The House Gun

by Nadine Gordimer

  —You lay in the cottage all day on that Friday, 19th of January, brooding over the event of the night before?—

  —Thinking.—

  —Isn’t that the same thing, going over and over in your mind the injury done to you. What you desired to do about it. Wasn’t that it?—

  —Not that. Because there was nothing to be done about it.—

  —Yet later in the day you went over to the house. Was that not doing something about it? It was between six and seven o’clock in the evening, there was every likelihood that Jespersen would be home from work. You knew that, didn’t you?—

  —I found myself in the garden, I didn’t think about who would be in the house.—

  —You ‘found yourself in the garden’ and I put it to you that it was then that you also were aware that the time was right for you to carry out what you had been thinking, planning all day—to find Jespersen, take your revenge for the wrong you felt he had done you, although he was not the first man with whom your live-in lover had been unfaithful to you. I put it to you that your thinking, all day, was the brooding of jealousy, and you went to the house in a consequent aggressive mood with the intention of confronting Jespersen violently.—

  The task of the Prosecutor is to make out an accused to be a liar: that is how Harald and Claudia see his process. Claudia shifts in her seat as if unable to sit there any longer, and he crushes her knuckles a moment, comfort that comes from his own resentment.

  But if they knew—perhaps they partly know; Duncan is not sure what they have learnt, are learning about him—he is a liar. A liar by omission. Because the Prosecutor cannot know, is not being told—there is no telling of the staggering conflict of his feelings towards Carl Jespersen, towards Natalie, his confusion of their betrayals, a revulsion in sorrow; that was his thinking, in the cottage. Revenge: if Natalie had come back that day, why not have thought of killing her? But she—oh Natalie—she has taken enough revenge upon herself for being herself.

  The gun is in court. It has become Exhibit 1. A draught of curiosity bends the companions in the public forward to try and catch a glimpse of it.

  It’s nothing but a piece of fashioned metal; Harald and Claudia don’t need to see it. The fingerprints of the accused’s left hand, the Prosecutor says, were discovered upon it by forensic tests, his fingerprints unique to him in all humanity, as he is unique to them as their only son.

  —You know this handgun?—

  —Yes.—

  —Do you own it?—

  —No.—

  —Who does?—

  —I don’t know in whose name it was licensed. It was the gun kept in the house so that if someone was attacked, intruders broke in, whoever it was could defend himself. Everyone.—

  —Did you know where it was kept?—

  —Yes. Usually in a drawer in the room David and Carl shared.—

  —You lived in the cottage, not the house; how did you know this?—

  —We all knew. We live—lived in the same grounds together. If the others were out, and I heard something suspicious, I’d be the one who would need it.—

  —You knew how to handle a gun.—

  —This one. It was the only one I’d ever touched. In the army, privates were trained on rifles. David demonstrated, when it was bought.—

  —On the night of January 18th the gun was brought into the living-room and shown to one of the guests who was about to acquire one for himself. Did you show it to him, handle it?—

  —No. I don’t remember who did—probably David.—

  —Were you aware that the gun wasn’t put away—back in the drawer in another room where it customarily was kept?—

  —No. I left while the others were tidying up.—

  —But you saw the gun lying about before you left? On the table near the sofa?—

  —I didn’t notice the gun.—

  —How was that?—

  —There were glasses and plates all over the place, I suppose it was somewhere mixed up.—

  —So when you entered the room the next evening you saw for the first time that the gun had been left out, lying on the table?—

  —I didn’t see it.—

  —How was that?—

  —I wasn’t looking anywhere, only saw Carl.—

  —And at what point did you see the gun?—

  —I can’t say when.—

  —Was it before he said ‘Why don’t you pour yourself a drink’ as if this was just a drinking session between mates?—

  —I suppose so. I don’t know.—

  —Did you know if the gun was loaded?—

  —I didn’t know.—

  —But weren’t you present when the use of the gun was being shown to the guest? And wasn’t he shown how—wasn’t it loaded for him?—

  —I didn’t see. I suppose so. I was talking to other people.—

  —So when you entered the living-room the next evening you saw the gun lying there, you had every reason to know it was loaded, and you made the decision to take the opportunity perhaps to threaten Carl Jespersen with it?—

  —I didn’t threaten him, I didn’t make any decision.—

  —So you didn’t give him any chance? Any warning?—

  —I was hearing him, I didn’t threaten—

  —No. You picked up the gun and shot him in the head. A shot you knew, because you know how to handle a gun, almost certain to be fatal. In this way you satisfied the thoughts of revenge you had been occupied with all day, and that you had gone over to the house in intention of pursuing, one way or another. The gun to hand was an opportunity presented to you, so that you didn’t have to grapple with the man fist to fist, you didn’t have to plan any other way of eliminating him as a rival in your life, your desire to do so reached fulfilment of your intentions.—

  Motsamai was signalling; there is a procedure for everything in this ritual: I object M’Lord. But the judge is urbane and democratic, let everyone have his say. Objection over-ruled.

  A stir along the row, people making way for someone to pass, an appearance on the witness stand singling him out like a celebrity. Khulu Dladla came and sat beside them after he had given his evidence for the Defence.

  Khulu; behinds shifted to make place for him next to Claudia. She lifted her hand, it sank towards her lap then lifted again, a tendril reaching out, found and pressed a moment the large warm back of his hand.

  Yes, I can say I know him well, very well, he said when Motsamai led his testimony. And the young woman? Yes, Natalie too. Since she joined our place. But Duncan, before that. In the well of the court, where no signs of recognition are exchanged, Khulu smiled directly at Duncan as if he had just walked into his presence in an ordinary room somewhere. Hi, Duncan. It was because of this that Claudia wanted to touch him.

  —Before Natalie joined the friends—what were relations like between those living in the house?—

  —Oh very nice. We got on well, that’s why we got together, nê?—

  —You, David Baker, Carl Jespersen and Duncan Lindgard. You were all homosexuals?—

  —I don’t know about Duncan, really. He didn’t live in the house. Anyway, then he brought a woman along … but the rest of us, yes, we are men. Gay.—

  —Some of you were intimate with one another?—

  —Yes.—

  —Were you aware that Duncan had a relationship of this nature?—

  —Yes.—

  —And who was the man?—

  —Jespersen. Carl was the kind who when he takes a fancy to someone, that person can’t escape him. He seemed to get a kick out of making it with Duncan, I don’t think Duncan had had our kind of experience before, I mean, that a man could feel that way about him, Jespersen could be such a charmer. He could make you feel like you were missing something great in life if you passed up on him. He was from overseas and all that, he thought he was special. Like some kind of food or drink from there. Something we hadn’t tried.—

  —So you observed that Jespersen was hav
ing an affair with Duncan. Surely this wasn’t surprising, in your set-up?—

  —No, it was. Because Duncan was straight, we knew that. There are a lot of straight people among our friends. He took the cottage and sort of shared the house not because he was one of us, gay, but because we got on well in other ways. He’s an interesting guy. I’d call him a real artist in his designs of buildings. You can work out ideas with him, politics, art, music, God—no frontiers. —

  —Was Natalie James the cause of the break-up of the affair? —

  —No way. It happened before she came on the scene. Jespersen got tired of it. Quickly. He was like that with everything. That’s why he’d moved around in so many countries. He broke off with Duncan.—

  —What was Duncan’s reaction? Did he take the same casual attitude?—

  —Not at all. He was upset. Couldn’t understand why he’d been so involved, you know, emotionally, and then just thrown over.—

  —How did you know all this? From observation only?—

  Khulu was looking at Duncan again, as if Duncan would join him in confirmation.—He talked to me. I didn’t know how to get him to understand … he was in a bad way … his ideas, some of them were different from ours, certainly from Carl’s.—

  —Did you succeed in consoling him?—

  —I think I got him to see that his reaction was, how shall I say, a bit—inappropriate, that was it, to make a fuss, a drama, was spoiling all the good things about our kind of life on the property, that he liked so much.—

  —So the incident, as it seemed to you, was smoothed over?—

  —Oh he calmed down.—

  —He and Carl Jespersen continued to live in the group, as friends?—

  —That’s right. And when he brought the girl along and set her up with him in the cottage, that looked fine, the right thing for him. At first.—

  —Why ‘at first’? What happened after? Didn’t the men at the house like her?—

  —We all got on with Natalie. Though Carl when he was in a bad mood would carry on with all his usual stuff about women—make fun behind Duncan’s back, sometimes, of what he said was going on in the cottage with Duncan and her—thoughts about women in general, but at the same time he and she and Duncan, well, they went along together, were good friends. We really forgot all about that business between Duncan and him. He was the one who found her that job at his advertising firm and Duncan was pleased she at last had work that might interest her, something in her line, she writes, you know.—

  —So what was it that no longer looked fine, for Duncan?—

  —She’s a strange person. Well, he knew that—she’d tried to kill herself, there was that business of the child—she’d he the life of the party one minute and all over him, and the next she’d be jeering at him, attacking him for what she would say was ‘he wanted her to be like that’.—

  —Be like what exactly?—

  —Happy. ‘Performing her life for him’—that’s exactly what she always said. That’s why I remember the words.—

  —Did he tell you about this or was this type of scene taking place in the house, in front of you others?—

  —Oh we were all there, around to see, to hear.—

  —What was Duncan’s reaction when she taunted him in front of their friends?—

  —He was so patient with her. Like with a sick person. Although she gave him hell. You could tell, it was hell. He would go about next day very depressed. But he didn’t talk to me or any of us about it—not the way he talked to me over the fling with Jespersen, for instance.—

  —So the relationship between Natalie James and Duncan was not happy?—

  —She tortured him. Really. She even tried again to commit suicide, it was with pills, and he seemed to think it was his fault. But you could see, he always tried again, to get her right. You couldn’t understand how he could keep on.—

  —He loved her?—

  Now this witness looked to the judge, who was impervious to the feel of eyes upon him. Khulu appealed to him, to all who judge, human or divine.—Who of us can say what it means to love.—

  In the person of the samurai, the Prosecutor turned that face to the public in moments of solicitation during his cross examination of Dladla.

  —‘Who can say what it means to love.’ Indeed, we can say that it is common knowledge that it means to be jealous. Jealousy is the passion that arises from love and is stronger than love itself, as it ruthlessly abandons all respect for the right to life of the cause of the jealousy, the man who has taken the lover’s place in the arms of the loved one. You describe the way the accused was devoted to the care of Natalie James, over-protecting her to the point when, as she has testified, this was offensive to her dignity, you have recounted his slavish attachment and behaviour. Do you not think that, with this background to the relationship, having come upon Carl Jespersen in the act with the loved one, his reaction must inevitably be jealousy? Violent jealousy. The shock that he has described—wasn’t that the extreme impact of jealousy? When he went back to the cottage that night, when he waited in vain for her to return, when he spent the day alone there, wasn’t it jealousy that he was brooding on?—

  —I don’t know.—

  —Wouldn’t you say he was extremely possessive about her, on the evidence of his general behaviour?—

  —He felt responsible for her.—

  —That may be another way of putting it. Why do you think your friend killed Carl Jespersen if it wasn’t out of premeditated jealous revenge for making love to Natalie James?—

  —Killing a person.—

  All around, the public is stilled with anticipation. How will he go on? It excites this audience, admitted for free, to think that the samurai has this victim cornered.

  —I know Duncan; so well. He doesn’t have a gun. Nothing. He was not sitting there planning to go and kill Jespersen. It is not in his nature. Never. I swear on my own life. It couldn’t ever have happened like that: that he was going to look for Carl to kill him. I don’t know how it happened—but not that. God knows how. I don’t understand killing.—

  Motsamai’s man, the Defence psychiatrist—in the blur of becoming aware of who comes and goes in the witness stand the appearance only of some irrelevance notes itself—wore an elaborate watch like a weapon, flash of light off his raised hand reaching Harald and Claudia. He addressed himself directly to the judge rather than the Defence Counsel. To emphasize objectivity? Or because they are equally of authority: the judge decides who is guilty, the psychiatrist decides who is mad. Motsamai has asked his opinion of the accused’s mental state in relation to the events in the house on January the 18th and 19th.

  —In psychiatry we look at ‘life events’ as precipitating abnormal behaviour, but we also see this as consciously or subconsciously reflecting any distortion of social norms. In a society where violence is prevalent the moral taboos against violence are devalued. Where it has become, for whatever historical reasons, the way to deal with frustration, despair or injury, natural abhorrence of violence is suspended. Everyone becomes accustomed to the solution of violence, whether as victim, perpetrator or observer. You live with it. In considering abnormal behaviour, the act must take into account the general climate of behaviour in which it has taken place.—

  The judge responds to this private exchange.

  —All very interesting, Doctor, but what the court expects to hear is a report on the mental state of the accused, not that of the city.—

  —With respect, the act that the accused has admitted he committed did not take place in a vacuum. Just as there may be the unconscious restraint which comes from the moral climate, there may be the unconscious sanction of violence, in its general use, general resort to it. This can overcome the protective inhibitions of the individual’s conscious morality in which such an act would be abhorrent. It is necessary to keep in mind this context in which events which led to the act, and the act itself, took place.—

  —Are you proposing, Do
ctor, that hijacks, muggings and so on sanction murder as a solution to personal conflict?—

  The judge’s sarcasm does not disturb the man; Motsamai would not have chosen anyone easily outsmarted in urbanity.

  —No such immoral proposal, Your Lordship … Simply a duty to inform the court of the methodology followed in psychiatric examination.—

  There has been a rise of attention among the public, even a policeman shifts from one foot to another like a dray-horse standing by. The public is enjoying the exchange between two men who are so sure of their superiority. This free show is getting better all the time, good as a talk-show at the television studios. But Harald and Claudia are clenched to attention in a different way, they are instantly analyzing every word. This man is theirs, Duncan’s, they are sure. What he will have confirmed in their son can only be his salvation.

  He found the accused to have been precipitated into a state of dissociation from what he was doing on the evening of January 19th, unable to exert proper control over his actions, which culminated in the death of Carl Jespersen.

  Motsamai has his attention.—Doctor, when would you say this state began?—

  In the doctor’s opinion it was the accused’s condition before he left the cottage and entered the house. Psychiatric examination found no evidence to doubt that the accused was telling the truth when he said he went to the house to stand where he stood the previous night; his disbelief of what he had seen from there would be part of a state of dissociation from reality. Nor was there any indication that he was not truthful in telling of confusion, lack of recollection of detailed sequence of his actions when he found himself in the house and Jespersen was lying on the sofa. The accused suffers from a genuine amnesia in regard to certain events of that evening.

  The judge attracts attention by moving his shoulders. Whenever he gave this signal, the court hung in balance between what had been said and what would now tip it. This time he thrust his chin forward and cocked his head.—The accused gave a detailed and coherent account of what the deceased said to him. How is it he remembers this?—