Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

I was sitting next to Father and noticed (in those days of sparse traffic, it was not difficult to notice) that the whole time we were followed by a black limousine. Father said he knew about it, that it was most probably the State Security.

Why were they following us? Father’s assumption was that his rivals in the factory had most likely denounced him again. On what grounds? Father couldn’t say. Nobody would ever tell him what their actual complaints were. When they finally plucked up the courage to speak out openly, it would become clear where the truth lay; which employees had the interests of society at heart, and which were only interested in their careers.

They came a few days later. They rang the doorbell before six o’clock in the morning: four men. Two others were standing guard outside the house in case the criminal absconded (though who was a criminal and who an innocent party among those assembled?). They burst into the flat, emboldened by the fact that they were fully dressed, which gave them an advantage over people who were only just waking up, and commenced their search.

What were they looking for? Even a tracking dog knows whether the trail it follows belongs to a fleeing hare or to a fox; but what trail were they following? What guilt were they assuming and what evidence were they looking for to prove it? Books were all they found. But they were mostly written in some foreign language, and if that were not enough, they were filled with mysterious figures and Father’s own notes in the margins. The snoopers picked up the books gingerly, as if handling unexploded bombs. They required explanations throughout their visit. Who had written this comment here? And why? Why had he written his comments in German? Why had he underlined this particular sentence and that number?

My father stood ashen-faced in their midst, almost at attention. He had simply wanted to emphasise a sentence he’d found interesting. Why? Because the author had come up with an original solution. Did he know the author personally? No; after all he had died when Father was eight years old. They’d check it out anyway.

I don’t know where they were intending to check out those tens of thousands of underlined sentences and figures, any one of which might have been the cipher they expected, and longed for. But more likely, as I realised later, they knew that they wouldn’t be checking anything really. Their methods were rather different.

None the less, those four men leafed through volume after volume: dozens of books in all. They rifled our family albums, lifted the carpets, went through my writing desk, asked where our money was hidden, ordered Father not to pretend he had none, ransacked my mother’s chest of drawers, and tapped the floors and the walls, already disgusted at what they suspected would be a futile search. In the end they fetched a typewriter from their car and wrote a receipt for the confiscated objects. The list was a short one: just a few books and articles (I never understood why those in particular, and not other ones), a letter from Father’s brother Gustav, a Meopta film projector, a screen and a silent film about the Danube salmon, an Underwood typewriter and a vintage Tatra car. The latter they sealed in the garage for the time being. Thus, with no trouble, they stripped us of all our valuables. We owned neither gold, silver, nor porcelain; not even a cut crystal vase. If we had ever owned anything of the sort it had been snatched by other intruders not so many years before. The process steered its way towards its pre-determined conclusion, but we were ignorant of it and still believed that the house-search had only confirmed my father’s innocence. But Father was apparently better informed, because when they finally ordered him to accompany them, he asked if he might be allowed to take his leave, and they magnanimously permitted him to do so, although in their presence, of course. So Father stepped up to my mother with tears in his eyes. Once again he was leaving for the unknown, except now there was no war whose end might bring liberation. Then, after they had hugged each other, Father turned to me and said that I was now a grown-up man and could be counted on to care for Mother and Hanuš if he didn’t return for a long time. Mother snapped at him that he would be sure to return the following day, seeing that he had done nothing wrong. Father managed to say that sometimes it took a long time to establish one’s innocence. One of the men opened the door and the one who played the good cop role said goodbye to us. Then they left.

We stood at the window and watched them get into the car. Father, dressed in his one and only decent suit, made from black cloth with a light-blue stripe, took a last look up at the window and nodded to us. At my side, Mother sobbed and in a fit of weeping repeated over and over again: Oh my God, this is no life, this is no life! The car drove off and I froze as the thought struck me that, on the contrary, this was precisely what life was.

On that day my brother Hanuš emerges from the obscurity all of a sudden. We had lived side by side, for a long time even shared the same bedroom, but somehow till then he had eluded me. I know that he did well at maths and used to go with a group of his friends to play ping-pong and billiards at a pub, where he also drank beer and occasionally behaved so wildly that — much to my horror — he came home with his clothes torn and covered in blood. He was also a good skier, refused to read the newspapers or listen to anything on the radio apart from music. His interests and lifestyle differed totally from my own. I didn’t know his friends, let alone his loves, or his attitudes to the world he was obliged to live in and about which I, like Father, had such definite ideas. I cannot even recall a single one of our conversations or rows — except for the one that particular morning. Shortly after they took Father away, we were both doing our best to console Mother. I maintained that it was bound to be an error, a false accusation that would be exposed by the next day, because after all, it was against the law to even accuse people unjustly in our country, let alone convict them. Everyone would be bound to testify to Father’s services and convictions. And all of a sudden my brother broke in and started to abuse me, calling me a dolt and simpleton who was guilty of everything that was happening because I refused to see or understand anything. He shouted about rigged elections and crooked trials, about people from our own building who had been sent to prison even though they were decent folk. I expect I tried to contradict him because he suddenly leapt at me: my younger brother, who — I thought — looked up to me, who was no more than a boy and therefore incapable of serious opinions. Now he was punching me with his fists as if I was personally responsible for all the evil in our country.

That afternoon, Uncle Gustav arrived. First of all he brought best wishes from Uncle Karel, who warned us not to make any telephone calls, send any letters, especially abroad, and above all, to visit no one. My uncle agreed with me that it was an appalling miscarriage of justice, and gave us a sermon (happily, my brother Hanuš had gone out) about the incredible complexity of the class struggle, when, after losing the decisive battle, the enemy sought to sneak in everywhere. Hence it was necessary to investigate even the most devoted comrades, and even, of course, those pursuing the enemy. Meanwhile, skirmishes with the enemy were becoming sharper all the time and he was employing all sorts of shrewd tactics such as pretending to be a friend while trying to label true friends as enemies. All this was undermining the most valuable and noble gains of our revolution: the mutual trust and the new relations of comradeship. As a result it was impossible and unthinkable to trust people absolutely. He, however, put his trust in the Party, which would eventually discover the truth. In the end Viktor would obtain satisfaction, though it might take a little time. In the meantime, we all had to wait patiently and have faith, wait and not make any phone calls, wait and write to no one but the authorities. And we could trust the family as well, of course: he and Uncle Karel would look after us until we could stand on our own feet, if the case should happen to go on longer or the enemy’s intrigues succeed for a while. Suddenly my uncle lowered his voice, his dark eyes became moist and he told us that he believed Father was innocent; he was sure of it. Viktor was the most remarkable man he had ever met. And even though it was not possible to trust anyone absolutely, he did trust his brother implicitly and dared to make an exception in his case. And I realised with dismay that suspicion had taken root in my uncle, that the unremitting logic of his thinking was sapping his belief in his own brother.