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

dramatic shift in the Judge’s attention triggered the alarm and a cloud of black smoke rose up from the table. The worst of it was that no one else, not even the waiters, or the two businessmen sitting next to them, who actually had a computer open on the table, took the slightest bit of notice. Schweigen tried to quell the flames with his bare hands, burning his thumb in the process. The Judge snatched up her yellow linen napkin, folded it rapidly in two and smothered the blaze in one swift gesture. The plastic flowers sizzled faintly beneath her ruthless grasp and then went out. She tipped her water glass over the napkin as a precaution, so that a small damp heap of charred remains defaced the table.
    ‘Have you burned your hand?’ The Judge was genuinely concerned. ‘There’s a sinister smell of roasting flesh.’ Then she laughed softly. ‘Come upstairs, André. I’ve got some antiseptic cream in my suitcase.’
    And that was the second time she had called him by his first name. For ever afterwards he always remembered this combination of emotions, chagrin, embarrassment, pain and joy – the pure joy of acknowledgement and recognition. She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me. He no longer cared about anything else; the woman he loved without let or hindrance had gazed upon him with undisguised tenderness and addressed him by his name. She loves me.
    *  *  *
     
    The heating in the chalet had not yet risen to the first floor. Schweigen prowled through the children’s rooms, full of video games, bright activity centres, plastic picture books and half-built constructions in Lego. The toys were beginning to get to him. He saw building kits, battleships and play-stations that he had bought for his own boy, the same baseball cap with the bright logo, similar boots. He bristled at these abandoned rooms and young lives sliced in two; his anger now rising in exact proportion to his approaching exhaustion. He wished them all back here, now, so that he could prosecute the lot. As he retreated from the main children’s room he turned out the light, and it was then that he became aware of the stars. André Schweigen looked up.
    Above him, all across the ceiling, glowing with soft phosphorescence, glittered a pattern of lights, carefully designed to mirror the night sky at the winter solstice. The children had gazed at that sky night after night and then died, their faces raised to the same pattern of stars, churning across the void, following the earth where they lay, staring wide-eyed into eternity. Schweigen completely forgot his self-imposed formal manner towards the Judge, which he reserved for professional occasions, and yelled down the stairs, ‘Dominique! Viens ici. Viens vite!’
    The Judge pattered up towards him, steadying her glasses and buttoning her coat. They stood, side by side, gazing at the gleaming stars. There was the sign, the same one that the Swiss police had pulled ruthlessly from the kitchen noticeboard, tearing at the edges, as they rushed to eliminate all the unintelligible symbols that only augmented their fears and the apparent complexity of the case. Schweigen had the creeps; it was like entering a pharaoh’s tomb.
    ‘Well, what’s the matter, André?’
    She lowered her voice. He was reassured by her steadiness and her immediate perception of his unease. He no longer felt the jubilant flush of adrenalin; the horror of the massacre on the forest floor pressed against his back, with the stealthy weight of an animal, hunting him down.
    ‘It’s the children. The toys. I don’t know –’ He petered out. She peeled off her right red glove, reached up towards him, and gently touched his face.
    ‘They’ll never come home. All their things are here. My boy’s got the same things. And they’ll never come home.’
    The Judge put her arms around him, and rocked him close to her warmth. He looked into her magnified eyes, illuminated by the fraudulent night sky above them, and flung away