Judge On Trial

by Ivan Klíma

  Some people in the stern – they must have got drunk during the trip – were singing Italian songs, the water gurgled softly as it flowed past the sides of the boat and my neighbour started yet another story. When she and her father were returning in their jeep along a valley in the Koh-I-Baba Mountains, they caught sight of a rock eagle drinking from a tarn in the middle of a deserted stony plain. She had often seen those magnificent birds of prey in flight but never on the ground. Her father said that when eagles drank they lost their sense of balance which prevented them taking off immediately and he started to drive the jeep towards the bird. And the enormous bird really did not fly away but instead retreated towards some rocks. They cornered him in a narrow hollow where her father rushed and overpowered him, tying his wings and legs together and tossing him in the back of the open jeep before driving off again.

  She could hear the eagle giving out dreadful squawks – of despair, most likely. From time to time she glanced at the back seat and could see him watching her with his yellowish eye. She felt almost an animal’s disquiet at that gaze, combined with a sense of awe at his majestic size. Then she noticed that the eagle was beginning to free himself, that he had loosened the bonds by constantly moving his wings. She knew she ought to tell her father who was concentrating on the road ahead, but she also felt compassion for the captive in his desperate efforts to win back his freedom and could not bring herself to betray him. She watched as he slipped his wings out of the noose and started to spread them. He did not dare flap them, however, but just kept stretching them wider. She could see the feathers at the wingtips vibrate slightly and shake so as to catch the wind, until the bird suddenly rose into the sky, his legs still tied together. And he rose higher and higher without a single movement of his wings, while they left him further and further behind. She observed the eagle as he ascended silently to freedom without the slightest movement, and she realised that freedom was the creature’s element and together they formed a unity. For a moment she felt she too was a bird and flying upwards also.

  I detected emotion in her voice. That was the end of our conversation.

  I watched the distant banks and wondered whether I would be capable of recounting my own story, and if I managed it, whether I would find within it a single moment when I shook off my bonds and flew upwards.

  4

  I travelled abroad once more that year. It was my wife who decided that she would at least set eyes on the country where she had once decided to live, and also on Menachem with whom she had decided to share her life.

  On this occasion, she managed to overcome the authorities’ resistance and we were given permission to travel.

  Menachem no longer lived at the foot of the Hills of Galilee, but in a recently established kibbutz on the edge – or rather beyond the edge – of the desert. He drove to Tel Aviv to pick us up in a little Citroën whose dark bodywork became unbearably hot in the course of the journey.

  As we drove southwards, all trace of green quickly disappeared from the landscape, leaving sand and the occasional pitiful clump of yellowish grass. At the end of a two-hour drive we arrived at an artificial oasis: several agricultural sheds, dusty palms and eucalyptus trees growing from the bare, dead land, and a group of small, dazzling white houses actually surrounded by green lawns.

  They lodged us in the furthest of the houses. It must have served frequently as guest accommodation. It was a fine house like most of them there: a spacious living room, a small bedroom and an alcove with small refrigerator and a small table with a cooking-ring (main meals were prepared in the communal kitchen and eaten in the communal dining-room). On the verandah, deckchairs were set out. The windows were covered with venetian blinds, but in spite of them the heat was so great inside that I was covered in sweat almost as soon as I crossed the threshold.

  I raised the venetian blind and opened the window. Immediately beneath it, water gushed out in a geyser from an invisible opening, keeping alive a few square metres of lawn. Where the lawn ended, the Negev Desert began. Bare rocks towered out of the landscape like the ruins of a gigantic city. To me it seemed unearthly and inspirational. When I lowered the blinds once more, I noticed that the window ledge was covered in a layer of fine yellowish dust. I tried to wipe it off but it just blew about and caused me to sneeze.

  I would have liked a nap but my wife said she wanted to see round the kibbutz. We walked along a stone path that was so hot I could feel the heat through the soles of my shoes.

  If it had ever been that hot back home, Alena would have caught sunstroke the first afternoon, but here she seemed transformed. Tirelessly she rushed from one place to another. From Nazareth to Lake Tiberias, up to Galilee and back to Mount Carmel, from there to Haifa and back to a kibbutz near Lydda. She lost weight. Her normally pale skin started to tan. Whenever she removed her optical sunglasses I could see her eyes were red. I didn’t know whether it was from the glaring sunlight or from exhaustion.

  Menachem was waiting for us in front of the communal building. He invited us into the communal dining-room and asked if we would like to tour the kibbutz after our meal or go for a drive in the desert. About an hour’s drive from there was one of the first desert settlements; it had been established by its members even before roads had been built or pipes laid down to bring them water. They were true pioneers. They not only suffered from thirst, they also had to fight with the nomads; in recent years, after retiring from office, a former prime minister had joined them there and helped them graze their flocks. Menachem added that he also had several good friends there who would certainly like to meet us.

  I had seen enough pioneer settlements during the previous days and heard too many stories – full of pathos and heroism – which did not concern me. It also occurred to me that my wife would no doubt like to travel with Menachem alone. After all, he was her acquaintance, her former boyfriend.

  She was kind and attentive towards me. She went with me to our temporary accommodation, and insisted that I lie down and eat an orange. Then, although I had no headache, she laid a wet towel on my forehead and left.

  I woke in the middle of the night and found to my sudden surprise that I was alone. From outside there came a strange hissing noise and it took me a few moments to realise that it was the sound of gushing water. I looked at my watch: it was two in the morning. It seemed odd to me that Alena hadn’t yet returned from her excursion to a place that was supposed to be only an hour’s journey away. I got up. The tiled floor was warm to my feet. I browsed among the books for a while. I started to feel increasingly uneasy. I had never been superstitious, but it suddenly struck me that her unusually considerate treatment of me had been a premonition of disaster. In a country where bombs were exploding all the time and where a solitary vengeance-seeker could turn up at any roadside, I shouldn’t have allowed her to go off without me. For a moment I was tormented by the image of her lying by an overturned car on a deserted road, her face, which still seemed childlike to me, bearing an expression of amazement. She had never accepted the idea that somewhere in the world she might come across a force that would challenge her, and so she was incapable of believing in personal danger. I was touched by her optimistic faith in life’s basic goodness, I loved her for her optimism and maybe I encouraged it by shielding her when I could from life’s worst troubles.

  Time dragged by. I could hear the distant drone of motors and from the darkness came the raucous shriek of some animal I could not identify.

  With an effort of will I sat down at the desk and took out a notepad. Before leaving home I had decided to write an article about the death penalty. I had prepared myself thoroughly, studying the views of advocates and opponents. Naturally, I didn’t have my notes with me, but that might be an advantage: I wouldn’t be influenced or distracted by others’ words. It was bizarre of me, of course, to start it here and at this time of night. Or perhaps it was the perfect time and place to start it, sitting here in the shadow of violent death.

  It was impossi
ble to concentrate. I rushed out of the house and dashed to the main road which, just beyond the kibbutz boundary, started to climb towards the mountains. There was no point in going further. I sat down on a low rock at the roadside. There was not a light to be seen. Was it possible that fate had brought me here, to the land of my forebears, in order to catch me and demonstrate its wilfulness – not upon me but upon the person who had become my closest companion in this life?

  The sand on either side of the road glistened palely in the moonlight. It was as if the almost forgotten misery of the human condition had suddenly been revealed before my eyes: skulls rolled around in the sand, so many of them that if they came back to life and exhaled, their breath would be a shriek filling the entire valley. My beloved friends from the fortress town, you will appear no more; your feet will no longer walk the sand of the desert, your breath will not reach me on this earth. My precious, darling wife: you, at least, breathe on me! May Azael – the Destroying Angel – pass you by, may your innocent face move him to pity.

  I waited there, offering myself as a ransom, but no one appeared to take me; no headlights appeared either. It struck me that they might have returned by another route, by some invisible path, and I ran back to our temporary abode.

  She did not appear until dawn.

  I heard her footsteps and someone else’s. They stopped beneath the window. I was so happy and excited that I dared not move, lest I scare her and change her into a phantasm. Then an indistinct whispering reached my ears and the door opened ever so quietly.

  I hugged her. She smelt of wine. I wanted to kiss her but she covered her mouth. Why wasn’t I sleeping! What had I been doing?

  I couldn’t sleep, so I started to write an article.

  An article? What about?

  About a legal problem of mine. And how about her?

  Nothing. Why didn’t I go to bed? Why was I staring at her? Whatever prompted me to start an article at this time?

  I was waiting for her, of course. I had to pass the time somehow. Had she enjoyed herself out there? Had she learnt anything interesting?

  She was tired, she would tell me everything the next day. She came no closer to me and did not kiss me as she usually did when coming in. She pushed aside the curtain and disappeared into the bathroom. I went over to the window and gazed out at the dead landscape as the light started to return.

  The sound of gurgling water came from the bathroom and then silence. I waited for my wife to come to me; I desired her, yearned for the touch of her body, her small hands; I awaited her with a strange anxiety, as if she were still far away in an unknown place. Then I called out to her, but she did not reply. So I pulled back the curtain myself.

  There she sat on the tiled floor, her back propped against the white wall, her legs tucked up almost to her chin and her hands joined on her breast, as if in prayer. She was asleep.

  5

  The article turned out to be important for me personally, even though I certainly said nothing particularly radical in it, but merely rehearsed the basic attitudes to the death penalty, an issue which had long ceased to be considered controversial here. In it (though I doubt that it would have been evident to anyone else), I challenged the belief which I myself had held until recently, that the value of life could be measured like all other values, in terms of ends (to what degree it served the Revolutionary Idea and its immediate interests – or what purported to be its interests); in other words, an enemy’s life was worth less than the life of a friend and comrade. It was a belief that asserted one of the cruellest of inequalities, an unequal right to life.

  I wrote the article with enthusiasm, and I really do feel I managed to present the maximum evidence for the proposition that the death penalty was a relic of times when the main aim of capital punishment was to exact retribution, appease an outraged public, or protect innocent people from criminals. At that time, I wrote, people still lacked explanations for the origin of crime and knew nothing of social diseases, let alone mental disorders. But how could we justify such punishment in our own days?

  I sent the article to a cultural weekly where it would attract a much wider readership than in a specialised journal.

  In time I was invited to the editorial offices and the editor went through my text with me, deleting from it the passages that seemed to me the most significant or at least the most personal, and promised that he would include the article in a future issue. I could therefore look forward to finding it there, unless something predictable happened to stop it, of course.

  Something predictable did happen – the censor vetoed it. I received a message from the editorial board asking whether I would like to attend the discussion at the relevant department of the Party’s Central Committee.

  There were three of them waiting for us in a large office (there were just the two of us).

  They all introduced themselves though I failed to catch their names, and we sat down at a table on which there lay several photostats of my article. Most of the text had been struck through with different coloured pencils by someone with a warped predilection for ornament, and in addition, large question and exclamation marks had been drawn in the margins.

  A secretary brought us coffee and the three of them talked together in low voices, while my companion clipped the end of his cigar and I sat there totally unaware of what we were waiting for. And then a door at the back opened and in came a little fellow with a small head on top of broad shoulders. There was something familiar about his chubby features. He nodded to the editor and even smiled at me, saying in a high, almost womanlike voice that we were acquainted, weren’t we? I nodded, but I still couldn’t place him or put a name to him. I therefore asked him how he was. He replied that they had just given him this job. And how about me, had I got married? I told him I had and he grinned, displaying ugly yellow teeth, and commented that they had been great times all the same. Did I still remember Eva? – after all I had been sweet on her in those days. She had married and divorced and not long ago had married an Abyssinian or some other Arab and gone off to Turkey with him.

  It was this display of geographical knowledge which at last enabled me to put a name to the face: Nimmrichter. And at once my mind went back to that garret in Košiře and that party of long ago with Nam the Korean, and the story of the priest and the underground cell, the priest he had called a ‘fat mouse’. And I was so overwhelmed with disgust that I turned away from him and sat down at the table without a word. My former classmate had no alternative but to open the meeting. For a while I tried to follow what he was saying, but then I realised it was the same old sentence all over again, the one he used to weave without end. Only the diction had changed: no doubt he had picked up the intonations he had heard at countless meetings. Thus those who pretended to be listening to him – everyone, in other words – were fooled into thinking that he was actually talking, speaking in sentences and moving from one idea to the next.

  When he finished speaking, having opened our discussion in worthy fashion, he nodded to one of his men, who, rapidly and without interest (as if he had said the words so often that he didn’t notice them any more), declared that the question of the death penalty was a serious problem and our society regarded it as an exceptional and temporary measure. That was also how it was formulated in the legislation. No doubt the time would come when we would consider the abolition of all punishments, and hence the supreme penalty also, but for the time being such a consideration would be premature, and I was bound to realise that we had no institutions in which to place the most serious criminals and assure their resocialisation. What would be the point of bothering the public with a question that was insoluble at the present time?

  Only later did I realise that this man, who for the rest of the discussion guarded a passive silence, had been trying to help me. He was trying to shift the whole argument to a level at which questions were admittedly separated into useful and non-productive, timely and non-timely, appropriate and inappropriate and so on, bu
t at which no one would get worked up about my having expressed subversive ideas.

  It was then the turn of his colleague. He declared that our legislation had become a matter for the working people. I would be surprised how often, in cases where professional judges hesitated about a verdict or even fell into error, ordinary people with their sense of justice had a proper perception of the seriousness of an offence. How many times, in cases in which we, lawyers, narrow-mindedly insisted on the letter of the law, the people were capable of being broad-minded, but how, on the other hand . . . I was amazed to find, even though he was talking directly to me, his words started to become incoherent.

  Suddenly he paused, staring at me, and I realised that his last sentence had been a question.

  Receiving no answer from me, he gave the reply himself, declaring triumphantly that a law like that would not be understood by people, let alone approved.

  Then the last of them took the floor. He was an older fellow wearing shoemender’s spectacles. He reminded me of the father of my long-exiled schoolmate and I subconsciously expected him to say something wise.

  He said he had read the article with interest, for the very reason that he himself had once occupied the condemned cell. He fell silent and lowered his head, so that his glasses slipped to the end of his nose and he gazed at me through the cut-off lenses with a look that seemed to me benevolently stern, and added that in those days they used to execute the best sons of the working class. Since then, everything had changed, which certainly none of us here doubted. These days, only criminal elements and real enemies of our system landed in court. It was true, he said for my benefit, that there had always been individuals among the workers who ended up taking the path of crime, but in those days conditions were such that many of them quite simply had no other choice. Class society was cruel and grounded on violence, selfishness and property, not like our new society which we had built on comradely relations and mutual help and trust.