Brave enough to throw your shoe at the Supreme Leader, can’t stand an itch, eh?” The guards mocked him. Sometimes, when the howling became unbearable, they knocked him down with their metal-tipped truncheons. He relished the moments of his unconsciousness. It was the only time when the itch retreated. But it always came back, with the persistence of a long-term abuser.
He had lost his ability to sleep a long time ago, like most of his comrades. They couldn’t sleep when there was so much oppression and suffering around. Now, all of that felt as if it happened in a different lifetime. The itch had infected his body and mind. He was ready to apologize a hundred times over if they took the cast off. He no longer dreamed of revolution; he just wanted to scratch. But it was too late. The date for his public hanging was already announced. No one walked away from the death row—no appeal, no petitions.
“He howls too much. I can’t even eat in peace.” The warden often complained. He explained how those demonic howls spoiled his dinner the other night. That too, Biryani—a special treat from the State.
“Should we cut the cast?” The jail doctor asked, nibbling at the seams of his samosa.
“Nah! The hanging is in a week. We shouldn’t have bothered to put a cast on him this time. The rascal never learns. It’s a waste, like applying make-up on a dead body. But the Supreme Leader is very lenient. He says, ‘everyone should die with dignity.’” The warden bent down to spit the blood-like paan into the spittoon.
His days and nights melted into each other as he trudged the room in a delirium. It seemed he would tear up anyone who approached him. “Cut it, cut it, cut it…” He chanted, banging his head against the glass walls of his cell. He would sit on his spiked bed and try to look into the abyss inside the cast. The itch snarled at him. It reminded him of the tyrant’s smile—the smile that desecrated every public building, every hoarding, and every newspaper. He started hearing sounds as though the itch was talking to him. He heard the click of his neck breaking. He hallucinated his funeral— his skin melting, flesh burning, bones crackling.
He didn’t know that a person could suffocate himself. They hadn’t taught him that in the rebel camps. He didn’t know it would only take thirty seconds. The itch competed with death, and death won. For the first time in weeks, silence pervaded through the death row cells, like a speck of ink diffusing in water.
“Selfish bastard! He spoiled a perfectly enjoyable public hanging.” The warden muttered while they cut the body down.
“Let’s cut the cast.” He added.
“Why? We could just push him down the bridge.” The orderly said.
“I am curious. Cut it!” The warden twirled his truncheon.
They laid his body on a steel table and cut the cast. The orderly jumped back. His face twitched in terror. Thousands of bed bugs came gushing out of the cast. They deluged the room and muffled the warden’s cry. On that black sea floated a leg, or what had remained of it, like a swollen log.
Illustration: Suman Mukherjee
