Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

‘I’m used to the cold, your honour.’

‘So you spent the whole night walking the streets for no good reason?’

‘Yes, your honour. I’d done it many times before. Nobody ever noticed because no old ladies got poisoned those nights.’

‘Don’t be insolent, Kozlík!’

‘I’m only telling the truth, your honour.’

He had returned to his empty flat where everything was exactly as he’d left it that morning, but where everything seemed unfamiliar, as if he had returned as an old man to his childhood home.

I knew you were like that, darling.

Like what?

You know very well. You just want to hear me say it.

I didn’t know until now.

You didn’t know who you were till now.

The bathroom shelf was full of his wife’s bits and pieces. Creams, powders, the mascara pencil she used on her rather ill-defined eyebrows. He felt regret as he looked at it all.

He had run a bath and immersed himself up to his chin in the hot water: heat and regret permeated him.

With his wife he had never felt the ecstasy he had felt tonight, his wife was not endowed with the gift of total abandonment, but on the other hand she was pure and incapable of deceit, and he had no wish to hurt or deceive her. And he never had deceived her before; something like that would have broken the code he lived by. But what was that code?

He went to bed; a cool night-time breeze blew in through the window but waves of perspiration washed over him again and again. A voice which previously he had never accepted as his own started to speak to him, asking him questions and demanding answers. He tried to drive it away but it remained stuck in him like a splinter or a pin, and went on goading him. What reply should he give? Was it possible he had been mistaken up to now about who he was and what he wanted? Was he a strolling rabbi or, more likely, a schnorrer wandering a strange country, in search of — what? A hot supper, a good companion, freedom or even God’s grace, maybe?

In a few days’ time he was to go and pick up his wife. What would he tell her? The truth, of course; he wasn’t going to tarnish her or himself by lying into the bargain.

From the twilight of the bedroom a harlequin leered at him while outside an eagle flew softly and silently past the window on its journey to freedom; he felt a pin-prick and the blood trickling slowly and uselessly from his finger into the void, while she stood naked on the roof of the house opposite. Her unfamiliar, fondled body was bathed in moonlight so that the minutest details were visible to him.

‘You went back to your fiancée in the morning?’

‘Yes, as soon as her old man left for morning shift.’

‘You didn’t have to go to work?’

‘I would still have made it, your honour.’

‘Weren’t you surprised that they came for you that morning, seeing that you knew nothing about it?’

‘You get used to all sorts of things, your honour. They were always after me. Even at the place I work.’

‘What did you say to them when they charged you with this crime?’

‘I told them I didn’t know anything about it.’

‘But then you admitted it. Why did you admit to it, if you hadn’t done anything, Kozlík?’

‘I already answered that, your honour. There’s no point in not admitting it, once they start working on you.’

‘You’ve already stated that you have no complaints about the way you were questioned.’

‘I haven’t, your honour!’

‘So you can keep such comments to yourself, Kozlík. You know very well there is no sense in someone confessing if they are innocent. If they really are innocent.’

‘I am, your honour!’

‘Some splinters from broken perfume bottles and some spilt face powder were found in the entrance hall.’

‘That’s possible, your honour.’

‘So there was some truth in your original statement?’

‘That was an unfortunate accident. I’d bumped into that shelf on the way in.’

‘I see. And what was your landlady’s reaction?’

‘I can’t remember, your honour.’

‘Try to remember! Wasn’t she cross with you?’

‘She might have been. I don’t remember any more.’

‘Was she often cross with you?’

‘No, your honour. She liked me.’

‘Surely you can recall whether she was cross with you on the evening she died.’

‘She might have been a bit cross.’

‘How soon afterwards did you go out?’

‘Soon!’

‘What does “soon” mean? How much later?’

‘About half an hour.’

‘And during that half-hour she handed you her savings book. You made her cross and immediately afterwards she entrusted you with her savings. All right, have it your own way! When you came home from work was your landlady’s granddaughter already there?’

‘I didn’t notice. I was only home for a short while.’

‘Half an hour!’

‘I was in my room!’

‘Who swept up the broken glass?’

‘I don’t recall.’

‘When a shelf full of glass falls it makes a racket, doesn’t it? If the child had already been in the flat she would probably have rushed out to see what had fallen. Did she come out, or not? You can’t remember anything because you didn’t come home at all that afternoon. That’s why you can’t say who was there and who wasn’t.’

‘I came home straight from work!’

‘Do you have any witnesses?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But no one has come forward.’

‘Witnesses like that don’t come forward.’

‘Witnesses like what?’

‘The sort that might help you.’

‘What makes you think that they wouldn’t come forward?’

‘They might make problems for themselves.’

‘I think you might be overestimating your importance slightly.’

‘No one looks for the sort of witnesses that might spoil the prosecution case.’

‘So you are sticking to the statement you’ve just made?’

‘Yes, your honour!’ He had a sudden devastating intuition: right now everything that had seemed significant to him in his life was disintegrating. But what was disintegrating in fact: his life or, on the contrary, his delusions about his life…?

So far for him time had taken an orderly course — not a torrent rushing along a river bed or carving out a course between rocks. His wartime experience had actually increased his self-confidence; it had seemed to him that he had been faced with an obstacle such as none of his peers had known, and he had coped with it and stood the test. But what sort of test had it actually been? He had been caught in a trap by one set of people and stayed there incarcerated until another set of people released him. While it was happening, he had neither shaped his own destiny nor had any opportunity of influencing it. And since then, life had had no further trials in store for him, or more accurately, he had managed to avoid them. When others got caught in traps he had always skirted them deftly and pretended not to see them. He had sat in judgement when to others the very word justice was anathema. And here he was still in the same situation, still with the power of life or death over someone else.

But how long would he be able to keep it up? Or: if he did keep it up his whole life, what would he gain by it?

Now there was no skirting the traps, too many had been laid. He would either have to decide on what action to take, or become bogged down. But he was not accustomed to taking any decisive action; not on his own behalf, anyway. Even the thing that had just happened had not been of his doing.

‘Think carefully again about all you’ve told me.’

‘Are you advising me to confess, your honour?’

‘It’s not my function to give you advice. That’s the job of your defence counsel.’