Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

In the grey overcast sky, the sun slowly sank towards the sharp mountain peaks. If I stayed here, a bear might come in the night, pumas might rush up to me, snakes might hem me in, or some demon with a woman’s face might arrive from the sky and press its lips to mine. But most likely nothing would happen, I would just spend a lonely night. Once upon a time, sages would spend many days and nights alone. If I had forty days and nights ahead of me on this rocky cliff, I might just manage to come up with one single answer, but tomorrow I have to be back with my family and in a few days I have to dash back up north and visit dozens of people and write hundreds of letters and talk about everything, in other words, nothing, then board a plane and return to my homeland, relate my experiences, rush from place to place: that was the sign I was born under, that was the sign we were born under; will I ever really manage to call a halt?

4

Even though excited letters were arriving from the homeland calling us back (what we had longed for all those years was at last coming about, Matěj wrote to me, and everyone is needed here, whereas there you’re of no use to anyone) and we wanted to return as soon as possible, we did not manage to get away before the middle of summer. One more farewell to the world of highways (anyway, all the newspapers were writing about my homeland, firing my impatience), a few nights of neon lights, nights in motels on the edge of small towns I would not see again, buying as many postcards as I could, a last crossing into Kentucky (I would never make Wisconsin now), gifts for my niece Lucie, some fashionable sunglasses for my wife, books for Matěj and Oldřich, woollen stockings for my mother and a shawl for my mother-in-law, a few records, at least, for my brother, and there, behind the glass doors of the airport, stood my parents: my mother in a hat that was fashionable twenty years before; they were waving, and behind them, next to my brother, I could make out the figure of Matěj. The customs officers seemed to me unusually friendly and unofficious. In a fit of impatience I asked Matěj to invite all the friends to come over that very evening.

The flat was strewn with suitcases and heaps of brochures, maps, postcards and posters, as well as bottles of Kentucky bourbon, foam-rubber figures and magazines which would have seemed to me such a rarity only a year before; I was scarcely able to find enough chairs for everyone.

I was prepared to report on my journey and my research into foreign mores, but amazingly enough no one displayed any curiosity; they were all too preoccupied with their own problems. So in the end it was I who listened: to news of the last parliamentary session (did I know that they no longer voted unanimously?), news of newly created organisations (even the tens of thousands of those who had been unjustly sentenced over past years were allowed to establish them), news of new journals (Matěj had brought a package of them; I was to read them straight away in order to understand what was actually happening — one could even find out things from the newspapers now, as people were writing for them freely). They drowned each other out and choked on news reports — even Oldřich, for whom politics was more of a game which he observed with interest but unemotionally — and pronounced heated judgements. While I had been away, they had all signed lots of appeals, attended lots of meetings, spoken at various assemblies; now they wanted to know what I intended to do. I could, of course, return to the institute, because all the charges that were laid against me had now been dropped, or would be. (Nimmrichter had already been dismissed; it had been discovered that once, when he was still working as a warder, he had tortured some priests and would be having to answer for it in court.) But it would not be advisable for me to waste time in the institute, I would be needed in more important areas. Indeed at this very moment reliable judges were being sought for the rehabilitation tribunals. (Surely I knew that parliament had passed laws allowing the investigation of unjust convictions?) There was such a shortage of people with the necessary skills who also commanded people’s trust.

But I wasn’t publicly known.

I was mistaken; the specialised public knew me.

When they left after midnight, I sat down with the journals. The same faces stared out at me from the different title pages — caricatures of politicians, even: something very novel to my eyes. Dawn was already breaking outside as I scanned the pictures. It was like reading over a fellow-passenger’s shoulder in the tram; my attention was caught by particular headlines and I would read random paragraphs, readers’ letters, complaints about the injustices and crimes of the previous years, and I started to become aware of the purgative significance of what had happened here, and I started to acquire my friends’ enthusiasm, and their excitement at the longed-for freedom which had been unexpectedly obtained. It was as if my long-lost dreams of a perfect state, a juster society and freedom to associate were coming alive within me again. Only this time I was not a powerless youngster, I was of an age when I could take part; and it could well be that the society I lived in expected it of me.

I dozed off in the armchair where I was reading, and in the morning was unable to restrain my impatience and drove into town, parking the car right in front of the Main Station. I stopped at a kiosk to buy some newspapers and behind the glass I could see a postcard with a picture of our first President and even a book about him, as well as some postcards with naked girls. I bought all the daily papers and an illustrated magazine I had never seen before.

As I walked along Příkopy, I encountered two young fellows, both long-haired and one of them bearded, reminiscent of the students in Michigan, standing in the middle of the pavement manning a stall covered in sheets of paper. Passers-by would stop and some would add their signatures.

I went up to them and read the text on one of the sheets, but there was too much commotion for me to concentrate.

I was about to move on when the bearded youngster asked me whether I would like to sign, or whether I had any questions. In sudden confusion I shook my head, pulled out my pen, and added my name to a long column of signatures.

5

A few days after I returned — and on the eve of ‘that night’ — I received a visit from my Uncle Gustav in the unwitting role of harbinger of doom. I had not seen him for a long time and had only heard from my mother that he was not well, that his wounded leg and his heart were playing him up. He hung his stick on the back of the chair and limped heavily around the flat at my heels. He commended listlessly our standard furniture and standardised rooms and then asked after my wife and the children.

I didn’t know what to talk to him about; I had no idea why he had dropped in out of the blue like that: the uncle whom I was once fond of and even admired when he returned as a hero after the war. So I started to tell him about America, but he interrupted me and started to hold forth about America himself. He recalled the black soldiers he had fought with in Africa; they had told him all about the misery of the shanty towns they lived in and the discrimination they suffered. I pointed out that times had changed, but Uncle told me with irritation not to try and tell him how things were, he could see very well what ‘my favourites’ were up to in Vietnam, how they’d found some other coloured subject-race to shoot at and keep their factories in business. Then he asked me whether it was true that we were planning to proclaim innocent all those convicted reactionaries, class enemies and agents who had been found guilty at one time in accordance with the laws in force then. And my uncle’s hands trembled, his eyes became bloodshot, veins stood out on his brow and the froth formed at the corners of his mouth.