On the Edge of Reason by Miroslav Krleza

Author:Miroslav Krleza [Krleža, Miroslav]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811226486
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2016-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

CRIME

AND PUNISHMENT

The courtroom, in which His Honor Dr. Attila von Rugvay opened the trial to pass judgment on me for the quadruple murder by Mr. Domaćinski, was more like a concert hall that day than a courtroom. Everybody was assembled as at a sensational first night at the opera: Sandreta and Pipa, Bobby and Robby, Muki and Kuki, Buki and Cuki, Teddy and Meddy, Baby and Lady, Tekla and Mimi, Madame Dagmar Varagonski with the old lady Aquacurti-Sarvaš-Daljski and the young lady Aquacurti-Mencetić-Maksimirski; in brief: the elite that takes its frozen conservative stand on the unshakable principles underlying the bourgeois way of life, plays bridge perseveringly, kills its boredom by making inane jokes, stages intrigues, makes chamber pots, padlocks, and chains; sells fur and spices; in a nutshell, acts constructively in the interests of the lower classes.

The whole night before this unpleasant trial, I admittedly did not get a wink of sleep. I could not imagine how I could run the gauntlet of those traveling salesmen dealing in neckties, compiling Latin grammars, producing like baboons illegitimate children in the most legitimate marriages, holders of historical titles that were neither historical nor, as titles, anything but a national shame. I have never felt any respect for selfish, promiscuous people or stubborn bachelors who in their mid-sixties marry young girls and then move about in society as respectable cuckolds. Subconsciously they were strangers to me even at times when I mixed with them for business reasons, offering them my so-called professional services. But as I had broken away from that elite by withdrawing into my own solitude, what could that agitated flock of parrots and jays mean to me at the moment when I already saw before me my own flight? Making my appearance at the other end of the courtroom, like a man who shows up late at a concert, I passed through that elite composed of my personal friends, walking on a carpet to a seat in the front row in front of that whole agitated public, which stopped murmuring as soon as the person who was the main attraction at this unique performance made his appearance.

At my place, which in vulgar jargon is called the defendant’s bench, I found three copies of the Gazette. On the second page, under a sensational headline, “What a Moralist Thinks of Himself,” was my photograph and the facsimile of the official report in which I stated that I was a promiscuous person, a slanderer, a paramour, divorced through my own fault, according to witnesses a confirmed adulterer, a problematic man, a morally sick case.

Dr. Attila von Rugvay opened the trial and thereupon, in the name of Mr. Domaćinski, the indictment was read out, bearing the signature of Hugo-Hugo, the Director-General’s lawyer, saying that I had declared that Mr. Domaćinski was a bandit, a criminal type of man, a murderer, a born evil-doer, a morally insane type; that he had reached for a revolver and wanted to shoot me, and as I had stated

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