The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge Page 11

  ‘Ah, I see. That sounds very grand. My father was always somewhat mistrustful of the law. I can’t think why. He wrote his last will and testament himself. Impeccable, unambiguous, like the ledgers. But he was a very private man. He had a secretive side.’

  A tiny fragment of the puzzling labyrinth of connections before her suddenly settled in the Judge’s mind and she turned her dark-rimmed, magnified eyes upon the printer.

  ‘Forgive me, Herr Bardewig, if I appear intrusive. But may I ask when and how your father died?’

  The generous, open-hearted face before her closed like a trap. Regret, pain and a flood of unlocked memories swept past his mouth and cheeks like a rising tide. She had given him back a man he had honoured and adored. For one half-day his father had returned to the firm in his old shape, upright, exacting and just; his love for Das Buch des Glaubens manifested itself in the careful beauty of his work, made to last for ever. Now this chilly Judge had snatched away the beloved presence and his goodness stood eclipsed.

  ‘It is not easy for me to speak about these things, Madame Carpentier. My father died in 1984, by his own hand.’

  6

  ENDLESS NIGHT

  The first letter, and she always thought of this message as the first one, the first one addressed to her, outside the investigation, for it came bearing nothing but her name on the envelope, was delivered by hand to their hotel.

  Effengrube 19,

  Lübeck

  Chère Madame,

  Please forgive my appalling rudeness to you and your assistant this morning. To hold, in my own hands, that book which belonged to someone I dearly loved was to bring him once more before me. It is a loss that I cannot accept and I allowed my feelings to govern my behaviour. But it is inexcusable bad manners on my part and I beg your pardon.

  I enclose two tickets for tomorrow’s performance of Tristan and Isolde at the main theatre in the Bechergrube. I would be honoured and delighted if you were able to be my guests at this performance. Please accept my humblest apologies.

  Mit vielen freundlichen Grüssen,

  Friedrich Grosz

  ‘Well, there’s no way I’m going to sit through any opera, let alone Wagner,’ roared Gaëlle, flinging down the letter on the Judge’s bed, ‘and anyway our plane’s at midday.’

  The Judge pursed her lips.

  ‘Go and take off those wet clothes, Gaëlle, you’ve been sitting around in them quite long enough. I’m sorry that you had a fruitless search through the bookshops. But I’m afraid that I’ve already postponed our flight back until Friday.’

  ‘You didn’t! Without asking me?’

  ‘Remember that you’re on a mission for the French Republic, which may not require your services on the weekend, but certainly does so throughout the week.’

  ‘How can you do this to me? I hate the food.’

  ‘We will eat at a splendid, expensive restaurant tonight, I promise. And if you absolutely can’t stand Wagner I won’t make you go.’

  Gaëlle collapsed flat across the duvets and let out a mighty cry of relief. She kicked off her soaking boots. The Judge rescued the Composer’s letter and slipped it into a plastic envelope reserved for evidence. The phone rang, and there at the other end, baying like an abandoned hound, was André Schweigen.

  ‘Alors? Dis-moi où tu es,’ he yelled. Gaëlle snatched up her boots and fled, banging the door shut behind her.

  * * *

  DEM WARHREN, GUTEN, SCHÖNEN

  The Judge arrived at the Lübeck Stadttheater forty minutes before the performance was due to begin, and stood on the pavement opposite, looking up. The theatre was dedicated to truth, goodness and beauty or rather, given the grammar of its declaration and the declension of the abstract nouns, to that which is true, good and beautiful. Not only are those three things not the same, thought the Judge, they are also rarely united in the same object or person at the same time. Musical performances were probably no different. And, so far as the Judge was concerned, only truth shone unambiguous, and non-negotiable. Beauty and goodness were up for grabs.

  The Beckergrube was, or had once been, one of the more grandiose streets in Lübeck, with large and pompous houses, lumbering upwards from the Trave on either side. Most were now down-at-heel business premises, a tobacconist, an artistic flower shop with improbable dead pods arranged in the window, a mobile phone company which had placed a gigantic plastic ‘Handy’ on the pavement to entice passing customers, and several evil-looking cafés. In the midst of this stood the temple to dramatic art. Comedy and Tragedy flanked Apollo and the Nine Muses, a great frieze of figures beneath the pediment bearing the dedication to truth, goodness and beauty, in their individual or collective manifestations. The entire bombastic monument, a mountainous construction in art nouveau, dated 1908, with a solid brown stone face, and two handsome wings with tall windows, squatted before her, vast, bulbous and murky, with the odd glittering tile, in silvery diamond green. The Judge braced herself for battle, settled the tortoiseshell clamp in her black coil, steadied her glasses with her right forefinger, pulled her cashmere shawl more firmly around her, against the crisp spring dusk, and then marched across the road and into the theatre.

  She gave up one of the two tickets at the box office, now besieged by a lurking queue for returns, where it was promptly sold to the first of the waiting Wagner fanatics. The opening performance, duly greeted with rapturous notices from all the local papers, sucked in the public from distant provinces. Roars of eulogy, now stuck up on giant boards all around the foyer, dwarfed the Judge. Vast black-and-white photographs showed desperate figures with their mouths open and their arms outstretched. An Isolde for our times: Fräulein Maria Bayer in the title role, ravishing, passionate, seductive, nobly supported by Gerhard Klingmann as the knight torn between his love for Isolde and his loyalty to the King. The Judge yawned and gave up trying to translate the superlatives. She decided to find her seat and read the programme.

  Her knowledge of the plot was somewhat hazy, for while she knew the general outlines of the legend she entertained the common delusion that all operas were the same: ludicrous incidents, irrational behaviour, uncontrollable passions, overblown orchestration, and four fat folk bellowing at the footlights. The point of the evening was to spy upon the Composer, openly and at his own invitation, to exploit his repentance if at all possible, by gaining his confidence, then squeezing whatever information, or better still, confessions, could be extracted from this powerful, but slippery source. This man was a living connection to the Faith. Of that she was certain. But she knew now that she was dealing with something far more ancient and sinister than the usual run of sects, which, if they survived at all, became bourgeois, visible and liable to fiscal inspection. The Faith now assumed an ancestry that smelt of Masonic ritual and a hidden, deeper past than she had first suspected. The Faith remained uppermost in her mind. The opera was neither here nor there.

  Dominique Carpentier disliked all manifestations of excess: older women who wore far too many trinkets, happy people, drunk and singing, love letters that made free with words like ‘for ever’ and ‘all eternity’, men who thought sport was significant. This deep and innate hostility to all those trivial joys which keep the advancing shadows at bay, tinged with a sharp, ironic tongue, led many of her colleagues to think of her as heartless and a little cruel. This was unjust. The Judge cherished a deeper passion, one that was as surprising as it was laudable: the desire to defend and protect the vulnerable, the feeble-minded and the mad from every predator, and, if necessary, from themselves. Through her office trailed a sad procession of victims, frail beings whose desperate need for security and belonging trapped them in narratives of faith, largely of their own imagining. The Judge pared away the delusions, leaving the people on whose behalf she felt compelled to act naked, defenceless and ashamed. Reason is neither gentle nor kind, and the Judge believed in Reason with as intemperate a commitment to her own credo as any of the secret initiates who had given their hearts
to the suicide Faith. She sought the Truth, and nothing but the Truth. Yet the Truth is not, and cannot be, the instrument of freedom for every one of us; and to know the Truth may well imprison gentle souls in wretchedness for ever.

  The inner spaces of the theatre were solid, plain and unpretentious. Despite the early start – the performance began at six-thirty – many of the audience were wearing full evening dress, black ties and silken gowns, brandishing small, jewelled evening bags and trailing overblown chains of shining gems, entwined with leaves of gold. The Judge felt slightly underdressed. She never wore bulky costume jewellery. Inside the stalls the theatre felt suddenly smaller and more intimate. The great red curtains plummeted in folds like a waterfall. Yet the illusion of their proximity was so compelling she imagined that she could reach out and touch them. The distances around her shivered and shortened, treacherous, unstable. She identified her seat: six rows back from the stage at the very centre of the house. A quiet escape for a breath of air and to collect her thoughts proved therefore impossible. As she stood at the rim of the great sea of red seats, dismayed by the prospect of imprisonment, she sensed someone surging towards her. The Composer appeared in the still largely empty theatre, magnificent and gigantic in full evening dress, every aspect of his presentation formal and meticulous. The iron discipline of the man, a façade she had so casually shattered, stood remade before her. He bowed, now reconstituted as a handsome, cultivated gentleman, inexorable in his determination to charm. He held out his hand.

  ‘Madame Carpentier, will you humour a cantankerous, bad-tempered old man and shake hands with me?’

  She accepted the gesture and the self-deprecating, shamefaced smile at face value. And she was not wrong to do so. The Composer’s manner gave away his uncertainty at his possible reception.

  ‘Please forgive me, Madame, for my unpardonable bad manners.’

  The Judge bowed and smiled slightly. She had no clear advance plan as to how she should deal with sincerity; there was no doubt that the cordial welcome and diffident apology were both absolutely genuine. He wrapped her small hand in his and drew her down towards the orchestra.

  ‘Was your assistant unable to come?’

  ‘Gaëlle? I’m afraid that Wagner’s not exactly to her taste.’

  The Composer laughed, and inside the warm embrace of his laughter the Judge felt suddenly included and at ease. He continued, ‘She had the most wonderful spike through her tongue and an array of pierced ear studs that are surely quite uncommon amongst lawyers. She must be a very unusual person.’

  Had Gaëlle put her tongue out at the Composer? The Judge felt compelled to present excuses and explanations.

  ‘She’s discovered a Rockkneipe in the Marlsgrube and is spending the evening with some new friends.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ he grinned, ‘I know that place. It hasn’t changed in years. The crowd always looks exactly the same – Motorhead T-Shirts with the sleeves rolled up to their armpits, terrific tattoos – smoky air, thrice-breathed, and the music so loud you can’t think. But the clients are all greybeards now. Like myself. I hope she finds someone her own age to play with.’

  He took the Judge’s arm, gentle, solicitous, a gesture that suggested old-fashioned manners rather than impudent familiarity, and led her to the middle of the low barrier above the orchestra. The space was cramped and dark, almost beneath the stage, only the lights on the music stands glowed like rafts on a sea of shadows. The brass section was arriving, carrying their huge instrument cases. They looked up at the Composer and his guest, startled and a little anxious. One of them ostentatiously turned off his mobile phone. The Composer’s stand was illuminated from beneath as well as above, like an exhibition case, or the hotplate on a stove. She saw the full score of the opera; there lay the music, a language she could not decipher and had never valued, open at page one.

  ‘Are you fond of the opera, Madame Carpentier?’

  He was still holding her beside him as they looked down into the pit, and this gentle reassurance encouraged her honest response.

  ‘I’ve never been to one before.’

  ‘Oh good heavens! Tristan and Isolde? Then you are climbing Everest, never before having set foot upon a mountain?’

  He chuckled slightly.

  ‘Madame Carpentier, you are a very courageous woman. I have conducted this opera many, many times in the course of my professional life. Yet each time I find something new, fresh and miraculous in the score. So, even for an old hand like myself, the familiar remains strange, uncharted, even obscure. Let me advise you how to listen. Do not rationalise. I know that you are a very rational person. A Judge must be so, to sift the evidence. But put that part of yourself aside. Do not assess things or calculate. Or really even try to listen. Let go of everything. Like loosening a rope. Is that the right metaphor? Yes, let go. And give the music time to speak to you.’

  ‘I know nothing about music.’ The Judge tried to disentangle her arm. But he held her more firmly and turned her towards him so that he could see her face. The house lights were up and the theatre murmured with the rustle of arrival, but they stood so close to the orchestra that his features, lit from beneath, took on an eerie magnificence.

  ‘This opera is dear to me for many reasons. These are young singers; they are utterly dedicated. And I have worked them so hard. The soprano is singing Isolde for the first time. Wagner demands such stamina, I have asked myself again and again whether she is ready to do this. Be indulgent and generous to them, Madame Carpentier. If you are not an aficionado you will be harder to persuade. To win you round will take a great effort. We will give you our best. Our very best.’

  The Judge looked up at his fine lean face and registered his terrible intensity. She realised that he was proposing to offer the performance, as a special gift to her, as if she were the only member of the audience. But I know nothing of Wagner, nothing about opera, I cannot even read music; she retreated backwards in her mind, searching for cover. The Composer’s next words disconcerted her utterly, for despite the hesitation in his voice he had grasped the most effective metaphor to silence her. He delivered his masterstroke.

  ‘You are my Judge. Let this music be my advocate. May the music plead my cause.’ His lips touched her hand. They were in full view of everyone in the house. Then he stepped back, setting her free at last, bowed formally, as if they stood before the Court and the King, then vanished away into darkness. The Judge found herself standing alone before the open score; apparently she had seized power in his absence and taken command of the orchestra. She fluttered hurriedly to her seat, and plunged her nose into the programme, turning each page slowly, understanding nothing.

  She had not reckoned with the audience. Nobody else was there for the first time. These were the opera lovers for whom music-theatre in general, and Wagner in particular, was not just a passion, but a drug. The excitement in the stalls smothered her like a fragrant cocoon. Despite craning her neck till the veins stood out and ached, she could catch only the faintest glimpse of the Composer when he greeted the audience and the assembled musicians in the pit. The level of the orchestra sank until all that remained was an expectant rustle and the gleaming lights above the unreadable music, the sounds locked up in hieroglyphs.

  Opera remains a miracle; partly because the cost of producing a performance is so prohibitive it can never be met by the price of the tickets. The art requires princely subsidies; its origins are aristocratic, and so is the grandeur of its spectacle. The plots may be improbable and the emotional content may well defy all sense and reason, but the form, infinitely mutable, remains extraordinary, subversive, insidious. Canny producers know that naturalism is the enemy of opera. We demand the big symbols and the gestures of excess. This particular production of Tristan and Isolde, set on a derelict Cunard liner manned by a chorus of mutinous, lecherous sailors, confronted the Judge with a vision so unlikely and bizarre that, for the first forty minutes, she stared, transfixed, in affronted amazement. Had she unwittingly
attended a mass gathering of the sects she so effectively liquidated, she could not have been more disconcerted or perplexed. The singers wore formal modern dress with a 1920s atmosphere; yet the costumes achieved a shimmer that was both timeless and imprecise. The Judge crouched in her seat, baffled by the action and the incoherence of the music. Yet everything unrolled according to her prejudiced expectations: forbidden love, desperate conflicts of loyalty and trust, she loves this one but has to marry that one, who is this one’s lord and master. So far, so predictable. But the music unsettled her nerves; a monolith of sound, oddly broken and discordant. Each theme she picked out modulated, mutated, dissolved and escaped, so that she could never keep hold of the threads. The Judge confronted a structure, which resembled the barrage in the mountains above Montpellier, a giant man-made dam behind which the waters mounted, pressed. She could hear the danger rising, rising. And so two conflicting emotions bubbled within her: anger and irritation at being forced to listen to something that she neither liked nor understood, and hypnotised fascination. Her gaze flickered across the rapt and concentrated audience: another sect, another sect. The Judge refused to silence her canny, analytic intelligence, as the Composer had advised her to do, for this gift operated not only through judgement, evidence and selection, but also out of an unacknowledged feral cunning. I am here for a purpose. This man is showing me something that I need to see, and presenting me with an argument that I need to hear. This is the fulfilment of that interrogation that was broken off, and the subject before me, a great secret love and a suicide pact, is both pertinent and sinister. She nestled into her red velvet perch, an animal on the watch, her muscles tensed, intent.

  The effort did her no good at all. She could make no sense of that huge, impenetrable wall of strange, discordant, contorted patterns. She could hear the structures of logic building great towers of sound, but grew impatient; the action proved too static to engage her attention. Every one of the singers flung themselves into the enterprise with a passionate desperation that suggested the Composer would flay them alive if they didn’t. Yet still they failed to reach her. Why am I sitting here? To what end? She decided to slip away at the interval. But no sooner had the house lights risen and the mountainous clamour of applause sunk away, than she found herself looking up at a young woman, elegant as an elf in black, with a short slick haircut, murmuring her name.