Now he looks indignant. “The paper and ink have been checked…”
“Of course, I’m not doubting the authenticity. And it was a stupid comment, really. But I know what she’s getting at. Klauer’s style is unusual, hard to pin down, not ahead of its time but outside it.”
“Is it a piece you’d want to perform publicly?”
“Yes,” Conroy says at once, pauses, then adds, “It’d require a lot of preparation.”
“Would you have any particular venue in mind?”
Verrier is speaking like a true entrepreneur, but once more the faltering state of Conroy’s career risks exposure. “Somewhere small and intimate would be best.”
“Yet it seems so grand. The first movement’s huge.”
“Not the last, though.”
Verrier nods. “I noticed that, a curious falling off. I even wondered if it might be unfinished.”
The possibility occurred to Conroy when he played it; the finale opens with a melody that could be the near relation of a popular song, the movement as a whole has an atmosphere of lightness bordering on triviality. “Think of Schubert,” he says. “The G major or D major sonatas, those final movements that don’t go at all the way we expect, none of that Beethovenian climax and culmination. Instead something far closer to life.” Klauer’s finale, Conroy explains, is a danse macabre, a black comedy. “That’s his point: things end badly.”
“A marvellous theory,” Verrier concedes. “And that gunshot in the park — what a superb joke!” He pushes his half-eaten salad aside and reaches down to the briefcase beside him, opening it to retrieve some pages, one of which he slides across the table to Conroy who brings his reading glasses from his pocket.
“This is the newspaper report I mentioned in my letter,” Verrier explains while Conroy’s eyes focus on small old print he supposes to have come from a web archive: French text announcing the tragic accident. Then a second sheet pushed beneath his view, another press extract, this time in English. Verrier points to the date in the corner, 1919, and a headline further down the page: “Agitation at public meeting.” Conroy scans it without comprehension; Verrier’s finger offers further assistance.
A Frenchman, M. Pierre Klauer, also took the floor, making inflammatory remarks about his countryman, the infamous revolutionary, Blanqui.
Verrier sits back with an air of triumph. “He dies in 1913 then reappears six years later.”
“A different man, his namesake.”
“What are the odds? Individually, the first and second names are common enough, not in combination.”
“Then he didn’t die? Or someone stole his identity?”
Verrier shrugs. “It’s a mystery, the secret of Pierre Klauer.”
“Genius or fraud,” Conroy says thoughtfully.
“Possibly both. We really should try to get to the bottom of this before you premiere the work.”
“None of it affects the quality of the music.”
Verrier laughs. “You think so? What about the finale with its black comedy; the last word from a condemned man, or a prankster’s up-yours? When Klauer wrote it, did he know he was going to fake his death and leave the country, was he already the political revolutionary he apparently turned into? Is that the secret knowledge? But leave it to me, David, I’ll do the digging, you study the music. Quite a find, eh?” Verrier looks at his watch and says he has to leave for another meeting, he insists on paying, the amount too negligible to merit discussion or gratitude. The newspaper items go back inside his briefcase, his closing handshake accompanied by a voice lowered in seriousness. “I trust you not to mention this to anyone else. As owner of the manuscript, I have to ask you to keep the information confidential and your copy secure.” Then he exits, leaving Conroy to ponder the enigma of Pierre Klauer, and the pages he gave his student. He phones her at once.
“Paige, it’s David Conroy. There’s something we need to discuss. Could we meet?”
1919
It’s the evening of the meeting and the hall is full. On the platform, behind a long table, sit the committee whose nomenclature has, as Joe Baxter promised, gone unremarked, since the men and women crowding every available chair have more important concerns than spelling. John Quinn and Pierre Klauer sit side by side, Quinn rustling and reordering his scribbled notes while Klauer looks at the audience in front of him, the ranks of faces tired, determined, hopeful. He sees Jessie sitting near the front.
Quinn calls the meeting to order, his voice unsteady. He has never addressed a gathering as large as this, never seen so many hostile eyes. He quickly hands over to the regional head of one of the mining unions who outlines the case for reform, a man past fifty but still strong in appearance, his arguments clear, precise, and no different from what Quinn has been saying in print. Next is a representative of the Clyde Workers Committee who insists the campaign is not about undermining the existing order, only an attempt to create fairer working conditions and stave off the threat of mass unemployment. During the previous years there has been a working week of fifty-four hours or more, made necessary by warfare’s insatiable appetite, and some groups have profited from it: the manufacturers, landlords, speculators. But war has also raised the consciousness of the workers, not afraid to strike even when the government, under the false pretence of patriotism and national unity, made striking illegal. So we must again defend ourselves, the speaker says. We must look after our own folk.
Then Pierre Klauer gets to his feet. He has no script, no notes, and for a moment appears unsure what to say, though there is no trace of nervousness or reluctance in his manner, only a calm indifference to his surroundings, as if speaking to two or three people instead of as many hundred.
“I work at the Russell factory, like many of you. And you can tell that I am a Frenchman. So I cannot say much about the history of your country but instead will say something about my own. Half a century ago, the Prussians reached the outskirts of Paris and laid siege. The people ran out of meat and had to kill dogs and cats and horses. Zoo elephants were slaughtered and served to restaurant diners. The poor ate rats, until even the rats were gone. The government in Versailles capitulated, but not the people of Paris. Governments are often less patriotic than those they claim to represent. So while it suited Thiers and his cronies to make peace with German industrialists, the workers thought otherwise, and declared Paris a socialist republic, a commune that would fight on.
“The communards imprisoned various members of the ruling class; Thiers demanded their release. And the communards told him, we will free everyone if you in turn release, out of all the many political prisoners you hold, just one, the man we have chosen to be our president. Thiers said no. He signed a humiliating peace treaty with Prussia, and the commune was suppressed. Thousands of innocent men, women and children were slaughtered; shot or bayoneted as they tried to flee, lined against walls in summary executions until the streets of Paris were washed with proletarian blood.
“Who was the man Thiers feared so much that he would allow the deaths of all these people, and the hostages too, rather than free him to join the insurrection? His name was Louis-Auguste Blanqui. He had wielded a musket when Charles the Tenth was overthrown, was on the streets in 1848, and had suffered for it, kept in solitary confinement at Mont Saint-Michel in conditions that would have driven many men insane. At Belle Ile he grew so sick he was released in order to die — but instead this man with an iron constitution recovered and continued the struggle, until the grimy Fortress of Taureau became his final home.
“Blanqui was a small, wiry man, not at all handsome, prematurely aged by incarceration, white-haired by his forties, his face hollow, his clothes shabby. One day when he was in prison they told him his wife had died; he had barely seen her, or their son. He gave his life to the cause of revolution, renounced all human pleasure, all comfort, expected nothing except hardship. To someone like Thiers, feasting in Versailles with German bankers while the whole of Paris starved, this was incomprehensible. How can any man value justice more than money? How can anyone love freedom so much that he is prepared to spend three-quarters of his life in prison? You see, my friends, to the capitalist mentality, self-sacrifice is a mystery greater than the transubstantiation of the Host. A man who will not give a coin to a beggar will never understand someone willing to give his life for a stranger he calls comrade.”