— Are you not worried, does it trouble you that you don’t know who is the father of the child you’re going to give birth to?—
Natalie turns her head away, first this side then that, away from them all, she escapes the court borne by the will of the public: shame. Then she comes back to answer them all. — It’s my child.—
Duncan wants to thrust the policemen against the walls and rush to hold her poor head, face, mouthing foul words at him, silenced against his chest, cradling her for the child she abandoned, Natalie/Nastasya, the death she submerged herself for and lost — but Motsamai can’t be restrained, the process can’t be halted. Ever since he, Duncan, stood in the doorway something was started that can’t be stopped.
— Doesn’t it disturb you to think of the distress this news will cause the accused, who has given you his faithful love and support, and which you have accepted from him, despite all your accusations against him, for several years?—
— Nobody’s business but mine.—
— Is that your answer to the question of whatever effect, however painful, your news will have on him?—
It is as if, for her, Motsamai and his pursuit of her don’t exist. She repeats — Nobody’s business but mine.—
— You don’t care. Very well. Ms James, I believe you are something of a writer, poems and so on, you’re familiar with many expressions. Do you know the meaning of in flagrante delicto? —
— I don’t need any explanation.—
— You don’t need any explanation. Were you found in flagrante delicto with Carl Jespersen on the sofa in the living-room where the party was held, the lights on and the doors open, anyone could have walked in, on the night of Thursday 18th of January? Was it the accused, the man who saved your life and with whom you had been cohabiting as lovers, who walked in and found you there?—
— Yes. — And the monosyllable spreads through the keen receptivity of the public: yes yes yes.
— You admit that you performed, before his eyes, the sexual act with his intimate friend. Have you not thought of the renewed anguish this latest news is going to bring him in addition to the shock and pain you caused him when he was confronted with the sight of you and Jespersen that night? You admit to intercourse with both men within the period of twenty-four hours. The child is yours. What does this mean? There is no child without a father. Are you proclaiming a miracle, Ms James? Your immaculate conception? —
Objection from the Prosecutor, upheld, Motsamai withdraws the question and proceeds with a wave of the hand.
— You have two putative fathers for your child. It doesn’t matter to you. M’Lord, I put it to the court: this callous, careless, yes, uncaring attitude is surely abhorrent to any responsible person who has due concern for the feelings of another. How is the accused supposed to accept that the woman he loves doesn’t care whether the child she is going to bear is or is not his? Isn’t this cynical coda the final, cruel afterword to the dance she led him, which evidence we shall place before this court describes as a life of hell. Finally, there was the extreme, the unendurable provocation she subjected him to on the night of January 18th, so that the attitude of her partner to that exhibition of the sexual act, when next day the accused found the man at ease on the same sofa on which it was committed, culminated in the accused as a blankout in which he committed a tragic act. The witness’s share in responsibility for that tragedy has just been confirmed out of her own mouth. It has been confirmed once and for all by the sentiments she has now openly expressed in total indifference to the abuse of the accused she commits yet again, this time taking no account of his feelings that she may be bearing his child.—
— Have you concluded, Mr Motsamai?—
Yes, like an opera singer breaking off on the top note, he knows the pitch at which to stop. The public is fickle, led by whoever has the gift to sway them, or they are such a community of voyeurs, now, that there are even factions which have developed among them. It’s the judge’s adjournment for tea, and as Harald and Claudia move out with them someone manoeuvres close and says, claiming hissing intimacy, She’s the one who ought to be up for it. Khulu has joined Harald and Claudia and he uses the tilt of his broad shoulders to make way for them in protection.
The State’s psychiatrist is a woman, while the Defence’s choice is a man. For some reason, Defence Counsel is pleased about this; Hamilton explains: a woman, even in the moral climate of an urbane judge, will be likely to be perceived as soft on the character of the woman in the case, vis-à-vis the issue of provocation, a male is likely to be accepted as more professionally objective. Claudia smiles behind a fist held at her mouth.
— That’s the fact of it, my dear doctor. — Hamilton gives a short briefing in the echoing corridors, just before the court sitting resumes. Voices, the dialogues of other people in trouble rebound hollow against the high ceilings but Harald and Claudia hear only their own exchanges with the man who has them in his hands. His confidence is like the dop of brandy he offers in chambers, a warmth that quickly fades from the blood.
The Prosecutor continues his case, calling the State psychiatrist and leading her evidence. She exudes competence from the freckled flesh of breasts tightly twinned like displaced plump thighs in the neckline of her dress as she testifies that the accused’s intellect is within high limits, his judgment sound.
— In your opinion, would such a level of intellect and sound judgment operate in conscious responsibility for actions, even in stressful situations?—
— Yes. The accused was not entirely unprepared for what he saw on that night after the party. I believe, from my consultations with him, that he was suspicious of the situation before he came upon the couple in the sexual act. He had made himself custodian of his partner’s morals, this was a constant source of quarrels and conflict between them. There is deep subconscious animosity present within his passionate possessiveness towards her. He would not face the reality of her personality, although she was frank with him, and he prides himself on being an advocate of personal freedom, including sexual freedom. He constantly suspected her of infidelity, whether on occasions when this was justified, or not. He had an obsessional, evangelical attachment to her which manifested itself in rational, precisely practical direction of every aspect of her life.—
— Was his day of inaction after the discovery of the couple consistent with this rationality?—
— In my opinion it was.—
— A day of inaction, contemplation, followed by action — is this also consistent with purposeful behaviour?—
— Yes. His is the personality of a brooder. He does not act on the spur of the moment. He plans. He planned the young woman’s whole life without her volition or consent.—
— Do you believe, then, that he could have shot Jespersen ‘on the spur of the moment’, almost twenty-four hours later than he had discovered the compromised couple?—
— No. If he were to have acted in an irrational state, unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his behaviour, he would have attacked Jespersen at once, in the shock of his suspicions proved by what he came upon.—
— In what state of mind, then, would you say, with what intentions, would you say, he went to the house next day?—
— He went to the house with the conscious intentions of jealousy built up during his solitude.—