It is very different with Motsamai. Hamilton. Servants used to be known to their employers only by first names, everyone knows now it was intrinsically derogatory. This use of a black man’s first name is a sign not of equality, that’s not enough — it’s a sign of his acceptance of you, white man, of his allowing you unintimidated access to his power. In this relationship the comfortable terms, quite accustomed now, of taken-for-granted equality once the appropriate vocabulary and the same references are understood, draws back from an apparition that must have been waiting in the past. In those hands, now. Hamilton. All that exists, in the silences between Harald and Claudia, is the fact of the life of their son. Every other circumstance of existence is mechanical (except for Harald’s prayers; the sceptic resentment Claudia feels when she senses he’s praying). Because of the old conditioning, phantom coming up from somewhere again, there is awareness that the position that was entrenched from the earliest days of their being is reversed: one of those kept-apart strangers from the Other Side has come across and they are dependent on him. The black man will act, speak for them. They have become those who cannot speak, act, for themselves.
The relationship between the lawyer and his clients is not a business relationship of any kind Harald has known although the best available Senior Counsel is highly paid for his services. Claudia should understand it better; it must be more like that of patient and doctor when disablement threatens. But she was dismayed by the lawyer’s suggestion that she and Harald come to his house — for a quiet talk, Harald told her he had said.
What Hamilton had said to him was confidential. — I don’t think Dr Lindgard — Claudia — and I have really hit it off together, yet. I don’t feel she has confidence — you know — in what we lawyers are doing. Ah-hêh. Yes. I want her to get to know me not here, this room reminds her of what is happening to Duncan, this place with the nasty smell of a court about it — isn’t that so? Nê? I want to talk to her in a relaxed way, get her to tell me the kind of thing women know about their kids that we don’t, my friend … I see it with my own youngsters. They’ll run to their mother. We men bring our work home with us in our heads even if we don’t bring it in our briefcases, we don’t seem so sympathetic, you follow. Any childhood traumas are useful to me in this kind of defence where there isn’t the object of proving innocence of a crime — no option for that — but of proving why the defendant was pushed beyond endurance. Yes. To an act contrary to his nature. Ah-hêh. Anything. Anything the mother remembers that would support, say, a deeply affectionate, loyal nature in the defendant. Anything that will show the extent of the damage done to him by the woman Natalie. How she betrayed these attributes he has and wilfully destroyed the natural controls of his behaviour — think of that scene on the sofa! Not even to go into a bedroom, man! She knew anyone could walk in and see what she was up to there, she knew — I believe it — he might come back to look for her, and what he’d find!—
A brief preview offered of what eloquence Motsamai was going to produce for his clients, in court.
Harald had to grant it as such with a gesture.
— Claudia spent as much or as little time with him as I did. A doctor also brings preoccupations home and doesn’t even have regular hours. And he was in boarding school … if you think of it, how much time did we have of him. I don’t think she knows anything about Duncan I don’t.—
— Ithink I know better. Sorry! I’m working on Natalie, I’m satisfied with that, and what I am looking for from Duncan’s mother is the other side of the story, what the young man was before that particular young woman got hold of him.—
Harald has learnt that when Motsamai has something to tell that is likely to rouse emotion and dismay he uses the tactic of sudden rapid development of the subject so that there is no warning pause in which apprehension speculates on what might be to come. He does this now without a change of tone or voice level. — I’ve made an application for Duncan to go for psychiatric observation. To tell you the truth, that’s why I didn’t quibble over postponement. Among other reasons … I need time, I need a full psychological report for my submissions. Absolutely essential. I need to know everything there is to know about Duncan. As I’ve told you — from you, from Claudia. And I need to know what neither of you knows and what I’ll never get from him myself. There’ll be a State psychiatrist and one we’ll appoint privately, ourselves. I’ve engaged a first-class chap, your wife will have heard of him. Duncan will go to Sterkfontein — that’s a state mental institution, yes. Ah-hêh. Don’t be alarmed. I know you won’t like the idea. He’ll be there a few weeks — well, four weeks. And it’s better if you don’t visit. Don’t be upset. It’s a routine procedure in a case like this. Your son’s not mad, man! That is certainly not my submission, no! Something different — what propelled the accused to act as he did.—
Duncan Duncan. Again the branding iron descends. — He’s guilty. In his right mind.—
— No no Harald, the plea is ‘not guilty’. That’s the form. While we admit material facts which prove guilt, we submit our argument of momentary loss of capacity to distinguish between right and wrong.—
Your son is not mad.
— Only a few weeks there. And it so happens — it’s advantageous, point of view of timing. The trial. Yes … Ah-hêh. I have my sources.—
The glassy whites of his eyes signal a quick nudging smile, for himself, not directed to the man in trouble. — It’s good to find out what judges will be on the bench during what period. There’s an old precept we lawyers have — well, call it a saying — you must meet the judge in the moral climate he occupies. I want the judge whose moral climate is one I can count on meeting in this exceptional case.—
Your son’s not mad, he said. She, Claudia, understands better. I expected it, she says.
What kind of place is it.
Pretty unpleasant, she says.
That’s all, from her.
At the remove of the telephone, Harald told the Senior Counsel. that Claudia was stressed and wanted to rest over the weekend. Motsamai sounded as if he took no offence, but asked Harald to come to his chambers whenever convenient that afternoon.
For Harald’s part, it still was necessary to show no offence was intended — after all, the man had offered his hospitality, if with professional motive.
— Claudia’s become unapproachable.—
But Motsamai understood Harald did not know what he was saying, did not know his was an angry plea for help, not a warning to the lawyer that he would have no success with the wife. Motsamai is accustomed to the erratic attitudes of clients — people in trouble — alternating between confidence and distrust, dependency and resentment.
— The very one who’s in the same boat with you isn’t always the one you can talk to. I don’t know why. But there it is, I see it often. Don’t worry that she won’t get through to you. Don’t be disturbed, Harald.—
Ah-hêh, In the silence there is the resonance of his soothing half-sigh; sometimes it is like a human purr, sometimes a groan you cannot express for yourself.
And Harald at once felt a new anger; at himself, for having revealed himself. Too late to recall the image that should have remained private between him and his wife, to rebuff the recognition expressed (urbanity speaking clumsily for once) by this third party for whom nothing must be private because it might be useful. There is no privacy for anyone, in what has happened, is happening. Soon the prisoner’s utter privacy of isolation will be broken into by doctors. Night-notes at the bedside are discovered by prying eyes.