The House Gun by Nadine Gordimer Read Free Book Online Page A

relationship.—
    â€”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.—
    â€”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.
    â€”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.—
    â€”He’s guilty.—
    Counsel received the father’s interjection with the approval of an instructor for a pupil.
    â€”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.—
    â€”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.—
    â€”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