Judge On Trial

by Ivan Klíma

  He shuddered. He had almost dropped off to sleep at his desk. It was time he went.

  He had arranged to meet Magdalena at four thirty in the park. He stopped on the way at a milk bar and had a cup of cocoa and a bun. What time did they knock off at the animated film studio? he wondered. During the day he had been tempted once or twice to call up his friend’s wife, but he had not done so, not knowing what to say to her. Unless he invited her out for dinner. He ought to, in fact, as a way of thanking her for selling the books for him. Only he wasn’t free that evening: he’d promised to go to Petr’s.

  He made another stop at the flower-stall in front of the technical university to buy a bunch of carnations. Magdalena was waiting on a bench right next to the statue of a woman writer whose name he could never remember; she was wearing a rather old-fashioned suit. He sat down too and handed her the flowers.

  ‘That’s sweet of you,’ she said, and laid them on her lap.

  He opened his briefcase. ‘I’ve got the money for you and I can give you back a couple of the books. We only needed to sell half of them.’

  ‘You drove such a hard bargain?’

  ‘It was a woman friend of mine who sold them.’ He took a look around him, no one seemed to be paying them any attention. Anyway, he had the money in a big opaque envelope. He could hand it over without fear. ‘The fellow who bought them makes films for television,’ he explained, feeling he ought to tell her something about the buyer. ‘Today he brought me the second instalment of money. He can’t be over thirty. Apparently, he makes anything they commission from him.’

  ‘And why does he do it?’ she asked, and he realised she was only asking out of politeness. No doubt she had long ceased to worry about the details. Besides, she was probably in a hurry to pass on the money.

  ‘Because they pay him for it.’ He also gave her the packet of remaining books. ‘That’s what almost all of them are like nowadays. No ideals, just making a living.’

  ‘You were different, weren’t you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You had ideals and you certainly didn’t make a decent living. Do you remember that barn you lived in all that time? Every other day you would treat yourself to goulash in the pub until you completely ruined your insides.’

  He remembered all of it.

  ‘And you were incorruptible. And you weren’t the only one. What hope could they have, the people you took it in your minds to destroy? Sorry, I’m upset. What if this plan doesn’t help? Our principal is a monster. He makes a habit of doing the rounds of the village on his bike every weekend to find out which of the teachers and the kids have been to mass. Jaroslav’s a Catholic, which is why he wants to put paid to him. What if he gets his way?’

  ‘You mustn’t be afraid of him,’ he said. ‘People like that generally only go out of their way when they think someone will praise them for it.’

  ‘You don’t know him; you’ve no idea about people like him. His sole reason for living is to wreak revenge on those who believe in anything.’

  ‘The world isn’t only made up of people like your principal.’

  ‘I agree. There are also people who might possibly shout them down – for a consideration. But for how long?’

  She spoke to him as if he were someone in a different – more hopeful – situation. More and more people were beginning to regard him as someone who had survived, and hence was part of the establishment.

  What if they were right?

  She stopped as they were leaving the park. ‘I’m talking the most awful rubbish. I’m very grateful to you. Everyone else only assured me I had their sympathy.’

  ‘You still have time to change your mind.’

  ‘My mind’s made up! It would cost even more in a year’s time.’ She smiled at him and shook his hand. ‘We should have gone abroad,’ she said. ‘We’ve only ourselves to blame.’

  2

  Petr was planning to give a reading from his latest work to a group of friends. He had told Adam the title, but it had gone from his head. Naturally, it would be better for him not to associate with some of the people who would be going. Nor did he fancy attending a lecture.

  He was making excuses for himself; he wanted to avoid any unpleasantness. He wouldn’t like to lose his friends, but on the other hand, he wouldn’t like to be the next for the chop. Probably the best policy would be to call on them but not take part in larger gatherings. The trouble was they would soon notice and stop inviting him altogether.

  Petr opened the door to him wearing an apron and with his sleeves rolled up. His hairy forearms contrasted curiously with his almost bald head. ‘I’m glad you’ve come early, Adam; there’ll be a horde of people arriving in a moment and there’s a small favour I’d like to ask of you.’

  He didn’t tell him what exactly, so Adam took a seat. ‘What’s new?’

  ‘There are lots of rumours going round, but the only one that sounds at all credible is that they’ll adopt that new law about compulsory explanation. It’s a shitty piece of work, don’t you think?’

  He shrugged. ‘You surely didn’t expect any decent legislation now of all times.’

  ‘No, but I don’t like the thought of sitting around,’ Petr said brandishing a knife, ‘and watching them make off with the remnants of my freedom.’

  He would have liked to say that there was probably no alternative, that he’d already seen it all once before: the slow, inexorable slide. There was no telling when it would stop or where, nor how deep was the abyss people would sink into. But Petr would probably take it as a sign he was beginning to knuckle under. It is hard to come to terms with losing control of one’s destiny, and with the realisation that, while one admittedly still had a voice left to shout for help, there was no one to heed the call.

  The doorbell rang and immediately he recognised Oldřich’s voice from the front hall. This was one of the reasons he had come that evening, but although he listened out for it, her voice could not be heard.

  ‘You wanted to say something to me before the others arrived,’ he reminded Petr.

  ‘That’s right. I’m almost embarrassed to bother you again, but there’s no risk involved for you. Are you going to your cottage some time soon?’

  ‘Tomorrow, I expect.’

  ‘Do you think you could take some money to a girl who lives out that way?’ It was money for the wife of a student who was recently convicted. The student, who was unknown to him, had been sent down for some leaflets whose content had not been in the least inflammatory.

  Petr pulled out an envelope from behind the crockery on the dresser. The green of a hundred-crown note was visible through the paper. ‘It’s only eight hundred.’

  Adam stuffed the envelope in his breast pocket. Just recently he had been acquiring practical experience as a part-time currency messenger.

  Meanwhile the guests had been congregating in the sitting room. He knew almost all of them. Many of them had been acquiring practical experience in all kinds of substitute employment – though not on a part-time basis, to be sure. They had been digging metro tunnels, washing shop windows, guarding warehouses or drilling wells, just to earn a living. From time to time, they would get together and act as if nothing had changed since the days when they worked in colleges and institutes.

  He had indeed been through it all once before. Back in the fortress town, almost no one had been engaged in the work they had done before the war.

  He said hello to Matěj and suppressed the urge to start a conversation with Oldřich about his wife. In the meantime, Petr had changed into a clean shirt and was busying himself spreading out his papers on the table. Now he put on his glasses and announced that he was going to read a chapter about manipulation from his latest book.

  The barber who used to cut his hair on the ground floor of the barracks had been a professor of ancient languages in peace time. He would tell Adam stories about the Greek gods and enjoyed reciting Ovid to him. It was possible that after finishing his day
’s work in the barber’s shop, it had been his custom to get together with other classical philologists or philosophers, who were working then as gardeners, cooks or maintenance men, and organise lectures. He had been too young at the time to have noticed. On the other hand, he could still remember how they had put on a performance of The Bartered Bride in the loft of the barracks. There had been no orchestra, of course, just harmonium accompaniment. Mařenka was sung by an elderly lady – apparently a former member of the Vienna Opera, though what she was employed as in the fortress, he did not know. He could still recall the exalted mood that had reigned in the gloom of the enclosed attic room, as if the singing itself was somehow opening those closed impassable gates.

  ‘What is distinctive about this new regime is that it derives its legitimacy neither from the will of the gods nor from other external symbols, but instead pretends to express the will of the people, the will of the individual whose subjugation as a free personality it is intent on achieving. For this very reason the hallmark of the regime is arrogance: it recognises no transcendent moral law and hence there are no actions it would not stoop to, or be ashamed of if it thought they served its aims.’

  It was possible that the music had opened the gates as far as the soul was concerned, but our bodies continued to sink further into the depths. Did people ever really control their destiny? They certainly made every effort to. To the extent of handing their king over to the executioner when they thought he was trying to hinder their efforts. They had elected parliaments and taken pains over their choice of representatives, but again and again the parliaments would declare a war and leave people no less desperate or hopeless than before. Therefore they had tried getting rid of parliaments and establishing leaders enthusiastically in their place. And what had been the upshot? Even greater disaster.

  It was worth asking whether the idea of a world in which people controlled their own destiny was only a foolish dream; quite simply a fable we like to tell ourselves about an imaginary paradise. If I were to accept that, then I might make a better job of taking vital decisions than I have so far. The trouble is I don’t want to accept it: that fable is rooted within me and has taken over my brain; it’s in my blood. I want to assert myself, to struggle; I want there to be ever greater justice in the world; that’s the reason why I studied law, it’s the reason why I do the things I do. The trouble is, bad laws are adopted somewhere higher up, and it’s left up to me to decide whether I accept this state of affairs and try people according to bad laws, while doing what I can to get round them a bit and lessen their impact, or whether I protest and attempt to prove the possibility of adopting better laws. Protest without any hope of my protest being heard, though in the certain knowledge that sooner or later I will provoke the legislators. Then not only will they remove me as a judge, I’ll also lose the opportunity to make any meaningful protest. At most it would be a gesture, and then the memory of a gesture. Perhaps one day it might encourage someone, or encourage their false hopes, more likely.

  Maybe there was a flaw in this way of thinking. He ought to try to identify it, otherwise he’d never reach a decision on anything.

  ‘This new étatisme – I shall call it police étatisme because the police become its chief agent and support and in the end proclaim themselves to be the state and their interests to be the interests of the entire community – has created a new form of exploitation, which we might describe as intellectual exploitation.’ Petr looked up from his paper and took off his glasses. It looked as if the interval had arrived.

  He helped himself to a sandwich and moved away to the open window. The sound of voices came from all around him. He overheard encouraging stories, all sorts of encouraging stories about how the present status quo could never be maintained and changes for the better were therefore inevitable. If only some of them were true the decline would be halted, the resurgence would begin again and paradise would be in sight after all. But this too brought to mind the days when he was in the fortress town. Every day parched souls would be refreshed by a shower of good news: the German front would be collapsing and twice a week the Allies would be making landings on the French coast. Hope never ceased to shine and its sunny rays accompanied the multitudes all the way to the ramps where they were selected for the gas chambers. The only thing that puzzled him was that some part of the hope had been fulfilled after all: the war had come to an end and the decline seemed to have been halted, and it really had seemed to him that he held his destiny in his own hands. Most likely it had been the greatest mistake of his life.

  It was probably important to know who or what embodied one’s destiny at a given moment, whether king, party, God, leader or police. But the thing he’d like to know above all was how one should live in the knowledge that destiny is irreversible.

  He suddenly became restless; there was no sense in his staying; he wouldn’t listen anyway.

  At the corner of the street he found a telephone booth. Before entering it he looked back at Petr’s house. Oldřich was just coming out of the front gate. Fortunately he set off in the opposite direction.

  3

  Someone picked up the receiver and before Adam had a chance to say anything, the sound of distant music and a muffled man’s voice could be heard from the other end. It might just as easily have come from a radio.

  ‘Hello!’ she said.

  ‘Is that you, Alexandra? This is Adam. Am I disturbing you?’

  ‘Why should you be disturbing me? Oldřich said you’d be at some party or other.’

  ‘We were.’

  ‘And did you leave?’

  ‘I left to call you.’

  ‘That’s nice of you.’

  ‘I didn’t catch you in the middle of something, did I?’

  ‘Not in the least, I was just listening to a record. A friend sent it me from Holland recently. Drop by some time, I’ll play it to you.’

  ‘Are you going to spend the whole evening playing records?’

  ‘No – I’m not sure. I never know in advance what I’ll be doing. I’ll probably buzz off somewhere, it’s too nice an evening to stay indoors.’

  ‘Do you think we might go somewhere together? Or do you have company already?’

  ‘Something, yes.’

  ‘I’m sorry!’

  She dropped her voice so that she was scarcely audible: ‘I didn’t know you’d be calling.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t.’

  ‘Unless you felt like joining us. There’d be no problem if you fancied it.’

  ‘No, thanks. I’ll go straight home.’

  ‘As you like. But there was no reason why you shouldn’t join us. And don’t forget to drop by and hear that record.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll come over some time.’

  ‘You can always give me a call at work beforehand so I know you’re coming.’ She hung up and was gone.

  He left the booth. Television sets screamed from open windows and a tramcar squealed in the distance. Otherwise the place was a desert. Neither people, dogs nor trees. Just drab cars parked along the kerb. But then he caught sight of a young couple crouching behind one of the cars. The young man was wearing a double-breasted suit and carrying an attaché case under his arm. The woman was certainly older than he. They sensed his eyes on them, turned and walked slowly away.

  Where should he go? If only Alena were here with the children. But there was no sense in driving out to them now. It would be midnight before he arrived and he’d have to leave again in the morning. Or he could get on with some writing. He had actually started an extensive study of the role of the judge in different legal systems. Except that nobody would be interested in his book, so why go on working on it?

  A wind rose from the river and there was a flash of lightning over Petřín Hill in the distance.

  He was not too far from the courthouse. If he was going to be sitting on his own, he might as well sit in his office. At least in one’s office one could look forward to going home, even to an empty one, but w
hat was there to look forward to in an empty home?

  He walked up to his floor. An open window rattled in the corridor; he had to climb up on to the radiator to close it.

  A glimmer of light was coming from under his office door. It startled him. Who could have left the light on in his office? During the summer even the cleaners went home before dark. Or was there someone inside?

  He stood waiting outside the door until it struck him as a little ludicrous that he should be trying to eavesdrop on his own office.

  At the coffee table, Alice and his friend Oldřich were drinking wine.

  They exchanged glances. Alice blushed. Oldřich smiled.

  ‘I beg your pardon, I didn’t realise . . .’

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ Oldřich interrupted him. ‘It is your office. If you’ve come to do some work, we’ll go elsewhere.’

  ‘No, not at all. I just came to pick something up.’

  ‘If you’re in no hurry, you can join us,’ Oldřich suggested. ‘There must be another glass around here somewhere.’

  ‘No, thanks all the same. You know I don’t drink.’ He’d had enough polite invitations for one evening.

  ‘So you did a bunk too, then? It’s not the best sort of company to keep at present. It’s unfortunate,’ his friend said, turning to Alice, ‘but one has to be very careful whom one associates with these days. Things like that always used to stick in my gullet.’