Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

‘Is it all right if he brings them over?’

‘Yes, of course it is!’ (Knowing her mother they were already on their way out of the door. Her mother never asked first, she acted and took decisions and merely announced them to others in the form of questions.)

‘Marketa is such a sweet child,’ her mother said. ‘She picked you a thistle in the park. Is Adam back yet?’

‘No, I think he’s in court.’

‘Is he very busy?’

‘You know Adam. He’s always very busy.’

‘I don’t know. He ought to choose some other profession. With his gifts and education.’

‘Oh, Mummy!’

‘All he’s doing is making lots of enemies. One day, one of those…’

‘Mummy, you know it’s pointless.’

‘There are plenty of jobs where they can use people like him. In export for instance,’ her mother was unbudged. ‘And no one ever bothers them.’

She had only just hung up when the phone rang again and all at once she knew it was him. There was a moment’s silence at the other end. ‘It’s me…’ She didn’t say anything. She had been looking forward to the call and was pleased he’d phoned, or rather, she wouldn’t have been pleased if he hadn’t phoned, but now — any moment the children would be here and she hadn’t even managed to wash or get something to eat.

‘It’s you,’ she replied at last. ‘Had a good sleep?’

He treated it as a joke. ‘I couldn’t get to sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking of you.’

‘That’s sweet of you.’

‘Alena,’ his voice dropped as if he was afraid someone would overhear him, ‘I have to see you!’

‘When?’

‘Right now!’

‘I can’t. How could I get to you? What’s the time, anyway?’

‘Three,’ he said, ‘five to three.’

‘There you are. My children will be here in a moment. And tomorrow I’m going away.’

‘That’s precisely why I have to see you. Please, Alena, I beg you!’

‘Has something happened?’ The urgency in his voice frightened her.

‘Yes. I’m in love with you.’

‘Oh, Honza, my love. But I can’t now!’

‘Just for a moment.’

‘Where are you calling from?’

‘From your place.’

‘What do you mean?’ and in spite of herself she looked round the bedroom.

‘I’m here in the phone booth. On the corner of your street.’

‘You’re crazy!’

The doorbell rang in the passage, followed by the sound of a key in the lock.

‘Wait,’ she told him. Quickly she slipped on her dressing-gown. ‘The children are here,’ she said, ‘with my father.’

‘But I have to see you!’

The bedroom door opened with a crash. Marketa was holding in her hand a prickly thistle stalk.

Behind her flaxen mop there appeared the darker, round head of her son. The head said: ‘Mummy, is it true that donkeys eat this?’

For a moment she was covered in shame. She put her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Go and take your shoes off. And don’t interrupt me. You can see I’m on the telephone.’

‘I’ll wait here,’ suggested the voice at the other end.

‘No,’ she said quietly, ‘we might be…’

The door opened once more. She turned to see the ruddy face of her father. ‘You’re on the phone? Sorry!’ But he remained in the doorway.

‘OK then,’ she said quickly, ‘but I don’t know when!’

‘I’ll wait here until…’ the receiver yelled. She banged it down, in a sudden fit of panic that even that might not silence it. She was sure she’d gone red, but her father seemed not to have noticed, or pretended he hadn’t. He was a well-bred man.

‘I’m glad you’re here, Daddy. I could do with popping out to the supermarket for bread.’

‘I’ll run and get you some,’ her father offered.

‘No, thanks all the same. I’ll get it myself.’

‘But you’re not even dressed,’ her father said, not yielding his offer. ‘I’ll be back before you’re dressed.’

She hurriedly combed her hair. She tugged so hard it brought tears to her eyes. ‘There’s no need to worry, Daddy. If you’re in a rush, don’t hang about, I’ll go later on.’

Her father went out, leaving her with the children.

‘Mummy, have you packed yet?’

‘I’m going to take that crying doll.’

‘Will Auntie Sylva be there with Lucie?’

Now he’d be walking up and down outside the phone booth. Scrawny and with a visionary’s gaze, waiting for her. She was touched that someone was still waiting for her and wasting time that way. Whenever she was late, Adam scolded her roundly.

She heard a distant rumble outside. That was odd: a storm first thing in the morning! No, of course, it wasn’t morning any more; in a moment Adam would be back and might see him. ‘Would you mind,’ she asked the children, ‘if I popped out for some bread?’

‘Daddy brought a loaf this morning,’ her daughter told her.

‘Daddy will need that one here,’ she explained. ‘We’ll need some bread for the journey. You keep an eye on Martin while I’m away.’

‘I’m going with you,’ the little boy said.

‘Stay here,’ she told him. ‘Take a look out of the window. It’s going to rain.’

‘That doesn’t matter, Mummy. You always used to tell us that rain doesn’t matter.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she admitted in desperation, ‘but when you’re shopping it does, because the food can get wet.’

‘Then why are you going shopping, then?’ Martin started to snivel. ‘I don’t want to stay here with her. She bosses me about.’

So they all went out together. She could hardly insist that they obey her, seeing that her motives were so obviously base. She saw his tall figure from afar. He was standing still, leaning on the lamp-post and looking in the direction from which he clearly expected her to appear. Her lover.

In the supermarket she bought one superfluous loaf and some rice. Probably she ought to be buying something for the journey, but she was in no state to think what they might really need; Adam usually took care of the shopping. As she was leaving the shop, he was still standing there. My little lad, she addressed him silently, and felt so tenderly towards him that she had to make every effort not to desert the children and run over.

Before we taste the waters of Lethe

1

It was my first encounter with punitive justice, or rather with an all-powerful police. They accommodated us in a rambling barracks. During that winter of 1941–42, we were sleeping thirty-two to a room, lying on mattresses on a filthy floor tramped over by soldiers’ boots for the past century and a half. From the window could be seen a number of ordinary two-storeyed houses. Indeed there was altogether little of interest in that town, except perhaps for the bastions of the fortress, and the cemetery with the graves of Gavrilo Princip, Nedeljko Cabrisovič and Trifko Grabež, whose action allegedly sparked off a world war virtually forgotten now. In the distance, beyond all the houses, the battlements and the cemetery, there were hills. A steep grey-green hillside whose features remained etched in my memory for ever.

The features of the people, however, have been lost to me. What would have remained unchanged of those features anyway after three decades, had they lived on? But none of them did, as far as I know, apart from me, Adam Kindl, No…. — but I don’t even want to recall the number — and my mother and my brother Hanuš. I can’t even muster the names of most of the people; in our room there lived three Stein families, but that name conjures up no faces, it is only a sound: one of the sounds of those days, like the snatch of a silly rhyme that I learned on the scarlet-fever ward: