Gordimer Nadine - The House Gun

They sit with Khulu through the summings-up. The Prosecutor and the Senior Counsel for the Defence each review with succinct force and conviction what they have already submitted on the evidence in chief, elicited, each according to his own purpose and skill, from accused and witnesses during that process and in cross examination.

Duncan is a fanatically possessive man who jealously premeditated revenging himself, harming Carl Jespersen who had sexual intercourse with his lover, Natalie James, and, in full awareness of the situation, in purposeful behaviour, in full capability, with criminal capacity, took advantage of the availability of a gun and deliberately shot the man where he knew it would be fatal, in the head.

Harald and Claudia and Khulu follow in common comprehension only these key terms in what comes from the samurai face the Prosecutor is wearing: criminal capacity, purposeful behaviour, full awareness. The combinations of phrases ignite as words in a column of newspaper set alight run together in flame. In a single attention, they scarcely hear the connecting sequence, the sense of the Prosecutor’s long discourse. These legalistic terms, set down in the books of reference both Defence Counsel and Prosecutor have on their tables, are what will pronounce judgment of Duncan. When it is Hamilton’s, Motsamai’s turn, the three become separate attentions again, each listening with a different silent accompaniment, out of different ideas of what Duncan is, to every word, detail, nuance in what Motsamai is saying.

Duncan is a man totally without violent instincts, as his record of behaviour and caring for a mentally aggressive partner shows. As he well knew, there was no love affair possible between his former homosexual lover and the woman to whom he himself devoted such loving care. Therefore there was no jealous premeditation of violence or any other form of action towards the man. What he was suddenly confronted with on the night of January 18th was a shameless spectacle of crude sexual exhibitionism performed by these two people. Would not any violent man have attacked Jespersen at once? He certainly would. Duncan Lindgard did not attack Jespersen then and there, as any violent instincts undoubtedly would have led him to. All next day the shock and pain incapacitated him, he could not go to work. Scarcely believing he had seen what he had seen, he went back to the house only to look again at where it happened. Jespersen’s unexpected presence on the very sofa where the degrading spectacle had taken place, Jespersen’s incredible lack of shame, his assumption that it could just be brushed aside between men who were brothers, once even been lovers, over a drink together — this was a second terrible shock on top of the first. Equalling the force of a blow to the head, psychiatric evidence bears out, such shock has the effect of producing blankout.

An interruption from one of the two presences, the Greek chorus of the assessors forgotten round the judge deity: the white one asks, What is that? You used that word before. You mean a blackout?

— What is a blankout? A blankout is not a blackout, a state when the individual loses consciousness. A blankout is the state in which the individual suffers loss of self-control, a loss in which there is inability to act in accordance with appreciation of wrongfulness, a state of criminal incapacity. It was in this state that, as a result of provocation and severe emotional stress, Duncan Lindgard picked up the gun that was lying there and silenced his tormentor with a shot.—

No-one — Harald, Claudia, Khulu — Duncan? — what was Duncan looking for in him — no-one could have any idea of the judge’s reactions from the face inclined slightly over the papers apparently being ordered under his precise hands. Perhaps (this is what Harald believes) he has, as Motsamai suggests, made up his mind on the verdict much earlier; or perhaps he is going with his two assessors who ramble behind him for the lunch adjournment like companionable dogs, to decide with them what it was that Duncan really did when he shot a man in the head. For it becomes clear to those who witness a trial that there is no such act as the simple act of murder. To kill is only the definitive act arising out of many others surrounding it, acts of spilled words, presumptions, sexual congress, and, all around these, muggings in the streets.

Motsamai offers no experienced observations he may have made of the judge’s reception of his summing-up and that of the Prosecutor, and Harald and Claudia don’t have the sense that it is right to ask him. It would be like questioning his effectiveness; making him feel the weight of them, finally, in his hands. His demeanour is Senior Counsel Motsamai rather than Hamilton as he leads them, at last, to what they have never seen, a cell. It is not quite the cell where Duncan has been led back to as they left him after the visitors’ room, but a cell under the well of the court where prisoners are kept during the intervals of their trials.

Corridors and steps and doors for which warders have bracelets of keys. It’s a cellar-like place and in a comer behind a knee-high wall there’s a lavatory bowl. Some wooden chairs with numbers chalked on them. There is a plate of food on the seat of one. Duncan, their son, is standing with a glass of water in his hand, he feels for somewhere to put it down, it wobbles against the plate. He embraces his mother, a hug as he always used to when he came for a meal, and then presses his father to him, the touch of his beard against Harald’s cheek and ear something unfamiliar to them both.

Motsamai had left them alone; the presence of warders, policemen, has long ceased to count, with them. — He’s confident about this afternoon. — Claudia is the first to speak. But what does that mean, confident? Duncan’s gentle smile: it says he does not need the judge to tell him he did what he did.

— The circumstances. — Harald can’t quite bring himself to make full reference to everything that has been done to Duncan and everything Duncan has done, but he wants to take the three of them to the safety of the concession by justice — extenuating circumstances; salvation has come down to this practical compromise from its place on High.

— Anyway. I’m glad it will be over for you two soon. Time for you to get back to work, I’m sure. Take things up.—

Harald doesn’t want to be pictured sitting in a board room, he’s here, for his son in a cell. — How did you feel about Motsamai, the way he handled it, was it what you expected? I couldn’t see at all what was going on with you.—

— I left it all to him. Except when I was on the stand myself. I said what I had to say, that’s all. The rest is his work, his decisions.—

— It’s a good thing you trusted him. There’s so much it’s difficult for people like us to understand — about the process, I mean.—

He can’t ask their son about the real subject they can’t help circling, Motsamai’s cross examination of the girl. What might be crucial for the verdict, what Motsamai did to that girl — how does he feel about Motsamai using like this Natalie whom he loved — loves? She stayed with him because he was ‘more dreadful than the water’, it’s in the notebook — only Harald and his son know it, Harald thought from time to time in Motsamai’s chambers he ought to show him the notebook but, unknown to his son that he had stolen it, he kept it between him and his son. Now the son has had to stand by between warders and watch her destruction by a lawyer because he has, yes, done something more dreadful, far worse than her choice to drown herself, taken a life not his own to take. Because of what he came upon on the sofa that night, did he rejoice to see her subjected to Motsamai’s tactics? I left it all to him . Was there now a new solitariness, a new suffering to add to all the others that had assailed him, now it is bitterness against the man who has destroyed Natalie/Nastasya, a turning against the man in whose hands he was, no-one else can do anything for him, not even the parents who made a covenant always to be there for him? Inside Harald there cried out in anger to his God, is there no end to what my son has to bear?