Judge On Trial

by Ivan Klíma

  But human reason was indomitable and had always been humanity’s guide. Hence reason would always find a way out of the darkness; it would emerge from silence and rise from the dead. Only now was I approaching the purpose of my essay. What else was reason’s supreme achievement but my Model State: a society carefully run so as to leave no scope for unreason? What else was the apogee of reason but the idea of socialism? The new judiciary would determine culpability solely on the basis of evidence that could be verified rationally. The sole objective of the court would be to steer citizens who had gone astray back on to the path of rational and useful activity and peaceful coexistence.

  The thesis was sixty pages long – twice the required length. Only later did I discover that my teachers had long argued about whether it was a case of extreme naivety, or, on the contrary, extremely subtle insolence, whether I had really got so worked up about an extinct form of justice or whether I had been artfully attacking the present legal system. I don’t know who stood up for me and persuaded the rest to accept the former assessment, but I do recall Professor Lyon bringing me into his office at that time. He wanted to know if I had a particular interest in the history of law, or whether perhaps my concern was the executive, or even, quite simply, the death penalty.

  I gave a confused answer of some sort because up to that moment I had had no particular interest. He told me he had read my thesis with interest (it had not occurred to me that he would read it) and asked me if I would like to visit him at home some time.

  He was one of the most respected specialists in the field of penal law, so the mere fact of the invitation flattered me.

  4

  I found it impossible to imagine what went on inside the heads of the older professors. We youngsters could scarcely have any real inkling of what law, legal culture or legal traditions were. We didn’t even know the basic terms. Even had we been aware of the decline, we had no way of gauging its extent. But what about those erudite gentlemen who had still had the opportunity to study Roman law, who still retained, or should have, something of the pride and sense of independence their profession could once boast? Many of them had left, of course, and many had been expelled, but what about those who remained? How did they feel when the faculty was swamped by semi-educated youngsters who immediately started to lecture them on what they should teach, what they should study, what they should believe and what they should condemn? What could have been the feelings of men who had penned truly scholarly works when they read in their journal (one of the oldest in the country) theoretical essays for which they would have failed first-year law students? And here they were signed by their colleagues. What were their feelings when they themselves concocted similar articles or even whole books? Why did they behave the way they did? Were they goaded by fear, or was it only the cynicism of people who had already lived through too many changes? Or did they too believe that there was no direction in which to continue, and that it really was necessary to start afresh and from the bitterest beginnings seek to give legislation and law a new meaning, in the same way that life was being given a new meaning? Or did they have the wisdom to know that it was only a passing phase? Revolutionary fury would always blow itself out, the revolution would start to eat its own and they would be needed to assist the work of auto-destruction. Then they would return to their interrupted work and resume the tradition where it had been curtailed.

  I remember my uneasiness on first entering Professor Lyon’s study at his villa in Dejvice. The window filled one wall and the three other walls were covered in pictures and shelves of books. I couldn’t understand why he had invited me, why he had taken a liking to me – if he had at all. But he invited me on several occasions and I would sit there in a deep leather armchair gazing at the wall full of books which were totally inaccessible to me, because, though I had almost completed my studies, I was incapable of reading in even one of the world languages.

  The professor would ask me more about my interests. He wanted to know what had made me write as I had, why I had discussed bygone trials and bygone injustices with such fervour. Why was I so incensed by violence which had taken place such a long time before? Then he told me I allowed my feelings to run away with me. It was wrong for a lawyer to let his feelings get the better of him or get carried away with false hopes. Legislation was enacted and its implementation was assured by the rulers, and rulers always used violence; every law was intrinsically an act of violence against human liberty. He asked me whether I believed it was possible to achieve some kind of pure justice. I said I didn’t know (I tended to be humble in his presence) but that maybe we ought to strive for it.

  Yes, of course, that was how it always started. Everyone yearned for perfection and purity. As if there existed some collective creative spirit that soared ever higher and higher. However, it soon found itself far above the earth and got lost in the clouds, whereupon it forgot why it had set out in the first place and where it was bound. At that point it could see only itself and became fascinated by its own image. It actually became bewitched by its own face, its own proceedings, its own words, its own form, its perfect logical judgement. That was when concepts of pure reason and justice emerged, along with theories about the absolute norm in art, philosophy and jurisprudence. Whither the spirit then? Where could it soar to now? Then all of a sudden, the spirit would plunge to the depths, where crass, commonplace passions seethed, where teeming crowds consumed rissoles with enthusiasm, and therefore had no time – or, alternatively, were so hungry that they did not have the strength – to register anything of that fallen beauty. There was nothing wrong with my striving for absolute justice if it tickled me to, but I should never delude myself it was attainable. Unless I wanted to assist a further decline, I had always to remember that in reality there was no such thing as justice or the law. What was there, then? All there was was compromise with the rulers as they decreed a greater or lesser degree of injustice – a degree dictated by their self-confidence not their conscience, he stressed.

  And on another occasion, when he knew me better and could talk more openly, he said that many intellectual disciplines might vegetate in our country, but two could not exist at all: philosophy and law. I waited for him to explain, but he either considered the statement self-evident or simply intended it as an aphorism. He merely added that law was superb as a code. And the more perfect and logical a code was, the more magnificent it was. But this was at the cost of increased artificiality, rendering it less capable of existing in reality. Hence the opportunity to study and reflect on law offered the greatest satisfaction while the requirement to implement it was the saddest or most painful fate that could befall one. The practice of law led either to cynicism or madness. We could see examples of the former all around us, and as for the latter, suffice it to recall Kafka, who, though few realised it, was a Prague lawyer. I didn’t know who he was talking about and was ashamed to ask.

  I hung on his lips; I was grateful for his noticing me and for his efforts to enlighten me. Only years later did it occur to me that his words during our meetings were first and foremost a skilful and poignant apology for his own degradation.

  5

  My mother and brother accompanied me to the station. Mother asked me to tell Father, if I got to see him at all, that she was still thinking of him all the time but was in no fit state to undertake such a long journey. She was also afraid that the agitation might kill her. Moreover we couldn’t afford so many tickets. But in all events we would soon be seeing each other again; after all, the lawyer had written to say that we could expect Father home as soon as the trial finished. My brother gave me a statuette he had made out of wire, screws and coloured tin cans. I expected that Father would never be allowed to take something like that back to his cell if he was convicted, while if he was released it would be pointless dragging a sculpture to the other end of the republic, but I took it just to please my brother. I also took a kilo of oranges from Uncle Gustav, as well as a cake and a strudel from Mother. I took
for myself an Edgar Wallace thriller to help shorten the day-long journey. I well remember standing on the open platform of the stopping train, my briefcase between my knees, avidly devouring the gruesome details of the ill-contrived story while the train bore me onwards towards a real-life adventure.

  The old fortified town lay in flat terrain on the River Morava. Autumn was just beginning. I roamed along the rounded cobblestones. In the park, begonias and dahlias bloomed in the flowerbeds and two old ladies in folk costume sat on a bench. The defence lawyer had the face of a genial Mickey Mouse. He invited me to the local coffee-house and repeated the joyful news he had already sent us: that the prosecutor would only be indicting Father under ‘para 135’ which virtually guaranteed his release (though he was sure he didn’t need to explain that to me). The maximum penalty possible was three years’ imprisonment and my father had already served twenty-two months on remand, but the court was unlikely to exceed half the maximum. That’s what he was hoping to achieve; after all my father was a first offender and moreover he had resistance activity to his credit. Every so often, the defence counsel would glance over to the neighbouring table though it was as yet unoccupied. Even so, he lowered his voice until he was scarcely audible. He started to complain, telling me how things were difficult for him here, sometimes as many as twenty cases a month. He had received the brief for Father’s case only a week ago: all nine hundred pages of it! But it was a blessing that the times had improved. It was not so long ago that sentences of ten and even fifteen years were handed down for things like this. What did he mean by ‘things like this’? He smiled at my question.

  I said I knew my father, and it was inconceivable to me that he might fail to fulfil his duty, let alone deliberately neglect it. My father was a remarkable man and no one could even imagine just how much he loved his work and how much time he devoted to it . . . I realised how trite my words were and how shallow my portrait of Father; they could have fitted anyone. At that, the counsel leaned over so far that his mouth almost touched my face and whispered: But my dear colleague, you know very well that what you say is totally immaterial. How can one talk about innocence or guilt in the present climate!

  The next day I got up at about five, slipped out of the hotel and made for the prison. The streets were empty. Beyond a high wall rose the grey, gloomy walls of the prison itself. I had no idea which was the window of Father’s cell, and that wasn’t what mattered. His could be any one of them. Suddenly I realised the complete absurdity of Father being there. I strained to catch any sounds from inside but the windows were too far away for any to reach my ears.

  I entered the still empty courtroom and sat down on the rearmost bench. Then it occurred to me that I would be better occupied finding the defence counsel and trying to have another chat with him, to plead with him to do everything in his power. But what power did he have? It would make more sense to go and see the judge or the prosecutor, or whoever it was who decided on the actual level of sentence. I stood up, but at that moment several strangers came in and sat down on the bench in front of mine, and then I caught sight of Father. He was coming through the door escorted by two warders. I was still standing while the rest were seated, so he noticed me immediately. I raised my hand in a small wave and gazed at my father’s pale features. He seemed to me incredibly small and slight, almost lost in his best suit, the black one with the blue stripe. He nodded to me too: just a motion of the head, like the one he made the day they took him away, and smiled. One of the guards said something to him and Father nodded and now looked the other way, so that he was staring at the wall, or at the portrait of the President, to be precise; he was not allowed to look at the son he had not seen for two years. But I looked at him. That slight, gaunt man with his high forehead and still thick head of hair had fathered me in a moment of love, had engendered me in a moment of freedom and delight, and now here he was sitting like a trapped rabbit, not for the first time in his life. Why? And there was I sitting just a few yards from him and not allowed to speak to him. And why not? I wasn’t doing anything to help him – what kind of son was I? And I felt tears welling up in me. Then the judge entered and at last I was able to hear Father’s voice after so long. The prosecutor read out the indictment: a list of absurd offences that Father had not committed. I found it impossible to follow however hard I concentrated. So this was justice, I could not help repeating to myself, when one person was trapped between two guards and was not allowed to turn his head towards his own son; this was justice: one was the defendant – why? – one was the judge – why? – and one was the warder – why? Why, when their roles could be switched around and reallocated? The defendant would be the judge, the judge would be only a warder and the warder would be the defendant, or the warder could be the judge, the defendant the warder and the judge would be on trial – all of that would be equally conceivable, and that was how it had certainly been on so many occasions, and it would still be justice. I tried to discover something from the judge’s face. He too must know it, I thought to myself, the same thought must have struck him too, he must have realised at some time the arbitrariness of what he was doing, this pretence of being a model individual judging a malefactor. And for a moment I actually managed to delude myself that the judge would have to acknowledge Father’s integrity and conclude that he was incompetent to pass judgement on a man who had suffered so much in his life, who knew so much and had worked so hard for the good of others. Once more I heard Father’s voice saying no, he didn’t feel guilty, and then they ushered us out of the room, having declared, contrary to the spirit of the law, that the entire hearing would be held in camera.

  They convicted Father on the grounds that some enormous machine in Poland had not worked as it was supposed to, which could have been as experts testified, either a fault in the manufacture or the assembly; in addition, on the grounds that he habitually gave his instructions orally and not in writing, thereby making it impossible to check his work; and lastly, on the grounds that he had not paid sufficient attention to the training of younger engineers. They sentenced him to twenty-five months’ imprisonment. The judge read out the verdict as if it was a report about shoe production or the potato harvest, not once raising his eyes from the paper, never once looking in the direction of Father or the public benches. He didn’t raise his voice and made no pretence of feeling or thinking anything at all. Appeals could be lodged against the verdict within eight days of receipt of the verdict in writing.

  They permitted me a visit that same afternoon.

  I was let in through a gate which closed behind me, led across a yard and then along gloomy prison corridors. I held tightly to the bag with my brother’s statuette, the oranges, the strudel and cake (and I had been out to a buffet and bought a fresh schnitzel and a length of salami to add to them). I was shown into the visiting room, which made an ineffectual show of trying to look civilian. I sat down and took out the sculpture and the food. I felt a sense of total emptiness growing within me, an absence of everything – pain or tears or reactions of any kind. I put the statuette away again and stood up, but then I remembered it was against the rules and I sat back down. At last my father appeared.

  They sat him down opposite me. Father gave a slightly bemused smile and said he was glad to see me. And then suddenly his voice quavered and I saw his Adam’s apple give a leap. He asked what was the matter with Mother, why hadn’t she come?

  We had been expecting him to be released, we had not counted on those extra three months. And I started to give him the news, relating almost with relish how we lived on an abundance of student-canteen buns and soup and talking about my studies and how we would all be together for Christmas, and how Hanuš had built a new bookshelf above his desk, and Father was relieved. His gaunt face seemed to me youthful, almost boyish, a little boy scout erecting a tent in an old grey photograph in the family album unaware of what life held in store for him. The same eyes, the same person.

  He asked me whether I had a girlfriend yet an
d how Hanuš was getting on with his studies. Our time was running out; the guard looked at his watch and announced five minutes more. Then he got up, took several paces away from us and started to look out of the window. It was almost blatant permission. Father leaned towards me and said rapidly: ‘Adam, it’s all lies and falsehoods. Lies and falsehoods.’ The guard at the window turned round.

  This, then, was Father’s message, the most important thing he had to tell us, the essence of months and months of reflection: the whole of life in a single sentence, one little word, in fact –

  Lies

  That evening, as I took the train home, alone in the compartment, the landscape beyond the window swallowed up in a cascade of sparks, I realised that Father was just falling asleep in that alien town, inside a tomb-like building with barred windows; and I thought of a whole landscape that, like a tomb, was quietly devouring thousands of its children and waiting for more innocent bodies, a landscape full of tombs, full of malevolent witnesses, a landscape to which at any time I too could be taken, hands above my head, a pistol at the nape of my neck, a pistol aimed at my forehead, the shots were already ringing out, I could no longer hear them anyway, my blood was flowing, dogs were running up, the sound of shovels on stone, shots, funeral carts with cold outstretched arms and contorted heads protruding stiffly from them; the carts were wending their way in procession through the world, my realm of freedom, my slaughterhouse, my model state, my camp, my prison, my tomb, my dead landscape bathed in moonlight.

  And when at last I started to fall asleep, lulled by the rasp of iron against iron, the conviction took hold of me that I would change it, I had to change it.

  Chapter Six