and there, on the witness stand, a man, become emotional in reliving the memory, tells about a mass shooting somewhere in Volhynia. His nerves can’t take it, he weeps, although without tears: the sobbing shakes him dry, his shoulders heave, he can barely get the words out. He goes into agonizing detail about another man who was to be shot in a group. The mass grave was already dug, twenty yards by ten, several rows of corpses were already lying in it. And this man had a child at his side, his son, eight years old, a bright little boy—dry sobs, quaking shoulders . . . OUR LORD JUSTICE soothingly taps a sucked pencil. Would the witness kindly pull himself together and speak more succinctly, the Court’s time is limited, this carrion-smelling nightmare is only supposed to take nine months, long enough to give birth to a legal changeling . . . So the witness pulls himself together and tells about how this child didn’t quite understand what was going on, he spoke confidently to his father, but noticed, by the father’s—how shall I put it?—absent, abstracted expression that something unusual, something ominous was afoot . . . the child suddenly became frightened and began to ask what was happening, why were there so many corpses lying in the ditch. And the father caressed his head and spoke calming words to the boy: It’s not half so bad, my child, there is almost something good about dying young—And then the rattle of the machine guns or the automatic pistols or whatever they used—The witness can’t speak, and OUR LORD JUSTICE clears his throat. This is a private digression, as it were; the witness should confine his testimony to the fact of the shooting alone (if possible with precise data on the number of shooters and victims)—harrumph, yes. The issue here is something more general, that is to say, human rights in the legal sense, i.e., we must accurately establish crimes of such magnitudinous planning and perpetration as to impinge upon international law . . .

and meanwhile: the voices of the simultaneous interpreters chirp away in four languages like twittering parakeets from the glass cage on the witness stand, secretaries for both prosecution and defense are walking up and down with copies of documents and affidavits for tomorrow and the day after and handing them from one table to another where the testy, frustrated lawyers sit. The court reporters, bored, bang away at their steno machines in a slow-motion estrangement from reality. Defense attorneys scribble away at objections for the day after tomorrow. Prominent guests with earphones in the spectators’ section are deeply moved; they take enjoyment in the drama of what is happening, take enjoyment in themselves, witnesses to an act of World History . . .