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

of their urgent shouts. The lower reaches of An der Obertrave appeared to contain only houses, silent, domestic. On her left the gabled buildings stood uncurtained, lit up, like the backdrop of an Advent calendar. She peered into their bright interiors, the gold pine tables decorated with candles and yellow flowers, vivid cushions and low lamps, half expecting to see hosts of angels and bewildered shepherds, receiving the good news. Planted vats of flowers and bulbs lurked by the festive doorways, many already filled with tiny green spears, rising to meet the inexorable spring. On her right, beyond the fragile early green of the trees, swam the river, shimmering dark, a faint mist hovering above the ripples and the lost floating leaves. She paused, examining the washing lines. These strange structures, the wires almost invisible, stood by the river, and the white sheets, hanging in still folds, now hardened, kissed by the plunging frost.
    The interior of the cathedral sizzled with humming floodlights and the orchestra, clamped in a semicircle, their heads bent over their illuminated scores, resembled a Vatican conclave of dark cardinals, buried in prayer, before casting lots. Then the second violin raised her head, and began. The terrifying sadness of these high, yearning notes sliced through Dominique Carpentier’s concentration, but only for a moment. The underlying cold beneath the heaters, the muggy damp and halogen brilliance sent her scurrying down the side aisle, keeping close to the darkness beside a parched white row of baroque tombs. The massive structure of red brick was painted white inside; huge white Gothic vaults, dusty and darkened with candle smoke, loomed above her, harbouring the cold. Everywhere else was filled with sound technicians and cables. The concert was being recorded and broadcast live later that night on Nord Deutsche Rundfunk. The Judge sought out a secure perch from which she could observe, without being seen.
    The nave was divided into distinct sections with raised seating beneath the west windows, and across a dozen of these fixed rows sprawled a mass of bored young people in white shirts and dark jackets, clutching floppy green scores of music. The choir, waiting. Around the altar spun the orchestra, in an ever-widening arc, and before them, white head bowed, listening intently, stood the giant, skeletal form of the Composer. The Judge faded into a pillar for a moment, to be quite sure, and to assess the difference made by five years. He wore a black jacket over a white T-shirt with a faded symbol across his chest; his white hair hung over his eyes and forehead as he bent down, studying the score, gently marking time as the solitary violin steadied and soared. Then suddenly he looked up and the floodlights coupled with the rimless glare of his eyes; the orchestra flexed, like a great beast awoken. The strings raised their bows, expectant, tense.
    The Judge took hold of her shawl, drew its mask more closely round her face and tiptoed up the steps beneath the Gothic clock beyond the apse. The font, a brass treasure with a giant candelabrum poised just above it, dripping real wax, lay in a sunken circular pit surrounded by chairs. She had just vanished into a large straw seat with oaken arms and a high back when the low murmur from the strings arose, blocked out the woodwind and settled into a peculiar, haunting monolithic sound, subtle and vast, at once near and distant, as if the notes originated in some far corner of the world, but came back, bearing an echo of silence and darkness, by a special grace. The Judge caught her breath, arranged her shawl and settled her nerves. She found herself corralled by painted Gothic saints, somewhat larger than life, brandishing symbolic animals, doves, parrots and a chubby leopard, their dusty eyes all fixed upon the Virgin. She watched the Composer, and him alone; the rest was nothing but the backcloth. She had not expected to see him, conducting a