Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

Instead, dear bro, as happens in this life, my wife has found a lover and I a mistress. All the things I was sure of are falling apart; the things I regarded as shameful cloak me round like darkness at night. All I can ask is: what do I possess? What do I have left? Where is my home? Where is my universe?

He could hear familiar footsteps stumping up the stairs. The door slammed and the flat was immediately filled with shouting.

‘We telephoned several times,’ his mother-in-law announced, ‘but no one answered. We thought your phone was out of order.’

‘I expect there was no one home.’

‘Where’s Mummy?’ his daughter wanted to know.

‘She’s gone somewhere.’

‘Weren’t you together?’ his mother-in-law asked in surprise. She had sat down at the kitchen table. It would be proper at least to offer her a cup of coffee, but his mother-in-law always tended to irritate him and he wanted her to go as soon as possible.

‘Alena is so under the weather these days,’ she declared ‘Nothing bothering her, is there?’

‘We’ve all got something bothering us.’

‘It was just I thought she might be overdoing it. I know you’re a considerate chap, Adam, and help her as much as you can, but you’re always so hard at it yourself. You ought to persuade her to take a bit more care of herself.’

‘She takes care of herself, don’t worry.’

‘People are always in such a rush these days. They all want to get the most out of life and they end up wearing themselves out.’ At last she left.

The children were talking nineteen to the dozen, telling him all about television programmes whose inanity became increasingly apparent as they retold them. No doubt the mother-in-law had let them gawp at the television from morning to night, though he had asked her not to. But what right had he to be annoyed? He didn’t do anything to entertain them and had nothing better to offer.

He lay down in the lonely bedroom. There had been a time when he thought he knew. But what had he known? That it required assiduous and conscientious work if everyone was to be better off, that sacrifices had to be made for the general good! He had also known that he was not supposed to hanker after possessions, that it was his duty to watch out for enemies. He had known that he was not to believe in God but in science, or at least what purported to be science. He had known that out of the ruins of the temples and the ashes of the old world a new society would be born, a new humanity — a socialist world. Where selfishness, envy and meanness were once rife, friendship and comradely love would prevail.

That fanatical and infantile notion of friendship, a street in which an apathetic and hate-filled crowd was transformed into a throng of empathising and understanding companions, had captivated him so much that he believed he had answered the fundamental question, he believed he knew how to live.

Then, dear bro, I realised I’d been wrong. But what conclusion did I draw? I went on living the same old way, fulfilling my duties. I continued to behave in a non-adult way. A child also does the jobs it is given without asking why, and if it does ask, it expects an answer to its question, as well as praise for having asked a question that was clever. And so one goes on, fulfilling one’s obligations and kidding oneself that one is a decent and upright person and worthy of affection. One has a family and a job and one judges others. And through inertia one goes on waiting for someone to come and explain at last what one is living for. And then one has a mistress as well (and one tries to live for her) and success (and one lives for it), and board and lodging and a car. Meanwhile time moves on and one’s thirtieth and fortieth birthdays come and go; all of a sudden one doesn’t have a wife, one doesn’t have children either; then the mistress goes and all that’s left is the success, the board and lodging, and the car, or not even them. But by then one has forgotten one’s former doubts and life just goes on through inertia, so one doesn’t even notice that the time for waiting is long past; one has been an adult for long enough and it is time to answer for oneself. But what is one to answer when one has never found sufficient freedom or courage, and one has allowed the light that maybe once burned within one to go out?

I now ask myself, bro, what difference there is between me and the fellow I’m supposed to convict for having gassed his landlady? What if the only difference is that I am too cautious, methodical and self-disciplined to have gassed anyone? There is a fundamental difference, certainly: one of us is a law-abiding judge with a wife, a position, children, and a mistress, who acts prudently in his emptiness, while the other is a recidivist who has neither wife nor position and in his emptiness imprudently pushes his children and his mistress to the edge of the abyss.

No one can deny this indisputable difference between my irreproachable behaviour and the behaviour of that desperado, in terms of the penally indictable nature of our actions. But as regards the emptiness into which we try to tempt those nearest to us? In that emptiness, even the principled find their hands on gas taps that turn easily, and at that moment it matters little whether the gas escapes into a kitchen, a gas chamber or even into the motor of a rocket that will fire a ray and cut the earth in half.

As you can see, I’m a bit put out by it all — but I’m not desperate. I am better off than when I was satisfied at the way I fulfilled my obligations. At that time loving my wife was a duty like devotion to my work in court. But what can one create out of a sense of duty that is worthwhile? A home? Some relationship, or achievement, maybe? All you can do out of a sense of duty is to belong. To a home, or to a wife or to a mistress, say. Or to justice.

One should have the necessary freedom of spirit to define one’s place and one’s relationships; to be capable of leaving or staying if one wishes — however mad, inexplicable or ludicrous it might seem.

I don’t know whether I’ll prove equal to it. I’m over forty and I don’t know whether I’ll manage to find within myself what I have not found so far, or even looked for. I bet you think I should have a try, whether I succeed or not.

I feel as if I’m standing underneath a high tower looking at a narrow, darkening staircase that spirals upwards. There are those who promise me that from the top of the tower I will behold a land which I would never set eyes on otherwise, while others warn me that the depths beckon and many have already fallen. I, for my part, hope perhaps to meet her up there, and there, alone, on a wooden floor between earth and heaven to make love to her in total seclusion and solitude, in a silence broken only by the buzz of a stray fly — that would be freedom…

He woke before the alarm was due to go off. The neighbouring bed was empty. She’d not been in the whole night, then. It was remiss of her; what was he to tell the children?

Maybe he would not have to explain anything to the children from now on. The court would award custody of the children to his wife, and she would get the flat too.

He opened the window. Outside, a grey misty autumn day was breaking; a moth lay dead on the windowsill. He washed himself and went into the kitchen to get the children’s breakfast ready.

She was sitting on a chair with her head resting on the table, apparently asleep. The stink of gas hung in the air. Alarmed, he looked towards the gas stove, but the taps all seemed to be turned off.

‘Alena!’

Slowly she raised her head. Her usually pallid features were a greyish yellow and there were dark shadows under her eyes which were puffy and swollen. She seemed unable to unglue her eyelids. At last her eyes opened slightly and he could see that the whites were bloodshot. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Why didn’t you come to bed?’