The House Gun (15 page)

T
he Constitutional Court has gone into deliberation on the verdict and Harald and Claudia have no information as to how long this may take.

For them, their son has been already on trial—this trial in a court other than the one in which he will appear—and is awaiting a Last Judgment above any that may be within the jurisdiction to be handed down when his own case is heard. Motsamai is sympathetically condescending, reiterating reassurance.—I know you don't believe me. Ah-hêh … I know what you think: what can I know if the whole question has been argued before the highest authority we have except the President of the country and God Himself, and those judges haven't been able to come up with a verdict? But it may take them many weeks. My concern for my client does not include any fears about the outcome. What will emerge will be the end of the Death Penalty. My concern is to demonstrate without any doubt that this young man was driven by circumstances to act totally against his own nature. This woman, and the individual who was once more than his friend—the pair betrayed him out of his mind!—

There were other people in trouble waiting to be received by him. He ushered these two to the door of chambers.—Look, I want you to meet my wife, and my son—we've applied for medical school for him, I don't know if he's got the aptitude, you could give us some good advice, Claudia? What about this Friday evening? I hope you'll get a good dinner. I'll be coming back from the Appeal Court in Bloemfontein, so let's say around eight-thirty, something like that.—

The aplomb glossed urbanely over the sensitivity to their situation; he knew how it was, they would be in retreat from the company of friends whose sympathetic faces served only to set them apart from the basis of old friendship, common circumstances no longer shared. It was not always necessary or desirable to keep the relationship with clients formal. Taking on a brief means establishing the confidence of human feeling, some sort of give-and-take, with the family of the life to be defended, even while retaining professional objectivity. This white couple didn't have the resilience that blacks have acquired in all their generations of being people in trouble by the nature of their skins. He knows how to handle these two: they'll feel they're able to do something for him; that aside about wanting advice on a career for an ambitious son.

When they are in the visitors' room neither lets surface their preoccupation with the unknown deliberations of the Constitutional Court. It was not the first time they had had to employ this tact; there are so many subjects and reactions that are inappropriate to display to someone living unimaginably, exposed there before you only for a half-hour between two prison warders. The prisoner is a stranger who should not be confronted with what can be dealt with only in the familiarity of freedom. Certainly Duncan knew of the subject of the first sitting of the Constitutional Court; he had access to newspapers but he—also out of tact, it's a two-way process if it's to make these visits possible—he does not speak of it either. Or perhaps it is because they could not even begin to comprehend what the proceedings of that Court must have meant
to him as he followed reports. A man who declares himself guilty, is he declaring himself ready to die? Or does he, as only he can, know himself in the death cells with Makwanyane and Mchunu, asserting the right to life no matter what he has done?

They ask him instead if he's able to make progress with the plans he's drawing and he says yes he is, he is, the work is going well enough.

—It's pretty remarkable you manage all that.—Harald is admiring; admiration is a form of encouragement that's admissible.

—The only problem is I don't get a chance to discuss any difficulty that comes up. With the others at the office, as we generally do. So this really will be all my own work … a bit eccentrically so, who knows.—

—Maybe someone from the firm could come and talk about it with you. Why not.—Harald is prepared to ask the senior partners for this service (if his junior colleague Verster had been the right person Duncan surely would have mentioned him); prison is not a disease, there's nothing infectious to keep clear of, in this visitors' room.

—Not worth the trouble. When I've finished the draft plan Motsamai will take it out and someone'll look at it.—

What is really being said here is that he understands that if the Last Judgment is going to be in his favour and will ensure that his life will not end now, it still has to be endured: back to the drawing board. But what that means to him, having once sacrificed the life of order for chaos, is something that cannot be conveyed.

When they retreat down the corridors behind the riding buttocks of the usual warder, Claudia—and maybe Harald—envies a woman taking the same route who humbly tries to hide her face in a scarf as she brays aloud, like a beast of burden, in tears.

C
laudia supposed they couldn't very well refuse. They preferred to be at home together, these days. Best off like that. Recently Harald had taken tickets for a chamber music concert, his favourite César Franck on the programme, but the paths music takes are so vital, unlike the perceptions that divert in a film or a play—it drove them even deeper into their isolation.

He means well. Harald was familiar with the combination of business interests and a certain trace of personal liking come about, of course, that prompted such invitations.

Harald and Claudia had never been to a black man's home before. This kind of gesture on both sides—the black man asking, the white man accepting—was that of the Left-wing circles to which they had not belonged during the old regime, and of the circles of hastily-formed new liberals of whose conversion they were sceptical. If they themselves in the past had not had the courage to act against the daily horrors of the time as the Left Wing did beyond dinner parties, risking their professions and lives, at least neither he nor she sought to disguise this lack (of guts: Harald faced it for himself, as he now did other soft moral options
taken) by dining and wining it away. Black fellow members on the Board; well, they were no longer content to be names listed on letterheads; they were raising issues and influencing decisions; recognizing this—that at least had some meaning? And Claudia—she had something remote from anything he had, familiarity with the feel and touch of blacks' flesh, knowing it to be like her own, always had known—an accusation, too, for all she failed to do further, in the past, but a qualification for the present; she didn't need any gesture of passing the salt across a dinner table.

The address Motsamai's secretary handed on his card was in a suburb that had been built in the Thirties and Forties by white businessmen of the second generation of money. Their fathers had immigrated in the years when gold-mining was growing from the panning by adventurers to an industry making profit for shareholders and creating a city of consumers; they were pedlars and shopkeepers who became processors of maize the millions of blacks who had lost the land they grew their food on couldn't subsist without, manufacturers of building materials, clothing, furniture, importers of cigars, radios, jewellery, carpets. Their educated sons had the means of their fathers' success to indulge in the erection of houses they believed to express the distinction of old money; dwellings like the ones the fathers might have looked on from their cottages and izbas in another country: the counts' mansions, the squires' manors. Architects they employed interpreted these ideas in accordance with their own conception of prestige and substance, the plantation-house pillars of the Deep South and the solid flounced balconies from which in Italy fascists of the period were making speeches. In the gardens, standard equipment, were swimming pools and tennis courts.

Some of the fortunes had declined so that portions of the grounds had been sold, some of the sons had emigrated again, to Canada or Australia this time. Some grandsons had reacted against materialism, as third generations can afford to, and left the suburb to live and work in accordance with a social conscience. There was a hiatus during which the houses were inappropriate to the
taste of the time; they were regarded as relics of the
nouveau riche,
while newer money favoured country estates with stables, outside the city: the houses would be demolished and the suburb become the site of multinational company complexes.

But it looked as if it might be saved by the unpredicted solution of desegregation. A new generation of still newer money arrived, and these were no immigrants from another country. They were those who had always belonged, but only looked on the pillars and balconies from the hovels and township yards they were confined to. It was one of these houses that Motsamai had bought. Whether or not he admired the architecture (the parents did not have their son's criteria for determining the worth or otherwise of people's taste) it provided a comfortable space for a successful man and his family and was now supplied with current standard equipment, electrically-controlled gates for their security against those who remained in township yards and city squatter camps.

The enthusiastic chatter of the television set was part of the company, its changing levels of brightness another face among them. They were gathered in one area by a natural response to the oversize of the living-room where islands of armchairs and spindly tables were grouped. Hamilton Motsamai had discarded his jacket as he shed the persona of his day spent flying back and forth to plead in the Appeal Court at Bloemfontein.—Make yourself at home, Harald!—

A domestic bar that must have been part of the original equipment of the house was stocked with the best brands, a young man who seemed slight in contrast with the confident ebullience of his father was chivvied to offer drinks between Motsamai's introductions to various others summoned—a brother-in-law, someone's sister, someone else's friend; unclear whether these were all guests or more or less living in the house. Motsamai switched angrily to his mother tongue to reproach several youngsters who were lying stomach-down on the carpet, paddling their legs in glee at the pop group performing on television, and had not risen to greet the guests.

The wife and a daughter—so many introductions at once—had entered with bowls of potato crisps and peanuts. Motsamai's wife was a beauty in the outmoded style, broad-bosomed, her hair straightened and re-curled in European matronly fashion, but the daughter was tall and slender, nature's old dutiful emphasis on the source of nourishment, the breasts, mutated into insignificance under loose clothing, her long dreadlocks drawn away from a Nefertiti profile, the worldly-wise eyes of her father emerging in slanting assertion under painted lids, and the delicate jut of her jaw a rejection of everything that would have determined her life in the past.

Motsamai's wife—Lenali, that's right—was animatedly embarrassed by the behaviour of the children.

—Never mind, they're enjoying themselves, let's not interrupt them.—Hadn't she, Claudia—oh long ago—had the same parental reaction when her own son had ignored the boring conventions of the adult world.

—These kids are terrible. You can believe me. I don't know what they learn at school. No respect. If you've had a boy, of course you know how it is, the mother can't do anything with them and the father—well, he's got important things on his mind, isn't it … always! Hamilton only complains to me! I don't know if you found it like that!—

This woman doesn't know what happened to the boy Claudia ‘found like that'; or rather, if she does (surely Hamilton has told her something of the story of the clients he's brought home) she doesn't draw attention to their plight by the pretence that their son doesn't exist, that what he says he has done has nullified everything he once was, the way old friends feel they must do. Duncan is not taboo, tonight, here.—I used to think it was because ours is an only child, and he was too much among grownups, he showed this the only way he could, just ignoring them. Wouldn't kiss the aunts who patted his head and asked what he wanted to be when he was big … he'd disappear to his room.—

—Oh I find the teenage is the worst! In our culture, I mean,
you don't kiss your auntie, but you must greet her in the proper way we've always done.—

Harald, under his conversation with others heard; Claudia was laughing, talking about Duncan.

—You're in the legal game, with Hamilton?—The brother-in-law, or was it some other relative.

—No, no, insurance.—

—That's also a good game to be in. You pay, pay all your life and if you live a long time before you die the insurance people have had more of your money than they're going to give out, isn't it.—

There was head-thrown-back laughter.

—That's the law of diminishing returns.—

The different levels of education and sophistication at ease in the gathering were something that didn't exist in the social life Harald had known; there, if you had a brother-in-law who was a meat packer at a wholesale butchery (the first man had announced his métier) you would not invite him on the same occasion when you expected compatibility with a client from the corporate business world, and an academic introduced as Professor Seakhoa who would drily produce an axiom in ironic correction of naïve humour. Hamilton put a hand on either shoulder, Harald's and the meat packer's.—Beki, my friend here doesn't come knocking on your door selling funeral policies, he's a director who sits away up on the fifteenth floor of one of those corporate headquarters where bonds for millions are being negotiated for industries and housing down there below—the big development stuff.—

—Well, that must be an even better game, nê. More bucks. Because the government's got to pay up.—

New faces appeared with the movement in and out, about the room. Some young friends of the adolescents, their voices in the higher register. The academic, whose belly wobbled in appreciation of his own wit, turned to tease them. Claudia—where was Claudia—Harald kept antennae out for her—she was talking to the son, no doubt about the prospects of a career in medicine, he had
been captured by his father and delivered to her. A glimpse of her face as she was distracted for a moment to the offer of
samoosas
: Claudia's expression with her generous frown of energy; probably about to suggest that the boy come to her clinic, put on a white coat, lend a hand where it could be useful and try out for himself what the practice of medicine should mean in service to the people and the country. She laughed again, apparently in encouragement of something the boy was saying.

A tiny, light-coloured old man had already scented substantial food and sat with a heaped plate on his knees eating a chicken leg warily as a cat that has stolen from the table. Everyone sauntered, talking, colliding amiably, to another room almost as large as the one they had left, where meat, chicken and potatoes,
putu
and salads, bowls of dessert decorated with swirling scripts of whipped cream were set out. Harald found his way to her.—We didn't expect a party.—But she only smiled as if she were still talking to another guest.—Oh I don't think it's really that. Just the way the family gets together for the weekend.—

He had the curious feeling she wanted to move away from him, away among others choosing their food, among them, these strangers not only of this night, but of all her life outside the encounters in her profession, the dissection of their being into body parts. Here, among closely mingled lives that had no connection with hers and his—even the connection that Hamilton had in his chambers was closed off by an entry to his privacy—if she lost herself among these others she escaped from what held the two of them bound more tightly than love, than marriage, a bag tied over their heads, unable to breathe any air but that of something terrible that had happened on another Friday night. There was the hiss of beer cans being opened all around but Hamilton, who had filled his clients' gin-and-tonic glasses several times, brought out wine. His own glass in hand, he went about offering one bottle after another; Harald didn't refuse, as he customarily would, to mix drinks—anything that would maintain the level of equanimity attained would do. A man holding his plate of food carefully balanced
before him came dancing up with intricate footwork as if with a gift; not of food, but with an unspoken invitation to partake—of the evening, the company, the short-term consolations. A man who had overheard that Harald was in the business of financing loans was taking the opportunity to corner him for advice, with heckling interruptions from others.

—It's no win, man, without the collateral you can't get the kind of money you're dreaming about. Ask him. Ask him. Am I right? If you want to build a little house for yourself somewhere, that's a different thing, then go to one of the government agencies, housing whatyoucallit, you get your little cents for bricks and windows—

—A casino! And where'll you find a licence for that—

—Oh licence is nothing. Don't you know the new laws coming in about gambling? He'll get that. But if he finds the property, the piece of land and maybe there's something on it he wants to convert, or maybe it's empty—then the trouble begins. Oh just wait, man. Objections. Objections from the people in the neighbourhood, applications to the city council—you don't know what hit you, it can drag on for months. And still you won't win. I know, I know. Freedom. Freedom to object, object.—

—That's how whites see it. Live anywhere you like but not next door to me.—

—Let him answer Matsepa—

—We don't have capital. What is this ‘collateral' but capital? For generations we've never had a chance to create capital, tonight's Friday, every Friday people have had their pay packet and that's what they ate until the next pay day. Finish. No bucks. Collateral is property, a good
position
, not just a job. We couldn't have it—not our grandfathers, not our fathers, and now we're supposed to have this
collateral
after two years of our government. Two years!—

—But let Matsepa ask, man!—

—The people your company gives money to for projects, where is their collateral? Where do they get it?—

—Look—the route to take is by consortium. That's how it is done. We are talking of sizeable projects which require development funds; yes.—Harald hears his Board Room vocabulary in his own voice coming on as at the accidental touch of some remote control: who is that holding forth?—It's a matter of the individual who has the vision, the idea … project … finding others who will come in … most have studied … the project requires … criteria laid down … our co-operation with the National Development Council … viable economically … benefit to the population … employment … production of commodity … The man may have the brains—and the empty pockets; he has to link up with people whose position in some trustworthy way …—He was being heard by a young man, a son, lying in a cell looking up at a barred window.