The Thrill of the Case – Part Seven

Read Part Six of The Thrill of the Case, or go back to Part One.

"Based on the foregoing, your honour, I believe I have successfully proved that I, that is to say, Everarck Fanger, am not guilty of intellectual vanity."

And then because he'd always wanted to say it in a court.

"I rest my case."

And then he sat down, feeling immensely pleased with himself. This was the case that he'd painstakingly prepared with Gerellia, who'd turned out to be a vigorous advocate of his right to prove himself innocent of the ugly sin. He'd enjoyed working with her over the ten days or so of preparation, grown warm towards her, and privately in the comfort of his own mind, he was prepared to admit he'd even bonded with her more than a man in a long-term relationship ought to have.

He'd begun - and this had been his own idea - with a dictionary definition.

"Intellectual vanity can be defined - according to Cox and Moodie - as an excessive pride in one's own intellect or knowledge, often leading to a sense of superiority over others. Those who commit the sin of intellectual vanity often feel their own intellectual achievements or opinions are superior to those of others."

Gerellia had agreed that that provided a tidy opening to the subject. All he had to do now was go through the definition, bit by bit, and explain how no part of it described him, or his evident attitudes to others. She had even reminded him, "It doesn't matter if a defendant is actually guilty of a crime. It only matters if the defendant's conduct evinces criminal behaviour."

He had squirmed as she'd used words like 'crime' and 'criminal'. The other words: 'argument', 'demonstration', 'trial', 'judgement', with these he was comfortable, but 'punishment', 'prisoner' and 'sentence' made him shudder. Gerellia realised, watching him, that he saw the process as a high-minded exploration of whether certain qualities manifested in his behaviour. He had not, however, really grasped that he was in a literal court, which he had paid upwards of three thousand pounds to prosecute him and to which he had granted the power of finding him guilty of this form of behaviour, a social ugliness, which he himself had declared to be undesirable.

Intellectual vanity was not a crime, and the court had no power to imprison, but it was at the very least the architect of a public event whose proceedings had the power to stain a person's reputation, to humiliate them even as they attempted to wriggle free from the shadows in their own mind. Gerellia was not a lawyer. Everarck had simply assumed that. In fact, Gerellia was a psychologist, and what she saw in Everarck fascinated her. Never before had a person so obviously guilty of a social ill provided themselves to a process with such a powerful means of measuring it in them. That Everarck's motivation was to prove himself free of such vanity only plated the event with, to her, a profoundly satisfying irony.

She'd watched as Everarck had described his parents, his childhood, his dreams as a young person, his education and intellectual dreams. It had been a beautiful start to a strong argument. However, as the ten days progressed, shadows had swept over the self-examination, his gleaming autobiography. He had described his dreams of becoming a doctor which had seemed to wither even as he had pushed himself towards them. His daydreams of receiving that scroll of achievement had acquired, on one hand, the glow of utopian fantasy. On the other, parallel visions had showed the process as yellow and tawdry: the giving of a meaningless piece of paper in a dirty city hall surrounded by clowns in ridiculous gowns. Becoming tormented latterly that he would not be accepted by any university he'd want to join, he had pulled back from his exam preparation, and the results had been consequently mediocre.

"It was them!" he'd told Gerellia in strict confidence, "They were the intellectually vain!"

It was the gatekeepers of academic achievement who had been guilty of the sin. Gerellia had nodded encouragingly. From her own studies and the literature, she knew that accusing others of a sin is a behaviour repeated often amongst those most culpable of it. Then, taking pity, she had explained the phenomenon of projection to him, and got up and walked out of the room to allow him some time to himself. Clouds had occluded the sun that Tuesday afternoon, and the previously cheerful plant in the corner of the room had grown sullen.

He was guilty, he realised at last: guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, and all that remained for him was to become a new man from this moment onward, to stand up in court and show that the events of the past no longer stuck to him. The best way to do that, the plant explained to him, was to plead guilty. Cleanse yourself, accept punishment, move forward, enjoy honesty.

"You smug bastard of a plant," he hissed, raising a pair of office scissors at it and stabbing the air, "I'll get out of this shit on my own if you won't help me!"

And then he had constructed his tale of Everarck the Innocent, knowing full well that it was a work of fiction, promising himself that he would not let himself off the hook in the court of his mind, if only he could evade the public humiliation now facing him.