Gordimer Nadine - The House Gun

We must turn now to the special circumstances of this particular sexual adventure. The court has learned from the accused himself that what he came upon that night after the party not only was his lover, Natalie, engaged in sexual intercourse with another man, that man was Carl Jespersen, a homosexual who had himself taken the accused as a lover and then discarded him, and who had repeatedly declared himself revulsed by women’s sexuality. The accused has not confided to the court what his emotions are towards his present and former lovers, what interpretation he puts on a role in the spectacle apparently inconceivable for him to believe Jespersen would ever force himself to perform. It is the Defence psychiatrist’s opinion that ‘When he (the accused) saw her in the sexual act with his former male lover, he felt himself emasculated by them both.’—

Silence is a great hand spread over the court.

All at once the people on the public benches are no longer strangers, their prurience is stifled as the laugh was, their presence is protective around the parents of this man.

— The court can accept that it was ‘not in his nature to kill’.

But what the accused saw in that act, and what he encountered in the deceased’s attitude next evening were surely not in the nature of human relationships in even the freest of sexual mores. Given these exceptional circumstances of what might otherwise have been nothing more than another regrettable incident in a relationship fraught with problems, the State psychiatrist submits that if the accused were to have acted in a state of diminished capacity, unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his behaviour, he would have attacked the deceased then and there, on the night when he discovered the couple. The psychiatrist’s opinion is that the accused went to the house next evening with the conscious intention of vengeful jealousy built up during a day of solitary premeditation in the cottage. Asked whether she meant the accused intended to kill Jespersen, the psychiatrist’s reply was that she was not able to say to what extreme the accused’s intention might carry him.

This brings to the court’s attention the question of the gun kept at hand in the house: did the accused have in mind, in conscious intention, the availability of the gun, which he admits having seen being produced in the living-room the previous night?—

The judge looks up conversationally, but his audience is transfixed.

— The psychiatrist called by the Defence found the accused to have been precipitated into a state of dissociation from what he was doing when he was confronted with the sight of Jespersen on the evening of 19th January. He submits that when the deceased said ‘Why don’t you pour yourself a drink’ this attitude constituted a second blow like the one received the previous night. His professional opinion was that ‘A tremendous emotional blow is as forceful as any external blow to the head.’ Further, he states: ‘With the impact of these last words he (the accused) recalls Jespersen saying, he would have entered a state of automatism in which inhibitions disintegrated … cumulative provocation reaching its climax in the subject’s total loss of control.’

This raised again the question of the nature and extent of cumulative provocation acceptable as the extreme stress submitted by the Defence as justification for a temporary non-pathological criminal incapacity. The psychiatrist testified that — I quote — the accused ‘is a man with a bisexual nature. That in itself is a source of personality conflict. He had suffered emotional distress when he. followed his homoerotic instincts and had a love affair which his partner, Jespersen, did not take seriously and broke off at whim. He overcame the unhappiness of the rejection and turned to the other and probably dominant side of his nature, a heterosexual alliance for which, again, he took on serious responsibility. Even more so, since the alliance was with an obviously neurotic personality with complex self-destructive tendencies for which, when crossed in what she saw as her right to pursue them, she punished him with denigration and mental aggression.’ The conclusion of this assessment, which I have already quoted earlier, was that when the accused saw her in the sexual act with his former lover, he felt himself emasculated by both.—

Claudia feels Khulu lift and let fall his arms. At her other side, Harald’s profile is Duncan’s, the order of resemblance reversed; confusion engulfs her. She is confronted with the face of a patient whom she referred for surgery to take place today; it’s a fragment of the medical record that is her life, blown across her mind. My assessors and I , what is the voice saying—

— My assessors and I, of course, have to examine the evidence of psychiatrists carefully and give it due weight. However, as the highest court of the land has said, their science is not an absolute but an empirical one. Psychiatrists rely on what they have been told by the accused, often without critically analyzing these statements to determine whether they may not be proffered as self-serving. My assessors and I are equally capable of interpreting the evidence as a whole, led before us, as to whether or not there was criminal responsibility. Albeit that the Defence psychiatrist is of the opinion that there was no criminal responsibility, and even though the State psychiatrist, if somewhat reluctantly, has made some concessions in terms of our law, we are entitled to come to our own conclusions. We find as a fact that the accused’s personal history of prolonged emotional stress is genuine; but is this enough?—

So confidently in control of their life, Claudia’s and his own. First they were ceded into the hands of Motsamai; now in the power of this man who asks, but is this enough? The power’s omnipotent. Only Duncan could answer.

— We have identified the decisive aspects of the case.

One: did premeditation of revenge occupy the accused during the day he spent alone in the cottage, and as a consequence did he go to the house intending to seek out Jespersen and cause him bodily harm?

Two: whether or not harmful intention was premeditated, when the accused picked up the gun and shot Jespersen, was he in a state of automatism in which inhibitions disintegrated and there was total loss of control?

On the matter of Question One, my learned assessor, Mr Abrahamse, a member of the Bar, and I are of the opinion that there was no premeditation of vengeful bodily harm, this based on the absence of dissimulation in the accused’s evidence and the fact that, firstly, it is accepted that he had no weapon of any kind with him when he left the cottage; secondly, although the house gun was not kept locked away in security, merely in a drawer in a bedroom, it is reasonable to suppose that when the room had been tidied up after the party it would not have been left lying on the table. My learned assessor, Mr Conroy, an experienced senior magistrate, was of the minority opinion that there was premeditation, this based on the reasonable assumption that solitary self incarceration in the cottage strongly implied this.

In the matter of Question Two, the court has devoted much careful deliberation to the contrary elements revealed between the only witness to the crime itself available — that of the accused himself, and the fact of the body of the victim — and the various interpretations of his act as presented to the court. The accused has testified that he did not see the gun when he entered the living-room, and he could not say at what point he saw it. Yet he admits that he could and did pick it up. He says that he ‘didn’t make any decision’; but, nevertheless, he fired it.—

The lifted gaze accuses them, the mother and father and friend of the murderer, although the judge probably doesn’t even know where they are among the faces; they take that gaze upon themselves.