Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

Uncle Gustav now turned to me and said that I was to go on believing in my father, and in the Party too. I must inform it about what had happened. He went on to reminisce for a while about how the English had caught him in Palestine and charged him with espionage and how the military prosecutor had demanded the death sentence for him. Then he recalled the battle of Tobruk where death stalked like a wild beast, and how, during the siege of Aachen, an artillery grenade had exploded a few yards from him, and yet everything had turned out well for him in the end, apart from the leg wound. But after all, he had been awarded a pension for it. He took his wallet out of his pocket and removed an envelope from it; it probably contained his pension as not even Uncle Gustav owned any property apart from his wounded leg. He thrust the envelope into Mother’s apron pocket, then stood up and left.

There were only two people on duty in the Party secretariat of my faculty: a girl in a blue shirt and some old fellow in threadbare clothes. He could have been one of the lecturers, but equally a boilerman or one of the maintenance staff.

They listened to what I had to say and told me that they had noted my statement and would inform the committee of what had happened. Then they would let me know.

I also told them that Father had recently been spending most of his time away from home but had never changed his opinions and had certainly remained a good comrade. I was not entirely sure at that moment whether those particular words were intended to help myself or support Father, but most probably I needed to tell someone at least what was weighing on my mind.

The girl replied that she understood my attitude and my confidence in my father, but I was certainly not capable of objectively assessing all the factors, and added that if there was any unexpected change, such as my father being released, I was to come and tell them again without fail. And I still remember that dismal combination of words: ‘unexpected’ and ‘released’. Yes, anything but that was more likely: that he would be convicted of the gravest crimes and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment or even to death; anything was more likely than his release.

A few days later, we received a three-line notification that Father had been remanded in custody on the orders of the regional prosecutor in Brno. Confirmation of receipt of an arrested person. The signature was illegible. Father had not been granted defence counsel.

Uncle Gustav brought a copy of the Criminal Law and Penal Code and read us out excerpts from it. It had occurred to him — on the basis of what Father had told him just before his arrest — that it was bound to be some recent slander by his enemies. One could not even rule out the possibility, Uncle Gustav feared, that Father, being above all a scientist, might have made some mistake or even neglected something in the management of the enterprise, and this had been seized upon by his enemies and led to his arrest. In which case, he concluded triumphantly, when everything had been weighed up, and assuming Father wasn’t found entirely innocent, they might use paragraph 135 covering damage caused by neglect, for which the law prescribed, and here my uncle raised his voice, a term of imprisonment of up to one year, i.e. one year maximum. This, in Father’s case, was ruled out as the court would be obliged to take into account his utter probity.

After my uncle left, I took that thick volume in pocket-Bible format and, as I had once done with the Scriptures, I read it right through, from cover to cover. From the preamble to the temporary provisions and concluding statutes. It took me a single evening and part of the night. I do not recall whether I had had any particular interest in legal study before then. I had, of course, enthusiastically followed the trial of the Protectorate government and read commentaries about the Nuremberg Trials and even had several pamphlets on my bookshelf dealing with the trials of the war criminals, but I had read them chiefly for their connection with my own past; it had never struck me that anything significant in terms of legal theory and practice had happened during those trials. Like most people I viewed the law more as a device for obscuring true justice. All of a sudden, to my surprise, I had encountered a code. Its perfection, adequacy or absurdity compared with other codes of the same kind of course were issues I could not possibly judge, but the very attempt to encompass the whole of life and organise it into a system enthralled me.

Consideration to be given to a mother’s nervousness after childbirth, to the feelings of under-aged witnesses or those learning of the crimes of their next of kin; the precise distinction to be made between responsibility and irresponsibility, sanity and insanity, between a deliberate action and negligence; the different definitions to be observed of contrition and remorse, given the paramount importance of the time factor! Could there exist anywhere a more exhaustive expression of the longing to regulate and demarcate the proper value of all human relations?

I was summoned to attend a committee meeting at the beginning of the summer vacation. This time, the room was full of people. I knew none of those present except for Nimmrichter, but I was in no state to notice individual faces. I was too upset and subdued by a sense of guilt, though I had done nothing wrong.

They treated me with kindness and consideration, that is if I consider their behaviour not in terms of legal norms, but in terms of the way they could have treated me — with official approval — in those days. They asked me if I had received any news of Father, and if I was coping with things. Then they said that as far as I was concerned, they had the highest opinion of me. I assisted other students with their studies and was active in other fields, and they were sure that I would come through this present test also. (I could feel my heart thumping. Their words and their confidence moved me; despite the dreadful thing that had happened in my family, they still regarded me as their comrade!)

But they were sure I would understand that I could not continue as a student in this faculty. They had no wish, however, to block my future career; they knew that I was not to blame for my father and they would try to ensure that I could continue my studies at some other faculty. And they even asked me if I had thought about what area of study I might opt for.

That question caught me unawares. Anxious not to waste this moment of magnanimity, I replied that I had been thinking about law.

It was not until half-way through the summer that we received the first letter from my father. He told us his address and asked us to write and tell him about our state of health and how we were coping. We were not to worry our heads about him, though for his part he was deeply concerned about us, and hoped in particular that Mother would not get upset unnecessarily as it could only make her condition even worse. The last line of that shortish letter, which was written on both sides of lined paper and looked as if it was torn out of a school notebook, was addressed to me. An individual may make mistakes or even commit blunders, for which he must then atone, my father wrote, but this did not mean he should lose his belief in the noble idea for which many people had suffered and on which all of us had never ceased to pin our hopes.

I knew that someone had read this letter before me (his signature was appended to the beginning of the letter), so I was not sure whether Father’s message wasn’t intended more for that person’s eyes than for my own.

1

HE WAS WOKEN next morning by the children’s loud whispering: ‘Martin! Wake up! Guess who’s here!’