The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge (35 page)

‘Buried in sand? Like Verdi’s lovers? You believe that this life amounts to nothing more than a tiresome prelude to the grave?’ Now she was actually shouting.

‘No, no.’ He kissed her forehead gently, but continued to speak. ‘There is no grave. And for me there will be no grave. I will vanish into light, air, darkness. And all through your long life I will stand beside you, waiting for you to accomplish your work, this immense work that is entrusted to both of us. And once your time here in this strange green world is completed, then you will step into eternity, the great ring of pure and endless night, the night of boundless love.’

She sounded like a disappointed, bawling child, even to herself.

‘But I want you now. Now! In this world. There is nothing else but this world. And I think you’re insane!’

The heat of his body engulfed her, as if he was already consumed by fire aboard the Viking ship. And for one terrible moment she felt herself sinking, vanishing. She pulled herself away from him, flung open the nearest French window and lurched out into the wet grass. The freezing night washed over her; she gulped down the shock of the mountain cold, and felt herself shivering. Wrapping her arms about herself she picked her way through the soaking earth, unable to see anything at all on the black mass before her. A man’s passion held no terrors for Dominique Carpentier; this was just one more field in which she excelled, like mathematics and jurisprudence. And to the outcome she was largely indifferent. He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me. The deepest currents within her never surfaced and were never touched. But now, in this man’s arms, she had sensed her cold intelligence obliterated, and she was shaken to the core. The combed vines and the glassy blackness of the lake with the Alps beyond, ghostly in the night mist, refused to remain a backdrop to this moment of temptation, like a painted scene before which the Composer seduced her with his outrageous propositions, for the very landscape heard his voice, and shivered, animate, listening, intent. She was surrounded, trapped.

‘Dominique?’ She never heard his approach. He caught her and she felt his giant hand cradling her head. She lost her footing in the slithering grass.

‘Look up,’ he commanded softly, ‘look up.’

And there above her reeled the Great Bear and Pleiades, the vast dense mass of stars, suffocating, close, the long veiled trail of the Milky Way, exploding with light, a dance of such glamorous enormity that her breath stopped in her throat. As if for the first time, she saw the huge immensity of light and distance, stretching away into nothingness, a soft glimmer on the outer edge of the universe, and then the endless galaxies beyond. She heard his voice coming towards her from the passionate brink of all created worlds, seen and unseen.

‘Everything already is. Everything exists. It is both before us and within us. All we have ever done is discover the names. We spend our short lives finding the words to say it. You and I have always been here, now and for all eternity. Did you never listen to your uncle when he was teaching you your catechism? He was teaching you the first fragments of the Faith.’

16

FOLLOW ME INTO THE KINGDOM

She stumbled out past the gatehouse in the first grey-blue light of coming day, dishevelled and unsteady, like someone drugged. Where had she left the car? Could she still find her keys? With each step she struggled to regain her chilly equilibrium. Her mind shuddered and gaped, as if she had stepped into a distorting fairground mirror and retained its grotesque shape. There was another car parked, just behind her own. As she reached for the lock a huddled form crouched behind the wheel of the intruding vehicle sprang into life and leaped out before her – André Schweigen.

He must have spent the night collapsed in the front seat. He looked like a homeless tramp, unshaven, battered, trembling with cold.

‘How did you find me?’ The Judge, suddenly lucid and terrifying, almost roared into the dawn. ‘And what are you doing here?’

‘Gaëlle. She’s on holiday in Egypt and she’s desperately worried about you. Both the phone in the office and your mobile have been clamped on to the answering service for over a week. You haven’t answered any of your e-mails. You don’t respond to messages. She rang me and I traced you here via Myriam at the Domaine.’

‘André – I am not a child and I don’t need a minder. Now get back into that car and follow me down the mountain. We’re going to find an expensive hotel in Vevey and sleep till midday.’

But by the time they reached the dozing desk clerk at the Grand Hôtel Continental neither of them could speak; the Judge was exhausted and Schweigen had been transformed into a living block of ice. The only rooms available formed the honeymoon suite. Schweigen booked the suite with fabulous views down the length of the lake and the Judge paid on her credit card. She ate all the chocolates laid upon the pillows, both hers and his, then pushed him into the bathroom and told him, without ceremony, to thaw out and eliminate the lingering stench of sleeping rough before coming to bed. He could barely see her, brandishing the hotel toothbrushes and picking out shampoos, through a cloud of steam. They muttered to one another, grateful for the familiarity of each other’s movements and gestures, unable to initiate any explanations. She was almost asleep before he joined her in the vast four-poster, tasselled with satin and gold.

‘Don’t talk, André,’ she whispered, as if she were ill or drugged. ‘I can’t stand it. And in answer to the questions that are written all over your face – yes, I spent what was left of the night with the Composer. No – I didn’t have sex with him, but yes, I am in love with him. And don’t throw one of your jealous fits. I’m not up the mountain in his bed. I’m down here with you in the honeymoon suite. Goodnight.’

And she pulled the duvet over her head to shut out the light.

_{*  *  *}

The sun illuminated the honeymoon terrace and the long rows of vines directly below the Grand Hôtel Continental from nine o’clock onwards. André Schweigen, sleepless in luxury, watched the light growing from behind the Alps, and saw the lake changing colour, from black to leaden blue. The Judge, he reflected with some irritation, slept as if there was no original sin in this world, and no impending consequences following her terrible declarations. Had she changed sides? Gaëlle thought not, but the outspoken Greffière possessed a boundlessly loyal spirit; she would never betray her Judge, in thought, word or deed. And in any case André Schweigen now discovered himself capable of understanding only one thing. She loved another man. She had told him so. The fact that she had never returned his devotion in any shape or form was neither here nor there. If he went on loving her, and he had no choice but to do so, then that was enough. But now there was someone else. She loves someone else. He paced the borders of his mind and found the dangerous edge, perilous as the Wall of Death. Here he lay, poised on the brink. What should he do now? Morning blazed in the windows. His wife had sent three desperate text messages. He no longer possessed the words with which to lie, and so he merely read the messages again and again. At last, André Schweigen blacked out his mobile, settled down beside the sleeping Judge and closed his eyes.

When he finally awoke it was well after midday and the Judge was standing on the terrace, wrapped in a white fluffy bathrobe with the hotel’s sinister logo stitched in gold glowing across her back, her face raised to the sun. Someone was tapping at the door.

‘Entrez,’ cried the Judge, and a uniformed flunky oozed into the suite bearing a vast silver tray, overflowing with breakfast, two flutes, and a bottle of champagne.

‘Félicitations! Madame, Monsieur,’ murmured the apparition. ‘The management would like to wish you a very happy stay at the Grand Hôtel Continental.’

‘Thank you.’ The Judge helped herself to a glass of champagne and escorted him out of the suite. She stalked back to the four-poster.

‘Cheers, André!’ She handed him the fizzing golden cone. ‘This is the honeymoon suite and we appear to have done the decent thing and regularised our situation at last.’

Schweigen sat up and gulped down half the glass. The room flickered to the beat of her smile. For one moment their complicity was complete and Schweigen grinned broadly. They had escaped together and were now on the run.

‘Didn’t they notice that we haven’t any luggage?’

‘Perhaps they think we’ve eloped?’

Then Schweigen remembered her confession. He flung away the moment of intimate peace between them and roared, ‘You’re with the wrong man,’ as he clambered out of bed. He tried to pull on his trousers, but rage triumphed over dignity and his right foot got stuck. She knelt down and pulled his foot through the hole.

‘Don’t start up, André. Please. It will stop you thinking straight and we need to stay calm.’

She carried the tray out on to the terrace. Her use of the plural immediately sent a message of reassurance to his muddled, exhausted brain, and he followed her out into the gorgeous day. The air smelled of September, the first fires, damp leaves, and a chill rising from the dark lake. In the shadow of the mountains the water remained black, with a faint mist clinging to the surface, as if the thing was living, breathing. The Judge set out breakfast on the glass table, her brisk, assured gestures shimmering with confidence and certainty. Cheese, pâté, wurst, eggs. Where are the croissants and the pains au chocolat? She rummaged through the sweet treasures.

‘Here. Orange juice. Drink it up or you’ll pass out.’

‘Did he ask you to marry him?’ André exploded, nevertheless obediently guzzling orange juice at her command.

‘Well, he did make me a proposition and yes, I think you could call it a proposal. So in a manner of speaking, yes.’

André gazed at her in horror. Her glasses had darkened in brightness, and so she sat, her bare legs and toes stretched out to greet the sun, munching pains au chocolat. She was eating his share as well as her own.

‘And what did you say to him?’ He held his breath.

‘What every cautious woman says. I played for time. I said I’d give him my answer in a week.’

‘A week!’ Seven days vanished in the flicker of her black hair falling across her face. Seven days and she would be lost to him for ever.

‘Don’t look so tragic. I haven’t said yes.’

‘But you will.’

‘Why do you assume that?’

André nearly crunched the champagne glass to splinters in his hands.

‘You told me last night that you were in love with him.’ He found himself shouting. The Judge swivelled in her seat, her darkened eyes invisible behind the black frames.

‘And I will never lie to you. That man has paid me the compliment of loving me with his whole heart and offering me the things that matter most to him. He has asked me to watch over his daughter. And I love him for his confidence and his trust in me. But I am not a madwoman, André. Friedrich Grosz and I stand on either side of an immense divide, like an abyss beneath the ocean. He cannot see it. He has a faith that knows no limits. For him nothing is impossible.’

She paused. André let out his breath with a long seething hiss.

‘And for you it is impossible?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

Then something else hit Schweigen like a slap; she had concealed information from him.

‘Marie-Cécile Laval’s younger child. The girl. That’s his daughter?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long have you known?’

‘About a month and a half.’

Schweigen stood up and clutched the wrought-iron balcony, his knuckles white.

‘I can’t stand this, Dominique.’

‘André, sit down. Listen to me. And keep your nerve.’ He collapsed into the honeymoon cushions.

But for a moment she didn’t say anything at all, merely handed him a slice of dark bread spread with garlic cheese and poured out the coffee. They ate in silence, gazing down the lake, which stretched away into a glaze of mist. The landscape draped before them, like a curtain of endless beauty, softened into golden light. The lake, shadowed, unclear, now appeared as difficult to comprehend as the nature of the decision the Judge had sworn to make within the week. Would she abandon her past? Unthinkable. Marry an old man, albeit a disturbingly energetic vieux Picasso? She hated music, never listened to it and didn’t even own a hi-fi system. Had she suddenly become domesticated and begun dreaming of a family? Schweigen could not imagine the Judge managing kitchens or clutching children. He suddenly realised that he had no idea how old she was. The smooth, timeless olive face gave little away.

‘How old are you?’ he demanded, all caution gone.

‘Forty-two. The same age as you.’ She smiled at him. ‘Do you think we might order some more champagne?’