He must have spent the night collapsed in the front seat. He looked like a homeless tramp, unshaven, battered, trembling with cold.
‘How did you find me?’ The Judge, suddenly lucid and terrifying, almost roared into the dawn. ‘And what are you doing here?’
‘Gaëlle. She’s on holiday in Egypt and she’s desperately worried about you. Both the phone in the office and your mobile have been clamped on to the answering service for over a week. You haven’t answered any of your e-mails. You don’t respond to messages. She rang me and I traced you here via Myriam at the Domaine.’
‘André – I am not a child and I don’t need a minder. Now get back into that car and follow me down the mountain. We’re going to find an expensive hotel in Vevey and sleep till midday.’
But by the time they reached the dozing desk clerk at the Grand Hôtel Continental neither of them could speak; the Judge was exhausted and Schweigen had been transformed into a living block of ice. The only rooms available formed the honeymoon suite. Schweigen booked the suite with fabulous views down the length of the lake and the Judge paid on her credit card. She ate all the chocolates laid upon the pillows, both hers and his, then pushed him into the bathroom and told him, without ceremony, to thaw out and eliminate the lingering stench of sleeping rough before coming to bed. He could barely see her, brandishing the hotel toothbrushes and picking out shampoos, through a cloud of steam. They muttered to one another, grateful for the familiarity of each other’s movements and gestures, unable to initiate any explanations. She was almost asleep before he joined her in the vast four-poster, tasselled with satin and gold.
‘Don’t talk, André,’ she whispered, as if she were ill or drugged. ‘I can’t stand it. And in answer to the questions that are written all over your face – yes, I spent what was left of the night with the Composer. No – I didn’t have sex with him, but yes, I am in love with him. And don’t throw one of your jealous fits. I’m not up the mountain in his bed. I’m down here with you in the honeymoon suite. Goodnight.’
And she pulled the duvet over her head to shut out the light.
* * *
The sun illuminated the honeymoon terrace and the long rows of vines directly below the Grand Hôtel Continental from nine o’clock onwards. André Schweigen, sleepless in luxury, watched the light growing from behind the Alps, and saw the lake changing colour, from black to leaden blue. The Judge, he reflected with some irritation, slept as if there was no original sin in this world, and no impending consequences following her terrible declarations. Had she changed sides? Gaëlle thought not, but the outspoken Greffière possessed a boundlessly loyal spirit; she would never betray her Judge, in thought, word or deed. And in any case André Schweigen now discovered himself capable of understanding only one thing. She loved another man. She had told him so. The fact that she had never returned his devotion in any shape or form was neither here nor there. If he went on loving her, and he had no choice but to do so, then that was enough. But now there was someone else. She loves someone else. He paced the borders of his mind and found the dangerous edge, perilous as the Wall of Death. Here he lay, poised on the brink. What should he do now? Morning blazed in the windows. His wife had sent three desperate text messages. He no longer possessed the words with which to lie, and so he merely read the messages again and again. At last, André Schweigen blacked out his mobile, settled down beside the sleeping Judge and closed his eyes.
When he finally awoke it was well after midday and the Judge was standing on the terrace, wrapped in a white fluffy bathrobe with the hotel’s sinister logo stitched in gold glowing across her back, her face raised to the sun. Someone was tapping at the door.
‘Entrez,’ cried the Judge, and a uniformed flunky oozed into the suite bearing a vast silver tray, overflowing with breakfast, two flutes, and a bottle of champagne.
‘Félicitations! Madame, Monsieur,’ murmured the apparition. ‘The management would like to wish you a very happy stay at the Grand Hôtel Continental.’
‘Thank you.’ The Judge helped herself to a glass of champagne and escorted him out of the suite. She stalked back to the four-poster.
‘Cheers, André!’ She handed him the fizzing golden cone. ‘This is the honeymoon suite and we appear to have done the decent thing and regularised our situation at last.’
Schweigen sat up and gulped down half the glass. The room flickered to the beat of her smile. For one moment their complicity was complete and Schweigen grinned broadly. They had escaped together and were now on the run.
‘Didn’t they notice that we haven’t any luggage?’
‘Perhaps they think we’ve eloped?’
Then Schweigen remembered her confession. He flung away the moment of intimate peace between them and roared, ‘You’re with the wrong man,’ as he clambered out of bed. He tried to pull on his trousers, but rage triumphed over dignity and his right foot got stuck. She knelt down and pulled his foot through the hole.
‘Don’t start up, André. Please. It will stop you thinking straight and we need to stay calm.’
She carried the tray out on to the terrace. Her use of the plural immediately sent a message of reassurance to his muddled, exhausted brain, and he followed her out into the gorgeous day. The air smelled of September, the first fires, damp leaves, and a chill rising from the dark lake. In the shadow of the mountains the water remained black, with a faint mist clinging to the surface, as if the thing was living, breathing. The Judge set out breakfast on the glass table, her brisk, assured gestures shimmering with confidence and certainty. Cheese, pâté, wurst, eggs. Where are the croissants and the pains au chocolat? She rummaged through the sweet treasures.
‘Here. Orange juice. Drink it up or you’ll pass out.’
‘Did he ask you to marry him?’ André exploded, nevertheless obediently guzzling orange juice at her command.
‘Well, he did make me a proposition and yes, I think you could call it a proposal. So in a manner of speaking, yes.’
André gazed at her in horror. Her glasses had darkened in brightness, and so she sat, her bare legs and toes stretched out to greet the sun, munching pains au chocolat. She was eating his share as well as her own.
‘And what did you say to him?’ He held his breath.
‘What every cautious woman says. I played for time. I said I’d give him my answer in a week.’
‘A week!’ Seven days vanished in the flicker of her black hair falling across her face. Seven days and she would be lost to him for ever.
‘Don’t look so tragic. I haven’t said yes.’
‘But you will.’
‘Why do you assume that?’
André nearly crunched the champagne glass to splinters in his hands.
‘You told me last night that you were in love with him.’ He found himself shouting. The Judge swivelled in her seat, her darkened eyes invisible behind the black frames.
‘And I will never lie to you. That man has paid me the compliment of loving me with his whole heart and offering me the things that matter most to him. He has asked me to watch over his daughter. And I love him for his confidence and his trust in me. But I am not a madwoman, André. Friedrich Grosz and I stand on either side of an immense divide, like an abyss beneath the ocean. He cannot see it. He has a faith that knows no limits. For him nothing is impossible.’
She paused. André let out his breath with a long seething hiss.
‘And for you it is impossible?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
Then something else hit Schweigen like a slap; she had concealed information from him.
‘Marie-Cécile Laval’s younger child. The girl. That’s his daughter?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long have you known?’
‘About a month and a half.’
Schweigen stood up and clutched the wrought-iron balcony, his knuckles white.
‘I can’t stand this, Dominique.’
‘André, sit down. Listen to me. And keep y
our nerve.’ He collapsed into the honeymoon cushions.
But for a moment she didn’t say anything at all, merely handed him a slice of dark bread spread with garlic cheese and poured out the coffee. They ate in silence, gazing down the lake, which stretched away into a glaze of mist. The landscape draped before them, like a curtain of endless beauty, softened into golden light. The lake, shadowed, unclear, now appeared as difficult to comprehend as the nature of the decision the Judge had sworn to make within the week. Would she abandon her past? Unthinkable. Marry an old man, albeit a disturbingly energetic vieux Picasso? She hated music, never listened to it and didn’t even own a hi-fi system. Had she suddenly become domesticated and begun dreaming of a family? Schweigen could not imagine the Judge managing kitchens or clutching children. He suddenly realised that he had no idea how old she was. The smooth, timeless olive face gave little away.
‘How old are you?’ he demanded, all caution gone.
‘Forty-two. The same age as you.’ She smiled at him. ‘Do you think we might order some more champagne?’
‘Are you mad?’
‘No. This is the honeymoon suite, remember. I think it’s included in the price. Anyway, I gave them my personal credit card number. We’re not on the fiddle and it’s Saturday. Order another bottle, André. But remember, they think that you are now Monsieur Carpentier.’ She flung back her head and laughed.
He gave up, staggered forth into the bridal drapes and fumbled about for the telephone.
* * *
She remained both affectionate and preoccupied throughout that long afternoon. Towards the end of the day they walked down through the vines to the woods by the lake’s edge. The dry earth crumbled under their shoes and they disturbed a hare on the brink of a tall mass of uncut maize. The creature shot away from them, its huge arched legs forming a jagged pattern as it vanished up the bank and into the golden woods. The light shivered and slid across the surface of the water and tiny waves lapped against the pebbles on the artificial beach. The hotel owned a brace of small boats, padlocked to the jetty. Schweigen and the Judge sat side by side on the warm planks, their feet hanging just above the water.
Only now did Schweigen remember what he had intended to tell her. And, mirabile dictu, they began to take up the investigation again. Whatever she thought about the impassable abyss between herself and the Composer, she still stood beside him, on the same side. The Faith, and the dismantling of its power, still bound them together.
‘Dominique, I found something in the documentation for the Foundation set up by whoever is now running the Faith. Weiß is the director of the fund, but there is a legal Deed of Trust, properly drawn up and witnessed, which names two other trustees in the event of Weiß’s demise: Professor Hassan Hamid and Friedrich Grosz.’
The Judge caught both knees with her arms and rested her chin between them. She thought for a while, but made no reply.
‘Do you think they’re creaming it off?’ André desired this with all his soul. He wanted to believe every possible ill of the Composer.
‘Did either of them sign this Deed of Trust?’
‘No. They’re just named.’
‘Then they probably know nothing about it. What is the purpose of this Foundation?’
‘I don’t know. Not yet.’
‘Then keep digging.’
‘You want me to go on?’
‘But of course.’
Schweigen shuddered, incredulous. He imagined the Judge, now coiled like a spring beside him, as the crusading saint, bearing the white banner of righteousness, the sword of justice unsheathed in her bare hands, sea-green incorruptible, and possessed of no human feelings whatsoever. She says she loves this man; yet she would put the handcuffs on him herself. He imagined her as the Grand Inquisitor – cold, ruthless, obsessed. Her next question was therefore unexpected.
‘And what, may I ask, have you told your wife this time?’
There was no animosity or judgement in her voice. She simply sounded curious. He looked at her, puzzled, and then suddenly certain that the fact he was married had mattered to her, all along.
‘The truth. That I had spoken to your Greffière who feared that you were in some sort of danger, and so I was going to find you.’
‘And what did she say to that?’
André Schweigen hesitated, sheepish, rueful.
‘She asked me if I cared about you in a way that I shouldn’t.’
‘And you replied –?’
‘That I was in love with you. That I had been in love with you for years, and that I always would love you more than anything or anyone else. I felt better saying it. That’s the truth.’
The Judge whistled and took his hand in her own. He crushed her lizard cool in his warmth. They sat side by side for many minutes without speaking. The times they had spent together rose before her. She could no longer see the shadow of parting which had haunted every encounter. The Judge heard the echoes in the simplicity of his declaration and recognised the resemblance between André Schweigen and the Composer; they were both given to extremity, generous men swept by the giant winds of irrational, powerful emotions and tempted to take mad risks. And they both trusted in truth. The truth cannot be spoken, clearly and with conviction, and remain unheard. When my love swears that he is made of truth – she stopped the thought before it formed, and wisely kept her insight to herself. They watched the mist thickening on the lake.
‘Well, André, I’m amazed. And very flattered. I have heard exactly what you said. But I will need to think about that too. And you’d better drive straight home and face the music.’
* * *
Gaëlle sliced open the post in the office, sitting bolt upright. She had been transformed, by a mere three weeks on an Egyptian beach, into a bronzed god. Her Cleopatra haircut blocked into an exact geometry of lines and layers was held steady by the same transparent gel that had maintained the original black spikes. Her eyes, rimmed with kohl, re-created the looming gaze of Isis, and a large beaded collar, brilliant with white threaded shells, yellow ceramics, jade, onyx, and cobalt blue stones of lapis lazuli replaced the death’s heads, silver rings and chains.
‘It cost a month’s salary. Do you like it?’
‘Yes, I do. It looks unbelievably vulgar, but wonderful. You can carry it off.’ The Judge thumped her briefcase on the desk and kissed her Greffière.
‘Are you livid with me for putting Schweigen on your tail?’
The Judge paused; it had never occurred to her to be angry with someone whose only motives were loyalty and love.
‘No, of course I’m not cross. It was actually very useful to have him there in the end.’
‘There are two e-mails from him already – both marked urgent and personal and tagged with receipts. Do you want me to open them? And are you going to tell me what you were doing in Switzerland?’
‘No, I’ll read what Schweigen has to say. And yes, of course I’ll tell you, but all in good time.’ The Judge settled her glasses and peered into her screen.
Dominique – my belle-mère has moved in and I have moved out. I’m living with my brother. Please use his home e-mail. Or ring me. André.
‘Oh no. Schweigen has finally lost his mind,’ groaned the Judge.
‘What’s he done?’ Gaëlle practically leaped over the desk. The Judge closed the screen.
‘He’s left his wife.’
‘Oh no!’ Gaëlle clamped her hand across her mouth, smudging her Death-Ray Red lipstick. ‘What will you do?’
‘For the moment, nothing whatever. I’ve made no promises.’
‘Do you think it will blow over?’
‘No.’
‘Did she find out?’
‘No. He told her.’
‘He must be mad.’
‘As I said.’
And so the two women settled back to work and the rhythm of each other. The Judge hunched down over her desk to read her incoming reports and prepare the week’s interviews. An incendiary incident
involving an adolescent gang on the outskirts of Béziers had led to the destruction of an entire Renault showroom. The gang, all aged under eighteen, and of encouragingly mixed ethnic origins, confessed their intention of peacefully setting fire to one or two cars on the forecourt. The spectacular blaze and accompanying fireworks were entirely unexpected, although delightful, and therefore not their fault.
‘Help me process the little shits,’ snapped her colleague. ‘You and Gaëlle can deal with the girls. I know two of them. Their social workers are already here and the police are trying to track down the parents.’
The affair made the national news. Every single member of the gang had numerous warnings and previous convictions: handbag snatching, car theft, selling drugs in class, burglary and vandalism. They had all been excluded from the local schools and were now being educated through a special scheme in a boot camp run by ex-army officers. And so the Judge had little time to reflect on her strange situation or the Composer’s proposal. But she was not easy in her mind, or even entirely certain that she knew exactly what she had agreed to consider. What alarmed her more than anything else was the sinister sensation that she had overstepped a professional line and was now standing on the brink of something unthinkable. Was she simply the chosen dupe of a powerful, charismatic lunatic? She took off her glasses. The text before her became a blur and the Composer took shape as she had last seen him, exhausted, urgent, passionate. Why had he excluded his daughter from any knowledge of the Faith? Did he in fact doubt the credo he preached with such intensity? If anything should ever happen to me, take care of my daughter. She admires you so much. She wants to study law and to learn how to dance. She wants to be like you. I am afraid for her, Dominique. I would be easy in my mind if I knew that you would watch over her. And that promise she had made, without reflection or hesitation, because the care of one slender, fragile girl seemed a little thing compared to the enormity of a secret faith, thousands of years old, whose nature was beyond reason or understanding. For if I studied the Faith with an open mind surely all I would see would be a fraudulent pack of cards, like a Tarot reading, specially adapted to seduce the gullible and the frail. Surely I would see what I always see – mendacity and delusion? Study the Faith? As a serious task? I cannot, I cannot. The only proofs that exist are those provided by my own senses, and they tell me that there is no other world but this, no supernatural patterns, and no destiny charted in the stars. I would have to see first, before I could believe. Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe. Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. But even then, could I ever bring myself to believe in anything irrational, mystical, uncanny? Or make myself sufficiently fanatical to convince anyone else? This is ridiculous. My job is hard enough as it is.
The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge Page 25