The Blasphemer: A Novel (22 page)

He is distracted from his staring by the specks of blood appearing on his cheek, watching as they grow in size, drip down over his chin into the sink, and mix sickeningly with the water. After splashing his face again, he looks around for a sheet of paper and tears off tiny strips that he uses as plasters. There is a further minute of staring before he becomes aware of the scratching being amplified through the gramophone horn. He raises the gooseneck, lifts the record off the box and snaps it across his knee. It breaks neatly in two. One half of the label reads, ‘I’m Henery The’. The other half reads, ‘Eighth, I Am’. Perhaps this is part of my punishment, Morris reflects. In my own circle of hell the only recordings available are from the music hall.

Standing in his vest and braces, with the towel draped around his neck, Morris takes from his wallet a tattered score of the first movement of Mahler’s last completed symphony. He smoothes it out on the desk before him and contemplates it. It had been presented to him by the composer himself – the two had met for dinner in Leipzig in 1910 – and it is annotated in Mahler’s own pencil marks: ‘
das Lied
’, ‘2×3, 3×2’,
‘der Abschied
’, ‘
mit höchster Gewalt
’. It includes
words in English, too. ‘Like a shadow’. ‘Love and hate’. ‘Youth and death’. It is signed ‘Gustav’.

In the restaurant that day, a young woman had come to their table asking for an autograph. After that, an excited chatter had run between the tables like an electric current, and the quartet playing waltzes in the background increased their volume and tempo. Mahler, awkward in wing collar and pince-nez, looked discomfited by the attention and when, at a murmured signal, three waiters simultaneously lifted the silver dish covers and an expectant hush fell on the restaurant, he looked as if he might be sick. Gradually, other diners lost interest and got on with their own meals. Morris was hungry and made short work of his braised duck with port wine, but Mahler barely touched his, instead pushing mushrooms around his plate with his fork. He was agitated. Morris, having heard the rumours about the composer’s failing health, asked if he was unwell. Mahler shook his head and, in a subdued voice, confided his terror of writing a ninth numbered symphony – ‘the curse of the Ninth’, he called it. Beethoven and Bruckner had died soon after writing their ninth symphonies. So had Dvo
ák and Schubert. Mahler was afraid the same would happen to him. ‘The ninth is a limit,’ he said. ‘The ninth circle of hell is the last. You can go no farther.’ This, he explained, was why he had not given a number to the symphonic work –
Das Lied von der Erde
– which followed his Eighth, but instead described it merely as
Eine Symphonie für eine Tenor- und eine Alt- (oder Bariton-) Stimme und Orchester (nach Hans Bethges ‘Die chinesische Flöte’
).

This confession brought him to the point of their meeting. He had written two versions of the opening and this, he said, handing over a score, was the more contemplative. No one knew about it and no one was to know, not while he was alive at least. The composer felt that for as long as it remained a secret, the symphony would remain uncompleted and he could go on living. Mahler wanted Morris to conduct it in London, but only after his death. A conductor himself, he had long admired Morris’s integrity, as well as his light hand. He was convinced that only Morris could do it justice. Only Morris would understand the melancholy beneath the
anger: the composer looking back over his life and saying goodbye.

Mahler’s terror had been prescient. Shortly after completing the symphony he discovered he was dying. The doctors hadn’t told him this in so many words, but he knew. He fell ill with a streptococcal blood infection and conducted
Das Lied
in a fever. He died soon after. And before Morris had a chance to conduct the alternative version, the war began.

Now, as his dove-grey eyes flit over the notes in front of him, Morris feels a tingling in his brow, as if some soothing balm has been applied there. His spirit is being raised to some higher metaphysical plane and an invisible hand is leading him to some inner world, the resting place of Mahler’s soul. This version of the first movement seems to be more sublime, tender and full of hope than the original. Although he has memorized it, he cannot quite hear it in his head, yet. The prospect of conducting it in public one day is, he knows, his only bulwark against insanity, his only defence against the hounds baying at the door.

Andrew is whittling a stick in the garden, filling the hours until his next call-out in the afternoon. Four days have passed since he missed his moment to kiss Madame Camier, and he has been able to think of little else. She has been behaving as if it never happened. He begins to doubt himself. Perhaps nothing did happen. The sharp sky is empty and the warmth of the morning sun, after the cool interior of the house, is melting through to his bones. He rolls up his sleeves and plucks a blowzy white rose from the garden. It loses a couple of its petals as he removes its thorns.

‘Is that for me?’

Andrew turns to see Madame Camier standing directly behind him.

‘Have you no work today?’

‘Not until this afternoon.’

Madame Camier considers this. ‘Would you join me for a walk?’

‘Where to?’ He doesn’t mean to say this. He should have said yes, of course he would.

‘There is a river half a mile away. We could have … We say
déjeuner sur l’herbe
. What do you call it?’

‘A picnic?’

‘Yes, a picnic.’ She gathers her skirt and walks inside the house. Ten minutes later she emerges carrying a small hamper under her arm. She puts it down as Andrew, having regained his composure, presents the rose to her with a half-bow. She holds it to her nose and tucks it behind the ribbon in her hair before reaching for the hamper again. There is fluency to her movements drawn from habit. Since her amputation, her simplest actions take on a three-stage complexity.

‘Let me carry that,’ Andrew says.

‘I am fine,’ Madame Camier says, putting the hamper down and lifting one side of it so that Andrew can lift the other. ‘I am strong, you know.’

They walk slowly, following a path that skirts woodland, swinging the hamper between them, crackling beechmast underfoot. When they come to a stile, Madame Camier hands the hamper to Andrew, gathers her skirt up and climbs over. As she leaves the path to stroll in an arc, Andrew stays on it – and when Madame Camier catches up with him she begins treading on his heels deliberately. Smiling, he pretends he hasn’t noticed. She overtakes, plucks a long feathery wild grass and, walking backwards, begins swishing at his face. It tickles. He tries not to laugh. They walk over a carpet of wood anemones, savouring the mushroomy, pine-woody smells, and reach a meander in the river where the water is sluggish and damselflies are skimming the surface with their gauzy wings. They lay the hamper down and break off chunks of bread. Madame Camier pats the ground beside her. Andrew shuffles over, avoiding a bed of nettles, enjoying the warmth of the soil under him.

Madame Camier throws a pebble and they watch the ripples slap and plunge against the reed-fringed bank.

Andrew uncorks a bottle of red wine, takes a swig from it and shudders at its warm and bitter taste before handing it over.
Madame Camier takes a sip, lights two cigarettes and inhales quick jabs of smoke before handing one over to him. They both lie on their backs, staring at a single fleecy cloud that has appeared. It is motionless. They blow languorous smoke rings to keep it company. When they finish they toss the butts in the river and listen to them hiss.

I can’t stop thinking about you, Madame Camier.

Andrew wants to say this but the words will not come. Instead he lies on his front and studies her eyes. The colour changes according to the light, sometimes grey, sometimes blue. Now they appear green. When she closes them, he wants to kiss the lids. She raises her chin. His own eyes are closed. When he opens them again he can see her cheeks are flushed. She holds his hand.

Five minutes pass before Madame Camier sits up and reaches for some cheese, breaks off a piece and chews on it in silence. Andrew does the same. Knowing that the taste he is experiencing is the same as that which she is experiencing makes him feel an almost claustrophobic intimacy with her. They eat small rations of cold tongue and ham that Madame Camier has saved and both drink again from the neck of the bottle. Andrew thinks he has never felt happier and knows that he can never be as happy again – it would be impossible – a sweetly melancholic thought. He swallows and looks inside the hamper for a knife. When he finds one he uses it to try to cut off a small lock of Madame Camier’s hair. It takes several attempts and only works when he makes the lock smaller.

‘
Pourquoi?
’ she asks.

‘Proof.’

‘Of what?’

‘That you were here with me. The two of us alone.’ He lies on his back with one hand pillowing his head and touches her lips with the tip of his finger. A moment later, when an old man appears on the opposite bank following the river path, Madame Camier smiles but Andrew turns pale. Strangers make him nervous. The old man looks across at them in puzzlement before becoming distracted by a smell that has reached his nose. He inspects the sole of each shoe in turn then continues on his way.

Madame Camier rests her head in the crook of Andrew’s arm and slaps at a bluebottle on her calf. They both stare at the cloud, lost in their feelings, before sleep closes their eyes.

It is cooler when Andrew wakes, the sun having disappeared behind scudding clouds. Feeling dryness in his mouth, he opens and closes it several times, and his gummy noises wake Madame Camier. He scratches, props himself up on his elbows and realizes that it was the sudden coolness that woke him, as someone sleeping in front of a fire might be woken by a passing body. Madame Camier steps out of her dress to reveal that she is wearing a fulllength swimming costume underneath, one that has sleeves long enough to cover her stump. She strides to the river’s edge and hesitates a moment before jumping in. Andrew strolls over, stretching and yawning. The water is a greeny-brown, its undercurrents stirring up silt. When Madame Camier resurfaces, flicking her hair back and gulping for breath, Andrew asks: ‘Cold?’

Madame Camier can’t keep her teeth from chattering as she replies. ‘N-no. I-t is l-lovely.’

The atmosphere is close and sultry. The river is smoking. ‘Going to rain soon,’ Andrew says in English. ‘Midges are low.’ As if in acknowledgement of this there is a distant roll of thunder.

‘Come in.’

‘Don’t have my costume.’

‘You don’t need one.’

He looks around before slipping his braces and tugging off his shirt, trousers and boots, so that he is wearing only his long johns. As he removes the second boot, he hops on one foot. With his fingers pinching his nose he takes a running leap. The water is so cold that, when he comes up for air, he cannot, for a moment, breathe. Madame Camier splashes him. He splashes her back. After they have been treading water for a while, the cold begins to bite and they can feel the first pinpricks of rain. Soon large raindrops are puckering the surface of the water, and, as they fall more intensely, they bounce off it. On the bank, the dusty soil absorbs the water and begins to turn greasy.

‘We must get our clothes undercover,’ Madame Camier shouts
above the noise of the rain. As she scrambles out, she slips over. Andrew splashes after her, catches hold of her ankle and flops down beside her. Their cold, goosefleshed calves scrape together as Madame Camier struggles free and crawls on a few yards, laughing to herself. The soil is turning to mud and, as Andrew squelches it in his fist, he has a sense memory of the trenches. He smears the mud on his arms and over his long johns, which are sagging with the weight of water. As gently as he can, he rolls her over so that she is resting on one hip. This makes her sleeve slip back. Seeing him glancing at her stump, she reaches across to cover it with her hand. Andrew lifts the hand away and kisses the meld of skin where the amputation was performed. He kisses her neck, enjoying her involuntary shiver as his whiskers tickle, then he touches her mouth with his fingertip again. When she takes the finger in her mouth, the sudden sensation of warmth and wetness makes Andrew’s heart dilate. He withdraws the finger in shock. They lie together, she with her back curled up to him, he with one arm looping under her neck, the other tucked under her knees, clinging to her, oblivious to the rain.

Andrew’s next job is out of the town along a potholed lane corrupted by tussocky grass and lined with tall poplars. At the end of this he comes to a spinney. He recognizes it as the route he followed with Madame Camier three days earlier. The riverbank must be near. Why has she been so distant with him since that happened? Is she embarrassed that he saw her stump? Did she want him to kiss her? Why had he let the moment slip away once more?

There is blossom on some of the trees and lime-green buds on others. A smell of garlic and elderflower pricks the air. Andrew inhales deeply, not caring that he might be lost. Another lane hidden by thickening hedgerows leads on to a blue haze of open meadow. This looks more promising. On closer inspection he can
see the ground is misty with bluebells nodding in the breeze. Beyond it is the farmhouse, his destination.