Concerto to the Memory of an Angel (9 page)

He gave a victorious wink to his wife because he was convinced that his clever question would give Mr. Lang the opportunity to explain the cause of his infirmity and, in so doing, he might become a bit more human.

Mr. Lang answered straight off the bat.

“There was a niche for it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Yes, Jesus and the Virgin Mary dominate the market. In Europe, saints are no longer in fashion, except for St. Rita and St. Jude, if you market them properly.”

“St. Jude?”

Mr. and Mrs. Beaumont had never heard about St. Jude or sold any items representing him. Lang grumbled, impatient with his clients' ignorance.

“The parking saint! Call on St. Jude and he'll help you find a place to park: since he's not very well-known, he has time to take care of you. And he fixes things very quickly.”

“Is that so? Does it really work?”

“You must be joking! I'm just telling you what you have to say in order to sell him. Didn't Miss Mee tell you about St. Jude?”

“No.”

“What an idiot! She'll be out the door first thing tomorrow.”

Mrs. Beaumont went bright red when she saw what a worker was removing from a mold before her very eyes.

“But . . . but . . . but . . . ”

“Yes, we also manufacture these,” said Mr. Lang approvingly. “Pornographic accessories. Are you interested?”

Mr. Beaumont went up to the plastic phallus set amidst a number of silicon women's buttocks.

“Oh! How repulsive.”

“You're mistaken,” said Lang, “they are excellent items, as good as our religious accessories. Once you have the actual casts, you know, you use the same materials and the same techniques.”

“It's an insult! To think that our St. Ritas come into the world next to these . . . these . . . ”

“As does St. Rita, and all the rest of us, sir! You are only a wholesaler for religious items? It's a pity, because once you're in the business . . . ”

The telephone rang. Lang listened, did not speak, hung up, and then paying no further attention to the Beaumonts he said, “I'm going back up.”

The French couple hardly had time to say goodbye before the doors of the elevator closed behind Lang.

As soon as he got to his office, he rushed over to his secretary, a young Korean man of twenty-five years of age, tall and thin as a reed.

“Well?”

“They have found him, sir.”

For the very first time, the secretary saw his boss smile: Mr. Lang's mouth opened and a short laugh came from his throat.

“At last!”

Certain of pleasing the tyrant, the secretary provided the information he had at his disposal: “He doesn't work in the field we were investigating. You said it was classical music, did you not?”

“Yes, what does he do? Has he gone over to pop music?”

“This activity has nothing to do with art. Here's a leaflet about the place where he works.”

Mr. Lang grabbed the folded paper. He was ordinarily so impenetrable, but now he could not help but raise his eyebrows, marking a moment of astonishment.

“And you're sure it's him?”

“Absolutely.”

Lang nodded.

“I want to go there. Immediately. Book me on the next flight.”

The secretary stepped behind the desk and picked up the telephone. While he was dialing the number, Lang said carelessly, “Get rid of Miss Mee at once, tonight. Professional incompetence.”

The secretary reached their travel agency.

“I'd like to book a flight to France. The town of Annecy . . . No direct flights? Are you sure? He has to go Shanghai-Paris, then Paris-Grenoble, then rent a car for Annecy? Or Shanghai-Geneva and go the rest of the way by taxi?”

He held his palm over the receiver and asked his boss, “Is that all right with you, sir?”

The nabob of religious and pornographic artifacts nodded his head.

“All right,” continued the secretary. “Shanghai-Geneva. As soon as possible. In business. The name is Lang. Axel Lang.”

Making his way to the window where the light was better, Axel took the leaflet his secretary had given him and turned it this way and that, trying to make out on the tiny photographs the face of the man he had been trying to find for months, and whose memory had been dogging him for twenty years.

Sunil, his physiotherapist, a fleshy giant and former judo champion, interrupted him with a clap of his hands.

“Time for your session, sir.”

A few minutes later Axel, his skin oiled, was receiving the daily care his rehabilitation necessitated. He had placed the leaflet beneath the open space in the massage table for the eyes and nose, and he was now learning it by heart, humming to himself.

“You seem to be in a better mood than usual, Mr. Lang.”

What business is that of his, moron? grumbled Axel to himself. Why should he care whether I'm happy today or in a bad mood on other days? He's a masseur, not a psychiatrist, jerk!

Five minutes later Axel was humming again, and the former judoka, in a surge of friendliness, took the liberty of repeating his question, presuming that his patient would be in the mood to share his emotions.

“What is making you so happy, Mr. Lang?”

“A promise. I swore to myself that once I earned my first billion, I would make a dream come true. My dream.”

“Ah, really? Congratulations, sir. On the first billion, I mean.”

“You're hurting me, idiot.”

“Forgive me. And what is your dream, sir?”

“To go to France.”

“That I can understand . . . ”

“To Annecy.”

“Hmm, never heard of it.”

“Me neither. To the Villa Socrates.”

“The Villa Socrates? What's that?” asked the masseur with a drawl. “A restaurant? Thalassotherapy? A high end clinic?”

“None of that. Simply the place where I am going to get my revenge. I'm hesitating between torture and murder.”

“Very funny, Mr. Lang!”

The huge man's laugh rang hollow; there was more stupidity than joy in his sudden outburst. Axel, who had been getting massages from Sunil for over six months, now thought that he could no longer put up with the former wrestler's serenity, his mindless conversation and damp hands. Tomorrow, before he left, he would fire him.

Pacified, he looked again at the photographs in the leaflet, where adults were posing, gripping each other's shoulders. Where was he? Which one of these men was he? What might Chris look like now?

 

*

 

Strains of the concerto “To the Memory of an Angel” emerged discreetly, timidly, furtively from the loudspeakers. A memory of music more than a living music. In his room under the eaves, Chris was careful never to increase the volume because in this large wooden house perched on the mountainside sounds traveled from room to room; he wouldn't want one of the adolescents he looked after at the Villa Socrates to come up and attack him, criticizing his taste—not that he was ashamed of it, but because this particular work belonged to his private life, and he did not share his private life with anyone.

The stereo was a cheap one—the sound crackled, the violin was a mere line, the orchestra a muddle of sound, just enough to give him an idea of the work and set his memories loose. Chris listened to this CD the way you might look at a slide with faded colors; the music was a prop for his reverie.

Since Axel's death he had not been able to stop thinking about him. In the beginning it was a tiny spring, a trickle of water in his memory, but over time the stream had swollen to the size and strength of a river. Arrested in his genius, his kindness, his perfection, Axel now occupied an essential place in Chris's spirit—he was an icon, a saint, virtually a god to whom Chris the atheist would turn whenever he had a dilemma.

Chris would sit on his chair behind the little desk where the light of day fell and contemplate his favorite vision of the countryside as it changed from season to season. Through the dormer window you could see more of water and sky than of land. A window open upon infinity? At the bottom of the hill the lake of Annecy slept beneath a pure sky where eagles circled. On the slopes of the opposite shore the houses among the fir trees looked like cobblestones in a dark meadow, while higher up, herds of white mountain peaks grazed ghostly in the distance.

“Hey, Chris, come quickly, we have a problem.”

Laura, a colleague who looked terribly thin in her Lolita jeans and loose T-shirt, had come into the room.

He followed her. Without saying a word, so that their boarders would not hear them, they hurried into the director's office, the only isolated room in the chalet.

Montignault, the founder of the villa, gathered his seven instructors around him and said, “Karim, our newest arrival, has run away. No sign of him this morning in either his bed, the workshop, or the barn.”

“We have to inform the gendarmerie!” exclaimed Laura.

Montignault frowned.

“Let's leave that as late as we can, Laura, first we'll have a look. It's not a good idea to send the gendarmes after a kid who has already spent far too much time with the police in his previous life. He'll only find a better way to hide, or he'll attack them, or if they catch him he'll despise us and assimilate us with the cops. That would be counterproductive. We'd lose any influence over him.”

The group agreed, including Laura. In this center devoted to troubled adolescents—drugs, victims of violence or rape, pre-delinquents—the instructors, who cared passionately about their work, did not nurture their own egos and were able to admit as much when they were wrong. The children mattered more than they did.

“I imagine that some of you might have established closer ties with him. Who knows him a little?”

Chris raised his hand.

“Yes, Chris. Give us some clues.”

“I'm afraid he may not have run away.”

“What do you mean?” asked Montignault worriedly.

“Karim has suicidal tendencies.”

A dismayed silence greeted his words. The special needs teachers sat down around the office and thought through the ways in which Karim might attempt to put an end to his life.

 

Twenty minutes later Chris was headed toward the railroad line below the Villa Socrates. In order to determine which way to go, he tried to put himself in Karim's place: here was a boy who had been brought up in an underprivileged neighborhood. Since a death wish is a sign of regression, an act that aims to regain the comfort of childhood, the young man must have found a place in this Alpine landscape—utterly exotic to him—that would remind him of his original slum in the outskirts of Paris. What could be more universal than the railroad? The same smell in the country as in the town, a mixture of coal, oil, and organic waste. The same signs above steel bars. The same danger, were a locomotive suddenly to appear.

Chris followed the narrow river as it rippled and foamed and flowed over its bed of stones, where here and there a tuft of green grass waved. An icy wind slapped his face. No doubt about it, winter would soon be here.

When he came alongside the tracks, Chris looked in both directions: no one.

He suddenly remembered that farther along there was something else that might attract the kid: an overpass above the railroad line. As he recalled the location, Chris shed any further doubts: Karim must be there, waiting for a train to come, to fling himself beneath the wheels.

At a run, careful not to be seen, he covered the kilometer leading to the place. Spot on! He could see a figure on the overpass looking out at the horizon.

He approached Karim from behind, and only began to speak to him when he was a few inches away.

“Karim, I think this morning you're hurting all over.”

The adolescent swung around, hesitating between his fury at being found, his surprise at seeing Chris, the instructor he had befriended, and the emotion caused by his words.

“You are hurting, is that it, it hurts?” said Chris again gently.

Karim wanted to say yes, but to say yes would have been giving an answer, and he didn't want to answer anybody.

“It's your life, Karim, you can do what you want with it.”

To the rebellious boy it was as if Chris had just read his mind.

“I don't want to spoil your decision, or the time you're spending here. The problem is that I am going to stay with you, and if the train comes along, I will stop you from jumping. So yeah, I can see I'm a nuisance.”

Karim turned away, disturbed by so much understanding.

“Let me make a suggestion, Karim: why don't I buy you a drink up there?”

He pointed to an auberge some ways above them, tiny yet visible, a red dot in the middle of the steep slope.

“Let's go have a chat up there. And after that you can do what you like.”

“I'll come back here!” shouted Karim, as if to prove that he was not some indecisive weakling.

“Okay,” concluded Chris. “If you want, you can come back here and I'll leave you alone. But first, come and have a coffee or a hot chocolate with me.”

“You swear you'll leave me alone afterwards?”

“I swear.”

Once the boy was sure his touchy pride had been respected, he shoved his hands into his pockets, hunched his shoulders and lowered his head, all of which meant, “I'm coming.”

 

From the terrace of the inn, higher up, a man had been watching the scene with considerable interest. When he saw that the two figures were coming toward him, he turned his wheelchair and headed back inside to come to a stop between two columns, in a place where he hoped he would not be noticed.

They came into the room with red checked curtains and tablecloths, cowbells decorating the windowsills. Karim was only convinced it was a café once he saw the espresso maker behind the zinc counter and the pinball machine near the door to the toilets.

Chris ordered two hot chocolates and they curled their frozen palms around the stoneware bowls before they drank.