Gordimer Nadine - The House Gun

For some reason that is not explained it is announced at what would have been the adjournment for lunch that the court will not sit in the afternoon; the case will continue at 9 a.m. tomorrow. The judge is not obliged to give account of what may be some urgent commitment elsewhere; or perhaps an aching tooth for which a visit to the dentist is his priority. People make the claims of these commonplace ills against matters of life and death. To hell with them. But a judge cannot be consigned in this way, by Harald, or anybody else.

The tension Hamilton Motsamai meets in their faces, concentrated on him, must surely irk him. No, he is impervious but not indifferent; he has his interpretation of the process so far, ready for them. It is all going as expected, he tells. There are no surprises. Nothing to worry about.

And tomorrow?

You can’t ask him about tomorrow. Tomorrow he will have Duncan on the witness stand. Not even to Harald and Claudia will he reveal his strategy, one can only try to infer some idea, from the angle of his approach with State witnesses today, how he will conduct his case tomorrow: Duncan in those hands.

They are right. All of them. It is so: he and she cannot distinguish which Duncan is being described in truth by the Prosecutor, the psychiatrist, by Motsamai. Perhaps he himself, back in his cell, knows. Perhaps they will know, tomorrow.

— Although Natalie James, with whom you were cohabiting, worked in the same advertising offices with Carl Jespersen, where he had obtained a position for her, and she was travelling to-and-fro to work with him, spending her lunch hours with him daily, you were not concerned that an attachment might be forming between them?—

At last, Duncan is about to speak. To speak for himself.

— No.—

— Why?—

Motsamai’s question is a cue in a dialogue everyone knows is of his devising, rehearsed. But Duncan’s replies are not lines learnt. Harald and Claudia hear his voice coming as if Duncan is talking to himself. To them; they are overhearing their son.

— Because Carl was not interested in women. Except as friends.—

— Why were you sure of this?—

— He was gay. A homosexual.—

— How did you know?—

Ah, but the banal question had a lawyerly purpose, Motsamai has the flair to build his scene carefully for his client.

— He lived as a homosexual. Everyone who shared the house was homosexual.—

— You lived on the same property. Did you share the same inclinations?—

— At one time I had a relationship — with a man.—

— One of the men in the house?—

— Yes—

— With whom?—

— With Carl.—

— With Carl Jespersen. So it was this experience that led you to believe that there could be nothing between Natalie James and Jespersen. Were you in love with Natalie James?—

As it touches on his nerve-ends, Harald and Claudia shrink from the question, with him.

— We were close.—

— It was a love relationship, a sexual relationship between a man and a woman?—

— Yes.—

— Ah-hêh. If you could have a homoerotic affair, and then fall in love with a woman, enjoy a heterosexual relationship, how could you be sure that Carl Jespersen would not have sexual designs on your lover, Natalie?—

It is difficult to trust Hamilton as he shows himself now. Harald sees Motsamai is enjoying himself, Duncan’s life is material for a professional performance. The man who brings from the Other Side the understanding of people in trouble, the man in whose hands there is the succouring glass of brandy, is left behind in chambers.

— Because he wasn’t attracted to women. Sexually. Anatomically, he told me often, he found them repulsive. I can’t go into — repeat — some of the things he liked to say. I can only put it — their genitals — he felt disgust for women.—

— Did he say these things to you in an attempt to dissuade you from heterosexual rotations?—

— I suppose so. At one time.—

— So you were absolutely confident that he could have no erotic intentions towards your woman lover?—

— Yes, quite sure.—

— Although you yourself had had homosexual relations with him, and then fell in love and entered into a close relationship with a woman, it did not occur to you that he might be capable of the same instincts?—

— No. It was out of the question. I am not homosexual, not any more than any adult human being has some erotic ambivalence that may or may not — come out — in certain circumstances. I had only that one attachment. He was actively homosexual, he’d been so, he often told me, from the age of twelve.—

— So you had absolutely no idea that he was having an affair — Natalie was having an affair with Jespersen?—

Across the well, in the rapt, prurient silence of the court, from the target that was the witness stand there came distinctly the sharp small sound of Duncan’s tongue pressed and released against his palate. The air of the spectators tingled; they had been waiting before a cage for the creature to cry out — There was no affair. —

— You are completely convinced of that?—

— I know. Carl was David’s lover, Carl was heavily involved with him.—

— Can you describe what happened on the night of the 18th January: there was a party at the house?—

— It was not really a party. The house is a place where people just turn up. And often Natalie and I would join the men at the house and we’d eat together at night. I suppose we were a sort of family. Better than a nuclear family, a lot of friendship and trust between us.—

— That night you had a meal together.—

— Some other friends of David and Khulu came in for drinks and then as it got late, stayed on to eat with us. So I suppose you could say it became a spontaneous kind of party. David had done quite a lot of drinking and he went to bed when the others had gone. Khulu left with one of them — some rendez-vous of his own. Natalie had been keeping the party going with her anecdotes about experiences as a cruise hostess, she’s a devastating mimic, and she hadn’t been much help in the kitchen so she offered to stay behind and clean up with Carl. She’ll make that sort of gesture. When she’s been particularly flamboyant. Just because she hates — never does domestic chores. I know it’s necessary for the sense she has of herself, so I left her to it and went to our cottage — to bed.—

The judge lifted his head as if he had at last found something that intrigued him. — Natalie James, in her testimony yesterday, gave a rather different version of the events. Was there not an argument between you, didn’t you try to make her return with you to the cottage?—

— You cannot persuade Natalie when she is in that sort of state.—

— Are you saying that there was no altercation with her before the others present?—

— She was in the mood. So if she wouldn’t come home and give herself some rest, it was better for me to leave.—

The judge’s glance gives Motsamai the signal to continue.

— What time was that?—

— About one o’clock.—

— You expected she would follow?—

— Naturally.—

— Did she?—

— No.—

Motsamai is patient against resistance; Harald, Claudia have the sense of Duncan fleeing, fleeing, out of the cell he has occupied, out of the closed institution for the mentally incapacitated, out of the court, out of the gallery of faces whose prey he is — out of himself.

Motsamai is in pursuit.

— What happened then?—

— I woke up. She wasn’t there. I saw it was half-past two. I was worried. About her crossing the garden so late in the dark, there are intruders all over the suburb.—