Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

I’d hate to confuse you with that word, but now it has come to my mind, it occurs to me that there are two kinds of exile. One kind is when you are banished from your home and have no chance of returning. The other is when you abandon yourself and are unable to return. Perhaps the only piece of advice I can give you is: don’t confuse the two!

Perhaps you’d still like to know how I’ve decided? Whether I’ll leave my family because I’ve fallen in love with another woman and don’t want to hide the truth, or I’ll leave my mistress and stay with my children and wife because my infatuation will pass anyway, and it wasn’t even real love, just one of many possible forms of escape?

First I thought I had to decide between just two options. Like a cybernetic mouse in a maze, like a computer that knows only two answers: yes or no. Then, when I glimpsed the light in that house near here, I realised that I had been intending to choose between two escape routes, two kinds of deception and self-deception, contrasting two possibilities of exile, seeking whom to join, whom to follow, where to have my home: in other words, a bed, at the side of a woman, somewhere for a desk, and breakfast in the morning, instead of looking for a place where I’d no longer be a fugitive; I would be there solely because I wanted to be — even if it meant being homeless.

Now you want to know where that place is, not for me, but for yourself. You already have an inkling what my reply is going to be. The moment is coming when you must not abandon yourself. If you do, you could pronounce a sentence on yourself that no one will overturn, and which qualifies for no amnesty, since the decision will have been yours alone.

Here’s my tram coming. But just so you don’t run away with the idea, dear bro, that I’m somehow talking to you from heights I might be expected to have reached as an elder brother, I will admit to you that all this time I have been gazing at that fateful house on whose top floor I spent several weeks as a happy guest. What if the other one, my other woman, had suddenly come out into the street and was on her own? I would have run after her and by the time I reached the staircase — that is if she would have invited me up — I would have forgotten all my solemn resolutions.

She didn’t appear, of course, and as a result I am perhaps wisely setting off to find a place where I will no longer be an exile.

4

He was making love to Alexandra in his own flat. It was night-time and a purplish light was shining in through the sharply pointed window. He was lying on the bed, she was kneeling in front of the bed grasping his thighs and kissing him between them. Just as his body began to quiver in ecstasy the doorbell rang.

She stood up, put his shirt on over her naked body and walked to the door. He also tried to get up, but was unable to find the strength to raise his enfeebled body. Not even to reach out for his trousers and put them on.

He heard from somewhere nearby the sound of men’s voices, and among them he could recognise Oldřich’s.

She glanced in at the door, the shirt scarcely reached her waist. ‘Ruml is here with some friends of yours.’

He sat up. He pulled Alena’s pyjama top out from under the pillow and quickly slipped it on. But it was so tight it pushed his arms forward. He looked like a dachshund begging for a titbit.

All the intruders were wearing dark formal suits with old-fashioned bowler hats on their heads.

Oldřich was carrying some file or other. Immediately behind him came his brother Hanuš (he might have known he’d get invited). The last to come in was a fellow with the face of an ageing boxer. He was carrying a stick: a conductor’s baton or a truncheon. He recognised that one straight away.

They all sat down round the table and covered it with sheets of paper. Alexandra — still half-naked — brought them glasses on a tray. He tried to indicate to her that she should get dressed, but he suddenly realised his own nakedness and tried to cover it with a corner of the bedsheet.

‘So where do you have the suitcase?’ Plach asked.

‘What suitcase?’

‘That takes the biscuit!’ Plach exclaimed, turning to the others. ‘He just goes on denying it. We’ll have to fetch his wife!’

‘My wife?’ He tried to laugh. After all, he didn’t have a wife any more — not even a mistress. He now looked round for her in vain. He really was left with just the suitcase, and it didn’t even belong to him.

It wasn’t yet five o’clock and everyone else was still asleep. He got up quietly, got dressed, and went into the kitchen where he drank some cold tea and spread himself some bread.

Once he had the suitcase in the car he felt relieved. It was most likely an unwarranted precaution, but it would be more unwarranted to leave it in the flat.

The dream was still fresh in his mind and also filled him with nostalgia. What would happen if he drove to the corner of the street where she lived and waited for her to come out on her way to work? Maybe she would get in with him. Where would they drive to?

He parked on the Old Town Square. The street lamps were still on, but the sky above the Powder Tower was already growing light. People were thronging along the street in the direction of the tram.

He pulled the suitcase out and entered the house. It was still early. He should have telephoned first. His mother would be bound to have a fright if she was already up. He dragged the case right up to the flat door and let himself in as quietly as he could.

His mother was peeping out of her bedroom before he’d even taken his shoes off. ‘Has something happened, Adam?’

‘No, nothing at all.’

‘What’s that suitcase you’ve got with you?’

‘Just a suitcase.’

‘Where are you going with it at this time of the morning?’

‘I’ve got some papers in it.’

‘You’re taking them to court?’

‘No. I thought I might leave them here.’

‘Why should you leave a case here? Haven’t you enough space at home?’

At last his father appeared. ‘Come in, for goodness sake!’

‘He’s arrived with thai: thing,’ his mother called out, ‘and he wants to lumber us with it.’ She came over to the suitcase and took hold of the handle as if intending to try its weight. ‘God knows what he’s got in it.’

‘Books,’ he replied. ‘Just books.’

‘Nice books they must be.’ His mother lowered her voice. ‘Very dubious ones, if you’re offering them. I can’t recall the last time you brought us a book. A decent book, I mean.’

‘Shove it in the lumber-room,’ his father decided, ‘there’s room for it there.’

‘I don’t want it in the lumber-room!’ His mother ran her finger fastidiously along its worn edge. ‘God knows where the thing has been.’

‘All right, I’ll take it away again.’

His mother stopped him in the doorway. ‘Have you had any breakfast?’

‘Never mind.’

‘You’ve been very odd just lately. You’ve not shown yourself at all.’

‘I think it’s just as well if I don’t show myself. You never know, I might be after something else. Or I might dirty your lumber-room.’ He opened the door and pushed the suitcase out.

His father caught up with him on the stairs. ‘What’s come over you?’ He looked round in case anyone was listening. ‘You know what Mum is like. Why didn’t you ring me first?’ He slipped the cellar key into his hand and quickly went back upstairs.

In the cellar he dirtied his hands and most probably his face too. If only he had been hiding a time-bomb, a case of gold bars or at least some leaflets calling for rebellion. But the contents were so innocuous and the action he’d been driven to so pathetic that he felt humiliated.