by Ivan Klíma
Uncle Gustav now turned to me and said that I was to go on believing in my father, and in the Party too. I must inform it about what had happened. He went on to reminisce for a while about how the English had caught him in Palestine and charged him with espionage and how the military prosecutor had demanded the death sentence for him. Then he recalled the battle of Tobruk where death stalked like a wild beast, and how, during the siege of Aachen, an artillery grenade had exploded a few yards from him, and yet everything had turned out well for him in the end, apart from the leg wound. But after all, he had been awarded a pension for it. He took his wallet out of his pocket and removed an envelope from it; it probably contained his pension as not even Uncle Gustav owned any property apart from his wounded leg. He thrust the envelope into Mother’s apron pocket, then stood up and left.
There were only two people on duty in the Party secretariat of my faculty: a girl in a blue shirt and some old fellow in threadbare clothes. He could have been one of the lecturers, but equally a boilerman or one of the maintenance staff.
They listened to what I had to say and told me that they had noted my statement and would inform the committee of what had happened. Then they would let me know.
I also told them that Father had recently been spending most of his time away from home but had never changed his opinions and had certainly remained a good comrade. I was not entirely sure at that moment whether those particular words were intended to help myself or support Father, but most probably I needed to tell someone at least what was weighing on my mind.
The girl replied that she understood my attitude and my confidence in my father, but I was certainly not capable of objectively assessing all the factors, and added that if there was any unexpected change, such as my father being released, I was to come and tell them again without fail. And I still remember that dismal combination of words: ‘unexpected’ and ‘released’. Yes, anything but that was more likely: that he would be convicted of the gravest crimes and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment or even to death; anything was more likely than his release.
A few days later, we received a three-line notification that Father had been remanded in custody on the orders of the regional prosecutor in Brno. Confirmation of receipt of an arrested person. The signature was illegible. Father had not been granted defence counsel.
Uncle Gustav brought a copy of the Criminal Law and Penal Code and read us out excerpts from it. It had occurred to him – on the basis of what Father had told him just before his arrest – that it was bound to be some recent slander by his enemies. One could not even rule out the possibility, Uncle Gustav feared, that Father, being above all a scientist, might have made some mistake or even neglected something in the management of the enterprise, and this had been seized upon by his enemies and led to his arrest. In which case, he concluded triumphantly, when everything had been weighed up, and assuming Father wasn’t found entirely innocent, they might use paragraph 135 covering damage caused by neglect, for which the law prescribed, and here my uncle raised his voice, a term of imprisonment of up to one year, i.e. one year maximum. This, in Father’s case, was ruled out as the court would be obliged to take into account his utter probity.
After my uncle left, I took that thick volume in pocket-Bible format and, as I had once done with the Scriptures, I read it right through, from cover to cover. From the preamble to the temporary provisions and concluding statutes. It took me a single evening and part of the night. I do not recall whether I had had any particular interest in legal study before then. I had, of course, enthusiastically followed the trial of the Protectorate government and read commentaries about the Nuremberg Trials and even had several pamphlets on my bookshelf dealing with the trials of the war criminals, but I had read them chiefly for their connection with my own past; it had never struck me that anything significant in terms of legal theory and practice had happened during those trials. Like most people I viewed the law more as a device for obscuring true justice. All of a sudden, to my surprise, I had encountered a code. Its perfection, adequacy or absurdity compared with other codes of the same kind of course were issues I could not possibly judge, but the very attempt to encompass the whole of life and organise it into a system enthralled me.
Consideration to be given to a mother’s nervousness after childbirth, to the feelings of under-aged witnesses or those learning of the crimes of their next of kin; the precise distinction to be made between responsibility and irresponsibility, sanity and insanity, between a deliberate action and negligence; the different definitions to be observed of contrition and remorse, given the paramount importance of the time factor! Could there exist anywhere a more exhaustive expression of the longing to regulate and demarcate the proper value of all human relations?
I was summoned to attend a committee meeting at the beginning of the summer vacation. This time, the room was full of people. I knew none of those present except for Nimmrichter, but I was in no state to notice individual faces. I was too upset and subdued by a sense of guilt, though I had done nothing wrong.
They treated me with kindness and consideration, that is if I consider their behaviour not in terms of legal norms, but in terms of the way they could have treated me – with official approval – in those days. They asked me if I had received any news of Father, and if I was coping with things. Then they said that as far as I was concerned, they had the highest opinion of me. I assisted other students with their studies and was active in other fields, and they were sure that I would come through this present test also. (I could feel my heart thumping. Their words and their confidence moved me; despite the dreadful thing that had happened in my family, they still regarded me as their comrade!)
But they were sure I would understand that I could not continue as a student in this faculty. They had no wish, however, to block my future career; they knew that I was not to blame for my father and they would try to ensure that I could continue my studies at some other faculty. And they even asked me if I had thought about what area of study I might opt for.
That question caught me unawares. Anxious not to waste this moment of magnanimity, I replied that I had been thinking about law.
It was not until half-way through the summer that we received the first letter from my father. He told us his address and asked us to write and tell him about our state of health and how we were coping. We were not to worry our heads about him, though for his part he was deeply concerned about us, and hoped in particular that Mother would not get upset unnecessarily as it could only make her condition even worse. The last line of that shortish letter, which was written on both sides of lined paper and looked as if it was torn out of a school notebook, was addressed to me. An individual may make mistakes or even commit blunders, for which he must then atone, my father wrote, but this did not mean he should lose his belief in the noble idea for which many people had suffered and on which all of us had never ceased to pin our hopes.
I knew that someone had read this letter before me (his signature was appended to the beginning of the letter), so I was not sure whether Father’s message wasn’t intended more for that person’s eyes than for my own.
Chapter Five
* * *
* * *
1
HE WAS WOKEN next morning by the children’s loud whispering: ‘Martin! Wake up! Guess who’s here!’
‘Take your hands away from my eyes, then!’
‘No! Guess!’
‘Honza!’
‘Don’t be silly; he can’t sleep here!’
‘So it’s someone sleeping here? It’s Daddy, then. Hooray, Daddy! When did you come?’
‘Stop yelling! Can’t you see Daddy’s sleeping?’
‘We can go swimming, then, now that Daddy’s here.’
‘Don’t be silly! Honza can’t go in the water.’
‘So what, now Daddy’s here?’
‘You’re a nice one. When Honza made you a boat you sucked up to him then.’
‘No, you’re the
one that sucked up to him. And you played cards with him.’
‘Fibber!’
Thump. Thump.
‘Hey, Manda! Can you hear? Honza’s getting up.’
The bed next to him was empty. He got dressed. Not only was Alena already up, but breakfast was ready on the table. Five mugs and plates (why five? oh, yes, five, of course: they had a guest), five egg cups, and what’s more a knife and two spoons at each place. He couldn’t recall when his wife had last laid the table in such exemplary fashion. Wasn’t she rather overdoing it just on account of some student? He gave her a kiss. ‘Couldn’t you sleep?’
‘I’d slept enough.’
‘It’s just that I thought we went to bed quite late . . .’ Above, the stairs creaked; her guest was apparently coming to join them for breakfast.
He entered at the same time as the children, rather as if they had carried or propelled him through the door. They danced all round him. The student seemed even taller and skinnier than the night before – there was something about him Adam found inimical. But it was less his appearance than the fact that it was here he had decided to take his overdose, or even taken the pills at all. He didn’t like people who couldn’t even see out the few years one was allotted on earth.
‘Good morning!’ the student bellowed, as if addressing an entire platoon.
Alena was pouring the tea. ‘How did you sleep?’
‘It’s nice of you to ask, Alena, but you know I don’t sleep very much.’ He buttered himself a slice of bread. ‘But I did see the sunrise.’
‘Honza, you promised you’d tell us about how you jumped with a parachute.’
‘Shush, Martin!’ Alena scolded him. ‘You know you mustn’t talk with your mouth full.’
‘You did parachute jumping?’ asked Adam incredulously.
‘Yes, when I was taking flying lessons,’ he said, blushing slightly.
Why did the student tell lies? He was used to all sorts of people lying to him; indeed most of the people he met in court did. But they generally lied to some purpose – to conceal or fabricate something. Those people were trying to avoid suspicion or punishment, but what could this young fellow hope to achieve, apart from the admiration of a six-year-old boy?
Alena got up from the table. Though normally she took even longer over her food than the children, this morning she had been the first to finish her breakfast – if she’d eaten anything at all. And now she was hurrying to wash the dishes.
He sensed the tension in the room and would happily have done something to ease it if he’d known the cause. The only thing he could do was to leave the table and go out.
The elm outside the window was bathed in sunlight and the scent of flowering meadows wafted in. He stood up. ‘I think I’ll go and see if there are any mushrooms growing. Coming with me?’
‘I’m not sure.’ She was making such a clatter with the washing-up that he scarcely heard her. ‘I thought I might drive Honza to the bus stop now.’
‘The bus doesn’t go till this afternoon.’
‘Oh, yes, I hadn’t thought of that. But what about the children? And here . . .’ She gave the student a disconcerted look.
‘Off you go, Alena!’ Honza replied condescendingly. ‘I’ll look after them.’
They walked along a grassy path that sloped up steeply towards the forest. He took her hand; he knew she liked him to. She walked without speaking at his side – she always panted when going uphill.
He could still feel tension in her silence. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘No. It’s just I’m still het up about what he did.’
‘The student?’
‘Why do you keep calling him a student?’
‘Sorry.’
‘I got a terrible fright. But there’s no need for you to upset yourself.’
‘It peeves me that you’re in a bad mood on his account.’
‘I’m not in a bad mood.’
It seemed to him she was fighting back tears. ‘Look, you don’t have to come with me. I know you’re not interested in mushrooming.’
‘That’s not true. Why are you always getting at me?’
He stopped. They had almost reached the brow of the hill. When he turned round, he could see a broad hollow below him. On the horizon, the ruins of Trosky stood up like two monster teeth. ‘But I don’t get at you.’ He sat down on a flat, warm stone. She stood over him in confusion for a moment, then put on her sunglasses and sat down also.
‘When I was at Petr’s it struck me things can’t go on much longer like this.’
‘What things?’
‘I mean I can’t go on hanging around with them all, acting as courier for money and messages, and continue working as a judge.’
‘Why not?’
He caught a surprising note of relief in her voice.
‘So what do you want to do? They are your friends, after all.’
‘I’m giving it a lot of thought. I can’t see how I’ll manage to keep my position, but then I can’t imagine what else I’d do if I had to leave.’
‘We’d make a living somehow,’ she said absently.
‘That’s not what worries me. Everyone manages to make some kind of living. And I might not even have to measure water like Matěj – but what would be the point of being an industrial lawyer, filing suits about delivery dates and damages? It’s something that never interested me.’ He sensed that her thoughts were elsewhere. She never was one to share his concerns particularly, but on this occasion he had clearly chosen the wrong moment.
‘It’s wrong to desert anyone,’ she said. ‘Even your friends!’
‘I’m not deserting them. It’s just that I felt odd in their company all of a sudden. Not because I was still somewhere that they had had to leave, but it seemed to me that with them I would be going back to somewhere I never wanted to see again.’
‘Where didn’t you want to return to?’
Her voice sounded to him just as indifferent as before. ‘To the ghetto. That state of constantly waiting for miracles and liberation. But at the same time, among the ones at work I feel even worse. A complete alien. It suddenly hit me that I didn’t belong anywhere. It was an odd sensation.’ He waited for her to say: But you belong here, or something similar, but she remained silent.
‘In the past I always thought I knew where I belonged and what I wanted. Maybe I was wrong. But now . . .’
‘People should act according to their conscience!’
He glanced at her in surprise. ‘I’ve always tried to, my whole life!’
‘No you haven’t . . . Your decisions have always been to do with tactics. One should be true to oneself.’
‘That’s something I was told in that place – when I was a little boy. A clown said it to me.’
‘You think you have to be a clown to be honest.’
He noticed that tears were trickling from under her sunglasses. ‘Why are you crying?’
‘We never talk about anything but you,’ she sobbed. ‘You’re only interested in yourself.’
He couldn’t remember when they last talked about him, but before he could respond, she stood up and dashed down the hillside.
2
He arrived at the courthouse direct from the country. He was in a bad mood and felt tired. He had had to get up early and on such occasions he always woke up even earlier than necessary. During the two days he had spent at the cottage, he had not had much chance to relax – the tension he had felt on his arrival had not dissipated. Perhaps it had only been his impression, only the presence of the Honza fellow getting on his nerves. It might well have been that the others had felt nothing.
He found a number of letters on his desk and a note to say that this morning’s hearing had been cancelled because the defendant was ill. That news helped raise his spirits slightly.
There was a letter from Karel Kozlík addressed to him. The defendant urgently requested a meeting. He promised to reveal a number of new, important facts about the case.
An air letter from his brother Hanuš in England (he’d already written telling him to send letters to his home address, for heaven’s sake) and a postcard from America: handwriting unfamiliar; the picture showing several hideous skyscrapers in Dallas: Best wishes, bit of a headache on the way home. Sorry if I caused any bother. Jim. Who was Jim? The name meant nothing to him, nor the message. He spent a few moments trying hard to recall his short stay in Texas. It could possibly be a university colleague who happened to be passing through Dallas. Why was he writing to him about headaches, though? And what sort of problems could this Jim have caused him?
There was no point bothering his head about it; Americans were strange people; in their striving to be friendly, they sometimes became incoherent.