The Blasphemer: A Novel (53 page)

Northern France. Second Monday of September, 1918

THOUGH HIS BILLET IS ONLY A TWO-MINUTE DRIVE AWAY FROM THE
police station where the condemned prisoner is being held, the journey takes Major Morris eight minutes – he keeps stopping to look at the steering wheel in his hands, as if unsure what it is. On two occasions, as revealed by tyre tracks on the grassy verge, the car weaves off the road and back on again. Upon reaching the billet, he climbs out unsteadily, leaving the engine running and the door open. A platoon of Welsh guardsmen stare openly at him as they march past, some giving a muffled cheer at what they assume is the sight of an officer the worse for drink. Their sergeant has to bark: ‘Eyes front!’

In the sanctuary of his billet, Morris mentally unfolds his score of Mahler’s Ninth, the one he has lost. As the memorized notes swim before his red-rimmed eyes, he removes his punch dagger from its scabbard and runs his thumb along its blade. With a heavy sigh, he raises it in the air as if it is a baton, closes his eyes and sees an orchestra before him – the perpendiculars of the strings, the balancing arches and curves of the cellos. He stands still for a moment before clenching his fist and giving a tiny, almost imperceptible flick of his wrist. An upbeat.

The first sounds are from the cellos to his left, below his podium. They are soft; the uneven throb of a heartbeat. Morris leaves a minute-long pause between the first two notes, indicating a sharper second beat, as if he is at a church door silencing a latecomer. From the back of the orchestra, the
answering sound: a French horn playing the same note – long, then short. With his mind’s eye, Morris looks across at the fourth horn – giving him assurance, bidding him to keep it pianissimo – before giving a taut, third beat to the right. He is into bar three now – the restrained entrance of the harp being plucked behind the first violins. It is joined by a loud horn phrase, rasping and harsh, the notes stopped with the horn player’s hand pressed into the bell. As the cello and the fourth horn continue their longshort heartbeat, Morris adds the delicate sound of the double basses from behind the cellos. They play a long-held harmonic, one octave higher. Now, at bar four, he encourages the second horn to play strongly but also to keep his hand pressed into the bell, making the sound suppressed and cruel. There is a stretching of time as he allows his second violins to begin their hypnotic melody. The bell-like tolling of the harp is replaced by a more gentle and yielding sound. With bar five comes a delicate, almost spectral shuddering from the violas: six notes with an accent on the first, agonizingly soft then falling away. He is conducting by heart rather than memory now. Though he has never yet managed to conduct this far, he knows what is coming. The stillness and lulling beauty of the opening herald a crashing dissonance, one as inevitable as death. His death. Mahler’s death. Private Kennedy’s death. Like two chief mourners, the second horn and bassoon enter at bar fourteen. With six beats, Morris introduces the first violins, asking them with his eyes to play so softly they will become shadows. The conductor’s arms are outstretched. His breath is held. The shape of his body is flowing upwards, reflecting the shape of the music, an elastic stretching of time. As he turns back to the cellos for a rising figure that will introduce the movement’s first loud sound, his brow furrows in pain. He wishes he didn’t have to hear what is coming, but come it must. The horn enters with a minor half-tone, a death knell, and, within two bars, Morris is in the middle of a dark, swirling fortissimo.

The crashing of guns.

He is intoxicated now, filmy with sweat, his shoulders expansive and his arms sweeping violently. With each fling comes a thrill of intensity. Before him, a thousand musicians are galvanized beyond control, a phantom army on the march. They are responding to every signal from his body, reading his eyes, his posture. They can sense, as he can sense, the power contained in the tip of his baton. Power enough to drive a man insane. His eyes are
closed tightly. The music in his head is tumultuous. His baton flails and thrashes. He demands urgency from the violins, from the sweeping machine guns, and he shakes his fist at the trombone and tuba, a signal to draw from them the most jarring, almost atonal sound they can manage as they lurch towards the hate-filled climax. When Morris hears the snarling trumpets there is cold horror in his eyes. Out of breath and shivering with exhaustion, he comes to the resolution, the consoling sound of the horn – the hate melody turned into love, the dying away into dusky silence. He stands still. Arms limp by his side. Spent.

As the baton slips from his fingers and bites, point first, into the floorboard, Morris opens his eyes. What was that noise? There are drips of red paint around his feet. The foreshortened handle of a punch dagger is vibrating. A slow blink. Another question forms in his head. Have I stabbed myself? He now sees his breeches are slashed, the cuts forming diagonal lines. They are also wet with blood. He slips his braces. Allows the serge material to fall around his ankles. Bends at the waist. There are plump lips on his thigh, parted to reveal layers of fat and rising bone. He looks at them with curiosity, as if this mortal wound is not his own.

a cognizant v5 original release september 20 2010

I am grateful to John Preston, Emma Howard, Chris Lang, my agent David Miller and my editor Marianne Velmans for their close reading and astute comments. Above all, I am grateful to my wife Mary, not only for her wise suggestions about the book but also for her patience and good humour.

Nigel Farndale
is the author of
Haw-Haw: The Tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce
, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He lives on the Hampshire–Sussex border with his wife and their three children.