The House Gun

by Nadine Gordimer

  You tell me what we should have said to him.

  She hit her thighs with her fists.

  That we believe him.

  When he says what? He has said nothing. We know nothing. I read the record of circumstantial evidence. The man is dead. A gun in the mud. What does that mean?

  While he is speaking she is hammering across his words. That we believe in him! That we believe in him! That there’s no possibility, ever, in this world, that we would not! That’s what wasn’t there, wasn’t said—

  He was checked in obedience to a traffic light. His hand went down to shift the gear to neutral and she moved slightly to avoid contact with the hand. He waited, with the red light, then spoke.

  Believe?

  You know.

  There was no response.

  That we believe he could never do such a thing and we’re right about that.

  He was carried along with the traffic as if the car drove itself. His head was stirring, almost weaving, in some unshareable conflict, intolerable reluctance.

  Claudia—he knew he should qualify the formal use of her name with some intimacy, but the old epithets, the darlings and dearests were out of place in what had to be stated, hard. Begin again.

  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.

  His intermittent attention to them was a kind of rehearsal of how to approach what he has to tell them. He had been briefed —in the lay sense, as well—about these clients by the good friend Philip, so knew they were not nobodies—one of the directors of a large insurance firm with a pragmatically enlightened policy towards blacks, and the wife, evidently, a doctor. Educated people to whom he could speak plainly so that they would understand his position: that is, the limitation of his possibilities in undertaking the brief.

  —I have talked to your son. Of course I’ll be seeing him again, many times. Ah-hêh … He is not an easy young man to understand. But I am sure you know that.—

  The father was about to speak but the mother preceded him. —No. We’ve always had a good relationship.—

  —What you’re saying is now—he’s not easy to understand now? Is that it?—

  The advocate was nodding, tapping extended fingertips in a little tattoo of agreement with the father.—Exactly, that is so. But it’s only the beginning. There is often—always—difficulty when an individual is in trouble, is in shock. You know (to her) it’s like when someone comes to you after an accident, in trauma, just like that.—

  —To be told your friend’s dead and to be accused of it. Yes.—

  The advocate knows the accused’s mother is accusing him: of being too measured. He’s accustomed to this kind of reaction, fear turned to resentment. In her case no doubt exacerbated by the fact that she is accustomed, as he has reminded her, to being the professional adviser instead of the victim. He looks away, flicking aside the shred of irrelevancy.

  —Unfortunately. Unfortunately—I have to tell you, when he (a wide gesture) when he opens up, when he begins to co-operate with me—at this moment in time he’s somewhat hostile, you know—that is when he and I will have to tackle what there is to face.—He paused, to gauge if they were ready.—I have to tell you that the evidence is overwhelming. Conclusive. With just the exception of the weapon, the question of the dirt, you know, the mud—the fingerprints. But the final report still has to come in, and there are tests that might be able to find matching traces. He’s left-handed, that’s so? If traces should he found and they match, that will be very serious for us. Very, very. You understand? It would wrap up the prosecution’s case. We have to proceed on the assumption that this is going to happen. His hostility is not a good sign. In our experience, it means there is something—everything —to hide. The person doesn’t want to co-operate with the lawyer because he doesn’t believe the lawyer can do anything for him.—

  —He’s guilty.—

  Counsel received the father’s interjection with the approval of an instructor for a pupil.

  —The person believes or knows he’s guilty, that’s right.—

  This man with his glib use of the grandiloquent nonsense ‘this moment in time’ when he means now, and his generalized evasions; Harald does not accept the impersonal version of his words: ‘the person’ is his son.—He’s guilty. Duncan. That’s what you’re saying, Mr Motsamai.—

  —Wait a moment, sir. That’s not at all what I am considering. It is for the court to decide whether or not an accused is guilty, not his lawyers, not even his parents. What I am asking you to understand is that I—we—the attorney and I—have to prepare our argument for such a contingency. In the light of this, all the circumstances—from childhood, even, the background, the temperament, the character and so on, of the young man, are vitally important. Any detail may be of use to us; that’s why, if you can —just calmly—get through the hostility that he shows to me, I mean—I’m sure it doesn’t apply with you—if you can influence him to tell his lawyers everything he knows about himself, his friends, the lot—that is essential. He must understand that there is nothing he cannot tell us.—

  —Hostility—I don’t know whether you could say he has no hostility towards us. What it is that he shows … But how can his father or I approach him in our usual, the old way if anything went wrong, when we see him in that room with a warder hearing everything that might be told. He didn’t even say how crazy it was. For him to be there. No protest. He only made some kind of joke, almost, about where he’s shut away. We sat there as if our tongues were cut out. There was no possibility he’d say what happened. I can’t see how we could do what you ask while we see him under those circumstances.—

  I fully appreciate, I fully understand, the advocate repeated in different formulations, developing what lawyers call their arguments. Ah-hêh. But it was not possible for them to talk to their son in complete privacy; that was the regulation. No possible harm could result, however, from them indicating to him, openly, in the presence of warders, that they were convinced, in his best interests at this moment in time, that he should trust his lawyers absolutely, that he tell his lawyers everything there was to tell. The glassmarble glance flashing again, as if it should hardly he necessary to pronounce the obvious:—The warder would be most unlikely to comprehend anything you talk about, anyway. Most of those chaps are still a hangover from the old days. Sheltered employment for retarded sons of the Boere.—He tosses an indiscretion he knows won’t go amiss with these people.—Our government finds you can’t change the prison system overnight—or many nights. Ah-hêh.—

  During these early days they seem to repeat an inescapable ritual of departure from the same kind of compulsory encounter which leaves each waiting for the other to speak. And each is wary of the kind of interpretation that may be revealed by the other; that would set the encounter up or down on some scale of use, of hope, for them. So long as the silence lasts, this time, they do not have to face in one another what the advocate, Senior Counsel Motsamai, has said has to be faced. It is best to break the silence obliquely, as near to gently, within devastation, as you can get.

  What d’you think of him?

  She drops her chin towards her breasts a moment; lifts her head to speak under the still-falling avalanche of the meeting. Full of himself. Somehow arrogant. We’re in a mess that he wearily is expected to get us out of. I don’t know.

  Probably what looks like arrogance is the kind of decisive presence that’s impressive in court. Judges themselves are reputed to have that kind of presence. I didn’t like him much, either. But that’s irrelevant, he’s not there to ingratiate himself with us—I respect that, he’s there to do his job.

  And he’s decided what that is.

  That’s what he’s briefed for, isn’t he. His expertise.

  And he’s decided that Duncan killed. I can’t, can’t even hear myself say it. I can’t say to myself, Duncan killed, Duncan perfosmed a pathological act. Duncan is not a psychopath, I know enough about pathological states, grant me that, to say so. And I’m not bringing us into it, I’m not basing my disbelief on any proud idea that this can’t be because he’s our son, this isn’t what a son of ours would do. It’s Duncan, not our son, I’m talking about. There must be some explanation of how this ‘circumstantial evidence’ came about. The man doesn’t know, but he’s preparing what?—his defence, on the premise that this ‘circumstantial evidence’ means that Duncan killed. Duncan killed because that little bitch who shacked up with him, who wasn’t too particular who attracted her fancy, and he’d tolerated th
is before, had a tumble on a sofa with one of the other friends. I’m sure she wasn’t the first girl in Duncan’s life, don’t you remember the others—Alyse or whatever-her-name-was, happened to be a medical student who came to assist me, for the experience, two years ago—she was the favourite for a while.

  Why doesn’t Duncan speak.

  I can’t tell you, can I? I don’t know. Perhaps because the lawyers keep battering him with ‘circumstantial evidence’ so that he can’t have any faith that the truth will count, you can’t win against circumstantial evidence, a gardener sees you crossing the grass and later the police pick up a gun. A man who doesn’t even have a watch, can’t say what time all this was. If you can’t prove your innocence, you are guilty, isn’t that what Duncan’s come to.

  Why doesn’t he speak.

  Well, that’s the only positive thing the man said, so far as I’m concerned. We have to try and get him to confide in the lawyer even if he won’t in you or me. And don’t ask me why he won’t.

  She and he.

  But what are they to do, if in his dire need, he does not need them? He, Harald, has to keep his eyes on the road, away from her, because they suddenly are deluged with tears, as if a sphincter has been pressured to bursting point. These drives. These drives back from disaster.

  Harald was in the cottage. He had gone first to the room at the end of the garden where the plumber’s assistant and part-time gardener lived. A padlock on a stable door; the property was old, the man occupied what once must have housed a horse.

  Harald had avoided the house, expecting to send the man to fetch the cottage key for him, although there was a car in the driveway, indicating someone was at home. When he knocked, a half-recognized face appeared at a window, and Khulu Dladla came to the door. He had met Dladla a few times—Duncan now and then had his parents over for drinks in the garden, they didn’t expect him to bother with providing a meal, and usually one or other of the friends on the property would join them. Harald had the key from Khulu; the heavy young man thumped off barefoot to fetch it; the word-processor at which he was interrupted shone an acid green eye on that living-room; that sofa. Harald was left standing alone with it. The young man’s feelings as he handed over the key to the cottage drew his features into the kind of painful frowning of one who is tightening a screw.