by D. W. Buffa
‘Everything else changes,’ he said as they stopped at a bench and watched the ferry pull out from the dock, heading back to the city on another thirty-minute run, ‘but this never does, the sight of boats on the bay. Maybe that’s why people love the sea, why they’re always drawn back to it. There was something Marlowe said, almost the first time I met him: that you begin to understand how simple it all is out there, how the rest of it is all a fiction, the made-up story of other men’s dreams and ambitions—that the only thing that matters is life and death, and how you live them. Not just how you live your life, mind you, but how you live your death. I can’t honestly tell you that I quite understand it, but when he said it, I believed it. Marlowe does that, you know—gives you the sense that he knows things you don’t, and that he won’t tell you all of it because you might not be quite ready to hear the whole, unvarnished truth.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
IF WILLIAM DARNELL HAD NEVER HAD ANYONE like Vincent Marlowe as a defendant, neither had he ever had a witness like Hugo Offenbach. There had been a few trials he could remember, most of them in the early years of his career, in which someone of remarkable intelligence had been called by either the prosecution or the defence. They had usually been mathematicians or involved in one of the more theoretical sciences, like physics or genetics—disciplines that, because most of us had studied some part of them in school, were not entirely beyond the average comprehension. Hugo Offenbach was another kind of genius, less understood and more mysterious. It did not matter which of two people followed the same mathematical formula to the correct conclusion; it mattered a great deal which of two musicians played a violin concerto. Genius in science was known by its method; genius in music and the arts was known by its result, a feeling that you were in the presence of something great and inimitable, something you might never experience again.
Offenbach was a genius, but that did not mean that the major critics thought he knew anything about music. His views on certain matters were considered hopelessly out of date, the uninformed opinions of a musician so well trained in the classical tradition of his instrument that he failed to grasp the important changes made by modernity. In a long-forgotten essay, published in a periodical with a circulation so limited that issues were hand-addressed to each subscriber, Offenbach had first given expression to a point of view from which he had never departed. Speaking of the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, he wrote:‘While everyone spoke of progress, measuring the vast improvement in the material conditions of existence and the spread of democratic institutions and the rights of individuals, music and art began a long descent into madness.’
Lacking all talent for evasion, Offenbach, to the lasting mortification of friend and foe alike, offered as examples of the ‘new barbarism’ Bartók’s violin sonatas, numbers 1 and 2, and Webern’s ‘Four Pieces for Violin and Piano’, works which he resolutely refused to play, because ‘it would be like writing an obscenity on the wall of a church’. If he had not been the greatest violinist of his age, he would have been dismissed as a harmless crank. If he had not been the greatest violinist of his age, the crowd that watched him enter the courtroom on Monday morning, the next witness for the defence, would not have felt the same sense of wonder.
Even to people who had no interest in classical music, Offenbach’s face was famous because of the distinction of his accomplishment. He appeared not to have changed, at least in any obvious way. His thin lips were pressed together in a straight line the way they usually were; his eyes, intelligent and alert, looked straight ahead. The eager crowd, turning towards him with its unremitting gaze, had no effect. He was used to being on stage, all attention centred on him.
The gate in the railing swung shut behind him. The clerk was waiting, ready to administer the oath. But first Offenbach stopped, turned to his left and quickly walked the few short steps to the counsel table. ‘It’s good to see you again, Mr Marlowe,’ he said in a firm, even voice.
Marlowe had risen from his chair as Offenbach approached. They looked at each other like old war comrades, men whose memories are secrets no one who had not been there could understand.
‘Thank you, Mr Offenbach,’ whispered Marlowe. He lowered his eyes and, with what seemed like reluctance, let go of the older man’s hand.
Offenbach settled into the witness chair, turned to the jury and, without any change of expression, gave the kind of formal nod with which he might have acknowledged a concert audience. He looked across at Darnell, who was standing just in front of the counsel table, and nodded again, signalling this time that he was ready to begin.
Darnell could not quite help himself. He stared down at the floor, smiling to himself at how Offenbach had managed with just two small gestures to make the usual formalities of the courtroom seem somehow lax and undisciplined.
‘Mr Offenbach, let me ask you first why you were aboard the Evangeline. As a concert violinist, was it not difficult for you to take that much time away from your schedule?’
Hugo Offenbach was short—five foot six, perhaps five foot seven—and of less-than-average weight, but he held himself with an almost military bearing, his thin shoulders square, his small, round head moving only when his shoulders did. Every movement was quick, sharp and precise, the way his fingers worked when he played. His sat motionless while Darnell asked his question, then turned his head and shoulders to the jury. ‘I was invited by an old friend of mine, Basil Hawthorne, who was a friend, or at least a business acquaintance, of Mr Whitfield. I had never met Mr Whitfield myself. I had just finished a fairly lengthy concert tour in Europe. I was tired. I thought it would be good to get away, to be out on the ocean with no one else around. I’ve spent so much of my life indoors.’ He paused and looked at Marlowe.‘I did not know it would end like this. No one did.’
‘Basil Hawthorne was what I think is called an impresario, someone who arranges concert tours for musicians?’
‘And my dear friend.’
‘He was lost at sea?’
‘The night of the storm. I don’t know what happened to him. He may have been in the other lifeboat. All I know is that he did not survive.’
‘On that night, the night the Evangeline sank, what happened to you? How much do you remember?’
‘Captain Marlowe did not want to alarm anyone, but I could tell that something was wrong and that he was worried. The sea had been rough for days, but—and it’s the strangest thing—the worse it got, the better we sailed. Perhaps Marlowe can explain it, or someone else who has spent his life at sea—I’m ignorant about such things but I can try to tell you what it was like. The Evangeline seemed to come to life, to breathe, as if the storm had shocked her into the conscious knowledge of what she could do. It affected all of us. We were like children set to gallop on a horse that did not need a hand on the reins to tell her what to do. For those few days, the days before that night, I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so aware of my own existence, or felt quite so connected with the world around me. And then the storm changed—not in degree, but in kind. And the Evangeline changed, too. She was not running over the sea anymore; the sea was running over her, crushing her to death. The equipment—all the electronics—had failed. Marlowe was holding on to the wheel with all the strength he had. He saw me come on deck and told me to grab a coat, something warm, and to brace myself because he did not know how much longer he could keep her headed into the storm. That’s when it happened, just seconds after that. The boat seemed to lift right out of the water as if it were being tossed end over end, and then there was this ghastly shudder as if it had been ripped apart.’
Offenbach stared down at his hands as he slowly shook his head. The silence in the courtroom was heavy.
‘I don’t know what happened next, except that Marlowe saved me. I had a heart attack, not strong enough to kill me, but I lost consciousness. Marlowe somehow got me into the lifeboat.’
‘And your violin?’
‘Yes, and
my violin.’
Darnell moved across the front of the counsel table, close to the jury box.‘Who first suggested that it might be necessary to kill someone to save the others?’
‘Trevelyn,’ replied Offenbach immediately.
‘You’re sure? There isn’t some possibility that others were talking about it and you simply remember his voice more than the others?’
‘Trevelyn,’ he repeated so quickly that their two voices echoed together. ‘No one else had said anything like it. As far as I know, no one else had even thought it.’
‘The defendant, Vincent Marlowe, testified that not only had he thought it, he had known it was something that would have to be done when that ship that could have picked you up sailed by without stopping. Does that surprise you?’
‘That Marlowe would say it? No. He would say it whether he ever actually had that thought or not. In his mind, it would not make any difference who said it first or who thought about it first, because he allowed it. He’s wrong about that, of course. Trevelyn — and not just Trevelyn—would have killed someone to get what they needed. But I agree with Marlowe that it would be wrong to blame Trevelyn, or anyone else.We were not civilised people living in comfortable homes, debating after dinner about where we wanted to spend our next holiday. The choice was stark, simple: kill or die. If it hadn’t been for Marlowe, some of us, I’m afraid, would have ripped the others apart, driven mad by hunger and our own repellent taste for blood. Marlowe put an order on things. He changed us from a pack of dying animals to something at least a little more human.’
Darnell looked him squarely in the eye. ‘Is it your testimony that, whatever he may have thought about this himself, Marlowe was driven to it by the force of circumstances in which he found himself? That if he had not stopped them, men like Trevelyn would have taken matters into their own hands and killed whoever they wanted?’
‘I’m afraid that is exactly what would have happened.’
‘But Marlowe made sure that did not happen,’ said Darnell, glancing at the jury to reinforce the full significance of this. ‘Instead of the rule of the jungle, everyone for himself, he established a kind of government, a set of rules by which all of you could live. And everyone agreed to this?’
‘Yes. There were some—and who could blame them?—who did not want to be part of any killing, who thought it better to let death come when it would; but even they agreed that we should all be bound by what the majority decided.’
‘And everyone whose life was taken, everyone who died so the others could live, was chosen by chance?’
‘Yes—or so I thought before I read what Mr Marlowe said about the death of the boy. At first, I must tell you, I did not think it was true; I did not think he could have done that. But then I realised that it was exactly what he would have done—tried to spare the boy from having to live, even if only for a little while, with what we were about to do. The boy worshipped him and Marlowe knew it.When we were on the Evangeline, the boy followed him everywhere. Marlowe was harsh with him, barking at him when he was not doing what he should, giving him one of those stern looks when he told him he had work to do.The boy would just stare at him,waiting for the change that always happened, the sudden sparkle in Marlowe’s eye, the reluctant laugh as he sent him on his way. Marlowe did not believe there was any chance of rescue—he told me that, when we made our agreement—but I wonder whether he would not have done the same thing anyway to spare the boy from learning about the awful things human beings can be made to do. Marlowe was strong enough for that … The look on his face when he had to kill the boy—It must have been what Abraham looked like when he was told by the Lord that he had to sacrifice Isaac.’
‘The agreement?’ asked Darnell. ‘You said “when we made our agreement”. Do you mean the agreement that all of you made to decide by lot who would die?’
A troubled smile crossed Offenbach’s lips. ‘Marlowe told me that I had to play the violin; I said I would not. He said I had to help the others forget for a while what they were suffering and how they had no hope. I told him I was barely alive, that my hands hurt so much I did know if I could even hold the bow. I told him that there was no point to it, that it was a fool’s game he was playing to pretend that we had any chance of being saved. That’s when he told me that I was right, that it was as good as certain that we were all going to die.’
Hugo Offenbach stared into the silence, fascinated by what he was watching in his mind. ‘Marlowe said that was the reason we had to do it, why we had to stay alive; we had to make the others think that there was a reason to live because it was the only way to make them believe that there was a reason to die. I told him I wanted to die myself. He asked me what good God had done to give me this talent if He had made me too much of a coward to use it when it was most needed.’ Offenbach looked around the courtroom at the sea of uplifted faces. ‘As you might imagine, I had no answer for this. So I agreed to what he wanted; but he was right about me, you see. I was a coward, and so I said I would do it, play as often and as well as I could, but on one condition.’
‘One condition?’ asked Darnell, almost mesmerised by Offenbach’s bright, piercing eyes. ‘What condition was that?’
‘That when it was all over, when we were the only two left, that he would kill me first; that he would not kill himself and make me live alone.’
‘And did he agree to that condition?’ asked Darnell, his voice a whisper. ‘Did he make you that promise?’
‘He promised he would kill us both.’
A death-like stillness descended on the courtroom, the only sound the slow creaking of the chair as Darnell pulled it back from the counsel table and sat down.
‘Do you have any questions, Mr Roberts?’ asked Homer Maitland in a voice that sounded tired and distracted.
‘Just a few, your Honour.’
Roberts stood at the end of the table, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He glanced down at the tablet on which he had scribbled half a page of notes.With his head still bent to the side, he raised his eyes and studied Offenbach for a puzzled moment.
‘This agreement you had with the defendant, Vincent Marlowe—this was a systematic plan for murder, was it not?’
‘No, I reject that categorically!’ was Offenbach’s immediate reply. ‘It was just the opposite. It was the only way to stop them killing each other.’
‘It’s a strange logic, is it not, to argue that the only way to keep people from killing each other is to kill them yourself?’
‘It was the only way to keep us from becoming even worse than we were. And, as you might remember, it is only because of Marlowe that any of us are still alive!’
‘But by your own testimony, that wasn’t the way you planned it. By your own testimony, you agreed—you and Marlowe—that there was no chance of survival and after all the others had been killed, Marlowe would kill the both of you. Isn’t that what you just said?’
‘Yes, but is that really so different from how we live anyway?’
Roberts was stunned, confused. He stared at Offenbach with a look of utter incomprehension.
‘I mean, all of us—you, me, everyone sitting out there.We live for a short while, a few years—sixty, seventy—and at the end, always death.Why do we do it? What drives us?—Isn’t it for most of us the thought that we’re leaving something behind? And what is that for most of us but the use we made of our bodies— children, their existence, the extension of ourselves.
‘We were all going to die. What meaning could we give our death if it wasn’t so that others could live?’
‘And so you think that cannibalism was permissible? And not just permissible,’ said Roberts, giving vent to his growing irritation, ‘but—what was it you said?—made you “a little more human”?’
‘That’s not what I meant!’ cried Offenbach. ‘Not what we did—never that—but the way we did it.What Marlowe did was to bring what would have been pure barbarism under the kind of rule that left us at least a little of our
dignity and self-respect. Do you imagine, Mr Roberts,’ said Offenbach, his eyes burning with such brilliant clarity that it was impossible to underestimate the power of the intelligence behind them, ‘do you imagine that it was any different in the beginning, when our ancestors first raised themselves out of the swamp, before they first began to sense there might be some difference between what they were and the other living things around them, when their first impulse when they saw each other was to kill? It took millions of years to become what we are now, beings who understand something about what we are supposed to be; but do you think that even now we’re really that far from where we started? Do you really believe that, if it weren’t for people like Marlowe, we would be any better than we were?’
‘You believe, then, that what Marlowe did was right, that it was not murder?’ asked Roberts sharply.
‘Marlowe did what he had to do. That’s the tragedy of it, don’t you see? He did what he had to do and he’ll never tell you that what he did was right. Why are you charging him with murder? Don’t you know he’s already convicted himself of that? Do you think you can punish him for what he did? That you can make him feel remorse? Don’t you understand that to his dying breath he’s going to wish that he had died out there instead, that he had died and not the boy or any of the others who died so we could live? Don’t you understand that, worse than any of it, is the knowledge that if he had to do it all over again, he would, because it was the only thing he could have done—there was no other way?’
‘No other way? You’re alive; all those others are dead. The other way would have been to let each of you die in turn, not murder anyone. But this way, because of your agreement, you and Marlowe are still alive!’ cried Roberts with one last withering glance.‘No more questions, your Honour!’
Darnell jumped to his feet, his own face red with anger at what Roberts had done.