Twelve

I can honestly say that one season quickly followed the next. No seasons change as many lives as they do here with the days warmer or cooler, rainier or less rain. The monsoon of November is very different from the one of May. As the warmer days approached I sensed that something new was awaiting me. My case was due in the last session of the crown Court which finished in the last days of the month. The proceedings opened with the sun blazing outside the courtroom. My lawyer had assured me that it wouldn’t last for more than two or three days, and besides he said the judges would be in a hurry because it’s the start of the holiday season just after my turn.

I knew what he meant. We were over the worst of the rain and our dry monsoon would soon be upon us. I loved the beaches between April and September. We call them here the light yellow wine. There is more of sunlight even though you always have rain; the sun splits the days and brings us our evenings, like the light that fell that one fateful Sunday with all the huts along the beach glistening and groaning  with an activity and abundance  you can only imagine in November.

At seven in the morning, someone came to get me and the police van took me to the court room. The two policemen showed me into a small room that smelled a bit stale as if the windows had not been opened to the air. On the other side of the door were the sound of voices, names being called out, the scraping of chairs, voices of authority, the kind of commotion that made me think of certain festivals we used to have in our district when the furniture in the room is pulled to one side and re arranged for dancing or when the bride first looks out of the window and flings out her shift of flowers. The policeman told me we had to wait to be called into the courtroom and one of them offered me a cigarette. I said no and showed him the tiny piece of wood stuck between my teeth.

‘I use these now ‘I said. A little while later he asked me if I was nervous. Again, I shook my head and said that in a way I was quite interested in seeing a trial. I had never been in court before. He laughed and said that wasn’t true and laughed again but I just shook my head and said no not serious like this one. Those other times were minor matters, this was the real thing.

‘Yes said the second policeman, ‘ A trial wears you out. I’ve seen innocent guys fly away in their heads because they can’t take it anymore. In the end they accept what they give you just to be rid of it’

After a while a little bell rang in the room. They took off my handcuffs and opened the door and led me into the dock. The room was jam packed. In spite of the blinds, the sun filtered through in spaces and it was stifling hot. They’d left the windows closed for the air conditioning but something wasn’t working properly and everyone seemed to be sweating.

I sat down and the policemen stood on each side of me. It was then that I noticed a row of faces in front of me. They were all watching me. I realised that they were the jury. They all looked the same to me but I could see a scarf here and there, it was only later that I would be able to tell the faces line by line and what they seemed to be thinking. It was like getting on a bus or crowded train to go back to the villages, at first there is just a sea of faces in front of you but after a while you realise each and every definitive trace and feature of every single one. They were all looking to see who the last passenger was as if it was me; like they were craning over to see what was contemptible in the face of a killer. Did I really look like one? They called me baby face at school and on the fish dock but maybe there was something in me that looked like a monster. I did not really know.

I was confused by all the people crammed into this tiny space, everyone seemed to be talking and to know one another, I looked around again and again I could not recognise a single person. It had not occurred to me that most of the people here, all sweating, had come to get a good look at me. No one normally took any notice of me, especially on the markets when everyone was babbling and smoking before the rain. It took some effort on my part to recognise that I was the source of all this commotion.

 ‘There are so many people ‘I said to the policeman.