Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

I said that I too understood his way of thinking (though I didn’t), but that I thought he would nevertheless speak differently if he had been through what I had.

In reply, he said that it was something he didn’t like talking about, but seeing that I’d mentioned it, he too had come from Europe. Both his parents and his younger sister had stayed in Vienna during the war, he alone having been sent to Sweden, and managed to survive. His next of kin had all perished in the way I had indicated earlier, though where and when he had been unable to discover, in spite of his efforts.

His words mortified me and I stuttered some kind of apology. The others steered the conversation elsewhere and I did not say another word the whole evening.

That night, when everyone had gone home and I was alone in my small bedroom, I realised that I had disgraced myself not just by having tried to manipulate my listeners’ feelings but also because of the attitude I had espoused.

3

The next morning I set off to spend a few days in Scotland. My host furnished me with a whole list of addresses but I had decided to spend at least a day on my own. In Inverness, after booking into my lodgings, I boarded a pleasure boat at the quay with the prospect of a four-hour cruise on the trail of the famous monster.

It was a clear, fresh day in late summer. About two dozen passengers were crowded on the deck. I went and sat in a brightly coloured deckchair in the bows. A sailor rang a brass bell in the stern and we were under way.

The loch resembled an enormous river. The sheer, unwooded mountainside gave the impression of rising to heights one would normally think of as cloud level.

Then a girl came and sat in the deckchair next to mine. I was expecting her to be joined by someone else, but no one came. She wore a nautical T-shirt and sat with her hands in her lap, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses. Maybe the sunglasses or the colour of her hair reminded me of my wife.

I thought she was asleep and observed her almost blatantly. She initiated the conversation by asking if I had any matches (I never carried any), and then we chatted, or rather she talked while I lay looking at the banks and awaiting the appearance of new landscapes and new formations of hills and rocks from around each bend in the loch.

She was American and had come here to visit relatives. She had done a lot of travelling, having spent several years in the Middle East and India with her father. She had lived in Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan and regaled me with all sorts of bizarre adventures, tales and sketches from her time in those countries, which all sounded so exotic to me.

I don’t know what made her so communicative. Maybe it was the peace and calm of the cruise or the effect of the landscape which was so different from the ones in the countries of her adventures. Or maybe she was as lonely as I was. In the end I started to lose the thread of her narration, my mind turning increasingly to the thought that the journey would end in a few hours and we would both disembark. It would be up to me to invite her: to dinner, a glass of wine or beer, a walk, anywhere — and I was already touching those arms, leading her up to my little room in the boarding house, where we were already writhing in one another’s arms.

When the boat reached the point at which it turned round and started on the return trip, my companion fell silent for a moment. Maybe she now expected me to entertain her for a change. But I didn’t know any exotic stories. What could I tell her about? About a man who thought he was going to bring people salvation and then discovered he had been mistaken? About the revolutionary who discovered the self-deception of revolution? About the lawyer who came to the conclusion that justice didn’t exist? About the son who wanted to imitate his father but discovered he lacked his father’s strength?

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.