Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

I know I haven’t mentioned the thing that Father never stopped telling us was the most important thing of all: one’s work — wanting to do something, to achieve something so you can say you weren’t here in vain, that you’ve left behind some special winding or discovered an unknown wave motion in a crystal, or at least an oscillation within yourself, so that even when God has become distant and turned His face away from you and people have deserted you, something lasting remains: such as a passion for the truth.

I didn’t mention it, because it might easily happen that at the very moment your work starts to become crucial to your life, when the choice is between moving towards the light or becoming eternally bogged down, at that moment some snooper arrives on the scene, some officially sanctioned thicko, you might know him, or you might have never seen him before, and he’ll say No! and you’ll end up being bunged somewhere where the light can’t get in and where the light from inside you can’t get out either.

But I realise too that not even that need be the most important consideration. You’ve forgotten about the snoopers, and you’re missing the forests or the silhouette of your native city; maybe at this moment you too would like nothing better than for us to jump on our bikes and ride off anywhere, even though we don’t have bikes any more, the gypsies probably don’t sing but listen to the radio, and I know what you mean, although I’m sad and have the feeling I’ve nothing left, apart from the last hope: that I will at last fathom something about the strange urge for justice. But they’re even stifling that hope: I have the feeling — and this is precisely the absurdity of every barrier, every restriction — that everything is totally immaterial compared with some urge that emanates from the soul and is therefore incomprehensible to any outsider — it cannot be communicated or even defined in words, only through deeds: such as the urge to jump on a bike with someone you long for, and ride off somewhere, anywhere, taking a path you know or you’ve never been down before, with nothing at the end of it, or, on the contrary, a route whose end is foreshadowed by its very beginning, in other words, what people generally think of as one’s downfall, but despite it all you have to jump on and go, there’s no other way, you just get on and ride away, and therein lies your freedom and your chance to live.

He got up from the bench. His legs felt light and his head was clear; he was in just the condition to go and try the most difficult of cases and he was almost certain of making the best judgements possible.

4

He pulled up in front of the cottage, unlocked the padlocks and switched on the current at the main. Usually he would wind up the big farmhouse pendulum clock as soon as he came in, but this time he did not. Behind the door stood a row of wellingtons: his own, Alena’s and Manda’s.

(‘Hey, Daddy, where are you going?’

‘To mend the fence at the cottage.’

‘I want to go with you!’

‘You can’t. Who’d look after you there?’

‘I’m a big girl now. I can look after myself.’

‘I’ve got some things to see to on the way.’

‘That doesn’t matter, I’ll wait for you in the car.’

‘You can’t wait in the car all day.’

‘I can go to sleep in the car then.’)

A half-full teapot had been left standing on the stove, the water in it covered in a rust-coloured greasy scum. Alena had forgotten to empty it again.

(‘Adam, don’t go. We could all go on a walk somewhere. It’s ages since we’ve been anywhere.’

‘It’s not my fault you were never here.’

‘I was stupid. I regret it, Adam. I regret it awfully.’

‘But I don’t feel like walks at the moment.’

‘We have to talk it over, though. We can’t just leave it in the air like this.’)

‘Would you like a drink?’

‘You should know me by now.’ She was standing in the middle of the low-ceilinged sitting room: a tall, slim, beautiful stranger. He put his arms round her. She snuggled up to him but wouldn’t let him kiss her. ‘You promised me a drink, remember!’

In the dresser he found a bottle of rum. It was covered in dust; he didn’t even know what it was doing there. He poured out two glasses — his own only half-full.

‘I don’t think much of your choice of drink.’

‘I’ll take the car and go and buy something else if you like.’

‘Why should you drive anywhere?’ She picked up the bottle. ‘It’s full: that’s the main thing.’ She sat down at the table in the same place as the student that time.

He opened the food safe. ‘What do you prefer: rice or macaroni?’

‘You’re going to cook?’

‘We’ll have something to eat before going to bed, surely?’

‘I’m not used to being cooked for. A piece of bread would do me.’

He switched on the electric ring and put on some water to boil. On the wall opposite there hung a garland of everlasting flowers. Alena grew them every year in the flowerbed under the window and when she had dried the flowers, she hung them round the house.

He could not rid himself of the feeling he was doing something inappropriate. It was wrong to have brought her here — the house resounded with familiar voices and they were all shouting against her; even his own voice was not sure on which side it belonged. If only she weren’t so perfectly turned out: her elaborate perfume and made-up face were out of place here and only made her seem more of a stranger.

He broke the macaroni sticks in two and dropped them into the boiling water. Behind him he heard the sound of a cigarette lighter and his nostrils were filled with cigarette smoke, an unfamiliar smell in these surroundings. He opened the food safe in search of spices. The jars were labelled in large childish writing: MARJORAM! PAPRYKA DRID MUSH. He took a pinch of dried mushrooms and added them to the saucepan. He couldn’t recall his daughter painting the jars. He also opened a tin of frankfurters and chopped up the sausages.

When they had eaten he would take her into the next room and the two of them would make love in Alena’s bed. That was the way it went. Beds are only things, they couldn’t care less who was lying in them.

‘I’ll give you a hand if you like. Or lay the table, at least,’ she suggested. She had no difficulty finding plates and cutlery. But her movements seemed out of place to him; she was a stranger here, and her presence seemed even to alienate him from himself.

How had he come to be here at her side? Out of love? Out of desperation? So as not to have to find some way of filling the time whose emptiness would otherwise destroy him? The one did not rule out: the other, of course. And the very thing that now seemed out of place and alien to him could well end up seeming totally appropriate and even banal one day. She would be integrated into his life. Always supposing that either of them wanted it or had the courage to go through with it.

‘Have you got a candle somewhere?’ she asked. ‘I don’t like the light here. Or rather, the things I can see in this light. There are too many unfamiliar objects around me.’

He found two candles in the pantry, and what’s more a wooden candlestick.

She placed the candlestick in the middle of the table and put the other candle in an empty jam pot before switching off the light. ‘Don’t you think that’s better?’ The shadow of her head stretched itself along the wall and looked ghostly to him.

He divided the food between the plates.

‘It’s lovely to have someone bring me a plate of food. Where did you learn to cook?’

He shrugged.

‘Were you an only child?’

‘No, I’ve a brother.’