The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

XIV

Within twenty-four hours of my meeting Yvonne outside the prison where Dumbo had just been murdered she was standing at our door.

‘Thank you for coming,’ I said.

She muttered something uneasy in reply. I had realised some time ago that certain people, certain sections of the population, are just not used to those who go around thanking each other for things.

She told me her name as we stood in the living room, looking out at Heidi playing Hawks and Doves with Sam. Heidi put on a deep menacing voice as she advanced on him, fingers hooked like a hawk’s claws. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, all that came through the window were Sam’s squeals of delight.

‘He’s a nice boy,’ she said. ‘How...’ She didn’t finish her question.

‘He seems to have forgotten everything,’ I said. ‘Can you understand that?’

Yvonne shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but for kids most of what happens is new and dramatic, even everyday things that seem trivial to us grown-ups. For example, I don’t know if seeing someone in your family getting a beating is worse than being stung by a wasp, or your teddy bear losing an eye.’

I looked at the young woman. Something told me she was speaking from experience.

‘So then why are children traumatised by sexual assault but apparently not by circumcision?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But I would guess pain and humiliation are easier to take if the pain feels natural and necessary in some way. People can get tortured in a meaningless war and lose their minds, but not people who have a tooth taken out without an anaesthetic. Or a woman giving birth.’

I nodded. Now Heidi had caught Sam and they laughed as they rolled around on the grass. Heidi laughing; it struck me that was a sound I hadn’t heard since that terrible night.

‘Context,’ I said.

‘Eh?’

‘I read somewhere that some people believe our minds can deal with pain better if we’re able to put it in a context that seems to us to justify it.’

Yvonne nodded. ‘Good. Then someone’s written down what I think.’

‘But...’ I said, drawing a breath and folding my hands. ‘The pain of losing Amy for me and Dumbo for you aren’t things we can place in a meaningful context. So we need to find other ways of dealing with the pain, am I right?’

‘Revenge,’ she said.

I looked down at my hands. Colin used to say I always folded them before saying something important. And that when a lawyer is about to say something important that usually means bad news.

‘That’s one way,’ I said. ‘The human appetite for revenge distinguishes us from the animals, but from an evolutionary perspective it’s still logical. If everyone knows that killing a child will lead to revenge, that will make the child’s life safer. But if there’s dispute over the question of guilt in the death of the child then any act of revenge is liable to give rise in turn to yet another act of revenge. Which in turn gives rise to yet another. It was spirals of bloodthirsty revenge like that that decimated the population of Iceland, for example. And the same thing happened in Albania. In Iceland they solved the problem by establishing a court consisting of the best minds in the community and they were charged with the task of deciding on questions of guilt or innocence, and where necessary passing sentence and carrying out the punishment. In so doing they eliminated the need for revenge. And this idea is not just the basis of the use of courts for dispensing justice but for the whole idea of societies in which the law is the same for everyone. This meant the end of a tyrannical system in which the strong were always in the right. Because when it is the state that is strongest the tyrannical and the barbarous must defer to the power of the law. Justice, common sense and humanity are the guiding principles. And that is what I want — that is why I have not executed Brad but intend to charge him in front of an independent court of law.’