Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

And then out of the kitchen came Mother: monumentally buxom, her thick hair, which was still dark, combed into a bun. She smiled at me and extended to me a large, almost masculine, hand (so unlike her daughter’s), while summoning the family to her in a deep voice, and I realised that in this family, matriarchy survived untouched by time.

Then we all sat around an enormous table and ate goose with cabbage and dumplings (the goose was in my honour, in honour of a potential new member of the family and I was immediately horror-stricken at the very thought of it), drank beer, ate a dessert and sipped coffee from mocha cups. My future sister-in-law Sylva carried the infant back and forth and my brother-in-law-to-be started arguing with the grandfather about some motor-car problems. My wife-to-be then slipped as she was carrying away the dirty dishes and the awful sound of breaking china drowned the surrounding din. Brought up in the rather fastidious surroundings of our household, I sat with bated breath wondering what would happen next, but nothing did; my wife-to-be and her sister-in-law merely brought a dustpan and brush and swept up the pieces while her mother, now that the lunch was finally behind us, sat me down in an armchair and asked me if I liked music, telling me straight away that they all loved music. Music brought some measure of tranquillity to people’s lives in the hectic modern world and helped one discover that necessary inner peace and serenity. The most important things in people’s lives, she stressed, were harmony and mutual understanding. Then she asked me what my work actually consisted of, but I had hardly managed to utter a few sentences when she interrupted me and sent the remaining female family members off to wash the rest of the unbroken dishes. Then she told me that what she really wanted to know was if my employment did not take up too much time. In the current rat-race for money and success people no longer had any free time left for themselves, let alone their families. She could not accept such an attitude.

She also wanted to know whether my profession was not rather risky. I could not understand what she meant by the question. Only later did it dawn on me that she had been afraid that if there were a change in the status quo (not that she found the present status quo particularly unbearable, but because she had lived through too many sudden, abrupt changes in her lifetime) my existence might be in jeopardy and they might send me to prison, or even the gallows.

I also had to explain to her how things had been for me during the war, and all about my mother’s illness. She decided that she would send my mother some herbal teas which were excellent for the heart, the nerves and the digestion. And at once she stood up — monumental in her wide dark skirt — and strode into the front hall, where she opened one of the many cupboards. After turning out a pile of rags, a whole bundle of old-fashioned straw hats and several boxes — I could not see their contents but they gave out a tinkle like glass — followed by a cellophane bag of pheasant’s feathers, she at last found what she was looking for: an old Van Houten’s cocoa tin. In a single breath she blew a cloud of dust off it and after removing the lid — in the process, releasing several moths which flew noiselessly up to the ceiling — placed before me in yellowing bags (the work of her late mother-in-law who had collected the herbs herself) the miraculous teas.

It struck me that although this household differed utterly from my own ordered and restrained home, where everyone worked, where most of the time they were all ensconced in their hideouts, and where one spoke quietly and only about essentials, this too was a home, or rather that collection of people, that place of constant bustle, shouts, crying, laughter and non-committal words, was a home.

4

The spring of that year was cold and rainy — Alena and I would go for walks together, taking a train or a bus a little way out of the city. Then we would wade through wet meadows and tramp along muddy footpaths. Leaning against the mighty trunk of some rare fir tree in the Průhonice Game Park, we kissed and cuddled while flakes of late snow blew all around us.

Often we would be caught out in the dark and I would suggest to Alena that I might be able to find somewhere for us to stay the night, but she always refused. It would not be proper. And what would Mother say? We would therefore make a dash for the last train, huddling together under the eaves of the station building while enormous drips fell alongside us from the holes in the guttering above.

She also refused to come and see me at our flat except for visits when the whole family was present.

But we would have to remain together one day. Just the two of us! Why was I so impatient? One day we would go off on a journey and stay somewhere together. And when would it be? I probably didn’t love her enough if I was so impatient.

Then Oldřich offered to lend me his flat. All right, she would go there with me if that was what I wanted. Was I certain there would be no one in the flat? I assured her there wouldn’t, that Oldřich and his wife were the only people living in the flat and they were out at work, and their little girl went to nursery. What if one of them were to be taken ill and return unexpectedly? I told her it was unlikely.

So we found ourselves in a small room which supposedly served as a joint bedroom, but clearly belonged to Alexandra. The furniture in it was white; a chair with red and purple seat covers, a wardrobe and a dressing table cluttered with trinkets. A skirt lay strewn over an arm of the armchair and a pair of women’s slippers peeped out from under the bed. An artificial scent of jasmine hung in the air.

And that was where we first made love. In the silence of a strange room; just the sound of rain outside and at one moment the loud chime of a clock from the room next door, which made us jump.

She wanted me to tell her over and over again that I loved her, and so I did. In reply, she whispered that she loved me too. She also wanted me to tell her I wouldn’t leave her, so I promised her I would never leave her. She whispered that she wouldn’t leave me either. And she wanted to hear that I would never love another woman, and I repeated that I would never again love anyone but her.

Then we carefully removed all traces of our presence but she ended up leaving her glasses there and we had to go back for them. We looked high and low. As she was kneeling looking under the couch I knelt at her side, her large breasts almost touching me. Then we made love again on a strange rug that gave off a scent of jasmine.

In the end she found the glasses hidden, quite improbably, underneath a skirt that neither of us had touched before.

It was her mother, of course, who came to the conclusion, one day in midsummer when I had persuaded Alena to spend the night with me, that it was improper for us to live together like that in unconsecrated union. Her subsequent pressure on me to commit myself cut short that most beautiful period of our courting.

We decided that the wedding day would be at the end of October. We were rewarded with her mother’s kisses and blessing, as well as her consent for us to go off together on a prenuptial journey that summer.

Towns beyond the frontiers of our country still remained as closed to us as deserts and sea coasts: the all-powerful authorities had not yet taken into account the change which my wife-to-be had wrought by her choice of partner. Alena wanted me to show her The Hole, to sleep in the dismal inn where I had spent two years of my life. But I feared we might bump into Magdalena there, and besides I had no wish to meet any of my erstwhile colleagues.

In the end we set off for somewhere in that part of the country at least. We rambled all over a plain through which — enclosed by almost absurdly high embankments — a murky summer stream flowed quietly and sluggishly.