The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge

by Patricia Duncker

  She turned up the Mengstrasse, away from the river, and wrinkled her nose: the lower reaches of the street stank of old, rotting, dead fish. A portly yet agile rat flickered down a crumpled entrance to a drain beneath the stone steps. She checked her map. The printers that once stood at No. 42 were no longer there. She stalked onwards through the rain, patient, thorough, unhesitating, learning the city as she negotiated the old streets, practising whispered German sentences, ready with her explanations.

  The Judge travelled a good deal in the course of her work. She was used to the Anglo-Saxon countries, especially Canada and America. There she settled into suitable clothes, at ease with the tacky culture of the streets, the plastic hotels, unintelligible accents and appalling food. But she did not know Northern Europe and was troubled by this sharp green cold settling on the late afternoon, and the alien politeness of these people. She could not understand the casual talk around her and disliked the sensation of being silenced, shut out. The men and women she approached all fingered the book in its plastic covers, fascinated, entranced by its secret language. But it could not have been made here, not here, no, not here. Those methods of production, that stitched binding, old-fashioned, uneconomic, long fallen into disuse. But look, Madame, this stitching is immaculate, this book was made by hand. No one understood or even recognised the code.

  A pile of brown boxes cluttered the doorway of the last house in the Engelsgrube, before the Siebente Querstrasse. Each one had the brochure’s cover stuck to the carton, indicating the contents. A small brass plaque mounted the plastered wall.

  BARDEWIG GmbH

  LÜBECKS ÄLTESTES VERLAGS-UND DRUCKHAUS

  Seit 1579

  She looked at the firm’s logo stuck to the glass door; the slogan was a strange mixture of German and English.

  Lassen Sie sich beeindrucken!

  Moderner Druckereibetrieb mit Full Service

  Something about the firm’s claim to longevity and its sheltered position in the Altstadt filled the Judge with confidence. She shook out her umbrella and strode in without ringing the bell.

  ‘Darf Ich Ihnen helfen?’

  She stood surrounded by courtesies in a busy office filled with computers and bright light. This was clearly the section that dealt with the publicity brochures. A few scrunched programmes for the Music Festival lay on the floor. The new schedules and timetables for the leisure boat-trip companies, based on the Trave and the Wakenitz, were stacked in piles beside her. She produced the book and her questions. A small flurry of curiosity greeted the strange code and the worn but beautiful, anonymous binding.

  ‘I’ll ask the Director.’ The elderly woman in charge was the first person of the afternoon whose enthusiasm did not falter into a mass of categorical and discouraging denials. ‘He may know. There is something familiar about the pattern around the rim.’

  She set off into the darker passages of the building. The Judge gazed after her, realising that the narrow street façade concealed an obscure receding labyrinth of busy spaces; for, when the padded door thudded shut, far away, a small ghost of damp air flitted back through the house. For it was once a house, a great house for a rich family. The Judge read the small signs and details: a dumb waiter with sliding doors for transporting hot food to a first-floor dining room, an archway, now blocked off, which framed the great entrance, a curving stairwell with fine carved banisters ending in a fluted baroque column, and a handsome globe, all the countries of the world still visible through the dust. The stucco roses, entwined with vines and flowers, lingered on the ceilings although no trace remained of the lost chandeliers, dismantled, sold off.

  The Director was Herr Hartmut Bardewig, the owner of the firm, a vigorous, red-faced man of fifty with thinning blond hair on his freckled scalp and a warm excited handshake. He clutched the book.

  ‘Guten Tag, Madame. Frau Handl tells me that your mystery book looks like one of my father’s productions. Let me see, let me see –’

  He fished his half-moon glasses out of his breast pocket and fingered the binding. Then he opened the book. The Judge noticed that he paid no attention to the strange language, the marginalia or even the German commentary; instead he examined the stitching and the folded groups of pages. Then he closed the book entirely and peered at the tiny repeating pattern stamped in gold along the spine, faint but luminous like the edge of a Roman mosaic, lost beneath centuries of dust.

  ‘Yes, yes, yes. That’s his work. Indeed it is. This book is my father’s work. And he bound it himself. Where did you buy it? It must be a very unusual specimen.’

  He now appeared reluctant to relinquish the prize and turned the Book of the Faith over and over in his hands.

  ‘May I remove these plastic covers? It’s wonderful to see something so distinctive. He rebound many rare books in his time. Collectors’ items. Some were sold at auction for amazing sums. This one is rebound. The paper is handmade. Very rare, very old. I think the paper may be French, but there’s no obvious watermark. I could take a look with my lens and see. But it’s in good condition, worn but not damaged. Um Gottes Willen, what sort of a language is this?’

  ‘Then you don’t recognise the language?’ The Judge hesitated between two verbs: ‘erkennen’ and ‘wieder erkennen’. But Herr Bardewig was already reading the commentaries.

  ‘Most odd. Is it poetry? Or biblical? Or that sort of seventeenth-century mysticism where the author pours out all her theological passions? Schöne Seelenliteratur. My father had dozens of volumes of that sort in his personal library. Very beautiful books, but none that looked like this.

  ‘Madame, please forgive me. We can’t go on standing here in the dispatch room. Come through to my office. Frau Handl, bringen Sie uns bitte einen Kaffee. Please, please, do come through. Come this way.’

  The Judge settled peacefully into an old leather armchair with a scarlet cushion and allowed Herr Bardewig to fuss over her comfort, wet shoes and long journey from the South of France all for the sake of an obscure book that she couldn’t read. She understood that she was being welcomed and honoured in his father’s name, and that her host’s loquacious enthusiasm was utterly artless and unfeigned.

  ‘I still have all his bookbinding machines. Even the hand press on which he used to print small runs of poetry. He was the founder of the Lübeck Poetry Society. Religious things mostly. Schwärmerei, I used to think, but he was minded that way, it meant a lot to him.’

  He poured the Judge a large cup of hot coffee, and faltered when she refused to accept any Kaffeesahne. ‘No cream? None at all? Will you have a biscuit? That’s my father’s portrait up there, above the water cooler. Yes, that’s my father.’ He gazed beatifically out into the hall of the old baroque house.

  The Judge rose up, cradling her cup, and stood looking into the dim space. The arched doorway was squared off beneath a fan light and decorated with dark, swirling woodwork. Framed certificates, licences and awards littered the walls beyond the august patriarch, who met her gaze. A stiff white collar and a dark suit, but yes, the same face as the son that stood beside her, rubicund, benevolent, courteous. The offices were located on one side of the doorway, the business on the other, and the old master printer himself surveyed all their goings out and their comings in, radiating familial solidity and magnificence.

  ‘Oh yes, he was a great man in his time. He was always a printer rather than a publisher. He left that side of things to his partner. But he had a deep love of books.’

  ‘And you are sure that this is his work?’ The Judge put down her coffee cup and concentrated on her darker purpose.

  ‘Yes, quite certain. Look, this is another of his books, one that he bound himself. This unusual repeating pattern is his mark, his signature. But I don’t need even to see that crest, Madame. Look –’ He pointed to the tiny Gothic script squashed into the margins. ‘That’s my father’s handwriting.’ He ran his forefinger tenderly over the words, not attempting to read them, but caressing each capital, as if reaching out towards t
he lost hand. ‘This is wonderful – to see his writing again. But it’s odd. I never knew him write in any of his books. He had a separate book for notes and ideas.’

  The Judge decided to forestall any further speculation or questions.

  ‘Have you any records? Any way of knowing when he might have rebound it? Or from whom he might have bought the book?’

  ‘Oh, of course, we have all the old ledgers here. With all his orders and commissions, and all the work he did for himself. The project is always dated, described. He must have done this after the war. I can tell from the Stempel, this stamp, here. We still have that machine. He bought it in 1948. It’s not in use any more. But I can’t bring myself to destroy or discard anything that was precious to him.’

  The Judge rose up from her leather perch, glittering.

  ‘And may I see these ledgers?’

  ‘Of course. I should be delighted. But I may have to get a duster. Wait a moment.’

  Herr Bardewig disappeared into his nether vaults. By the time he returned the Judge had quietly photographed the frozen face of his dead father and noted the name of the painter and the date on the corner of the portrait. 1946. The ledgers were impeccable: records of orders, the dates on which they were confirmed, executed and delivered, with a note of all payments received, whole or in part. Entire transactions were handwritten in the same flawless Gothic script, until they reached the 1950s, after which fragile, typed descriptions of the orders, completed on carbon paper, were stuck into the ledgers alongside the dates and figures. Something about the very accuracy and fullness of the ledgers, which exuded the sweet smell of past wealth and private business, disturbed the Judge. The records were also handbound in leather, massive, avaricious and replete; the firm intended to survive, apparently for ever. They leaned over the great books searching for an entry that might describe the secret Book of the Faith. Herr Bardewig inspected the code.

  ‘What a very strange text! You thought it was Hebrew, didn’t you? My father could read Greek. He read the New Testament in Greek. But he couldn’t read Hebrew. And he couldn’t have typeset this. You’d have to know something about the language. And no matter how carefully you follow the original you always make mistakes. You should see our brochure for the Buddenbrooks House. We all think we know a bit of English, but we had to do it three times in proof and the errors still got through. Are the characters Hebrew? Someone must have possessed a set of characters. The moulds would have been very expensive to make if there was just one copy. Economic madness! Have you found any other copies?’

  ‘Not yet. We’re still looking. You’ve never seen this language before?’

  ‘No. Never. The paper is old though. Look, there is in fact a watermark. This paper is French. I was right. Probably seventeenth century.’

  The Judge saw the faint crown and circle, at last evident under the strong lamp. She had great difficulty reading the handwriting in the ledgers. Herr Bardewig translated the abbreviations.

  ‘That means it was for his own use. So no invoice would have been issued. Let’s look for that symbol. I wonder if the order was simply for this single copy. But we don’t know that there is only one. And if he bought it in an auction he always bought more than one book at a time. So he may have rebound it with several other books.’

  ‘Let’s look for one single book first,’ said the Judge. ‘That will narrow the search.’

  ‘Ah, that makes it much easier,’ cried the printer, his finger now speeding down the margins of the years, ‘he always notes the quantities in this column.’

  They found one family Bible, one book on animal husbandry, an entire collection of medical textbooks on the science of anaesthetics, each one individually rebound, and nevertheless noted as one, the livre d’honneur, the memorial volume for the glorious dead in the Petruskirche, rebound without charge as a personal gift to the Parish, all the yearbooks for the Lübeck Musical Society, and a special presentation copy of The History of Lübeck, destined for the retiring Bürgermeister, for which the remuneration was exceedingly handsome, even allowing for an inevitable shift in the value of the Deutschmark. They had been searching for nearly two hours, and were beginning to lose heart, when a small entry in March 1957, crushed at the bottom of a page, an entry that they had already passed over, stopped Herr Bardewig’s sliding finger.

  ‘Look. What about this?’

  Frau Handl knocked upon the door.

  ‘I’m going home, sir. Will you lock up?’ She looked suspiciously at the Judge. Who was this tiny visitor from France, this pretty woman with wet shoes, and black-rimmed glasses, who had absorbed the Herr Director’s entire afternoon with a wild goose chase?

  ‘Thank you, thank you, Frau Handl, schönen Feierabend. Yes, I’ll do it all. Put the catch up but leave the lights. Now what do you think, Madame Carpentier? Could it be this?’

  S. Single copy for rebinding and repair 23rd March 1957. Das Buch des Glaubens, 280 Seiten. The Book of the Faith, 280 pages. Replace damaged cover. No titles. Rebind as stands. Two pages slightly torn. Repair as necessary. No. 480.

  ‘Who placed the order? Or was it his book?’ snapped the Judge.

  ‘Privat Kunde. A private customer. The book was rebound for someone else. That’s all that’s noted. But if it was someone else’s book why on earth did he write in the margins? I can’t imagine him defacing any book, let alone one that belonged to someone else.’

  ‘Was there an invoice?’ The Judge gazed at the next page, hungry as the wolf spotting the child’s blood-red hood coming through the trees.

  ‘No. No invoice was ever issued. He rebound this book for free. But where’s the delivery note?’

  ‘May I photograph this entry?’

  ‘But of course. Ah, you have one of those modern digital cameras. My daughter is clamouring for one. But they’re still rather expensive. Most useful for documents. Here, I’ll hold the light.’

  They stood side by side in the warm office. The Judge noted the numbers and dates beside the record in the great ledger. The book had been returned to a person, or persons unknown, three weeks later.

  ‘The missing delivery note? Does this number correspond to some other record that he kept?’ The Judge had begun to have great faith in the dead patriarch’s meticulous exactitude.

  ‘Well, he kept everything in good order, as you see. But I don’t have access to every aspect of his system now. We computerised the accounts not long ago.’

  ‘But do you still have his private records of his book purchases? The ones he bought at auction and rebound?’

  Herr Bardewig looked up at the rows and rows of dark and golden books above him.

  ‘The books are all here,’ he said. ‘Wait a minute. I’ll look in the household accounts. He managed those too. Mother never worried herself with the household bills because we always lived upstairs.’

  Herr Bardewig accepted her challenge and vanished again into the company’s archive. The Judge looked at her watch. Seven o’clock already passed. She was the ferret, shaking a rat, and could not let go until she was certain that the thing was dead. The printer finally re-emerged with two large cardboard boxes and an embarrassed confession.

  ‘These aren’t so well filed as I imagined they would be – loose sheets and only roughly in order. But here are all the existing delivery notes and household invoices from 1956 to 1960.’

  They sat down at separate tables and began to hunt for anything relevant or the number 480. An hour later the Judge struck gold.

  ‘Excuse me, Herr Bardewig, but I think I have it.’ She held up a delivery note. ‘There is no name on the ticket, which if I understand you correctly, was not your father’s usual practice. But here is the number. 480. Would you be good enough to confirm the address for me? Is this a double S or a double F?’

  ‘It’s an F. Effengrube 19. That’s in Lübeck, near the cathedral. Do you recognise the address?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Judge, glowing, ‘I do.’

  But she gave nothi
ng else away.

  Herr Bardewig photocopied the delivery note for her and insisted on a small schnapps in celebration. They sat at ease, like old friends, and the printer talked on about the firm and his father’s time; how he had learned the profession from his father and uncle, how as a small child he had been allowed to sit up and listen to the music and poetry in the great salon above them, which had now been divided into two rooms. He asked very few curious questions concerning the provenance of the book and her unstinting search for its source. She rose to leave. And then it became clear that he had knowingly held his tongue.

  ‘Is this book part of an investigation, Madame?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Not anything horrible? Or criminal, I hope?’

  The Judge hesitated. It was always better to say very little about her work. Outsiders became intrigued, then spellbound. The sects touched an unconscious current of fantasy; a Kraken, which unfortunately needed very few underwater currents in order to awaken. As the years passed the Judge remained unimpressed by the mental strength of most ordinary people, for, with the lightest of prods, they became irrational and unhinged. The actual content of most people’s faith beggared belief. Long used to floods of hysterical insanity poured forth upon the walls and ceilings of her office, the Judge scarcely flinched at the narratives of past lives, alien abductions, revelations from floating tablets, voices emerging from space, birds or bushes, and conclusive evidence of maternal reincarnation in the form of a sheep. She avoided precise explanations of her role as ‘la chasseuse de sectes’ whenever possible. Yet she owed this man a slice of honesty.

  ‘It is a little disturbing perhaps, but I am a juge d’instruction. I gather evidence. I don’t prosecute anyone. I present my reports to the Public Prosecutor, Le Procureur de la République. He decides if there is a case to answer.’

  Herr Bardewig turned a little white.