Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

‘What about tomorrow?’

‘I’ve got other plans tomorrow. With other people.’

‘Well it can’t be helped. I hope you have a good time.’

‘As good a time as I’d have with you, that’s for certain.’

He hung up. He opened his desk drawer and then quickly closed it again. Sometimes he had the feeling that everything being played out around him, everything he participated in with such seriousness was no more than a farce, an absurd play that all the players were in by mistake. They smiled and bared their teeth (both apparently an expression of the same instinct) as directed by an author and a producer they had never met, and they had no idea how or by what route they might leave the stage with honour. Now, for a very short while he had had the impression of leaving the stage behind, of living, really living, but more than likely he had just ended up in another, less well-known, but equally absurd play, and yet again he was required to act as directed by someone else. Would he prove capable of resisting and leaving this one, or could he at least transform it into reality?

But what was the point of resisting at this moment, of fostering false hopes in the child, of sitting oblivious next to her in the cinema? The worst thing would be to start play-acting on the children’s and his own behalf.

A whole age ago, he had caught the fancy of a sad-eyed clown who could already see his own end and had selected him from a whole crowd of children, as if he had guessed that this was the one who would be able to transmit his message to others. But what precisely was the message he had entrusted him with? He had told him that it made no sense to play-act with the aim of deceiving oneself and others. That one should live in harmony with oneself and the world.

What was he to do? How was he to find harmony when he was incapable of knowing himself, had never learnt to heed his inner voice and it was so long since he had seen his own light, ever since he lost it in the way sleepers lose for ever the light of the star that they observed with such amazement in the night sky before they fell asleep?

The clown hadn’t told him, and now no one ever would.

The telephone rang. He quickly lifted the receiver but it was only his father wanting to meet him somewhere other than at home. He arranged it for the following afternoon when his father had assured him it was nothing of immediate urgency. He was rather pleased to have something to do now it seemed as if he would have time on his hands.

2

His father was supposed to meet him right alongside the place where the gigantic monument once stood. As usual, Adam arrived several minutes early, but his father was already sitting on a bench — with his back to the river, understandably, so as not to be distracted by the view of the city — writing something in his notebook — figures, no doubt. He had tossed his shabby coat over the back of the bench.

Adam sat down next to him. ‘Something happened, Dad?’

‘Your mum doesn’t know I’m seeing you,’ his father began conspiratorially.

‘Is something wrong with her?’

‘What would be wrong with her? I told her I was going to the library. But Hanuš rang yesterday. Did you hear about it?’

‘How could I have?’

‘He hasn’t called you?’

‘Not for a bit.’

‘Do you know he wants to come back next month? Adam, he must be off his head!’ Father spat in disgust on the filthy verge.

‘That surprises me.’

‘Your mum’s pleased, naturally. She takes it as a matter of course. Adam, I really hope you haven’t been advising him to do anything of the sort.’

‘No, I haven’t given him any advice at all.’

‘For goodness sake, try and explain to me what he thinks he’ll find here? They’ll kick him out of that institute of his the moment he steps through the door. He’ll end up stoking a boiler somewhere or shovelling coal, like those pals of yours.’

‘My pals don’t shovel coal.’

‘But there are others who do. And even if they don’t kick him out, what could he possibly hope to achieve here? Do you really think it’s possible to do any decent academic work in this bloody place? They’ll set some numskull over him and he won’t let him do a bloody thing. Or maybe you think I’m wrong.’

‘I don’t know what the situation is like for mathematicians.’

‘The same as for everyone else. What can you achieve if they don’t give you access to information, if you’re not trusted and there’s no investment? Who appreciates conscientious work here? Have you already forgotten the reward I got?’

‘You did get that prize, Dad.’

‘What I got was two years and one month. And when they first took me in to see my charge officer, do you know what he told me?’

‘You told me, Dad.’

‘He said: “You won’t be beaten, don’t worry.” And I said to him: “Of course I won’t, after all I’m in a socialist…”’

‘Yes, you’ve told me before, Dad!’

‘He said to me: “You’d be surprised. You should have been here a few weeks ago.” Now tell me, what sort of idea is it, him coming home?’

‘I expect he’s got his reasons.’

‘What reasons, what sensible reasons could he possibly have? You don’t think it’s that woman, do you? We don’t know her, but she’s bound to be crazy — mad for home, like all women. Your mum’s the same: she’d sooner die than live abroad. But everything’s finished here now, can’t you see?’

‘In what sense, Dad?’

‘Science and technology are finished. And especially anything creative. They destroy anyone who might be capable of achieving anything. Because the place is run by numskulls and lazy slobs. And when everything’s on the rocks because of them, you know what they’ll do? The same as they did then. You know how long they held me in solitary?’

‘Yes, but things were different in those days.’

‘So you think things were different in those days. You tell me, then, if anything happened to the ones who sent me to prison that time, me and all the other innocent people. They’re still sitting where they were all those years ago. Like that Presiding Judge of yours.’

‘But Hanuš knows all this. It was you who told him, for heaven’s sake.’

‘So tell me what’s got into him, then.’

‘Maybe he wants to come home because this is where he was born. He knows the streets here. There are forests for him here. And he understands everything that people say to him. And we’re here too.’

‘What sort of nonsense is that? Are you telling me there are no streets over there and he can’t understand what people say?’

‘Why are you shouting at me, Dad? I didn’t put him up to it.’

‘People aren’t the same as birds or animals, for heaven’s sake. They’re not forced to go back to the place they were hatched, regardless of the fact they’ll be shot at.’

‘You might be wrong there, Dad.’

‘I might be wrong?’

‘Forgive me, but you were wrong when we came back here after the war.’

‘What I did wrong then was to put my trust in an untested project. But there’s one truth that has been tried and tested over millennia: everything that people have has to to be worked for. And now tell me this: who in this country still does an honest day’s work? Who is still allowed to do an honest day’s work here?’

‘You’re right in all you say, Dad, but maybe he sees things differently.’

‘In what way could he see it differently?’

‘You look at everything with a mathematical eye, but you can’t calculate everything in life.’

‘Oh, can’t you? More’s the pity. Most people don’t calculate at all. He doesn’t need a slide-rule to work out that there he has the freedom to read what he likes and go where he wants, while here he’ll be lucky if they don’t send him to shovel coal. And what if they send him to prison… Who’ll stand up for him? Who stood up for me then?’