The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge

by Patricia Duncker

  ‘Monsieur Grosz? Alors, neither of them is here at the moment. There’s some sort of reunion in Switzerland. I’m not quite sure where, but I can find out. Is it urgent?’

  ‘I don’t know. But yes, it might be. Do you know where Monsieur Grosz is next performing with his orchestra?’

  ‘Alors ça, non. Aucune idée. But that’s easy enough to find out. They’ve got the future programme tacked up on the kitchen door. I’ll look up the dates and ring you back.’

  The Judge prowled around her desk, angry at her own indecisiveness, her feelings troubled and confused. I should stand back, let a little time elapse, consider this summer’s events in a colder mood, from a rational distance. But why did she sense there was no time left? A reunion in Switzerland? In 1994 a gathering of the Faith around Anton Laval had led to a mass of abandoned bodies clasped in one another’s arms. I must save that girl from her own longing for her mother and from them, whoever they are. She saw Marie-T coming towards her across the tiles in the Domaine, a slender messenger in a green dress, hesitant and insecure, anxious to please and to be loved. And then she saw the girl again, her long bare legs stretched out, her arms folded across her belly and her head thrown back, looking up, up, up at the assembled gods and the frozen stars. She grabbed the Guide and hugged its bulk against her stomach; the leather felt warm through her shirt and the lock left a square red mark upon her hand. Dominique Carpentier had reached a crossroads, her experience and intelligence counselled caution, patience, the long careful assessment of motive and risk. But now she stood on the brink of a dark pool, and beyond her, on the far side of the still water, two people waited, two people who had inexplicably reached out towards her, the Composer and his teenage daughter.

  She jumped back against the water cooler as the phone went off like a bomb.

  ‘Dominique? C’est Myriam. His next engagement is Saturday September the 23rd in London; guest conductor with the London Philharmonic. It’s a concert performance of Fidelio, the Beethoven Festival, which comes at the end of the Proms. He’s working with his usual singers, all the same ones that performed at Avignon, but not the whole orchestra. And the reunion took place last night at the Château de Séverin. It’s about an hour, no, maybe half an hour, beyond Lausanne on the Swiss side of the lake. Do you want the address? I can’t find a phone number, but I’ve got the address. And I can give you Marie-T’s mobile.’

  The very ordinariness of Myriam’s helpful voice forced the Judge to acknowledge how far she had travelled towards an outburst of obsessive hysterics. She began to see fan shapes spread before her, which resolved into bodies, their eyes open, their mouths fixed and smiling.

  ‘Thanks, Myriam. You’re marvellous.’ She wrote down all the information and watched her damp, shaking hand leaving a smeared trail across the pad. When did I last eat a proper meal without Gaëlle? I work all the hours God made, and neglect to eat. No wonder I’m light-headed.

  She rang Marie-T’s mobile, Laissez-moi un petit message, but she could find no words. Her sense of impending threat remained obscure and therefore, to her conscious mind, both unlikely and ridiculous. She drank half a litre of water and sat staring at the Guide; the stealthy unease crept through her bones. That fête at the Domaine was important to them both. I was their chosen guest. And I have let them down. Don’t hope. Never hope. Don’t count on me. For the first time the Judge realised the appalling scale of her rejection. I think that the subjects of my investigations must be mentally deficient and somehow less than human. These two people opened their hearts to me and I sent them packing. Why? Because my professional convictions prevent me from seeing the justice in any other narrative of reality that differs from my own. Their Faith is ludicrous and insane. I therefore dismissed them along with their monstrous delusions. But no one becomes worthless simply because they believe something different from yourself. Does my knowledge and education always give me the right to condemn? My role remains clear: to save and to protect.

  The astronomical charts of the middle heavens still covered one wall of her office. She wheeled around and stared at the deep-blue map spattered with white points and the fine black lines between them. She saw the same patterns again, fluorescent on the ceiling of the children’s room in the freezing chalet. Their Faith follows the rhythm of the universe, as do all faiths, the patterns of the seasons and the phases of the moon. I never really listened to them. I did not care to understand. In my mind, they were already judged.

  She rang the office administrator and told her she was going home. As she surveyed her tidy office before turning out the lights and the photocopier, her eye caught the gold clasp on the Guide, which lay closed and silent upon her desk. I must lock that up. She was halfway to the safe when she paused and stood still. The Judge was never again able to account for her reasoning, or for her actions, in the moments that followed. She swept up the Guide, for this is indeed the only copy in the entire world, placed it carefully in her documents case, where it consumed all the space, and marched out of her office into the first cool wind of the day.

  Her locked house simmered, airless, stifling. The shutters onto her verandah had not been opened for a week. Her green plants had all wilted and died in the dark. She flung open her shutters and saw her shrubs and the wonderful Datura, les trompettes du jugement hanging their heads, shameful and parched. There had been no rain for almost a month, just dry thunder passing over the mountains. The computerised watering system had turned itself off during the power cuts and never been reset. She tested the system; then set the sprinklers to work throughout the garden all night long. She ran cold water over her wrists and flung open the fridge.

  Four plastic bottles of water lay on the bottom shelf; a dried segment of St Nectaire, shrivelled in its wrapping, settled, stinking faintly, inside the door. She finished off a bottle of sour-sweet gherkins in vinegar and abandoned the cheese to its fate. No fruit, no wine, no bread. I’ve been eating once a week – dimanche midi – with my parents, and that’s it. How did I come to this? She opened a small tin of tuna, and, still standing at the sink, drained the brine and fished out each mouthful with a cake fork. The salt taste skimmed her throat.

  She loosened the tortoiseshell clasp and ran her hands through her thick black hair; her scalp felt unpleasant, greasy and damp. She caught the smell of her own sweat. The Judge strode into her bathroom, threw everything she was wearing into the washing machine and turned the shower’s force to maximum. She scrubbed her body and her head until her skin was singing. Then she dressed for battle in black. By the time she had locked her rucksack into the boot and climbed back into her car her mind was clear; strait was the gate and narrow was the way that lay before her.

  She set out for the motorway.

  * * *

  By mid-September the A9 is clear in the evenings, and once the Spanish lorries bound for Italy lurched on to the A54 beyond Nîmes, the Judge found herself left looking at empty lanes, white cliffs, windy skies, and the shadows lengthening out from the feet of the cypress trees, those long rows of dark green guarding the frontiers of the garrigue and the rim of the vineyards. She had no plan, only an inner conviction. The Composer and his daughter were asking me for help in however strange and obscure a way, and I would not listen to their appeal. My manner was too rigid, guarded, cold; they were creatures to be observed, from the far side of the glass. I played the witch at the feast, plotting against my hosts. She stopped at the motorway services and deliberately chomped her way through the solitary, remaining plat du jour, rôti de porc et ses petits légumes, drank a bottle of water and a double espresso, and drove onwards, north, always north, with the blazing orange sunset draining the light behind her.

  The night was almost upon her by the time she circled Valence and turned east, towards Chambéry, Annecy. She saw the dark edge of the mountains of the Vercors, folded white rock, and the falling shadows, darkening across the farms and orchards just below the wooded edge. She increased her speed, pounding down the column of
her lights through the tunnels, all her windows snapped shut against the stale air lingering around the dim green discs marking the escape zones. She emerged into white moonlight, the Alps hulked above her, a jagged dark line, free of mist, against the still deepening blue.

  At the Swiss frontier, just south of Geneva, she was stopped by the douanes and the motorway police. They stood round her car, curious and bored.

  ‘You must buy a vignette if you are driving on the motorways.’

  ‘I’m only here for one day. Why is it so expensive?’

  ‘It’s valid for a whole year. That is, until the end of January.’

  The Judge shrugged, changed two thousand French francs into Swiss francs, paid for the exorbitant vignette and drove onwards into the dark.

  Once past Lausanne she slowed down and watched the lights bobbing on the black water. The great lake shimmered to her right; the traffic ebbed. It was gone eleven at night. For the first time she doubted the wisdom of this impetuous journey. Should she search for a hotel in Vevey and approach the Château in the morning? She looked at her map. The Château de Séverin was not marked, but the village was there, perched on the narrow precipice above her. By the time she had climbed all the way up the mountain it would be well after midnight. Visitors at midnight! Only the messengers of death – doctors, priests, police – came to the door after dark. And yet something almost tangible, like a fine silk thread, drew her onwards, upwards. The vines flashed autumnal in her lights, the walnut trees stretched out above her. On either side of the uncoiling road a sequence of red poles marked her way, appearing and vanishing as she looped and turned. These must mark the path for the snow ploughs, so that even in the worst weather the roads stand clear. A green municipal scoop of salted grit loomed before her, then disappeared into the ascending dark. Séverin. Here was the village, silent, unlit. No street lights, cobbles underfoot and a strong smell of crushed grapes on the roadway. Was the vendange already over? She slowed right down and crawled past tiled barns, painted gates, tidy houses, their gardens filled with golden rod and the purple flowers of Michaelmas. Far below her she saw lights moving on the surface of the lake. Suddenly the flickering dark landscape sank from view and a great stone wall appeared directly before her in the car’s headlights, blotting out all else. Follow the wall to the gates. Two hundred yards later the black gates rose up, as if conjured out of the darkness. Private Property. Keep Out. But the gates stood open. She turned on to the sandy gravel, dipped her beam and followed the trail towards a tiny square of light far ahead, suspended in space. The gatehouse. There was another, inner court. She stopped the car, cut the engine, and sat still in the cooling velvet night. Crickets, frogs, damp grass recently cut, smelling green, fresh, cool. She climbed out, stiff, exhausted, and stretched her arms high above her head. Then she set out towards the warm blotch of light, her rucksack over one shoulder.

  The window proved too high in the wall above her to see what lay inside, but she tapped anyway on the warm glass and waited. No answer. She felt her way along the rough façade. Where was the door? Here, beneath my fingers, and it will be open. The Judge felt a pattern of iron bolts, a rusty decorated swirl, and then the lock. She heard the latch rise beneath her hand. Yes, this is the lock and the doors are open. She slithered on the damp cobbles in the courtyard, but the steps leading up to the main entrance were lit by two yellow globes balanced on the stone curls, which ended the staircase with a flourish. The Judge stood looking into a handsome tiled hall through clear glazed doors. Where was the bell? Should she creep away now? Or waken the sleeping house?

  The bell, a real one, hung just above her, and a leather strap, glistening and slippery from the light rain, that once encircled the neck of some Alpine beast, unfurled beside the clapper. The Judge pulled gently upon the strap. To her surprise another bell sounded inside the house to the right. She waited. Then she saw an old woman wearing a headscarf and slippers coming towards her. They peered at one another through the glass. The Judge braced herself for another language, but the woman, neither unfriendly nor surprised, simply asked in French, ‘Yes? Who is it? Can I help you?’

  ‘My name is Dominique Carpentier.’

  The door opened at once.

  ‘Enfin, c’est vous! Bonsoir, Madame, bonsoir. Mais vous êtes très en retard! Entrez, entrez.’

  The Judge hesitated on the threshold. Once again she was expected and announced. They are waiting for me, even in the long watches of the night, they are waiting. She was disconcerted, but no longer surprised. The old woman, even smaller than she, resembled an ancient wizened root and for a moment the Judge harboured a vision of the giant Composer, lurking in his Swiss castle, transformed into an ogre surrounded by dwarves. Then she entered the Château.

  High decorated ceilings and another great yellow globe descending from the moulded plaster rose – the tiled corridor clearly stretched the length of the building. The silence around her deepened. Were they all asleep? Was no one there? The old woman answered her unspoken questions.

  ‘They’ve gone to Geneva. Monsieur Grosz took Marie-Thérèse to the airport tonight. He will be back. But very late. Shall I show you to your room? Or do you want to wait?’

  The eerie sensation of walking into a prepared future, about which she possessed no knowledge and over which she therefore had no control, assaulted the Judge. She stood absolutely still for a moment, confronting two vast carved doors leading into the reception rooms.

  ‘I’ll wait.’

  ‘Would you like a hot drink? Tea? Chocolate? Coffee?’

  ‘I don’t want to give you any more work.’

  ‘Oh, it’s no trouble. I usually wait up for Monsieur Grosz and then I lock all the doors. But now that you’re safely here I’ll go to bed. Let me get you a drink. You must be very tired after such a long journey.’

  ‘Tea, then. Thank you.’

  One wall of the long drawing room was divided into high glass doors, overlooking the lake. Far away she saw the distant lights, skirting the rim, jewels in the dark, then the great expanse of black, and on the far side, the continuing necklace of diamond lights. The great shapes of the Alps bulged upwards, vast, distant, black. The dark sky opened up from time to time as the wind shovelled the clouds slowly across the dome, revealing a deeper darkness in the gulf. The moon had set. And so the Judge took up her position by the French windows and stared out into the rolling night. The land before her stretched away into darkness and distance. Immediately outside the windows she saw a dim terrace, and as her eyes steadied against the shadows, the outline of a Chinese summer house, glimmering white in the long tunnels of light from the glass doors. She viewed the world in monochrome, like an old film.

  The drawing room extended, luxurious and opulent as a dark-red serpent, long and comfortable, all the way from a baroque marble fireplace at one end to a huge grand piano at the other. A stack of folding chairs leaned against one wall, deep sofas and armchairs still bore the dents, lumps and disarray of recent occupation. She gathered up two fallen cushions. A crumpled newspaper lay scattered on the floor, open at the detailed European weather maps. The television eye glowed red, waiting. The Judge switched it off, then stood back to assess the objects before her. What can I read from this space and these colours: reds, orange, gold? The room smelled of woodsmoke, alcohol and wealth: lamps, books, a wine glass abandoned on a small table, the wood inlaid, gleaming, with solid shafts of mother-of-pearl. Whoever lived here, and she found it hard to believe it was the Composer, lived well, in rural security, comfortable in the world, the host at the banquet, one of the masters.

  The Judge unshouldered her rucksack, took off her black jacket and sank into the embrace of an opulent sofa facing the lake. She felt her eyes closing. I have been driving, almost without interruption, for nine hours.

  ‘Voilà! Your tea and some lemon cakes. I wasn’t sure what you would like.’

  When the old woman had gone, pattering away down the long halls, the Judge inspected the tray. Eat
me, drink me. The cakes tasted rich and delicious. I’m hungry as the Wolf was when he met Red Riding Hood. She brushed the crumbs from her black jeans and eased off her shoes, clutching her china bowl of tea. Don’t fall asleep. Stay awake. Lie in wait for him. But the room was warm and the dying logs in the fireplace shuddered, settled, glowed, went out. The Judge set her empty bowl down by the plate on the soft red rug and was asleep before her dark head even touched the cushions.

  * * *

  She never heard him enter the long drawing room. The Composer padded like a cat towards her and stood looking down at the Judge, whose glasses, twisted sideways, had left a red mark on her cheek. He gazed at the dark rings under her exhausted eyes and then knelt beside her, lifting her into his arms.

  ‘Dominique?’ He carefully removed her glasses and put them in his jacket pocket. It was gone two in the morning. She shivered and raised one hand to rub her eyes.

  ‘Oh – you.’

  The heat from his throat warmed her cheek. She tried to sit up, suddenly alarmed that she might still be driving and had fallen asleep at the wheel.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m here.’

  ‘Why are you so late?’

  She dropped all pretence of anger, formality or distance. She simply closed her eyes again and snuggled into his arms. He massaged the red patch on her temple where the glasses had cut into her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, ‘Marie-Thérèse wanted to get home. She has school on Monday. The plane was late. I wouldn’t leave her alone at the airport.’

  ‘Is she safe back?’

  ‘Oh yes. She’s already landed. She’ll ring tomorrow.’

  The Judge began to surface from the borders of sleep.

  ‘Why aren’t you surprised to see me?’

  ‘You rang Marie-T on her mobile. But you didn’t leave a message. She knew it was you and she believed you would come. That’s why she waited as long as she could and then took the late plane. We both waited for you.’