A small daydreaming laugh bubbled up inside Sammy as he remembered the unconventional circumstances surrounding his newfound love and the way Jesus had rescued him from his own stupidity. Geneviève, a pretty and radiant redhead who lived in the same apartment complex as Sammy, had stolen his infatuated sixteen-year-old heart. She had invited him to attend a Christian ski camp at Grimentz—a spectacular but typical Swiss mountain village—during the winter school holidays and he’d almost fallen over himself accepting her offer, very certain she had amorous intentions. Sammy flushed red and giggled to himself as comedic images flashed into his mind, trying to impress Geneviève and the other kids with his skiing prowess, instead crashing stooge-like in a heap of tangled feet and arms. Even though the only injury he had sustained was to his pride, he was struck by the way no one had laughed and everyone had been concerned for his well being... including Geneviève.
Then, his most stupid act of all!
That night, he had been unabashedly bragging to a group of Christian girls around an open fire, capturing Geneviève’s attention fully with his embellished story. He'd boasted that he could ski across freshly fallen thick snow and drifts that weren’t cleared by the authorities as safe, but were in fact, avalanche threats. He could see the admiring looks on some of the girls' faces as they'd followed his tale, riveted to each fantastic word. Then a man who had nothing to do with the camp, but listening close by, decided to put a pin in Sammy’s inflated balloon and embarrass him in front of his audience, challenging his incredulous story. Red with embarrassment and feeling cornered by the questioning faces of the group, Sammy was compelled to prove his tale, but hoped the weather wouldn’t give him an opportunity and allow him an excuse to bravely back down.
Just a few days later, however, a massive snowstorm raged during the night, closing the ski areas until the authorities checked for avalanche threats. Sammy had no choice but to follow up on his bragging, donned his heavy outdoor clothes, rigged his skis and mounted his camera on his helmet for proof. He’d slipped outside into the heavy mountain mist, checked his map for the most difficult ski ramp and pushed through the loose snow. As he climbed through the mountainous country, the fog began to lower and cut his visibility. A rumble like distant thunder caught his attention, and not too far away he could hear trees snapping under the force of some huge giant. Fearing the power of an avalanche, Sammy panicked and dug his ski poles into the thick snow and tried to backtrack the way he thought he’d come. But soon it was evident he was disorientated and lost in the growing cold and fog.
The hours passed and it became colder as Sammy began to shiver, losing body heat to the extreme winter environment. Gentle snow at first started falling, turning the white landscape into an unrecognisable sheet and deleting any footprints or landmarks while the wind started to increase, driving the snowflakes like stinging bullets into Sammy’s frightened features. Then the wind whipped violently through the trees in a sudden gust, dislodging more snow to add to Sammy’s misery and making it harder to see, frightening the young teen to his lying core and wishing he hadn’t told such a whopping story.
He remembered clowning around and trying to disrupt the camp leaders while the group endeavoured to listen to their talk on Jesus and how He loved and protected those He chose. But Sammy wasn’t buying their tale or believing any of what they said and spitefully determined he wasn’t going to let some Jesus spoil his bid for Geneviève’s attention. Shivering severely now, Sammy knew he was in deep trouble and tried to remember something of the leaders' speech. As his teeth chattered together, an inspiration flashed through his mind and a voice whispered, ”Just call Him, Samuel.”
With nothing to lose, Sammy desperately pulled in a lungful of cold air and yelled in an act of sheer desperation, "JESUS, HELP ME!"
The sound of his own voice rattled around the treetops while frustrated and frightened tears formed in the corners of his eyes.
“Samuel, is that you?!” a voice sounded back from the whiteout.
“Over here!” Sammy couldn’t believe what was happening and began to sob in sheer relief.
Alex Dupont, one of the camp leaders covered in snow and with icicles hanging from his beard, pushed his skis out of the thick forest. “It’s alright, son,” Alex comforted. ”I heard your voice when you screamed to Jesus for help. Otherwise I wouldn’t have seen you and judging by the worsening weather reports, you probably would have perished out here, frozen to death. Follow me and I will lead you home.”
That night back at the camp and wrapped in a blanket, Samuel talked honestly about his attempts to impress and disrupt the camp. He also gave an accurate account of how Jesus had saved him from freezing to death and the small voice that urged him to yell at precisely the right instant for Alex to hear him. In a moment of surrender, he’d asked the group for forgiveness and requested his hero, Alex, to lead him to Christ. Sammy still remembered Geneviève’s warm hug and her kiss so soft on his cheek. Although the relationship didn’t go any further, Geneviève and Sammy were the best of friends even to this day.
“Lots of fun!” Ryan exclaimed sarcastically, his voice abruptly breaking into Sammy’s daydream and disrupting his thoughts. “You won’t be surprised if I pretend not to know you! I wouldn’t like people to think that I hang out with a religious nut!”
Sammy joined the lighthearted laughter rattling around the teenagers at his expense. “No problem, Ryan. I won’t bother you. But just know that I will be in the crowd if you need me.”
In a heartrending moment amid hugs and tears, the class of 2014 broke up and went their separate ways for the last time.
But with Delphine in Ryan’s company and no sign of Guillaume, the two were insulated from the sadness by the joy of finally being alone together. The couple ambled among the ever-present construction clamour along the Quai de la Rouvenaz towards Clarens, talking and laughing. Every year at this time, a massive white canvas pavilion, whose purpose it was to shelter the stalls of the jazz festival situated along the lakeside walk, had to be built; but today the language of the heart drowned out the ferocious activity and the noise wasn’t even noticed.
The flower beds were in full bloom, with the poplar, palm trees, Ginkgo biloba, mimosa and magnolia rolling across the summer scents and adding an urgency to the budding teenage romance smouldering just below the surface and waiting for the warm lake winds of passion to fan the emotions into flame. As they sauntered past the steamboat pier defining the port of Montreux, the pleasant garden walks of the Quai de la Rouvenaz gave way to the invigorating Quai Edouard-Jaccoud and almost unnoticed, the Quai Edouard-Jaccoud became the Quai de Vernex. Surprised to have walked the distance so quickly, Ryan anxiously pointed to the Auditorium Stravinski behind them, hoping to impress Delphine.
“This is one of the venues I’ll be working at.”
Delphine swivelled on her feet to face the structure and nodded, but something else was distracting her mind. She turned back to face Ryan, fidgeting impatiently with her small purse, her eyes dancing between her fingers and Ryan’s intense eyes. “I must leave you here, Ryan. My mother waits for me in the car park just across from the Avenue des Alpes,” Delphine prodded and then obviously checked her watch, hoping to spur the young man into making the decision she waited for and fulfil her romantic expectation.
Ryan‘s mouth dried up and his hands began to sweat, trying to work out if he should kiss the girl of his dreams or if she would object and become offended at his forward advances. In an instant of intense bravery and with his heart hammering in his chest, Ryan hesitantly stepped closer to Delphine, setting her emotions on fire and her eyes flashing with romantic anticipation.
Misreading her reaction and assuming he had made a mistake, Ryan stepped back again and bid her a fond adieu, deflating Delphine’s passion like a punctured balloon. With a frustrated flounce and burning cheeks, Delphine huffed loudly, turned away and stalked off towards her waiting parent, leaving Ryan chastising himself for the biggest miss
ed opportunity of his life.
Close by and cautiously following Ryan’s disgruntled movements into Clarens and then onto the Gambetta bus station, another teen scoured the scene with dark piercing eyes and took note of the bus Ryan boarded. As expected, the bus turned up into the Rue Gambetta and gathered speed, rumbling towards the Route de Chailly in an aggressive climb as Ryan made his way home. Ten minutes later Ryan alighted the bus in Chailly, 'a petit village' above Montreux where he lived with his family in a little villa, still fuming with himself for failing with Delphine and completely unaware of the observer stealthily following his movements.
*~*~*~*
Chapter 8
“Anne-Claire... Anne-Claire! Take those things out of your ears and stop being so rude in front of our guests! I can hear that… noise from over here. Goodness knows what it’s doing to your hearing!”
“W-H-A-T?!“ Anne-Claire bellowed. Her mother’s lips were moving vigorously and judging by the colour of her face, her blood pressure was on the move, too, although Anne-Claire couldn’t hear a word until she tugged on the little wires connected to her iPod. The earphones dropped helplessly from her ears to her lap, continuing on unperturbed with its distorted screaming concert.
With a nostalgic gleam of understanding, amused older passengers turned to stare at the interaction between mother and daughter, and the sixteen year old’s overemphasized reply. They, too, had trod the uneven stage of raising defiant teenagers, reading from an impossible real life script yet without the chance of an interval. However, once the final curtain fell, the embattled parent wore a crown of victorious grey hair while grandparent wisdom oozed from every pore and passed onto anyone foolish enough to ask for advice.
“I said...! Oh… never mind. Why don’t you go and find your grandpa if you can’t be sociable around your cousins.”
Anne-Claire’s face wrinkled in a popular sixteen-year-old pose, but the whatever didn’t slip out. She obeyed her mum, raised herself from her seat and headed unsteadily along the moving vessel’s railing toward the front of the old paddle steamer. Grandpa was full of great stories and he was the only one who made her mother’s impromptu tours of Montreux and Lac Léman bearable. Long lost cousins from Rouen, France, had decided to holiday with Anne-Claire’s family. Only trouble was, they were in their fifties and being the only teenager on tour made life unbearable. If it wasn’t for her iPod, her world would descend into an unrecognizable blur of wrinkly old people.
“Don’t be so hard on her, Jeannine. You were like that once,” Laurent whispered, perched beside his wife and watching his daughter climb the paddle steamer La Suisse’s ladder to the bridge.
“Exactly! And I am determined she won’t be like that, Laurent!” Jeannine responded. “I know how my behavior spiraled out of control when I started to listen to heavy rock music with a negative message. And Anne-Claire is doing the same thing, listening to the Slippery Eels or whatever they’re called!” the passion in Jeannine’s words flowed over into her demeanor and an unintentional sob caught in her throat.
“Has this got anything to do with the Frank Zappa concert and the Deep Purple thing?” Laurent whispered, trying to avoid an argument.
Jeannine met her husband’s eyes with a tinge of hurt, betrayed by his blunt reply and searching his meaning, wondering whether he was belittling her experience and accusing her of making too much of a traumatic past event. “Yes, as a matter of fact, it does. I was one of the last ones to get out of that concert and if it wasn’t for a quick thinking fireman, I would have died in there with a lot of other people.”
Just then, Christelle leaned into the conversation, intrigued. “What was that?”
Jeannine sighed. “It’s something I don’t really like thinking about, Christelle.”
Laurent caught Jeannine’s eye and rubbed her shoulders, communicating more than an affectionate gesture.
“Okay!” Jeannine threw her hands up and sighed dejectedly. Then drawing a breath and letting it out sharply, she realized her cousins were expecting an explanation and Laurent wouldn’t let her shrug off a reply. With an expression that could kill, she glanced sideways at her husband and almost spat out the first words. “It was a cold December afternoon in 1971 and Frank Zappa had a concert scheduled for 2 pm in the old casino complex here in Montreux. I was exactly like Anne-Claire and idolized a group of rock stars and wanted to see them live, but that was nearly my downfall. An older friend had bought an expensive ticket to the concert but couldn’t go, so she asked if I wanted to take her place and of course, at sixteen I jumped at the chance. However, I knew Dad wouldn’t let me within five miles of the casino—or Zappa. I remember treating that ticket like gold and kept it deceptively hidden from him… what was I thinking?! I knew it was wrong keeping it from Dad, but the pull to see my rock heroes was stronger, and I went.
“Anyway, about an hour into the gig, someone fired a flare into the rafters and the ceiling caught fire, burning the whole casino to the ground. Somewhere before the venue was fully engulfed the fire brigade came and chopped through the windows to get us out. Thankfully, no one was injured or died, but the casino was a write off. The band, Deep Purple were staying next door and they saw the whole thing happen from their hotel room window, inspiring the drummer to write the rock classic, Smoke on the Water from watching the casino’s destruction.”
“Oh… I loved that song!” Christelle interjected.
“Well, every time I hear it, it puts me right back inside that burning building again and I realize how close I came to death from a stupid act of disobedience. I can’t… stand... Smoke on the Water!”
Laurent rubbed his wife’s shoulders lovingly, trying to bring comfort, calming the prickly emotions the memories were stirring up and deliberately detoured the ingrained disdain directed at their daughter’s rock heroes. All four adults stared across the calm and enticing aqua blue water of Lac Léman from the rear deck of La Suisse, watching the pretty municipality of Pully pass by in silence. It seemed their hearts beat in time with the sleepy swishing from the steam powered paddle wheels while silently contemplating Jeannine’s somber tale.
As if enticed along by their sober emotions, La Suisse’s solemn steam whistle broke into the silence, causing Jeannine to jump and shocking her out of her tragic past.
*~*~*~*
Searching the moving paddle steamer’s wheelhouse for her grandparent’s attention, Anne-Claire raised her voice from the access ladder so the old man could hear her. “Grandpa?! Am I okay up on the bridge with you?”
“Anne-Claire sweetheart, of course you are! Come on in and tell me what you have been up to.”
She stepped off the ladder and walked into the bridge where her grandpa was working, guiding La Suisse through the gentle waters of Lac Léman en route to Chillon Castle. She pulled on the earphone wires and the little discs dropped from her ears while she investigated the lake from the antique steamer’s wheelhouse.
“What are you listening to, honey?” Grandpa asked, pointing to her iPod.
“It’s a new Italian group and I like them a lot. You wanna hear them?” Anne-Claire teased, expecting her grandpa to decline.
“Sure. Let me have those ear things.”
Anne-Claire handed her grandpa the ear discs and then swiped the play button, astonished when his face went red and he appeared as if his eyes were going to pop out. Quickly realizing the problem, she immediately adjusted the volume down to minimum, forgetting she had set it at full for herself. What Grandpa heard was B-L-A-H!!!! and then a piano falling down an elevator shaft followed by someone destroying a guitar, pulling its strings out and bashing it on the ground, interspersed with the same words repeated over and over. ‘Bastone i vostri occhi insieme con Sicad’.
Grandpa started to laugh and pulled the ear discs from his ears.
“What’s so funny, Grandpa?” Anne-Claire started to smile at the older man’s hilarity.
“Do you understand these words, Anne-Claire?” Grandpa kept g
iggling.
“No. I only listen to the music, not the words,” Anne-Claire flushed red with embarrassment.
Grandpa caught a giggle in the back of his throat and struggled to control another one trying to escape around his tonsils. “The song says, ‘Stick your eyes together with Sicad’. Sicad is Italian glue.”
Anne-Claire seemed scandalized and a little hurt at Grandpa’s description.
“Sorry, sweetheart. I didn’t mean to belittle your favorite rock group.” Thinking he would make amends for his treachery, Grandpa asked, “What’s their name?”
Anne-Claire wondered whether she should surrender the next bit of information but felt she was committed. “Sticky Lizards,” she offered innocently.
Grandpa fell about the wheelhouse laughing and grabbed hold of the steam whistle cord to steady himself. La Suisse let out a raucous scream, mimicking Grandpa’s laugh. Regaining his composure, Grandpa wiped his eyes and turned to face Anne-Claire, but the hurt expression on her face melted the old man’s heart and activated his compassion, draping his arm lovingly over his granddaughter’s deflated shoulders.
“Anne-Claire, there are always messages in everything we see and hear, and when it is combined with music we like it can have devastating effects on our feelings and how we make decisions. What you’re listening to here is the thought processes contained in some young man’s head. If his thoughts are wholesome, then his music message will be wholesome. What do you think his message is in this song?”
Anne-Claire shrugged.
“To me, the message is a negative message, inciting his listeners into antisocial behavior. Listen, sweetheart. If the music we listen to and the people we associate with behave in a certain way, then it affects our behavior and we do things we normally wouldn’t. That’s why pressure advertising is such a dangerous tool. Romanticizing abject evil through music can—and does—influence people away from our well established values and cause us to make wrong choices, sometimes leaving us agreeing with the wrong side of an argument without us knowing it. You’re a smart girl, Anne-Claire. Be wise in who you let inside your head.”