Read Online Concerto to the Memory of an Angel by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt - Free Book Online Page B

. . . He doesn’t want to be reminded of this absurd message anymore. He has banished it from his mind. It’s none of his business. An error.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œDr. Simbadour assured me he had sent word to the ship.”
    Suddenly Greg freezes. What? Was the message in earnest? Was it really meant for him?
    Mary looks down and says gravely, “I was in pain. I went to the hospital. A miscarriage. I lost our child.”
    Greg grasped what had eluded him earlier: his wife was pregnant at the time of his departure, he had forgotten. It was so unreal, the announcement of a child, when you couldn’t even see the mother’s belly getting round. Mary must have been expecting a daughter. If Dr. Simbadour didn’t give the child’s name, it was because the fetus didn’t have one . . .
    Â 
    Mary and her four daughters were struck dumb by Greg’s behavior in the days that followed. Not only did he look after his wife in a way he never had before, showering her with treasures of attentiveness, but he also insisted they baptize the little unborn girl.
    â€œRita. I am sure her name is Rita.”
    He said they must bury her. Every day he went to the cemetery with flowers; every day he cried over Rita’s tiny grave, this child whom he had neither seen nor touched, and he whispered sweet words to her. Kate, Grace, Joan, and Betty would never have believed that this brute of a man could be capable of so much affection, attention, and delicacy. As they had nearly always spent time with an absent father, and their contact had been limited to his physical strength or orders they must obey, they now looked at him with a different eye and began to fear him a bit less.
    When two months later Greg informed them that he had accepted a position as a longshoreman in the port, which meant he would no longer be going to sea, they were glad that this stranger, once so distant and dreaded, had become their father at last.

CONCERTO TO THE MEMORY OF AN ANGEL
    Â 
    I t was while listening to Axel play the violin that Chris became aware of his own inferiority.
The notes of the concerto “To the Memory of an Angel” rose on the air, through the trees to the blue sky, the tropical mist, the trilling of birds, the lightness of clouds. Axel was not interpreting the piece, he was living it. He was inventing the melody; the changes of mood, shifts in pace, all came from him, and he carried the orchestra with him from one second to the next, using his fingers to create the melody that would convey his thoughts. His violin had become a voice, a voice that languished, hesitated, then found confidence and strength.
    Chris succumbed to the charm of it, trying all the while to restrain himself, because he sensed there was danger: if he came to love Axel too deeply, he would despise his own self.
    Ordinary musicians give the impression that they have walked in from the audience, merely left their seats to climb onto the stage, and most of the students who made up this festival orchestra were that sort of musician, with their tentative way of walking, their inexpensive eyeglasses, their hastily-chosen clothing. Axel, on the other hand, seemed to come from elsewhere, as if he had landed from some sublime planet where intelligence, taste, and elevated spirits reigned. He was of medium height, with a narrow waist, a smooth, proud chest, and a hypnotic, feline, triangular face framing immense eyes. His brown curls were light, carefree, youthful. Other boys with similarly harmonious and regular features might appear sad, or boring, because their expressions are empty; but Axel had an irrepressible energy about him. He was a young man of integrity and generosity, exuberant and severe at the same time, and he was as radiant as an idol, confident, at ease with the sublime, a willing accomplice to genius. As he played he meditated, with the incandescent authority conferred by inspiration; he accentuated the healing effect of