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

Day. The mechanism inside the Lettneruhr, as it was called, had survived the RAF air attack in March 1942 , but was considered too delicate to be stopped by anyone but an expert in seventeenth-century clocks. The expert had been summoned from Hamburg and was in fact busy with the saw-tooth wheels during the rehearsal. Unfortunately he managed to arrest only one of the inexorable wooden figures on the apex. The quarter-hours were already silenced. He had stopped not Death, but Judgement. Therefore, as six o’ clock arrived in a trembling hiss of machinery, the hour glass turned over and into the eerie surge of unearthly music came that very human toll, calling us all to our final engagement, concerning whose approaching moment we possess neither power nor choice.
    Dong, dong, dong. The hammer collided with the bell and Death’s nodding head wobbled above the severed hands, which now divided the clock.
    The Composer exploded, leaped from the podium with startling rapidity and blazed through the church like a comet, his white hair flying. He stormed straight towards the Judge, who shrank, rigid with surprise and alarm, back into the bishop’s throne. She had heard the bell, but because she sat behind the clock she had no idea what had occurred. The Composer plunged up the steps and pounded upon the antique wooden door, which held the secrets of the clock.
    ‘Um Gottes Willen, was machen Sie denn eigentlich?’ he roared. ‘What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?’
    He was a mere ten feet away from Dominique Carpentier. She saw the liver spots on the back of his clenched hands as he dragged the door open, revealing a gnome-like figure in the entrails of the clock.
    ‘Vorsicht! Mensch! Passen Sie doch auf!’ yelled the expert. ‘Watch it. Be careful! That door’s fragile!’
    A nerve throbbed in the Composer’s throat. The two men screeched at one another. The Judge, certain that the Composer had never even seen her, picked her moment carefully and slipped away. As she pattered past the orchestra she noticed their amused relief that his rage had settled upon another, different victim.
    *  *  *
     
    ‘Where have you been? I looked everywhere. Reception said you’d gone out. Why don’t you ever leave messages?’ Gaëlle, surrounded by empty crisp packets and Coke cans, crouched indignantly amongst her scrunched duvet and cushions. ‘I’ve watched two hours of cartoons on TV 5 and four lots of news on CNN. Are we ever going to eat? And don’t you want to do some preparation for the interview? Where have you been?’
    The Judge sat down on the edge of the bed and offered her Greffière a boiled sweet. Gaëlle, now aged twenty-eight, could still revert to torrents of childish demand when they were alone together. Now she bristled at the Judge, but accepted the sweet as a peace offering.
    ‘I have been doing a little unexpected preparation for tomorrow. The Composer was rehearsing in the cathedral and I went to watch.’
    ‘Really?’ Gaëlle’s eyes widened. ‘What’s he like? Schweigen says he’s a monster.’
    ‘A perfectionist. Short-tempered. Choleric. Lots of white hair. Physically very powerful for a man of sixty-four.’
    ‘Ughhhh. You didn’t tell me he was so old.’ Gaëlle put out her tongue and revealed a large silver spike, solid enough to endanger the enamel on her teeth.
    ‘Hmmm,’ said the Judge, ‘you’d better not smile tomorrow. And don’t wear that T-shirt with the slogans.’
    *  *  *
     
    The Composer’s house in the Effengrube stepped upwards into a Gothic red-brick gable, a little lopsided, but still elegant and luminous, pierced by a steeple pattern of tiny windows. The unshuttered squares on the lower floors were larger, double-glazed and utterly clear, so that the sombre costumes of Gaëlle, now in a long, dark-purple coat, purchased that morning, and the Judge in flat shoes and Lincoln green, with tiny creases in her skirt, were reflected back, mirrored again in