Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

Then I walked about the streets until first light. Then I made my way immediately to my common-law wife’s, Libuše Körnerová, as by then she was alone at home and didn’t go on shift till the afternoon. I asked her for a tablet for my headache which had come back very bad and some money which I promised to let her have back. I told her nothing about what I had done. Then I was arrested. I wish to add that I no longer know what streets I walked along nor did I meet anyone I knew. I visited no one that night and telephoned no one, since there was no one I could.

I have nothing more to add to this statement.

Statement completed the fifth of April.

He read a few more pages of additional testimony which in fact added nothing.

He realised she was staring at him. When he raised his eyes she quickly looked down and started taking things out of her desk and putting them away in her handbag. ‘Adam,’ she said, ‘I think I forgot to give you a message. Oldfich Ruml called you yesterday. You’re to get in touch with him.’

He thanked her for the message.

‘Do you know him well?’

‘Hard to say.’ Her inquisitiveness aroused his suspicion. What is she after this time? ‘We used to share the same office once upon a time. Like you and me now. But it’s ages ago.’ It occurred to him that Oldřich would be able to advise him over Magdalena’s business. He always had plenty of useful contacts and acquaintances.

‘Do you know his wife?’ she asked. ‘He is married, isn’t he?’

Actually he had been married longer than Adam. They had been practically newly-weds, though, ‘ages ago’, and Alexandra looked about sixteen. She used to use a lot of make-up, which didn’t appeal to him. ‘Ages ago’ meant ten years back — no more — when Adam returned to Prague and Oldřich introduced him into society. ‘I’ve not seen her for a long time. I think she used to paint quite well,’ he said, as it seemed a fairly bland piece of information, ‘but I don’t know for certain. Then they had a daughter.’

She snapped her handbag shut but she was not leaving. She waited. Most likely she wanted to hear something more, but he could see no reason why he should tell her anything. ‘Are you going to lunch?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think so.’ She lingered a moment, but as he said nothing else, she left the office.

In response to your enquiry we notify you that the patient Karel Kozlík received both somatic and neurological examination in our department. He was also subjected to several basic tests (Minnesota, Rohrschach, etc.). In general, the patient’s personality displayed certain pathogenic characteristics (chiefly paranoid and schizophrenic). Karel K.’s mental attainments were good, although somewhat neurotically impaired. He is emotionally immature, egocentric and infantile with a tendency towards moodiness. Neurotic features — a negative mater imago (Weiss, shock) and castration anxiety. Most likely other pathol. characteristics such as sensitive egocentricity, narcissism.

The patient was recommended for out-patient treatment, but failed to attend the first appointment.

Best Wishes,

Dr Václav Kvěch

P.S. I also enclose some completed sentences that you might find of interest.

Sentence completion

Name: Kozlík Karel

Finish the following sentences as quickly as you can.

Always write the first thing that comes into your head.

Don’t try and resist your real feelings. If you find any of the sentences difficult to complete, draw a ring round it.

You can always return to it after completing the others.

1. I BELIEVE MYSELF TO BE a special person

2. ONE OF THE MAIN THINGS I WANT TO DO IS eliminate convention

3. WHEN I’M ALONE I feel good

4. IN OUR FAMILY I’m not happy

5. I’M BOTHERED BY social isolation

6. SECURITY IS steadfast unshakeable ideas

7. MONEY IS power

8. MY CHILDHOOD wasn’t worth much

9. I PARTICULARLY LOOK FORWARD TO rambling and fun

10. WHAT MOST DISTURBS ME WHEN I’M WORKING people in charge

11. I’D BET MY BOTTOM DOLLAR THAT my thoughts are basically noble

12. THE HAPPIEST TIME OF MY LIFE when I got to know Vlastimil P.

13. ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS IN MY LIFE the defect in my right eye

14. WHAT REALLY ANNOYS ME is when some thickhead thwarts my plans

15. WHAT GIVES ME REAL PLEASURE pleasing someone I like

16. THE MEANING OF LIFE IS death…

Forensic examination had found no trace of fingerprints on the gas-stove tap. The tap controlling the burner from which the gas escaped had apparently been wiped with a rag after the last time it was turned (i.e. in the ‘on’ position). The rag had probably been used previously for cleaning shoes, since traces of brown ‘Tagal’ shoe polish were found on the tap. They found the rag thrown into a corner of the kitchen, the shoe polish in the scullery. On the inner handle of the front door, which had been forced, they found a thumb-print with traces of the same shoe polish, and it was identical with the left thumb-print of Karel Kozlík. It could therefore be assumed that Karel Kozlík was the last person to leave Marie Obensdorfová’s flat on 3rd April. Were the opposite true, his thumb-print would necessarily have been wiped off, at least partially, by the hand of the person who followed him — unless they both left at the same time.

Had the door not been forced, but unlocked normally, the print would most likely have been wiped off by not just one hand but by the many hands of the people who went in and out of the flat that fatal night; because who, in a gas-filled flat, is immediately going to think of foul play and worry about something like fingerprints?

Forensic analysis had established that both the water in the saucepan on the stove and the spilt water under the burner had not reached boiling point ‘so it may be safely assumed that the flame was not extinguished by the water overflowing’.

He turned another page.

The pathologist’s report on the examination of the corpses of Marie Obensdorfová, born 19.10.1902, and Lucie Obensdorfová, born 23.4.1960 stated that no traces of violence had been discovered on either of the bodies of the deceased. ‘The colour of the posthumous stains is consistent with carbon monoxide poisoning. Death in both cases occurred around two a.m. on 4th April. Death was probably caused by coal gas escaping from an unlit burner beneath a saucepan half full of water…

‘The age of the householder…’

Someone knocked on the door, and it was only after he had called out twice for the person to enter that the door opened slightly and there appeared a swelling pregnant belly, and only then, as if anxiously tilted backwards, the rest of the trunk and the head; a florid face with expressionless eyes and a large blubbery mouth.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you!’ Her voice was slightly hoarse and her intonation placed her somewhere between a waitress and a cleaner.

‘What do you want?’ he asked, motioning her to the free chair.

‘My name’s Körnerová.’ She sat down, breathing heavily, her ugly face covered in sweat. So it was her. ‘What do you want?’ he repeated.

She said nothing but sat there with her doleful gaze fixed on him. At last she replied: ‘They told me that maybe you, sir, sir… comrade…’ she corrected herself. For a moment he wondered if she was going to stick fast, and never surmount the problem of how to address him, ‘That you, comrade, will be judging Karel… Kozlík, for what happened in that flat.’