Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

‘I’ve decided not to write any more. It wastes too much energy.

‘27.4. This morning I have decided I must take better care of myself. Total neglect of one’s appearance weakens one. It is a sign that one cares about nothing any more. I shaved. But I couldn’t look at my reflection. It was as if my own corpse was staring at me from that splinter of mirror that someone lent me. I’m an ugly, emaciated corpse. Only my thoughts are alive.

‘The morning passed without any sign of food, but towards noon I suddenly heard wild cheering. What had happened? For a second it occurred to me that the Russians had arrived. I got up and walked in the direction of the cheers. There stood a row of white vehicles with red crosses. About twenty of them. I learned that they had brought us food parcels. I said to myself that the SS wouldn’t let us have them anyway, but a miracle happened (the Red Army really can’t be far away after all) and towards evening we actually received a five-kilo parcel among three of us. In the afternoon G. and I had cut down a tree (the very thought of receiving a parcel gave us the extra energy) and built a three-man tent using one blanket. We shared out the parcel. G. ordered us to economise. We spread ourselves one cracker each, ate a piece of chocolate and that was that. That’s got to last us at least a week, G. said. We don’t know when we will get something next. We have hidden the parcel under a pile of leaves and are sleeping on it.’

We were waiting for him in the middle of a hot June day. I recall lorries covered in flags and full of people in a pitiful state. There were several lorries and I didn’t know which of them he’d be getting off. Then I saw my mother — though she too was clearly unsure — taking some steps towards one of the men.

I didn’t recognise him, He was dressed in civilian clothes that hung from him oddly and he was carrying a woollen blanket over his shoulder. His head was shaved. There was nothing familiar left in his features apart from the eyes. He was crying.

Apart from the woollen blanket (which Mother later unravelled to knit us some socks so thick that I’ve not managed to wear them out yet), Father had brought us two sections of tent, a number of army plates and pots (which he would never let anyone throw out), a large tin of meat and three bars of the chocolate from the last parcel they had been given for the journey.

That very evening, the whole family congregated — the surviving members. Father, for whom it was impossible to find any clothes which didn’t make him look like a scarecrow, sat at the head of the table dressed in a white shirt of his older brother’s and some dark trousers. Fresh from the bath, his ears suddenly conspicuous and cheeks sunken, he told us his story: all about that first death march in the winter and the second death march which had actually continued right to that very moment, since some of his companions had died even after the camp was liberated and two hadn’t survived the homeward journey.

Death was the main protagonist in Father’s stories. It was ubiquitous and so unrestrained that it lost all particular meaning and it scarcely aroused horror any more, but rather a weariness. Then Father started to preach about the coming world order. He had no doubts that the future belonged to the new social order he called socialist. Socialism would liberate people from wars, poverty and unemployment.

I don’t know whether the others agreed with him. Most likely they had no view one way or the other, and didn’t understand what he was talking about. But everyone nodded and my cousin actually sketched a picture of the scene: my shaven-headed father preaching at the white-covered table about a better global future. I sat at the end of the big table, which was covered with plates, glasses and dishes of food, my stomach uncomfortably distended, listening in adoration, elated that my father was sitting there opposite me, that he had come home, that he was right as always, and he had proved it by returning. And for me, his return meant that the war had finally ended.

Little did I suspect that for me, as for many others, the war would never end. I would carry it within me even when I’d forgotten about it, even when it no longer came back to me in dreams.

I’ll never get into the habit of throwing away a crust of bread or believing that anything that is can’t be done away with in the blink of an eye. I don’t know whether such an outlook is closer to reality; I don’t seek to evaluate it, but that constant subconscious anxiety about a sudden cataclysm, and the entrenched assumption that the main purpose of one’s life is to prevent it, pushed me in a direction I would scarcely have taken otherwise. Convinced I had to do something to ensure that people never again lost their freedom, so that they should never again find themselves in hermetically sealed surroundings with no chance of escape, ruled solely by butchers’ knives, I prepared to become a foot-soldier of the revolution, a hobby horse for a new generation of butchers to mount, and wielding their cleavers drive the scattered human herd into rebuilt enclosures, and set to with their knives to carve out the splendid future.

1

ADAM HAD NEVER had an office of his own, but this was the first time he had ever shared one with a woman. Dr Alice Richterová might have been young and single (why would a woman rush into wedlock who so early in her career as a judge had already dissolved hundreds of marriages, and had heard so much evidence proving that married life is composed of deceptions, infidelities, backbiting and fakery, sexual nastiness and disputes over the washing-up and the car?) but she was definitely neither beautiful nor likeable. Her voice was raucous and too loud, and it always seemed to him to have the tone of argument or admonition. He also disliked her reverent attitude to the dignity of her profession. There was no humour there, and clearly no understanding of the extent to which that dignity had been undermined by external circumstances. Moreover, he was ignorant of her attitude to those circumstances. Admittedly she made a pretence of sympathy for his victimised friends, and she seemed to have no objection to the opinions he used to proclaim in the days when people were able to proclaim opinions publicly, but as far as he knew she was in the Party and had actually joined it at the time he left. Why had she been assigned to his office at all? Had she been given the job of keeping an eye on him and reporting back to them?

‘Did you know that Obensdorfová’s son is an army officer?’ she asked. She was just taking off her gown, beneath which she wore a yellow sports shirt and a short white skirt and looked as if she was on her way to the tennis courts. ‘Perhaps there was some other motive involved.’

Why her interest in his case?

‘If all he wanted was to take revenge on the old woman, or he was only after the money, surely he’d have chosen another moment,’ she said. ‘Not the very time the kid was there.’

‘It’s possible he didn’t know about the kid.’

‘Or he deliberately waited for it to be there.’

‘What makes you think so?’

‘He might have hated the whole family. Criminal types tend to be full of hatred.’

‘They got taught at school that hate’s important, some kinds at any rate. Maybe he got the wrong end of the stick.’

‘People like him don’t need lessons!’ She had raised her voice; she was speaking loud enough to be heard in the corridor. Why had he got into an argument with her? He still hadn’t learned it was better to say nothing. At least to say nothing if one didn’t feel like agreeing at high volume with everything said around one. He opened the file with the case history, but added in a conciliatory way, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get to the bottom of it.’