Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

Adam reflected for a moment. ‘I think I was twenty-six.’

‘There you go. And you were passing judgement on people and I was telling them how they ought to behave.’

‘It was the way things were then.’

‘It was the way we were. And we wanted to remake the world to boot. You wouldn’t find me doing anything like that any more, even if I got the chance.’

‘What are you waiting for, then? You’re surely not going to spend the rest of your days in a circus caravan.’

‘I sincerely hope not. It’s only bravado when I pretend I don’t care. But at least here I can be sure that I won’t be required to do anything I can’t square with my conscience. Here I can almost feel free.’ He took Adam’s bowl and washed it in the sink. ‘In actual fact I’m waiting for some inner voice to make itself heard. I have the peace and calm for it here.’ He put the crockery back on the shelf, and gave no hint of further explanation. ‘What shall we do now? There are some archaeologists in a caravan not far off. They’re excavating a Celtic settlement. We’re cultivating neighbourly relations. One can learn all sorts of reassuring things from them.’

‘Later maybe.’

‘We could sit outside and see what we can see.’

The moon hadn’t risen yet and the darkness seemed total. Frogs croaked from the water and a warm breeze blew off the meadow.

What inner voices did his friend hope to hear? Had the quiet here unhinged his senses or, on the contrary, sharpened his hearing? What voices do I heed? I listen to all sorts of voices around me every day. They are so numerous that one drowns out the next, and when I go to bed my ears are full of hubbub as if torrents were flowing through my head. ‘I’ve just been given such a case,’ he said. ‘There’s this fellow on a double murder rap. He killed an old woman and a twelve-year-old girl. He turned on the gas in their room and left them.’

‘Is it a murder at all?’

‘What else could it be?’

‘I always used to think that a fellow had to strangle somebody or stab them to death. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t have woken up and turned the gas off. It might not even occur to them that someone had turned it on. What sort of penalty does it carry?’

‘Two people are dead — and one’s a child. And the culprit is a recidivist. There’s only one sentence: the noose. Otherwise the public — or what purports to be the public — will be outraged.’

‘And it doesn’t outrage you?’

‘Of course it does,’ he said. ‘And so do a lot of other things. But it doesn’t mean I want to see people hang for them.’

‘I know, you explained it to me a long time ago. Even so, I can’t help thinking that there are crimes which are unpunishable. Here on earth, at any rate. Surely that’s why we invented hell. The worst horror is perpetuity — and I should think that goes for punishment too, doesn’t it?’

He nodded. And how about happiness? Or relief, or hope, or love for that matter? He sensed the silence penetrate him, traversing him like a soft, cleansing breeze. Usually he feared silence as much as he did solitude or inactivity. He was convinced that at such moments his life was just slipping away to no purpose. But what purpose had his life served so far?

‘I’ll have to do my rounds again,’ Matěj announced. ‘But you’d better stay here this time — the grass is wet now.’

So he returned alone to the caravan. On the bed lay a pillow and several neatly folded blankets. But it was warm and he wouldn’t need more than one blanket.

Suddenly he recalled how, when still a student, he had been moved and also disconcerted by the fate of Ovid — the greatest poet of all time. (Which is how his Latin professor described him, at least.) This greatest of all poets was sent into exile, cut off from his wife and friends, banished from his home, his comfort, his homeland and his public and left to eke out a living, in lamentation and despair, and finally to die among foreigners in a barbarian land. He even recalled a wistful couplet:

Hic ego qui iaceo tenerorum lusor amorum

ingenii perii Naso poeta meo…

He had never thought to ask whether one could be a great man — or maybe a poet, either — if one was incapable of accepting fate. It had never occurred to him because he had always believed that what constituted human greatness was the capacity to protest, change the world and prepare for revolution.

Matěj returned. He took a thick book out of the desk and entered some figures. Then he wound his alarm clock.

‘Do you have to get up at night?’

‘We’re supposed to make measurements every other hour.’

‘But you said that the water flow was regular.’

‘And mostly I don’t measure it at night,’ he admitted. ‘But at least I get up and enter the figures.’

‘You could just as easily do it in the morning.’

‘I don’t want to make things too easy for myself. Besides, in theory at least, we could be checked on at night.’

Later, as he lay on his bunk staring into the darkness, Adam said: ‘I remember reading a book one time; it was the diary of a psychologist they sent to Nuremberg during the main trial. I would keep on going back to the last few pages where he recorded the verdicts and the behaviour of the defendants immediately after hearing their sentence. I felt pleased that they were sent to the gallows.’

‘That’s understandable.’

‘And when I read the memoirs of Hoesse of Auschwitz, I remember I spent several evenings imagining how I’d shut his wife and children in the gas chamber before I executed him, and make him watch them die.’

‘What language did you get it in?’

‘Polish. It was the most shocking book I’ve ever read. I’d never do it, of course.’

‘Wouldn’t you? Not even if you had the power to?’

‘No.’

‘Wouldn’t you even send him in?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I expect it’s because it seems a greater punishment to me to live with guilt than to die, though I realise for some people it presents no problem. Or because underneath I believe that in the end everyone is capable of understanding their crime and starting to regret it. At the same time I know it’s not the case. Most people never regret their misdeeds.’

‘I’m curious to know whether you wouldn’t do it because you feel it’s wrong, or because you know it is.’

He pondered for a moment and then said: ‘I wouldn’t do it because of me!’

3

When Alexandra came to the door, he didn’t even recognise her. He had not seen her for a long while — not since he left for the States. Then she had had short fair hair like his wife, now she had dyed it black, and wore it low on her forehead. She also outlined her eyelids in black. Across her left cheek there ran a scar carefully masked with powder. She was wearing a red T-shirt and a short leather skirt, and still looked like a little girl.

She greeted him in the tone of voice we usually reserve for people we’ve seen the day before. ‘Oldřich told me you’d be coming, but he phoned just now to say he’d be delayed.’ As she came closer to him he found himself enveloped in a fine, artificial perfume. ‘You don’t mind waiting here for him, do you?’

‘So long as it doesn’t put you out. I was only after his advice about something.’

‘You’re not the only one.’

‘It’s not for myself.’

‘Don’t apologise. He likes giving advice, it makes him feel important.’

She led him into the sitting room. He was taken aback by the ostentatiously antique furniture. It was most likely the same furniture as all those years ago, except that he hadn’t noticed such things then.