The Prosecutor paused to let her mere figure of speech find its resonance in the charge before the court: murder.
— So the accused had no reason to be jealous of Carl Jespersen?—
— No reason. But that’s to say — he is jealous of everything, he broods on everything connected with me, even when he himself has chosen the solution. Carl and I got along well together, we worked together every day, he could have cooked up something in his mind even over the fact that Carl was the one who smoothed things between him — Duncan — and me. Reconciled us to each other. I mean, to what Duncan is, what Duncan was doing to me.—
— Why did your relationship as a friend with Carl Jespersen change, that night?—
— A party developed at the house and I was enjoying myself. But Duncan again wouldn’t have it, he was sure I wouldn’t get up in time for work next morning. I didn’t know whether I really was in my place in an advertising agency but Duncan was always worried that I wouldn’t take it seriously. He wanted me to go back to the cottage with him. In front of other people he was pleading and arguing — humiliating me. I’d had enough that day.—
— What had occurred that distressed you?—
— We’d talked half the night before, started again, quarrelled when we woke up in the morning, it ended the usual way. I’d had enough.—
— Was that the reason why you did not go back to the cottage with the accused when the party ended?—
— Yes.—
— You were afraid that the hostility of the accused would subject you to another night of abuse.—
— I stayed on to help Carl clean up and to get the whole scene off my chest, talking to him about it. I couldn’t bear to go back to the cottage and be reproached all over again, for my own good. I should have taken my car and driven off, right then — anywhere — as I’ve done many other times.—
— Was violence part of the accused’s reproaches to you, did he strike you?—
— No. It didn’t come to that.—
— But he threatened you?—
— Often I knew it. Not in what he said. But in the way he was; the way he looked. He was wanting to kill me. Sometimes it came out of him like a light.—
— You were sure he had the capacity of violence. You were afraid?—
— I knew he couldn’t kill me, because I was the one he had taken out of the water.—
— But you had to take refuge from him that night?—
— I just needed something without chains. Carl made me laugh instead of crying and he comforted me. Then what we did was natural. Part of it. I have never had any comfort from Duncan. I don’t know what he brought me back to life for.—
Again, why is Duncan not in the story?
He is the vortex from which, flung away, around, is the court. If he cannot understand why he did what he did, there will be the explanations of others. Versions. And there is this version of what he saw from the doorway; the first time, that is. She is on trial, not he. This is the way it was for her; natural. Part of it. A mating dance for three, first he with one and the other, then those two together. She was ‘enjoying herself’, the wildness he knew so well, that was her means of exploding the self that tormented her, that ended in the water, or with the pills she was able to charm out of doctors and pharmacists. When she said he took me to a hospital, she didn’t say how many times. Enjoying herself and he was the rescue service again, needing to take her back to the cottage and give her love, loving, no matter what she did (what other comfort is there). Not drunk, no. She doesn’t need alcohol to stimulate her, going on the attack with words is all the stimulant she needs, it can keep up her excitation through the nights. So this time she doesn’t want to be ‘saved’ as she puts it, in advance. It’s his turn to be victim.
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.—