Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

‘You talk as if I didn’t think about anything but girls.’

‘You struck me as one of those — though I’m not sure any more. I doubt if I’d get to Hawaii with you.’

The wine was finished and she took away the empty bottle; as she passed him he finally made up his mind and took her in his arms.

4

Even though he had given them advance notice of his visit and arrived on time, the prisoner hadn’t been brought to the interview room yet. The tiny room was stiflingly hot, which increased the depressing emptiness of the place.

He was sleepy. Although it had only just gone midnight when he arrived home and he had been physically exhausted from lovemaking, it was dawn before he fell asleep. And even then he could not stop hearing it, a woman’s voice he did not know by heart yet. Passionate moans, which excited and terrified him, drowned out all other sounds, cutting him off from the world he had so far inhabited, a world that rang to the voices of other people, the voices of his wife and children. When he woke up, he had been incapable of telling whether it was despair, fear or desire that dominated his emotions. He had a heavy head, that was certain, and he could sense the grains of sand trickling through it in a constant, silent stream.

At last the first member of the escort entered and behind him he saw his prisoner for the first time.

‘You can take a seat, Kozlík,’ he said when the warders had left.

The young man was on the small side; he had large ears that stuck out either side of his high cranium. He seemed to have a cataract in one eye, while the other stared straight at him.

‘You requested an interview.’

‘I did, your honour. I want to withdraw the statement I made during the investigation.’

‘Why did you confess, then, if now you want to withdraw everything?’

‘I wanted to get the investigation over as quick as possible. What other option have you got, once they’ve got you in their hands!’

‘Do you intend to file a complaint against any aspect of the investigation into your case?’

‘No, that’s not it. It’s not so easy to get out of it once they decide to drown you. That’s all I meant.’

‘Are you trying to say that you did not commit the deed you’re charged with?’

‘I didn’t commit it, your honour.’

‘So who do you think did? How do you explain it?’

‘I’ve no idea, your honour. After all, it’s not my duty to know.’

‘No, you’re right there. So what is it you want to tell me?’

‘I didn’t do it, your honour. I know nothing about it. It didn’t have to be anyone else’s fault. She could have done it herself.’

‘Someone wiped the tap and put a saucepan of water on the gas.’

‘But she could have done that herself. She never stopped wiping the taps. She couldn’t stand dirt.’

‘You think the water put out the flame?’

‘I don’t know, your honour.’

‘It’s more likely that the gas under the saucepan was never lit, don’t you think?’

‘That’s possible, your honour. She was getting confused. It was something she done several times before: turn the gas on and forget to light it.’

‘Did she? And weren’t you worried she’d poison you as well?’

‘I always used to go in and check before going to bed.’

‘And you didn’t go in that evening?’

‘I wasn’t there that evening!’

‘I thought you were seen leaving the flat.’

‘No one could have seen me, your honour, because I wasn’t there!’

‘Your neighbour is sure she saw you.’

‘That woman’s almost blind, your honour.’

‘They found the murdered woman’s savings book on you, Kozlík.’

‘She gave it me herself, your honour. She asked me to take some cash out for her. She had trouble walking.’

‘It’s rather a coincidence, don’t you think?’

‘If I’d stolen the savings book there’s no way I’d have kept it on me, is there? I had plenty of time to hide it somewhere, if I’d known about what’d happened.’

‘Did she often send you to withdraw cash for her?’

‘I don’t think she often touched her savings. She had her pension and my rent money.’

‘She seems to have trusted you, if she sent you to the savings bank for her.’

‘She liked me, your honour.’

‘You said something entirely different in your earlier statement.’

‘I want to withdraw the whole of my original statement. I made it all up.’

‘You made it up very convincingly.’

‘If it’d been unconvincing, they wouldn’t have accepted it.’

‘Save your insolence, Kozlík! Why didn’t you bring your landlady the cash, if she’d given you the book?’

‘She only gave it to me that day, your honour.’

‘So you were there that evening, then?’

‘In the afternoon. When I got home from work.’

‘And then you went off to the cinema with your fiancée?’

‘That’s right, your honour.’

‘Your landlady gave you the savings book when you were going off to the cinema?’

‘I was supposed to draw the cash the next day and bring it to her.’

‘You knew you wouldn’t be coming back that evening?’

‘I was meaning to stay at my fiancée’s, your honour. Her folks were supposed to be on night-shift.’

‘And did you?’

‘One of them changed their shift, I can’t remember which one.’

‘What time did you actually go to the cinema?’

‘At eight o’clock, your honour.’

‘What were they showing?’

‘Some American film. About some woman who told several men that they had given her a baby. She was an Italian and they went on paying her for years like idiots.’

‘What did you do after the film?’

‘I walked my fiancée home.’

‘What time did you part from your fiancée?’

‘Around midnight. We stood for a while outside the house.’

It was at least an hour before midnight that she had suddenly wriggled out of his arms. I’ve got to go. Your friend Ruml might beat me up otherwise.

She was standing in front of the now darkened window, lit only by the dim light of a table-lamp. Her naked, tanned body seemed so strange to him, so unlikely, so unfamiliar, that he wondered if he was dreaming. Then she leaned over him and gave him a peck. Get up, darling!

They left together in a taxi; she laid her head on his shoulder and he was aware of that unfamiliar perfume. They stopped the taxi at the corner of her street. When shall we see each other again? He knew it was up to him to ask, even though he was not sure at that moment whether he really did want to see her again. She just said: Call me! Then he saw her run along the narrow alley between the villas: a stranger, yet close; desired, yet feared. She turned round just once and waved. But by then the car had already done a U-turn and was moving away from her. The astonishing realisation sank in that no car could now take him away entirely from what had just happened.

‘Is that something you often did: stay out all night?’

‘Fairly often, your honour.’

‘All right, so you used to spend nights at your fiancée’s. But why didn’t you go home, when you couldn’t stay with her?’

‘I didn’t feel like it, your honour. It was too far to go. I’d just missed a tram, and there wasn’t another for an hour. I got fed up waiting for it.’

‘So where did you go?’

‘I just walked about.’

‘You didn’t even go to a pub?’

‘It was too late, they were all closed.’

‘Or to some friend’s?’

‘No, your honour.’

‘So you just walked the streets?’

‘I sat on a bench for a while.’

‘Weren’t you cold, out all night?’