Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

She led them down a passage. Antlers stuck out absurdly from the walls and baroque statues of saints stood on shelves between crossed swords. In the sitting room they sat down on impractical chairs covered in flowered print. Beneath their feet soft carpets were piled deep. A bust of an author fifty years dead crowned a small bookshelf of collected works. A bulldog dozed in an armchair at the table. It raised its head lazily as they came in, bared its crooked teeth and then fell asleep again without making a sound.

Oldřich said: ‘You have a lot of fine things here, dear lady.’

‘My brother-in-law got hold of ’em for us. He always used to bring a little something when they were closing down a monastery. Them days it’d’ve all gone for scrap or on the bonfire, anyhow. But nowadays,’ she indicated an inlaid bureau, ‘you couldn’t get it for love nor money. Everybody wants to get their mitts on it. Even people who don’t know the first thing about it. Once you’ve got it it’s yours for good. It’s safe from reforms, it’s safe from everything. Except maybe woodworm.’ And she offered them coffee.

He watched Magdalena clasp the handle of the coffee cup in her plump fingers and stare doggedly at the carpets in front of her. Her cheeks flushed. He recalled seeing it happen to her once before. Then, she had said: ‘I feel so ashamed.’ He could no longer remember the reason for her shame; most likely himself or something he had said or done.

‘Last week one of my friends offered me a pewter plate for eight hundred crowns,’ the woman remarked. ‘They must think we’re made of money! And now I’ve got to lay out a thousand for Ben here. As if there was anything wrong with wanting the best for mum’s best friend.’ She got up and heaved the bulldog on to her lap. The dog went on sleeping and she went on complaining. How she had had to cough up for her daughter’s co-op flat, help out her poorly old mother and pay the builders at their country place. About the reason for the visit she said nothing.

After a quarter of an hour or so, Oldřich got up and he followed suit.

He waited alone in front of the house. His friend apparently had another similar meeting to see to that afternoon. He ought to get him something for his services too. At least a bottle of something, or some flowers for his wife, perhaps. He was getting more and more embroiled. It was a mistake to have offered to help Magdalena. So many had lost their jobs that no one would ever know the exact figure; all of them would have to find themselves a living doing something other than the work they had been trained for, or had a vocation for. Magdalena’s husband would get over it too. The problem is that I’ve not been thrown out. I hand down verdicts in the name of the Republic and in return collect my salary in two instalments every month. My services aren’t badly rewarded, considering.

In olden times they fed a single sow, the trough’s a lot more crowded than that now, Russian proverb.

Magdalena appeared half an hour later. She linked her arm in his — as in olden times.

‘How did you get on?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m supposed to think about it all. She explained to me that about five people have to get something. At least three thousand each. She swore that they wouldn’t get a penny out of it, that they were doing it as a favour to your friend and for the sake of justice.’

‘But you’re not going to line their pockets with fifteen thousand!’

‘I don’t know. I feel out of my depth.’

She said it as if he wasn’t. Could she really think he’d sunk so low?

‘We don’t even have that much. I don’t know where we’ll get it from.’

‘Do you think it’d be worth it?’

‘What else can we do? He loves his work. He enjoys teaching. He’d go mad working as a warehouseman or a book-keeper somewhere.’

‘He wouldn’t have to do it for ever. The present climate won’t last long.’

‘Long enough to see all of us buried. And then our children would suffer. They always hound the children when they’ve hounded the parents. I no longer want to spend my life just waiting for things to change.’

‘You’ll be waiting for it to happen anyway.’

‘No, I don’t mean to wait for anything any more.’

He had ten thousand saved up. He was keeping it by in case some unexpected disaster befell him, though he had no idea how such a small sum might save him. Maybe for precisely the kind of situation Magdalena and her husband now found themselves in. Only he would never use it to that purpose on his own account. And what if Alena got herself into this situation? He had to regard half the sum as her property.

‘I could lend you some money. Or you could have it as a gift,’ he quickly corrected himself.

‘Why should you? I’ve not existed for the past thirteen years as far as you’re concerned, so why, all of a sudden… I’m sorry, forgive me, I’m upset. But I could never take anything from you.’

Suddenly something came back to him from the distant era when he was still visiting her flat, the single room where they sat, slept and made love, where he so often perused the books on the shelves, though he had no time to read any of them however much he would have liked to. ‘I’m sure you used to have loads of old books.’

‘Dad left me them when he emigrated. I could hardly sell them, even if I had a mind to.’ A moment afterwards she added, ‘Who’d buy them from me? We live in a small town. The people there buy refrigerators and television sets, not books.’

‘You could sell them here.’

‘I wouldn’t get anything for them anyway.’ He noticed she had tears in her eyes. ‘I wish I were home already. I need to ask Jaroslav what he thinks.’

‘We can drive there if you like.’

‘That’s out of the question. I live near Jihlava.’

‘When we were in America we would sometimes drive that far for supper.’

‘This isn’t America.’

‘You can have a word with your husband and come back in the morning. Or you could come straight back with me if you wanted. There’s plenty of time till morning.’

They drove through Prague and turned on to the motorway. ‘Dad died two years ago,’ she remarked out of the blue. ‘It was completely unexpected. I didn’t even manage to get to the funeral. He’d been living in Germany, but over near the French border. He remarried. He left everything to his new wife. I never met her.’

‘I never saw your father either.’

‘Those books are my only memento of him. I realise they’re only things. People go their separate ways, so why should one hang on to things?’

Darkness fell. When they arrived he would most likely have to go into the flat with her. For a cup of tea, at least. She’d introduced her husband Jaroslav. What did he look like? he wondered. He didn’t care, anyway. And she would introduce him as well. This is Adam. The judge I was in The Hole with. He managed to find someone who can pull some strings for us, so you might be able to keep your job at the school. Don’t start feeling grateful: it’ll cost fifteen thousand… No, it’s not for him, only for the go-betweens. Will it be criminal? There’s no need to worry on that score if he’s the intermediary.

He glanced at her. She seemed asleep. Would this really help her? Rather than aiding one victim wouldn’t he be helping her instead to spin a web that would entangle several others?

We commit crimes, or at least we acquiesce in them, so we can go on leading normal lives. But we can never live normally again once we are implicated.

‘Adam,’ she said suddenly, ‘I know you don’t like doing it, and I’d never ask it of you if it weren’t that I haven’t the strength to go through it all again. To move on to yet another Hole. You know what I mean. It’s not happiness I’m looking for any more,’ she went on. ‘There’s not much happiness left in life for me now, but I would like some peace and quiet. And Jaroslav’sz a kind man. When I met him I was completely alone. He helped me.’