32 - The Trial

Summary

Kafk a's The Trial is so well known, and widely discussed, because people see in it not only an existentialist novel depicting pathological anxiety but also an anticipation of the Nazi trials, to which some add the Stalinist trials, which were easily their equal.

Both Hitler and Stalin were sinister figures. Maybe the most sinister in history, because their crimes surpass those of all other criminals recorded by history, combined. Both were insane and criminal, but Hitler seemed to have been first insane, then criminal. As a consequence, his trials are more like Kafk a's model. The same two attributes characterize Stalin, but in his case, he was first and foremost a criminal, as Solzhenitzyn showed without a doubt. Hitler has killed only three to four million people. Stalin seems to have killed ten times more, and his trials took place under the sign of systematic perfidy, and were even organized scientifically, as his henchmen, starting with Vyshinsky, have claimed. That is why the absurdity of the world in Kafk a's novel seems closer to that of the trials organizaed by Hitler, who was an epileptic, and less to Stalin's and Vyshinsky’s, who organized their trials with a cool head. Crime and insanity cannot be confused, even if they represent intersecting circles with common features.

The prelude to our trial started in the afternoon of October 24 or 25, when turmoil started in the detention area of the Interior Ministry. The metal doors on the cells opened every few minutes. At first I thought they were the usual trips to interrogation, but then I realized it sounded more like they were vacating the cells. I became sure of that when at short intervals the neighboring cell doors opened, which had held Admiral Măcelariu and engineer Balş for four months. A longer silence, about ten minutes, went by, and then I was taken out. Two strapping constables frogmarched me to the gate through which I had come in, and outside a car was waiting.