Judge On Trial

by Ivan Klíma

  The election result depressed me. I tried to convince the others with my arguments, but mostly without success. Sometimes Švehla would join in our debates. Unlike me, he was a slow and steady speaker (everything about him was steady; he was also the only one of us to have a steady girlfriend) and had a perfect mastery of the techniques of political argument. But what he said always contained some thinly veiled threat which antagonised the others even more than my incoherent statements.

  We never managed to win anyone else for our beliefs, but we were to receive support from an unexpected quarter. A new art master was appointed to the school. His name was Ivanič, Ivanovič, or maybe Ivandelič if my memory serves me right and such a name exists in Serbia, which is where he was from. He entered the art room for his first lesson wearing a long, paint-flecked green overall and scuffed shoes. Reminiscent of an ear of corn with a tousled panicle of hair, he came to an abrupt halt just inside the door and observed us. Then he almost trotted to the desk and informed us in a sing-song foreign accent that fate had given us to him to teach, although he could tell already, just by looking at our faces, our ties, and those brothel-creepers on our feet, that we lacked the smallest smidgeon of sensitivity to art. He could see with his own eyes that he was confronted by young ladies and gentlemen from a better class of home, and he laughed hoarsely. As far as he knew, the well-off only ever drivelled about art or invested in it. But seeing that he was obliged to waste his time here, he would do his best to make honest, conscientious and hard-working people out of us, and cultivate in us a sense of beauty, so that we didn’t have our minds fixed solely on money and careers. And he went on to explain that in the past, during the bourgeois republic, teachers weren’t allowed to cultivate their pupils; all they could do was pour knowledge into them. But times had changed. We were now entering the era we had struggled for: an epoch when even a downtrodden grammar-school teacher had come into his rights, including the right to talk about other things apart from the angles of a triangle or the green tree-frog.

  He told us to take out our drawing pads; he said each of us was to paint what we felt like and what would give us pleasure, using whatever materials we liked; and he ran down the row between the desks. He stopped right at the end, just behind me, and ruffled my hair, praising me for not wearing a tie or brothel-creepers (I had scuffed shoes that vied with his own). Then he asked me what my father did for a living.

  When I replied that my father was a civil engineer I sensed right away that it did not meet with his approval.

  We painted still lifes, fish, our homes, and attempts at nudes, though I, of course, painted concentration-camp prisoners queuing for dinner, and meanwhile he rushed up and down between the desks, telling us that throughout history the rich had held sway and so the rich had decided what was beautiful. They paid the artists and thereby enslaved them too. Artists who had stood up to them and painted according to their lights rather than to order, languished in poverty, even the greatest geniuses, such as Rembrandt, Van Gogh or Aleš. But the salvo from the cruiser Aurora in 1917 had marked the beginning of a new era. The degenerate nobility and the surfeited bourgeoisie were chased out of their palaces, and the people took the government into their own hands. The people – and this he could declare from his own experience – suffered and went hungry, it was true, but deep in their souls, unseen, they yearned for beauty; indeed they created splendid artefacts, albeit anonymously. And he dashed into his study and brought out a traditional vase, exclaiming with admiration how splendid its shape was, and functional at the same time! What would the people create now, now that the well-springs of knowledge were being opened for them, now that they were being accorded all the opportunities that only the bourgeois had exploited so far? We would live to see it; we would live in a beautiful land and in a favourable age, when beauty would become part of life.

  His words – their intonation as strange as his appearance – probably struck most of the class as ludicrous, but I was enthralled. He had expressed precisely what I had been striving to say myself and had been incapable of formulating so convincingly, so perfectly. My admiration for him was such that I started to paint in earnest. I persuaded my parents to buy me some oils, and from that day forth I trudged along suburban footpaths with my little case, painting houses and fences, ochre meadows and birch groves under blue skies, and then brought my creations into class.

  One day he invited me to bring my pictures to his study. I entered in trepidation, practically in reverence, aware that this might be a turning-point in my life. The room was filled with plaster models, stacked easels and dusty rolls of paper, and the walls were hung with reproductions of still lifes by Cézanne, and Van Gogh’s sunny landscapes. On a table alongside tubes of colour were scattered photos of the master’s wife and his five children, and similar images gazed out of portraits that were leaning against a wall in a corner of the room. I unrolled a bundle of my paintings and he spent a few moments absentmindedly gazing at them in silence. Then, as if he had suddenly made up his mind, he gripped me by the shoulder and told me he had something to show me. He led me to a large easel that I had not even noticed before as it was covered in a sheet. With a mighty gesture, the art master whipped off the sheet and a painting was revealed to me.

  It was a sizeable canvas. It depicted a country farmyard and in the foreground there towered a massive, dazzling red machine.

  I realised that it was his own painting, this perfect machine in a deserted, but meticulously detailed yard, and I didn’t know how to react; whether it was the done thing for me, a pupil, to praise my teacher. So all I said was that I’d never seen a picture like it.

  Now I expected him to say something about my paintings, but instead he started to tell me about his canvas. He spoke passionately about his efforts to create a new, comprehensible art, but said that it would have problems being understood as all the committees were still formed of advocates of old-style art, the kind that was created for the select few, and they all hated creators like himself. I don’t think I understood too much of what he said.

  All of a sudden he exclaimed – pointing at the painting – that a threshing machine like that had been his father’s dream. His father had longed to own one machine at least, but never been able to afford anything, not even his own horse or mule; his father would have been happy to see this picture, because he would understand what it meant, why that machine was oversized and as dazzlingly unreal as a dream. He began reminiscing about his father, how he used to get up at three in the morning and not come home till twilight. He had been unable to read or write, but decorated the outside of their cottage with ornaments, because he had had an innate sense of beauty. Even nowadays, as he worked, he, my teacher, would imagine his father standing in front of his picture. And he tried to paint in such a way that his father might say: ‘Dobro, my son!’

  I noticed all at once that tears were streaming from his grey watery eyes. I realised that his father was dead. Wanting to say something to cheer him up, I told him laboriously that I wanted to be like him, and deliberately I said ‘be’ and not ‘paint’.

  He taught us for almost three years. In spite of my partiality for him, my artistic efforts and the fact that I was one of only three like-minded pupils in his class (even he won no converts) he only gave me a grade two for art on my report.

  About a year before our school-leaving exam he disappeared from the classroom. I thought he was on sick-leave, but then a young supply-teacher arrived to take his place. She was accompanied by the headmistress, who told us in severe tones that Mr Ivandelič had been arrested and would be tried for acts hostile to the republic and to socialism. She tried to speak impersonally but she herself seemed disquieted by the news. She went on to tell us that what had happened should stir us to vigilance and serve as a warning that a cunning enemy could hide behind even the most enthusiastic words. The word enemy astounded me. I put up my hand. I wanted to ask if everything I had heard him say was no longer valid, but I could not utter a sing
le word. I just stood there with my head bowed.

  3

  At the end of that winter (during that last school year I was elected – appointed, I ought to say – chairman of the class committee of the sole permitted youth organisation) the head-mistress summoned me to her office. She sat me down in a leather armchair intended for inspectors and other important visitors, and told me I enjoyed her confidence. She knew that I was a good, politically aware comrade and did not need to explain to me the complexity of the times we were living in. Enemies could breach our western frontier at any moment and attack our homeland. And they relied for this on the assistance of all opponents of socialism. Admittedly the latter had been crushed not long ago and some of them had indeed changed their attitudes, but there were others who had gone underground and were only waiting for a chance to infiltrate various important institutions and be ready to do damage when the opportunity arose. And it was our job to prevent it.

  I nodded to say I had heard, understood and agreed.

  She said that was the reason she had called me in. In a few months’ time we would be leaving school and in the places we went from here they would know nothing about us. Even those whose hostile attitudes were not in doubt would have no difficulty winning the confidence of others. To avoid anything of the kind happening, it was necessary to write a true report on each of us. Our teachers would make their reports, but they tended to know only one aspect of us, mostly to do with the subject they taught; besides which, many of those who taught us in the past had now left – had rightly left – and the new ones hadn’t yet had time to get to know us well enough.

  Over the years, we pupils had come to know each other very well and were therefore well placed to make a just and truthful judgement of what each of us was truly like.

  She wasn’t asking me to do anything dishonourable. On the contrary, she was sure that we youngsters would be eminently just towards each other and would manage to rise above friendships or enmities. It was an enormous responsibility, but if we acquitted it honourably, we would help to ensure that in future posts of responsibility would be occupied by the best people. After all, it was going to be our world and how it would be was up to us.

  I nodded once more. Everything was clear to me. I understood, and was convinced that I would manage to perform all that was required of me in a totally fair and unbiased manner. After all, my entire life so far, my experiences and my convictions fitted me for just such a role.

  And since I had my own notions of justice, and because I had no reservations about the rightness of what I was to do (and maybe also because I delighted in my extremely scrupulous powers of judgement), I had no wish to hide my intended activities under a bushel. I proposed that our committee should draft its reports on individual pupils and hold a discussion about them in class. In that way, we would obtain the fullest possible picture of each of us, and therefore it would also be the fairest possible. I don’t think the headmistress was too taken by my idea. She hesitated, possibly reflecting on some instruction I had no inkling of. Then she said that what I was suggesting would be even more demanding than what she had asked, but if we thought we were capable of defending and asserting the correct opinion, she had no objections and we had her full confidence. (In the end, however, she turned out not to have too much confidence in us, as she assigned our new art teacher to assist us in drafting the reports.)

  We held a meeting in the classroom after school: our committee comprised Josef Švehla, two girl pupils and myself. That day – it was a sunny afternoon – I looked out of the window at my colleagues as they trooped out of the school gate and tore off along the sunlit path to the small park behind the school, where they dumped their coats and bags on a bench and started circling round a group of girls before disappearing with them into some flowering laburnum bushes. I imagined the blissful embraces they would now sink into, while I would be stuck in this classroom with its permanent smell of sweaty bodies, in the company of poker-faced Švehla and two girls I didn’t care about. I felt it as an affront that while they were having the time of their lives, larking around irresponsibly or even kissing in the bushes, I would be toiling away, trying to squeeze into a few sentences their attitude to the society which I was protecting for their benefit.

  I hadn’t the faintest idea what repercussions each of my sentences and each of my judgements might have. I knew nothing of the existence of the political screeners who were eagerly awaiting our words, which they would use as a basis for their merciless decisions. It never even occurred to me that my activities were based on a fundamental act of tyranny in that I was given the right to pass judgement on the lives of my fellows, while the same right was denied them.

  The result of the mock election still stuck in my memory. It was a warning to me that I was hemmed in by opponents, among whom was hidden one friend. Who was it? And who were all the others?

  Gone were the days when my fellow-pupils would argue with me or act normally in my presence. I had nothing on which to base my judgements. I could have taken that lack of evidence as a chance offered me by fate to avoid passing judgement. But I wanted to judge. Even at that time, or rather, only at that time, I yearned to sit in judgement. My own irrepressible certainty allowed me to classify people like beetles into useful, harmless and dangerous.

  Mine was not to forgive or overlook. I’m sure I would have done both if I’d been acting on my own behalf: but I wasn’t. I was commissioned. I was acting in the name of society which had honoured me with its trust; my sense of duty blinded me.

  I was certain that my opinion would be shared by the other members of our strange tribunal, and I was amazed to discover that the two girls in particular, together with the art teacher (but what could she possibly know about us after teaching us for only a few months), were opposing me ever more adamantly in cases which I considered to be open-and-shut. At first I argued, but then took umbrage and remained silent. Let them decide! Let them shoulder the whole blame on the day the false prophets and judges they let through exacted their bloody revenge!

  I looked on in resentment while those who were supposed to be eager fishermen like me wreaked such havoc with my net that scarcely three little fishes were caught in it.

  4

  Two days after our committee’s preparatory meeting, visitors arrived in our classroom. Apart from the headmistress, they included a very portly man, who spent almost the whole time hiccuping under his breath (I never did find out who he was and he uttered not a single word), and the teachers of the other classes in our year, who were apparently there to learn how it was done.

  I was sitting in my place in the last but one desk in the middle row, a sheaf of papers in front of me. In the room an apprehensive (now I would say: resentful) silence reigned. I read the first name in the alphabet. It happened to be one of the three I mentioned. I can no longer judge whether that girl really differed from the rest in her opinions and attitudes, but it is unlikely. She was just older than we were, because she had spent a long time in a sanatorium with a disease of the spine. The teachers treated her with the indulgence they had once reserved for me, and in my view she took advantage of it. She was the only one to make frivolous comments during civics classes (and they were always greeted with approving laughter, to my annoyance). What I resented most of all was her total indifference towards socially beneficial activity. She used her medical certificate as an alibi for never once turning up at the salvage collection point (where every Friday I would stand, notepad in hand, carefully recording the kilos of stinking refuse, which my classmates reluctantly dragged there). She had never been among those volunteering for hop-picking or emergency work on the harvest when it snowed. I was sure she was using her illness as an excuse. Had I myself not got over a serious illness? I, too, could easily obtain a medical certificate, but unlike her, I had not done so. Now she got to her feet and her pale sickly face became even paler.

  She stood up, which rather threw me into confusion. I stood up too and read the few
sentences I had managed to push through that we had all agreed on. The last of my sentences, the only one I am able to recall, read: Zora Beránková’s attitude to our people’s democratic order is largely hostile.

  I can still recall the consternation and the deathly hush that followed my words. I turned to her and asked her if she had any objections to the statement. She smiled at me – it really was an attempt at a smile, a courageous smile in the face of intimidation. She said she was grateful for the pains we had clearly taken in drawing up our report, and in total silence, she sat down.

  I remained on my feet however, and when the silence around me continued, my self-assurance started to wane. But I represented higher interests, and must not allow myself to fall prey to doubt. I therefore picked up another sheet of paper from my desk-top. Slowly – and now I was grateful to the other members of the committee for imposing moderation on me – I started to deal with the next case. His name was Viastimil Polák. I personally knew very little about him (our interests were quite different), but Josef Švehla suspected him of having been a member of the Socialist Youth several years before. It struck me that membership of such an organisation (even though it had been an entirely legal association) was a very grave charge. Why? That was a question I would not have been able to answer, but nobody asked such questions any more; the only questions asked now were concerned with determining guilt, not ascertaining the truth, and so I too asked them. Why had he joined that organisation? I asked the question in the tones of an incensed state prosecutor, because colleague Švehla had not been entirely sure whether his suspicion was well founded or not, and believed that if we posed the question with sufficient emphasis and confidence (a proven trick of all interrogators when they are on unsure ground), the subject would spill the beans himself.