The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge (25 page)

She found herself talking about who she had once been, and that small, ferociously ambitious slender girl who loved dancing seemed as remote and lost as the days of embroidered flared jeans, agit-prop street theatre, the MLF and
Le Torchon brûle
, glam-rock, the songs of Jacques Brel and revolutionary socialist politics. At first his concentration upon every word disconcerted her, made her hesitate, slow down, but gradually, the quality of his attention, the fact that he was so clearly committing every frown and gesture to memory, and the deep quiet that she sensed, listening within him, calmed her unease. The Composer was a man at peace with himself, for all his explosions and irrational outbursts. It was this that anchored his presence at the table before her. The dining room emptied out behind them and the afternoon breeze tugged at the tablecloth. By the time they rose, full of fish and champagne, her senses were no longer sharpened against his danger. She felt cradled, safe.

‘Shall we have coffee in the gardens?’

He held out his arm to her, gallant as a nineteenth-century prince, and she accepted him without hesitation.

_{*  *  *}

The belvédère from which the hotel took its name turned out to be a summer house perched on the last terrace above the main building. A steep flight of damp steps led upwards to the frivolous little cupola, painted with tiny white flowers, surrounded by a verandah. The cane furniture, laden with cushions, suggested a peaceful afternoon snooze in well-fed somnolent heat. A sea breeze ruffled the wisteria strangling the balcony, but before them lay nothing but a giant white haze. Even the sea unfolded into a white glaze of light, as if a veil had descended, cutting them off from the working world. The Judge, clutching her coffee, stretched herself out upon a floral sofa, clearly designed for the frail and elderly. Without warning the Composer leaned over and removed both her shoes. This gesture, which amused rather than annoyed her, gave them the exact measure of the distance they had travelled in two hours. She curled and extended her naked toes in a patch of faded, blustering sun; the wind brushed the soles of her feet. Despite the roar of the invisible cicadas, she became intensely aware of every approaching sound and the distant rhythm of the sea.

He sat beside her, gazing into the light.

‘You’re unlike most Frenchwomen. You don’t wear any paint.’

‘I was wearing lipstick this morning,’ she corrected him. ‘And as you haven’t allowed me out of your sight I haven’t had time to touch up my paint, as you call it.’

‘Good. Don’t. If I’m on trial, you’re under arrest. You must understand how greedy I am as far as you are concerned. I have you near me now, for a few precious hours. But you will never have much time for me.’

The sudden sadness in his voice made her look round at him.

‘On the contrary, I spend nearly all the time we are apart thinking about you and trying to dig up information on your background, personality, history and career. And the last two hours have amply demonstrated the limits of my methods. I have dossiers full of facts, none of which match the man.’

His delighted roar of laughter shook his huge frame and the chair beneath him shuddered. The white hair fell across his eyes; he flung back his head to shake it free.

‘Really? How wonderful! So I’ve succeeded in disguising my bad temper, autocratic manners and impossible character.’

‘Oh, completely.’

They settled into a companionable silence that is the usual hallmark of friends who have known each other for years.

‘Don’t you have any more rehearsals to attend?’

‘Yes. This evening. I’ve been flung out by my lighting engineer for brazen interference. We’ve been working together for decades, so he can say what he likes. You must meet him. He thinks that light is an abstract language, like music.’

She reflected on this for a moment.

‘But it is, isn’t it? Light doesn’t use words, but has the power to rouse the emotions.’

‘And that, Dominique, is the root of your mistrust of music.’

For the first time, he used her Christian name. She decided to take no notice of this collapsing barrier. Instead she merely nodded her agreement, sacrificed the pawn, and made her much meditated move across the board.

‘If I ask you something about the Faith, will you tell me the truth?’

Oddly enough the question now seemed neither risky nor impertinent. She was at last sure of her ground, and they were sitting side by side, close together, facing the sea far below them. She could see his hands, his knees, his worn jeans and leather moccasins; she watched his jacket trailing on the tiles, but she could not see his face. He answered without hesitation or disquiet.

‘Yes, of course. You can ask me anything. And you know quite well that I will always tell you the truth as I understand it – and as far as I know where truth lies.’

‘Where does the poem come from –

Ja! Ich weiß woher Ich stamme!

Ungesättigt gleich der Flamme –?’

He corrected her German pronunciation.

‘Stamme. That means ‘‘originate from’’, it’s a ‘‘sch’’ sound, not like ‘‘stammer’’ in English. Don’t you know it?
Ecce Homo
. It’s from Nietzsche.’

He recited the poem, just as it was written in the Guide.

Ja! Ich weiß woher Ich stamme!

Ungesättigt gleich der Flamme

Glühe und verzehr’ Ich mich.

Licht wird alles, was Ich fasse,

Kohle alles, was Ich lasse.

Flamme bin Ich sicherlich!

Yes, I know where I began!

Insatiable as flame

I glow and consume myself.

What I grasp turns to light,

What I leave becomes cinders.

I am surely flame!

‘I see you have been studying the Guide! I’d write it all down for you, but I don’t think I could translate it properly into French.’

‘Yes, I have been reading the mysterious book. But we haven’t yet cracked your code.’

She stared at her own toes; he laughed softly.

‘The language is only for initiates to know. But nothing would give me more joy than to teach you how to read that book.’

The day’s heat flowed over them both, like an incoming wave, yet as he spoke, her skin rose up against an inner gust of cold, peculiar, unforeseen, and a quick thread of fear passed through her. The instinct of self-preservation swirled in her stomach, bounded through her heart. I must never, never know these secrets. I must never understand his code. She sat up straight and looked at him. One of the cushions fell to her feet. But the Composer seemed unaware of her alarm. He leaned back, tranquil, languid, giving no sign that he had said anything disturbing or out of the ordinary.

‘Tell me,’ for now she risked everything, and the question was unpremeditated and therefore unprofessional, but her fear screamed within her: save yourself, save yourself, and the only safety that remained lay in knowing the scale of the monster before her, ‘what is the Faith?’

He took hold of both her hands and swung round to face her, the chair scrabbling the tiles; he looked straight into her eyes. She saw tiny flecks of hazel amidst the dangerous blue. She had never been so close to him. He did not raise his voice; there was neither urgency nor hesitation in his words, simply the desire to be as clear as possible.

‘The Faith is a way to live in this world and a doorway into the life to come. It is a very ancient pathway towards wisdom and has always existed in the margin of other faiths. This is not to say that the Faith, as you call it – for bien sûr it has another name, a secret name – is in any way derivative. Our teachings and the hidden knowledge we transmit are borne through the millennia by members of our people, who may well apparently be highly placed representatives of other monotheist religions: Judaism, Christianity or Islam. Sometimes we have been burned as heretics or traitors. We are engaged in a long search, like the Grail Knights, but we are also watchers, the people who remain awake while all else sleeps.

‘We are also known as the people of the dark, because in our mythology, which has been studied for hundreds of years, we follow the Dark Host, the charioteer, Auriga. You may have noticed the maps and charts of the night sky buried in the Guide. Auriga is easy to see in the northern sky because of Capella, the most northerly star of the first magnitude and the sixth brightest star in the night sky. You know that astronomers have always mapped the night skies; mariners have always used them to steer across the world. Those are our traditions, our inheritance. But Auriga possesses one intriguing characteristic. Within this cluster of stars are two eclipsing binaries. Do you understand this?’

The Judge held her breath and said nothing.

‘Well, one is Zeta Aurigae, the scientists now call this an orange giant – I rather like the term – which holds a smaller blue star in its orbit. The giant eclipses the blue star every
2
.
7
years. This causes the star to fade for a period of six weeks. But in the same constellation we see Epsilon Aurigae; the ancient Arabic name for this star, which we continue to use, is Almaaz. And this is what modern astronomers describe as an eclipsing binary star, for Almaaz has a mysterious dark partner, which we cannot see, but which eclipses the star every twenty-seven years. And the eclipse lasts for two years. This means that this giant star – it’s about two thousand light years away from the sun – is being eclipsed by something far greater than itself. But exactly what this dark companion is, we cannot know. My people call it the Dark Host. Astronomers think it may be another star veiled in dust. Perhaps one day we will know. The next eclipse will begin at the end of
2009
.’

He paused; and all around him the bright day began, imperceptibly, to ebb, despite the throbbing cicadas and the windy heat. The Judge sensed the change at once, as if the Dark Presence he invoked seeped out of his words and infected the blaze of southern summer, muting the heat, softening the sounds, darkening the world. The wind stilled, dropped.

‘We only know of the existence of the Dark Host because of what it conceals. But we can hear this Dark Presence at the heart of the charioteer, whose horses’ heads are pointed towards eternity. We can record its voice.’

‘The thing speaks?’ The Judge had heard enough; her scorn gave her away. She pulled back from him, incredulous, and thrust her feet into her shoes. He shrugged, and smiled slightly, as if he had anticipated her reaction.

‘I am a musician, not an astronomer. You can ask Professor Linford at the Jodrell Bank Observatory in England. He is the world expert on Epsilon Aurigae. He seldom calls it Almaaz. He has been listening to the radio signals for decades and will tell you whether what I have said is true or not.’

‘So we’re being addressed by something in the stars?’ Her self-possession, now utterly restored, wrapped her away from him, and her voice rang out, taut, ironic, cold. The Composer never flinched, but faced her down.

‘Show me a little more respect, Dominique, and hear me out. We are part of everything that is. This is the voice of our own souls speaking to us, across infinite distances. Do you expect me to tell you about little green men and flying saucers? They don’t exist and never will do. We are all that there is, and the Great Mind speaks in us, through us.

‘We find the love of God in one another. Earth and heaven are locked together in the perpetual explosion of creation and eternity. All time is collapsed into the drama of a splintered second. We seem to follow our small lives like a thread, across the few years we possess, when we inhabit the kingdom of this world, but inside every second here, within every moment that I stand before you – loving you more than you will ever be able to grasp – I touch the colossal space of endless night,
die ewige Nacht
of all eternity, where there is no loss, no grief, no churning time, only the endless night of union and joy, the moment that endures for ever, this moment that we can grasp now, with our bare hands. We are such lonely creatures: the poor, bare, fork’d animal, longing to be accompanied, to be comforted. That loneliness is an illusion; for we are surrounded, secured. You know – for it is written – that the very hairs of your head are all numbered. ‘‘Now therefore with angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven we laud and magnify your glorious name, evermore praising thee and saying Holy, Holy, Holy.’’ How many times have you spoken those words and neither understood nor believed them?