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

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.
    â€œHey, 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.”
    â€œWe have to inform the gendarmerie!” exclaimed Laura.
    Montignault frowned.
    â€œLet’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.
    â€œI imagine that some of you might have established closer ties with him. Who knows him a little?”
    Chris raised his hand.
    â€œYes, Chris. Give us some clues.”
    â€œI’m afraid he may not have run away.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” asked Montignault worriedly.
    â€œKarim 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.
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    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: