Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

I’m YOURS for my now very short ever, my one and only, my dearest, my only love.

Your, your, your,

H.

She was unable to conceal her reaction. ‘Mummy, did Honza write something horrible?’ Manda asked.

‘No!’

‘Didn’t he write anything about those pills?’

‘No!’ and she realised that nothing had been consigned to the past. What was she going to do? What would she tell Adam? What would become of the children? ‘What pills?’

‘He had some pills to help him go to sleep. And now he’s eaten them. Martin saw him through the window. He said he took one pill, and then he had a drink of water, then he took another one and had another drink of water. Martin said he took fifty of them, but he doesn’t know how to count!’ she added scornfully. ‘And then he said…’ She listened no longer but dashed up the stairs. He was lying fully dressed on the bed. His face looked even paler than usual. The tube lay empty on the table:

Phenobarbital 10 tablets 200 mg.

1 tablet contains:

Phenobyrbitalum 200mg.

She had no idea what sort of tablets they were. She had a horror of all pills and she would probably have been just as alarmed by an empty tube of penicillin.

‘Honza!’

He opened his eyes. He tried to sit up but immediately fell back again.

‘What have you done?’

‘Sorry,’ he said in a fading voice. ‘Sorry!’

‘Get up immediately!’ she said with a brusqueness that concealed her anxiety. ‘Immediately!’

This time he really did raise himself. Thump, thump went the plaster cast.

Bob’s Renault was standing in front of the cottage, wet from the rain.

While her sister-in-law searched for the keys, she opened the car door and helped him on to the back seat.

‘Mummy, we want to go with you.’

‘You’ll stay here!’

‘You promised you’d take us this morning…’

‘Well get in then, but quickly, we can’t wait.’

‘Mummy, have you got your licence?’

‘Daddy says you mustn’t drive without your licence. Don’t rev so much, you’ll wear out Uncle’s battery.’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake, it won’t start. What’s wrong with it?’

‘Alena, I’m sorry!’

‘Mummy, when Uncle starts the car, he pushes in the choke.’

‘What choke, Martin?’

‘That switch.’

‘I’m sorry, Alena!’

‘Mummy, you can change to third now.’

‘Mummy, how far is it to the hospital?’

‘Firty minutes, stupid. It’s firty minutes to town. Daddy said.’

‘Mummy, what if Honza dies before then?’

‘Mummy, you can push the choke in now.’

‘Mummy, I don’t think Honza’s breathing any more. Did he make a suicide?’

‘What’s a suicide, Mummy?’

‘It’s when someone doesn’t want to live any more, isn’t it, Mummy?’

‘Why didn’t Honza want to live any more, Mummy?’

‘Because his leg hurt, stupid!’

‘Stop talking to Mummy. Can’t you see she’s driving? And she’s bothered. Aren’t you bothered, Mummy?’

‘Mummy, Honza touched me with his hand and it’s freezing.’

‘His hand must be freezing if he’s not breathing!’

‘But he touched me with it.’

‘He couldn’t have touched you if he’s not breathing!’

‘But he did.’

‘So what? So he touched you, but he’s still not breathing, though.’

‘You should have turned off by the shop to go to the hospital.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘No, but there was a signpost.’

‘What signpost?’

‘One with a big blue H. Daddy said it means hospital.’

‘Mummy, Honza is terribly, you know, pale. I think he really will die! I’m frightened.’

Inside the hospital grounds, she wasted five minutes trying to find the proper wing and another five looking for an orderly with a stretcher. Maybe it was less, but every minute she waited seemed endless to her. Then she was left standing alone on the black and white tiles of the corridor.

She walked up and down. What if he died and it was all her fault? Please God, if you exist, don’t be so hard on me. Other women do it too. Without thinking twice, just for fun, or out of boredom.

Ten minutes. Back and forth.

They have lovers and talk about them as if they were talking about television. They love describing how they deceive each other. And nothing happens. You don’t punish them in any way, God. I did it for his sake. I wanted to help him. If he dies, what shall I do? What shall I tell his mother?

She heard a door open on the corridor and then caught sight of a doctor. He was small, old and fat. ‘Was it you who came with that young fellow?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you a relative?’

‘No, just a friend.’ And she felt the blood rush to her cheeks. He was beating about the bush, so it meant bad news. Prepare yourself for the worst, madam… ‘We’re here on holiday together.’

‘It’ll be all right,’ the doctor said. ‘He’ll soon be well, but the problem is he might try again. One can never be too careful in these cases. Have you any idea why he did it?’ And it seemed to her he shot her a meaningful glance.

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. Her cheeks blazed as if she had a fever. But he surely couldn’t suspect anything. It was merely his duty to ask. But that wasn’t even important. The main thing was that he’d recover. She felt a sudden sense of relief and tears came to her eyes. ‘I just happened to have the car, so I brought him.’ And she was amazed at the strangeness of her voice. She wasn’t: used to lying.

‘And the place you brought him from: does he have any relations there?’

She shook her head. Then she said: ‘He only has a mother, and she is in Prague.’

‘OK, we’ll have to send word to her. It might be better if she came for him. Could you leave us her address?’

‘But I don’t know it. He… he’s sure to tell you later.’ Her throat was dry and burning. ‘And he really is out of danger, Doctor?’

‘You need have no further worries.’

‘Thank you, Doctor!’

‘If you like, you can come for him yourself the day after tomorrow.’

So he’d twigged at last. That is if he hadn’t known from the very first.

Before we drink from the waters of Lethe

1

It must have been some time in the fourth year of grammar school that I decided it was high time I set down in writing my ideas about how the world should be run. The essay was entitled ‘The Ideal State’. When, some time ago, I opened the black exercise book with its copperplate title and the dedication, To My Friend Miroslav Vozek, I was amazed to find that most of the pages were missing. Had I torn them out myself? Why? When? Apart from the few remaining pages that deal with justice in the ideal state, I can no longer recall what my essay said. But I can still remember how zealously I filled the narrow lines of the school exercise book with borrowed wisdom that I believed to be my own, and the anticipation with which I presented it for comment to the friend whose name it bore.

My friend’s likeness I still have, preserved on the class photograph they took of us in the fourth year (my parents had wisely resisted the advice of my first post-war teachers and entered me two classes lower than my brilliant report would have permitted); Mirek is standing alongside me in the back row, a tall boy with curly hair and a long face.

His father owned a shoemaking workshop in Dlouhá Avenue; you had to go down steps to get to it and the windows hardly reached to street level, so that inside the lights were kept on the whole day. I used to visit their ground-floor flat just behind the shop. Mirek had a small bedroom, no more than a box-room in fact, with a window on to the airshaft. I can only remember two pictures from that room: the first president and a reproduction of a portrait of Kant, whose severe face I can still see, with its high forehead and a moustache too long in proportion to the small chin. And shelves full of books.