The Secret Knowledge (13 page)

He’s too disconcerted to continue practising, he feels stifled and needs to go outside. He’s in the park later when his mobile rings, it’s his agent, Michael. They haven’t spoken for a while. Conroy initially keeps walking, almost fooling himself with an air of importance as they discuss business, then feels the need to sit down and finds a vacant bench.

“I’m afraid they’ve cancelled, David.” It was to be a festival appearance in France; Conroy was looking forward to it.

“Then there’s nothing in the diary for next season.”

“That’s how it looks. I’ll keep trying. Might need to widen the net a bit.”

Conroy knows his agent means: you might need to lower your expectations even further. “I’m working on an interesting new piece,” Conroy tells him, wondering how much to say about Klauer, hoping to generate a sense of mystery and anticipation. The gambit fails.

“Let’s hope you get a chance to perform it,” is all Michael can offer. “Times are hard. There are always new names coming through.”

“Like Paul Morrow, for instance.”

“I’d hardly call him new.”

A boy of three or four has stopped to stare at Conroy, face of ice-cream-smeared innocence. Poor bastard, Conroy thinks, you don’t know what’s in store. The mother comes and bundles her child to safety.

“I saw Morrow at Tune Inn,” says Conroy.

“I saw him last week. Looking a bit podgy, I thought. Don’t reckon he’ll be able to do the
enfant terrible
thing much longer.”

“How about the recording idea we discussed?”

“Forget it. You know what downloads have done to the market. Look at the pop acts, even they’ve gone back to touring, only way they can make money. We need to get you on the road again, David. If the South Bank won’t have you there’s always plan B.”

“I thought we were already further down the alphabet than that.”

The agent’s professional chirpiness suddenly acquires a tone of genuine humanity. “Don’t lose hope, David.”

In the evening he’s got the Klemperer
Missa Solemnis
on the stereo but can’t concentrate on the music, he feels uneasy, a stranger in his own home. All the doors and windows are locked, he went round and checked, yet he’s still nervous, and every so often pulls at the curtain to see who might be roaming in the darkness outside: the mysterious youths or the confidence trickster who invented them. He’s startled by the ringing of his landline, wonders if it’s his agent again bringing better news, but it’s Claude Verrier who can hear the background music and asks if it’s a bad time. Conroy says no and silences Beethoven with a turn of the control.

“I’m just back from Paris,” Verrier says brightly, he’s been doing business there, makes many such trips. “How’s Klauer? Ready for performance?”

“Getting there.” Once Conroy has retrieved the slow movement from his student he’ll still need a few more weeks to practise and memorise it all, but he knows he’ll get them anyway.

“And what do you think? Have you worked out its secret?”

Conroy perceives a note of irony; Verrier is sufficiently sophisticated to know that music, if it is of any worth at all, is not the bearer of a discoverable message. “The first movement is best,” he declares flatly.

“And the finale?” asks Verrier. “Still a
danse macabre
, a black joke?”

“People can interpret it how they like, I don’t care for biographical analysis. Too much room for error.”

At Verrier’s end the sound of a station or air terminal, place of perpetual motion. Then the man’s voice. “He really died, though.”

“What?”

“I’ve seen the death certificate. Klauer’s buried in Père Lachaise, I went and looked, a very fine headstone though I don’t suppose many tourists have noticed it.”

A new twist, the latest enharmonic modulation. “What about the newspaper report you showed me, the public meeting in Scotland?”

“What do you think?”

“A coincidence… an impostor.”

“The latter more likely. But still not an answer.”

Conroy’s being teased, manipulated. The possibility occurs to him: all is fake, Verrier is another fraud.

“I’ve been finding out more about him,” says the dealer. “And about the company he kept. Seems Klauer was associated with followers of some obscure philosopher.”

“Where have you found this information?”

“They believed in a sort of multiple reality. I don’t understand the details, nonsense anyway I expect, though apparently there are physicists nowadays who reckon there may be something in it.”

“What are you saying?”

“He died. And did not die.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“There’s evidence of both.”

“The authorities could dig up that grave in Père Lachaise and find an empty box…”

“Or one full of bones,” Verrier says calmly, untroubled by the tannoy announcement that almost drowns his voice. “In any case, there’s other evidence. I managed to locate a photograph of Klauer, I’ll e-mail it to you. Quite a dashing figure, jet-black hair, fine moustache, a studio portrait, background’s meant to be trees, I think. He’s standing proudly in a white suit with his hat under his arm, could almost be a character out of Proust.”

“You said there was other evidence.”

“And you didn’t let me finish,” Verrier says with relaxed firmness. “I also followed up the story of the meeting in Scotland. There was a big political protest at the time about working hours, culminated in a rally in Glasgow that turned into a riot, some historians have called it the closest that Britain came to a communist revolution.”

“I’ve never heard of this.”

“Battle of George Square, 1919, look it up for yourself. Klauer was there.”

“How can you say that?”

“I found a photo showing a group of protesters, he’s in it. I’ll send you that, too.”

“Then he didn’t die.”

“The Paris police saw his body, his family identified it. He died.”

“This is madness.”

“Who cares, think of the interest it’ll generate. Possibly with a bit more digging we’d find the truth. One truth. But does it matter? Each story works: the tragic composer killing himself and having his identity stolen by a fraudster. Or Klauer the fraudster, discarding his old life to start anew. Let the audience believe both or neither. They want music, not fact.”

Conroy should say he will have nothing more to do with this, yet knows it may be the last chance to redeem his career. A choice between two kinds of futility, two forms of weightless oblivion. Klauer dared to have both, to leap and live. “All right,” he says. “What happens next?”

The dignified couple arriving for dinner at the Hotel de Francia are greeted by a low bow from the proprietor and the stern approval of the Generalissimo whose hand-tinted photograph glowers from the wall behind. “Good evening once again,” Senor Suner says to his clients with unctuous cordiality, adopting imperfectly but adequately their native French. “Would monsieur and madame care for their usual table?” It has been theirs only twice before but that is enough to establish a tradition; with a snap of his fingers, Senor Suner summons Pablo, the waiter, and tells him in Spanish to prepare for the two guests in the dining room.

“We will be joined by others,” the grey-haired Frenchman breaks in, a man imposing in both manner and dress, with the air of a businessman and a wife of comparable age whose mature beauty owes itself not entirely to good connections with the black market in cosmetics.

Suner, pleasantly surprised at the prospect of further distinguished custom, holds Pablo in check. “A second couple?” he inquires.

“We shall see,” the Frenchman replies cryptically, then to his wife says, “Yvette, would you mind if I have a word with our host?” She follows Pablo to the dining room, the swinging open of the curtained glass door briefly releasing the impertinent crackle of a gramophone; then when it is closed, Monsieur Carreau says quietly to Suner, “A group of refugees left Banyuls this morning, intending to cross the border.”

“Jews?”

“Mostly, yes; also some agitators. The French police know about them. They don’t have exit visas.”

Suner follows it all perfectly well, given that the scenario is an everyday occurrence, yet rubs his chin at his guest’s last remark. “The police let them go up the mountain, though they lack visas?”

Carreau nods. “The civil guard on this side have also been informed. The refugees will be brought to your hotel to stay overnight, then returned.”

This is unexpected news. Suner had immediately known, when Monsieur Carreau spoke the other night about “shipping interests”, exactly what was meant by the term, the present major item of cross-border trade being people, usually on their way through Spain to Lisbon and then America. The restaurant of his small hotel, in a fishing town notable only for its strategic location, is the regular haunt of under-cover Gestapo men, informers and fugitives, all offered a warm welcome and a hearty meal as long as they can pay for it. But Suner is not used to having his establishment serve as a detention centre. “Who’ll pay the bill?” he asks bluntly.

“They are persons of means,” Carreau assures him, unable to conceal a note of disgust at such plebeian concerns. “You will not be left out of pocket.”

“Then I shall assist the authorities in whatever way I can,” Suner avers, touching his moustache where a bead of sweat has lodged, and bowing once again when monsieur moves towards the dining-room door. “Pablo will be pleased to tell you about tonight’s dishes, and may I cordially recommend the sea bass.”

Such pretensions are typical of Suner and the grimy pension he runs. Monsieur Carreau finds the dining room almost deserted; a young couple huddle in one corner, furtively studying the menu, while in another a gaunt man sits alone with a glass of wine, fingering the stem with a jilted look that could be the poor mask of a spy. Carreau’s “usual” table is out of earshot, conveniently close to the gramophone that on his last visit he requested to be turned down. Pablo must have remembered; it might on this occasion be necessary to ask for a raising of volume. Yvette watches her husband’s approach impassively. “Have you decided yet?” he asks her, sitting down.

“The waiter said something about fish and I nodded, then he went away. I don’t know if that constituted an order.”

Carreau laughs and takes her hand which lies on the crumb-specked table. “Darling,” he says fondly, but the disdainful lowering of her eyes makes him trail off.

Yvette listens to the music, murmuring half-forgotten lyrics to the dance band’s melody, then stops and in a low voice says, “When do you think they’ll get here?”

Carreau isn’t sure. “I hear that the walk over the mountains can take ten, maybe twelve hours. Depends how fit they are. And how long the police hold them.”

The door springs open; it is a new group of diners, all Spanish in appearance: two men in suits, a smartly dressed woman, a boy of nine or ten. The waiter comes and speaks to them rapidly and with familiarity; Yvette is unable to follow but Carreau listens carefully, and seeing his wife’s anxiety says softly to her, “It’s not them. We’ll know when we see them.”

Outside, in the lobby, Senor Suner is speaking quietly on the telephone to the local chief of police. “Yes, Juan, I have rooms for them, but I hope this isn’t going to be a regular occurrence. I don’t want my hotel being turned into a prison.”

And at the other end of the line, the police chief momentarily puts his hand over the mouthpiece to tell the deputy waiting at his desk, “Take them now.” There they are, sitting on wooden chairs in his office, five women, a teenage boy and an overweight spectacled gentleman with a black leather briefcase at his feet, all exhausted from their walk and dumbfounded by their treatment. It is as if the rules have suddenly been changed, just for them.

Yvette flicks away a crumb from the tablecloth. “You do promise me they’ll go free?”

“Of course,” Carreau nods. “That’s the arrangement.” He leans closer to his wife. “We’re dealing with small-town minor functionaries; the only thing they understand is the gleam of gold. Everybody’ll get what they want.”

“But the refugees…”

“They want to leave France illegally and we’re helping them do it.”

“That’s not how it must seem to them right now.”

“It’s the way it has to be.” The music stops, and while Pablo goes to replace the record on the gramophone, Carreau glances cautiously towards the silent man with the wine glass. Only when an operatic aria strikes up does he resume speaking. “You know I’m doing this for you, Yvette, don’t you? All these years, all the searching and gathering, all the running and hiding, it’s been for you.”

“I know that’s what you think, Louis.”

“It’s what we both know. And now we shall add another piece, we shall draw another step closer. It’s the only way. He needs something we can give, he owns something we want.”

Yvette looks at him with time-worn sadness. “But a step closer to what, Louis? To happiness? To the grave? You say it’s all about protecting me…”

“Yes,” he snaps, unable to suppress his impatience. “It’s about not letting them do to you what they did to Pierre.”

“And I thank you for it,” she whispers, “you know I do, I always have. But we’re getting old. You seem as determined as ever to go on, you’ll never rest until you’ve put every single piece of the jigsaw together; yet I, Louis, I am tired. If they caught me right now, yes, even if that fellow over there with his empty glass should turn out to be one of them, and if he should come at me with a dagger as soon as we get the documents, you know, Louis, I’m not even sure I’d have the strength to fight. Perhaps I’d really want him to slit my throat, perhaps I’d feel relief at last. I never asked for any of this…”

“I know, darling.” Carreau takes her hand again. “But you’re the one Pierre chose. No one can alter the path of destiny.”

It is a word she has heard too many times. Walking as a young woman in the park nearly thirty years ago, waiting for Pierre to arrive, the word was as thrilling as the big wheel they rode on; destiny meant marriage to a genius, or so she thought. What she got instead were a few relics: a piano score, a lock of hair, the fragile orchid he wore that terrible day – she even thought she could see a spot of blood on it. And the letters, the warnings, the strange and threatening events that Louis, her brave warrior, arrived to rescue her from. He’s been rescuing her ever since. Her life has been a long and wearying journey over a mountain, with no indication of who her pursuers really are, or why they want to harm her.