The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge

by Patricia Duncker

  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.

  PS.I will always reply to you, but perhaps not in the manner you expect. We are far more than colleagues now, André. I expect your cooperation. I can ask you for anything and I will not be refused.

  This e-mail, sent at 4.57 a.m. on Monday morning from the Judge’s home address, confronted André Schweigen with the red exclamation of alarm as soon as he arrived in his office. Immediately, he rang her mobile, only to be short-circuited by her usual message. Nevertheless, he flung himself into the fray with tingling zeal. She was back. She needed him. And here were her commands. Like a hunter, who hears one branch snap in the forest, and exaggerates the scale of the prey, Schweigen mounted an expedition of some magnitude, and readied himself for the chase.

  14

  PRAYER FOR THE DEAD

  Many people are still on holiday at the end of August; so, although the stealthy evenings now crept across the city, cooler and more sudden, the pavements still burned at midday and the tables in the Allées bubbled with noisy foreigners in shorts. Work in the office remained slow, as they waited for the promised reports that never came. Gaëlle spent her time poking through the dossiers and then scouring the Internet. They filed all the dead cases. The Judge read an entire manuscript on faith healing with an eye to mendacious claims. No word came from either Schweigen or the Composer. She held herself clenched and ready for another eruption in the office, but the silence extended over five long days, and she faced the next week disappointed and relieved.

  Then Gaëlle discovered something strange, which startled them both.

  ‘Hey, you know that celestial phenomenon the Composer told you about? The eclipsing star?’

  ‘Yes?’ The Judge had included a carefully edited report of the conversation at the Belvédère in her dossier on the Faith. The Composer’s peculiar claims proved to be the safest territory; she had therefore recorded every word he said.

  ‘Well, I’ve found something here about the star. It’s a prayer included in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Must date from around 3,000 BC.’

  The Judge rose up and leaned over Gaëlle’s computer. There, in the British Museum’s catalogue of curiosities, given pride of place upon the website, was an oval stone, roughly carved like a small hand, scratched with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Judge gazed at the open palm. She had seen the thing before, carefully drawn, with the actual dimensions noted beneath, apparently reproduced in its entirety. There is a whole page of coded annotations surrounding this object in the Book of the Faith.

  ‘Look. It says here that it’s a prayer to the charioteer, Auriga. And the reason that it’s on display is because the star is especially bright this month. The eclipse isn’t due to begin until 2009. Nine years to go. Here’s the translation in English.’

  The Judge scrolled down quickly, saying nothing. Patterns of nine. The thing eclipses every twenty-seven years. Nine years to go.

  Pray, pray for my soul – that the Dark Host may embrace me and restore me. Let no evil approach my dwelling. Anoint my servants with the holy oil of sanctuary that we may pass safely across these dread waters and that at our rising the Dark Presence shall grant us joy perpetual.

  The Judge pressed Print without speaking. Across the years she heard a foreign voice, shaking in the air. I have overlooked this. This is my fault. How can I have overlooked this prayer for the dead? Why did I neglect the translation? Gaëlle was still reading.

  ‘What does “anoint” mean?’

  ‘To pour over something, or I suppose to smear on if it’s oil. It’s a sort of holy consecration. Like extreme unction when you’re dying.’

  ‘Ughhhh. Horrible.’

  ‘It’s supposed to be comforting.’ The pages ground slowly out, emerging into the printer’s tray. The Judge fingered the stone upon the screen, tracing its outline, wonder
ing at its scale.

  ‘Where is this thing on display?’

  ‘London. In the British Museum.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now.’

  A still pause opened up between them.

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘No,’ smiled the Judge, ‘not this time. I can’t claim the journey on expenses unless it proves to be directly related to the investigation. And you must keep things going here. I’ll be gone one day, two at the most.’

  Gaëlle tore at her spiky hair in mock despair.

  ‘You are abandoning me to my fate, O cruel one!’

  The Judge laughed. ‘Careful. You’re beginning to sound like the Composer.’

  ‘Really? Is that how he talks?’

  The Judge decided that she had already said too much.

  She negotiated the holiday queues at the airport and was standing, thoughtful, in departures, bound for Gatwick on the daily shuttle, when André Schweigen rang the office, seething with victory. He burbled at Gaëlle, who forced him to repeat himself, slowly.

  ‘I’ve got a trace, a firm trace. There were six huge anonymous donations to the orchestra all made on the same day in December 1999 and all with the same stipulation, that the money could not be transferred until January the 3rd of this year. All the donors insisted on anonymity – some from France, some from Switzerland – but I bet I can already put names to the dead. The Brigade Financière is tracking down the French donors and Interpol are investigating the Swiss sources; that will take longer, maybe much longer. And it’s all gone to a subsidiary called the Foundation, run by the orchestra’s Company Secretary, the first violin, Johann Weiß. He’s using the orchestra like a private bank. Where is Dominique? How did she know? I’ve rung her mobile and it’s switched off. Where is she?’

  ‘In the air by now, en route for London. She’s hunting down a hieroglyphic stone.’

  * * *

  The Judge found a small hotel in Bloomsbury from which she could walk to the British Museum. Her journey seemed frivolous, escapist, almost festive. She settled in an art nouveau Pizza Express, chewed upon a rubbery cheese-and-mushroom pizza, drank two glasses of bad red wine and read the English newspapers from cover to cover, even deciphering the advertisements. She rang her parents to explain her absence and listened to Schweigen’s excited sequence of messages, satisfaction spreading through her like floodwater finding its designated channels. She didn’t ring him back, but stretched out her feet beneath the table, coiled her ankles around one another and stared out at the muggy drizzle and the London night. Now what precisely am I doing here? Am I an ordinary visitor staring at an arcane system of belief? Or am I still a juge d’instruction conducting an important investigation? Perhaps I am simply Dominique Carpentier puzzling out a man who tells me that he loves me? Indeed, a man given to incessant declarations. And what am I to think of this?

  She took the Composer’s three letters out of her leather case, the first innocent invitation to the opera, and the two subsequent culpable diatribes, seeking her out and drawing her in, and flattened them beside the printout from the British Museum website. The Dark Host is the name given to whatever it is that eclipses Epsilon Aurigae. The Ancient Egyptians were celebrated astronomers, they had seen it and named this Dark Presence. And to them it was sacred, potent, holy. They too believed in life beyond the grave. The Dark Host is associated with Anubis, the Jackal, also a charioteer, which is a traditional image for the God of the Dead. The Dark Host is the coachman, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Swing low sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home. Because I would not stop for Death – He Kindly stopped for Me – The carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality. She read his last words to her. I love you with all of my heart and it is my greatest joy to tell you that this will always be so. Well, he certainly doesn’t stint on hyperbole. She took off her glasses, cleaned them carefully, then read his words again. The tightness across her lips gave way as she gazed at his cautious handwriting. Despite her cynical wariness she was touched to the core by the unhesitating, robust energy of his excess. She sensed the urgency in his demand. Am I part of his greater purpose? How can he love me? He barely knows who I am. What can he offer me that I do not already have? He is all desire and demand, like a child – I want, I want, I want – and what I want is you. Nothing will ever be enough for this man.

  She decided to reinspect his entourage, now that she had observed them all at close quarters. She pulled Johann Weiß to the front of her mind. My first violin, my right hand. We have the right to be insatiable in this world. Everything shall be given to us. The Judge saw a massive hoard of starving people, naked or in rags, mutinous at the gates, ferocious with justified claims. Do we have the right to be insatiable? I think not. So distribution should undo excess and each man have enough. In this corner of Europe we have enough and more than enough. But I’m being too literal. These people think in symbols and metaphors. Are they beyond the reach of my analytical imagination? Her eyes clouded and she removed her glasses, staring straight ahead.

  Wealth, comfort, possessions – that isn’t what he means. So what does he mean?

  She saw the Composer, earnest, unleashed, lost in the tempest of his own convictions, appealing to her across the laden tables. And then, despite her rage at his presumption – how dare you impose your feelings upon me? – she felt the fabulous beauty of his candour. He had chosen her. And having made his choice he would not change or bend. He was in thrall to his perception of a woman he could neither abandon nor possess. She was indeed his Judge.

  And I? What do I feel for you? Answering his letters was professionally unthinkable. But she saw him again before her at the theatre in Lübeck, demanding her opinion and acknowledging the tribute of her tears. And now he was courting her with his uncontrollable sincerity. She had been right to warn him. Don’t hope. Never hope. Don’t count on me.

  * * *

  The Judge presented herself, her identity cards and her passport at the museum offices as soon as they opened on the following day. She explained her mission, a straightforward and brief prepared speech, including the minimum of gruesome detail, to a fascinated administrator, agog with curiosity to learn that a modern suicide sect was actually inspired by one of their current exhibits.

  ‘You’ll be wanting the Keeper of the Stones, Professor Hamid. He received the fax from your office and he’s in today. I’ll call him.’

  And so she found herself shaking hands with a tiny, serious, dark-skinned man whose white beard and crinkled, grizzled hair were on a level with her glasses.

  ‘I’m really an expert on the Assyrian antiquities,’ he began to apologise, ‘and my colleagues in Egyptology are on holiday, but I’ll help you as much as I can with the Auriga Stone. That’s what it’s called.’

  He led her past giant black statues of winged and sculptured creatures with lion’s claws and huge slabs of ruffled rock for beards, through the great hushed gallery of the Elgin Marbles, already filling with visitors, towards the Egyptian sarcophagi and glass cabinets of mummified cats. Spotlit in a case on its own, lay a tiny black stone, smaller than her own hand, the thumb and fingers roughly sketched. A large sloping board beside it explained the hieroglyphs and the object’s provenance in several languages; an astrological chart illustrated the impending eclipse. The stone hand, cradled in velvet, with its gouged signs, glinting, unintelligible, disturbed the Judge. Her work did not usually encompass crime scenes, exposed cadavers and precious objects as evidence. She worked with printed sources: documents, photographs, tax affidavits, accounts, medical reports, duplicitous publicity, leaflets. The Faith had drawn her on to a lurid terrain where unbalanced emotions fluttered naked against her face, and inexplicable delusions had a history stretching back into antiquity.

  The Professor allowed her many minutes to gaze upon the stone, rapt and concentrated, then drew her away to a little distance from the exhibit, so that they were standing in front of the golden mask on th
e lid of an Egyptian coffin. The frozen stylised features looked strangely androgynous, as if the dead pharaoh, recently the recipient of a successful face lift, was truly contemplating a life among the angels in heaven, where there is no marriage, or giving in marriage. The achievement of serenity seemed to be the gift of death itself, which no philosophy could, with certainty, procure, and no faith guarantee. She peered at the peeling gold, the barred stripes and the strange cartoon images of stick men and elongated birds. The god Anubis, his wolfish face vivid and alert, braced himself for the last passage in the black boat. Death is a river, the Stygian waters into which we step, only to be drowned for ever.