The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge (37 page)

The Judge found herself smiling, unresentful of this interruption, and amused by the girl’s importunate enthusiasm. She possessed the power of granting happiness, and the generous, open-handed gesture of granting a wish charmed her, pleased her. She had begun to love the sensation of being courted, admired, and mattering to someone else. Suddenly this child’s admiration magnified before her, into a pearl of great price, and she closed her hands about the gift.

‘Of course, come at twelve.’ Then the Judge took the risk. ‘Is Friedrich with you?’

‘No. He’s already joined the orchestra in London. It’s the London Philharmonic, not his usual team, so he’s got masses of rehearsals. It’s just me.’ A sliver of alarm entered her voice. ‘Were you expecting him? You don’t mind that it’s just me?’

The Judge relaxed.

‘Don’t be silly. I’ll look forward to seeing you.’

_{*  *  *}

Gaëlle was in the high-roofed front hall, with all the gods and stars above her, when Marie-Thérèse bounded up the steps. The Judge watched the two young women shaking hands. They appeared to originate from quite different cosmological systems: Gaëlle had cloned herself as Isis in a miniskirt with powerful shoulders and a benign fixed glare, Marie-T impersonated Persephone, on lease from Pluto’s gloom, shining in her embroidered green spring. But the world beneath their feet has tasted the first gust of autumn. The Marin darkened the sky above the Allées and the medieval streets; then a nasty salt wind had them all reaching for their jackets. As the revolving doors swung round, a faint wash of white sand slithered across the stones, and the first leaves from the plane trees, still green but poised for the change, fluttered against the steps. A moist fog covered the mountains of Languedoc; eating outside was unthinkable.

As she listened to Marie-T’s cheerful optimism for the vendanges – the harvesting of the muscat was already well over on the Domaine – the Judge found herself formulating enquiries that, coming from a concerned parent, would have seemed ordinary and suitable. When do you complete your Bac? This year or next year? Well, you really should be thinking in terms of a university qualification. Unless you’ve already decided to run the Domaine Laval, in which case a course in management and accounting is, I think, essential. What is your brother’s opinion?

They debated the various merits of the law, languages, philosophy, which the Judge had first studied in Paris; psychoanalysis, which fascinated the Composer, and about which he possessed dozens of books, including the
The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud
– or perhaps a more practical degree from the business school.

‘I’ve got no ear for music. But Friedrich doesn’t seem to mind. Maman didn’t either. We love his music. But we’re amateurs. Friedrich says it’s just a gift. Either you can hear it or you can’t.’

The Judge nodded. And as she did she realised that the Faith, mysterious, secret, unseen, was written in a higher register than the one to which she habitually listened. And yet, and yet, the Judge never mourned the liars who were fraudulent, duplicitous, predatory; the people who caused her genuine grief were the passionate faithful, bristling with conviction, entirely persuaded of their own reckless creeds. I can deal with crooks, but not genuine fanatics. And I have no patience with romantic obsessions, the products of wilful wish-fulfilment. And is that how I have judged Friedrich Grosz? Have I imagined him as a character in one of his own unintelligible operas? A man whose motives are dark to me?

Marie-T gabbled on cheerfully about a young man who had asked her out. Should she say yes? What did Madame Carpentier think?

‘I think you should call me Dominique. And I’m not sure. Do you like him?’

The two women sat before their empty plates, gazing at one another and following quite different trails through the forest. Do you like him? Yes, I do. Immensely. He has given me his full attention. Does anything else matter so much? Do I want him to hold me in his arms and go on talking to me? Suddenly the Composer’s presence filled the empty space within her, his white hair and the heat blazing in his giant frame. She saw his lined face, enraged, then smiling, heard his voice, cheerful, amused, telling her that her hair was falling down, threatening to follow her into the lavatory, teasing her in a shower of drops, keeping her warm against the frozen dark. She turned her long stare upon his daughter, who was fiddling with her necklace, hesitating over her emotions, plucking at her sleeves.

‘Oh, I don’t quite know what I feel or what I want.’

She lifted her eyes to the Judge’s face, and Dominique Carpentier gazed straight into the Composer’s eerie, intense blue presence. Well, you may not know what you want, ma petite chérie, but I do. I desire your father with my whole heart and if that means taking on some mad cult that should have been obliterated thousands of years ago, then I will.

She took his daughter’s hands in her own.

‘You must listen carefully to what you feel. What you really feel, not what you ought to think or want. And don’t let other people influence you. What do you truly desire? Right at the core?’

Marie-Thérèse flushed, startled. The Judge grinned, reading her face.

‘Then do that,’ she said.

_{*  *  *}

On the night of Friday the
22
nd of September, the night before she flew to London, the Judge sensed something strange and loose, flapping in the bushes behind her. She was walking in her garden in the cool of the day, checking the sprinklers before resetting the computer to water her shrubs and trees. A few days’ chilly drizzle had hardly penetrated the dry red earth. She stood still, listening. A wild cat, perhaps? The light wind dropped. She heard it again, a faint crackle, then a muffled rush, as if a fire was just beginning. Bonfires were still forbidden and very strict regulations governed outdoor barbecues built on the brink of the garrigue. The heat had briefly returned towards the end of the afternoon and the white haze over the sea generated an odd yellow glare as the light dimmed, ebbed. The Judge looked out over the hills from the garden of her little villa, searching for a dark trail of smoke, the first sign of fire. Surely it’s too late in the year to worry about the garrigue bursting into flames? She could see nothing.

But as night fell a peculiar unease settled over her. She packed her rucksack ready for the journey and chose her clothes with care. Even in high summer London had been autumnal, cold. The bulging dossiers on the Faith lay outstretched upon her dining-room table. She flicked through the pages of notes, reports, autopsies, pausing over Schweigen’s signature and his rough translations of the earliest Swiss reports dating back to
1994
. She knew most of the material by heart. Now she looked more carefully at the astronomical reports from a British professor based at the University of Manchester, who was responsible for a network of radio telescopes known as the Merlin Array. Schweigen had left no stone unturned. The original reports had been updated, along with the main Lovell telescope itself, towering above the Cheshire plain. The dish had been realigned and was being recoated with galvanised steel plates. In reply to her enquiry about the Auriga Stone the Professor had kindly written back. Yes, the stone was well known to modern astronomers, who had the greatest respect for the ancients. And she was perhaps aware that the Crab Nebula in Taurus, a supernova created by the explosion of a giant star, had been observed and recorded by Chinese astronomers in
1054
. I expect that you know our work on gravitational micro-lensing, which enables us to detect objects such as neutron stars and black holes which emit no light. We have no idea what the Dark Presence accompanying Almaaz actually is, but our studies of mass distribution within the galaxies we record and observe will eventually give us enough data to risk a hypothesis.

She laid down the letter. Astronomy enacts the drama of measurement. And we are intent on measuring infinity. One day we shall be able to weigh each single ounce of gas, light, dust. She bit her lip and set aside the documents. But we cannot measure the effect of that micro-distance between rising fifths, or a burning palm against my cheek. Then she heard again the Composer’s voice, patient in the face of her incredulity. We are part of everything that is. This is the voice of our own souls speaking to us across infinite distances. The Faith is a way to live in this world, and a doorway into the life to come. She slammed the file shut and sat listening to the dark outside.

And then she heard it again: a faint rustle and snap of something close, even present in the room. The Judge stood up and turned on all the outside lights. She could see nothing. Suddenly she plunged into the second file, looking for a report, an address, a particular number. What is the code for Germany?
0049
. That’s it.

‘Herr Bardewig? Guten Abend. Verzeihen Sie … habe Ich Sie gestört? This is Dominique Carpentier, the French Judge who enquired about your father’s book, back in March. Do you remember me?’

‘Of course. Das Buch des Glaubens. With the wonderful binding. How is your investigation progressing?’

The Judge heard her own voice, unsteady with urgency.

‘I’m sorry to ask you this and I know how painful it must be – but you told me that your father took his own life, but not how.
How did your father die?
’

There was a deep silence on the other end of the phone. The Judge held her breath. Then the printer’s voice returned to her.

‘He died in the fire. We believe that he deliberately set fire to his old warehouse on the other side of the river and that he flung himself into the flames. He used some kind of industrial phosphorus that was traced by the police. That’s how we think he died. He gave no hint, no sign that he was intending to leave us. His body was utterly consumed. We had nothing to mourn. There was nothing left, nothing but ash and dust. So we buried a small urn with ashes scraped from the remains of the blaze.’

There was an even longer silence on the line.

Then the printer spoke again. ‘Are you still there, Madame?’

‘Yes,’ whispered the Judge,’ thank you.’

_{*  *  *}

Evening shadowed the slick streets. She strode down the wet pavements, shouldering her black rucksack and counting the number of people before her in the taxi queue. The coffee on the Gatwick Express proved undrinkable, but she calculated that she had no time to eat a proper meal before the concert. The city rushed towards its various destinations, theatres, restaurants, cinemas, clubs, home. She made no arrangements for the night, booked no hotel, and left her mobile switched off. Let it come. Whatever is to come, let it come. The taxi driver wanted to chat. She could barely understand him. What are you going to see at the Albert Hall? The Proms have finished. An opera? They don’t do opera at the Albert Hall. It’s an opera presented as a concert performance. Well, wouldn’t be my thing at all. Nor mine, thought the Judge, looking out at the grey chill settling over the white squares and the towers glazed with light, shining in the damp. It is as if I have stepped forwards in time, into the autumn, into the dark.

The Albert Hall looked like a gigantic brick cake with several decorated tiers. She saw the Composer’s name on every poster, his face on the programmes for sale just inside the door. She had arrived too early to enter the auditorium and from inside she heard the soaring squawks of the orchestra, rustling, settling, like a giant black bird. She abandoned her rucksack in the Cloakroom and then set off round the building, looking for the stage door. Two members of the Composer’s entourage were standing outside, smoking. The Judge recognised them from the fête at the Domaine, but did not know their names. They knew her at once.

‘Ah! Voilà! Madame Carpentier!’

‘You’re coming to the concert? The tenor’s first-rate.’

And she could hear the singers rushing up and down their scales, then two long notes held for a moment before dying away.

‘Is Friedrich here?’

‘Yes. He’s locked in the office. He had an urgent call from Switzerland.’

She stepped inside the stage door anyway; the corridors were crowded, not only with members of the orchestra but the choir, some of whom, brimful of energy, and all wearing black shirts, like a Fascist youth movement, scampered down the corridors, pushing past her. Where was the office? She hooked one of the technical staff and murmured in English.

‘The conductor? Monsieur Friedrich Grosz? Where is the office?’

A porthole in the door contained slightly distorted glass, but she could see him, hunched like a vulture over the table. His shoulders were rigid, and his great hand, spread out flat upon the wood, remained still, like an outstretched claw. She tried the door; it was locked. She tapped upon the glass. He did not hear her. She stared for a moment at his unkempt white hair and then noticed that he had removed his white tie. The thing lay scrunched and abandoned on the thick dog-eared score. I am less than three metres away from him, and he does not know that I am here.