The Killer in My Eyes by Giorgio Faletti

reply, because at that point the lights went down and the audience fell silent.
    From the darkness had come a soft guitar arpeggio, a sound so delicate as to be quite sensual, with a delay effect that seemed to make it roll around the walls of the auditorium. Maureen had the impression it was echoing in her head. Then a light had struck the centre of the stage from above, and into that beam, so white as to appear fluorescent, Connor Slave had stepped, wearing a dark suit with a Korean collar that was almost monastic in its plainness. His head was tilted towards the audience and his arms hung casually at his sides. In his hands he held a violin and a bow.
    A synth pad had been added to the sound of the guitar, a low electronic vibration that seemed to move straight from the ground into the spectators’ bodies. Then Connor had slowly lifted his head and started singing. The unique charm of his hoarse voice had immediately relegated the accompaniment to the background. For a few blissful moments, Maureen had had the absurd sensation that the song was dedicated exclusively to her – then she had looked around at the dimly lit auditorium and saw from the expressions on the other spectators’ faces that everyone there was feeling the same thing.
    It was a song called ‘The Buried Sky’, a gentle melody with anguished lyrics that some critics had accused of being blasphemous. The song was about Lucifer, the rebel angel, meditating in the darkness of hell on the consequences of his act, an act not so much of rebelling against God as of daring to think for himself.
     
How strange it was to choose a day
and say, ‘The day has come to pass’ –
a day that on the hill of heaven
was nothing but a blade of grass.
The day I disobeyed the rules –
the game would never be the same.
     
How strange it was to see the sky
and say, ‘Now I don’t need the light’ –
then stand and watch the sun go down
and bring about eternal night.
The day I took the rebel’s mark –
condemned myself to endless dark.
     
    Another voice had joined Connor’s then, a voice as pure as crystal, and a beautiful female singer had appeared from the shadows at the back of the stage to share the spotlight with him. Their two voices were completely different in timbre and colour, and yet they had harmonized so perfectly as to make them one voice. That vocal union had embodied everything the song was about: the light and the dark, the regret and the pride, the sense of setting out on a journey from which there was no return.
    Instinctively, Maureen had felt a sharp sense of jealousy towards the clear-voiced girl who was sharing a fragment of Connor’s life with him on the stage. It was hard to believe that her obvious passion and devotion were just pretence.
    But the feeling went as suddenly as it had come, because at that point Connor Slave had stopped singing and lifted the violin to his shoulder. When he started playing, it was as if he had disappeared, leaving only the music. His body was there, in front of everyone, but he was surely elsewhere, in some parallel universe. Perhaps influenced by the words of the song, and by that supernatural talent, Maureen had become convinced that, if the devil did really exist, at that moment He was there, playing the violin.
    For the rest of the concert, Maureen was kept spellbound by this man. He was with the audience listening to him and with the band accompanying him and with the music he was playing, and he was with whoever wanted to go with him – and at the same time he was nowhere and belonged to nobody.
    As she watched him receiving the tumultuous applause at the end of the concert, Maureen had found herself thinking that for someone like Connor Slave, real life was hard work, and the only time he felt free was during those few hours up there on the stage, making music.
    Then the curtain had fallen, the lights gone up, and the magic had ended. Marta turned to her with a triumphant expression. ‘What did I