Class Relations

Reporting from Denver, Kolorado

Once or twice a week, my partner, a journalist who specializes in commercial lawsuits and white-collar crime, puts on a suit and walks to the courthouse with his laptop in his backpack so he can transcribe multi-hour hearings and use direct quotes from the courtroom in his stories. Back home, he reports on cases that might go on for years in daily, clear, and concise installments.

Class Relations. 1984. Directed by Jean-Marie Straub & Daniele Huillet.

It’s been a Kafkaesque fantasy of mine to go to court with him ever since he told me what he did for a living on our first date in a Jesus-themed Denver bar. In August 2023, I finally got to follow him to the courthouse to watch the sentencing of a murderer.

A dentist and hunter who killed his wife on a big-game hunting trip to Zambia in 2016, claimed it was an accident, and collected millions of dollars from insurance companies. He’d made national news in 2022 when the truth came out years after the fact. He was found guilty of not only murder but also insurance fraud, which was why my partner was assigned the story.

At 8:30 am on a Monday, we walked into the courthouse in our respective normal people costumes. He took his seat on the press row, and I sat right behind him. He turned around to ask if my phone was turned off. I said yes, of course it is. He’d told me to not silence but to turn it off at least five times before we got there. He’d also told me that bringing my laptop wasn’t a great idea. There were no rules against laptops in the courtroom, but most people didn’t bring in 16-inch laptops. 

Maybe I’ll look a little strange, I’d told him, but what are they going to do? We can pretend to be strangers if you want.

Why can’t you just bring a notebook and a pen? He asked. I’ll be writing everything down anyway. 

It wouldn’t be the same, I insisted.

I needed to take my own kind of notes. Over the weekend, I’d reread two famous hunting stories by Hemingway, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and I was convinced I had to write a modern-day version of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” the one where Hemingway’s narrator recalls his time in Constantinople and Anatolia as he’s dying on a hunting trip in Africa. Or maybe even synthesize it with the Francis Macomber one, which ends with a shotgun.

This was a financial crime.

—The first and last quote I managed to type in full before I was kicked out of the courtroom.

You’re reading an excerpt from the original letter. I clip most public posts two weeks after sending out my newsletters. Opt-in to receive posts as emails so you can keep them in your inbox forever.

The rest, I’ve put together from the cryptic notes I found on my laptop two months later.—

The hunter’s prison clothes, khaki and brown, match the wooden walls, stands, and benches of the courtroom. 

(Like the cabin where he killed his wife?)

Yes sir, he says to the clerk (a woman) who asks if he solemnly swears to tell the truth and only the truth.

This man bribed the Zambian funeral director, says the prosecutor. He gave $20k to another hunter who wanted to start a business in Zambia. As soon as he got back to the US, he had the shotgun picked up by an untraceable trash service. 

Kafka’s novel Amerika: The Missing Person opens on a ship carrying Karl Rossman, a German teen, to his new life in America. Come Chapter II, Karl is already at the top, staying with his wealthy uncle—until he’s banished from New York for making one odd mistake.

What’s the mistake? You tell me.

Mr. Pollunder, a friend of his uncle, invites Karl to his country estate. 
His uncle says Karl can go. 
The next day, Mr. Pollunder comes to pick him up. 
Karl and his uncle are confused since they hadn’t settled on a date for Karl’s visit. 
His uncle says it’s best to postpone the visit since Karl’s not prepared to leave. 
Mr. Pollunder says he’s happy to wait. 
The uncle then says Karl has classes he can’t miss. 
Mr. Pollunder asks for an exception, the uncle responds with silence, and Karl ends up leaving for the night.
After a couple of uncomfortable hours at the country estate, Karl wants to return to his uncle. 
But everyone, including Mr. Green, another friend of his uncle, says Karl must stay the night.
Once Karl convinces them to let him go, Mr. Green tells Karl he must wait until midnight for Mr. Green has important news he was asked to deliver precisely then. 
At midnight, Karl is handed a letter from his uncle that says if Karl returns before midnight, his disrespectful leave will be forgiven. But if not, he's no longer welcome anywhere near his uncle's house.

If only Karl had seen the letter before. If only he’d refused to wait until midnight to read it.

Out, both of you, out, I said no laptops, was the only explanation we got from the clerk who yelled it at us in front of everyone in the courtroom.

Outside, we tried to explain to the guard that she did not say no laptops. We were both sure that she only said no phones. We pointed out that the no this or that during this session note on the wall actually said laptops were allowed. 

Still, had the clerk said laptops were not allowed, we wouldn’t have used them.

There’s nothing I can do, the guard said. 

The court wouldn’t let us back in, with or without our laptops.

If Kafka’s Amerika couldn’t be more than a cipher of his imagination, couldn’t be real America, if it was only a parable for Europe, I thought, then how did I feel like even more of a Karl Rossman than Karl himself, more than I ever did in Europe, as I stood by the elevator in the hallway of the courthouse in Denver?

My partner had disappeared to talk to the head clerk. Was the judge annoyed at my partner for writing a story that didn’t exactly make him look great last week? I wondered. Was the clerk upset because the murderer called her Sir and took it out on us? Was I at fault here, for bringing unwanted attention to my partner with my big black laptop and white tennis shoes—the most formal shoes I own? Turns out, he reappeared to tell me, the court had posted a notice on their website before the session, which said laptops were not allowed in this specific hearing of this specific case. He was promptly assigned a new case for the day, but I returned home feeling defeated and empty.

This was supposed to be my very own American story, my anti-Hemingway Hemingway story.