Gordimer Nadine - The House Gun

Or maybe what he is recording simply belongs along with what Duncan had written there and that he, Harald, has read in transgression of his own codes of behaviour. Probably it will go to the box in the cupboard where that letter the boy wrote from school has lain so long.

The word performance keeps rising. He sees he wrote down his nadir reached: Justice is a performance. Scribbled what he has described as Hamilton’s self-promoting ‘performance’; and then Khulu Dladla’s quote from the girl — that Duncan wanted her to be ‘performing her life’ for him. He turned on the television to keep himself from going to bed unable to sleep (he refuses Claudia’s prescription of a tranquillizer or sleeping pill, she thinks — privately — that he is one of those fortunately disciplined individuals who have the subconscious instinct that there is in them something that would lead to addiction) but what was offered was just another performance, a rock group contest on one channel and a sitcom in a language he didn’t understand, on another.

He sat on, the notebook under his hand, and turned to the radio. He had come upon the middle of one of the phone-in programmes on subjects of public preoccupation, from abortion to supermarket prices and the culling of elephants, which are the circuses provided by democracy so that those who have bread but are aware that it is not true that anybody can (as opposed to ‘may’) become president have the opportunity and recognition at least of hearing his or her own voicing of opinions and frustrations aloud to the populace. The callers are, however meandering and inarticulate (he usually switches off at once), sometimes calling up deep impulses that lie beneath conformation to the ethos of their time and place. The Death Penalty: this was what talk-show democracy was open about to these eager citizens, this night. But the Death Penalty will be abolished! In-the-know Motsamai is certain of it. It will be proved a violation of the Constitution; there is no possibility, now, that Duncan — God forbid, and He has — could have sentence of death passed on him for what he has done, whyever he did it?

This is a civilized country now, and the State does not commit murder. But as Harald sits with his gaze fixed on the flowers that should have been thrown away he hears them, those callers for the death cell and the rope, early mornings with the hangman in Pretoria. They want, they still want, they are ready to demand over the air, for everyone, the President, the Minister of Justice, the Constitutional Court to hear — they want a corpse for a corpse, a murderer for a murderer. And they stumble indignantly through what can’t be denied: the satisfaction they feel, the only reconciliation there is for them, lies in the death of one whose act took one of their own, or whose example threatens other lives. Their voices relayed over the telephone to the studio, the patronizing check on their verbosity by the presenter — for them the Death Penalty cannot be abolished. They — the people clamouring out there beyond the townhouse complex and the prison where Duncan awaits the verdict of his trial — they will condemn him to death in their minds no matter what sentence the judge passes down upon him, no matter how many assurances of mitigation Motsamai, out of his knowledge, his cleverness, his experience gives. In the air of the country, they are calling for a referendum; they, not the Constitutional Court will have the Last Judgment on murderers like Duncan. And referendum or not, Harald hears and knows, his son and sleeping Claudia’s shall have this will to his death surrounding him as long as he lives. The malediction is upon him even if the law does not exact it.

No performance; this is reality.

She turned in her sleep and was awakened by the sense of emptiness beside her; felt for her watch. The luminous message: past two o’clock. She got up as Duncan had done and went to find the missing one. The door to the bathroom that was what the townhouse complex’s brochure called en suite with the bedroom was ajar; no-one there. The living-room was dark and mum. She went cautiously down the passage as if she thought to meet an intruder. In the second bathroom Harald was lying, asleep in the tub, his head supported on the rim but his body, to Claudia, that of a drowned man.

Motsamai has assured his client, the accused, as well: tomorrow it will be over. And it has gone very encouragingly: he is confident. Colleagues who have been following the case say ten years, and of course there’s always remission. But he, Motsamai, he thinks he has succeeded in a manner that has a good chance of seven. And then, with remission … The best way to talk to Duncan, he knows, is to do so as if Duncan were a fellow lawyer and they were considering someone else’s case in which both were interested. That is the way, he is sensitive to, this young man in deep trouble can best manage himself; but he cannot resist repeating, indeed, as if to a colleague — Extremely well, particularly the cross examination with her.—

They’ve all gone away to await tomorrow when it will be over for them: his mother, his father, Khulu their proxy son he sees sits beside them where he cannot be, Motsamai, the judge, the girl clerks with their hair falling over their arms as they touch the keyboards of their word-processors, the faces of the spectators of his life; gone home. Alone. His parents, his friend Khulu (he hadn’t realized, until now, how that one in the house really was his friend among the others) feel bad about leaving him behind, particularly this time, he knows, but he is relieved to have them gone.

So Motsamai, playing father when father cannot, has saved him at the cost of her. Natalie/Nastasya. He has opened her up and exposed her, dissected her womb with a baby in it, held out for all to see her mind and motives and body whose force and contradictions a lover knew only too well. Who will put Natalie together again; no-one. Motsamai is confident; this time she has saved him.

During the night, he did not dream in his cell but lived a fantasy while wakeful. Ten years, with remission, whatever spell of time has gone by, he comes out blinking into the sun, the city. Someone points to a child. Is it a girl, it looks like Natalie/ Nastasya. No, it’s a boy, it looks like us, Carl and Duncan.

Motsamai is wearing a particularly well-cut suit and the close coir of his hair has been shaped, the 19th-century African chief’s wisp of chin-beard is combed to assert its mobile emphasis when he’s speaking; this is the care Harald’s business colleagues will take with their appearance on the day an important meeting is scheduled.

Motsamai was waiting for them in the corridors where echoes of everything they have heard in court in the past days is trapped under the high ceilings. He walked them along with calm tread through the skitter of clerks and messengers and the wandering of people looking for this court or that. When he found a little space for them he stopped. — You’re all right, Claudia? I hope you had a night’s rest, Harald. Me? Oh I always sleep, when I finally do get to bed if I’m preparing myself … Ah-hêh. Today. Now look, I’ve got the Prosecutor to agree that you can see Duncan at the lunch break. You know — it’ll be after everything’s concluded this morning, I don’t expect the verdict and so forth until the afternoon. So you’ll see him. Before it’s handed down.—

When you find yourself confronted — can’t look away, no evasion of propriety, class or privilege possible — with justice, you understand: the defenders and the prosecutors come to a reasonable settlement on the price of a murder. For Harald — that’s what’s been agreed. Motsamai’s Learned Friend, for the State, is satisfied he’s exacted all he can get. Motsamai himself — he actually makes a balancing gesture, his two hands are the scales: let well alone. — judges are touchy people. Ah-hêh. You know? They get tired like us — when you keep on going after they’ve made up their minds. There’s a stage at which … You follow me? He sits with his assessors and the verdict is there. More evidence — that’s not going to affect it. We’ve made our impression with our witnesses, our cross examination. I don’t want to disturb this with over-kill. With regard to sentence — that’s something else. (He’s using the phrase as one of the double entendre expressions in his voguish sophistication, implying not only another matter but also something exceptional.) I’ll be applying myself to that this afternoon.—