Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

He found a number of letters on his desk and a note to say that this morning’s hearing had been cancelled because the defendant was ill. That news helped raise his spirits slightly.

There was a letter from Karel Kozlík addressed to him. The defendant urgently requested a meeting. He promised to reveal a number of new, important facts about the case.

What new information could he have for him? From the very start he had guessed that he would have nothing but trouble with this case.

An air letter from his brother Hanuš in England (he’d already written telling him to send letters to his home address, for heaven’s sake) and a postcard from America: handwriting unfamiliar; the picture showing several hideous skyscrapers in Dallas: Best wishes, bit of a headache on the way home. Sorry if I caused any bother. Jim. Who was Jim? The name meant nothing to him, nor the message. He spent a few moments trying hard to recall his short stay in Texas. It could possibly be a university colleague who happened to be passing through Dallas. Why was he writing to him about headaches, though? And what sort of problems could this Jim have caused him?

There was no point bothering his head about it; Americans were strange people; in their striving to be friendly, they sometimes became incoherent.

In addition, a message from his colleague Alice: Adam, a woman called just after you left. She didn’t say who she was and left no message.

Honza had departed mid-day Saturday. Alena had made him two large sandwiches for the journey (when had she last made him a packed lunch?) and then they all drove with him to the bus stop.

There had been something obsessive about the way the young fellow had looked at his wife after he boarded the bus. Had it not seemed ludicrous to Adam (the fellow being ten years younger than her) he would have said he was in love with her. But he had no wish to be prejudiced against Honza; he didn’t want to think about him at all. He just couldn’t stand people who turned up in places he wanted to keep for himself — and where he had hoped to find a bit of peace.

That was one thing he didn’t need at a time when he was stuck in court from morning to night: someone visiting the cottage, carving his children boats and taking overdoses in front of them like a hysterical wife who’d just been jilted by a husband or lover.

His bad mood started to come back.

His brother Hanuš apologised for having been too talkative on the phone (no doubt he was about to atone for it by repeating the error in the letter), saying he had merely chanced to be in that kind of mood. Now and then he suffered an attack of homesickness and couldn’t even say what for exactly. For instance, he would be walking along a street named after some lord or admiral he had never heard of and he would suddenly long for the red signs at the street corners. Incredible sentimentality. You were talking about freedom, his brother continued, and you’re bound to have some fantastic, classic definition. I, of course, never forget the morning when they rang our doorbell (how they came during the war, I fortunately don’t remember) and took our father away, and I know that something of the kind is most unlikely to happen to me here, and I’m grateful for the fact. But I can’t go into the woods, they’re fenced in, and a week ago a landowner was going to shoot me for straying on to his river bank. People here can think freely about whatever they like, but their brains are assailed by the advertising slogans that are drummed into our heads from dawn till dusk: Hennessy was in vogue when Wellington was still in bootees. Generation gap? Jim Beam never heard of it. Now birth control is as easy as the tampon. There is no way of shaking them out of your mind, except by escaping to the Sahara or a desert island. But who’s going to run away? What, in fact, is essential to a feeling of freedom? People will always lack something and have to make do with what they’ve got. Who knows the right scale of values? It struck me not long ago that freedom is in fact an infinite set. If I try and compare your freedom with my freedom, for example, I am comparing two infinite sets. Or if I try and compare the limits of my freedom here with the limits of my freedom back home: if I call the original factor of my limits here LF, then the limits of my freedom back home start at about LF + 20, or some such figure. Do you see what I mean?

He didn’t particularly see. He hoped that it would be no less mystifying to any possible censor and didn’t feel that the letter’s importance justified his seeking out an expert on set theory to explain it to him.

I am therefore comparing an infinite set with its sub-set, his brother continued, and they are, as everyone knows, equivalent. At first sight it struck me as a beautifully absurd paradox. But that’s what the comparison of any infinite set with its sub-set looks like at first sight. It made me wonder whether I was really in the thrall of some commonly shared prejudices. Only the joke is, I suppose, that freedom cannot be expressed in mathematical terms.

The phone rang. It was Alexandra. ‘I’m not disturbing you, Adam?’

‘No, it turns out that my court hearing has been cancelled.’

‘Why can’t I be that lucky? Why do they never dismiss one of our cartoons for lack of evidence, and set us all free? But I’d like your advice on something.’

‘So long as I’m up to it.’

‘I’m sure you are. It concerns a flat.’

‘I’m not really an expert on flats. Oldřich is bound to know more than me.’

‘If it was something I fancied asking Ruml about, I wouldn’t be asking you, would I?’

‘Fine. Do you want to come here, or would you rather I came to see you?’

‘It’s not as urgent as all that.’ She hesitated a moment. ‘Maybe I’ll drop by after work. I’ll call you from the front desk. You do have a front desk there, don’t you?’

3

She walked up the stairs ahead of him. In her bright clothes, which covered her as little as possible, she seemed to him like a migrant from a southern clime. Right at the top of the building, where he expected there to be nothing but a loft, they stopped and she searched for the right key. The advice she was looking for concerned this flat. It belonged to her mother, but the lady had already lived outside Prague for several years and was apparently afraid it would be taken from her. He could have given her the answers to her questions in five sentences, and he certainly had no need to see the flat in order to advise her.

The lobby was spick and span and the smell of a familiar perfume hung in the air. ‘There is only this room,’ she indicated, ‘and the kitchen next to it, if you fancy having a look.’ She opened the glass door. The motor of the refrigerator came to life, noisily. ‘It’s fairly tolerable at the moment; it doesn’t get hot in here. But it’s not so good in winter. The sun doesn’t reach it from one end of the year to the other.’ She showed him round the flat casually as if he was one of many people interested in a flat-exchange, while he was unable to think of anything but the fact that he now found himself — at her behest — alone with her in an enclosed space, which, he assumed, no one ever entered but those she brought here.

‘Did you live here once?’

‘After Dad died.’ She opened the refrigerator. ‘Shall we have a drink?’ She reached inside blindly and brought out a bottle. Then she took some glasses from the battered sideboard.

The walls of the attic room slanted inwards. The furniture seemed shabby to him and the carpet threadbare. A vase of wilting carnations stood on the window ledge. A number of pictures hung on the walls, but he was unable to register their details. He walked over to a low window and tried unsuccessfully to see something from it. From far below he could hear the sound of sheet metal being beaten and the faint whine of some machine or other. He oughtn’t really to be sitting here, and certainly not drinking wine. He shouldn’t stay longer. At last he noticed the slender spire of the Emaus church towering behind the houses opposite.