The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge Page 14

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  The little party of three rounded the corner of the house. The vines surged like a green wave almost to the bottom of the steps. A narrow grassy path, now burned back and browning in anticipation of the great heat, delivered them to the main entrance. Huge pottery vats overflowing with red geraniums topped the stone balustrades. The long terrace stood in shadow, sheltered by an orange-and-white-striped electric awning, which protruded from the medieval walls like a grotesque decorated tumour. At the far end where the terrace circled the house and two solid doors gave access to the kitchens, the table was already laid for lunch, three places, real white starched napkins laid across the plates, lovingly encircled with engraved silver rings.

  ‘Est-ce qu’il y a quelqu’un?’ called the Judge, leading the attack. ‘Marie-T? C’est Dominique Carpentier.’

  The salon remained dark with shadows, all the shutters blank against the sun. Is there anybody there? The Judge began to climb the steps.

  The Composer loomed suddenly above them, a terrible apparition, his unsmiling face and white hair as arresting and eccentric as that of the disturbed Count, discovered lying in his native earth.

  ‘Bonjour, Madame Carpentier. We are expecting you, but not your companions.’ He stepped into the bright sun and blocked their advance. His face clenched against the glare; he nodded at Gaëlle, but scowled at Schweigen.

  ‘This isn’t a social call, Monsieur Grosz,’ snapped the unwelcome Commissaire, ‘and we haven’t come to see you.’

  ‘I am Mademoiselle Laval’s godfather and legal guardian. I will not have her interrogated, especially not by you, Monsieur le Commissaire. You may remain, Madame Carpentier. But I must ask your Greffière and Monsieur Schweigen to leave at once.’

  Impasse. The Judge made a snap decision.

  ‘Very well.’ She turned around so that the Composer could not read her face and flung all her persuasive intelligence into a long hard stare at Gaëlle and Schweigen. If there hadn’t actually been a punch-up in February a real fight seemed inevitable now. Back down, André, for God’s sake, back down. This is my decision, and I will take the consequences.

  ‘Gaëlle, guide Monsieur le Commissaire back to the village. You know the way. I’ll ring you at your parents’ later on and pick you up on my way back.’

  Schweigen opened his mouth to object. The Judge raised both her eyebrows. Schweigen muzzled himself with a massive shudder, but held his ground. Va-t’en André! Mais vite! The sweat was running down both sides of his clamped jaws. He turned without a word and rampaged back down the steps and round the corner of the house. Gaëlle lingered; anger rising like a red tide from her collarbone stained the side of her throat in a glut of blood. Stand-off. The Greffière is the recorder. Her juge d’instruction should not conduct formal interviews without her recorder. The young woman would not be dismissed.

  ‘Gaëlle?’ prompted the Judge.

  ‘We are the servants of Isis, sworn to obey Her commands,’ snarled the Greffière and bolted. The Composer intervened as she stormed off down the steps.

  ‘Isis? What does she mean? What’s she talking about?’

  ‘Gaëlle is teasing me a little,’ smiled the Judge.

  This was so clearly not the case and the menace of Isis so obviously offered as an outraged insult that the Composer threatened to pursue the vanishing Greffière. He glared, hesitated and then set off after the girl. What on earth did he intend to do? Box her cheeky ears with all their pierced studs and cuffs? The Judge touched his arm gently and stopped him in mid-stride, and it was this gesture, unpremeditated, peculiarly intimate, which transformed the space between them. He turned to face her and looked straight into her eyes, past her glinting lenses, past her redundant diplomatic smile. Suddenly the Judge questioned her own judgement. Why had she decided to remain alone with this man? She remembered the weight of his hands on her shoulders, and a vivid, bitter taste rose in her mouth; she heard the stifling intensity of Wagner’s strange music, sensed the tears pouring down her cheeks. The Composer’s face unravelled into a mass of indecipherable lines, and she knew he was remembering the same things. Then she saw something else in his eyes; an electric attention, not to her role as the Judge, but to her, Dominique Carpentier, and to her alone. She caught her breath and sucked out the dry taste from under her tongue. The Composer relaxed and bowed to her, ushering her back up the steps, returning her smile at last. His whole face changed when he smiled, as if the dictator’s mask peeled back, revealing another man, one anxious to conciliate and to charm.

  ‘Marie-T and I were speaking of you last night. I wanted to see you again. Very much. But how to approach you? I couldn’t think of an excuse. And then – pouf! – it happens like magic. Three months go by and we are thousands of miles apart and then you ring up to say that you are coming. I am delighted. Marie-T thinks I have rubbed the lamp three times. Will you have lunch with us, Madame Carpentier? We were hoping you would stay to lunch.’

  He guided her into the cool interior. She had passed over the threshold.

  The walls of the Domaine were also two metres thick and the perceptible drop in temperature veiled her like a shroud of muslin. She was Judith stepping into Duke Bluebeard’s castle. Had she ever entered this salon on her childhood visits? She remembered the steps and the timeless vats of red flowers, but not this shaded space. The old wooden floors, polished honey smooth, proved hard to negotiate. Her feet encountered a rug, and looking down she saw a dim red expanse of darkness. The shutters remained closed tight against the heat. All around her massive dark cupboards, two chests shining with polished darkness, uncushioned eighteenth-century chairs, their dark seats looming from the dim walls; the room breathed darkness, square blocks of dark rimmed with gold jostled on the walls, but so dark that no subject could be discerned. She could make out a lamp and a writing desk. A telephone. A sofa draped in dark rugs. A low table with a white vase, and she could smell the lilies, rising pale in the darkness. And then she saw something that she remembered: a large stone egg, calcified and immovable, an egg abandoned by the dinosaurs. A small cache of these eggs had been discovered on the estate decades ago and now formed part of the distinctive marketing image. Madame Laval designed a new label for the white wines with the eggs just beneath their name and the children had named it their Vin Dinosaure. She reached out and fingered the stone egg.

  ‘I remember this. It’s always been here.’

  ‘I wish I could remember you. Everybody else does. You came to the dances with your parents, didn’t you? I can remember your father very well. You were famous for leading off the dancing. Myriam tells me you always chose the prettiest girl in the room. And her husband says that it was always Myriam. Marie-T remembers you with awe. You frightened them all rigid with your cleverness. Let me get you an apéritif. We have un peu de tout. Un petit muscat?’

  His careful, hesitant French gave her the advantage and the illusion of security. As the subtle, darkened room took shape around her, the Judge settled into a high-backed leather chair and set down her briefcase, which now seemed charged and dangerous. The tiny box from Goldenberg’s and the shining Christmas paper lurked like living creatures inside their plastic prison. I have to bring them out. I have to mention these terrible things. The oblivious Composer was cracking ice cubes and outlining his summer schedule.

  ‘… so I will not be very far away from you. We are performing at the Festival in Aix and I am conducting three performances of Aïda at the theatre in Orange. We are to have real elephants. Yes, I can promise you hundreds of naked slaves, real elephants and for the execution scene – real sand. Imagine that! Now, would you like some ice?’

  ‘How do you execute someone with sand?’ The Judge stared at him, mystified.

  ‘Ah, I forgot that you don’t know the opera. Somehow I assume that you know everything I know. The lovers are buried alive at the end. We can use the Roman theatre to good effect. It is open-air, as you know – an odd booming acoustic. But the sand is very eas
y to recycle. We are building a cavern like a tomb at the front of the stage and we will bury the structure in real sand.’

  ‘Buried alive?’ The Judge shuddered.

  ‘Verdi has some wonderful ideas.’

  The Judge sensed that she had lost control of the conversation and cleaned her glasses carefully. When she looked up someone else had entered the room. A tall pale girl, fragile as a fresh shoot in a faint green dress, softly closed the door and came straight towards her. The Judge stood up. She had last seen Madame Laval’s daughter cowed in black at her mother’s side, a child, anxious not to bawl or sniff, clutching her white rose. The child still lingered in the young woman’s shy glance, her bent head. She walked straight up to the Judge, who was startled to find herself the smaller of the two, then bent her face to be kissed, as if the Judge was an intimate friend of the family.

  ‘Bonjour Madame Carpentier, merci d’être venue.’

  The Judge faltered, speechless. Here was Persephone’s double; a young girl, uncannily like Myriam at the age of seventeen, slender, cautious, re-emerging from Pluto’s kingdom. The Judge’s eyes widened as she stared into the past. Here was the girl she had once loved, restored to her at last, with the promise of eternal spring. She had planned a formal interview; her now discarded strategy had taken Marie-T’s youth and disturbing bereavement into consideration, but had followed a more restrained and austere script. The girl began apologising.

  ‘I’m really sorry that Friedrich asked Monsieur Schweigen to leave. It must have seemed very rude, and it wasn’t his fault, it was mine. You see, last time, when he came in February, he kept asking me questions I couldn’t answer. And he spoke so loudly. I started crying and couldn’t stop. He must think I’m feeble-minded. And I’m not at all really. I miss Maman so much. I know she’s happier where she is, but every day I want her here.’

  The Composer stroked the girl’s head gently.

  ‘Don’t take on so, ma petite, I’m sure Madame Carpentier understands.’

  The girl slid her hand into the Composer’s giant paw and squeezed his finger. Then she stretched out the same hand to the Judge as if she was claiming her role as the link between them. The Judge accepted the girl’s warm grasp and rapt seriousness. She imagined Schweigen yelling at this fragile, soft face and felt a ripple of indignation. As a silent rebuke to her brutal, absent colleague she lowered her voice.

  ‘I’m sorry that Monsieur Schweigen alarmed you. I’m sure he thought that he was only doing his job.’

  A bell chimed far away beyond the closed doors, across the shining wooden surfaces, through the darkened rooms.

  ‘Bring your drink with you, Madame Carpentier. We always eat on the terrace.’

  The vile striped sunshade had managed to spawn another on the dark side of the mas. The Judge noticed that they had been recently installed and were electrically powered; Marie-Thérèse registered the Judge’s sceptical glance and apologised for these concessions to modernity.

  ‘Maman would never have tolerated them. We always used to have a big white sunshade. I don’t like them. I said so to Paul. Do you remember him? My elder brother? He had these put up a month ago when he was down from Paris. He’s very cross about the continuing investigation. It means we can’t sort out the inheritance. Monsieur Schweigen was very short with him. He just said, “Le criminel tient le civil en état.” Basta! You have to wait.’

  ‘Did you know that Friedrich is my godfather? Yes, godfather to both of us. He held me in my little white shawl when I was baptised. Your uncle wasn’t the curé then; it was his predecessor. Do you remember Père Michel? Your uncle has fourteen parishes to run now. And there are only two priests at the presbytery. I think the Church should ordain women, don’t you? Maman thought so too. After all, we have women judges, why not women priests? Do sit here, then you can see the vines. They are wonderful in all seasons, don’t you think?’

  They sat down in wind and shadow. The red dust rose up in little clouds at the roots of the vines, that green sea, stretching away into the white glare of midday. The Composer waited until both women were seated before settling himself between them at the head of the table. The Judge noticed the silence. All the tractors and trucks in the yard on the far side of the house no longer trundled away across the slopes or down the drive. All sounds within stilled at midday, even the faint bangs from the kitchen ceased. The Domaine Laval fell under a hushed spell of quiet. Their napkins rustled in the tug of the wind; in the hard light reflected from the green vines and the red earth, the Judge studied both the lunch and her companions. Charcuterie, home-made, gherkins, thinly sliced, tiny onions soaked in vinegar, a green salad now being turned over in the Composer’s hands, cold rosé, a dark, rich colour, no label, produce from the estate. Madame Laval’s daughter returned the Judge’s careful stare with an anxious, ardent confidence. Was everything all right? Would she try the olives? Did she like the pâté de campagne? Maman taught me how to make it. And I’m really no good in the kitchen. The Composer held back. He let his god-daughter talk. This steady flow, laced with polite civilities, appeared to be utterly unguarded, spontaneous, an unerring artlessness which held the Judge at bay.

  Who was this calm girl, who had buried her mother not four months before, and now played at being hostess to the investigating judge? Her identity rang like a bell in Dominique Carpentier’s imagination. She bore the unlined, haunted profile of Persephone, painted a thousand times, the lost daughter, reclaimed from the underworld, clad in delicate spring green. The Judge scrutinised her features, seeking a likeness to the enraptured dead face of Marie-Cécile Laval, but saw none. This strange fair skin and blonde hair, untouched by the sun, suggested another race altogether, a wandering child from a northern land where distances remained imprecise, the sun low, red and huge, a land where nights never came to pass in summer. The girl raised her eyes to the Judge, her uncanny face drenched with smothered grief. The Judge embraced this unspoken appeal without hesitation. This girl has been given to me, and I will defend her.

  Dominique Carpentier felt the Composer’s giant hands encircling her glass, pouring her wine, pressing her with simple delicacies. She knew he was watching her; every time she looked up, she met his eye. Although she could not grasp the meaning of his intent absorption in her every comment or gesture she felt neither uncomfortable nor ill at ease. She worried a little that she should have been. He did not appear hostile, but the very lucidity of his attention glittered with purpose. For the first time the Judge registered what manner of man stood before her. Were he asked a direct question, it would never occur to him to lie. Had she been too cautious, too oblique in her earlier interrogation? Most of the prophets and gurus she interviewed were quacks, charlatans and frauds, men on the make. Their motives were financial or venal – or both. Lying became as natural as breathing; often they had completely lost their grip upon the truth and raved on before her, convinced that they too saw aliens descending from heaven alongside their disciples. Very few, apart from the reincarnated Goddess Isis, proved to be certifiable, dangerous lunatics. The Composer did not fit into any of the categories under which she filed her usual suspects.

  Marie-T stood up to clear the plates. No, no, you stay there and talk to Madame Carpentier, the Composer insisted. He disappeared into the house and returned with a giant platter of seafood, oysters, moules, bigorneaux, cushioned in ice and surrounded by glistening chunks of fresh lemon. Had they been preparing this feast all morning, in her honour? Not possible. Gaëlle had rung the Domaine shortly after ten. The Judge’s astonishment must have risen to her face because the Composer leaned forward, his smile gloating and boyish.

  ‘Once we heard that you were coming – you should have seen the activity. The kitchen revved into top gear. Panic in the household. The Marriage of Figaro! Act Two. Myriam drove down to town like a racing demon to hunt for the oysters. For you – nothing less than the fatted calf!’

  Marie-T glowed with pleasure and rubbed her long hands together. The
midday shadows rippled up and down her skirt as she rose to pour more wine. The Judge limited the girl’s generosity to half a glass and surveyed them both in suspicious disbelief. What is this? What does this mean? Am I being courted and bribed? The Composer covered a thin slice of bread with a fine layer of butter and presented it to her as a gift.

  Dominique Carpentier had presided, stony-faced, at a sufficient number of interviews with deluded maniacs, con men and criminals to recognise her antagonists. Her judgement remained shrewd, unclouded, cold. She saw two things in this man’s strange lined face and extraordinary blue eyes: the desire to give her pleasure, and a passionate attention to something private and invisible, hidden in the depths of her. He sought her good opinion, yes, but he was also listening, listening carefully to the shifting depths of her feelings and reactions, as if he could hear the currents seething far below the polished surface of her sealed face. And yes, he was watching her, anticipating her needs, retrieving her napkin, worrying that the sun was creeping across the old tiles towards her, lowering the appalling sunshade, and laughing as it twitched and jerked, but he was always listening, listening to her with a disinterested intensity that took her breath away.

  When they had finished their coffee Marie-Thérèse handed the Judge her vital opportunity to redeem the time and pursue her abandoned investigation.

  ‘Have you seen the garden since Maman transformed it completely? It now looks quite different – after ten years of work and a new irrigation system. She began rebuilding the garden when I was a little girl. I remember the brambles smothering the cherry tree. Oh, it was a beautiful place even then. Like a secret jungle. I love sitting out there now; it’s where I feel closest to her.’

  The Judge couldn’t remember any garden at all near the house of the Domaine Laval. Beyond the yard with the caveau were the wine cellars, cut back into the soft rocks. The dry riverbed lay below the pinède at the foot of a barren escarpment, and the little Gothic chapel built above the vault, which she had once fixed in her binoculars, stood further away, on the edge of the vines at the end of a rough track. On her left the vines swept down the great slopes, vanishing into bright sunlight and symmetrical purple distances. Marie-Thérèse registered her puzzled frown.