Gordimer Nadine - The House Gun

— But you stayed. You stayed with him until you got into your car and drove off and left him alone that night and didn’t come back.—

She was still looking him full in the face, her hands still calmly interlaced.

She closed her eyes a moment. The black lashes pressed on her cheeks.

— I was free.—

— So you were afraid of my son.—

— He was afraid of me.—

When she had gone Harald sat on in Motsamai’s chambers, looking round the shelves of law books with their paper slips marking relevant pages that might decide — not justice — he was not able to think of justice as he used to — but a way out. The law as a paper-chase whose subsidiary clauses might lead through the forest. Motsamai called on his intercom for coffee, and then without explanation to his client countermanded the order. He came out from behind his desk and went to a brass-handled cupboard. In it were rows of files and an inner compartment where glasses hung by their stems from carved slots, as in an elegant bar. He lifted in either hand a bottle of whisky and one of brandy, questioning? Harald nodded at the brandy. Motsamai poured them each a good tot. It was a small gesture of kindly, silent tact that came unexpectedly from this man. Harald could say to him — So she believes Duncan killed the man he saw fucking her on the sofa.—

— She knows the sort of woman she is. That is for us to proceed on.—

Motsamai drew at his tongue to savour the after-taste of the brandy; here is a man who enjoys his mouth, has managed to retain the avidity with which the new-born attacks the first nourishment at the breast.

— Is it?—

— Man, she provoked him beyond endurance, drove him beyond reason, not only that night, with her exhibition, but for over a year or so preceding that night. Culminating in it.—

— That’s not what she says. She says he was the one. He was the one to get, how did she put it, pretty ugly.—

— Ah, but you said it yourself — she stayed. And did you hear: he was afraid of me. That was her answer when you asked, after all her complaints, her allegations about him, if she was afraid of your son. She stayed, she stayed!—

Because he was more dreadful than the water, learned Senior Counsel. But that self-judgment of the accused was not for the ears of the lawyers; not yet, if ever. There is a winnowing process in preparing a case, to be learnt by a layman; Harald had some experience in picking up nuances in a very different context, the Board meetings he attended and sometimes chaired. Some facts would be useful to the lawyer, some would be detrimental to the argument he would present — how to proceed?

Motsamai slid between his majestic maroon-leather upholstered chair and his desk to seat himself again. What he had to say had to be said from there and not from the casual stance of sharing a drink. — Harald, it’s not going to matter whether or not fingerprints can be discovered under the dirt on that gun. My client has instructed me.—

— Duncan has said so.—

— He has. Duncan has told me.—

— He’s told you. And he’s told you to tell us.—

— Yes. Ah-hêh.—

That drawn-out sounding from the breast can be, is everything, a recognition, a lament. When he heard the man call him by his first name, for the first time, he knew what was being expressed now in an articulation older and beyond words.

— So that’s the end of it.—

— No, that’s not the end of it at all. It’s the beginning of our work.—

— You and his good friend, his attorney.—

The whole body tingling, the drug of an unknown emotion injected in this well-appointed chamber of announced damnation which now replaces the meaning of all other dwellings on this earth, in this life.

— Is a lawyer obliged to take a brief for someone who has said he is guilty? Already judged himself. What is there to defend.—

— Of course a lawyer must take such a brief! The individual has the right to be judged according to many factors in relation to his confessed act. Circumstances may affect vitally the weight of circumstantial evidence. The accused may judge himself, but he cannot sentence himself. Only the judge can do that. Only on the verdict of the court. In terms of the kind of sentence likely to be imposed, this is the beginning of the case, man! What we concentrate on is ensuring that the sentence is not going to be a day longer, not a degree more punitive than mitigating factors allow. He’s opened up, Harald — your son’s talking to me now — there’re aspects of the affair to pursue for the defence, that defence still exists!—

The prison visit to a murderer.

When he came back from Senior Counsel’s chambers and told her, her face broke out in scarlet patches as if in fierce allergy, it was shocking to look at. A raw indecency before him. He anguishedly wanted her to weep, so that he could hold her.

They went dully over what the lawyer had said about his brief, his task. The principle of law, innocent until proved guilty, which they held along with all those who are confident they will never transgress further than incur a traffic fine, was overturned. In its dust, bewilderment isolates; each spoke for the self rather than succeeded in reaching out to the other.

Any other woman surely would have wept, keened over her son, and he could have found some purpose, embracing her, joining her. He offered, of himself: We know less than before. Motsamai didn’t ask him the only thing that matters. To me — us. It’s not why — that’s all Motsamai’s concerned with, that’s the defence. It’s also how. How could he do it. Duncan could bring himself to do it, take a gun and kill. He’s you and me, isn’t he, and we can’t know, can we. Not because he’s not going to tell Motsamai or us or anyone; it’s something that can’t be ‘told’. It has to be in you. In him.

Claudia went to the kitchen to find food because this must be about the time when they usually ate. He was not domesticated. He followed, out of some sort of courtesy which was all that was left for their situation. There was nothing further to say; he had perhaps said too much already. What Claudia had been thinking, framing in her mind in that burrowing silence of the kitchen, came next day when they were walking together down the path to the carport on their way to the prison. One of the stiff spatulate leaves of the Strelitzia caught at her hair and she dodged, breaking their inevitable progress, and he turned to see what was impeding her. A grin swiftly transformed her face and as swiftly shut away. You believed that night that he could do it. Didn’t you? You’d decided. You didn’t need to wait for any confession to a lawyer.

First there had been the persona of a prisoner on the other side of the table in the prison visiting room, this day there was the persona of a murderer, self-accused, self-defined as such. Duncan. Claudia, his mother, managed the half-hour within the format of her profession that she could summon, a surety no calamity could take from her; the confession of guilt a diagnosis. There was the question of the lawyer yet again. Was the patient absolutely satisfied with the competence of the one in charge of his case, was he sufficiently impressed with Motsamai, now that he had had talks with him? Would he like to have another opinion called in, there were many highly-experienced lawyers, wouldn’t that be worthwhile? The nature of the diagnosis itself, what awesome malignancy it has pronounced, is not under discussion. His father confirms — I’ve also had a chance to talk to Motsamai. I think he’s a clever man. And he knows you’re going to need a clever man. I think we should leave it to him, if he wants to bring in someone else for consultation. If there’s someone whose particular experience in a certain kind of case he’d want to make use of.—