Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

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One day we had a party in Plach’s garret room. I can’t recall any more what we were celebrating but there were a lot of people there I didn’t know. They might have been Plach’s relations or former friends and colleagues. Among them was a North Korean lieutenant called Nam who was studying with us. There were tables covered in food rare at that period of ration coupons, and from a large demijohn there came the aroma of home-made plum brandy, which we all (including myself: I didn’t want to be different) proceeded to drink.

We ate and then sang. Our Korean class-mate Nam played the accordion, while Plach accompanied him on the guitar. They were mostly songs with a fighting spirit, all about wars, partisans and revolution, which provided an opportunity for yelling political slogans, such as E viva il communismo e la liberta! Viva Stalin! Everybody sang. I couldn’t sing so I shouted the slogans all the louder and clapped in time to the music. We also talked politics — or what we took to be politics.

That night, Nirnmrichter got drunk. Cumbersome, with his gorilla-like shoulders and simian brow, he started to do a cossack dance and Eva, our leader, came over to me and asked me to dance it with her. I had never learnt to dance but I yielded and gambolled ludicrously between the tables and the joists, while the rest of them clapped in time to the music and laughed. Afterwards she told me I was sweet: she had always loved bears. And she gave me a kiss. There was nothing about her I found attractive: she was small and plump with big masculine lips and unkempt, greasy hair. But now I was drunk I had received my first kiss from a woman I didn’t know.

Maybe she realised, and for that reason came and sat next to me after our dance. She declared I had shaggy hair like a dog and ruffled it with her fingers, letting her hand rest momentarily on the nape of my neck. That touch took my breath away. Just then Nimmrichter staggered over to us. He sat down on the floor at her feet and asked me if I thought someone could believe in God and still be a communist. He kept on staring at me fixedly with his bulging eyes until I became nervous and replied that it would be difficult. He agreed with me and declared that the Church had been the enemy of progress since time immemorial and it still had only one thing in mind: to spoil everything, wreck everything and turn the people away from us, but it would never get away with it again. Then he remembered a priest who had buried a rifle and other weapons in his garden. The chairman of the local council had been a one-legged man who used to ride a horse, the chairman’s wife had been the sister of the farmer who owned the pub and he had had a brother who went off to the seminary, and the two of them had decided they would print some leaflets, all clever like, so the husband wouldn’t know, or his friends, especially the treasurer who used to play cards with him, but he had found the leaflets and set them on the trail, because everyone spills the beans in the end, and no one manages to hide what they really believe, and he could assure us of the fact, because he had been there at the time. He looked at me again, and all of sudden he crossed the boundary he’d never crossed before, at least not in our company. His narration suddenly became more coherent, as if previously he had only been groping his way through a mist in a strange land. When they arrested him, the priest told them he hadn’t buried the weapons or printed the leaflets, thinking maybe that the Good Lord would help him keep the whole criminal gang secret.

Eva declared that it was all very interesting and laughed quite irrelevantly. Then she snuggled up to me, again ruffling my hair and calling me her doggie.

Only that was where he was wrong (all the time Nimmrichter kept his eyes fixed on me) because he had fallen into his hands. He had taken him downstairs where he had a few cells that didn’t let in a single ray of light, and he’d made that fat mouse strip. What a belly! Nimmrichter actually stood up to demonstrate it to us, that enormous belly. Where had he got it from? What good had that church mouse ever done, what had it done apart from sponging off the poor and teaching them to grovel? So he had given it the order: walk! And the mouse had walked; in a funny way with its toes turned out, and Nimmrichter gave us another demonstration that made Eva start giggling again, our sides touching. The first day, my fellow-student continued, the mouse had tried to go on mumbling its prayers, but the second day it only groaned and begged him to let it sit down for a moment, saying it had varicose veins and a bad heart, it hadn’t any feeling in its feet. So he had let it do some press-ups for a while and afterwards he had allowed it to curl up on the floor and have a half-hour’s sleep, because even he, Nimmrichter, was beginning to find it tiring. But the mouse hadn’t slept anyway, but just kept on whining and even tried to threaten him with divine retribution, so he made it stand up and walk, and soon it stopped thinking about the Good Lord and started begging him instead, swearing it knew nothing, so he had made it do some more press-ups and walk again, and when it pretended it couldn’t do any more and fell down, it got a bucket of water over it, and then more buckets of water, until it started to shake all over and implore him. In the end it jumped up again and promised it would start walking again. But by now it was beginning to soften, by now it was only crawling on all fours, now it was beginning to sing as it was supposed to.

Nam played us the accordion again. Eva sang something with her head resting on my shoulder and Nimmrichter went on reminiscing. Some of them didn’t even have to be made to walk, it had been enough to make them stand with their hands above their heads and submit to ‘Nimmrichter’s Luck’. He decided he would give us a demonstration of the technique which bore his name, and asked us all to stand up with our arms in the air — just for a moment; there was nothing to fear. He came up behind me and tried to grip me under the shoulders, and I could feel hot breath on the back of my neck. At that moment a wave of revulsion welled up within me and I slipped out of his grip and thrust back my elbow. I caught him right in the face. He lurched back and caught his head on the corner of a cupboard. I could see the blood rush to his face and realised that the next moment he would leap on me and start to beat me; maybe to death. I swiftly retreated several paces so that there was now a table — still covered in food — between the two of us. But at that moment Eva came up to Nimmrichter, put her arm round his shoulders and pushed her glass to his lips, before slowly leading him away.

A few minutes later he came to find me. He fixed his goggle eyes on me and said that he had never liked me, that he knew all about me anyway, including the things I would rather no one knew anything about, so I should be sure to watch my step, because he had his eye on me. Clumsily I asked him to explain to me what he meant, but he only went on repeating that I should just watch my step, and sat down again on a chair, mumbling orders: Attention, on your feet, flat on the floor, up and down and walk, and no stopping, all the while staring at me with his bloodshot eyes and giving me the order: No stopping!

Eva leaned towards me and whispered in my ear that it would be best if we left now.

Outside it was snowing and the street and pavement had the appearance of a perfectly unsullied white plain. She linked her arm in mine and we defiled the plain with heavy steps. As we passed by the cemetery, the trees beyond the wall seemed to me to be painfully spreading snow-white branches, while the gravestones thrust upwards like dark threatening fingers.

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