Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

A few days later that same summer, Arie suddenly came to tell me he had to say goodbye. They had been summoned to a special transport. I can remember my consternation, the chilling dismay that he too was subject to the same inexorable fate as ourselves. But he didn’t strike me as afraid. Maybe he thought that his father would retain some of his old privileges in the new place, though more likely he had the gift of self-control and knew that the greatest virtue before Him whose name be forever blessed was humility; so he was capable of smiling even at that moment.

And so once more, for the last time we walk together down the long, grey corridor that I had run along that night when I realised I had a friend; the light shines in through the bay windows; we pretend that it’s not goodbye, agree where we’ll meet later when it’s all over; promise faithfully not to lose each other’s addresses: we’ll be bound to meet again. I have a growing feeling of dread, but I can already see us walking through the streets and crossing the thresholds of our homes. We exchanged photographs of each other. His was an ordinary passport photo, at least three years old; I remember it clearly, although I haven’t managed to bring it safely all the way from then to now; however, in those days, I would bring it out whenever I felt lonely and gaze at it with undiminished longing and nostalgia, and I could picture him moving away from me with his slightly shaky gait. It’s such a long time ago and I am sorry I cannot tell more, though I loved him dearly. But I don’t want to let my imagination run riot. When the war was over, I looked forward not only to seeing my father, who had also disappeared somewhere in Poland, but him too. I still used to take out his photo and was loath to believe that I would never set eyes on him again.

Some time later I heard that they didn’t even take them to another camp. They stopped somewhere in the middle of fields, forced them out of the train and shot them on the spot. But it’s possible that the story wasn’t true, and they murdered them some other way.

3

During the final days leading up to the end, prisoners from camps of every description were brought to our town from places undoubtedly more horrifying than our fortress. In the streets there appeared haggard shaven-headed individuals in grey and blue striped clothes, and we tried to find out whether my father wasn’t amongst them, or whether someone at least had news of him. But even more than the living, it is the dead who stand out in my memory. The poor things died in such numbers that they stacked them on carts as if they weren’t people, only wax models or dummies. It took several men to push the carts, with the two in front steering. Stiffened limbs hung out of the cart and motionless eyes stared out of the shaven skulls. I would give those carts a wide berth, but I also found them fascinating. I would shuffle along the opposite pavement. From that distance, the dead appeared harmless to me and only vaguely reminiscent of ex-human beings.

One day, on just such an occasion, a cart got stuck. One of the men pushing the cart called across to me: Come and give us a hand, young ’un! The nearer I came to the cart, the weaker I became, and I was convinced I wouldn’t be of any use to them anyway. By the time I was just a few paces away, I detected an odour unknown to me and it filled me with violent disgust and revulsion.

As soon as I put my shoulder to the side of the cart it occurred to me that I had not been summoned by chance. After all, what actually attracted me to those dismal carts, though I wouldn’t admit it, was a desire to find out whether one of them wasn’t carrying my father’s body. In fact, the whole time I was convinced that if they really did carry him past me I would receive some sign that would actually allow me to find him amidst that tangle of bodies. And now that I had received a sign I was afraid to believe it and did not dare raise my eyes. I leaned with the others against the wooden sides of the cart which indeed started to move again and I was able to take my leave. For a split second I looked up and immediately above me caught sight of a pair of dark eyes, fixed in a ghastly glazed stare. I didn’t even cry out. I shuffled to one side where there chanced to be a patch of grass and I sat down on it. I could still feel the saccharine sweet aftertaste in my mouth as consciousness left me.

That very evening, or maybe the one after, I was just falling asleep when I was woken by the unfamiliar persistent roar of nearby engines. I got up, pulled back the blackout and opened the window. There was still a chance that our gaolers would drive through the town shooting at us. But now there were other things for them to worry about. Like us, they found themselves on the border between being and not being, on the threshold of freedom which required them to flee, not to murder. And so I stood by the window as night fell, my mind on the passing roar. There was also the sound of gunfire and the deep-throated explosions of artillery grenades. Then I heard something utterly out of keeping with the gloom of the place: a shout of joy from myriad throats and people yelling hurrah over and over again. And someone was running around beneath our window bellowing like a lunatic: The Russians are here!

My mother got up, and hugged and kissed me. I picked up my brother Hanuš and took him to look out into the darkness where at that moment several rockets flared up and the smell of smoke and gunpowder wafted towards us. So this was the moment we had talked about for the past five years. We were free. We had been liberated .

The next day, I stood by the half-demolished fence that divided this place from the world and watched the moving columns of tanks, vehicles and horses — the vehicles decorated with pictures of statesmen like icons — all going in the same direction in an unstoppable tide, like a river, lava, a swarm of locusts — a natural phenomenon. And soldiers in filthy, dusty uniforms would occasionally toss a handful of cigarettes or sweets out of a vehicle and the crowd would dash forward into the road.

And I recall the moment when one of the men in striped clothes tried to reach a carton of cigarettes which was left lying in the middle of the road. In his desperate rush and eagerness to snatch the booty entirely for himself, he didn’t manage to get out of the way in time and so we all saw him fall and metal tank tracks pass over his body. They pulled him back by his legs and as they carried him past me I could see the bloodstained brains running out of the burst skull. I could feel myself going limp but I didn’t budge from the spot and so, in the short interval between two columns of vehicles, I was to see a crowd in pursuit of a thin little fellow. He was barefoot but his black trousers were of good quality and his shirt was very white. He was carrying a briefcase and doing a very good job of evading his haggard pursuers. But there were too many of us there by the fence and he suddenly found himself encircled. I tried to get as close as possible, but they quickly had him surrounded and hurled him to the ground anyway. For the first time I witnessing a people’s court; I heard shrieks, curses and supplications in German, then blows and a death rattle. Shortly afterwards they were carrying him away as well, now shirtless and his face obliterated; they carried him feet first towards me and I could see the deathly yellow shining through the layer of dust. I must have found it terribly shocking, for the scenes to have remained in my memory in such detail, though not shocking enough to prevent me looking on in jubilation. There were too many corpses for the shock effect to be sustained.

A few days later — the town had been placed under strict quarantine — my cousin Jiří arrived to release us.