Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

Eva unlocked the door and we entered a dark hallway. It stank of cigarette smoke and something like fish oil. She told me that the light bulb had gone in the hallway, opened the door to the sitting room and switched on the light.

Whether there was a chair in the room I do not know. I expect there was, but it must have been covered up with things, like the armchair which I do remember. So I sat down on the settee. She sat down next to me and said she fancied something else to drink. But she neither got up to fetch any nor told me where I could fetch some from. She laid her head on my shoulder and asked whether I minded the mess.

I said I didn’t.

She wanted to know whether I had already had lots of girls, and without looking at her, I told her I hadn’t.

Then she asked if I’d ever been really deeply in love, and I hesitated for a moment before saying I hadn’t.

She knew I was lying, like they all did, but thought I suited her, if only because I was Adam, and she put her arms round me. I kissed her, or rather she kissed me, and as we were kissing each other in a firm embrace she sank lower and lower until we were lying on that settee whose colour I have forgotten. For the moment I was only aware of my own increasing ardour, an ardour which I’d never known before and which took control of my senses. Then she abruptly pushed me away. She stood up and ordered me to stand up too. There was no call for us to act like little children, she said.

So I stood up and she took off the cushions and took out sheets and a heavy country-style eiderdown from inside the settee. I stared at her in amazement, having no idea what I was supposed to do next, whether I was being invited to a night of passion or being shown the door. Then she asked me whether I was going to go for a wash or not.

The wash-basin was in the hallway. In reality it was only a tiny sink beneath a tap, and to one side, an iron washstand.

I did not go out of any desire to wash, but because I suddenly wanted to delay the moment for as long as possible.

I stood there barefoot and half-naked (I’d only taken off my shirt) in the near-dark hallway, and while the water splashed into the sink, I worried in case I didn’t manage to act the man, or that I might become a father, and that what we were about to do together was going to bind us together for the rest of our lives, even though we didn’t even love each other. I also fretted in case I caught one of those loathsome diseases which, so far, I had read about with the reassuring awareness that I had nothing to fear from those afflictions at least.

She called to me from the next room asking where I had got to, so I wet my hand quickly under the tap for show’s sake and splashed my trousers. I turned off the water and returned to the room. I hesitated once again, this time mostly because it seemed improper to me to climb into a bed that someone was already lying in. It was only when she lifted the bedclothes slightly that I took off my trousers too, and with feelings more of shame and anxiety than passion I climbed in beside her.

Oddly enough, the details which have remained in my memory are the less important ones: the intrusive perfume she wore; how she evaded me for a long time, though laughing the while; how she wanted to touch my genitals; how I then recoiled from her in a sudden fit of modesty and stayed her hand. But the act itself has gone from my memory entirely. I was most likely too agitated to concentrate on my own (let alone her) feelings.

I do remember how she got up afterwards and, to my astonishment, fetched some water in that enamel washing bowl (so there must have been a stool of some kind for her to stand the bowl on), and a towel, and asked me whether I’d like to rinse myself.

It struck me as discourteous not to agree after she had gone to such trouble and so — this time to her astonishment — I washed my face.

I woke up just as it was getting light. What had woken me was the feeling I was suffocating. Someone was stamping up the stairs, a door slammed and through the wall could be heard the sound of brass band music. I had no idea who might come in, who might draw back the grubby curtain that separated the room I was lying in from the hallway, and shout out in surprise. My trousers lay crumpled on the floor amidst dirty cups. I was frightened to turn my head towards her, though I could feel the warmth of her naked body which, as I regained my senses, started to arouse me once more. It was cold there and I crouched back under the covers. Alongside my head there lay the face of a stranger: the thick upper lip smeared with lipstick, the mouth slightly open, showing over-large teeth; unkempt hair on the unlaundered pillow. It was so unfamiliar and unexpected, quite different from anything I had ever imagined, that I closed my eyes again and at that moment I could see in my mind’s eye those naked figures marching in the darkness on swollen feet, endlessly walking. Now at that very moment, maybe in the very cellar of the house next door, their tortured footsteps resounded in the silence in which here was I lying alongside a stranger, a silence in which millions of bodies unknown to me were lying next to each other, and still more bodies were lying in the soil, silence in which someone’s fingers had once sowed poisonous crystals in order to increase the number of motionless bodies. A silence broken by orders. Up on your feet! On the ground! A sudden desire for escape led me to stretch out my arm and draw that unfamiliar body to me. She opened her puffy eyelids slightly and, half-asleep, she snuggled up to me and we again made love in a desperate, passionless spasm.

The next day, during our very first class, Nimmrichter came up to me in the lecture theatre with a broad grin on his face, though his eyes searched my face fearfully. He said he had told me all sorts of nonsense that evening, and that there was no truth in any of those stories; he had only thought them up to amuse us.

I felt relieved and said that I had thought so from the very start and hadn’t really believed him. Then I asked him if the story about his sister being raped and the tales about the monastery were also made up. He froze, and his gaze became fixed. And I realised that he had made up those stories about his sister and those dreadful orgies, either that or he had heard or read about them, but what he had told me two nights ago had been true.

I didn’t see Eva for several days. The whole time I wrestled with the question of what I was going to do. What if I became a father? What if she said I was the father and it wouldn’t be my baby at all? How old was she, in fact? I didn’t want to marry an older woman; I didn’t want to get married at all, and I didn’t want a woman I didn’t love. But then why had I done those things with a woman I didn’t love? I was degenerate. I had betrayed myself and all my ideals! Worst of all, I was beginning to miss the thing we had done that night.

When at last I saw her in the lecture theatre, I rushed over to her. She said she didn’t know when she would have the time again; at the moment she had lots of work, but she’d certainly let me know.

The same afternoon, I caught sight of her in front of the faculty, hanging on the arm of a stranger. I was overcome with disappointment, or maybe jealousy, even. At home I started to write a letter. I had been prepared to love her, but she hadn’t been able to find time for me, whereas she apparently had time for others; now I was sad and longing for her. I went off to bed full of hope that my message would have the desired effect and she would answer: Come!

The next day I put the letter into my correspondence folder and never took it out again.

5

One spring afternoon, my father decided we would all go on an outing together. I looked forward to the trip as a rare opportunity to talk to Father. We got into our car (the car, a nineteen-year-old Tatra, was Father’s only luxury, the only thing he could bequeath us if hard times should come — not counting, that is, one still camera, a film projector and a screen).