Intimacies(20)

The accused then—I began to scan the file more hurriedly, one eye on the officials who were filing into the courtroom below, the session would begin soon—formed an army of mercenaries and began a process of ethnic cleansing, leading to death squads and mass graves. The UN sent peacekeeping troops, the African Union demanded that the accused step down from power, he was entirely unrepentant. His opponent retaliated, civil war ensued. Eventually, in the wake of French and United Nations air strikes, the opposition forces and the UN captured the accused and placed him under house arrest. This was approximately five months after the disputed election. If peacekeeping troops had not been present, it was assumed that the accused would have been executed, but the UN argued with some force that he should be tried in an international court, and now here he was, and had been for some years awaiting trial.

I closed the dossier and placed it to one side. Beneath it was a large photograph of the former president. He was looking into the distance, one arm raised and his mouth open as if he were delivering oratory. There were people visible behind him, their shapes blurred so that they were accumulations of color rather than distinct figures, he might have been speaking at a rally in the final days before the disputed election. He was wearing an expensive suit and tie and even in the photograph his body was rigid with energy and tension. In the background, I could make out large placards and banners.

Amina gestured to the public gallery, which was also in the mezzanine, adjacent to the interpreters’ booths. Inside, there were numerous attendees. The former president’s supporters, Amina said. In the second row I saw the man who had given me the flyer outside the Court. He was talking with several other supporters, his face as vulnerable as before, it was a pulpy mess of emotion and I remembered the former president’s message to these supporters, as he boarded the plane bound for The Hague. Don’t cry, be strong—a slogan that was subsequently emblazoned across newspaper headlines, that perhaps even now was being whispered by his supporters in the public gallery.

There’s some press today, she continued, new counsel for the defense will appear and the addition is apparently of some significance. She nodded to the group occupying one section of the public gallery. This trial is quite a spectacle, she whispered, more than usual, I would say. From the vantage point of the booth we could observe the courtroom below, the prosecution to one side and the defense to the other, the judges at the front and the witness stand at the back. Nearly every person on the floor seemed to be engaged in urgent activity, clustered around computer monitors, or flipping through large binders. I glanced at Amina but her attention was now fixed on her notes, she had told me in the elevator that she would do the bulk of the interpreting today, to give me a chance to acclimate.

I looked back down, there was some movement on the floor and I saw that the counsel for the defense had arrived, claiming the left side of the courtroom. They were dressed in robes, their manner somewhat circumspect as they nodded to their junior associates. I observed the three men, something in the sight of them was troubling, I watched as they set their papers down, conversed with the assistants who fluttered around them. It was only after some contemplation that I realized, with horror, that one of the three men was Kees, the man from the party, Gaby’s friend.

I quickly leaned back in my chair, afraid that he might see me in the booth, although such a thing was unlikely. For a moment, I wondered if I was mistaken; although I remembered Adriaan saying that he was a defense lawyer, one of the best in the country, his appearance seemed too implausible. I looked back down, at the man’s lustrous head of hair, no less coiffed here in the courtroom than it had been at the party. On the one hand it was impossible to reconcile the man in robes with the man I had met that night, on the other hand it was undoubtedly the same person, it was not the person but the context that made his presence so incomprehensible. He himself remained exactly the same, as I watched he made the same ridiculous movements, the hand to the hair, those assorted and imperious gestures.

However, in this context they mysteriously acquired gravitas, the junior associates and also the other lawyers nodded in response to the flamboyant flapping of his hands without a trace of irony or derision. When Adriaan had told me he was a defense lawyer I had imagined that he defended white-collar criminals, perpetrators of tax fraud or corporate malfeasance, simply because he seemed so petty a man. Of course, I’d known it was equally possible he represented people accused of manslaughter or robbery, the person who had assaulted Anton de Rijk, for example—crimes of a more serious nature, crimes that, even as they remained individual, could not be described as trivial.

But that he should be a defense lawyer for crimes of this scale, crimes of historical significance, that he should appear here in this courtroom—this was entirely too incongruous, he did not seem as if he would have the gravity of mind to discuss such matters, much less the concentration to make the necessary arguments. It was not that I thought a man could not be superficial and cunning and also a brilliant lawyer or politician—there were many men and women of considerable social repute who were nothing less than reprehensible in their private lives—it was more that I couldn’t believe the men and women in the Court would take him seriously, it seemed extraordinary that they would trust this man, a man of the flimsiest construction, in this most critical of matters.

And yet, as I observed the scene below, I saw that he was in a position of no small authority within the team, as he gave his directives they listened with care and even enthusiasm, they seemed to hang on his words, it was obvious that he was not simply respected but admired and even feared. Across the room, the prosecution was observing him warily, I could imagine that he had a reputation for ruthlessness and deviousness, and I wondered if that was another reason why Adriaan had greeted him with such suspicion, because of his professional capacity for deception.