The Good Mayor by Andrew Nicoll

There was a leery insolence about him. Cocky—a man who walked with his shoulders. Stoki sat down in the dock, looking from side to side with a challenge in his glance, sniffing repeatedly and brushing the tip of his nose with a curled finger.

    Tibo leaned down from the bench. “Mr. Stoki, you are accused of assaulting your wife. Are you guilty or not guilty?”

    Yemko Guillaume, the fattest lawyer in Dot, stood up to speak. Across the court, Tibo could hear his knees creak. Guillaume’s belly was so vast that it hung in front of him in two lobes, he had breasts like jelly moulds and Tibo was left trying to outstare a hair-fringed navel that winked from his gaping shirt front. It brought to mind the county fair when fat farmers came in from the outlying places and tried to cheat the carnival folk by squinting at the sideshows through the gaps in their tents.

    “I represent Mr. Stoki,” said Guillaume. His voice came in strange wheezes, like the high pipes of an organ choked with lard. “Mr. Stoki pleads not guilty.”

    Then the clerk called the constable, a solid middle-aged man with respectable whiskers, who told of being called to Stoki’s house when neighbours complained of screams and breaking furniture, and Mrs. Stoki’s black eye and the story she told, which he noted at the time, word for word, in this very notebook, of what had happened.

    “And was Mr. Stoki sober at the time?”

    “No, Your Honour, Mr. Stoki was not sober at the time.”

    “So was Mr. Stoki drunk at the time?”

    “Oh, Mr. Stoki was undoubtedly drunk at the time.”

    In the dock, Stoki sniffed some more and glared at the constable, jabbing his shoulders round like a bantamweight. The constable remained unimpressed and sniffed back.

    On the dais, Tibo waved the end of his pen to signal that Guillaume was now free to speak.

    “Constable, did you see my client strike his wife?” he asked.

    The constable rocked on his big thick boots. “Good heavens, no, sir! In my experience, them as has the uncontrollable tempers and can’t help themselves, always can when a constable’s around.”

    Tibo snapped a reprimand, “Try to stick to the question, please, Constable.”

    “That is of no consequence, Your Honour, I have no more.” Guillaume rolled back to his seat, descending gradually like a collapsing balloon and then suddenly crumpling into the complaining, squealing, straining chair.

    “There’s only one more witness,” said the clerk, “the complainer.”

    Tibo recognised her. He had seen her in court every week. When the clerk said “the usual drunks and wife-beaters,” this was the usually beaten wife. She was familiar—a pallid, stifled shriek of a woman with cowering eyes and a knuckled grip on herself. The same woman every week. The same blows. The same tears. The same screams. The same woman again and again.

    Good Mayor Krovic stifled his fury and spoke to her in a flat and level voice. “I have to tell you, Mrs. Stoki, that you are not obliged to give evidence against your husband.”

    From the dock, Stoki nodded at her with a sharp jerk of the head and wiped his nose violently. She read the signal.

    “No,” she said. “I want to.” She raised her hand to make the oath and, little by little, the story came out. Her eyes flickered between Tibo and the man in the dock as she told it.

    No, her husband was not drunk. No, he had not stayed out that night. Yes, they had argued but that was her fault. It was nothing. She had nagged him. No, he definitely did not hit her.

    Tibo saw the arm go back.

    Yes, the chair broke but that was because she fell on it awkwardly. She was always clumsy that way—always falling and breaking things.

    Tibo heard the slap. Tibo saw her fall.

    It was all a mistake. The neighbours got excited about nothing. Stoki was a good man, a good husband.

    Tibo saw a little boy, standing with his fists raised, tears streaming down his face and a father’s giant fist beating him