Gordimer Nadine - The House Gun

— That’s the fact of it, my dear doctor. — Hamilton gives a short briefing in the echoing corridors, just before the court sitting resumes. Voices, the dialogues of other people in trouble rebound hollow against the high ceilings but Harald and Claudia hear only their own exchanges with the man who has them in his hands. His confidence is like the dop of brandy he offers in chambers, a warmth that quickly fades from the blood.

The Prosecutor continues his case, calling the State psychiatrist and leading her evidence. She exudes competence from the freckled flesh of breasts tightly twinned like displaced plump thighs in the neckline of her dress as she testifies that the accused’s intellect is within high limits, his judgment sound.

— In your opinion, would such a level of intellect and sound judgment operate in conscious responsibility for actions, even in stressful situations?—

— Yes. The accused was not entirely unprepared for what he saw on that night after the party. I believe, from my consultations with him, that he was suspicious of the situation before he came upon the couple in the sexual act. He had made himself custodian of his partner’s morals, this was a constant source of quarrels and conflict between them. There is deep subconscious animosity present within his passionate possessiveness towards her. He would not face the reality of her personality, although she was frank with him, and he prides himself on being an advocate of personal freedom, including sexual freedom. He constantly suspected her of infidelity, whether on occasions when this was justified, or not. He had an obsessional, evangelical attachment to her which manifested itself in rational, precisely practical direction of every aspect of her life.—

— Was his day of inaction after the discovery of the couple consistent with this rationality?—

— In my opinion it was.—

— A day of inaction, contemplation, followed by action — is this also consistent with purposeful behaviour?—

— Yes. His is the personality of a brooder. He does not act on the spur of the moment. He plans. He planned the young woman’s whole life without her volition or consent.—

— Do you believe, then, that he could have shot Jespersen ‘on the spur of the moment’, almost twenty-four hours later than he had discovered the compromised couple?—

— No. If he were to have acted in an irrational state, unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his behaviour, he would have attacked Jespersen at once, in the shock of his suspicions proved by what he came upon.—

— In what state of mind, then, would you say, with what intentions, would you say, he went to the house next day?—

— He went to the house with the conscious intentions of jealousy built up during his solitude.—

— In a rational state of mind?—

— Yes.—

— He went to the house intending to kill Jespersen?—

She would not be able to say to what extreme his intentions might carry him. But she was not convinced of the amnesia of the accused in respect of what happened at the house after Jespersen told him to pour himself a drink.

— The fact is that after forming those intentions in his hours in the cottage, he murdered Jespersen. Was he in full awareness of what he was doing?—

— He is an individual in whom self-control has been strongly established since childhood. It is an axiom of his middle-class background. He is not led by emotion to act on impulse, he’s deliberate in every course of action he takes, whatever that might turn out to be.—

The Prosecutor’s gesture was of complete satisfaction with his expert’s testimony: no more questions necessary.

Motsamai rose with arms away from the body, elbows and hands curved open before him as if to take up something offered him. — Doctor, what is a state of shock?—

— It’s a mental phenomenon that affects different people in different ways. Some people cry, some burst into anger, some run.—

— But in general — not the variety of reaction, but the effect on cognition, the sudden disorder of mental processes?—

— There is the effect of mental confusion. Yes. And as I have explained, it manifests itself in different ways.—

— Including the impulse to run away and hide?—

— Yes.—

— In your experience, Doctor, is a profound shock something that is quickly over, the individual concerned regains emotional balance, with the self-control this implies, just like that? Indeed, among your patients there surely have been some for whom a profound shock has had extremely long-term consequences — from what I have learnt, it haunts them to such an extent that in order to regain emotional balance they seek out your skills …—

Harald is alert to a stir of disapproval under the judge’s robe, but this passes without an objection to the jibe.

— Is it not feasible that when the accused fled in shock from the sexual exhibition of Ms James and Jespersen and hid himself in the cottage, he spent the hours there not in instant recovery to his rationality and capability of deliberate intentions, but in the state of mental confusion that you have identified as the effect of shock?—

— It is possible.—

— You would agree that his was profound shock?—

— Yes.—

— In the case of profound shock, would you say that it may increase, rather than decrease, mental and emotional confusion in the process you term brooding? (A tendency to which you have diagnosed in the accused.) Is it not true that the impact of what has caused the shock gathers force as all the implications of the painful situation mount in a growing mental and emotional confusion? Mind-blowing. So that the individual cannot, as we say, think straight; think at all.—

— Shock could have extended effects of mental confusion. Again, this depends on the personality of the individual. In my opinion, Mr Lindgard is one whose long experience of emotional stress has equipped him to regain mental equilibrium and rationality rapidly, in accordance with his nature.—

— So you confirm that the accused had had a long experience of emotional stress, with Natalie James.—

— Yes. He brought it upon himself.—

— Both you and your learned colleague, Dr Basil Reed, a psychiatrist with twenty-three years experience in your field, have had the opportunity to assess the personality and mental state of the accused during a period of twenty-eight days?—

— Yes.—

— How long have you been in practice as a psychiatrist, Dr Albrecht?—

— Seven years.—

— Your senior colleague’s, Dr Reed’s opinion, as set out in his report to the court, is that the accused’s long experience of emotional stress, to which you yourself attest , is of a nature that far from finding resolution in rational thought and intention, culminated in unbearable emotional stress in which the accused was precipitated into a state of dissociation from reason and reality. Is it true that such a state, as a result of prolonged stress compounded by profound shock, is a state recognized by your profession?—

— It is recognized. As one among other reactions to trauma.—

— It is recognized. — Motsamai’s palms come slowly, measuredly together. — No further questions, M’Lord.—

His gesture claims the State’s case is closed, although the Prosecutor has still to declare this. Harald and Claudia watch the Prosecutor intently and hear his words without interpreting meaning; where is their son, what happened to their son, in these statements that turn him about as some lay figure, he is this, no, he’s that? Motsamai will have the hermeneutics according with the legal moral climate; he’ll explain.

The Prosecutor wears his down-turned samurai mouth and his eyebrows are furled together; he does not require any other, particular vehemence and he has not Motsamai’s range; a prosecutor knows he’s not the star the constellation of the Bar needed, its black diamond. — The sum of evidence is that the accused is a highly intelligent man, in full possession of the faculties of conscience, who shot dead, in cold blood, a man lying defenceless on a sofa. The issue before the court is plain: it is that of capability. Criminal capability; did the accused or did he not have this. Whatever conflicting expert opinions may emerge, it is clear that he did not act when it would seem natural, even excusable, for him to do so. He did not tackle the deceased immediately, when he found the man taking his place, performing sexual intimacy with the individual he believed he owned, body and soul. If he had done so, it would not be necessary to seek expert opinion to know that that attack would have been made when he was out of his mind, so to speak, overcome by emotion. But no; he turned his back on the scene, went away to spend a whole day examining his feelings and the options open to satisfy them; his sexual defeat, his male pride, the pride of a totally domineering male (which we have heard testimony was his unfortunate nature). He could have thrown the girl out of the cottage, severed relations with her as his creation — he brought her back to life, remember — turned ingrate. He could have scorned to have anything further to do with her, Jespersen, and the house where such things could happen. These were options. But in full possession of his rightful senses, after plenty of time to consider his course of action, he went to the house, knowing Jespersen would be there at that time of the evening, and made use of the gun he knew was kept in the house, to kill Jespersen. These are the indisputable facts. The accused was criminally capable of the act of murder he performed and I submit, Your Lordship, that the court deal with him in cognizance of this, if justice is to be done to his victim and to the moral code of our society: Thou shalt not kill.—