The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge

by Patricia Duncker

  Dominique Carpentier took her charisma for granted. She turned heads in church when she was seven, adorable in her first communion dress, clutching the great white candle that proved too big for her. Teachers waited for her upstretched hand in class, loving the bright frown of the cleverest child. And the entire assembly in the Great Hall, amidst the winter’s dark of the New Year, had paused to watch her dance. She was accustomed to admiration and expected to command. She anticipated winning this intellectual tournament with the Composer; just as she always won everything else.

  The land beside the route nationale slipped into great coastal lakes, the shallow masses beyond the airport, spattered with flamingos, and the pegged rows of oyster beds, dark blots against the ruffled blue. The Composer shouted the odd comment across to her, but otherwise watched the road and drove fast. Great convoys of lorries, nose to tail, holiday cars with billowing roof racks, a posse of bikers bound for Spain, all turned up on to the motorway. She saw the green shimmering hill of Sète materialise out of the heat, a murky outline, vague, incorporeal. The Composer knew exactly where he was going. They avoided the port and streets engorged with traffic either side of the canal, nipped past the semi-derelict railways yards and climbed up into the bushy pines amidst the comfortable villas and tiny walled roads above the Église Saint-Louis and the Quartier Haut. The Composer was telling her that the town council planned to extend the esplanade into a huge walkway as far as the beach. She lifted her glasses, rubbed her eyes and tried to remember his most recent bank statements; the Mercedes wasn’t new. Did he own several cars? They arrived in front of a peaceful pale-yellow villa in much-watered gardens, bulging with sweet scents and the rhythmic chatter of the cicadas.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘The Hôtel Belvédère. It’s small, quiet. Full of elderly people who’ve been coming south on holiday for years. Like myself.’ He grinned, a wonderful boyish smile beneath the dark glasses. ‘You’ll be the youngest person here. You like fish, I hope? The food is fabulous. Poisson du jour, selon arrivage. I won’t let you eat anything else.’

  ‘Then it’s just as well that I like fish.’

  The Judge, as a matter of course, noted the number of the car, registered in Montpellier.

  ‘Do you need your briefcase?’ He caught her staring at the boot. She shook herself slightly.

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  He took off his dark glasses and fixed her, aggressive and intent.

  ‘Do you want to continue your investigation over lunch, Madame Carpentier? Or may I have the pleasure of your company?’ The frightening blue eyes swept over her. She snatched off her own dark glasses and installed her usual black rims; the effect was of a knight’s visor snapping shut before the battle, and they faced each other, there on the gravel in the singing shadows, swords drawn.

  ‘Perhaps we had better get one thing clear now, Monsieur. I am here as your guest, but I am still a juge d’instruction and one of the open dossiers on my desk concerns you. You, your friends – dead and alive – your orchestra, whatever connections you may have to the Laval family and this mysterious sect you call the Faith. If you think that I’m going to shelve all that and just enjoy eating fish with you then you’re very much mistaken.’

  He changed colour and appeared to grow in size, like the Incredible Hulk.

  ‘Sect? You think we’re a sect? Like the Christian Scientists? Or the Moonies?’

  Dominique Carpentier noted his use of the plural, but her pedantic streak got the better of her.

  ‘The Christian Scientists are not a sect in France and their teachings are mostly very sensible. I suggest that you read Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health. You are confusing them with the Church of Scientology, which has long been subjected to state repression and anti-cult opposition, particularly in the USA. And as for the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, or the Moonies as you call them, they are one of the religious movements who delimit the elements used to define a cult, and in France they are indeed usually described as a sect.’

  She delivered this speech with absolute composure, as if she expected him to take notes. For a moment the Composer glowered at her, rebuffed and enraged. Suddenly he bellowed and shook with a great explosion of laughter.

  ‘I adore you, Madame Carpentier. You are the most extraordinary woman I have ever met.’ His face underwent a weather change, and contorted into a snarl. ‘But you know that I adore you. Why didn’t you answer my letter?’

  And now he wasn’t laughing. This radical shift of subject, violent as a fist in the chest, disconcerted her completely. The letter! In her passion for his bank statements, she had forgotten the letter. But still, she was quick off the mark.

  ‘You have answered it yourself, Monsieur. You have what you wanted. You are speaking to me now, as you demanded, face to face.’

  He began shouting. A row of fascinated faces appeared on the terrace above them, peering through the geraniums.

  ‘I’ve made it quite clear that I’m in love with you, Madame Carpentier, and I am perfectly happy to say it out loud. And to say it directly to you. You cannot have misunderstood me.’ He glared at her, then his features sharpened into a feral scowl, shrewd, knowing. ‘You did not. You are far too intelligent. Well then, why are you here?’

  The Judge, taken aback by his ferocity, recoiled two steps into the shade of a pin parasol that was being attacked by caterpillars. The tell-tale silk webs smothered many of the branches. Given time, this tree will die. The Composer stood before her, controlling the gravelled space, hands on his hips, his jacket pushed back, his eyes narrowed against the sun.

  ‘Well?’ he snapped, ‘answer me.’

  She recovered herself at once.

  ‘I am conducting an investigation, Monsieur Grosz. And your personal feelings are your problem. Not mine.’

  He stood frozen, savage, for a moment; then shook himself and walked round an imagined circle in the gravel. The watchers in the geraniums retreated slightly, but she could still see the audience, awaiting the denouement. The Composer looked at her ruefully, smiled, and bowed.

  ‘Touché, Madame. That is quite true, it is my problem and mine alone. And now I am being very rude. I have started arguing with you before lunch rather than afterwards. Will you ever forgive me?’

  He held out his hand. At this point a white-suited waiter, poised at the top of the hotel steps with his mouth open, dared to chip in, seeing that the argument had not actually come to blows.

  ‘Bonjour, Monsieur Grosz,’ he squeaked, ‘your table is ready.’

  ‘Ah, thank you, thank you. Madame?’

  His hand was still outstretched towards her; the moment sizzled in the heat. The audience in the geraniums leaned forwards – what will she do? And this tiny answered gesture, apparently without any great significance, determined the strange chain of events that followed. For Dominique Carpentier really did consider recuperating her briefcase, calling a taxi on her mobile, and, after a suitable absence, long enough to have eaten lunch with the enemy, pedalling back to her office, and never, ever again allowing herself to speak to this man alone. But what piqued, angered and aroused her, almost in equal measure, were his audacity, his directness and his charm. He still stood before her, his open hand naked as a promise without conditions, another Israelite in whom there was no guile, a man incapable of deceit. She knew, and her sixth sense told her truly, that not only would he never lie to her, but that he was incapable of doing so. And not only to her, but to anyone. In some strange and horrifying way his music, his passions and the Faith were bound to one another with holy cords, ‘too intrinse t’unloose’. She was the rodent in the storehouse, niggling at the hidden bonds, overturning the vats, meddling in those rich mounds of grain. And yet, and yet, she would not retreat, could not let go. She held out her hand to him. He drew her across the little distance that remained between them and kissed her fingertips. They stood arranged in sunlight amidst the roar of the cicadas, like a formal composit
ion or a couple about to dance. The faces in the geraniums withdrew, smiling in relief.

  ‘Say you forgive me for fighting with you,’ he insisted.

  In her haste to contradict him she had changed her glasses; now she was blinded in the glare she felt, once more, at a disadvantage. He still grasped her hand with an intimate intensity that alarmed her. This man conducts his business in public exactly as he would do behind closed doors; he doesn’t care who sees us, and anyone may hear. She squinted upwards.

  ‘I do forgive you. But you are on trial, Monsieur Grosz. You have been warned.’

  He chuckled and encircled her with one giant arm. She began to wonder how he had fitted into his own car as he rushed her up the steps. The unfortunate waiter was still standing in the doorway, confused and twittering.

  ‘The terrace, Monsieur? With the view? You did say that you wanted the sea view?’

  ‘What if I’d said no to lunch?’ muttered the Judge as they were whisked towards champagne and pointed starched napkins.

  ‘Then I’d have eaten my daurade on my own, looked very miserable and got drunk on champagne.’

  The elderly couples in the dining room all looked up at the tall, white-haired ogre of a man with the beautiful tiny princess scampering, captured, beside him, for they made an extraordinary entrance into the upper world, like the lost bride and her groom. They sat facing the huge and distant curve of endless blue. The Judge put her dark glasses back on to look at the menu. The entire restaurant kept a close eye upon the strange pair in case they fell to yelling at each other once again. She spotted the Composer peering at her over the top of the wine list. The waiter offered to open the champagne.

  ‘Thank you. We’ll open it ourselves in a moment.’ He hissed across the table, ‘Let me order for you.’

  ‘I am used to ordering my own food, Monsieur Grosz,’ she bristled back. The neighbouring tables laid down their forks.

  ‘Faites-moi plaisir!’ he begged. Then he leaned towards her and whispered, ‘Your hair’s coming down.’

  And indeed it was. Dominique Carpentier shivered like a ruffled bird, dishevelled and in disarray. She started to get up with every intention of withdrawing to the Ladies, but immediately his great hand shot out and closed hot about her wrist.

  ‘Please don’t go. Do it here. No one cares. I can’t bear to let you out of my sight. I’m afraid you’ll vanish.’ His voice overflowed with alarm.

  The ridiculousness of her situation struck her in the face as she thumped back down into her seat, pulled out her comb and wound her long hair back into its usual black coil. The audience cautiously resumed eating moules, bream, lotte, terrine de poisson, tarte au citron, tarte tatin, and every shade of sorbet. He stared at her, transfixed. She glowered back. He reached for the champagne. The Composer’s refusal to conform to any kind of expected behaviour undermined all her plans of attack. Why am I here if I am unable to control the discussion? Who’s calling the shots? Is this an acceptable state of affairs? Suddenly she smiled. She could no longer pretend they were strangers.

  * * *

  ‘I must tell you what happened in rehearsal last night. We’re performing Beethoven’s Ninth. A local choir – they’re very good – their choirmaster has drilled them to perfection – and my usual soloists. The performance always goes well if it’s a local choir: everybody’s entire family seated in the audience, willing us to succeed, and the music carries you off in transports of joy. Well, the bass is American, a great big black man with a barrel chest, he’s quite wonderful, and as he began –’

  Here the Composer forgot himself and began to sing. ‘O Freunde, nicht diese Töne – and all the buttons on his waistcoat flew off and hit the first violins like machine-gun bullets – ping, ping, ping – chaos in the orchestra and the sopranos folded up screeching, laughing like rag dolls!’

  ‘How does he survive in a waistcoat? In this heat?’

  ‘Precisely. Quite impossible. Marie-T has found a solution. We’re performing outdoors in the palace courtyard. I’ve made a fuss about the choir. They have a huge canvas sail above them to stop the sound going up, up, up and vanishing. So it’s not at all formal. We don’t have to wear evening dress. Marie-T ran up a shirt for him on her mother’s sewing machine. Eight hours work, all told. The shirt is all Hamlet sleeves and folds, and the tenor is also wearing a white open-necked shirt. We’re not in Berlin or Vienna now. Down here I think we can be more informal.’

  He stretched out his arms; the cream sleeves were turned back and the hair on his forearms shone ash blond.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘this was one of Marie-T’s prototypes for the concert shirt.’

  Then they talked about Marie-T. The Composer clearly took his role as guardian to heart.

  ‘She finishes her Bac next year. And do you know what she wants to study? Law! And all because of you.’

  ‘Me? I never suggested that to her.’

  ‘You didn’t need to do so. It’s your example that is so compelling. Marie-T has always wanted to be like you. She saw you dancing when she was a child.’

  The Judge merely raised one eyebrow. So Marie-T had said nothing about the strange moment in her grandfather’s Great Hall.

  ‘Tell me what you wanted when you were her age. I feel so old when I talk to her. I can’t imagine what she feels or how she sees this world. I was born in 1936. Before the war. Can you believe that? I am not even of her parents’ generation.’

  ‘But you don’t seem old,’ reflected the Judge, aloud; she looked up quickly, afraid that she might sound rude.

  ‘I’m delighted to hear you say that, Madame Carpentier. I lie awake, panic-stricken that you might view me as a dinosaur. I am over twenty years older than you. Time doesn’t matter to me. But even I am locked in this world.’

  He used the verb ‘enfermer’, which puzzled the Judge. Locked up, shut in, like chickens awaiting the fox. He asked her about her childhood and the Judge recalled the long boredom of her adolescence.

  ‘Well, soixante-huit and the sexual revolution certainly didn’t disturb our village.’ She smiled. ‘I wanted to be a philosopher, like Sartre or Michel Foucault. I certainly didn’t think of law. Not at first. And in order to be anything at all I had to leave my parents and my childhood behind.’

  She found herself talking about who she had once been, and that small, ferociously ambitious slender girl who loved dancing seemed as remote and lost as the days of embroidered flared jeans, agit-prop street theatre, the MLF and Le Torchon brûle, glam-rock, the songs of Jacques Brel and revolutionary socialist politics. At first his concentration upon every word disconcerted her, made her hesitate, slow down, but gradually, the quality of his attention, the fact that he was so clearly committing every frown and gesture to memory, and the deep quiet that she sensed, listening within him, calmed her unease. The Composer was a man at peace with himself, for all his explosions and irrational outbursts. It was this that anchored his presence at the table before her. The dining room emptied out behind them and the afternoon breeze tugged at the tablecloth. By the time they rose, full of fish and champagne, her senses were no longer sharpened against his danger. She felt cradled, safe.

  ‘Shall we have coffee in the gardens?’

  He held out his arm to her, gallant as a nineteenth-century prince, and she accepted him without hesitation.

  * * *

  The belvédère from which the hotel took its name turned out to be a summer house perched on the last terrace above the main building. A steep flight of damp steps led upwards to the frivolous little cupola, painted with tiny white flowers, surrounded by a verandah. The cane furniture, laden with cushions, suggested a peaceful afternoon snooze in well-fed somnolent heat. A sea breeze ruffled the wisteria strangling the balcony, but before them lay nothing but a giant white haze. Even the sea unfolded into a white glaze of light, as if a veil had descended, cutting them off from the working world. The Judge, clutching her coffee, stretched herself out upon a floral sofa, clearly design
ed for the frail and elderly. Without warning the Composer leaned over and removed both her shoes. This gesture, which amused rather than annoyed her, gave them the exact measure of the distance they had travelled in two hours. She curled and extended her naked toes in a patch of faded, blustering sun; the wind brushed the soles of her feet. Despite the roar of the invisible cicadas, she became intensely aware of every approaching sound and the distant rhythm of the sea.

  He sat beside her, gazing into the light.

  ‘You’re unlike most Frenchwomen. You don’t wear any paint.’

  ‘I was wearing lipstick this morning,’ she corrected him. ‘And as you haven’t allowed me out of your sight I haven’t had time to touch up my paint, as you call it.’

  ‘Good. Don’t. If I’m on trial, you’re under arrest. You must understand how greedy I am as far as you are concerned. I have you near me now, for a few precious hours. But you will never have much time for me.’

  The sudden sadness in his voice made her look round at him.

  ‘On the contrary, I spend nearly all the time we are apart thinking about you and trying to dig up information on your background, personality, history and career. And the last two hours have amply demonstrated the limits of my methods. I have dossiers full of facts, none of which match the man.’

  His delighted roar of laughter shook his huge frame and the chair beneath him shuddered. The white hair fell across his eyes; he flung back his head to shake it free.

  ‘Really? How wonderful! So I’ve succeeded in disguising my bad temper, autocratic manners and impossible character.’

  ‘Oh, completely.’

  They settled into a companionable silence that is the usual hallmark of friends who have known each other for years.