Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

‘But I love you,’ he said, as if incapable of understanding why any of it should make her unhappy. She replied that she had had enough. She didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to live with anyone any more, didn’t want to live at all.

He tried to console her. There was nothing for her to worry about. She could move in with him, into this little house, or he could swap the flat for something bigger; she would live with him and her children and would be happy again. At one point he tried to put his arms round her, but she slipped out of his grasp, jumped up from the chair and escaped to the other corner of the room. She looked at him with such disgust that he started to stammer an apology.

Then she returned to her chair and listened to his voice, although she couldn’t really follow what he was saying. He loved her and could not live without her; he’d tried to explain it to her in his letter. He had decided to die, to leave quietly without leaving any trace in her life. He realised that to live with her would be too great a happiness and he was not destined for such bliss. But now, now he’d understood what was on her mind, he wanted to stay with her at this fateful moment and leave at her side. Even that would mean greater happiness than he had dared hope for just moments before.

She said nothing. She looked at the window, veiled by a net curtain, beyond which night now held sway.

‘We’ll die together, Alena! My love! My love! Tell me if you want to. It’ll be quick; I’ve thought about it so many times before. This is a tiny room and we’ll feel no pain. We’ll just fall asleep. We’ll fall asleep together, my love, and no one will be able to hurt us any more.’

She still said nothing.

‘Say something, Alena! Can you hear me?’

‘Yes, I can hear you.’

‘Did you hear what I was saying to you?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s good. I’ll turn it on then, Alena. If you say no, then I’ll keep you company wherever you want to go and then I’ll turn it on alone, Alena. Because I couldn’t if you didn’t want me to, if it wasn’t what you wanted.’

He locked the door and knelt down by the heater. Then she heard quite a loud hissing sound; she had never realised how loud the hiss of gas was.

She sat motionless on the chair while he lay down on the metal bed. ‘Alena, are you going to come and join me?’

She didn’t reply. She was only aware of the acrid stench of gas. Her eyes were open but she could see nothing. Perhaps Adam had come home already and was actually looking for her, but it didn’t matter any more, she thought with relief. It had never struck her this way before: the relief inherent in the state of not-being. She became aware of a blissful torpor that pressed against her eyes, now even the offensive stench was beginning to slip away, and a soft, opaque veil clouded her vision. All of a sudden the window opposite lit up like a flash of lightning and flew open. She was able to gaze into the high marble hall of the crematorium and in the front row could see them, her children, she could make their faces out clearly, they were coming nearer, growing bigger, like a film camera zooming in until the picture filled the whole screen, the entire horizon, the faces of her children swelled and then shrank until in the end there remained only their eyes: huge, gruesome eyes staring at her.

She got up and went over to the window as if in a dream. She knelt down and turned off the gas tap. Then she tried to open the window, but the handle was stuck, or was too hard to turn, or she no longer had the strength. She went back to the door. It was locked. She rattled the handle several times before realising that the key was sticking out of the lock. She unlocked the door and went out into the lobby. The hissing in her ears continued but it was much shriller now and sounded like the shriek of many whistles. She opened the door to the next room; it must have been the kitchen. Cool air wafted at her. For a moment she stood in the doorway and then her head started to swim. She sat down on the floor, right under the coat hooks, and wrapped her head in some sort of soft material, wrapping it round her like albumen, and closed her eyes.

Before we drink from the waters of Lethe

1

Sometimes, in the brief reverie preceding sleep I see a landscape: a grassy hillside with scattered juniper bushes and short birch trees, and I fancy I can even hear the clang of sheep bells or glimpse the sharp outline of a horse’s brown neck. It is Vasil’s Antonka which Magdalena and I learnt to ride on. I feel the warmth of a summer’s day on my face, smell the scent of grass, see a wide sky with the single dark circling dot of a bird of prey, and sense the relief of a Sunday afternoon in the stillness, broken only by the sound of a familiar voice. It is almost nostalgia — for days long past, for a remote little town that I certainly didn’t love at the time I was obliged to live there.

I never called it by any other name than The Hole: that country town in the north-east corner of our republic. I didn’t even know it existed until the moment I learnt I was to practise there. There was no place further from Prague in the whole country. I had to travel a night and a day before I set eyes on it and before the soles of my shoes could touch the baking dust of the path that formed the border between the two-storey houses and the large open space regarded in those parts as a square.

Everything there seemed exotic and unfamiliar: the low buildings, the bilingual signs on the shops, the women’s costumes, people’s broad suntanned faces, the storks’ nests on the rooftops, the speech of the locals in the inn where I lived, and the court, which was crammed into one smallish building together with the construction department of the local authority. In my mind’s eye I can still see a corridor like a scene from an Eisenstein film: dozens of women wearing black headscarves and dark-coloured full skirts, men in battered hats and homespun trousers, and half-naked children. A hubbub of voices in which one could make out nothing, neither words, nor weeping nor laughter — a crowd, always including one or two cripples, that respectfully makes way for me as I pass through.

Equally exotic was the area between the courthouse and the inn which I crossed several times a day. In summer it was sunbaked earth covered with a grey film of dust; in autumn it was covered with a layer of mud and in winter with a layer of snow. It was an area which throbbed with the life of the town: horses, buses, markets, costumed processions, demonstrations, young pioneers, funerals, gypsies, motor-bikes, tightrope walkers, drunkards, soldiers, and villagers from the entire district who used to come to do their shopping at the five local shops. It was those villagers, gypsies and drunkards whose disputes and divorces I had to adjudicate, and whom I had to punish for their misdemeanours, quarrels and fights, as well as for their insubordination or their lack of political awareness.

But I looked forward to my work. No situations or surroundings, however strange, were going to catch me unawares. I was full of energy and eager to get on with something. I also had the best of intentions. I wasn’t going to enforce the law mindlessly; I was going to unearth the hidden motives of people’s deeds, precisely differentiate between mere going off the rails and criminal intent; I would educate my neglected brethren and bring the errant citizen back into decent society. Before I was actually told where I would be working, I pictured it in my mind’s eye: a monumental building from Austro-Hungarian days, several distinguished colleagues, whom I would consult or argue with, especially concerning interesting cases. But the building was not monumental by any means and my colleagues did not seem too distinguished either. Presiding Judge Tibor Hruškovič was a former coachman who had fought in the Eastern army and left it to join the State Security, where, after a year’s training, he was deemed qualified to run a court. There were lots of things to talk about with him, but interesting or difficult cases were not among them. He loved anecdotes, food, wine and noisy company. When he got drunk his broad face would go an apopleptic scarlet. In that state he would play the accordion and sing — and force the rest of us to dance. Once, when he was drunker than usual, he pulled out a pistol and started shooting up his office. First he put a bullet through a plaster statuette of a metalworker and then holed the picture on the wall before shooting to pieces a vase of flowers. Then he rolled on to the ground and started non compos mentis to lash out in all directions with his fists and feet.