Concerto to the Memory of an Angel (11 page)

“I thought that . . . ”

“Do I look like a corpse? I look more like an invalid, don't I? I was re-animated when they brought me out of the water, I spent five months in a coma and when I came round I was nothing but a vegetable. I had to learn everything—no, relearn everything—how to speak, write, count, move around. As for my mind, I had lost nothing. However . . . ”

He pointed to his shriveled right hand.

“No more violin.”

He pointed to his feet.

“No more sports.”

He pointed to his swimming trunks, his tadpole legs.

“No more sex. But, naturally, I'd hardly had time to even explore it very much.”

Overwhelmed by his confessions, Chris suddenly found it difficult to touch Axel. He set him down carefully and respectfully on the steps to the swimming pool.

“Oh, I am so happy that you're alive, so happy!”

He looked closely at his wrecked body, his thinning hair, and he shivered: poor Axel, the neat, irreproachable face that was once his had disappeared, leaving behind a hard mask where his features, twisted to the left side of his face, no longer expressed feelings but only the fatal, flattened, ravaged consequences of an accident.

“Do you think that someday you will be able to forgive me?”

“What would that change?”

Axel's voice was hostile.

Chris paused to think, disconcerted.

Stubborn, feeling the fury boiling inside, Axel insisted: “What would that change? Would it give me back my body, my music, my lost years, if I forgave you?”

“No . . . ”

“Ah, maybe it would change
your
fate. Yes, for you, no doubt, life would feel easier.”

“No, I have been crushed forever by the burden of my guilt.”

“So then what would it change? Answer me! Just answer me!”

Unable to control himself Axel had begun to shout, his metallic voice echoing under the humid vault of the swimming pool. The old man stopped whirling his arms about, and the chubby lifeguard leaned forward, ready to leave his chair to intervene.

Axel and Chris stared at each other for some time. Finally Chris said, “You're right. It wouldn't change anything.”

“Ah . . . So, I won't forgive you. That's not why I came here.”

Chris stared at him again. He realized that if Axel had indeed come on such a journey it must be for a precise purpose.

“What do you want?”

“Meet me at seven thirty this evening at the Grizzli restaurant, next to my hotel.”

 

Back at the Villa Socrates, Chris went to spend a moment with Karim in the carpentry workshop. He chatted warmly with the adolescent, then went upstairs to dress for the evening.

He did not know what to expect from their appointment. Nor did he know what to think after that afternoon's revelation. The fact Axel was alive was excellent news, but it did not exonerate him, far from it: when he looked at this enraged invalid, with his rough voice and broken destiny, he felt as if death had merely been replaced by permanent torture. Would it not have been better if —

Horrendous! What he was imagining was horrendous. Once again he was fleeing his responsibility. What a coward . . .

It pained him to know that Axel, who had been betrayed, had not gone immediately to the great beyond. The only person who knew just how ugly Chris's crime had been had survived and been the repository of that knowledge for twenty years. And that is what Chris found so hard to bear . . . He despised himself.

 

At the restaurant Axel was waiting patiently, his wheelchair already in place at the table.

They ordered their dinner then began to speak.

While Chris kept his narrative to a minimum—his return, the sudden clarity that came to him, his decision to change the course of his life and take a different path, a path devoted to others—Axel told his story at length, with a multitude of details, first of all because it was something he had never shared with anyone, and then because he wanted to like himself that evening, and perhaps even be liked.

Chris discovered who Axel had become in the course of his successive stories. It was horrifying . . . Where was the angel he had known, the boy who dreamt only of art and music, the boy who was so well-acquainted with the sublime? Sitting there at table was no one but a cruel, unscrupulous businessman, who had no fear of illegality, from clandestine businesses to immoral ones, provided they filled his pockets; a man who sold toys containing toxic paint and scoffed at the fact that children had died, a man who cheated the state and exploited human misery, a magnate with an empty existence, loveless and friendless, devoid of any ideals. In brilliant form, Axel did not realize the effect he was producing; on the contrary, he was delighted with himself, and he thought he had Chris under his spell. Twenty years earlier Chris might have admired this ambitious rise to money and power, but the new Chris, a teacher for delinquent children, no longer cared for this sort of talk.

A misunderstanding arose between the two diners. Each one had kept the other alive in his imagination, picturing a strong personality with clear, well-defined features. Axel had become a standard of achievement for Chris, and Chris was a prototype of success for Axel. They had constructed their lives taking each other as a model, with the rather vague intention of supplanting that model and surpassing it. And now their imaginary constructs were in danger of collapsing.

During dessert Axel realized that his boasting had led to a hostile silence in his dinner partner. He in turn grasped the situation: each of them had changed, and now despised what the other had become. Their loathing was all the more violent in that Chris reminded Axel of the generous individual he had once been and would never be again, while Axel reminded Chris of how he had eradicated that side of himself that had once taken advantage of others.

They lapsed into a long silence, then with a sigh Chris felt obliged to ask, “Axel, why did you come here?”

“To offer you a deal.”

“Right.”

“From today on, you obey me.”

“I . . . ”

“That's what I'm asking as reparation. From today on, you will do everything I ask.”

“But—”

“I'm not forcing you. You can refuse. In that case, I'll call one of my lawyers, they'll re-open the case, I'll inform them that I've found you and the trial will go ahead. You know as well as I do that there's no statute of limitations.”

“Go ahead. Denounce me. I won't deny it. I am ready to pay for my crime, I've been expecting it ever since.”

“Not so fast! If you pay for your crime in prison, you'll be paying a debt to society, not to me. What good does it do me if you're rotting behind bars? Justice will be done, to be sure, but I won't get anything from it. Don't you want to do me a favor?”

“Yes, Axel, I do want to do you a favor. I absolutely insist on doing you a favor.”

“Then from today on, you will obey me.”

“All right.”

“Swear.”

“I swear.”

Axel ordered another bottle of champagne and filled their glasses.

“To us!”

“To us . . . ” echoed Chris, hiding his stupor.

Axel drank his glass down in one gulp and immediately poured another one.

“Tomorrow you hand in your resignation. Bye-bye Villa Socrates. At midnight we'll be on the flight to Shanghai. Here, this is the address you can give people who want to stay in touch with you.”

He shoved the business card into Chris's fingers, English on one side, Chinese on the other.

 

That night, when Chris went back to his room, he automatically switched on his stereo, and the concerto “To the Memory of an Angel” began to play. After a few notes, he collapsed on the bed. He felt like crying, yet he couldn't. He had taken a promising artist and disfigured him, turning him into a cruel, irascible tyrant, paranoid and unscrupulous. Without realizing it, he had done worse than kill an innocent boy, he had killed innocence itself. His victim had turned into a torturer. In the strains of Alban Berg Chris could hear his own story: it was not only a child who had died, but an angel as well. Nothing was left of the old Axel; evil had won. And devastation.

When do we become the person we are meant to become? In our youth, or later? As adolescents, whatever our gifts in the way of intelligence and temperament, we are shaped, for the most part, by our education, our milieu, and our parents; as adults, we create ourselves through the choices we make. If Chris had once been ambitious, opportunistic, and combative, it was because of the pressure his mother had put on him: she was a single mother who wanted her only son to succeed in her place. In order not to disappoint her affection, he had to be brilliant, wage war and triumph. His mother was convinced that if Chris's father had rejected her, it was because she hadn't been chic enough for him! With hindsight, Chris decided that his father was no more than a selfish, irresponsible man, an ordinary bastard. At the age of twenty, when Chris came back from Thailand, he had managed, fortunately, to curb his mother's pressure; his casual criminal behavior toward Axel had shown him that he was headed down the wrong path and so he had started all over, on the basis of new values. What Chris had not foreseen was that the opposite could also occur: a good man could become a filthy bastard. And while redemption may exist, so does damnation. And it is always voluntary. When an accident disrupts an individual's life, people react differently: Axel had enclosed himself in a cocoon of cynical disgust toward humanity, while Chris had opened himself, learning to love other people.

While Chris may have felt that he was now himself, did Axel have a similar feeling? How much did freedom have to do with it? And fate? Chris could not get to sleep, for all these dizzying thoughts.

Nor was Axel able to sleep. He went on the Internet to check that his business was all running smoothly. In his random browsing he read that millions of antidepressants were sold annually the world over, and this gave him an idea: he could create an elixir of St. Rita, supposed to fight depression. He would call it “Rita's Miraculous Water.” Of all his various activities—toys, clothing, gadgets, pornography—it was his religious commerce that he found most entertaining. “Now that people no longer believe in God, they're prepared to believe anything! Astrology, numerology, New Age mumbo-jumbo, the rebirth of saints. Let's make the most of it.” As Europe became less Christian, it did not become more rational for all that; superstition had merely increased and diversified. In the old days, Christianity used to offer a framework for belief, and now that there no longer was one, Axel could exploit the rich seams of people's credulousness. Why St. Rita and not some other saint? Because of an etching pinned on the wall in his room in Sydney when he was convalescing, learning to speak and write again: instead of appreciating that image of goodness, Axel had begun to despise it, just as he despised any of the ritual forms that goodness could take, and kindness along with it. One day he spat on the saint and decided he would side with the victors, and stay there.

 

The next morning Chris handed in his resignation to Montignault who, once he recovered from the surprise, told him he was sincerely sorry and would miss him. Chris went to see Karim and gave him his address in China, then he attended a last-minute party his colleagues organized to see him off.

“When are you leaving?”

“Tonight. For Shanghai.”

Because they wanted to know more, he confessed he was going to look after a childhood friend who had settled there; he had serious health problems now, and had asked Chris for his help. As they listened to his explanation, his close colleagues recognized the Chris they knew, the defender of altruism, and they embraced him.

At seven
P.M
. Chris took his luggage and went to join Axel; he was checking out of the hotel and told Chris to get into a car.

The limousine drove around the lake and pulled up outside a luxurious hotel.

“Aren't we leaving from Geneva for Shanghai?” asked Chris, surprised.

“The day after tomorrow.”

They spent two days in the luxury hotel; Chris never found out why. During their stay Axel ordered him to perform a number of insignificant tasks—to help him get up, wash, put his things away. Chris obeyed, just as he had promised he would. Nothing he did seemed to bother him in any way, particularly if it only meant taking Axel to the indoor pool every three hours for his treatment, although the consistency of Axel's body never failed to alarm him—his bones were so light, his movements so disjointed. Chris wondered if all the years to come were going to be like this . . .

There were telephone conversations he overheard, and he discovered that Axel always behaved like a boor—curt, tyrannical, insulting, scornful, unjust.

“Axel, have you done anything good—by that I mean kind—in the last few years?”

“Nothing. May the devil preserve me,” laughed Axel.

“I will oblige you to.”

When he had time off, Chris gazed at the Alpine countryside he would be leaving behind. It was something inexpressible, a mountain lake . . . Sometimes it was as if the water was filling an enormous hole, like a lid over an abyss; other times you saw the relief of the terrain as harmonious shores cradling a body of water. In short, the place where he had spent the last ten years seemed from one second to the next either terrifying or delightful.

At dusk on their last night in France, a taxi came to take their luggage to deliver it to the airport the next day. Then a Chinese man from Geneva showed up at the wheel of a black car. Chris did not understand a word of what he said to Axel, because they were speaking Mandarin; he merely noticed that the Asian man, as he scribbled Axel's instructions onto a sheet, was terrified.

 

They did not wait until dawn.

At five o'clock Axel ordered Chris to give him his shower, dress him, put him in his wheelchair and drive the car.