"The Chair" by Lamed Shapiro (1934, translated by Rueben Barcovithch)

Nicola Sacco (April 22, 1891 – August 23, 1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti(June 11, 1888 – August 23, 1927) were Italian-born anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during the robbery of a shoe factory in Massachusetts,  United States in 1920.  They were electrocuted.  There was and still is a lot of controversy surrounding their executions.  They became iconic figures to those on the left wing of American politics who felt they were falsely convicted due to their political beliefs.  Joan Baez recorded a song about them.  

"The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti" by Joan Baez

Father, yes, I am a prisoner

Fear not to relay my crime

The crime is loving the forsaken

Only silence is shame

And now I'll tell you what's against us

An art that's lived for centuries

Go through the years and you will find

What's blackened all of history

Against us is the law

With its immensity of strength and power

Against us is the law

Police know how to make a man

A guilty or an innocent

Against us is the power of police

The shameless lies that men have told

Will ever more be paid in gold

Against us is the power of the gold

Against us is racial hatred

And the simple fact that we are poor

My father dear, I am a prisoner

Don't be ashamed to tell my crime

The crime of love and brotherhood

And only silence is shame

With me I have my love, my innocence

The workers and the poor

For all of this I'm safe and strong

And hope is mine

Rebellion, revolution don't need dollars

They need this instead

Imagination, suffering, light and love

And care for every human being

You never steal, you never kill

You are a part of hope and life

The revolution goes from man to man

And heart to heart

And I sense when I look at the stars

That we are children of life, death is small

"The Flight" takes place right after the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.  It begins in a cafeteria in Boston, a place where all sorts of strongly left oriented men of all sorts spent their time.  Many identified themselves as communists or socialists.  As Yiddish socialists and communists began to feel at home in America, they became involved with left wing zealots from many different countries.  We see this in the cast of characters in the cafeteria.  One of the more interesting characters is Jake, an African American.  His dream that he is being executed in the electric chair by the governor of Massachusetts was disturbingly real.  Shapiro made me feel I was there in the cafeteria.   

I am finding strong similarities in the work of Saadat Hasan Manto and Lamed Shapiro.  I will try to talk about this more as I read on in their short stories.

Mel u