Concerto to the Memory of an Angel Read Online Free PDF Page A

euthanized him, her Raoul.
    The young priest listened, pale, reproachful, horrified.
    He left without a word, merely making the sign of the cross over her.
    The next morning, at the seven o’clock service, she could tell from the purple shadows under his eyes that he had slept poorly, or hardly at all.
    After lunch, when he came to the confession box, he confirmed that he hadn’t had enough sleep.
    She was delighted by his admission: he was in her grip, he had tossed and turned in his bed, thinking about her. Since she had done the same, you might even say they had spent the night together.
    That afternoon she again returned to her inaugural crime, Raoul, and instinctively, without really knowing why, she poured out the whole story in an entirely different way: darker, more realistic, accentuating her disgust for the old and senile Raoul, all her hatred for the way he forced her to touch him. Portraying herself as a young woman who was the victim of a libidinous fossil, she revealed her darkest feelings, her calculations, her criminal urges; she described in detail how she had poisoned him with arsenic over a period of nine months so that the dose would be fatal yet untraceable; her relief when he died, her role as the tearful widow at the funeral, her delight at receiving the money and the house without having to account to anyone ever again.
    Every day she came to the church to unveil her crimes. Every night, the young man, obsessed by the tale of horrors, lost a few hours’ sleep.
    As she told her story, Marie reveled in being able to express herself at last, to free her memories and above all discover all her unsuspected motives. For while there was no changing the fact of the murders, her reasons for committing them varied from one day to the next. Which was the actual reason? The one on Tuesday, or Wednesday, or Friday, or Saturday? All of them. She relished every nuance; for years she had always had to stick to the “not guilty” version, so now exploring the “guilty” version enabled her to grasp the complexity of her behavior, the infinite varieties of her intentions; Marie was jubilant over the rich, diverse, profound character of her inner self . . . And she had been granted an additional faculty: while she may have had the power of life or death over a man in the past, she now exerted control over the truth of her acts, as she scrounged and interpreted and reexamined, destroying clichés and becoming the author of her own story.
    She established her ascendancy over the young priest. He no longer slept. Incapable of taking an interest in anything else, he anticipated as much as he dreaded their meetings at the confession box. His freshness faded. It was as if Marie were taking him away, into her world, her age, her fatigue, her ugliness . . . Naturally she did not realize this, and continued to see him just as she always had.
    The most intense moment for the priest and the sinner was when she spoke of her lover, Rudy the surfer, who had given her the only sensual pleasure of her entire life, a pleasure that was all the more vigorous for its total unexpectedness, for Marie had not enjoyed sex at all until Rudy. Surprised to find herself thinking about a man from morning to night, she had initially believed that she loved him for love’s sake until she realized it was above all his caresses that she wanted, his body against hers, the blond duvet on his skin, the smell of him. There was something about Rudy that annoyed her, attracted her, titillated her; he knew how to create a sensual atmosphere around him, which was powerful in his presence, then exasperating the moment he left. As she told Gabriel about this man she had desired to distraction, she was overcome by a confused, torrid feverishness, where the past contaminated the present; she left the confession box consumed by an urge to kiss the young man’s lips, to tear off his cassock and explore the texture of his skin with