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The Room with the Little Door

Chapter 5: CHAPTER III A Forbidden Song
By Roland Burnham Molineux
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About This Book

A former prisoner recounts life inside the Death-Chamber at Sing Sing, portraying a corridor of barred cells, constant surveillance, and a small door through which condemned men pass to execution. Through episodic sketches he conveys the monotony of waiting, restricted visits, a library of books, and the strange intimacy produced by shared confinement under bright lights. Vignettes range from tragicomic incidents—a man who befriends and ultimately preserves a dead mouse—to evenings of communal singing, friendships, and private reflections. Later pieces examine psychological experiments, interrogation practices, and contemplations about how individuals maintain dignity, hope, or indifference when facing imminent death.

CHAPTER III
 
A Forbidden Song

Sometimes in the evenings, the Death-Chamber seemed quite a different place, and we all forgot our ennui because some one started a song. I have heard good singing there, and some of us understood music. So when “Eddy,” with his really good tenor, would start up something we all knew, books would close and pipes go out, and we all would join in and sing ourselves out of the blues.

What did we sing? Everything, from “America,” with special gusto at the “Sweet land of liberty” part, to the last popular song whose strains had been wafted to our “desert island.” How we sang! When we could not remember or did not know the words we sang on just the same. Hours have actually speeded that way, when we happened to be in the mood, and we were all the better for it. Did I say we sang everything? No, not everything. There were strong men there, determined men, who had done and would do desperate things. But there was one song ever in our minds and in our hearts that never came to our lips, and which not one of us would have dared even to hum. Not a voice could have trembled through had it started. Every one thought of it; no one ever suggested it. You know the one I mean.

One night when we were through an especially good concert (I had sung a solo) some one shouted out “Police!” Now, of course, not one of us wanted to have anything further to do with that department. It was only our way of calling for a “light.” We have no matches in the Death-Chamber; there is phosphorus in them, and you might—. So when George, our keeper, had come to my cage with the burning paper spill, and when my pipe was going cheerfully, I said: “George, music certainly does affect the emotions, but under some circumstances, I imagine, it could make one quite blue. Did you ever notice that?”

“I should say so,” was the reply. “I remember once starting a song here that was never finished for that same reason.”

“What was it?” said I, turning away, for I knew the answer before it came.

“It was ---- ---- ----.”

“Damn this tobacco! the smoke gets into my eyes.”