Gordimer Nadine - The House Gun

We don’t even know if he accepts that we believe in him.

Accept? Why should he not? What’s accepting got to do with it!

He cannot allow it to become real to them both by pronouncing it, the father’s voice enunciating it to the mother, but it is there, secreted in the car between them as he arrives at the security gates of the townhouse complex: Because he knows he did what was done. That is why nothing was said in that half-hour in the prison visiting room; the premise we were there on does not exist. That is what our son was conveying to us. That is what there is to believe.

He presses the electronic gadget which lets them into their home but provides no refuge.

The Board of his company has its own prominent firm of legal advisers, one of whom sits on the Board. Harald approaches him for his opinion on all legal matters.

In ordinary circumstances. But he can do now what he would not find proper in ordinary circumstances. He can use the slight acquaintance at, public dinners to importune one of the prestigious figures in the legal profession for a confidential opinion of the capability, reputation and status of the advocate Motsamai. He has no compunction in being presumptuous. Such conventions of his life — what do they matter.

Of course the man knows, everyone knows, the story has been a gift to the Sunday papers. But what is he thinking as he listens to the reiteration of facts, my son is accused of murder, there’s been a decision to place the case in the hands of Senior Counsel Hamilton Motsamai. My wife and I do not know this person, we have no personal feelings for or against him, we are concerned only with whether he is the best possible professional to act for our son.

Is he interpreting, beneath one of the familiar silences of lawyers, translating the private language of what is not being said: this Senior Counsel is black. Is that it?

But for the moment the question should not be addressed between them; first, to protect the speaker from remarks inimical to the ethics of the profession, there must come a disclaimer: —There would be a number of ‘best possible’ defence counsel. You understand. I would not place one above the other. But Motsamai is known as eminently capable. And experienced. In his four years back in the country he’s appeared successfully in a number of challenging cases. Political, yes — but also of other natures. He has the kind of aggressive spirit — controlled, mind you, by strong intelligence — that puts him on a high level of competence in cross examination. Very clever — some would say exceptional.—

Harald does not need a general opinion, which may be given in the caution of all fairness; he must know what this man himself really thinks. There is no time, no space between cell walls for the dangerous reservations of ‘all fairness’.—And you? What would you say?—

It must be impossible to be confronted by Harald Lindgard at this time and not to be shocked — and shock is always within a breath’s distance of fear — by what it is that could happen to a man like him; like oneself. The last time they met they were standing around drinks in hand discussing with the Deputy Minister of Finance the pros and cons of lifting foreign exchange controls! Although the man did not know Lindgard more intimately than this, he had to put aside professionalism as if he doffed the black robe he wore in court. — Look, I don’t sprinkle exaggerated epithets around, but I can tell you the fellow’s remarkable. You don’t know anything about his background? I can’t remember exactly what part of the country he grew up in, usual thing, a poor lad from uneducated parents, and he managed to get into Fort Hare for his law degree in the late Sixties. Then he was involved in Youth Group political activity, detained. When he was released he fled to England and somehow — scholarships — continued law studies there. Before he came back in’90, he’d been accepted at Gray’s Inn and appeared for the defence at the Old Bailey. So there could hardly be any difficulties raised against his getting admitted to the Bar, here. Frankly — you can well imagine, after years when blacks were discounted as brains in the legal profession, now there’s considerable eagerness to show credit given where credit is due — in fact, Motsamai is providential … a star was needed and he appeared in our constellation … He’s what the popular press would term much sought-after. Fortunately this isn’t just an affirmative action display. No no.—

That may be the concluding statement to be carried away; but Harald senses a weight that keeps him from making to leave.

— You’ve had doubts about your son’s defence being conducted by a black man.—

There it is. Laid out before them, Harald and his distinguished mentor. But it is presented as what might be expected, a simple regression, belched up from the shared dinners of the past.

— We don’t have to attribute that doubt to racial prejudice, because it is a fact, incontrovertible fact, that due to racial prejudice in the old regimes, black lawyers have had far less experience than white lawyers, and experience is what counts. They’ve had fewer chances to prove themselves; it’s their disadvantage, and you would not be showing racial prejudice in seeing that disadvantage as yours, if entrusting defence to most of them. If you were to say to me, now, that you still would prefer to have a white counsel — that’s a different matter. I should have no comment. You are the one who has the grave burden. I can simply say: with Motsamai you are in good hands. If there’s anything else I can do—

Harald feels as he sometimes does when he walks out into the street, the world, after taking communion; a meditative quiet, some sort of certainty, at least, before he takes up to what it must be applied.

It was possible in these early days to get through them with attention fixed ahead in very short span on some action. There was the appointment to meet the Senior Counsel who had been briefed, Hamilton Motsamai.

They came independently to Advocates’ Chambers, she from her surgery, he excusing himself from a board meeting of the insurance company where he was a director. They greeted each other absently; only when they were seated side by side across from the broad and deep expanse of the advocate’s grand desk did they become the couple, the mother and father, the ominous bond. Motsamai was like his chambers, well-appointed. There was immense self-confidence in his combining the signs of success in a prestigious profession — the intercom instruction to his secretary to hold calls, the group photographs with distinguished Gray’s Inn colleagues in London, the library of law books with slips of paper standing up from their pages, marking frequent reference, the presentation plaque on the tray of desk-top accoutrements — with the wisp of beard just under the point of his chin that asserted a specific traditional African style, another order of dignity and distinction. His staccato and fluent English was strongly accented, he retained the drawn-out rounded vowels of African languages and established the right of the reverberating bass murmurs customary to their discourse, in dismissal of those other wordless conjunctions, the urns and ahs of white speakers. A new form of national sophistication. In his elegant grey suit, here is a man who has mastered everything, all contradictions that were imposed upon him by the past. Turning over papers (apparently his notes taken on the brief he has accepted) he glances up now and then at the man and woman before him, the whites of his eyes (he even removes his glasses for a moment, dangles them) strikingly clearcut in his small mahogany face as the glass eyes set in ancient statues. His is a face made by disciplines of the mind, the features drawn closed by concentration, even the mouth, hovering slightly as he responds inwardly to his text, has somewhat tightened its generosity. They study him; whatever is there is what they are dependent on as neither has ever before been dependent on anyone.