Gordimer Nadine - The House Gun

Like the arm on the shoulder, between Prosecutor and Defence Counsel in the corridors, passing over the scene in court where the one has been condemning a man and the other defending him. But Harald knows he should he the last one to be disillusioned by professional ethics; disillusion once begun, these days, here in this place, has ended up with his questioning his own.

— It does not require any preparation of premeditation for a conscious and rational determination to take revenge to be suddenly aroused at such a moment. The means of revenge in such circumstances is most likely to be some form of physical attack, with bare hands or whatever may serve as a weapon. It is unfortunate that a deadly weapon, a gun, was casually accepted as part of the household in that living-room and that it was lying on the table.—

How to follow the twists and turns, the swift about-face of what the man’s saying as he retreats and advances, down over his text, up to take them into his confidence again; there is the desperation of half-grasping a direction his mind is taking, only to have it snatched away as if attention has been disastrously lost for precious seconds — what did that mean, what was the order of words that are the clues to be followed to a verdict forming? Each loses the way and is impatient with anxiety to know if the other has caught what is missing, and yet cannot risk to interrupt attention by whispering the question.

— But the accused could have chosen bare hands; instead he chose to pick up the gun and shoot Jespersen in the head. He has said in evidence ‘The noise stopped.’ What he didn’t want to hear from Jespersen was silenced in the ultimate revenge, the taking of another’s life.—

Not a liar, but a murderer.

Claudia sees that her whole life was moving towards this moment. All the ambitions she had so naively decided she was going to fulfil, when she was a girl, all the intentions of dedication to healing she has had in her adulthood — they were to come to this. The end is unimaginable; if we knew it from the start we would never set out.

— The District Surgeon’s report is that the shot was accurately directed to a vital part, the forehead, consistent with deliberate action. Whether this means a certain series of actions had to be consciously taken to aim and fire it, as the State submits, or whether, as the Defence submits, to the hand of anyone who is familiar with a gun the necessary preparation to fire comes automatically, without conscious volition, is now the crucial matter on which the question of criminal capacity, as the State submits, or temporary non-pathological criminal incapacity, as the Defence argues, must be considered, having regard to the expert evidence and all the facts of the case, including not only the nature of the accused’s actions during the period immediately relevant to the crime, but also the circumstances that preceded it in the personal history of the accused.—

The sonorous maze of clauses dazes. Even the uttermost limit of attention which is prayer lands in dead ends, turns upon premises which it seems to have just left. During passages like this the ranks of spectators rustle. All the pros and cons are no business of theirs, they wait for the narrative to recommence, a judgment is the remnant of the oral tradition round the fire; they’re there to be told an exciting story.

Now it’s taken up again, good, it’s about the young man they’ve been able to study, face, gestures (what the judge called his ‘manner’) on the witness stand. It’s about a murderer.

— Both State and Defence psychiatrists find that the accused’s intellect is within high limits, his judgment sound. He is a young professional man of good family, apparently with a promising career ahead of him. There is no basis on which to question the Defence’s submission that everything in the accused’s behaviour as an adult has been contrary to the performance of any violent act. The evidence of a member of the common household, Nkululeko Dladla, states of the accused ‘It is not in his nature to kill.’—

And there he is, that Dladla, sitting with the murderer’s parents, right here. People turning to look at him: it is as if he himself has spoken, a hefty black man who wears like campaign medals the insignia of the gay, his tryst rings and necklaces. Harald and Claudia are moved by the judge’s quotation of Khulu and are graced to be identified in the focus of attention that has reached him; under it Khulu is rubbing his fist back and forth across his jaw-line as he often does, they’ve noticed, when he wants to emphasize something he has said in his calm way.

Ah but listen to this, Harald and Claudia are saying simultaneously, without words, to one another, as the judge’s narrative takes another unexpected turn, listen to this!

— Indeed, demonstrably, it has been in his nature to succour. The accused met Natalie when she had made a suicide attempt, and, on her own admittance, brought her back to life. After they commenced to live together as lovers, he saved her again from suicide. Although he was passionately in love with her, that the relationship was not a happy one is confirmed not only by Natalie herself, but by Dladla. It seems she was not grateful to the accused for saving her life. Asked why the relationship she and the accused had chosen was not happy, she replied in evidence ‘He owned my life because he took me to a hospital.’ Her attitude towards him as revealed under cross examination by the Defence was resentful, giving credence to Dladla’s statement that although the accused ‘was patient with her … like a sick person … she gave him hell.’ She taunted him before other members of the common household. The indifference, if not defiance, with which she told the court that the child she is expecting might he either the deceased’s or the accused’s appears to be a particularly malicious example of taunting the man who loves her and is on trial for a crime passionnel of which her action is half, if not the whole cause.—

A judge knows everything. He’s the vicar of the god of justice, as the priest is the vicar of God, he’s privy to the confessional of the court, where witnesses and experts and the accused tell what Harald and Claudia would never have learnt. This knowledge, it’s the basis of justice, isn’t it? To know all is to forgive all? — no, that’s fallacious. The man’s dead, shot in the head. He’s here under the ground of the city where this court is the seat of justice. But to know all: the judge is not going to follow, is he, any pressure for society’s angry retribution, society being represented by the State; he’s concerned with the fate of the individual as well. Motsamai must be thinking — what? Hope: it can’t be repressed. Duncan; but it’s somehow an intrusion to wonder what he’s thinking, feeling. As if the sacrificial victim is anointed in his extremis, and removed from the contagion of human contact which he pursued to its awesome finality, the taking of another’s life. But hope. Can it reach their son, from them.

— Unfortunately, it is not within the competence of this court to refer a witness for psychiatric examination. — And now the judge has allowed himself the indulgence of sarcasm, again an aside for those who may appreciate it.

Somebody stifles a rough laugh. It is out of order but probably what the judge expected he might get from the public.

— Therefore it is difficult to assess what the Defence submits, that the extent of stress this young woman was capable of imposing on her patient and devoted lover was great enough to culminate in his committing a crime in a state of criminal incapacity. There is evidence that Natalie had had other passing sexual adventures during the period in which she lived with the accused as his lover, and he had forgiven or at least tolerated these. Why then if he were not to have been reduced by her, finally, to a state where he was not responsible for his actions, would he not have forgiven, tolerated her betrayal once again?