The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge Read online

He was stamping his feet like a child. Regarde-moi. Occupe-toi de moi. I’m the person who’s important here, moi, moi. The Judge ignored his enraged squeal.

  ‘Can you come?’ An immense patience flooded the line. Schweigen caved in.

  ‘Mais bien sûr. Where shall I meet you?’

  ‘At the church. The funeral is at 15.00 heures. Can you get there by 14.30 at the latest? I will already be there and I want to be inside the church.’

  * * *

  Unexpected, aggressive and ferocious, the heat assaulted his black suit and bound him fast as he teetered off the plane at Nîmes. None of the hired cars within his budget had air conditioning. He roared sweating through the vineyards with all the windows open, the hot air rushing past. Already the land seemed parched and gasping. Cicadas rattled in the trees; a glassy haze coated the green. He never took his family south in the summer, no matter how hard his wife pleaded with him; the heat was simply unendurable.

  The little square in front of the church glimmered in a leopard skin of light and shade, shadowed with great plane trees. A café colonised the paving. The village smouldered quietly behind closed shutters. He heard the chink of plates being collected in the half-dark. Only the tourists ate outside; and the season had barely begun. The café had piled away some of the tables to make room for the arriving cars. Strangers in fine clothes and dark glasses already patrolled the square. The great west doors of the church, siege barriers covered in nails, stood open. The hinges had been renewed; crows perched on the corbel table. Only brides and coffins entered through the great west doors. The undertaker’s men, eerie, comfortable and sinister in black, skulked just inside, waiting.

  Schweigen imagined the hearse like a large refrigerated meat van. Anton Laval had been dead for nearly a year. What was the point of prising him out of the vaults in Switzerland and hauling him home – a poison bag of blackened skin and rotting bones? He was nearly an hour early and yet so many people were already there. Schweigen parked under the trees. The heat billowed around him. He sat for a moment with his eyes closed, wondering if he could put his jacket back on at the very last moment. The cicadas were deafening.

  Then the car door opened on the driver’s side and there stood the Judge, within his grasp, her black hair, slick and tight, wrenched into a thick plaited coil. She leaned over him; he smelt the crisp folds of her sleeveless black linen shift, absorbed her dark glasses with fine golden rims and black high-heeled shoes.

  ‘Bonjour, Monsieur Schweigen.’

  He stood up, stiff, sweating and off guard, wondering if he would ever, in all his life to come, desire a woman again as powerfully as he wanted this calm, untouchable Judge. She stepped back and stretched out her hand towards him. He could not read her eyes, and so he hesitated; then he took possession of her cool fingers in his clammy grasp.

  ‘I think you need something to drink,’ said the Judge.

  * * *

  He watched the people with whom she shook hands, tried to calculate which ones were family and which ones were probably more distant friends and acquaintances. One woman with opulent olive breasts clasped the Judge firmly in her arms and demanded her ‘nouvelles’. Schweigen retreated into the church, occupied a pew with a clear view of the altar and lectern and chastised himself for unreasonable jealousy. He regained control of his emotions and his face in the shadow of a pillar, and became altogether calmer in the musty dark. He had not set foot inside a church since his son’s baptism. The Judge slithered in beside him and produced a handwritten list of names, some of which were marked with an asterisk. She moved her briefcase to the other side so that her thigh rested against his and whispered against his cheek; even her breath cooled his simmering flesh.

  ‘All these people are relatives of members of the Faith who left in the last departure. Some others are colleagues and friends. I may not have all the names. This is my uncle’s list for the enterrement, which I compared with the one in the dossier. But it won’t be complete. People just turn up at funerals, others don’t even at the last moment. But if any members of the Faith still exist, then they may well be here in this church. Don’t worry about photographs. I’ve had the entrance wired with CCTV. We’ll have a video for cross-reference with the information we already have. This seemed such an excellent opportunity.’

  Schweigen noticed a prowling journalist carrying a tape-recorder and microphone. The television cameras set up in the square were excluded from the church, but the journalist slipped inside.

  ‘The press are here,’ he hissed.

  ‘No wonder. A government minister will be too. My uncle told me. These aren’t ordinary people, André, they have not only position, but power. Why do you think I’m so interested?’

  All he could think of was the fact that she had used his first name. In the midst of their conspiracy she had drawn him closer, closer. He looked down at her bare knees and then round at the packed and rustling church and the gathering of hushed and waiting mourners who loitered in shadow, just out of reach of the afternoon glare.

  ‘Won’t your CCTV camera be noticed?’

  ‘Goodness, no. It’s part of the church’s ordinary security system. Plenty of tourists are thieves. That Virgin dates from the twelfth century. The altar is wired up to all kinds of alarms.’

  ‘Then you know this church well.’

  ‘I should do. I was baptised here.’

  And suddenly he found himself staring into her intimate hidden past – her catechism classes, her first communion. He tried to imagine her as a young girl and failed. Her strange calm face, the eyes masked by the dark glasses, swivelled round towards him. He confronted her ironic smile.

  ‘Is your uncle going to say Mass?’

  ‘Oh yes. But not the address. I am especially interested in the tributes. One of Laval’s closest friends is due to speak. He’s a German Composer apparently. Uncle has only met him briefly, but I noticed the musical connection. Quite a few people here are members of his orchestra. Ah, here they come.’

  Members of the congregation, rummaging in their laps for the order of service and alerted by the deep whistle of the organ, lurched to their feet. A murmur of smart clothes and hushed, cultivated voices rose and died away. The minister appeared with his wife and bodyguard, who suppressed the journalist. There was a dreadful hush. They could hear the hearse and the family arriving outside. A small choir entered, following the cross. Dona nobis pacem. Schweigen recognised Madame Laval. The entire Mass was being sung in Latin. He shuddered slightly; the whole thing gave him the creeps. He had attended a boarding school, lodged in the mountains of the Haute-Savoie and run by Dominicans, passionate advocates of corporal punishment, which they believed essential to the formation of a solid, honest character. Schweigen continued to associate the Church with hot tears and incipient violence. He edged closer to the Judge. Requiem aeternam dona eis.

  The coffin swung slowly up three steps into the nave and at its head marched a man taller than the others, which caused a disturbing disequilibrium in the distribution of its weight. His white hair gleamed against the oak, his lined face and clenched jaw shone hard in the bright light for a moment then vanished into shadow. Despite clearly being older than the other bearers he was broader across the shoulders and chest; his stride was longer and he was forced to curb his steps to an uneasy shuffle so that the coffin, draped with an eerie velvet pall and crested with a crown of white lilies, ceased to list, like a rolling ship. He measured his slow stride, but it was still a relief when the massive coffin descended safe upon the catafalque and the unsteady progress down the aisle passed off without disaster. The congregation exhaled a gentle puff of gratitude and the funeral began.

  Afterwards, Schweigen couldn’t remember much about the funeral; he was too hot and still uneasy in the Judge’s presence. But he did remember the address. The white-haired man who had carried the coffin rose to speak. He stood still for a long time before addressing the congregation in hesitant, careful French. He did not speak to the decease
d, but the survivors. And he was the only person who gave any indication that Anton Laval had not died peacefully in bed, full of years and surrounded by his grandchildren.

  The substance of the Composer’s opening words proved conventional enough; the traditional professional tribute to a distinguished scientist, enumerating his honours, describing the importance of his research and highlighting the fact that he had pinpointed three of Saturn’s many moons. Then his tone changed. He laid down his text, fixed the assembled shifting crowd with a terrible glare, and spoke from the heart.

  ‘Anton was my friend. I cannot and will not judge the actions of my friend. But if anyone here were to feel angry and bereft because they do not understand the reasons why he has left us I would say this. You will never comprehend him or consent to his departure without understanding his belief that all things are eternal, that our very mortality is the sign that we shall be transformed. In the midst of life we are in death, but that life is ours for ever; it is that eternal life which awaits us beyond death, the glory of an eternal union with all that we have ever loved. We are not only earth and water; we are fire and air. And we are surrounded by signs, the pathways to a higher, greater nature, the Great Mind that extends beyond us, goes before us, leads the way. That Great Mind is Love itself, the place towards which all desire leads, the home for which we yearn. I loved Anton. And I know he loved, and still loves, every one of you.’

  The effect on the Judge was electric. She shifted against the wood and lifted her head like a cheetah that has just seen the wildebeest, ambling towards the river. The funeral felt like a cover-up, a fraudulent paint job, disguising a fissure that would bring the house down. So the speaker’s last words rattled the pews and the plaster statues; as he turned to caress the coffin, his head bowed, his giant hands seemed to cradle the dead head and lost bones; even the four vast candles encircling the catafalque guttered in the swift rush of air.

  The strange, gaunt figure returned to the lectern and gazed into space as if listening to something that only he could hear, then sat down suddenly next to Madame Laval, who leaned against him, dislodging her black veil. Then they heard another voice, another foreign accent of a rather different nature, booming out next to the coffin. The curé, standing a little to the left of the altar, bowed down in prayer, and the congregation followed. The Judge consulted her order of service, but nothing special was marked after the address. The small figure was masked by the Composer’s giant shoulders and remained invisible. He was nothing but a voice, a foreign voice shaking in the air. Schweigen realised that he was speaking English and grasped the incantatory rhythm, but missed the words. So did the Judge.

  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 craned her neck to see who was speaking, failed, then fished a small black notebook out of her bag and wrote three words: The Dark Host. Then she wrote: Prayer for the dead? Where is it from and who was speaking? Ask Uncle.

  When the moment came for each member of the congregation to circle the coffin, spattering the arum lilies with holy drops of water, the Judge reached out and drew Schweigen back into the gloom next to the font.

  ‘We don’t show ourselves,’ she hissed, ‘we’re not the only ones watching.’

  Schweigen’s flesh prickled where she had touched his arm. Every part of his body felt vulnerable, as if cut open; he was caught in the giant tide that swept all things towards her. He swallowed back the unprofessional hysteria which threatened to engulf him and clutched at the choir’s disturbing roar: Libera me.

  Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna

  In die illa tremenda

  Quando coeli movendi sunt et terra

  Dum veneris judicare saeculum ignem

  Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death

  On that awful day

  When heaven and earth shall be shaken

  And you shall come to judge the earth by fire.

  Schweigen felt slightly deranged. The only Judge he could now imagine stood next to him. And he was already undergoing a trial by fire. Everyone rose and faced the coffin as the unsteady procession left the church, and in the scrum that followed they lost each other in the crowd. Schweigen scuttled after her, trying to fix her glistening coil of black hair that was definitely pushing against the stream. He caught up with her beside the vestry door. She produced a giant key from the briefcase; then opened the back door into the square.

  ‘We’ll take your car. I’ll drive.’ She bundled him into the front seat.

  It was now well past five in the afternoon. The heat was still there, but its savagery had ebbed. They sped down a tiny walled road with vines on either side, then up into a rocky outcrop covered in shimmering Mediterranean pines. The country stretched away into layered hills, shaggy with stunted oaks and white rocks. The soil glowed red and stony. Humped between the vines, a series of small stone caverns, with domed roofs like prehistoric houses, punctuated the geometrical vineyards.

  ‘I won’t ask where we’re going. You obviously know.’

  Schweigen sat back, delighted to be no longer responsible for whatever was going to happen next. The sensation of recklessness was both erotic and exhausting. The Judge stopped the rented Clio behind one of the stone buildings and then led the way, clambering up the rocks. Her black high heels were swiftly coated with red dust. The small bulge in her bag, which he had decided must be a ladies’ gun, turned out to be a pair of birdwatcher’s binoculars.

  ‘Here you are. I thought we’d check if anything untoward happened at the interment.’

  ‘Do you mean we can see it all from here?’

  ‘Stay within the pinède; then they won’t see us. All the main buildings face the other way. I know the geography of the Domaine. I used to go to the dances in the Great Hall at New Year.’

  The buildings of the old mas had slit windows and great bulging walls like a fortress; and the glimmering heat painted the adjacent family crypt in odd shades of white and grey. The mausoleum looked like a tasteless nineteenth-century church and was surrounded by rusting railings. For a long time nothing happened. Schweigen was being munched by passing insects; he fidgeted and scratched. The Judge crouched silent and simply watched. They shared the binoculars.

  Then she said, ‘There’s my uncle!’

  And behold the priest tottering down the uneven path towards the doorway of the mausoleum. As he opened the great metal gates they saw the gaping dark of the opened tomb beyond him. The undertakers had taken over completely and were shunting the unstable coffin down the track on what looked like a hospital gurney. Madame Laval followed slowly, carrying the wreath of lilies. All the bearers and all other relatives had vanished.

  ‘Here they come.’

  They took turns to watch. The action unfolded like an unedited film from which the soundtrack had been lost. The white-haired Composer who had spoken so forcefully at the funeral was not there, nor was the immediate family. The last group accompanying Anton Laval to the ancestral vault consisted only of his sister and the priest, four undertakers and two builders with a bucket of cement and a discarded pump, ready to seal the stone. They whipped off their hats as the coffin wobbled past. Then everything froze as the priest opened his book to read the final prayers. The coffin tilted on the brink ready to descend the steps. At the last moment Madame Laval stepped forwards, removed the velvet pall, handed it to the builders and unfolded a small cloth, which she draped across the plaque like a fallen soldier’s flag. The undertakers straightened the cloth and began to lower the coffin into the gulf. The Judge had the binoculars.

  ‘Very interesting. Look.’ She passed the glasses to him, but all he saw was Madame Laval, supported by the curé, and the descending coffin covered by a flash of deep, glittering blue.

  ‘What was it? The fleu
r-de-lys?’

  ‘No,’ said the Judge, her face inscrutable, but every tendon in her shoulders stretched and tense. ‘It was covered in stars.’

  * * *

  Neither of them spoke on their way back to the village. Schweigen had lost all interest in the case, the funeral, the sect known only as the Faith, any possible political connections; all he cared about now was how to contrive some method of remaining beside the Judge for as long as he could. He had no idea what to do. Ask her out to dinner to discuss the funeral? Tear up his return plane ticket and invite himself to stay? Sabotage the car? What if she had a husband and children waiting for her at home? He knew nothing about her. She was simply ‘la chasseuse de sectes’, and he was sitting next to her; noticing the tiny freckles on her bare arms, her strong small hands and short, unpainted nails, the fact that she drove in one gear too low so that the car roared, and possessed an apparent immunity to heat – this was all he knew, and it made him feel slightly sick, reeling with desire, which loomed before him like a ghastly tunnel with no exit.

  ‘What is it?’ asked the Judge, as the village reared up out of the vineyards in the distance.

  Schweigen risked all.

  ‘Stop the car.’

  She pulled up on a small track by the edge of the vineyards. A little row of olives and two dark pillars of cypress trees, brushing one another, marked the rim. They could be seen, clearly, from all directions. The Judge switched off the engine and turned her dark gaze upon him. He reached up to her dark glasses and took them off. Her nose twitched and she blinked. Schweigen realised that she could no longer see him clearly and that she was swallowing a huge gust of laughter.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘You are.’

  She leaned towards him; he could smell her hair and the perfume on her dress. Her lunge across the gear stick was so sudden and unexpected that Schweigen cringed back against the passenger’s door. One hand shot out and caught his head, her fingers sticking into his short damp hair, and with the other she hauled his shoulders round to face her so that her savage kiss, hard against his lips, almost dislocated his collarbone. Schweigen shook with fright like an assaulted virgin. She covered his face and neck with light, dry kisses. Then just as suddenly as she had come she drew away, like a serpent recoiling, choosing the next bare patch of skin to bite.