Free The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge by Patricia Duncker

therefore his working life, but worse, far worse than this, she occupied his imagination, like a conquering army, whose troops and tanks, camped out at every street corner, now controlled all access to his soul. He gazed at his wife, desperate. For every action was now performed before the cool, appraising eyes of the all-seeing Judge, about whom he still knew next to nothing.
    In the beginning, five years before, the Judge created all the circumstances that could reasonably lead to another meeting. Almost a month after Anton Laval’s funeral, when all attempts on Schweigen’s part to contact her had been greeted with a shattering clatter of the portcullis, he had begun to plan reckless measures. He could not accept that this affair was a matter easily settled in one afternoon. Then her voice, steady and precise, appeared in his ear, as if they had just finished speaking some moments before.
    ‘Monsieur le Commissaire? C’est Dominique Carpentier à l’appareil. I have arranged to meet the judge who dealt with the Swiss departure. Just to talk things over. Given that so many of the families are agitating about the lack of an enquiry. Have you seen Le Nouvel Observateur ? Non? Marie-Cécile Laval has written an article about her brother that has provoked a good deal of correspondence. It reads more like a self-justifying obituary than an explanation. But you should read it. I’ve brought you a copy, just in case.’
    ‘Where are you?’ snapped Schweigen, incensed by her cool and aroused simply by the sound of her voice.
    ‘At Strasbourg airport. On my way to Bern. Would you be free, by any chance, and able to join me?’
    The hotel in Bern overlooked the Parliament buildings and a famous café, which the government patronised, strolling across the square, bent on consuming mid-morning coffee and cakes during the breaks between sessions. The scale of the buildings, both the Parliament and the political coffee house, allowed them to settle comfortably alongside one another, domestic and charming. As they sat in the restaurant the evening sun illuminated the crisp yellow linen tablecloth and the Judge’s olive arms. Schweigen counted the ribbed stitches on the front of her white shirt, and noticed that the veins in the semi-precious stones in her ears were not symmetrical. He looked everywhere rather than into her face, the large glasses and the fabulous, magnified eyes. He heard the amusement in her voice, like a melody played on the oboe, every time she ceased to speak about the investigation and addressed him directly as a man to whom she had once made love.
    ‘I’ve booked a suite with two rooms. Just in case you wanted to endorse our respectable cover story.’ She grinned at him.
    ‘How could you be so sure I’d come with you?’ Schweigen had actually told the truth at home, or at least the geographical truth – that he was called away to Bern, activated his mother-in-law, and hurtled off to Switzerland, trailing in the Judge’s first-class wake on the midday train.
    ‘Ah well,’ said the Judge, ‘here you are.’ And he was granted a smile more beautiful, more generous and affectionate than he had ever dared to long for during all the manic hours he had spent gazing at her handwriting, whispering her name. André Schweigen felt quite unhinged. This awkwardness, which accompanied his passion like a drinking chorus in the middle of Mass, then proved his undoing.
    Upon the table, beside their scraped dessert plates, was a Sträußchen, a little bouquet of wild flowers in a decorated pot. The hotel, now owned by a chain, had succumbed to the desolate economics of capitalism and replaced the fresh scented flowers, which had once enchanted visitors to the former family-run establishment, by an authentic plastic-textile cluster of edelweiss. Schweigen tipped the candle too close to the green-and-white bouquet, which caught fire at once and began to smoulder. For a moment he did not notice what he had done. A