Tales of the Night, page 11
“‘In the Supreme Court, burden of proof does not apply; no witnesses are called, the court sees defendants only in those rare cases where they present their own defense, and so my visit to the jail was somewhat unusual. You should not, however, blame the officer who admitted me to the cell. You must understand that, no matter where I go, I am never alone; even when I divest myself of my judge’s cape I remain cloaked in the authority of the court. Which is precisely why the Supreme Court is self-elective, why its judges may not simultaneously occupy other official or directorial posts. The life we live outside the court can be no different from that led inside it; wherever we go we must uphold the principle of juris immaculatio, unblemished justice, and even on this little detour past the jail I considered myself well within my rights.
“‘Morten Ross was sitting on a bench built into the wall. He thanked me for bringing the manuscript. “It is the story,” he said, “of a court case.”
“‘“I hope,” I said, “that in this story you have endeavored not to outrage public opinion.”
“‘He then asked if he might read this story to me and even now I have to ask myself what it was that moved me to stay. Of the moment itself I recall only the sun shining through the window set high up in the wall and the regal elegance of this young man in the midst of his degradation.
“‘And he read me the tale of a young woman who stands accused of a crime and who, during her trial, conceives the notion that all the protagonists in the case, herself excluded, are mechanical dummies. Filled with horror and circumspection she mounts an offensive in which she diverges more and more often from normal legal procedures so as to uncover, by dint of her unpredictability, an area in which these automatons are not on their guard. This she succeeds in doing, and finally, sure in her belief, she steps down from the dock without anyone’s making a move, circles around behind the judge, who is staring blankly at the spot where she has been sitting, and sees that he and all the others have a key in their backs for winding them up.
“‘More frightened, far more frightened than if they had been real, she walks toward the spectators and they, too, are mechanical. But on coming face-to-face with a young man whom she had noticed earlier, she stops, looks into his eyes, and realizes that he is alive.
“‘Here Morten Ross paused and I must have looked inquiringly at him because he told me that this was as far as he had gotten but that if I would visit him again he would have the story finished.
“‘At this I perceived the gravity of the situation: a judge paying a call on the accused and instigating a private conversation.
“‘“I must leave,” I said.
“‘“It would give me great pleasure,” he said, “if you were to call again.”
“‘“Mr. Ross,” I said, “I am here not to give pleasure but to do my duty,” and with that I left the cell.’”
* * *
“‘The third session of the court opened with the defendant’s statement. Deliberately, almost diffidently, he recounted the details of his affair with his pupil, and despite the matter-of-fact tone of this account I noted how the court burned with a bright red flame of disgust and indignation at such insouciant forthrightness in the description of a subject as fraught with responsibility as sexuality, at how casually this character viewed the danger of corrupting the morals of the young.
“‘Only in the gallery did I detect sympathy and good cheer, something I could not understand.
“‘When the public prosecutor took the floor to deliver his rebuttal his voice was hoarse with repugnance. He said the state requested that the defendant’s sentence be increased, for was not this punishable and perverse liaison, was not the accused’s vulgar explanation, was not his sensually deliriant work a massive, concentrated attack on the chastity of youth?
“‘At this, Morten Ross stood up.
“‘“Sir,” he said, “your concern for the youth of today does you credit, but are you certain that you are not overestimating my influence and placing too little faith in the morality of the young? I should like to ask you: Did you yourself feel overwhelmed by sensual delirium when you read my book?”
“‘At this point I deemed it necessary to interrupt. “Mr. Ross,” I said, “the public prosecutor does not speak here for himself or his private experiences. He appears in this court on behalf of the Crown.”
“‘“Ah, I see,” said Ross. “Then in that case I should like to ask you, Mr. Public Prosecutor, sir, whether, during the reading of my book, you were filled with delirious sensuality on behalf of the Crown.”
“‘And so it went. And the public laughed. Never before had I found it necessary to raise my voice in court. Never before had I wished so heartily that I had listened to others and left it to justice to tame this character behind closed doors. When I announced that the court would adjourn for dinner he stood up, turned to the gallery, and shouted to the spectators that he would feed them all. “Wait for me and my constable in the anteroom,” he cried, “and we’ll eat our fill and drink a toast to the Crown for having, through this trial, assured my novel of sales on which I have made a bundle!”
“‘I spent the hour strolling along the city ramparts, his words having spoiled my appetite, and it occurred to me that he was turning the court into a theater. A book such as his ought to be met with a chastening hush, a liaison of the sort he had entered into ought to be punished severely but in absolute silence, the whole point being, after all, to eliminate an infection, to stamp out a sickness that thrives on publicity. A degenerate such as he ought to be surrounded by emptiness and loathing, I told the wind, ought to hang in a dreadful vacuum. But look what has happened. Thanks to the court’s insistence on exactitude, on the presentation of all the facts, thanks to all the weighing of pro et contra, we have instead stirred up the mud, we have spread the infection, we have stuck our heads into a hornet’s nest. Now the book is selling wildly, the public is laughing its head off, the newspapers are printing stories about him. We wanted to hush things up, to bury, to amputate, and instead we have aroused curiosity, given rise to titillation, we have fanned the embers of public prurience into a saturnalian bonfire.
“‘And doubt came and walked by my side and questioned me on the nature of justice. Is this what it amounts to? it asked. Is it, then, some obscure ritual rather than pure justice that you serve? Is the Supreme Court not the ultimate seat of justice but simply the most grandiose of public brothels?
“‘Not until I stopped in my tracks, straightened up, and realized that I was feeling to see whether I had a keyhole between my shoulder blades, did I understand that I had veered off course, that I was the one person in this country who must not entertain any doubts and when I raised my eyes the doubt was gone and once more I was utterly alone.’”
* * *
“‘During the concluding stage of the proceedings that day we met the accused with new and crushing precision.
“‘The prosecutor for the Crown read a number of literary critics’ appraisals of the book. Their findings were quite conclusive: “A defense of licentiousness masquerading as literature.”
“‘“Our critics,” said the public prosecutor, “have cultivated and refined their faculty for judging literary merit. Consequently, their scholarly and psychological insight now makes it possible to determine that the artistic worth of this work ought to be rewarded by imprisonment in an institution for the criminally insane. If, that is, its author had not, with his profligate behavior, proved how admirably suited he is to a spell in an ordinary Danish state prison.”
“‘The accused had nothing to say in reply. I sensed that he was on the verge of collapse and I thought: Now his soul is hovering speculatively above the inner wall of Horsens Prison, where it belongs. But this was not enough for me; I had to look him in the eye, had to see him attest to his defeat in that room, so I called him back.
“‘“It is vital, Mr. Ross,” I told him, “that you understand the question here is whether you wrote your book with literary excellence in mind or just pornography, pure and simple.”
“‘He gazed at me from a great distance, then slowly turned around.
“‘“Who is to say, your Honor,” he asked, “that being pornographic might not be a literary merit?”
“‘“There is a long and historic precedent for differentiating between art and what is simply sybaritic,” I replied.
“‘“Oh, I see,” he said. “I think I understand. This exalted court is thinking of how Ovid was run out of Rome for The Art of Love, and how the erotic element in Romeo and Juliet was omitted from the Danish translation, and how Flaubert had to stand trial for Madame Bovary.”
“‘Then he fell silent and said no more.
“‘But his last words remained with me long after the court had adjourned; it rankled me that he had thus succeeded in firing off an impudent sally while, at the same time, heaping glowing coals on my head. It pained me physically, and as I made my way through the city in this migrainous fog I composed a short speech to deliver to him, a speech whose main substance was that of course the decision of a court does not simply reflect current tastes, of course an enduring standard does exist for the evaluation of fine and morally sound works of art, and of course there are abiding ethical and religious reasons for considering love between persons of the same sex abhorrent, and this, I thought, I must tell him in person. Now that the case is, strictly speaking, over, this responsibility rests with me alone. Who else can be expected to do it; is it not true that I am the Supreme Court?
“‘There was no surprise in the look he gave me when I entered his cell, and he listened impassively to what I had to say. He invited me to take a seat on his cot but I remained standing; I had come only to deliver a message, history and morality’s message, to an immoral writer.
“‘When I was done he nodded.
“‘“You came here to tell me this?” he asked.
“‘“It wasn’t as if it was out of my way,” I said.
“‘“He had risen to his feet, and standing there before me he seemed to regain the fighting spirit of that first court session.
“‘“I see, Your Honor,” he said, “that you are a man who never takes the roundabout route, a man who on his deathbed will be able to say: I went straight from the cradle to the grave.”
“‘I have the idea that we were circling around each other like two contenders in a boxing ring.
“‘“Yes,” I said, “but at least I make progress, which is more than you will be able to say of yourself in Horsens Prison.”
“‘He smiled bleakly. “You have already passed sentence on me,” he said. “So the court really did have a key sticking out its back.”
“‘“What became of that story?” I asked.
“‘“It won’t ever be finished,” he replied. “But I envisaged the man and the woman running away together, off into a brief burst of optimism that would come to an end when the girl’s hands found the keyhole in his back. And they would raise their eyes, having gone, so to speak, behind the back of the city, and would see that this, too, is a stage set, a vast, soulless, mechanical conspiracy, a fabrication of facades and delusions.”
“‘“And where does this unlikely story end?” I asked.
“‘“Having made her discovery the girl returns to the courtroom and takes her place in the middle of a new court case, without anyone’s noticing. The case runs its course and she is convicted of a crime other than the one with which she had previously been charged, and she accepts this verdict since it is better to take part in a senseless mechanical ritual than to float in a vacuum. So the story ends, Your Honor, where it always ends: in court.”
“‘I was seized by a powerful urge to lash out at him. By rights, all the centrifugal forces should have hurled us away from each other, but this was not what happened. Instead, we must have drawn a little too close to each other because suddenly, standing there before me in the sunshine, he seemed the most beautiful, the most naked person I had ever seen and I was drawn to him like a meteor destined on impact with the surface of the planet to turn into a crater and a ridge of dust. But this was not what happened. What happened instead was that I kissed him.’”
“At this point,” said Hektor Landstad Rasker, “my father paused for a moment and gazed straight ahead. But he was seeing not us, his guests, but something else. ‘And the only odd thing about it,’ he said dreamily, ‘the only thing that was different and surprising, was the gentle scrape of beard stubble.’
“Then he pulled himself together again. ‘The following morning we considered our verdict,’ he said, ‘all of us well aware that we were conducting this debate on the brink of a new era. We knew the future held a relaxation of the Freedom of the Press Act and a new outlook on the physical side of love. But more than this awareness of a new age, far more than this, that morning in court I was conscious of the presence of something else: of the defendant’s arresting charm.
“‘On the Supreme Court the youngest judge is the first to deliver his opinion, and the first six votes would have scaled down the sentence to the point of insignificance. I recall one of these six judges saying that what had been said during the trial had sown doubt in his mind as to the appropriateness of judging art and should this doubt not act in the defendant’s favor?
“‘The remaining six cast dissenting votes: they wanted to uphold or to increase the sentence. They had not much liked what they had seen and heard in the case and they were now looking for this to be defused. The votes were tied, just as I had guessed they would be; a tie was what I had figured on.
“‘I remembered the events of the previous day quite clearly. You must not think that I had banished what had happened to the deepest recesses of my mind; you must not think that I had been shattered against the surface of this young man. Quite clearly I saw my own fall, and I understood that I did not fall alone, taking with me as I did the entire judicial system, and with me, I thought, it shall rise up again, without anyone’s being the wiser. And I spoke out lucidly and with feeling for the need to increase the sentence; I reminded the others that the maximum penalty was six years’ imprisonment at hard labor, and we cannot give less than four, I said. And so a ruling came down that afternoon, and when it was read, I looked him in the eye and by then my equilibrium had been restored.’”
* * *
“‘That night I found it impossible to sleep, so I got up and went out into the streets. It had been snowing, and even though the heavens were black, the city gave off a muted white light, for all the world as if somewhere in a nearby but out-of-the-way street the moon, waiting to rise, were caught for a moment in the city’s frosted glass bottle.
“‘I walked the streets, and on each corner, fragments of my life awaited me. Silently we greeted one another and the snow muffled my steps. But outside all your windows I stopped. In the course of that night I stood outside the windows of the public prosecutor, and outside yours, Chief Superintendent, and yours, ladies, and for a good while I stood outside yours, my son, and thought: Behind those windows slumbers my life, and I tore myself away and continued, meeting no one and nothing but my own visions until finally I found myself outside the courthouse and I let myself in.
“‘Just then the moon rose and bathed the room in a cool blue light, like liquid slowly infiltrating an aquarium, and in that instant it was borne in on me that on this night I was to be put on trial, that the Supreme Court was about to ask me whether I had actually lived.
“‘The counsel for the defense was the first to speak, I myself being said counsel, and on this particular night the court took the extraordinary step of allowing witnesses to be called and I called you, my boy. “See,” I told the court, “I have a son.” And I called you, my dear ladies, the loves of my youth—ah, you seem surprised. You never knew, may not have had the slightest suspicion, but it was so. I called all of you and my wife as witnesses and said to the court: “See, these are the women in my life.
“‘“And finally,” I said, “I should like to conclude my defense by saying that I have to the best of my ability fulfilled my civic responsibility by diligently performing the duties of my office.”
“‘Then it was the turn of the prosecutor, he too being myself, and in his own singular fashion he seemed kindly disposed. “There is just one point in the indictment,” he said, “that I should like to pursue: have you, Mr. Landstad Rasker, ever been in love? Is it not true that you have never been fond of children? Is it not true that, shortly after your marriage and out of an aversion you yourself could not explain, you had your wife move out of the bedroom you shared and into a remote part of the house?
“‘“And your youthful infatuations. Is it not true that you never returned the affections of these five women? That only with reluctance did you agree to trysts in empty apartments from which these women had gone to great pains to banish their parents, empty apartments in which these women had made all the preparations for their own seduction? And that no sooner did you feel the hands of these women on your skin than you were overwhelmed by an inexplicable nausea, by a sense of claustrophobic wrongness?
“‘“And yet, Mr. Landstad Rasker, you are a man full of love, a man driven by a fierce longing for sensuality. Is it not the case that these unfortunate trysts threw you into the depths of despair, in which state you sought out druggists who sold you aphrodisiacs whose want of efficacy led you to believe that you lacked the natural predisposition?
“‘“And yet you know, Mr. Landstad Rasker, and yet you know that you are a man possessed of an all-engulfing passion. But you have imprisoned it in a bottle. You have encapsulated it and labeled it and tucked it away to ensure that no one will rub the bottle and call up uncontrollable forces. And therefore the prosecution must ask: Is it in accordance with the laws of life to act thus? Have you, Mr. Landstad Rasker, lived? Have you truly lived?”
