The Dark Backward

by D. W. Buffa

  “Do you mean other than the fact that I may die of old age before the witness is finished? Which wouldn’t be so bad,” he added immediately, “if I could at least die with some idea what he’s talking about or how it has any possible connection to the case.”

  Hillary Clark had grown used to Darnell’s frequent attempts to seize attention and make the jury concentrate more on him than on what a witness said. She had learned that the worst thing she could do was to get angry or let anyone think that she had been taken by surprise.

  “I can ask the witness to go slower, if that will help you understand.”

  With a curt bow, Darnell declined the offer.

  “Thank you, but I’d rather die in ignorance than prolong the ordeal.”

  Clark had only a few questions left to ask. When she was finished, Darnell sank back in his chair and stared at the ceiling like someone giving thanks for a reprieve. Then, before she had a chance to object, he was on his feet, heading straight for the witness.

  “Don’t misunderstand me, Professor Miller, I wasn’t reacting to anything you said in response to the prosecution’s questions; it’s my own impatience with my own impatience.” He nodded in puzzled tribute to his own apparent confusion. “My own impatience at my own impatience! You see what all these years of listening to courtroom testimony have done? It’s a little like what I imagine must happen to you, teaching the same course over and over again.” His eyes flashed with friendly certainty. He knew they would agree. “You aren’t ten minutes into a lecture on comparative law and you begin to wonder if you aren’t repeating something you just said. I apologize for that. But you’re the last in a series – we’ve had a whole seminar – on the same question, the rights of women and children in all civilized countries. We’ve heard from cultural anthropologists – three of them, to be precise; each with a different expertise – two sociologists; even, believe it or not, an economist – though I’m still not sure why, something about labor markets….” Darnell shook his head as if to keep his eyes from glazing over at the memory of it. “And now, finally, at long last, someone who knows something about the law; or rather,” he added, as he turned away and began to study the juror’s faces, “someone who knows something about the law of several different countries, well-known countries with well-known histories and customs.”

  Hillary Clark rose from her chair, a look of affected sympathy painted in her eyes.

  “Perhaps Mr. Darnell might like to ask a question before -”

  “Before you die of old age, Ms. Clark?” Darnell wheeled around and holding both hands behind his back beamed with pleasure. “There’s really no chance of that, no matter how long I take. You’re much too young to die, Ms. Clark, and, if I may be permitted to add, much too beautiful.” He made a courtly bow that, whether from innocent embarrassment or the sense of having been upstaged, made her blush.

  “She’s right of course,” Darnell remarked, turning back to the witness. “I do need to ask a question. It’s your testimony that in every legal system that you know of there is a strict prohibition on incest – is that correct?”

  “Yes, and that’s not a matter of conjecture.”

  “Not a matter of conjecture? What do you mean?”

  In his mid-thirties, Brandon Miller had taught at the Stanford Law School for nearly ten years. A brilliant student, he had been invited to join the faculty the year he graduated. Having majored in computer science as an undergraduate, he brought the use of systems analysis to the field of comparative law. At the beginning of her direct examination, Hillary Clark had spent a tedious quarter of an hour eliciting the list of his various publications. When Darnell asked him what he meant, Darnell knew exactly the kind of answer he was going to receive.

  “We’ve done a computer search, a thorough -”

  “Yes, I see. I understand. You used the computer and the computer searched the – what do you call it? Yes, I remember – this data base you have -”

  “Every legal system, all the statutes from every country in the world.”

  “Yes, I see. Thank you for that additional information.” Darnell raised his eyebrows, nodded briskly and began to pace back and forth. As quickly as he started, he stopped. An elfish grin cut across his mouth. “I’m afraid I don’t even use a computer. Don’t know how. I still write longhand with a pen. So you’ll have to forgive me, Professor Miller, if I don’t quite grasp the full significance of what you’ve done; though I think I have the gist of it. Your testimony, again, is that every legal system has a prohibition on incest. That much I think I follow. Yes?”

  “Yes, that’s right. There are no exceptions.”

  “But you didn’t research every legal system, did you?”

  Short, compact, with small, quick darting eyes, Miller had the compressed energy of a man who did not like to be challenged.

  “I just finished telling you that that was exactly what I did.”

  “Yes, but you were wrong,” Darnell fired back. “This data base of yours – the legal systems, all the statute law there is – wasn’t that your testimony? Wasn’t that what you said when Ms. Clark first asked you about it?”

  Miller did not see the point of this. It was clear from his expression that he thought the old man was even less up to date than he had said he was.

  “Yes, that’s what I said.”

  “All the legal systems now in existence?”

  “Yes, every one of them. There isn’t any mistake. Nothing was left out.”

  Mumbling to himself, Darnell walked a few steps away. Miller seemed to think it funny that anyone could be so confused.

  “What about the ancient Roman system, or for that matter, the Athenian?”

  The humor, and the arrogance, vanished from Miller’s eyes.

  “What?”

  “It’s a simple question, Professor Miller. Does this data base of yours, this systems analysis you’ve done, include any of the laws, any of the legal codes, under which various civilizations lived for hundreds or even thousands of years in the past?”

  “That wasn’t what I was asked to do,” he started to explain, growing red in the face. “I was asked to analyze existing law, I was -”

  “The deficiency of your instructions, Professor Miller, is no concern of mine; it’s the deficiency of what you did that is at issue here. You testified that incest is everywhere prohibited – part of the prosecution’s attempt to argue that even without a specific prohibition it could never under any circumstances be allowed. But all you can really say is that you haven’t been able to find any exceptions in the present. You certainly can’t say that there weren’t any in the past.”

  “Well, I doubt very much you’d find an exception no matter how far back you searched.”

  “Really, Professor – Is that your objective, scholarly opinion? Have you ever read Greek or Roman law?”

  “No, but -”

  “Have you ever read any ancient history?”

  “A little, but -”

  “Have you ever read Plutarch, specifically his Life of Themistocles?”

  “No, I can’t say I have.”

  Darnell retrieved from the counsel table a page full of scribbled notes.

  “If you had, you would have learned something interesting. It turns out that under Athenian law, a law which by your own admission you know nothing about, if a man died and left both a son and a daughter, the son alone inherited.”

  Miller shrugged it off. “There’s nothing new in that. For centuries, only men could inherit. I don’t see -”

  “You didn’t let me finish. The son inherited and endowed his sister, that is to say made some provision for her. But – and I think this will interest you – if they were not children of the same mother, the son, instead of endowing her, could marry her. They may only have been half-brothers and half-sisters, but it still seems like incest to me, Professor Miller. Doesn’t it to you?”

  Reluctantly, Miller admitted that it did. Oddly, Darnell argued that Miller was
wrong to do so, or rather, that he was not entirely right.

  “But notice what this example really teaches. Not that incest was allowed, but that it wasn’t defined in the same way. He could marry her if she was his half-sister, but not if they had the same mother. Tell me, Professor Miller, do you know anything about the parents of the defendant in this case, or the parents of the young woman alleged to have been the victim of both rape and incest?”

  “No, I don’t know anything about either one of them. I was only asked to -”

  “Yes, thank you, Professor Miller.” Darnell waved his hand as if he was through and started back to the counsel table. “One other thing.” He stopped and, bending his head slightly to the side, searched Miller’s eyes. “I asked another witness about the story of Adam and Eve. I’d like to ask you about Cleopatra. Do you know how old she was the first time she married?”

  Miller could only stare. This was way beyond his competence, and farther still from anything in which he had an interest.

  “Twelve years old, Mr. Miller. Imagine that, twelve years old.” His eyes drifted slowly from the witness to the jury. “Twelve years old, and married to her brother!”

  The testimony of Brandon Miller had taken all morning and as soon as Darnell had finished with his cross-examination, Judge Pierce recessed for lunch. The jury filed out of the jury box and the courtroom crowd began to disperse. Henry Hammersmith who, on the days that his wife did not do it, brought Adam each morning to court and usually stayed to watch the proceedings, was waiting near the door. He patted Adam on the shoulder and asked if he would mind waiting outside.

  “It’s good to see that you still know how to steal all the attention and take over a trial,” he said to Darnell.

  They had known each other for years and, in the habit of old friends, cloaked their affection with mild words of derision. Darnell was a lawyer, which meant he could always be called a crook; Hammersmith had made a fortune as an investment banker, which meant that Darnell was always talking about all the money he must have stolen. Today, however, there was a serious purpose behind what Henry Hammersmith said.

  Darnell was equally serious when he replied, “I’m not sure it will do any good.” He looked back over his shoulder at the now deserted courtroom and the empty jury box. “They have one more witness, and then I’m supposed to put on the case for the defense, but the only witness I can call is Adam, and I’m not sure I should call him.” He looked sharply at the other man. “Have you ever in your life seen anything like him? I swear I can’t make him out.”

  Everything about Henry Hammersmith, from his tailored English suits to the way his hair was cut, had the feel of money, but money well-spent by someone with a selective eye. He envied a little Darnell’s occasional flamboyance, the way he could mesmerize a courtroom and hold a jury in the palm of his hand, but that was not the same thing as thinking that it was something he might have wanted to do. He much preferred the quiet dealings of the boardroom and the nice adjustments of commerce and power. He preferred the things he could touch rather than what he could only imagine. And then he met Adam.

  “Seen anything like him? I’ve seen him nearly every day for months and I’m still not sure he’s even possible. But that isn’t why I wanted to have a private word. I’m a bit worried.”

  Darnell put his briefcase down. With no one but his old friend to see him, he dropped the mask of unvanquished and almost perfect confidence he wore in court.

  “There’s nothing I can do. We’re going to lose. I’m afraid it’s as simple as that. I’m sorry. When I asked if he could stay with you, I didn’t realize that you and Laura would get this close to him. I didn’t -”

  Henry Hammersmith stopped him with a look. He had very little use for sentimentality; it only got in the way of getting things done. He also was not the kind of man who ever gave up. He thought Darnell was trying to prepare him for what was likely to happen, to let him know that the probabilities were against them, but that Darnell had not meant it literally when he said he was going to lose.

  “I’m not worried about that. Remember what you’ve often told me: that something unexpected always happens in a trial, something that no matter how much you prepared you could never have anticipated, and that more often than not it changes everything? Something like that may happen here. No, I’m not worried about whether you can pull this off. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve done something no one thought you could. No, I’m worried about the boy.”

  “Adam? Why? What’s happened?”

  “At the end of the day yesterday, when Clark announced that she thought they could finish today, that they had only two more witnesses.”

  “Yes, I remember, but….The girl! Is that what -? He’s been asking me for weeks when he could see her. He’ll see her this afternoon. Is that what has him upset? He didn’t say a word to me.”

  “Nor to us. It wasn’t what he said, it was what he did. Last night, after he had gone to his room, I heard this tremendous wailing sound, like someone driven out of his mind by grief. I went to the door, to see what was wrong and if there was anything I could do, but he must have heard me – he can hear things at a distance I can’t hear up close – and it stopped. But I have to tell you, Bill, it was just about the most soul-shattering cry I’ve ever heard, all the anguish in the world, and then, just like that, the moment he thought someone might have heard, he stopped. And then this morning he was the same as always, completely in control of himself - cheerful, outgoing, eager to help. But last night….There are things inside him, terrible things, things I think would kill a normal human being.”

  Darnell picked up his briefcase, looked at Henry Hammersmith and could only shake his head.

  “He’s in love with her, as much in love as anyone can be. In love with his own sister – I wonder what the jury is going to think about that.”

  Though Darnell usually spent the lunch recess reviewing the voluminous notes he made in preparation for the testimony of every witness, he was not in a mood to do much of anything except wander around outside and try to clear his mind.

  Walking down the street on a sunlit afternoon, Darnell wondered what Adam must be thinking. Did he dream at night of the island and the girl, and did he have any regrets, or even believe he should, for anything he had done? Darnell was almost certain that he did not. Of all the remarkable things about this strange young man, perhaps the most astonishing was how much he seemed to live in the moment and not think about the past. But then that anguished cry that Henry had heard - Was that because of what Adam remembered, the girl, his sister, that he had lost, or the girl he still needed, the one he wanted now?

  Darnell walked for half an hour and the exercise did him good. He felt better, more refreshed, than he had in days. By the time he was headed back, he started to get a kind of second wind, a sense that things were not as bad as he had feared and that the odds against him might not be so great. He was standing just across the street from the courthouse, waiting for the light to change when suddenly someone took hold of his arm.

  “Mr. Darnell, I wonder if I might speak with you for a moment?”

  Darnell had been accosted by strangers on the street too often not to know how to get rid of them. With a look of annoyance, he pulled his arm free.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t….”

  That was all he got out before he changed his mind. He found himself staring into one of the most remarkable faces he had seen, perfectly balanced with thick gray brows over fine, intelligent eyes, high cheekbones and a tapered chin. The stranger’s age was indeterminate, certainly past fifty but very possibly much older than that. There seemed to be a slight accent to his speech, but Darnell had not yet heard enough to know more than that. He was wearing a suit and to the casual observer did not look any different than a great many men seen on the sidewalks of the commercial heart of town, but Darnell, who had an eye for the small detail, noticed immediately that the suit was a shade too large and, judging by the size of
the lapels, years out of date.

  “Yes, of course, Mr.….?”

  The stranger hesitated, as if for some reason he had to be careful about revealing his identity. His eyes moved in a slow, steady arc from one side to the other, making certain, as it seemed, that he would not be overheard.

  “Holderlin – Gerhardt Holderlin.”

  The name defined the accent.

  “You’re German, Mr. Holderlin?”

  “Yes. I came here from Berlin.”

  The light changed and they started across the street. Darnell checked his watch. He still had a few minutes before he had to be in court.

  “What is it you wish to talk to me about, Mr. Holderlin?”

  Darnell was impressed and even intrigued by the other man’s formal bearing, the strict manner of his speech, the precise efficiency of the way he moved. Holderlin paused before he answered and Darnell was certain that it was because he wanted to make sure that he knew exactly what he wanted to say and the best, most reasonable way to say it.

  “The reason I wanted to speak with you is because I think I may be able to help you.”

  They had reached the other side. Darnell stopped where he stood and turned a skeptical eye on his new acquaintance. It was instinct pure and simple, instinct taught by decades of experience, instinct for the con man, the scam artist, the street hustler. They came dressed like thieves and bums, they came with expensive haircuts and three-piece suits, and the story, for all its endless, bizarre variations, was always the same. They knew something that would help, a piece of evidence the police had not found, a witness who had seen the crime and could testify that the defendant did not do it, it was someone else. Then, because it was a case you were otherwise sure to lose, a case you would have done anything to win, you wanted to know more. What was this lost piece of evidence, where was this witness and when could you talk to her? There were difficulties, you would be told with a lowered gaze in tones of regret. He wanted to help, he really did, but it was going to take money, serious money. There were expenses that had to be paid, and of course, there were his own costs involved….