Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

At last, her acquaintance appeared in a black cotton overall. ‘You’re very welcome, Dr Kindlová!’

‘I’ve brought you the letters.’

He took the envelope from her.

‘My husband has read them. Or rather, I think he’s read them,’ she corrected herself. ‘He made no comment on them. But he doesn’t comment on anything in my presence.’

She wanted to talk to him, but she didn’t know how to start. She felt the tears coming to her eyes. It was out of the question for her to cry here.

He offered her the only chair in the place, while he sat down on an upturned box. ‘I think about it every day,’ he said. ‘I’d really like to identify that split second when evil triumphed in his soul. I pray that that victory should not be final. And for mercy on him. And, of course, for mercy on those he killed.’

As if mercy could exist for those who were already dead. ‘Do you believe in prayer?’ she asked.

‘How could I not?’ he exclaimed in surprise. ‘Prayer is the only opportunity we have to talk to our Lord. If I lost that opportunity, I’d fall dumb, or, as Scripture puts it, I’d fall prey to unclean spirits.’

The light dwindled in the room. The lighted windows of railway carriages passed by on the embankment behind the hut. If one believed in the power of prayer, one had to believe that God was listening. It meant assuming not only that there was a God, but also that He was capable of hearing and distinguishing between human tongues. ‘There was a time when I used to pray too,’ she said. ‘But not any more. Not for a long time.’

‘Do you feel that you have lost your belief?’

‘I don’t know if I ever believed. I didn’t feel there was anyone I could speak to.’

‘It must have been hard for you.’

She didn’t reply.

‘Whether prayer is heard or not is not the essential thing. The important thing is my right, my freedom to pray, to turn to God. There are moments when it is the only right and the only freedom we have — without them our soul would hardly endure.’ Then he said that people estranged themselves unnecessarily from the message of Scripture by wanting to take those words, which announced something so inexpressible and indefinable as the existence of God, as if they were words in a text-book. They treated them as if they were a scientific statement. After all, a discourse on physics and a poem could not be read the same way. People nowadays read Scripture as if they were reading a report of some historical congress and were scandalised to find references to the immaculate conception, miraculous cures of the blind, the lame and the leprous, and to read about the fires of hell, the resurrection of the dead, Satan and angels. It never crossed their minds that virginity symbolised purity, that the blind and leprous were images for the spiritually blind and the small-minded. It was certain that much of what had been accepted for centuries as a literal message was no more than an image intended to express the insights of the prophets. It was obvious that none of them was capable of defining eternity or redemption, Heaven, Hell or even God. After all, the controversy about the meaning of those insights had been going on amongst God’s people from the very beginning of their history. Even today there were few people capable of understanding the true meaning of poetry, the truth of a painting or the message of a piece of music. Very often, with the best of intentions, people turned the message on its head and gave it their own interpretation and squeezed it into the framework of their own souls. People were like that now and people had been like it centuries ago, and it was undoubtedly through their uncomprehending mouths that the Good News about the Redeemer was communicated to others.

‘Not long after I was convicted, Dr Kindlová, I shared a cell for some time with a well-known poet. He enjoyed telling me that human history was an eternal clash between poets and policemen and that clash had never been resolved. And was unlikely to be.’

He gazed at her anxiously and it seemed to her that he knew everything about her, or at least that she was in distress and was in need of comfort. That was why he had invited her to stay a while, why he had talked about prayer, why he had tried to restore her hope and belief in God. He was someone who was receptive to others and she could therefore confide in him.

She was determined to talk about Adam dispassionately, or even to speak in his favour, because she didn’t like the idea of complaining about someone with whom she lived. She spoke about his childhood as she knew it from his telling, explaining how that experience had cruelly marked him, taking away his trust in people and his belief in friendship and even in goodness. All he retained was a fanatical belief in some unreal, just world that would one day be created by means of reason. She told him that he was capable of being kind and loyal to his convictions and his work. He usually managed to control himself, but on the other hand he had never allowed her to enjoy the feeling of real intimacy and mutual devotion. This was possibly something that troubled him also, and why he had now found another woman. She said all this with her eyes fixed on the black, greasy floor.

‘And will you tell me something about yourself?’ he asked, when she started to falter over the other woman, that female stranger.

So she started to relate her childhood, even more incoherently. How her parents had sent her to stay in the country when she was six, how she had actually been happy there and also learnt to pray, but how she had suffered from anxiety about her nearest and dearest and used to have dreams about her mother being killed. She spoke about her family, which was always a haven of love and understanding and where they were always ready to help each other. Thanks to that, she had come to know the meaning of a good home and all her life she had wanted her own children to have a home like that. She also mentioned her friend Tonka, for whom she had never been able to find a substitute, and Menachem, who had offered her a wider family in a foreign land. And again she returned to Adam, for whom home had been at most a place where he could get on with his work in peace and where he slept. Then at last she started to tell him about the third person involved, how they had become acquainted and how all she had wanted was to help him, because she realised he was abandoned and disillusioned, but everything had turned out differently from what she expected and she had therefore decided that the relationship must be ended. She had only wanted to belong to her family even though her family did not fully satisfy her, and she had done it even though he had knelt down in front of her, clasping her round the legs and begging her to stay. Now she had no strength left and was unable to control herself. She sobbed out loud.

He waited patiently for her to calm down. He even smiled at her and she attempted a smile too. A pathetic attempt, no doubt.

‘Now you want to know what to do next?’

She nodded.

‘Do you want to save your family?’

She nodded again. ‘Only I don’t know whether I’ll be able to forget what he did to me. How he abandoned me when I needed him most.’

‘Maybe you also abandoned him when he needed you most.’

‘But I never abandoned him!’

He threw her a look of amazement. ‘But you’ve just been telling me about it.’

‘That was something else. I didn’t want to hurt him! I didn’t want to abandon him.’

‘Our actions always appear differently to ourselves than they do to other people.’

‘No, I didn’t want to hurt him,’ she repeated. ‘After all, it wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with him.’ She hoped he would see what she meant. She took a handkerchief out of her handbag and hid her face in it.