by Ivan Klíma
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.
‘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.
I waited curiously to see whether someone would draw any conclusions as to his suitability. But his behaviour, if news of it ever got out at all, did not seem to perturb any of our superiors.
He always wanted us impose the stiffest penalties the law allowed, since the longer the criminals and enemies were behind bars the better it would be for society as a whole. This was so contrary to the spirit of even those laws we were supposed to be upholding that I actually managed to protest on several occasions, but he either didn’t listen to me or didn’t understand.
My only colleague, Dr Klement Horváth, had served there for many years. He was an experienced lawyer, having graduated from the rigorous imperial schools, and an expert in Roman, Austrian and Hungarian law. He had been a judge during the first and second republics and the independent Slovak state. Having once tried those who were now in power, all the more willing was he now to try those who used to be in power then. He toed the line; not a word, not a glance suggested that he conformed unwillingly, or that he thought anything but what he was supposed to think.
I felt morally superior. I hadn’t had to change my views, fall into line or turn my coat. I was able to act according to my convictions.
I acted according to my convictions, fought for the new system of justice, defended the nascent new order. I served it with every ounce of my strength. I delivered dozens of verdicts (the Presiding Judge enrolled us in competition: the more cases the individual judge dealt with, the better the assessment), sat on various commissions and committees, and travelled round the villages, cajoling, negotiating and educating.
Occasionally, however, I would be overcome with nostalgia for my far-off home, besides having a permanent sense of not being appreciated. It was out of the question that I, who was destined to achieve something of importance, if not indeed of great significance, should spend the rest of my days in such a godforsaken spot.
I used to write lots of letters in those days (to my parents, uncles, colleagues and even Professor Lyon) with enthusiastic accounts of my selfless achievements, while occasionally complaining – as if jokingly – about my banishment, from which it looked as if only someone’s intercession could release me.
I received comforting replies, written – as I increasingly realised – in another world, and packages from my mother containing carefully wrapped plum slices or pastries filled with ground poppy seeds (goodness knows where she obtained them).
In the course of time, my home drifted further and further away from me, and with it all my former and current notions about the world. My ideals and university precepts started to quake from the moment I opened my eyes in the morning. How much longer would they survive the life here?
My favourite person in the courthouse was our clerk, Vasil. He was born locally and was the same age as my father – though, unlike him, he was a powerful man with enormous hands and a broad head on which there was always perched some hat or fur cap. He knew – or made a convincing show of knowing – the backgrounds of all the litigious individuals. He could remember all the sentences passed since the end of the war when he first came to work for the court.
He used to come and see me in my office, a knapsack thrown over his shoulder. He would always have a short chat with me if no more, regaling me with sayings about people, the weather and the ways of the world. From time to time, and especially in winter when it was already getting dark, he would pull a bottle of home-made spirits from his knapsack, pour us both a nip and reminisce about pre-war days before they had a court, a hospital or a factory, when he used to earn money as a forestry labourer or from smuggling cloth into Poland and alcohol out. If he had a good few drinks he would start to talk about the independent state, when he was set to catch smugglers instead, as they appointed him to the local constabulary. And if he got really drunk he would tell me the most fantastic stories claiming that they had really happened: about the mysterious black dog which always appeared behind the cottage belonging to an uncle of his who had inexplicably disappeared, about the golden coach and four which appeared to his father when he was returning from a social. The horses were driven by an eyeless coachman with hair aflame. He was the blind count who had once owned the local estate, and whom God had struck blind during his lifetime as a punishment for his dissolute behaviour. But even blindness did not secure his repentance and he went on to kill his coachman out of spite. So after his death he had been punished thus. That was justice. I was not sure what his intentions were in telling me that story, or whether he believed it or not. He also expounded his own theory about how society was ordered. The world was made up of those who ruled and those who worked. The masters were always changing, however. When new masters came along they would make all sorts of promises to their subjects so as to win them over, but as time went by they would forget about their promises so nothing changed, only the masters. The poor had to work and the only chance they had of getting anything was by cheating the gentry, and it was the people’s God-given right to cheat their masters. That was the way things had always been. And that was the way they would be now, he said, when I tried to explain to him that it was the people, not the masters, who were ruling now. The people couldn’t rule, he told me, because from the moment they were in power they were no longer the people but gentry. Meanwhile those who were ruled and had to do the work were the people, even if they had once been gentry, and the new people would cheat and rob the new masters. And they would get punished for it.
He was the only person I could turn to for advice (not counting those who volunteered advice themselves) and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to quiz him, that both the Presiding Judge and Dr Horváth secretly consulted him too. For Vasil knew in advance the effect which the verdict would have both in town and in the defendant’s home village, how many children the defendant was really supporting and how big and influential his family was. Vasil alone knew how to explain the true motives of crimes, instead of the fictitious ones derived from the literature: not class hatred but ancestral hatred, unhappy loves, inherited jealousies and unpaid debts.
It was only just before I left The Hole that I discovered he accepted bribes from the parties involved in return for intercession on their behalf, and that much of what he had told me, and which I had taken as gospel, was the product of his imagination. In his eyes, I was one of the new gentry (or at least one of their servants) and it was his God-given right to do me down.
That autumn, they assigned me my first politically significant case: that of a former shopkeeper from the village of Vyšná. I was supposed to convict him of concealing (like the majority of the shopkeepers whose shops were confiscated) some of his stock. In cash terms the concealed portion amounted to four thousand five hundred crowns.
I still failed to grasp the logic of a legal system which, knowing that it couldn’t prosecute everyone who broke the new laws, selected certain individuals and punished them severely as an example to the rest. I was amazed that the prosecutor ascribed to the shopkeeper’s action, which was so understandable, a deliberate intention to jeopardise supply, and in aggravating circumstances to boot. (Those aggravating circumstances were the defendant’s origins and the continuing political tension in the region.) What did the prosecutor expect of me? What sort of penalty for a hidden sack of sugar, several bottles of spirits, a few enamelled cooking pots and some axes? Five years? Six years? Or ten, even?
Shortly before the trial, the Presiding Judge called me in to ask about the details. After listening to my misgivings, he informed me that ‘our comrades’ (the term w
e used for the district officials) attached great political significance to the case. He merely wanted to forewarn me that the comrades would be keeping a close eye on what I did.
They clearly did not trust me and felt the need to let me know it. I felt hurt.
I went to see the prosecutor. Admittedly, he was no friend of mine, but we were of the same generation. He always treated me affably, with the faint superiority of someone who is senior in the profession and has greater experience. We would often chat together in our one local pub about this and that. (Like our Presiding Judge he had only taken a one-year course in law, so on the day I started my practice in The Hole, he was just completing his third year there.) On this particular occasion, as usual, we started by talking about wine, football and the nationality question. Then I raised the matter of our joint case. Was it really so important? What did my colleague think?
He shrugged. It was better not to think, he said.
I voiced the hope I would meet with some understanding. No one had the right to expect savagery from us in the name of justice. A sentence of a few months would be adequate punishment for what the man had done. My companion’s immediate reaction was to explain that this was no time to go in for unnecessary heart-searching. We were required to take action. Our enemies were already acting, as the case showed. If we didn’t convict them they would soon start to put us on trial and none of us would escape with our lives!
But in this trial it would be a matter of very specific guilt, I objected; surely it could not merit such harsh punishment?
The same was true of every trial, he told me. We had taken their property, which had formed the basis of their power. But they had not given up and wanted to get back their property and with it their power, Our power was therefore at stake. We had to defend it, that was why we were there. If we were weak we would lose our right to keep our posts.