Concerto to the Memory of an Angel by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

Author:Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Europa
Published: 2011-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

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

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