Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

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 impossible 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.