Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

She ordered a whipped-cream dessert. Without looking at her, the young man said: ‘Will you allow me to pick up the tab, madam?’

‘No, thank you.’

But he was already tendering the money to the counter assistant. He ordered a coffee for himself.

She drew a ten-crown note from her purse. ‘I’ll pay for myself. I am not used to letting strangers pay for me.’

‘You’ll soon get used to it, kiddo,’ he declared. He picked up the ten-crown note, leaned over to her and tucked it into her blouse pocket. She felt his hand touch her breast and she reddened.

He sat down next to her at the small table and observed her.

She swallowed a spoonful of whipped cream, but was totally unaware of its taste.

‘You from Prague, darling?’ he asked.

She made no reply. How could he be so familiar? He was bound to be at least ten years her junior. Like Honza. But Honza had a boyish look, whereas this fellow looked like manhood personified.

‘’Cos I’d show you around,’ he offered. ‘I know every joint in town.’

She quickly finished her dessert, without looking at him. Then she pushed aside the empty dish and left the shop.

He caught up with her. ‘There’s a great little bar right next door.’

The thought struck her: what was there to stop her going anywhere with anyone, seeing that she had nowhere to go anyway? ‘I have to make a telephone call,’ she said.

‘Who to?’

She didn’t reply and entered a phone box. ‘Just watch it. I can hear you!’

She tried to close the door, but he held it firmly. She once more dialled the number of her own flat and waited.

‘Wasn’t he in?’ he asked. ‘Or wasn’t it a real number?’

‘Where are you taking me? I don’t have much time.’

It was a small wine bar; just a few tables in a single basement room which they entered down a dirty staircase. The noise of passing trams could be heard from outside.

‘What’s your drink?’

‘I don’t drink.’

‘Well, you will today!’

‘As you like.’ At last, after so many years, here was someone ready to decide for her.

‘Do you drink wine or something stronger?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m not a drinker.’

He ordered a cognac. It tasted vile to her. Like drinking soapy water. She knew nothing about drinking but she decided that she would drink and drink quickly, so as to get drunk as soon as possible.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked, and told her his name was Karel. But she expected he was lying. Everyone lied — even Adam lied. He’d gone off somewhere with her. She picked up her glass and took as big a mouthful as she could stand. She shivered with disgust.

He started to chat her up; he told her how he went in for small-bore rifle-shooting, drove cars and motor-boats and flew light planes. He rode horses too. Maybe he was lying again. It seemed to her laughable that people were capable of boasting about so many things. It mattered less and less what the fellow was talking about and whether he was lying or telling the truth. Then she even started to enjoy herself.

Adam was sitting somewhere with her — sitting, or lying or driving. He was telling her about all the things he could do, all the things he knew, boasting to her about riding on horseback, driving cars and even driving down to Texas, but she couldn’t care less at this moment.

Honza was sitting somewhere too. Or walking. Or writing. She imagined him sitting at a table writing to her yet another of his repetitive grandiloquent outpourings of loyal devotion. And all at once she could see the funny side of it: Adam lying somewhere with her, and most likely declaring his love to her; the other one sitting at home writing a letter saying how much he loved her. Meanwhile she herself was sitting here with a third man whom she didn’t love at all, listening to him explain to her how to hit the centre of a target at fifty metres. As if there as any sense in hitting targets.

He leaned towards her and tried to kiss her. She might even have put up with it — what was wrong with her kissing some fellow when Adam was somewhere kissing that woman? — but the man’s breath stank so offensively of sardines or rancid oil that she felt sick and sweat broke out on her forehead.

She staggered out into the passage. Fortunately, the toilet was vacant. She bent over the bowl and vomited. Then she splashed herself with water and stood for a few moments staring at her ashen face in the mirror. The feeling of disgust stayed with her. There was no way she could go back in there. But where would she go?

Outside, the street lamps were already on. It was cooler and a wind redolent with rain was blowing from Petřín.

She lurched over to a telephone box, stood in it for a moment, leaning on the glass of the side panel. Then she lifted the receiver. It was dead. Maybe he was already home, but it made no difference anyway, nothing would alter what had already happened.

She felt sick again. She dashed out of the box, bent over a drain and vomited once more.

She eventually reached the main street, though she had no idea how long it had taken her. Fortunately a tram was just coming. She got on board without knowing where it was coming from or going to. The car was almost empty and she could sit wherever she liked. She sat down in the back seat and covered her mouth with the back of her hand, as if she could hold in her drunken breath somehow. Her sleeve seemed to stink of bad fish. She felt sick again. She got off and stood a long time at the tram stop. The wind was now keen and contained fine drops of rain; she turned her face to them.

One needed to be washed, it struck her. One needed baptism. And confession. One needed God. But she had nothing.

She got on another tram and got off at the stop where she had alighted from time to time in recent weeks. She was not entirely sure how she had come to be there, but now she was there, she set off in the familiar direction.

‘Is it really you, Alena?’ He almost hurled himself at her. ‘I’ve been expecting you. I’ve been expecting you for three whole days. I knew you’d come. I even prayed for you to come.’

She sat down on a chair in his small sitting room, the only chair there. ‘Oh, Honza!’

‘I knew you’d come back,’ he repeated. ‘I was convinced you’d have to come, since I couldn’t live without you.’

‘I haven’t come back!’ Her head ached and her throat was dry. ‘Would you bring me something to drink?’

He went off to make her some tea.

It was a very small room with windows on to what was almost a village street. The windows of the house opposite always had their blinds down; perhaps no one lived there. In a box on the window ledge some perlargoniums were in flower and under the window there was a gas-fired radiator that they had never had to switch on, as their relationship had started and ended while the weather was still warm. Just beyond the radiator was a battered old metal bed like the ones which these days could be found only in hospitals. Its springs creaked and she had always thought that passers-by in the street were bound to hear it as distinctly as she heard their footsteps.

The tea was hot and burnt her throat, but she drank it none the less. She welcomed the pain which each mouthful caused her.

‘I wrote you a letter. Mother went away on Friday and I’ve been writing it ever since.’ He picked up a sheaf of papers from the table. ‘Will you take it?’

She shook her head. ‘No. There would be no point.’ Then she tried to tell him about Adam’s infidelity. But it sounded so trite and she was incapable of actually saying the words betrayal or infidelity. She just told him he’d gone off with another woman.