Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

‘No, drink that disgusting rum, or just sit there and look normal.’

‘What way do I normally look?’

‘As if you were just off to the dentist’s. Or about to make a speech. Everyone has a particular look. When Ruml looks at someone, he tries to give the impression he’s just had a world-shattering idea.’ She looked at him intently while making rapid sketches. ‘Perhaps you’d sooner go to bed and I’m only stopping you now.’

‘Why, if it gives you pleasure…’

‘You seriously want to give me pleasure? If you’re not careful I’ll be so touched I’ll draw you with wings.’ She looked again at him but this time her gaze rested on him longer, and he could have sworn he saw tears in her eyes. Could it be that all her talk, all her mocking comments and attacks, were just a way of disguising her vulnerability and her timid hope?

‘I’m not used to people being nice to me,’ she said. ‘All they want is for me to be nice to them. Ruml sometimes gets the idea I’m not nice enough. Then there’s a fantastic row and he wallops me, knocks out one of my teeth or hurls at me everything he can lay his hands on.’ She touched her face where a scar showed through the layer of make-up. ‘I got that from a lead crystal vase. He must have been really pissed off that time to have sacrificed something expensive. He’s very careful with his precious possessions otherwise.’

‘And you just put up with it?’

‘No. I spit at him and scratch him. Unfortunately he’s stronger than I am and I always end up getting a walloping… Maybe I deserve it. Don’t you beat your wife when she deserves it?’

‘I’ve never beaten any woman.’

‘I think I’d better draw you with wings after all.’ She gazed at him, not drawing any more. ‘He did treat me decently once. When they wouldn’t give me a place in art school, I wanted to stay at home for a year and do some painting so I’d learn something on my own and then try again the following year. And then someone denounced me as a parasite and I was in a real fix. Mum’s fellow had put her on to Ruml and he really did arrange it so the whole thing was hushed up. I loved him for it — maybe it was mutual, he married me afterwards. So I stay with him even though he wallops me. Or maybe you think I ought to tell him to sling his hook and then wait for someone to turn up who’ll be so over the moon about me that he’ll take me and the girl? Someone honourable and fair-minded — like you! Don’t lie to me! You’re only too pleased I’ve got Ruml and you won’t be lumbered with me. You can dump me whenever you like. It’s what you were thinking of doing a moment ago, anyway — you think I couldn’t tell? Sometimes I hate you. All you men.’ She stood up, crumpled the paper, opened the stove door and threw the drawing in.

‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing!’ she snapped. ‘All I can do now is colour in dog’s gobs.’ She sat down on the chair next to the stove, her hands in her lap. She had long, slender fingers and narrow wrists — like his mother.

‘What are you staring at me for?’ she protested. ‘I never said I’d manage it. I don’t pretend to be an artist.’

‘That picture wasn’t important anyway.’ He took her hand. ‘Come out of here — you can have a lie down next door.’

‘Yes, I want to sleep,’ she agreed. ‘I want to sleep and think about nothing. Not even you!’

‘All right.’ He led her into the next room.

‘You really did make the bed?’ She undressed quickly while he stood motionless by the door.

‘Aren’t you going to join me in bed?’

‘I thought you said…’

‘Get a move on. It’s cold in here.’ She cuddled up to him and put her arms round him.

‘Did you like it with me? Just a little bit?’

‘You mean you couldn’t tell?’

‘I got drunk. I bet you think I’m terrible. But I was just miserable.’

‘Don’t think about it any more.’

‘What am I supposed to think about?’

‘Think about us being together.’

‘What’s the point of thinking about us being together? Tell me what you live for, instead.’

‘Why does that occur to you now?’

‘It didn’t just occur to me. No one’s ever able to tell me what they actually live for. And it struck me you might know. You seemed to me a bit of a rabbi.’

‘Do you think rabbis know?’

‘I don’t know whether rabbis do, it struck me that you might know something. That you’d be able to tell me the right way to live.’

‘I think you’ll be disappointed.’

‘You mean you don’t know?’

‘Who can possibly know?’

‘You’re just like the rest! How can you be a judge then?’

‘I judge people according to the law.’

‘How can you judge people when you don’t know how we ought to live?’

‘I don’t like people who think they know the right way to live.’

‘Why don’t you like them?’

‘Most of them force others to live their way.’

‘But they don’t know anything: the ones that force others to do things. They’re just as grotesque as the ones who judge according to the law.’

‘You’re probably right.’

‘You, my darling, are an odd fish. You know more than you feel like telling. David, the one I told you about, once told me that people should radiate light.’

‘What did he mean?’

‘I don’t know. I never asked him. Maybe he only meant it in an artistic sense. He used to love bright enamels. Did nothing of the kind ever strike you?’

‘Maybe. But I’ve never found the time to think about it.’

‘I know; you had to judge people and travel. They all travel and judge people. And want to make love. And none of them knows anything.’

She pushed him away and jumped out of the bed. She went to the window and opened it. ‘At least the moon’s shining out there. Otherwise I’d die of boredom.’ She sat down on the edge of the chest, her naked body bathed in pallid light.

He’d known many people in his lifetime who had seemed to him interesting and educated. Lots of teachers at the different levels of education, lots of judges and lawyers, not to mention quite a number who had considered themselves prophets or at least the successors to prophets. Had any of them radiated light? He was unable to recall even one. On the other hand, his memory was full of people who had spread darkness.

There was one dear figure, however, swaying towards him out of the dim and distant past. Time had blurred his features, but he recognised him none the less as he came closer; even in those far-off days, the murk of the corridors had retreated and the walls opened out; either Arie had radiated light or he had still been capable of perceiving radiance everywhere in those days. Where had that light come from? What did we know about the world at that time? Such light probably had little to do with knowledge but emanated from nobility of spirit.

And one night, on the only holiday we took together, when we were lodging in a small village inn, Magdalena got a bit tipsy and sang with the locals in the tap-room. Actually it got on my nerves and I led her off to our bedroom. She undressed and then sat naked, just like this one now — how long ago it is — on the bed, the coverlet turned back ready. She was holding a small black flute and playing it. I was going to tick her off again for getting drunk and acting in an unseemly way, but my irritation dissipated, and all of a sudden I realised that she was endowed with something I had been denied. However unhappy or even despairing she might feel, she had the capacity to see something that was hidden from me, to sense mysteries I could not penetrate.

And her body glowed gently that night in the darkness of the inn room, although it might well have been the moon shining on her, as on Alexandra now.