Gordimer Nadine - The House Gun

Bail application by the good friend cocksure lawyer had been again refused.

But why? Why? All she can call to mind is some unquestioned accepted reasoning that one who is likely to commit another crime cannot be let loose on the mere security of money. Duncan, a danger to society! For god’s sake, why?

The prosecutor’s got wind of some idea that he might disappear — leave.

The country?

Now they are in the category of those who buy themselves out of retribution because they can afford to put up bail and then estreat. He did not know whether she understood this implication of refusal, for their son and themselves.

Where does the idea come from?

The girl’s been called for questioning, apparently she said he’s been threatening to take up a position he’s been offered with a practice in Singapore. I don’t know — to get away from her, it sounds like. Something she let slip, maybe intentionally. Who can fathom what was going on between them.

If Claudia is dissatisfied with what little Harald has learned in explanation, could she have been more successful? Well, let her try, then.

An awaiting-trial prisoner has the right to visits. Her turn: I’d like to talk to that Julian whatever-his-name, before we go.

Harald knows that both have an irrational revulsion against contact with the young man: don’t kill the messenger, the threat is the message.

Claudia is not the only woman with a son in prison. Since this afternoon she has understood that. She is no longer the one who doles out comfort or its placebos for others’ disasters, herself safe, untouchable, in another class. And it’s not the just laws that have brought about this form of equality; something quite other. There’s no sentimentality in this, either, which is why she will not speak of it to anyone, not even to the one who is the father of a son in prison; it might be misinterpreted.

She telephoned the lawyer to obtain the number of the messenger who had presented himself at the townhouse security gate and entered at the hour of after-dinner coffee. She was adamant, Harald could hear as she reached the messenger, that he should come back that evening. Not tomorrow. Now.

This time when he opened the door to the messenger, Harald offered his hand to him: Julian Verster. Claudia had noted down the name.

How did they seem to him? The occasion had no precedent to go by; a social occasion, an inquisition, an appeal — what kind of hospitality is this, what signifying arrangements are appropriate, as the provision of tea or drinks set out, the placing of ashtrays and arrangement of a comfortable chair signify the nature of other occasions. Everything in its customary place in the room; that in itself inappropriate, even bizarre.

Their attitude towards him had changed, overcome by need. They saw in this young man the possibility of some answers, they might read even in his appearance something of the context in which what had happened could happen. Everyone wears the uniform of how he sees himself or how he disguises himself. Bulky running shoes with intricate embellishments, high tongues and thick soles, that cabinet ministers as well as clerks and students wear now, and Harald himself, at leisure, wears; pitted skin on the cheeks, the tribal marks of adolescent acne, wide-spaced dog’s-brown eyes darkened by heavy eyebrows authoritatively contradicting the uncertainties of a mouth that moves, shaping and reshaping itself before he speaks. A face that suggests a personality subservient and loyal: an ideal component of a coterie. In business, Harald is accustomed to being observant of such things when meeting prospective associates.

— I’m sorry to have interrupted your plans for the evening, like this, but when you came that night we were all … I don’t know … we couldn’t say much. It was difficult to take in anything. As Duncan’s friend, you must have felt something the same — it must have been hard for you to have to come to us. We know that.—

The young man acknowledges with an understanding downturn of the lips that this is, in turn, her way of extending a hand to him.

— I felt awful — that I did it so badly — I couldn’t think of any other way. Awful. And he’d asked me, he left it to me.—

They sat in a close group now. Claudia was turned to him, sharing the sofa, and Harald drew up a chair, to speak.

— Why didn’t he call us himself.—

But it was a judgment rather than a question.

— Oh Harald … that’s obvious.—

— He was terribly shocked, you can’t imagine.—

— That was at the police station?—

— No, the house, he reached me on my cell phone and I just turned round in the middle of the road, where I was … he was still with the police at the house, the cottage.—

Claudia’s knees and hands matched, tight together, hands on knees. — You went to the house.—

— Yes. I saw. I couldn’t believe it.—

To them, what was seen is the man in the mortuary (Claudia knows the post-mortem procedure; the body may be kept for days before the process is performed). But — there in his face — to this Julian Verster what was seen was his friend, as Duncan is his friend. This realization makes it possible to begin to say what it is they want of him. Out of some instinctive agreement, neither has any right above the other, they question him alternately; they’ve found a formula, at least some structure they have put together for themselves in the absence of any precedent.

— Could you give us an idea of how, at all, Duncan could have been mixed up in this, how his — what shall I say? — his position as some sort of tenant, his relationship to the men in the house — these friends — could have led to the circumstantial evidence there seems to be against him? I was at the lawyer’s today. You belong to that group of friends, don’t you? We don’t know any of them, really—

Claudia turned to Harald, but with eyes distantly lowered for the interjection. — Except the girl, his girl-friend, he’s brought her with him once or twice, here. But apparently she wasn’t there on Friday. She’s not been mentioned.—

— Could you tell us something about the friendship, they all more or less share the property, they must have got on well with one another, to decide to do that, live in such close proximity — what could lead to Duncan being accused of such a horror? You must understand we’ve lived, my wife and I, parents and son, as three independent adults, we’re close but we don’t expect to be privy to everything in his life. Different relationships. We have ours with him, he has his with others. It’s been fine. But when something like this falls on your head — we understand what this — respect, I suppose, for one another, can mean. Just that we don’t know anything we need to know. Who was this man? What did Duncan have to do with him? You must know! We can’t go to see Duncan tomorrow and ask him, can we? In a prison visitors’ room? Warders there, who else—

— We’ve all been friends quite a long time, well certainly Dave, he studied architecture along with Duncan, and so did I–I’m with Duncan in the same firm. But I didn’t join them when they took the house and the cottage together. Khulu’s a journalist, I think Duncan got to know him first, when Khulu wanted to move into town from Tembisa. Carl, Carl Jespersen — (it is difficult to speak of, or hear spoken of, in the tone of ordinary information, a man lying in a mortuary) Jespersen came I think about two years ago with a Danish — or maybe it was Norwegian — film crew and somehow he didn’t go back. He works — was working with an advertising agency. The three of them took the main house and Duncan took the cottage. But they more or less run the whole place together. I mean, I’m often there, it’s pretty much open house, some good times.—