The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge (28 page)

Myriam and the Composer saw her descending from her car at the same moment and hurtled across the courtyard in a flurry of greetings. Myriam got there first, kissed her three times, and wailed like a child.

‘Ma petite chérie! Help! We need you. Nous avons besoin de toi!’

The Composer almost slithered into them both, still clutching a festive packet of decorated yellow napkins.

‘Madame le Juge!’ He met her steady, unsmiling gaze, caught her hand and gently kissed her fingertips. ‘You find us one hour late in the Garden of Gethsemane. The wind is a disaster.’

Myriam jabbered on, noticing nothing, not even the suggestive stillness between the Composer and his Judge.

‘Where is Marie-T?’ The Judge decided to greet her hostess first.

‘She’s in the kitchen. C’est la Bérézina! Did you ever see such a wind? But what shall we do? It’s so strong one of the tables is sure to blow over. And there’ll be dust in the food.’

The Judge took command.

‘We’ll move the tables round to the back of the house. Further under the trees. It’s blowing from the north-west. There’ll still be a bit of wind but the tables won’t be caught by the big gusts, and when the sun comes round we’ll be in the shade. Is there a hose in the barn? We can easily lay this dust with a bit of artificial rain.’

‘Thank God you’ve come.’ Myriam yelled in at one of the windows. ‘Marie-T! Madame Carpentier is here and she needs someone to set up the sprinklers.’

And so the Judge and the Composer, side by side, dressed for a wedding in their smart summer clothes, hauled tables and chairs across the courtyard, rearranging them in the shade of the great plane trees, beneath the speckled white trunks and the broad leaves, already yellowing, hardening in the heavy air of August. When Marie-T and her helpers appeared in the doorway, laden with more plates and knives, they found the guest of honour, hot and a little dusty, watering the parched earth.

‘Spread it around. We don’t want rivers of mud.’

The Composer adjusted the sprinkler, grinned up at her, then suddenly altered the angle so that the Judge was covered from head to foot in a damp soft spray. The down on her arms rose, spattered with cool drops.

‘Mais qu’est-ce que tu fais?’ she yelled, leaping backwards, completely unaware that she had abandoned the formal term of address. She had always referred to him as ‘vous’.

‘Come inside,’ he said, catching her arm and leading her away. ‘You look hot. We both need a glass of cold water.’

He marched her through the Great Hall. Anyone could overhear them, indeed the entire staff of the Domaine might have witnessed the Composer’s presumption and his insistence. The Judge paused at the entrance to the kitchen, a scene of frantic action and boiling smells; the scullery, four doors down, hung over the secret garden against the cliff. Through the barred window she saw bright light spattering the dusty leaves of the fruit trees. The Composer flung open the fridge, the inner light flickered in the shadows.

‘Ah, Evian. Here are all the bottles.’

There were no glasses. He wrenched off the top and handed her the cool ribbed plastic. The Judge gulped down a third of the bottle of cold water, then smoothed her burgundy sheath, which had creased into two lines, one beneath her breasts and the other at the top of her thighs. The dress had almost dried out, and the effect of being watered like a flower surprised her; the sensation of renewal, readiness, energy suddenly returned. The Composer took hold of the bottle and drank the rest, his eyes half closed, his burning hand still clamped to her arm.

‘Stay with me. Sit here for a moment.’

She looked down the long cool shaft of the scullery; there were no chairs. He lifted her gently on to the great freezer, which hummed and bubbled beneath her, then slumped against the wall, gazing out at the garden through the iron bars. She bristled a little at being placed like a doll on a shelf so that her feet no longer touched the floor. His palpable need to touch her, to be physically close to her, proved both disconcerting and conspicuous. She felt compromised in the eyes of others.

‘Did you like the garden?’ His unexpected question startled her a little.

‘Yes, it’s beautiful.’

‘Her mother planted everything, you see. It was her gift to us.’

The Judge cooled; her mind snapped open. The habitual poise of the one used to asking all the questions, despite being perched on a freezer, flooded back. She dared to ask the dangerous things, quiet, casual, offhand.

‘You must miss her too, as much as Marie-T. Were you together for many years?’

The Composer continued to lean against the wall, looking away from her, the plastic bottle crackling in his grasp.

‘Yes, I do miss her. Especially in this house. We were lovers once. I was a young man. It became impossible to see her after Marie-T was born. Her husband was an angry, jealous man and that was one of his conditions. But the estate was hers; so was the money. Then she was widowed and the door was open. But by then the world had changed so much. My life was elsewhere; we saw each other as often as possible but we were never involved again. Yet the tenderness remained.’

The Judge sat very still, every nerve clenched, calculating the pitch of her voice. If I ask him now he will tell me everything. I have set the trap. But she had no chance to scissor him with her questions; he was too quick for her, and his emotions were too raw. Suddenly ricocheting off the wall, he caught her up in his giant grasp.

‘Don’t ask me about the past. It still hurts. And it shouldn’t do. I don’t see things clearly. I see you. And I see you as if you were illuminated. You haven’t answered my letter. You never answer me. You just think up more questions. I’ve brought you here to make you talk to me. Answer me now.’

He held her fast. The Judge was unable to climb off the freezer.

‘Put me down.’

For one awful second they glared at one another; their faces inches apart, he smelt of warm sweat and cinnamon. She resisted his incendiary grasp and wriggled violently. He swept her down on to the tiles; she saw the barred windows and the garden beyond, then her glasses, slightly dislodged in the scuffle, misted up.

‘Monsieur Grosz, control yourself.’

He let her go at once.

‘At last you said my name. One part of it at least. Why won’t you call me by my name?’

The Judge adjusted her dress and her temper; then set about polishing her glasses with the lining of her skirt.

‘Please don’t do this again. I shall have you prosecuted for assault if you insist on treating me like a toy.’

‘A toy? But I have laid myself at your feet, Madame.’ He grinned and swept his white hair back.

‘Am I too old for you? Is that it?’ Suddenly he clouded up, visibly distressed.

The Judge melted. ‘Gaëlle thinks so.’

‘I knew it. She’s been preaching sermons against me.’

He bulged into the entire space between the freezer and the door, like the gigantic symbol of the Macrocosm. She found herself smiling back at his candour and impertinence. The Judge knew, she always knew, when a man was lying; she had a nose for perjury, and this man was made of truth. The puzzle to be solved did not therefore rest in the Composer himself but in his entourage, and in the labyrinth of relationships, friendships, connections and memories surrounding him. She did not doubt this much-declared passion; his persistence had become not only peculiar, but flattering, and she realised that she could pinpoint the moment of his disintegration more precisely than he would ever be able to do. For before her she recognised the same absorbed and passionate stare that had engulfed her in the theatre at Lübeck, months ago, despite her lost glasses and blurred vision. He had seen her then for the first time.

‘Am I interrupting something?’ A figure darkened the passage.

The language was German; the voice urbane, familiar, self-possessed. The Composer let out a great whoop of joy.

‘Johann Weiß – meet Dominique Carpentier. This is the leader of my orchestra, my first violin and my right hand. He speaks all my languages, and, I imagine, all yours.’

‘Enchanté, Madame.’ The violinist, already brandishing a glass of the famous apéritif de châtaignes, bowed low. ‘Let the festivities begin! Et que la fête commence.’

To her relief the Composer was called away to welcome his orchestra, now being rapidly disgorged from a flotilla of cars and several minibuses. Johann escorted the Judge back through the Great Hall and out under the trees. He spoke fluent French, with a deliberately comic accent, and bubbled incessantly, like a man on the brink of raucous laughter. The Judge realised that she was the only stranger; everyone there knew everyone else. Marie-T spun past, giving her a jubilant squeeze, and admonishing Johann to take care of their most precious guest. The babel of languages overflowed into the dark spaces of the house and gusted through the tiny whirlpools of dust still floating in the yard. The wind dropped and the women’s bright dresses settled against their thighs. The Judge fished out her prescription dark glasses and, undercover, sifted the festive crowd, her eyes steady as needles seeking north. She assumed the secure, professional role in which she was most at home: the woman who watches, absorbs information and refuses to arrive at hasty conclusions, the woman who waits. But her concentration was perpetually uprooted, distracted. Almost every single member of the orchestra sought her out, shook her hand, claimed her acquaintance. She was more than welcome; she was anticipated, awaited, honoured. This was as disturbing as it was gratifying; she too was being observed, with an absorbed and rapt attention that undercut her confidence. What has he told them? Who do they think I am? The Judge nodded and smiled, like a distant cousin arriving at the wedding, who suddenly discovers she is the mother of the bride.

The Composer sat her down between Marie-T and the first violin. She made no objection to this careful pincer movement, for they dominated the head of the tables and she had an excellent vantage point from which to gather faces, voices, gestures. The orchestra unfurled carefully down either side with much snickering, grating of chairs and unstable benches. She felt surrounded by arguments and laughter. Were they arranged by instruments or languages? She had no idea. The Composer wolfed down charcuterie, cornichons, tiny sour onions and several glasses of muscat, while he conducted a violent argument about Mozart with a woman on his left to whom she had not yet been introduced. Their exchange in German was too rapid and technical for her to follow. The Judge sat isolated, disconcerted by a ripple of unbidden irritation. I could be at home, working, reading. What is the point of being here if I can’t spy on them and follow their discussions? He pounced upon her like a giant cat.

‘What do you think, Dominique? You must have a view on the Mozart symphonies.’

‘I don’t. I am not a musician and I very rarely go to concerts.’

The first violin chuckled. ‘Then we must set to work and convert you at once.’

He nodded at the Composer, but Friedrich Grosz had fixed her once more with his savage gaze, hunting out the muscles on her face, the tension across her shoulders. She felt him searching for the memory of her uncontrollable tears as the young soprano poured out her ardour and her longing for the endless night of all eternity, within which there is no loss, no separation, no division. Look, we have reached the place where the stars shine still and time no longer rushes on, the place where hours, days, weeks stand motionless and frozen, caught in the bright ring of unchanging perpetuity.

She spoke again, hypnotised by the energy of his glare.

‘You know perfectly well that music disturbs me.’

‘Exactly!’ exploded the Composer, as if she had given him all the evidence he needed to carry off victory in the dispute, and he began to gabble once more at his companion.

Suddenly he stopped, turned to face her and Johann Weiß, paused, and then declared in English, ‘Music alone opened the gates of the underworld. It was the song of Orpheus that broke Pluto’s heart and released his Eurydice. The appeal is irresistible. But does music make promises that it cannot fulfil? For it is the most Romantic of all the arts’ – he abandoned his thought to his native tongue – ‘
denn nur das Unendliche ist ihr Vorwurf
. But the eternity of love was never granted to Orpheus. He looked back.’

The Judge frowned, baffled.

‘Bullshit,’ cried Johann, including the Judge in his revolt, ‘you know perfectly well that the Promise –
das Versprechen
– is there and that it will be kept for all time. Music opens the doors of the unknown kingdom, that world which has nothing to do with the external world of the senses. And the kingdom is both the source of all our longing and our destiny, our final goal. We have the right to be insatiable in this world, and everything, everything shall be given to us. But we must keep our part of the bargain. And so far, we have been faithful in every respect.’