Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

Someone should get up and leave; they couldn’t sit here all three together. Can’t he sense it? Doesn’t it occur to either of them? ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

‘No. I’d be ill if I ate this late. Anyway I’m pretty tired already, I haven’t had much sleep this week.’

Why did he have to talk about it? She hadn’t had much sleep either, but she didn’t complain, even though she was a woman.

‘What do you actually do?’ he asked, turning suddenly to Honza. ‘You’re still a student?’

‘No, I’ve finished,’ the other replied in a deeper voice than usual. ‘I’m now working in a library, like Alena.’

‘I shouldn’t think that’s the nicest of jobs at the present time.’

‘A lot nicer than sitting on the bench,’ said Honza with the obvious intention of offending.

‘You’re right there.’ He might not even have been listening. He only listened when he felt like it, and then only to people who interested him in some way. He was oblivious to the rest. He stood up again: ‘Shall we go to bed?’ Then he turned to Honza: ‘Would you like me to help you up the stairs?’

Probably he meant well, but the other took it as a churlish hint that he should leave.

‘No, thank you. I’ll manage myself!’ On his way out he gave her a look that terrified her. What if he swallowed some pills again upstairs?

Adam scooped some water into the wash-basin. ‘I brought some money to a woman who lives not far from here; her husband’s in prison.’ He took off his shirt. ‘I had to wait for her till eight thirty and then listen to her story.’ Instead of starting to wash, he squatted down on the stool and talked. ‘I managed to leave town by three o’clock. I was missing you and wanted to get here as early as possible, but I didn’t know whether this woman was in a hurry for the money. She’s extremely young.’ As usual when he was tired, he talked ramblingly about all sorts of unrelated things.

‘I don’t know who you’re talking about,’ she said.

‘About the woman I had to wait for.’ And he continued his incoherent narration, throwing in something about another woman in a run-down flat, and now that woman was the mother of a man on remand whose case he was going to try, but the mother had never set eyes on him. Her son. As if that could possibly be true. And his friend Oldřich was having an affair with Alice, and yesterday two people pretending to be lovers had apparently tailed him, and then he was back to the first woman again and about what she earned, as if it was the most interesting and important thing he could possibly say to her. Nevertheless she made an effort to attend, while straining her ears to hear what was happening in the rest of the house. Had he gone to bed yet? What if he heard them later? His bedroom was immediately overhead.

He came over to her and put his arms around her. ‘I’m glad I’m here with you.’

‘I’m glad too.’ She slipped out of his embrace. He was bulky, unfamiliar, almost alien. What was she to tell him, when it came down to it? The children would spill the beans anyway. ‘Are you still going to wash?’

‘Yes.’ He stood up. He plunged his hands in the water. The floor around him was instantly wet.

‘He tried to commit suicide three days ago!’

He soaped his chest and went on automatically to lean over the wash-basin and scoop up water in his palm, as if unable to postpone the planned gesture. In the end he asked: ‘Who?’

‘Honza, of course!’

He turned towards her. She saw that he was trying to recall who she could be talking about, but he asked: ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said reluctantly. How could he possibly suspect nothing? Was it because he trusted her so much or because he had become so alienated from her? ‘I think he’s depressed about something.’

He reached for a towel. ‘Why should he be depressed?’

She was incapable of lying. She had never lied about a single bad mark when she was still at school. To live a lie seemed to her like living an illness. ‘I don’t know,’ she said in a whisper.

‘How did he do it?’

‘He took an overdose.’

‘But that’s a woman’s way.’ He picked up his shirt up from the chair. ‘I have to go and get my pyjamas.’

‘Aren’t you even going to ask how it turned out?’

‘OK by the look of it. He was calmly drinking tea when I arrived.’

There was one thing, though, she had never told him about: her night with Menachem. But oddly enough she didn’t feel it to be a lie, maybe because she had loved Menachem before she loved Adam; she had only been repaying a debt, albeit a debt to her own imagination. Moreover, Adam knew they were together that night and never asked what they had been doing. Had he asked she would have told him the truth, even though she wasn’t entirely sure herself what had really happened. They had been drinking wine together so that reality and her imagination had gradually blurred together and merged.

But this time she had no doubts about what had happened, and was still happening, and she felt she had a duty to tell him everything herself, before he asked, the moment she joined him in the bedroom, in fact. Only she wouldn’t have the strength to do it this evening.

She had already had her wash and was rinsing out her underwear. Maybe Adam would fall asleep in the meantime and nothing would happen for the one upstairs to hear. The trouble was Adam wouldn’t fall asleep. He’d not seen her for almost a fortnight and would wait until she came and lay alongside him and he’d have a chance to cuddle her. But how was she to join him in bed with the other one’s voice still sounding in her ears, how was she to cuddle and caress him with hands covered in a stranger’s kisses?

He lay in bed reading by the light of the wall-lamp.

‘What are you reading?’ she asked in a whisper.

‘I’ve no idea; some book of Manda’s. Something about puppies. You were ages coming. I was afraid of falling asleep.’

‘There was no reason why you shouldn’t have. You must be tired.’

‘I am.’

She still didn’t get into bed. She opened the cupboard. On the uppermost shelf there lay a packet of cotton-wool. She reached for it. But there was no point. Had Adam been like other men and not thought about such things, she might have fooled him by that gesture. But he counted her days (as he counted everything) and he kept track better than she did herself.

‘How long has he been there?’ he asked.

‘Why?’

He pointed towards the ceiling.

‘About a week.’

‘Did it cause a big commotion when he took those pills?’

‘No, I took him to hospital. Fortunately Bob was here with his car.’

‘He might have found somewhere else to do it!’

‘Ssh!’ she admonished him. ‘He’s sleeping just above!’

Just then, as if exactly cued by some invisible stage-manager: thump! thump! The plaster cast crashed on the floor several times and the door above creaked. The terrifying thought gripped her that he might come in, carrying a knife or wielding an axe, exclaim: My love! and then attack Adam or herself, or — even more likely — turn the weapon on himself.

Finally she lay down at his side and he drew her to himself in his usual manner. ‘No, not yet!’ she whispered. ‘I have to get used to you first.’

‘But it’s so late already!’

‘It’s not our last day, after all,’ she objected weakly.

‘I’ve been looking forward to you. The whole time.’

‘I know. I’ve been looking forward to you too. But everything can be heard here.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Anyway, everyone’s asleep.’

‘ He isn’t,’ she said, pointing upwards. ‘I don’t want him to hear us.’