Tihomir Levajac:
Here We Go on Trial Again

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Verdict

The verdict was due to be announced on Tuesday.

Word had reached the public and the courtroom was filled with spectators as if a circus performance was to take place. It was virtually impossible to enter the courtroom, so full was it of reporters, cameramen, all sorts of VIPs and mercenaries, assembled there to make the occasion as solemn as possible.

The Stories indicted were gathered inside a cabin, as if inside a refugee camp. They were taken care of, protected, locked up lest somebody’s irresponsible act or malicious intent should harm them.

They were protected from injustice by bullet-proof glass.

The judges were dressed most solemnly.

As if the day was Easter Sunday.

Finely dressed and glum-looking, pronged caps on their heads, wearing red tunics.

Red-and-black tunics.

As for the Prosecutor, everyone was dazzled by the way he looked.

Wrapped up in a wide, long gown, cascading silk below the chin, he resembled a silkworm that had cocooned itself in a place of its choice.

When he started speaking, the Stories feared his accusations rather less than his preaching. Let him accuse them of anything he liked, as long as he refrained from preaching about morality and justice to them!

For, every Court that insisted on speaking about morality was not itself moral.

Although the defendants were all alone in this world, without protection, although the people they belonged to was small, poor and without any allies, they were not bereft of honour.

On the contrary, they had more honour than those who were supposed to judge them because the latter, being high and mighty, had no need of honour.

Unfortunately, the Prosecutor chose to speak of nothing else but justice, honour and honesty. Also, about truth and freedom, about man being the jewel of the world, as if this world was nothing but an ivory tower.

He spoke of a united world, a world where democracy reigned, as well as justice and freedom, and some such nonsense. Then he spoke of Europe, describing it as a golden garden, how beautiful it was going to be, as if he was a nature lover and not the Prosecutor of the International Court of Justice, in the name of injustice.

So beautiful was his speech that a cactus in a corner of the courtroom blossomed in its pot.

Butterflies with multicoloured wings started flying through the courtroom.

Then the Chairman of the Tribeurinal Board, Mr Mumbo Jumbo Carambo Bhutu Corbutu, rose from his seat. That was the signal for the defendants to arise, for the Defence Counsel to get up on his hind legs, for the reporters to get closer to the ceiling and for the cameramen to adjust the lenses of their cameras.

The Chairman let out a small cough, then aligned his head by raising his right eyebrow and lowering the left one, and finally spoke up in a voice reminiscent of those who were about to lose their balance. When he did start speaking, he went on for seven hours, imperceptibly raising his tone of voice little by little, so that the announcement of the verdict should be as dramatic as possible.

Having uttered no less than ten thousand words, the Chairman finally pronounced the stories guilty! They were sentenced for giving false testimony before the Court. In their stories, they had presented the war in a manner not prescribed by the Statemute of the Vague Tribeurinal!

What the war was like was the way the Tribeurinal saw it, not the way the Stories were trying to present it!

And presenting the war and events related to it as the defendants saw them, even if what they related was true, constituted an attack on the New World Order and, naturally, on this Court, which was supposed to protect it.

Apart from that, the Stories were also pronounced guilty because they had been telling stories which could be interpreted both from the beginning and from the end, which could be considered from both sides, and which occasionally could not be examined from the outside but from the inside.

Which no Article of the Statemute of the Tribeurinal allowed!

For, the Statemute of the Tribeurinal stated precisely how a story should look, what topics it was allowed to deal with and what not. Then there was a Paragraph specifying whether a Story was allowed to tell its story if it possessed advance knowledge of it, and the procedure in the case of its obtaining relevant information afterwards. And another paragraph, stating precisely when a Story was allowed to turn the plot upside-down and when not, when the narrator was allowed to resort to ploys, to touch upon the truth or to leave it out, and when not.

Owing to the fact that the defendants had ignored all those rules, they were sentenced to life imprisonment, and the stories they had been telling were excommunicated from the World Cultural Heritage forever.
Just when the stern-looking judge had finished the last sentence, the chandelier under the cupola started swinging of its own accord and the lights started switching off and on for no apparent reason. The few pictures hanging on the walls started bouncing, only to end up facing the walls. Neon tubes exploded and drawers burst out of writing desks. Then the judges’ desks and the chairs where the reporters were sitting started shaking and levitating.

When a gust of cold wind swept through the courtroom, the countdown began.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero!