Judge On Trial

by Ivan Klíma

  He got up from the bench. His legs felt light and his head was clear; he was in just the condition to go and try the most difficult of cases and he was almost certain of making the best judgements possible.

  4

  He pulled up in front of the cottage, unlocked the padlocks and switched on the current at the main. Usually he would wind up the big farmhouse pendulum clock as soon as he came in, but this time he did not. Behind the door stood a row of wellingtons: his own, Alena’s and Manda’s.

  (‘Hey, Daddy, where are you going?’

  ‘To mend the fence at the cottage.’

  ‘I want to go with you!’

  ‘You can’t. Who’d look after you there?’

  ‘I’m a big girl now. I can look after myself.’

  ‘I’ve got some things to see to on the way.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter, I’ll wait for you in the car.’

  ‘You can’t wait in the car all day.’

  ‘I can go to sleep in the car then.’)

  A half-full teapot had been left standing on the stove, the water in it covered in a rust-coloured greasy scum. Alena had forgotten to empty it again.

  (‘Adam, don’t go. We could all go on a walk somewhere. It’s ages since we’ve been anywhere.’

  ‘It’s not my fault you were never here.’

  ‘I was stupid. I regret it, Adam. I regret it awfully.’

  ‘But I don’t feel like walks at the moment.’

  ‘We have to talk it over, though. We can’t just leave it in the air like this.’)

  ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘You should know me by now.’ She was standing in the middle of the low-ceilinged sitting room: a tall, slim, beautiful stranger. He put his arms round her. She snuggled up to him but wouldn’t let him kiss her. ‘You promised me a drink, remember!’

  In the dresser he found a bottle of rum. It was covered in dust; he didn’t even know what it was doing there. He poured out two glasses – his own only half-full.

  ‘I don’t think much of your choice of drink.’

  ‘I’ll take the car and go and buy something else if you like.’

  ‘Why should you drive anywhere?’ She picked up the bottle. ‘It’s full: that’s the main thing.’ She sat down at the table in the same place as the student that time.

  He opened the food safe. ‘What do you prefer: rice or macaroni?’

  ‘You’re going to cook?’

  ‘We’ll have something to eat before going to bed, surely?’

  ‘I’m not used to being cooked for. A piece of bread would do me.’

  He switched on the electric ring and put on some water to boil. On the wall opposite there hung a garland of everlasting flowers. Alena grew them every year in the flowerbed under the window and when she had dried the flowers, she hung them round the house.

  He could not rid himself of the feeling he was doing something inappropriate. It was wrong to have brought her here – the house resounded with familiar voices and they were all shouting against her; even his own voice was not sure on which side it belonged. If only she weren’t so perfectly turned out: her elaborate perfume and made-up face were out of place here and only made her seem more of a stranger.

  He broke the macaroni sticks in two and dropped them into the boiling water. Behind him he heard the sound of a cigarette lighter and his nostrils were filled with cigarette smoke, an unfamiliar smell in these surroundings. He opened the food safe in search of spices. The jars were labelled in large childish writing: MARJORAM! PAPRYKA DRID MUSH. He took a pinch of dried mushrooms and added them to the saucepan. He couldn’t recall his daughter painting the jars. He also opened a tin of frankfurters and chopped up the sausages.

  When they had eaten he would take her into the next room and the two of them would make love in Alena’s bed. That was the way it went. Beds are only things, they couldn’t care less who was lying in them.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand if you like. Or lay the table, at least,’ she suggested. She had no difficulty finding plates and cutlery. But her movements seemed out of place to him; she was a stranger here, and her presence seemed even to alienate him from himself.

  How had he come to be here at her side? Out of love? Out of desperation? So as not to have to find some way of filling the time whose emptiness would otherwise destroy him? The one did not rule out: the other, of course. And the very thing that now seemed out of place and alien to him could well end up seeming totally appropriate and even banal one day. She would be integrated into his life. Always supposing that either of them wanted it or had the courage to go through with it.

  ‘Have you got a candle somewhere?’ she asked. ‘I don’t like the light here. Or rather, the things I can see in this light. There are too many unfamiliar objects around me.’

  He found two candles in the pantry, and what’s more a wooden candlestick.

  She placed the candlestick in the middle of the table and put the other candle in an empty jam pot before switching off the light. ‘Don’t you think that’s better?’ The shadow of her head stretched itself along the wall and looked ghostly to him.

  He divided the food between the plates.

  ‘It’s lovely to have someone bring me a plate of food. Where did you learn to cook?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Were you an only child?’

  ‘No, I’ve a brother.’

  ‘You never mentioned him.’

  ‘He’s abroad. When you-know-what happened, he cleared out.’

  ‘At the very moment you came back. What made you return? Did you have some girlfriend here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or were you running away from one over there?’

  ‘Alena was over there with me, as you well know.’

  ‘Excuses, excuses. You’ve never told me anything about your girlfriends either.’

  ‘I don’t know what there is to tell.’

  ‘I’m sure you’d remember something if you tried.’

  For her it was a matter of course. People make love and deceive each other, just like eating and drinking. Or maybe she was testing him.

  She pushed away her plate. ‘That was very nice.’ She got up, picked up his plate as well and carried them over to the sink. ‘What does your brother do?’

  ‘He’s a mathematician.’

  ‘A pity. I was hoping he might at least be a rabbi.’

  ‘He’s nothing like me.’

  ‘Has he got a small nose?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And blue eyes?’

  ‘Blue-grey.’

  ‘And is he daft?’

  ‘No – just a trifle easy-going.’

  ‘Then you must be the daft one,’ she concluded. ‘Sometimes, anyway.’ She wiped her hands, returned to the table and topped up her glass. ‘Like when you chose that Alena of yours. She strikes me as a real dumb cluck. But on the other hand, maybe it wasn’t so daft. Maybe it was just what you needed. No one else would have been able to put up with you.’

  ‘Do you think I’m as bad as all that?’

  ‘The way you look at people, it’s as if you were just wondering what you might accuse them of first. I doubt if I could put up with you for long.’

  ‘You enjoy saying nasty things to people.’

  ‘I say what comes into my head. Take the way you’re looking at me now. You’re thinking: she drinks too much. She’s not the woman for me. Or for one thing only. It makes no difference. But you’re just keeping quiet. You’re afraid you might rile me, and that would be a shame now that you’ve brought me here.’

  He picked up the glass standing in front of her and carried it to the dresser. ‘Happy now?’

  ‘Yes, darling, that’s the way I like you. When I see you care about me. But you can bring me back that glass. I hate it when someone tries to clip my wings.’ She reached for it herself. ‘I won’t get drunk. This’ll be my last. And now, finally, tell me something about American girls.’

  ‘I met my first
American woman in England,’ he recalled. ‘It was on a pleasure steamer, cruising along Loch Ness.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘I couldn’t describe her any more. I thought she looked like my wife. She had fair hair, and when I first caught sight of her,’ he had recalled something after all, ‘she was wearing a nautical T-shirt and shorts. She had tanned legs like yours.’

  ‘Hair like your wife’s and legs like mine. She must have looked a proper mongrel.’

  ‘She was travelling round the world with her father, and she told me about it. She told me they once caught a mountain eagle somewhere in Afghanistan. They tied its legs together and were carrying it home in their jeep. But the eagle freed itself.’ He suddenly realised that the story, which at the time had sounded touching and had even moved him, was losing any point it had in the retelling. ‘Her father drove and she kept an eye on the eagle. The eagle freed itself but didn’t have enough space to flap its wings. Or it was afraid to call attention to itself. She claimed that it spread its wings and waited. And then all at once the wind carried it upwards.’

  ‘And did you make love to her?’ she asked with impatience.

  ‘I didn’t have time.’

  ‘I said you were daft. I bet you were afraid of being unfaithful to your wife.’

  ‘Does that strike you as so very daft?’

  ‘No. Sorry! On the contrary, it’s very nice to be faithful to one’s wife. Particularly when she’s as fantastic as yours. I expect she was always faithful to you too.’

  He stood up.

  ‘There’s no need to take offence. You can tell me some more fairy stories. I love hearing about how people love each other and are true to each other till the day they die.’

  He started to see red, but there was no sense in arguing. Or rather he had no comment to make and nothing to defend. He went into the bedroom and found clean bedding in the cupboard.

  The sense of impropriety remained with him. Feelings of guilt, in fact. But maybe it was only his mind’s conditioned reaction to stimuli, no more than the product of auto-suggestion. Like when an invalid felt pain in a leg long amputated. Whom could he harm? His children? Or himself? How did one do the greatest harm to oneself? When one failed to live according to one’s spiritual needs, or failed to heed one’s inner voice. He had lost the habit of listening to himself so long ago that he would have difficulty recognising his own voice. What he needed now was quiet. The quiet of the desert he had once come to know. He longed to lie down all alone on a sun-scorched rock and stare up into a sky that was quiet, impassive and infinite.

  He switched on the electric fire and sat down on the bed he had made, and listened to hear if there was any sound from the next room – but there was none. Only above his head – thump, thump.

  Is there something up?

  No. It’s just I’m still het up about what he did. I got a terrible fright. But there’s no need for you to upset yourself!

  Only others’ voices still.

  In a moment he’d bring her in here, press her to himself and start listening to her and yearning to hear her moan at last.

  It was wrong to have brought her here. The place was haunted by too many other voices; all he wanted was for one of them to drown the rest – and he also wanted to hug someone and not to be alone. Was this love?

  I’d like to experience that miracle and be close to someone, to be so close to you that the world around me falls silent, so close that we are enveloped by a stillness as deep as the Milky Way, a stillness that would pervade us so that we could hear one another without having to talk.

  But I don’t know if I’ll be able to accept you, whether I’d still be able to accept anyone in such total intimacy even if I tried.

  She was sitting at the table just as he had left her. There was just less liquid in the bottle and more tobacco smoke in the room.

  ‘Were you wanting to do a bunk?’ she said, turning her gaze to him. ‘To run home to your dear ones?’

  ‘I was making up the bed.’

  ‘You’re always finding excuses. It went through your mind. You thought very carefully about how you should behave in order to do the least harm. But you could easily have left me here.’

  ‘What would you do?’

  ‘Sleep. Just sleep. I’d make up for all those years that I’ve had to get up at six in the morning. And I might have done a bit of drawing. I caught sight of a drawing pad and pencils here somewhere.’

  ‘That’s Manda’s. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t do some drawing even though I haven’t left.’

  ‘What is there here for me to draw? Unless I drew you sitting at the table drinking. You’re so beautifully lop-sided. One shoulder up here and the other almost under the table.’

  ‘OK, I’ll sit for you.’

  ‘You didn’t take it seriously? But I don’t know whether I’m still up to it. It’s ages since I drew anyone.’

  ‘You can do a bad drawing of me. When I was a lad I painted too, and it never bothered me when it wasn’t good.’

  She took the drawing pad from the shelf and sat down on the stool by the window. ‘It’s yellow paper, the sort I always hated. And the pencil’s a hard one.’

  ‘Am I to look at you?’

  ‘No, drink that disgusting rum, or just sit there and look normal.’

  ‘What way do I normally look?’

  ‘As if you were just off to the dentist’s. Or about to make a speech. Everyone has a particular look. When Ruml looks at someone, he tries to give the impression he’s just had a world-shattering idea.’ She looked at him intently while making rapid sketches. ‘Perhaps you’d sooner go to bed and I’m only stopping you now.’

  ‘Why, if it gives you pleasure . . .’

  ‘You seriously want to give me pleasure? If you’re not careful I’ll be so touched I’ll draw you with wings.’ She looked again at him but this time her gaze rested on him longer, and he could have sworn he saw tears in her eyes. Could it be that all her talk, all her mocking comments and attacks, were just a way of disguising her vulnerability and her timid hope?

  ‘I’m not used to people being nice to me,’ she said. ‘All they want is for me to be nice to them. Ruml sometimes gets the idea I’m not nice enough. Then there’s a fantastic row and he wallops me, knocks out one of my teeth or hurls at me everything he can lay his hands on.’ She touched her face where a scar showed through the layer of make-up. ‘I got that from a lead crystal vase. He must have been really pissed off that time to have sacrificed something expensive. He’s very careful with his precious possessions otherwise.’

  ‘And you just put up with it?’

  ‘No. I spit at him and scratch him. Unfortunately he’s stronger than I am and I always end up getting a walloping . . . Maybe I deserve it. Don’t you beat your wife when she deserves it?’

  ‘I’ve never beaten any woman.’

  ‘I think I’d better draw you with wings after all.’ She gazed at him, not drawing any more. ‘He did treat me decently once. When they wouldn’t give me a place in art school, I wanted to stay at home for a year and do some painting so I’d learn something on my own and then try again the following year. And then someone denounced me as a parasite and I was in a real fix. Mum’s fellow had put her on to Ruml and he really did arrange it so the whole thing was hushed up. I loved him for it – maybe it was mutual, he married me afterwards. So I stay with him even though he wallops me. Or maybe you think I ought to tell him to sling his hook and then wait for someone to turn up who’ll be so over the moon about me that he’ll take me and the girl? Someone honourable and fair-minded – like you! Don’t lie to me! You’re only too pleased I’ve got Ruml and you won’t be lumbered with me. You can dump me whenever you like. It’s what you were thinking of doing a moment ago, anyway – you think I couldn’t tell? Sometimes I hate you. All you men.’ She stood up, crumpled the paper, opened the stove door and threw the drawing in.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Noth
ing!’ she snapped. ‘All I can do now is colour in dog’s gobs.’ She sat down on the chair next to the stove, her hands in her lap. She had long, slender fingers and narrow wrists – like his mother.

  ‘What are you staring at me for?’ she protested. ‘I never said I’d manage it. I don’t pretend to be an artist.’

  ‘That picture wasn’t important anyway.’ He took her hand. ‘Come out of here – you can have a lie down next door.’

  ‘Yes, I want to sleep,’ she agreed. ‘I want to sleep and think about nothing. Not even you!’

  ‘All right.’ He led her into the next room.

  ‘You really did make the bed?’ She undressed quickly while he stood motionless by the door.

  ‘Aren’t you going to join me in bed?’

  ‘I thought you said . . .’

  ‘Get a move on. It’s cold in here.’ She cuddled up to him and put her arms round him.

  ‘Did you like it with me? Just a little bit?’

  ‘You mean you couldn’t tell?’

  ‘I got drunk. I bet you think I’m terrible. But I was just miserable.’

  ‘Don’t think about it any more.’

  ‘What am I supposed to think about?’

  ‘Think about us being together.’

  ‘What’s the point of thinking about us being together? Tell me what you live for, instead.’

  ‘Why does that occur to you now?’

  ‘It didn’t just occur to me. No one’s ever able to tell me what they actually live for. And it struck me you might know. You seemed to me a bit of a rabbi.’

  ‘Do you think rabbis know?’

  ‘I don’t know whether rabbis do, it struck me that you might know something. That you’d be able to tell me the right way to live.’

  ‘I think you’ll be disappointed.’

  ‘You mean you don’t know?’

  ‘Who can possibly know?’

  ‘You’re just like the rest! How can you be a judge then?’