He had a very strange dream the other night, W. says. The two of us were on trial for something serious – what, he didn’t know. The courtroom was deserted, W. says. There was no judge there to bang the gavel. No defence team, no prosecution. No policemen. But we were guilty, we knew we were. We’d found ourselves guilty …
‘Has our time come?’, W. asked me. Ages ago, I told him. – ‘Then what's keeping them?’, he asked. The judgement came too late, I told him. There are no hangmen, there is no firing squad. The army have all deserted their posts. The very institutions of the law are empty, their doors swinging open, files blowing about in the wind.
‘Then who will carry through the sentence?’, W. asked. There's no one to carry through the sentence, I told him. – ‘Who will lead us to the gallows?’ There's no one to lead us to the gallows. – ‘Are we to strangle ourselves?’ I'll strangle you, and you strangle me, and we'll see where that gets us, I told him.
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