Concerto to the Memory of an Angel (10 page)

“Why do you want to do away with yourself?”

“Because I'm good for nothing. All I do is screw up.”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Well, let's just say you've been screwing up until the age of sixteen. Afterwards, you—”

“What are you talking about! If you're made of iron, you stay iron. If you're made of wood, you stay wood. If you're made of shit, like me, you stay shit.”

“That's not true. You can change. I'm the proof of it.”

“You? You've always been like this!”

“Oh yeah? I've always been like this, some sort of St. Bernard who thinks about others before thinking about himself? It so happens that when I was your age I couldn't give a damn about other people, I walked all over them, I thought about no one but myself.”

“You're just saying that to—”

“I'm just saying that because it's true. We don't stay bad forever, Karim, if we become aware of it, we can improve. We are free, Karim, free!”

“Free, me? As soon as I'm old enough to go to jail that's where they'll put me. And they'll be right. I don't want to stick around to see it.”

“You don't believe in redemption?”

“What you talking about?”

Six feet away, hanging on every word, Axel was finding it harder and harder to breathe. He withdrew further into his hiding place to eavesdrop.

“You can change your destiny, Karim. A thief can become an honest man, a murderer can come to realize that he has done wrong and never do it again. Karim, you may have started out with vandalism, pillaging, break-ins and dealing in heroin, but that doesn't mean you can't learn to behave well. The proof is that you disgust your own self. A really bad person thinks he is good. Just as a real jerk doesn't even know he's a jerk. You see, you've already moved up to the next category. I have faith in you, Karim. You have my word, I will help you all the way if I can.”

They fell silent. Karim warmed himself with the hot chocolate, but also with Chris's words.

To avoid appearing sentimental, to keep strong—according to his criteria—he maintained his rebellious stance: “Who are you? Why do you care what happens to me? You're not my brother!”

“Not directly.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“That I can feel like your brother even if I'm not your blood brother.”

“Bozo! You can only be brothers through blood, and the rest is just bull.”

“Oh really? Because you've never seen brothers fighting or hating each other in your neighborhood? And what about you and your family, what have your brothers done for you?”

“They're too little, I'm the oldest.”

“And you want to do away with yourself. Smart move, the ideal older brother!”

“That's enough . . . it's my business what I do.”

“Exactly. Do you know the story of the two brothers, Cain and Abel?”

“Sure, it's in the Koran.”

“In the Bible, too. They were the sons of Adam and Eve and they lived together without a hitch until the famous quarrel about the offerings. Abel gave God the products of his activity as a breeder—no doubt an ox and sheep—while Cain, as a farmer, offered fruit and vegetables. Now God for no apparent reason accepted Abel's gift but refused Cain's. You know life can be that way, unfair, unpredictable, never the same. You just have to accept it. So Cain, who was very proud, didn't accept it, went into a rage and rebelled. God told him off and advised him to calm down. No way! In a fit of rage Cain killed his brother Abel because he was jealous. At the scene of the crime, but too late, God asked him why. Cain just laughed and said, ‘Am I my brother's keeper?' Well yes, he was, but he didn't realize that, he hadn't thought about the great human family. Every man is responsible for every other man, for his brother and all the others. If you kill someone, it means you're forgetting that. If you're violent, you're forgetting. I don't want to forget anymore: I am your keeper, Karim, and I won't let you down. And you are the keeper of your little brothers: not only must you not abandon them, but you must help them, too.”

“Okay . . . and then what?”

“God sent Cain far away to a land where he had to work; he was eaten away by guilt, and he had children; all humanity up until Noah is said to stem from his descendents. Which goes to show that violence doesn't stop you from getting ahead. And, above all, that there is no life without violence, you just have to learn to restrain it.”

“When I said, ‘and then what?' I wasn't talking about Cain, I was talking about myself!”

“You come back with me, you trust me, and you trust yourself. Maybe you will turn into the person you really are, the real Karim, not the Karim the hoods in your neighborhood have turned you into.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“No. But I like stories that make me feel less alone and less stupid.”

“Well I do, I do believe in God!” said Karim, proud to express his conviction and superiority.

Chris could tell he had won from Karim's attitude: the kid would not go back to throw himself under a train.

Shortly afterwards they left the room, close together, so that at times their shoulders touched, and they took the path back to Villa Socrates.

Axel strained to follow them with his gaze until they vanished in the distance. “Disappointed,” was the only word that drifted through his mind—“disappointed,” yes, “profoundly disappointed,” because he could never have imagined he would see Chris again behaving and speaking like this.

He, too, had the impression he had changed.

Where was the jubilation he had expected to feel? Why was he no longer enchanted by the proximity of vengeance? Where was the black joy he had felt at the mere thought that he was about to strike? It was time to get a grip . . .

 

With its huge bay windows, the pool had been designed to give the illusion of swimming in the midst of Alpine nature, where meadows sloped down from the peaks to the lake on the valley floor, all beneath the peaceful gaze of snow-capped mountains. But on that day the pool seemed to be cut off from the world by a thick wall of steam that clung to the glass, warm droplets lured by the cold air to block any view of the valley.

In the main pool a few swimmers were doing laps, moving smoothly across the expanse, unconcerned by others. An old insect-like man with a swollen belly over his rickety legs stood next to the diving board making slow circles with his arms.

A hairless lifeguard with thick soft thighs sat on a high chair overlooking the entire facility, with his whistle between his lips like some outsize baby sucking on a bottle.

An employee had pushed Axel's chair as far as the small pool; wrapped in a dressing gown he now sat observing the man who had become his obsession.

Chris was in the water attending to an elderly woman with rheumatism. He held her gently in his arms to immerse her just enough so that she could perform the gestures she could not have made on solid ground, to give her strength and unblock her joints, stretch her muscles and tendons. It was an activity known as “aquatic physiotherapy,” and Chris was one of the rare practitioners of this fairly recent method, although he had not invented it.

Axel had taken note of this detail at the hotel when requesting a nurse for his daily treatment. On the list the manager had handed him he saw Chris's name under the column “New: Aquatic Massage!”

“Yes,” confirmed the manager, “he's a fellow who works as an instructor over at the Villa Socrates, you know, the centre for problem adolescents. As if there were any adolescents without problems, but anyway! I cannot recommend Chris too highly. Everyone is pleased with his work. Shall I make an appointment for you?”

“In the name of the hotel, please, not my own name.”

Axel wanted to make the most of the encounter. If he trumpeted out his name, he would be identified at once; however, if Chris did not recognize him right away, the surprise would be all the more exquisite.

Axel studied him, making the most of Chris's extreme concentration in order to see without being seen. How kind he was! How good to that dinosaur with her wrinkled folds of skin . . . A stranger, on top of it . . . If the patient had been his own mother, could he have been any more tender, more considerate? Impossible. Bent over her worn face, manipulating her carcass like a dancer in love, looking deep into his partner's eyes, restoring the grace of movement to her. And what a physique . . . At the age of forty, suntanned, sharp crow's feet at the corners of his eyes, Chris had maintained the red mane of his youth, and hadn't put on one ounce of fat: his muscles were taut and prominent, his belly firm, with broad shoulders above a narrow waist, his torso finely sprinkled with hair as precisely as if it were make-up, shadowing his lower belly and emphasizing his chest muscles. Axel was all the more fascinated as he gazed at Chris because he could not help but compare himself to him. He envied above all his slender legs beneath his firm buttocks; Axel could no longer aspire to anything like that since his accident had left his thighs and buttocks paralyzed, and they had melted, atrophied.

“And whose fault was it?” he murmured with rage, rubbing his legs, stiff as iron bars, with his right hand.

Chris's athletic splendor merely reinforced his determination: no mercy.

Curled upon himself, his thoughts of revenge like a constant refrain, he was surprised when Chris touched his arm.

“It's your turn now, Monsieur.”

Axel looked up anxiously. What if Chris recognized him right there and then?

“My name is Chris, and I'll be giving you a massage for an hour, that's right, isn't it?”

Axel nodded.

“What is your name, Monsieur?”

Axel uttered the first name that crossed his mind.

“Alban.”

He bit his lips. What an idiotic thing to say! In the grip of their shared memory he had said “Alban,” since it was Alban Berg's concerto “To the Memory of an Angel” that he had played in Chris's presence! Making such an obvious blunder—Alban!—meant that Chris would identify him instantly.

“Alban, I'm going to help you into the water. Allow me to push your chair, then I'll carry you over to the steps. All right?”

“Uh . . . all right.”

Chris had not recognized him. Out of the corner of his eye, Axel understood why: in addition to the fact that Chris did not expect to see him, his behavior was ultra-professional: mindful never to betray shock or disgust in the presence of infirmity, for fear of humiliating his patient, he focused his attention on technical details such as removing the dressing gown, taking off the steel braces, grabbing his hips from the right side.

Reassured, Axel decided to relax and let himself go in Chris's arms.

Once they were in the water, Chris asked him if there were any contraindications, any movements to avoid. Axel shook his head. Chris then ordered him to close his eyes, and he began the therapy, explaining every movement with a calm voice.

This whispering in Axel's ear brought his confusion to a head. Ordinarily, when two people murmur, with their eyes closed and their bodies virtually naked, it is because they are in love. And yet here he was in the arms of his worst enemy, the man who, many years ago, through his arrogant carelessness, had nearly killed him. It was absurd . . . so very absurd . . .

Yet there was nothing painful about this troubling situation. On the contrary. With Chris's help, his body now lighter in the water, Axel felt as if he had been relieved of his infirmity. He was floating, turning, gliding. This unexpected, beneficial session took him back to sensations of childhood, to his first swims in a pool in Sydney with his father, his slender body against the immense, imposing adult one, then their expeditions into the deep waters of the Pacific at Whitehaven Beach, where he clung to his father as he made his powerful breast-stroke: a little boy moved by this contact.

How strange it was to feel so trusting—their flesh touching—with his assassin . . . And what if revenge were to be reduced to this, to being manipulated by Chris, who would henceforth be his slave, every day until his last . . . At least it would be a form of torture—for the avenger as much as for his victim—that was out of the ordinary.

“Alban, how do you feel?”

Axel opened his eyes. Chris was rocking his patient in his arms, not eight inches from his face.

“Fine, just fine.”

Their eyes met, and then Chris pointed to Axel's legs.

“What happened to you?”

“An accident, twenty years ago.”

Chris shuddered. Not because he had guessed Axel's identity but because the time frame, twenty years, brought back certain memories. Axel hastened to distract his attention: “What gave you the idea to study this technique, aquatic physiotherapy?”

“Oh, I don't know . . . I wanted to come up with something good to do in the water.”

“Why? Is it possible to do bad things in the water?”

Chris moved to the side to smile to a swimmer who was headed back to the showers and did not answer. Axel continued, “I had my accident in the water.”

Chris turned around, and stared at him, numb, puzzled at first, then suspicious, then worried, then horrified. Axel held his gaze. He saw that Chris had realized what was happening; it was as if a curtain were being drawn open onto memory, allowing the light to enter progressively. He swallowed, then said in a toneless voice, “Is that you, Axel?”

“Yes.”

Tears fell from his eyes. He was struggling not to smile.

“But then . . . you're alive?”

“What did you think?” exclaimed Axel.

In twenty years, Axel had never considered this hypoth­esis, for he assumed Chris knew what had happened after the drowning.

Chris suddenly looked down, as if he had just received a blow to the back of the head.