Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

She went on praying for some time after the war, but He never appeared again: maybe it was because the clear stars no longer shone outside the window, or because the perfect stillness of the country no longer reigned, or maybe she didn’t need Him so much any more once she was back at home.

Now she was totally stuck in Adam’s world, which had no room for God or prayer, the forgiveness of enemies, reconciliation or love, only for lovemaking, work, success and constant rush.

She opened her eyes again. She could hear a jumble of voices in her head and a pinwheel of faces spun before her eyes. She had always wanted to be surrounded by lots of people, as she had been when she was still living at home. She still yearned for a wider family: life in a kibbutz or a commune. There, she believed, people were closer to each other, nobody lorded it over anyone else, or bullied others for the sake of success.

‘Were you a success?’ Why had he asked her that, what had he meant? And yet she had been a success precisely in the sense he had asked her, and in fact it had made her happy. But now as she lay in her bed a train-journey away from the voices and faces of all those strangers and from his voice, she was gripped with anxiety at the thought of the future. She couldn’t imagine how she could continue what she had begun, but on the other hand, she couldn’t just stop it all at once, when he loved her and she loved him .

It was imperative that she should not hurt him in any way after all he had suffered in his life already. She didn’t want to hurt Adam either. He too had known suffering, which was why he was so unbalanced, obsessed with a burning need to be doing something. If only she knew of someone who might advise her, but she couldn’t see how she could confide in anyone, how she could overcome the shyness that distanced her from other people. Only to Tonka was she able to open herself. Her onetime fellow-student had abounded in the qualities she herself lacked. Although Tonka’s life had been marked by tragedy (her mother had divorced her Jewish husband during the war so as not to lose her doctor’s practice, and her father, sacrificed so shamefully, was taken off to Auschwitz where he died), she had somehow always seemed well-balanced, content, open to pleasures and joy. Tonka was only fourteen when she first necked with a boy in the actual entranceway of her own house. She herself would never have dared do anything like that. When she was striving desperately to reconcile her longing for independence with her desire to be a kind and obedient daughter, her friend had already parted company with her mother and stepfather.

Tonka believed in an odd mixture of Judaism, Christianity and spiritualism. The dead dwelled and lingered in invisible form on this earth and they were able to reveal their presence to particularly sensitive souls. She was able to conjure up her father not only in dreams but also in moments of concentration and solitude, and she could converse with him and receive messages, advice and encouragement from him.

Alena could never share Tonka’s belief, though. It struck her as running counter to all her experience — no one had ever manifested himself to her and she had never undergone anything that might be described as a mystical experience — but even so, Tonka had squeezed a promise out of her: whichever of them died first would try to manifest herself to her friend and report on the way the dead lived. She gave the promise, not because she believed there was the slightest possibility of its coming true, but because she loved her friend. Then, even though she was convinced the vow could not be fulfilled, it terrified her and she was tormented by a fear that she would be punished by the very power whose existence and influence on this earth she doubted.

In the final year of secondary school, Tonka was caught up by a passing lorry as she stood waiting for a tram. The lorry dragged her many yards along the street before crushing her to death.

That death confirmed all Alena’s foreboding. She became frightened of walking along the street, convinced that punishment was going to seek her out as well. She was frightened of going to sleep, because scarcely were her eyes closed than she saw two dazzling points rushing at her, and no escape. She waited with horror and hope for a message from beyond the grave, convinced no longer of its impossibility. But apart from appearing to her in a number of confused dreams, her friend disappeared irrevocably and irreparably from this world.

Just before she left school she became friendly with a girl who did not resemble her dead friend in the least. Maruška was tall and plain, and invariably in a ratty mood. She had grown up poor and she seemed embittered against the whole world. They were united by desolation. Or more likely she felt a need even then to help those whom fate had hurt.

They prepared together for their final exams, and immediately afterwards they made a trip to the Beskid Mountains together. They spent the week hiking in the mountains, sleeping in strangers’ houses, eating only bread, cheese and dry salami and drinking the ewe’s milk whey known as žinčica. They chatted a great deal about books, their teachers and their fellow-students, and tried to imagine the kind of man they could bear to live with. In fact they came to the conclusion that no one of the sort existed and they’d be better off on their own. They also recited Latin verse to each other, which for reasons unknown made them laugh. There was no doubt her friendship had helped the other girl find some self-confidence, because she married as soon as she left school.

She had never managed to find a real girlfriend since. Even before she finished university she met Adam and adopted his friends along with him, as well as their wives. The latter were older than she was, with the exception of Oldřich Ruml’s wife Alexandra, but she struck Alena as superficial and only interested in where or how she could obtain Italian boots, French perfumes or English fabrics. She had most in common with Matěj’s Anka, a wise, level-headed person whose calm and energy and even looks recalled her own mother. But wasn’t that precisely a very good reason not to explain to her what she’d just been through? Anka would never understand her. She had her own attitude to the family. In fact their attitudes to their families were not very different; the difference lay in their husbands. Matěj was calm, wise, sensitive and balanced, and was capable of giving others support and guidance. Lacking self-assurance, Adam was unable to guide himself, let alone anyone else. He would slave away constantly without knowing why or what for, and criticise her for not doing enough, being slow and wasting time sleeping. Frequently, however, she only feigned sleep: both to him and to herself, because she was reluctant to wake up, rouse herself to a world in which she wasn’t at ease and where she felt deprived of support and tenderness. If he were different she would have had at least five children, a big family; perhaps she would have adopted some child from a broken home, or a little gypsy. If Adam had been different she wouldn’t have had to go looking elsewhere for love, love and a mouth that didn’t need searching for, its touch, the warmth of a stranger’s lips and a stranger’s arms, that…

When the phone rang, she was unable to tell where she was or how long she’d slept. Her heart was thumping, whether from being torn out of her sleep or from excitement she wasn’t sure. But it was only her mother.

‘Am I disturbing you, love?’

‘Hello, Mummy.’ She tried to make her voice sound normal. ‘How are the children?’

‘That’s why I’m calling. Daddy and I have to go into town.’

She hadn’t the slightest idea what time it might be.