The House Gun

by Nadine Gordimer

  If he could free himself (his companions the police are beside him) and walk across the well of the court to her, what is it that he would want to say?

  How could you think of something so exquisitely (Motsamai’s adverb) appropriate to destroy me? The two of you; both so clever, knowing me so well.

  You’ve told it to them your way: you didn’t tell them that it was in you, it was in your head, it was you who put it in me, so that was what you saw in me: you said to me more than once at three, four in the morning—there were birds beginning to call in the garden where I dropped that thing—you said, one day you’ll want to kill me, that’s what you want more than anything, to kill me to get what you want, save me and yourself.

  But she’s saved herself. She got into her car and drove away from us, Carl and me. The dead and the accused. There she is up on that stand and we’ll never talk until we hear the birds, again.

  —Ms James, are you pregnant?—

  At once the judge stops Motsamai; but the flourish with which Motsamai has opened his cross examination has cut through the air.

  —Mr Motsamai, what has this invasion of the witness’s privacy to do with the case—I order it withdrawn.—

  —With respect, M’Lord, it is most pertinent to the relationship of the witness with the accused, and the tragic consequences of that relationship. May I have your permission to proceed?—

  —Your claim to pertinence better be good, Mr Motsamai, and promptly evidenced.—

  The two understand one another; both know the judge had to make the objection, both knew he would rescind it. Senior Counsel doesn’t ask questions merely to create a sensation, although the immediate effect of this one, on the temperature of the public, is just that. There are stirrings and stifled exclamations. Shame. Not shame for her antics on the sofa, which they relish the opportunity to review, but shame, poor good-looker, for having what happens to women brought out before them all by the nasty prying of a lawyer and—one of those old, officially outlawed reactions comes back—a white girl, spoken to like this by this black man with his lined face drawn tight and demanding by the years when his kind couldn’t have asked any question at all of her, a white.

  In the moment the question was put to her, to the whole court, the public, her amazement swiftly had become a reluctant, ironic recognition of this wily enemy: she should never have told him, in passing, so to speak, to dramatize herself in his chambers!

  Motsamai repeats the question softly; she’s heard it once.

  —Yes.—

  Watching her, Harald understood that the girl had not given the Prosecutor this information when he was preparing her as State witness. And Hamilton—he must have made a shrewd guess that this would be so; the Prosecutor’s moral climate, to be met by her, was one in which she knew he would want to think the best of her.

  —Is Duncan Lindgard the father of the child you expect?—

  She answered, no need to whisper.—I can’t say.—

  —Could it be the child of Carl Jespersen?—

  —Possibly.—

  —You took no precautions against such an eventuality, in your impulsiveness that night after the party?—

  —That’s so.—

  —Is that why you can’t say whether the child is Duncan Lindgard’s, the man with whom you were cohabiting, or Carl Jespersen’s, the man with whom you were intimate that night?—

  —Yes.—

  —Doesn’t the date of conception, of which you must be more or less aware from your doctor’s confirmation of your pregnancy, rule out one of the two men as father?—

  —It doesn’t.—

  —How is that?—

  —You know. I told you when you asked me in your office. Duncan made love to me in the early morning, the same day, it was the way bad nights ended.—

  —Are you not worried, does it trouble you that you don’t know who is the father of the child you’re going to give birth to?—

  Natalie turns her head away, first this side then that, away from them all, she escapes the court borne by the will of the public: shame. Then she comes back to answer them all.—It’s my child.—

  Duncan wants to thrust the policemen against the walls and rush to hold her poor head, face, mouthing foul words at him, silenced against his chest, cradling her for the child she abandoned, Natalie/Nastasya, the death she submerged herself for and lost—but Motsamai can’t be restrained, the process can’t be halted. Ever since he, Duncan, stood in the doorway something was started that can’t be stopped.

  —Doesn’t it disturb you to think of the distress this news will cause the accused, who has given you his faithful love and support, and which you have accepted from him, despite all your accusations against him, for several years?—

  —Nobody’s business but mine.—

  —Is that your answer to the question of whatever effect, however painful, your news will have on him?—

  It is as if, for her, Motsamai and his pursuit of her don’t exist. She repeats—Nobody’s business but mine.—

  —You don’t care. Very well. Ms James, I believe you are something of a writer, poems and so on, you’re familiar with many expressions. Do you know the meaning of in flagrante delicto?—

  —I don’t need any explanation.—

  —You don’t need any explanation. Were you found in flagrante delicto with Carl Jespersen on the sofa in the living-room where the party was held, the lights on and the doors open, anyone could have walked in, on the night of Thursday 18th of January? Was it the accused, the man who saved your life and with whom you had been cohabiting as lovers, who walked in and found you there?—

  —Yes.—And the monosyllable spreads through the keen receptivity of the public: yes yes yes.

  —You admit that you performed, before his eyes, the sexual act with his intimate friend. Have you not thought of the renewed anguish this latest news is going to bring him in addition to the shock and pain you caused him when he was confronted with the sight of you and Jespersen that night? You admit to intercourse with both men within the period of twenty-four hours. The child is yours. What does this mean? There is no child without a father. Are you proclaiming a miracle, Ms James? Your immaculate conception? —

  Objection from the Prosecutor, upheld, Motsamai withdraws the question and proceeds with a wave of the hand.

  —You have two putative fathers for your child. It doesn’t matter to you. M’Lord, I put it to the court: this callous, careless, yes, uncaring attitude is surely abhorrent to any responsible person who has due concern for the feelings of another. How is the accused supposed to accept that the woman he loves doesn’t care whether the child she is going to bear is or is not his? Isn’t this cynical coda the final, cruel afterword to the dance she led him, which evidence we shall place before this court describes as a life of hell. Finally, there was the extreme, the unendurable provocation she subjected him to on the night of January 18th, so that the attitude of her partner to that exhibition of the sexual act, when next day the accused found the man at ease on the same sofa on which it was committed, culminated in the accused as a blankout in which he committed a tragic act. The witness’s share in responsibility for that tragedy has just been confirmed out of her own mouth. It has been confirmed once and for all by the sentiments she has now openly expressed in total indifference to the abuse of the accused she commits yet again, this time taking no account of his feelings that she may be bearing his child.—

  —Have you concluded, Mr Motsamai?—

  Yes, like an opera singer breaking off on the top note, he knows the pitch at which to stop. The public is fickle, led by whoever has the gift to sway them, or they are such a community of voyeurs, now, that there are even factions which have developed among them. It’s the judge’s adjournment for tea, and as Harald and Claudia move out with them someone manoeuvres close and says, claiming hissing intimacy, She’s the one who ought to be up for it. Khulu has joined Harald and Claudia and he uses the tilt of his broad shoulders to
make way for them in protection.

  The State’s psychiatrist is a woman, while the Defence’s choice is a man. For some reason, Defence Counsel is pleased about this; Hamilton explains: a woman, even in the moral climate of an urbane judge, will be likely to be perceived as soft on the character of the woman in the case, vis-à-vis the issue of provocation, a male is likely to be accepted as more professionally objective. Claudia smiles behind a fist held at her mouth.

  —That’s the fact of it, my dear doctor.—Hamilton gives a short briefing in the echoing corridors, just before the court sitting resumes. Voices, the dialogues of other people in trouble rebound hollow against the high ceilings but Harald and Claudia hear only their own exchanges with the man who has them in his hands. His confidence is like the dop of brandy he offers in chambers, a warmth that quickly fades from the blood.

  The Prosecutor continues his case, calling the State psychiatrist and leading her evidence. She exudes competence from the freckled flesh of breasts tightly twinned like displaced plump thighs in the neckline of her dress as she testifies that the accused’s intellect is within high limits, his judgment sound.

  —In your opinion, would such a level of intellect and sound judgment operate in conscious responsibility for actions, even in stressful situations?—

  —Yes. The accused was not entirely unprepared for what he saw on that night after the party. I believe, from my consultations with him, that he was suspicious of the situation before he came upon the couple in the sexual act. He had made himself custodian of his partner’s morals, this was a constant source of quarrels and conflict between them. There is deep subconscious animosity present within his passionate possessiveness towards her. He would not face the reality of her personality, although she was frank with him, and he prides himself on being an advocate of personal freedom, including sexual freedom. He constantly suspected her of infidelity, whether on occasions when this was justified, or not. He had an obsessional, evangelical attachment to her which manifested itself in rational, precisely practical direction of every aspect of her life.—

  —Was his day of inaction after the discovery of the couple consistent with this rationality?—

  —In my opinion it was.—

  —A day of inaction, contemplation, followed by action—is this also consistent with purposeful behaviour?—

  —Yes. His is the personality of a brooder. He does not act on the spur of the moment. He plans. He planned the young woman’s whole life without her volition or consent.—

  —Do you believe, then, that he could have shot Jespersen ‘on the spur of the moment’, almost twenty-four hours later than he had discovered the compromised couple?—

  —No. If he were to have acted in an irrational state, unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his behaviour, he would have attacked Jespersen at once, in the shock of his suspicions proved by what he came upon.—

  —In what state of mind, then, would you say, with what intentions, would you say, he went to the house next day?—

  —He went to the house with the conscious intentions of jealousy built up during his solitude.—

  —In a rational state of mind?—

  —Yes.—

  —He went to the house intending to kill Jespersen?—

  She would not be able to say to what extreme his intentions might carry him. But she was not convinced of the amnesia of the accused in respect of what happened at the house after Jespersen told him to pour himself a drink.

  —The fact is that after forming those intentions in his hours in the cottage, he murdered Jespersen. Was he in full awareness of what he was doing?—

  —He is an individual in whom self-control has been strongly established since childhood. It is an axiom of his middle-class background. He is not led by emotion to act on impulse, he’s deliberate in every course of action he takes, whatever that might turn out to be.—

  The Prosecutor’s gesture was of complete satisfaction with his expert’s testimony: no more questions necessary.

  Motsamai rose with arms away from the body, elbows and hands curved open before him as if to take up something offered him.—Doctor, what is a state of shock?—

  —It’s a mental phenomenon that affects different people in different ways. Some people cry, some burst into anger, some run.—

  —But in general—not the variety of reaction, but the effect on cognition, the sudden disorder of mental processes?—

  —There is the effect of mental confusion. Yes. And as I have explained, it manifests itself in different ways.—

  —Including the impulse to run away and hide?—

  —Yes.—

  —In your experience, Doctor, is a profound shock something that is quickly over, the individual concerned regains emotional balance, with the self-control this implies, just like that? Indeed, among your patients there surely have been some for whom a profound shock has had extremely long-term consequences—from what I have learnt, it haunts them to such an extent that in order to regain emotional balance they seek out your skills …—

  Harald is alert to a stir of disapproval under the judge’s robe, but this passes without an objection to the jibe.

  —Is it not feasible that when the accused fled in shock from the sexual exhibition of Ms James and Jespersen and hid himself in the cottage, he spent the hours there not in instant recovery to his rationality and capability of deliberate intentions, but in the state of mental confusion that you have identified as the effect of shock?—

  —It is possible.—

  —You would agree that his was profound shock?—

  —Yes.—

  —In the case of profound shock, would you say that it may increase, rather than decrease, mental and emotional confusion in the process you term brooding? (A tendency to which you have diagnosed in the accused.) Is it not true that the impact of what has caused the shock gathers force as all the implications of the painful situation mount in a growing mental and emotional confusion? Mind-blowing. So that the individual cannot, as we say, think straight; think at all.—

  —Shock could have extended effects of mental confusion. Again, this depends on the personality of the individual. In my opinion, Mr Lindgard is one whose long experience of emotional stress has equipped him to regain mental equilibrium and rationality rapidly, in accordance with his nature.—

  —So you confirm that the accused had had a long experience of emotional stress, with Natalie James.—

  —Yes. He brought it upon himself.—

  —Both you and your learned colleague, Dr Basil Reed, a psychiatrist with twenty-three years experience in your field, have had the opportunity to assess the personality and mental state of the accused during a period of twenty-eight days?—

  —Yes.—

  —How long have you been in practice as a psychiatrist, Dr Albrecht?—

  —Seven years.—

  —Your senior colleague’s, Dr Reed’s opinion, as set out in his report to the court, is that the accused’s long experience of emotional stress, to which you yourself attest, is of a nature that far from finding resolution in rational thought and intention, culminated in unbearable emotional stress in which the accused was precipitated into a state of dissociation from reason and reality. Is it true that such a state, as a result of prolonged stress compounded by profound shock, is a state recognized by your profession?—

  —It is recognized. As one among other reactions to trauma.—

  —It is recognized.—Motsamai’s palms come slowly, measuredly together.—No further questions, M’Lord.—

  His gesture claims the State’s case is closed, although the Prosecutor has still to declare this. Harald and Claudia watch the Prosecutor intently and hear his words without interpreting meaning; where is their son, what happened to their son, in these statements that turn him about as some lay figure, he is this, no, he’s that? Motsamai will have the hermeneutics according with the legal moral climate; he’ll explain.

  The Prosecutor wears his d
own-turned samurai mouth and his eyebrows are furled together; he does not require any other, particular vehemence and he has not Motsamai’s range; a prosecutor knows he’s not the star the constellation of the Bar needed, its black diamond.—The sum of evidence is that the accused is a highly intelligent man, in full possession of the faculties of conscience, who shot dead, in cold blood, a man lying defenceless on a sofa. The issue before the court is plain: it is that of capability. Criminal capability; did the accused or did he not have this. Whatever conflicting expert opinions may emerge, it is clear that he did not act when it would seem natural, even excusable, for him to do so. He did not tackle the deceased immediately, when he found the man taking his place, performing sexual intimacy with the individual he believed he owned, body and soul. If he had done so, it would not be necessary to seek expert opinion to know that that attack would have been made when he was out of his mind, so to speak, overcome by emotion. But no; he turned his back on the scene, went away to spend a whole day examining his feelings and the options open to satisfy them; his sexual defeat, his male pride, the pride of a totally domineering male (which we have heard testimony was his unfortunate nature). He could have thrown the girl out of the cottage, severed relations with her as his creation—he brought her back to life, remember—turned ingrate. He could have scorned to have anything further to do with her, Jespersen, and the house where such things could happen. These were options. But in full possession of his rightful senses, after plenty of time to consider his course of action, he went to the house, knowing Jespersen would be there at that time of the evening, and made use of the gun he knew was kept in the house, to kill Jespersen. These are the indisputable facts. The accused was criminally capable of the act of murder he performed and I submit, Your Lordship, that the court deal with him in cognizance of this, if justice is to be done to his victim and to the moral code of our society: Thou shalt not kill.—