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?”
1940. Spain
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.