Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

‘No. I haven’t the time to go visiting.’

‘But you will go and see him, won’t you? You realise that no one else will.’

‘Do you think I ought to?’ She relented and he followed her inside. ‘They are advising me to hurry up and forget about him.’

‘Who is?’

‘The lot of them.’ She offered him a battered kitchen chair to sit on, after giving it a wipe with a rag. The child was sleeping in a wicker cradle in a corner of the kitchen. ‘He done the dirty on me; a rotten trick like that just before it was born.’ She stared at him for a moment. ‘I didn’t see you there neither. That wasn’t you in the robes, was it?’

‘No, it wasn’t me. I only wanted to ask you, Mrs Körnerová, irrespective of the court’s finding: do you still think that your fiancé — Mr Kozlík, I mean — was innocent? Don’t you think it might have all been just a mishap?’

She gaped at him for a moment. ‘I ain’t going to tell you nothing. His lawyer told me not to either. He said I don’t have to say nothing, and that was what I was to tell anyone if they tried to drag anything out of me.’

‘I don’t work for the court any more, Mrs Körnerová.’

‘So what?’

‘You have nothing to fear from me.’

‘You weren’t the one who tried him?’

‘No.’

‘And you won’t be the judge any more?’

‘No! But I’d like to find out if there might be something we could still do for him.’

‘There’s nothing can be done for him anyway. That’s what they all told me. His lawyer told me I shouldn’t build my hopes up.’

‘I wouldn’t have sentenced him to death. I’d have only sent him to prison.’

‘But you just said you weren’t going to be his judge.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So it’s easy for you to talk.’

She was right: he was allowed to say what he liked, ask what he liked and even criticise authority. But the only reason he could was because he was powerless to do anything any more. So he just asked her: ‘Will you visit him?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve enough troubles of me own.’

‘You ought to go and see him. He is the father of your child.’

That was probably the most he could still do in the case: persuade her to visit him.

If he acknowledged the case for what it really was, a dispute over a human life and not merely a conflict over his own career, then he had to admit he had lost. He stood up.

‘Thank you for sparing me your time.’ She was going to see him out, but at that moment the baby started to cry and she went back. As he was closing the door he could see her leaning over the cradle. For the rest of his life, that child was going to have to write on official forms: father — deceased. And if the form required more specific information: reason for death — asphyxiation from hanging.

His last case had closed. What remained for a judge when he was no longer allowed to deliver a verdict as he saw fit? What remained for people when they were not allowed to speak? Who in the world, what in the world, could they turn to?

4

Matěj lent Hanuš his elder son’s bicycle and joined them on his own machine. He even suggested a destination: a village with the church whose claim to fame was that his great-great-grandfather had built it almost two centuries earlier. And it was most likely the only church in the country to have been built from foundations to roof by one single man.

They were lucky with the weather — the low sun actually gave out some heat. And even the wind was untypically warm for November.

As they neared the foothills, the landscape became more undulating. He was not used to cycling any more and although they had been on the road for only two hours he could scarcely move his legs. His brother, on the other hand, looked cheerful and whistled now and then.

The village lay on a gentle slope and the church could be seen from a distance. They rode up to it along a road strewn with yellow sand. He had been expecting a small church or even something more like a chapel, and was amazed to find just how massive a structure it was. The tower dwarfed the centuries-old lime trees that surrounded it. Its roof was topped with a weathercock which had doubtlessly turned before it rusted up. Six tall, narrow windows soared above them in the side wall. They leaned their bicycles against the trunks of the lime trees and Matěj went off in search of someone to let them in. The path around the church was covered in dead leaves which crunched underfoot.

‘Would you believe it,’ Hanuš said, ‘everyone stares at me as if I’ve gone off my rocker.’

‘Because you came back?’

‘Not just Father, either: at the institute, as well. They all want to know why. What shall I tell them?’

‘Do you need to tell them anything?’

‘Last month, a colleague of mine from Gloucester invited us to his home. He lives in an old brick town-house. He was born in it, in fact. And it struck me at the time that I too was born in an old house — an even older and finer one, but I would be unlikely to have the chance of showing it to him. Or even seeing it again. Is that a reason?’

‘It could have been for you.’

‘There was no reason. Alternatively, there could have been a hundred other reasons like it. And just as many reasons against too. After all, there’s nothing which you can state with certainty will be as important to you tomorrow as it is today. Unless you believe in God, that is. Or maybe you know of something?’

‘Hardly.’

‘I declared all false hopes taboo. Maybe it was also a case of being resigned to it. If Father were me he wouldn’t come back, because he knows he would have a better chance of working there and of achieving more. I could have achieved something there too, but in fact I couldn’t have cared less. But don’t tell Dad that, it would upset him: he set great store by me. Let him think I came back on account of them.’ He broke off. ‘After all, I don’t see why one should feel more responsibility to one’s work and career than to one’s parents.’

Matěj returned alone, but was carrying a bunch of old-fashioned keys.

It was cool inside the church and it smelt musty. The floor was covered with stone slabs, the ceiling was already cracking and immediately behind the pulpit there was a gaping hole in the plaster.

‘Is it really true that it was built by just one single man?’ he asked Matěj.

‘Yes. It took one man to build it, and now the whole village can’t keep it in repair.’

They walked up a wooden staircase, passing the organ-loft, until they found themselves among the giant roof beams. Then they walked along the brick vaulting which looked unusual and skilfully constructed from there.

‘How long did he take to build it, that forefather of yours?’ Hanuš asked.

‘The parish records say that the first services were held after two and a half years.’

‘That’s not possible!’

‘Why not?’ Matěj said in surprise. ‘Even when he worked from morning to night?’

‘All on his own?’

‘Apparently his wife occasionally passed him bricks or carried sand for him.’

‘And nobody else?’

‘Nobody else is mentioned.’

Hanuš became restive. He started to pace out the length of the building and then went over to one of the windows and examined the wall for a moment. He was clearly measuring its thickness. Then he sat down on a beam and took out his calculator. ‘Not on your nelly!’ he said finally.

‘Why don’t you think so?’

‘The walls alone come to over eight hundred cubic metres.’

‘Is that a lot?’

‘For one man? And who dug the foundations and put in the beams?’

‘He did, probably.’ Matěj went over to the bell. ‘It has a splendid sound. Whenever I hear it,’ he said, stroking its metal body, ‘I feel as if the old man is talking to me.’