Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

‘You’re not going to see Honza?’

‘Get along with you!’ she said with a start. ‘Whatever for, at this time of night?’

‘You ought to go and see whether he needs something,’ her daughter suggested. ‘Seeing he’s got a bad leg.’

‘He’s bound to be asleep by now,’ she said wearily.

‘Oh, no. Honza doesn’t go to bed till after midnight. He only sleeps five hours.’

‘However do you know that?’

‘He said so. And sometimes he doesn’t go to bed at all. Mummy, what does “achieve” mean?’

‘In what sense?’

‘Like when someone wants to “achieve” something.’

‘When you want to achieve something, it means you want to do it. And now be quiet.’

‘Honza wants to achieve something,’ her son declared solemnly.

‘Hush!’

‘But he said so.’

At that moment a chair scraped on the floor upstairs. (The only room where she could put him up was directly over their heads.) The plaster cast came down heavily on the floor. Thump. Thump.

‘You see. He isn’t asleep,’ her son pointed out triumphantly.

She went over to the window. The stars were shining so brightly she was frightened. She had always been afraid of the stars: those radiant masses just hanging there in the void above her. What if one day they came loose and fell to earth, crushing her?

Upstairs the bed creaked, then silence. Martin rolled over in the bed, he had probably fallen asleep. She thought she heard a match strike over her head. She must have imagined it but could see him at that moment, his thin boyish face lit up by the match. Most likely he was waiting for her to come up. But what if Sylva heard her going up to his room at that time of the evening? It was bad enough her taking him in at all. She probably shouldn’t have, though there was nothing wrong in it, of course. She could hardly leave him in the tent with a sprained ankle. Admittedly she could have driven him to the station and stuffed a fifty-crown note into his pocket for a taxi, but she knew this would be to humiliate him. Besides, that crazy leap had been for her benefit, while he was showing off like a little boy. He had already suffered enough humiliation having to lie there helpless below the rock before she and the children had arrived to help him back to the cabin.

Moreover, she wanted him here. The trouble was she was incapable of deception; people always saw through her when she tried to keep anything a secret. This morning her sister-in-law had asked her: ‘How’s your pal?’ She had stressed the word ‘pal’. One was not allowed to treat a person like a human or everyone else drew just the one conclusion.

Upstairs the window creaked. He was quite capable of calling out to her, or whistling, or even plodding downstairs. Something white fluttered outside the window. She was so scared, she couldn’t catch her breath. But it was only a scrap of paper tied to a string. She reached out for it.

My dearest, only one,

I repeat YOUR name all the time and want to die

Come to me!

Come to me! COME TO ME! COME TO ME!!

She tore the note into little pieces and threw them down the toilet. Then she went into the kitchen. Sylva was sitting there playing Happy Families with Lucie. (How much longer would they hang around? It was long past Lucie’s bedtime. Did they intend to go on playing that stupid game till midnight?) She switched on the cooker and put some water on to boil. ‘Will you have some tea as well?’

They did not even look up; maybe they were too engrossed in their game to notice. ‘No, thanks. Tea wrecks my night,’ her sister-in-law replied.

She poured water through the tea leaves in the strainer, put the tea-cup and the kettle on a tray and went out into the passage.

Gingerly she made her way up the stairs, which creaked unbearably. Upstairs there was one single small bedroom in the middle of the loft. Adam had had it fixed up for unexpected visitors. It contained two iron bedsteads and a small table and chair. There was not even room for a wardrobe.

She tapped softly on the door (though he must have heard her coming). He stood there comically with welcoming arms spread wide, as if expecting her to slip into his embrace, tea-tray and all.

For a moment, the feeling overcame her that she was doing something unthinkable, unbecoming. She ought simply to say ‘good night’ and leave (noisily, so that the determined card-players below could hear that she had departed straight away).

‘Darling,’ he exclaimed, and bumped the tray with his chest, making the kettle rattle, ‘at last you’re here!’

She put the tray down on the bed. ‘Quiet! Every little noise can be heard downstairs!’

In a glass jar, in the middle of the table, he had the posy of wild pinks she had picked for him with the children. Otherwise the room was bare.

He put his arms round her. ‘I thought I’d go mad if you didn’t come.’ He bent across the bed and shifted the tray on to the chair, wincing as he did so.

‘Why aren’t you lying down?’

‘I had to wait for you.’

‘Does the leg hurt?’

‘Not now. Not now you’re here!’

‘Otherwise it hurts?’

He made an agonised face and shook his head.

She sat down by him and told him in a whisper where she had been with the children, what her son had said to her and what she had replied. As she ran her fingers through his hair she became aware of his fingers slowly and timidly seeking a path to her body and she found it charming rather than stimulating. ‘I have to go now.’

‘You want to go already!’

She realised almost ruefully that he had not said: ‘Don’t go!’ or even ‘I won’t let you!’ He left it up to her whether she stayed or left. Adam left most of the decisions to her too. She hadn’t been lucky enough to find a man to take the burden of decision-making from her shoulders. Menachem had been the only real man, but he hadn’t possessed enough patience or loyalty to wait for her.

He put his arms round her.

They lay side by side, he kissing her and saying the words she always longed to hear (for years now, her lovemaking with Adam had been wordless), she listening to those words and to the noises in the house. Downstairs they had no doubt finished playing ages ago but they might still be wandering about in the passage. Or Sylva might come to tell her something and enter their room. And what if Manda woke up and came looking for her here! ‘Is the door locked?’

He got up. The plaster cast thumped on the floor.

She closed her eyes. She had never managed to let her mind wander at will when she was happy; instead it tormented her with things she ought to have put aside.

‘I love you!’ he whispered above her. ‘Alena, I love you so much. It would be impossible to love you more.’

‘I love you too!’

He held her to him. ‘It’s the most beautiful thing in the world having you. I remember once when Dad wasn’t even talking to me and Mum was in a bad mood I thought of ending it all. I had my own rock in a quarry not far from Radotìn. A white rock with a path running under it. It looked like a canyon in a western. I’ll show it to you some day if you like.’

‘Of course you will,’ she said, pleased he had changed the subject and that they might just as easily be chatting at table.

‘I wanted to jump off that rock!’

‘How old were you?’

‘It’s so long ago. At least five years. But when I reached the top I could see a couple cuddling in the meadow. It’s banal, but I really did turn back because of that. It struck me I might find someone like that.’ He gulped aloud and she thought he was crying. ‘And now I have. Now I know I did the right thing, that I had something to wait for. You’re my life. I could never be without you now.’