The Lunatic

by Anthony C. Winkler

  Inga’s father was impeccably dressed in a blue suit appropriate for the gray climate of the north and suggestive of custom tailoring. He wore a stern expression and started at every sound as though he were expecting at any moment to witness some bizarre event he had been steeling himself to face. Linstrom instinctively disliked him. To the barrister, nothing in the world was uglier than a rich white man. Let a white man get rich and suddenly his fingers got fat and smooth like restaurant shrimp, his head and face grew shiny from endless buffing with scents and soap, and sooner or later he ended up looking like a freshly polished tooth.

  The German lawyer look out a legal pad and prepared to take notes. Inga sat sullenly between the two men. When Aloysius walked into the courtroom she waved and smiled at him, drawing a grimace from the lawyer and a warning frown from her father.

  Service, looking nervous and repentant, wobbled into the courtroom between two constables, sat down at the table reserved for him and his lawyer, and immediately and conspicuously opened a Bible and began reading it in a mumble.

  Busha and Sarah were also present. Busha still wore a thick bandage around his arm where he had been chopped. Sarah held his uninjured hand and whispered often to him.

  The jury had just been seated when Linstrom made his first move. He approached the judge and wondered aloud in a peevish voice why the white woman was being granted preferential treatment by the court. The three Germans stared at him. The judge asked him to explain what he meant.

  “I just can’t help wondering why these two white men are allowed to sit at the defense table. Are they employed as counsel?”

  The judge squirmed.

  “Complexion has nothing to do with sitting at any table,” the judge remonstrated with a frown.

  “But I have to ask myself if that is what makes the difference,” Linstrom said loudly, facing the brown and black jury. “I mean, these white men are not on trial. This white woman is on trial.”

  “Why does the honorable gentleman keep bring up their complexion?” the judge asked.

  “To identify them, sah. These are white people. If I was talking about a brown horse, I’d say ‘brown horse’ and nobody would think I mean the black one.”

  Inga’s barrister jumped up and said that one white man was the father of the accused and the other was his personal counsel from Germany.

  “Are you qualified to practice law in Jamaica, sah?” Linstrom asked the German who was identified as the lawyer.

  The German smiled indignantly. “I am accredited to the Vorld Court,” he said smoothly.

  “My question is whether you have been admitted to the Jamaican bar.”

  “I am here in an unofficial capacity at my client’s request.”

  “So you don’t mind sitting where everybody else must sit who has no business in this court, do you? I mean, you don’t think that being a white man entitles you to sit in the front of the bus even though you are not driving?”

  “You Honor!” Inga’s barrister roared. “This gentleman is out of order!”

  “Mr. Linstrom, I will repeat. Complexion has nothing to do with this case.”

  “You Honor,” Linstrom retorted, addressing the jury, “it has everything to do with this case. My client is a poor black man who had been in and out of the madhouse all his life. He is what we call in Jamaica a ‘sufferer’—one of the many among us carrying the heaviest load. The man whose house he is accused of breaking, and whose life he saved, is a white man. The wicked woman you see sitting before you there, who used sex and money to inveigle this poor black man to become a thief, is white. The third defendant, who stands accused of striking the blow, is a black man. Don’t make ghost fool you that color don’t have anything to do with this case. Color has everything to do with this case, sah. Color and money.”

  The German lawyer and Inga’s father stood up.

  “Ve vill take our seat vith the spectators,” the lawyer said to the judge.

  “I would like to warn the honorable gentleman,” the judge said darkly, “that I don’t want any rabble-rousing in my courtroom.”

  Linstrom flashed his most engaging smile.

  “Where you see rabble in this courtroom, Your Honor?” He peered around him as though searching. “I don’t see a one. I see a very intelligent-looking jury. But I see no rabble that anybody could want to rouse.”

  The jury’s collective face was wreathed with a grin. Satisfied with himself, Linstrom sat down. The jury beamed in his direction.

  Nothing sweeted bumpkin more than to be told they had brains. Not even pum-pum.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Busha was on the stand giving his testimony about the Sunday of the robbery and the injury he had received. Busha said he had nearly bled to death that day because it took some time to attract attention from the street and get a passerby to go into the village and bring back the police. Until then, he just lay on the floor of his own drawing room bleeding while Sarah kept the gun trained on the three robbers.

  It was one terrible thing after another on that fateful day, Busha said heavily. When he got to the hospital they had to send for the doctor in the bird bush and by the time he arrived Busha’s arm had gone completely numb all the way down his fingers. In fact, Busha said, flexing his fingers, even to this day he could barely make a fist. Plus one of his fingers didn’t want to close right. He held up his hand and showed where the middle finger was still stiff.

  The crown counsel led Busha through the story, through the encounters he had had with the German woman, through his medical treatments in Jamaica and America, and finally, to an identification of the three robbers sitting in the courtroom.

  When it was time to cross-examine, Barrister Linstrom walked over to the dock and inquired of Busha in a polite voice how he felt today.

  Busha looked gloomy and said he didn’t feel well at all. He hadn’t felt well since the chopping.

  Linstrom asked to see Busha’s injured arm, touched the stiff finger and tried to get it to bend back. It curled back into its rigid position.

  “Mr. McIntosh,” Linstrom said sympathetically, “I want you to know that I sympathize with you. It must have been a dreadful experience to come to your own home on a peaceful Sunday, surprise three thief in your drawing room, and have one of them try to murder you.”

  “De doctor say it’s de worst chop he ever saw in all his years of medicine,” Busha said darkly. “He said de bone was almost chopped in two pieces. He said that bone was tougher than wood, tougher dan some metal. He said that when you see bone chop nearly in two, you know dat it got a good blow.”

  Linstrom did a turn around the small room and ended up in front of the jury box, where he squinted solemnly at Busha.

  “But it could have been worse, Mr. McIntosh,” the barrister said. “Except that my client intervened and prevented any further injury.”

  Busha stared at his feet.

  “Except that my client showed mercy, Mr. McIntosh,” Linstrom prompted.

  Busha glared at him.

  “Mercy?” he growled. “Dat’s what you call mercy? A thief break into you house and you call dat mercy? What kind of mercy is dat? A man stick out one o’ you eye and leave de odder one and dat’s mercy? Is dat what you call mercy?”

  “Not the same man, Mr. McIntosh,” Linstrom said smoothly, glancing at the jury. “Don’t forget that one man struck the blow whereas the other man, my client over there, showed the mercy.”

  Busha glowered.

  “He broke into my house! He was the one dat locked up de dogs in de garage! De dogs know him because he used to work for me! Dat’s what you call mercy?”

  “Just a minute, Mr. McIntosh. Fair is fair. Now I grant you that my client should not have broken into your house. However, I understand the reasoning that led him to do it…”

  “Reasoning?” Busha cried indignantly. “The man is a madman! Which madman you know have reasoning? They should’ve locked him up ten years ago and throw away de damn key!”

/>   Linstrom walked over to his desk and took up a folder stuffed with papers.

  “Mr. McIntosh,” he said, “let us say that for argument’s sake I am a thief.”

  “You could be a thief for all I know,” Busha grunted nastily. “I don’t know you from Adam.”

  “Good. So now I am a thief. And I have a little brain about me. Times are hard on me and I decide to do a little thiefing. So I look around me to see who I can thief from. I spot three houses I think I can thief from. Two of them belong to poor people. One of them belong to a rich man. Which house you think I would thief, if I was a thief?”

  “What does this line of questioning have to do with this case, Your Honor?” the crown counsel asked impatiently.

  Busha got red in the face.

  “So you saying dat because I might have a nice house a man can come and nearly murder me on a Sunday afternoon? You saying dat it’s my fault dat dese three wretches break into me house and nearly kill me?”

  “Of course it is not your fault, Mr. McIntosh,” Linstrom assured him. “I just showing you that although I don’t agree with what my client did, he did it for a reason. There was method in his madness. In fact, the only mad thing he did that day was to show mercy. Admit it, Mr. McIntosh, that if Aloysius hadn’t done that mad thing of showing you mercy, you wouldn’t be here today complaining about chopping.”

  Busha stamped his feet angrily.

  “Listen me, Mr. Linstrom. I was born in dis parish in de same house I live in today. My granddaddy built dat house, not me! My great-great-great-granddaddy buy dat land dat I farm and raise cow on today. I didn’t buy it. Not one square inch! I was born into it. Did I ask to be born into it? Did I ask to even be born? I don’t take nothing from anybody. I never trouble anybody! Dese damn people break me house and nearly kill me in me own drawing room on a Sunday, and why? Because it’s my fault to be born! Dat’s reason enough to kill a man? And look at what dey do to me? Look at my finger!”

  Busha waved his stiff finger over his head for everyone to see.

  “What I do to deserve dis? According to dis man, I was born with a little property, and so I deserve to get chopped! If I’d known it would come to dis, so help me God, when I was coming out of me mother womb I’d have hung on for dear life and stay dere in de dark rather dan be born on dis damn island and be chopped.”

  “Mr. McIntosh,” Linstrom pressed in an aggrieved tone, “didn’t my client show you mercy? Didn’t he save your life?”

  “MERCY!” Busha roared. “DIS IS MERCY?”

  He stabbed his stiff finger like an ice pick accusingly in the direction of the barrister.

  Linstrom said he had no further questions.

  * * *

  Sarah testified the following day. Busha did not appear with her at the courthouse. She told her story calmly to the jury, explaining that she had fired a single shot with her husband’s pistol at one of the men she identified as Service because he was standing over her wounded husband and about to kill him with the machete. Service kept his eyes downcast during her testimony.

  Inga’s barrister asked whether or not Sarah had seen Inga strike her husband. Sarah replied that she had not but that Inga had pulled Aloysius off Service, who had then been able to get the machete. Under persistent questioning, however, she had to grudgingly admit that Inga had not harmed her husband.

  “Mrs. McIntosh,” Linstrom asked Sarah, “did my client show your husband mercy?”

  Sarah squirmed.

  “Mr. Linstrom, I wish you wouldn’t put it that way. That’s what upset Hubert. You make it sound as though Aloysius was innocent when in fact he was there to thief from us.”

  “But, Mrs. McIntosh,” Linstrom insisted, “isn’t it a fact that he saved your husband’s life?”

  Sarah groped visibly for words.

  “He jumped on that one there,” she said, pointing to Service, “who had chopped Hubert and was going to chop him again. While they were fighting I was able to run into the bedroom and get the gun.”

  “So, in fact, it was his act of mercy that saved your husband’s life?”

  “Mr. Linstrom, I’m not as smart as you are about these things. Aloysius had a change of heart, but ‘mercy’ just seems to me to be the wrong word for what he did.”

  “Why, ma’am? Explain that to me.”

  “Because when I think of mercy I think of goodness, softheartedness, kindness. I don’t think of a thief breaking into an innocent man’s house and stopping an accomplice from killing him.”

  “But wasn’t it a kindness of my client to spare your husband’s life, Mrs. McIntosh?”

  Sarah looked weary.

  “I suppose so.”

  “And wasn’t it an act of mercy?”

  “If it was mercy, God spare us more of it,” she said with feeling.

  Service gave his testimony the following day. Before he even got to the witness box and was sworn in, he broke down and began a soulful sobbing. His defense counsel led him through a tearful recital of how he had come to St. Ann seeking butchering work and had fallen in with the German woman and her madman lover, how the woman had enticed him into lovemaking and inveigled him into breaking into the house of a white man he’d only seen a few times in the district. He sobbed that he hadn’t meant to injure anyone and that he’d struck the blow because he was fearful that Busha had a gun and would shoot him.

  His testimony brought an occasional tittering or clucking from the spectators and the jury. He described how Inga had held him down and used him for sex, how she had made them build a small house in the bush, how she had established what she said was the “rule of pum-pum.”

  The judge could not believe his ears and made him repeat the nasty phrase “rule of pum-pum” two times before it finally sank in.

  “You mean to tell me,” the judge asked with obvious disbelief, “that a woman could hold down a big man like you against his will?”

  “Yes, sah!” Service cried indignantly. “She hold me down, sah! She know kung fu and chop suey and marital arts, sah!”

  “Marital arts? Chop suey?” the judge scoffed. “What you talking ’bout, man? One is when a man marry and de odder is Chinese food.”

  “Me no know what name you call it, sah,” Service bawled pitifully, “all me know is dat she strong, sah! She break up any man in dis room. She chop off tree limb wid her bare hands, sah! She strong, sah! Two man can’t beat dat woman.”

  Unimpressed, the judge grunted and waved at him to continue.

  Service described the furious bouts of lovemaking with him and Aloysius alternating as her partners and tearfully babbled about how her gluttonous appetite for men wore both of them down so that neither one of them could walk straight and yet she would still want more. He paused frequently to sob loudly or to wipe his eyes and blow his nose.

  During this testimony Inga’s father sat up erect in his chair staring grimly ahead, his hands clenched tightly in his lap. He looked like an animal rigidly frozen in the presence of a predator. The German lawyer took a steady stream of notes. Inga yawned, slouched, doodled, and occasionally gazed around the room.

  When he had finished with the story, Service talked about his imprisonment and how a kindhearted warden had lent him a Bible to read and had made him see that he was a wicked sinner and badly needed to change his ways before Judgment Day.

  At the end of his testimony, Service begged forgiveness of Busha, who was not in the courtroom, and of Sarah, who was and stared at him with contempt. He pleaded with the court to have mercy on him and remember that he was still a young man with his whole life ahead.

  Linstrom approached for cross-examination.

  “So you get religion in de jailhouse?” Linstrom asked familiarly.

  “Yes, sah.”

  “What about mud, now?”

  “Mud, sah? Me don’t understand, sah.”

  “You not de man who used to say dat mud was God to you, dat mud do dis, dat, and de odder? You not de man who used to say dat mud is s
upreme over all things?”

  “Me, sah? Me say dat, sah? No, sah! Mud, sah! How anybody can say dat ’bout mud?”

  Linstrom paced near the witness box, peering scornfully at him.

  “I going to ask you one question. What stop you from killing Busha McInstosh?”

  Service hung his head. “Me get a shot, sah,” he said faintly.

  Linstrom turned and practically spat in his face. “You damn liar, you! Aloysius didn’t grab you and stop you from chopping Mr. McIntosh?”

  Service looked as though his feelings were hurt. “Grab me, sah? How do you mean, grab me?”

  “Grab you, you damn brute! Grab you and prevent you from murdering de man who was fluttering on de floor!”

  “Me fall down, sah! When me got up de woman shot me!”

  “Vhat liar you are!” Inga shouted. “Tell the truth!”

  “Is you do dis to me!” Service shrieked, pointing a quivering finger at her. “Is you bring me to dis! Is you mad up me brain wid pum-pum and make dem put me in de workhouse! Is your fault dis!”

  The judge pounded his gavel. “You’re out of order!”

  Service sobbed wildly. “Is she bring me to dis, sah! She mad up me brain wid pum-pum and do dis to me!”

  He was reduced to moaning and blubbering uncontrollably.

  “Idiot!” Inga’s voice rang loud with contempt.

  Like some hydra-headed monster, the jury turned as one and peered silently at her.

  The next day she was gone. The story broke in the Star with a smudgy splash of headlines: The German woman had simply walked out of the jail. Bribery of the guards was suspected. Even though her passport had been seized, she was believed to have been whisked off the island by her father and his attorney, both of whom had also disappeared.

  “Good riddance!” the crown counsel was unofficially quoted as having said about her disappearance.