Next came our old neighbour Mr He. It must have been a while since he’d been let out into such a large space and he was clearly itching to say his piece. He spiced his descriptions liberally, filling them with invented misdemeanours on my part: ‘You could say, he’s done it all.’ His lips furled, unleashing scorn as if he was the government. But to me he was just a putrid, decaying old man.
‘You hit me,’ I said.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Yes, you did.You dug your nails into my neck, cursed me, slapped me across the face. You humiliated me to the core.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘You hit me whenever you felt like it.’
This was fun. He didn’t know how to stop me. I could see him clench his fists.
‘Is your dog dead?’ I asked. This took him by surprise. ‘I fed him rat poison.’
The old man’s face went red and he began shouting.
‘Are you fucking human? You had to kill the dog too?’
My lawyer sighed. I was being childish, probably. The prosecutor smiled. Surely nothing proved the ruthless cruelty of a killer like this?
After that a police officer was called. He said that normally even the toughest thugs lost it in prison, cried, asked to see their families. I was the only one to remain calm and detached, as if none of it bothered me.
‘His only request was for a McDonald’s.’
‘It was a KFC,’ I said.
Last Words
As soon as my lawyer suggested a plea for leniency, the public prosecutor scrambled to his feet and cried that such a crime could never be pardoned. As the scales tipped to the left, my lawyer decided to change tactics and add weight to the right, which he did by producing a certificate signed by a midwife stating that I had not yet turned eighteen. The prosecutor argued for an investigation, including an inspection of our household registration documents and my school records, as well as witness testimonies and a trace of my mother’s movements eighteen years ago. They weren’t impossible requests. He simultaneously reminded my lawyer that pressuring a witness into giving false testimony was an offence under the law.
My lawyer then repeated his three-pronged argument about how I had willingly given myself up. This the prosecutor could not accept, because I had yet to express even a hint of remorse. The lawyer narrowed his eyes at me as if to say, I’m not doing this alone, kid. But the last thing I wanted to do was make such a performance in court.
‘You feel no remorse, isn’t that correct?’ the prosecutor said.
The question was there to help me, but I just cocked my head. I didn’t say yes, I didn’t say no. I wanted to say yes.
‘Why did you go looking for the police officer?’ my lawyer asked.
My head was still cocked. The judge reminded me I was required to answer. I thought for a long time and then decided I’d better tell the truth.
‘Because I came to the conclusion that they were so lousy they wouldn’t catch me otherwise.’
My lawyer looked betrayed and flustered. He walked past me in the dock, thumped on the table and filed an application for a psychological examination.
He then produced a medical report stamped by the A—Province People’s Hospital supposedly written five years previously. He began reading out loud the diagnosis: hysteria and neurosis mainly, peppered with quotations from seminal works of psychology for reinforcement. He expounded on the necessary nature of such expert testimony, arguing that the court’s own examinations were inadequate, and that this medical certificate was in full accordance with the principles of objectivity as required by the judicial system. He then took out another paper, in which two professors of law had written in support of this appraisal. And he quoted: ‘Our justice system should treat cases such as these as iron-clad. It is too late to conduct a medical appraisal after the death sentence has been carried out.’
The prosecutor laughed coldly. He dragged a comb through his already neat hair, guiding it with his other hand for protection. This was a standard tactic used by the defence. He then pointed at me and spoke to the rest of the room.
‘Does he show any signs of mental illness?’ He then turned to me. ‘Are you sick?’
‘Of course not.’ I could sense the shock in the room.
‘How do you know?’ my lawyer growled, standing up.
‘Shouldn’t I know best?’
‘That’s what every mentally ill person says. That’s the best proof, right there.’
His veins were popping as he thumped at the table. Laughter erupted in the public gallery.
‘So do you need an appraisal or not?’ the judge asked.
‘No,’ I said.
My lawyer threw his briefcase onto the table and looked as if he was about to storm out. Only a sense of his own self-importance stopped him and he asked for Kong Jie’s mother to be brought in. He then looked across at me like a man who was about to die making his last desperate plea to be saved. I, however, had long wanted an end to this game. The person in the courtroom on trial wasn’t me, but a machine designed to validate my lies.
Mrs Kong was wearing the same black ankle-length dress, but this time she had added a long blue scarf. Kong Jie’s scarf. Holding back her tears, she read out a document apparently entitled An Act of Mercy from One Mother to Another. Everyone in the court wore grave expressions, listening without moving. Her performance that day was pretty good; her tone, the balance between emotion and restraint, it was all exquisite. My lawyer must have written the script for her, but somehow it must also have touched a nerve (it was so unlike her wild shouting of before). My lawyer was like a songwriter watching the performance from his position in the audience as he seemed to tap his finger in time. People wiped tears from their eyes.
But I had to stop her. ‘This is a financial transaction.’ I watched as the paper floated from her hand like a white crane. Her thin, solemn frame began to tremble. She closed her eyes, opened them, and then fell backwards. People rushed to help. Saliva frothed around her mouth and her body twitched as if she was having an epileptic fit. The court was filled with noise like school breaking for the day: people fidgeted, talked, anxious and unsure of what to do. Then it hit them. Together:
Kill him!
Kill him! Kill him!
Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!
I looked up at the ceiling and then out at the courtroom. It was small, like a theatre box. People far in the distance were waving their fists and all that was left were the yellow seats and dark green banisters. On the wall to the side was fastened a Western-style lamp which was on but gave out only the weakest light. No one thought to switch it off. There will come a day, when everyone has gone, when all that is left is the dancing dust.
‘Kill me,’ I said, returning to reality.
My eyes showed I was sincere. My lawyer had stuffed his papers into his briefcase and taken his place as a spectator. The public prosecutor was stunned; his body shook. Eventually he began reading from a report, his voice almost singing. What I heard was ‘vicious in the extreme’, ‘utterly devoid of conscience’, ‘total disregard for the law and human life’, ‘ruthless methods’, ‘serious consequences’, ‘grave danger to society’, ‘public indignation if we don’t hand down the death sentence’.
The courtroom exploded in applause as he finished and continued for some time before stopping abruptly. They felt the amorphous loneliness just as I did.