The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge (29 page)

The Judge, rigid with attention, nibbled her warm toast and goat’s cheese. She could not follow the intricacy of the argument, but she remained convinced, without any doubt, that she was hearing, at this table, spoken freely and without inhibition, the exalted language of the Faith.

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Johann Weiß began to play at dusk. Insects thronged round the lights high on the walls of the Great Hall, which lit up the vast rafters and the dusty plaster. Myriam eased off her shoes and tucked her arm around the Judge as they leaned against one another, settled in white plastic chairs by the great medieval doors, their backs pressed against the studded patterns of round nails. The single sad thread of sound rose up into the old building, nourishing the gentle chink of dishes from the kitchens and the soughing of the plane trees, brushed by the fading wind. Everyone else stretched out, red-faced, exhausted and replete, ready to be quiet, breathing the sound of a single violin and its melancholy retelling of the old songs. The Judge forced herself to suspend her seething brain. She had drunk two glasses of alcohol in eight hours; she was probably the only sober person left amidst the cheerful hundred, all of whom were happier, at rest. Yet these were the places of her childhood; here she had played among the great vats, home from school, hiding from her father and Myriam. And here she had danced, on these very tiles, enjoying all eyes upon her. Had the family been initiates even then, followers of the sacrifice sect that swallowed fortunes, futures, every prospect of independent happiness? Who had known? Was it here, on her doorstep, even then? She looked at Myriam’s dark head, and the little gold hoops in her ears. What had her best friend known, but not told? No, as far as Myriam was concerned her mistress had been duped and murdered, deceived into a grim pact of slaughter. The events of New Year’s Eve had revealed the fabulous Madame Laval to be both cowardly and gullible, a lesser woman than we had all believed, not the great lady, who had managed a profitable business for decades. The Judge fiddled with the black Japanese comb, not her usual tortoiseshell grip, and therefore less comfortable, that held her hair high as a geisha’s, primed for an evening’s stint in the Tokyo bar. The violin dipped and soared as the sad songs ceased, banished from the night of joy, and the dance began.

Where had they hidden their instruments? For now there were three other fiddles and a double bass, informal, improvising, smiling at each other with no score placed before them. She felt the Composer’s oppressive concentration upon her, his eyes never leaving her face. He loitered in the shadows, leaning against the stacked tables, Marie-T perched above him, pounding his shoulders in time to the quickening stamp. Two men had begun to dance. Was it the
sevillanas
from Bizet’s
Carmen
? Or simply a melody everybody knows? She watched their arched backs and rigid hips; the dance unfolded in a drama of pounding feet, fierce gestures and fixed scowls, the sinister glare of the possessed. Someone was singing, an angry blazing shout, and Johann Weiß hammered his heels against the ground as he played. Everyone clapped, angrily against the beat. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, the dance was over, and the two men, back to back like victorious gladiators, raised their arms in victory.

‘Tu te souviens?’ Myriam squeezed her shoulders. ‘Do you remember, ma bibiche? How we used to dance?’

‘Mais oui. Of course I do.’

And there was Myriam, smooth and slender, a young girl of sixteen, swirling like an unleashed djinn, in the balance of her arms. I grew up here. This is my childhood friend. But what else could she remember that might have passed for the natural oddness of adult life, but in fact marked the presence of something dangerous and strange? The Judge ransacked her own past for signs and wonders, for anything that could tell her how long the Faith had been rooted in her native earth, and emerged with empty hands.

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She could not leave without thanking her young hostess. Marie-T, effusive in her gratitude, nevertheless managed to dissolve into the singing night when the Composer appeared, impatient at her elbow.

‘Where is your car?’

They marched to the far side of the buildings where the vines began. The pruned vines now shuddered in the first cool of night, the great leaves peeled back to expose the grapes. The muscat will be first. Sometimes, on these slopes where the sea heat gushed inland with the burning wind, they would begin the harvest as early as the last week in August. The Judge prodded a fat cluster with her keys, assessing the water content.

‘When can I see you again? I have five days before I must leave for Austria. I will agree to anything, Dominique. Only don’t withdraw from me. That’s all I ask.’

‘It’s not all you ask.’ She shook herself with discomfort and impatience. ‘Can’t you understand that so long as the investigation continues I cannot see you without being hopelessly compromised? I actually have to write reports on you. I shall have to write a report about this day.’

There was a silent space between them; she could see his white hair ruffled above his eyes and heard the distant laughter in the night. He stretched out his arms in a gesture of frustrated irritation, his sleeves rolled back, ready to fight; now he loomed above her like a wrestler.

‘Well? What does that matter? I’m not a trivial person. And I have nothing to hide from you. You can write all the reports you like.’

No one could hear them now, or witness this conversation. The Judge felt safe from all observers, indeed safe from everything except her own temper. She drew a deep breath, ready to extract herself from his demands. But as she searched for the curt reply ending in goodnight, the Composer sensed her hesitation and pounced.

‘You came with me to the Belvédère, you may not have answered my letters, but you have not returned them either, and I am certain that you have not merely added them to the mounting pile of papers in your legal files. You came here today. You give me great hope, Dominique, hope that one day you might consent to love me, or at least return one tiny glassful of the love I have for you.’

She reached the tipping point. No man had ever dared to assess her behaviour; even the Procureur gave her a free hand. No man ever assumed that he understood her feelings or her motives, and no man, not even Schweigen, had dared to comment on her inner intentions or decisions. This man interfered with her freedom of motive and movement. Incensed, provoked, and now blazing with anger, the Judge actually raised a clenched fist against him and snarled back.

‘Don’t hope. Never hope. Don’t count on me.’ She found herself shouting. He pinned her arms to her sides and her back against the car, then yelled straight into her face.

‘You can’t stop me loving you. And nothing you can do will ever change that!’

He stepped back. She sprang into her car and dropped the keys on the floor, her hands trembling. She saw his giant white shape, magnificent as a colossus, striding away down the vine rows to open the gates of the Domaine. For a second she caught him, grim-faced, in the blaze of her lights, then sped past in a white blast of dust. She refused to slow down, or look up.

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The Judge awoke in the grey, cool dawn and stood before her lighted fridge in the half-dark, gulping fruit juice straight from the packet. Something was becoming clearer to her. The clues gleamed in tiny corners of her mind, like beads on a necklace, fallen from the broken string, scattered and lost, splayed across the stone tiles. She heard Johann Weiß, his voice raised, jubilant –
you know perfectly well that the Promise is there and that it will be kept for all time
– and then she heard his music; the sombre mourning cry of sadness, absence, loss, his homage to the travellers who had passed onwards, treading the path we all must take, into the glowing dark. They swayed with the sad songs, and accepted their collective sorrow; no one asked him to play anything different. Then she heard the key shift into the major and the dance of joy began. For sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Something in the pattern of the performance and the shape of the fête itself flashed a warning to the Judge: the feast and then the dance. She stood still, sober, thirsty and exhausted, looking out into the whitening grey. The familiar shapes of shrubs, palms and fruit trees flickered darker as the light gathered about them, steady and intense. The shutters were still open. She had not bothered to lock them when she returned home, simply flinging her bag and keys down upon the kitchen table. The familiar hum of the automatic arrosage ceased. Soon, it will be day.

Had Friedrich Grosz paid for the fête? She began to cost it out – over eighty, maybe a hundred people had sat down at those long tables. The pleasant shimmer of wealth accompanied the orchestra; the musicians were opulent, casual, well dressed and at ease with one another. True, the mixture of languages had confused her, but when you cannot understand exactly what is being said you watch and listen for other things, an unguarded tension between the speakers, the way in which they hold themselves apart, unspoken assumptions, a connection that is scarcely visible, embedded in a dismissive gesture, an intimate glance, a bending of the head. These people knew and loved one another as clearly as members of a united family. They had opened out to enclose her as one of their number. Why? And why had they seemed so much closer than colleagues, friends? She could account for some of this. They worked together, lived together, travelled together, they must spend more time in one another’s company than they ever did with their families. Many string quartets contained a core of blood relations. The closeness she had observed between members of this orchestra suggested bonds that were equally powerful. Yes, they were there, the remaining members of the Faith, or some of them at least, and she had seen them, at the table, talking, eating, dancing in the night.

But what could she do with this information? As long as she remained close to the Composer she was touching the sect at its core. Of that she was certain. But the Composer had not expected the departure of Marie-Cécile Laval and her Christmas guests; of that too she had no doubt. His grief rose up, monstrous, unfeigned, and as powerful as his love for his unacknowledged daughter.

Well, what was André Schweigen actually doing? Beyond sending her savage or importunate e-mails?

Suddenly the Judge saw two connected glittering beads from the broken string rolling towards one another as if they had been magnetised. André Schweigen was still following up the startling sums of money that had vanished along with the wealthy dead left behind in the New Year’s snow among the broken trees. He had discovered nothing but a sequence of dead ends. Even modest donations to unspecified charities proved impossible to trace. One super savings bonus account, lodged in Zürich, that had contained two hundred thousand Swiss francs, emptied out in the run-up to Christmas. No one spends that much money decorating the tree or buying oysters.

Everything shall be given to us, but we must keep our part of the bargain
.

The Judge picked up her glasses, pulled her cotton kimono tight about her waist and strode into her office. The computer was on stand-by. She opened her e-mail and ignored all the waiting messages. One was from Schweigen. She opened the box. And there lay the brisk contradiction of his last two messages.
How dare you refuse to reply to me? Expect no further cooperation from my office
. The Judge sat baffled before her computer’s mysterious bulk. Why have I missed this? Surely I replied? Another message suggesting that she should visit a website entitled
Doctors and Nurses
gave her a moment’s pause, but she disregarded the contents of the screen and tapped out her new message with ferocious rapidity.

Date:
Mon
14
Aug
2000
04
:
57
:
23

From:
Dominique Carpentier

To:
André Schweigen

Subject:
Financing the Faith

Priority:
High!

Headers:
Show All Headers

André, I am still investigating the finances of the orchestra and I need some more urgent information. Find out where their siège social is located. Try Berlin or Lübeck. The Brigade Financière should be able to help you. The company has just finished a tour at the Avignon Festival and is engaged to perform at the Salzburg Festival next week. Friedrich Grosz is not only the Artistic Director, he is also Chairman of the Board. Or their association, whatever the legal definition in Germany. Insist on seeing
all the accounts
associated with the orchestra. Go back to
1990
(at least, earlier if you find anything odd) and make sure that you get hold of any accounts not used for immediate running costs. I don’t yet have any evidence of substantial donations in the last financial year that would match the money which disappeared in the wake of the New Year’s suicides. Check every account held under the names of the main signatories on the orchestra’s management committee. Keep me informed. Dominique.