Phantom (50 page)

Even if all things were equal, I'm still old enough to be her father!

But all things aren't equal. I know I haven't got a chance in a fair fight, so I'll fight the only way I know how, and I'll fight to the death if I must.

He's only twenty, only a boy, a harmless, charming young fellow with the whole of his life in front of him.

But I'll kill him if I have to… if there's no other way to keep her.

Yes… in spite of Nadir, in spite of my promise, I'm quite sure that I'll have to kill him in the end.

I once heard it said that troubles never come singly, and as far as I can see a truer word was never spoken.

It's all just as I feared. The new management is flexing the muscles of independence and quite flagrantly disregarding my wishes; my allowance has not been paid and box five has been sold for the first time since I amended the Opera lease. It's quite insupportable! I have made my displeasure known to them by letter, but it's beginning to look as if they're going to require tangible proof of my wrath before they give in. I'd give a great deal to have Poligny back, especially now that I wish to further Christine's cause.

Pure jealousy on behalf of our leading lady is preventing the management from realizing Christine's potential; Carlotta is a famous name and they're terrified of losing her.

Well, if they don't start listening to me, they could lose her for good! I've never killed a woman yet, but I don't mind making an exception for that spiteful creature; she's made Christine cry more than once and I won't have it.
… I won't have it
!

Last night I caused the entire performance to be disturbed by maniacal laughter issuing incessantly from box five. The hapless occupants of the box were eventually ejected by a municipal guard, loudly protesting their innocence; and in their absence the terrible laughter continued to disrupt the proceedings.

I consider that the management has received fair warning and consequently I have delivered my instructions with every expectation of being obeyed.

The part of Margarita shall go to Christine this evening.

If she doesn't sing that role tonight, someone's going to be extremely sorry!

A truly unbelievable thirty occurred tonight!

Halfway through one of her most triumphant arias Carlotta began to croak like a toad. By that I don't mean to imply that her voice cracked
—
a dreaded fate that can overtake any one of us
—
it was simply
transformed
! I was utterly amazed
—
it was as though the fate that I had wished upon her had been meted out by a vengeful angel
.

The most awful silence descended on the auditorium; people were too shocked even to hiss, and Carlotta eventually ran from the stage in hysterics. Hardly surprising
—
no one, even her worst enemy, could have expected her to continue under such dreadful circumstances. And when Monsieur Richard came to me in great agitation, begging me to sing Margarita in her place, I repeated my triumph of the gala night
.

I feel terribly uneasy about it all now, though. This is the second time I've taken over the lead because some unpleasant fate has befallen Carlotta. There's a dark side to the Angel of Music that has begun to frighten me. When I asked him if he was responsible for Carlotta's strange malady he laughed and said it was his pleasure to make even my smallest wish come true.

He laughed!

Surely an angel should not laugh!

It was some time before he recovered from his terrible mirth, and when he had done so he did not seem inclined to teach me. Instead for the first time he began to talk to me like a real person; he spoke of his hopes for my career and for once permitted me to ask a few questions. He said such outrageously amusing things about the management that I could not help laughing, too, and I suddenly realized that we were talking like old friends, easily and without restraint.

Even his voice had changed. No longer inside my head, it seemed to issue directly from the mirror, and though still of unearthly beauty, it had lost that awesome, godlike resonance.

Almost without knowing what I was doing I began to drift closer and closer to the mirror. I found myself imagining his face as that of a real living man, and I felt a deep need to reach out and touch solid flesh. I began to explore the surface of the mirror with restless caressing fingers. All these months I have heard his voice in my sleep and woken with my hands reaching out hopelessly into the darkness. Again and again he has passed through my restless dreams like a winged shadow, and though I have clutched with desperation at his fleeting image I have never, never been able to see his face.

Now I had the crazy sensation that this pane of glass was all that separated us, and in a foolish, off-guarded moment I confided my desperate wish to see him. I begged him to appear to me here in this very room, just as the Angel Gabriel once appeared to the Holy Virgin.

His anger was swift and terrible; it seemed to leap at me through the mirror like an electrical shock and made me recoil with bewildered pain.

"It is enough that you hear me!" Hard and cold as hail, his voice was abruptly back inside my head. "I tire of your mortal greed. Remember that what has been granted to you can also be withdrawn."

And then he was gone.

Neither tears nor hours of desperate penitence succeeded in winning his forgiveness, and I am terrified that this time he has gone for good.

I only wanted to see him… just to look once upon his beautiful face.

Why did that make him so angry?

Tonight she asked to see me, begged me to appear to her in a vision or a dream. I had just enough command of myself to show cold displeasure and then I fled from her innocent request before my grief betrayed me.

Memories crowded in on me as I rowed across the lake, memories of that other lovely girl who had died of her wish to see me.

"I want you to take off the mask, Erik, do you hear me? I want you to take it off right now."

It all came back so vividly, the sound of her scream and the landslide of falling masonry; it might have been yesterday.

I've never felt such abject despair. This whole insane travesty is spinning out of my control, and if I don't put a stop to it now I dare not think how it will end.

I must not go back to her.

I will not go back!

There is only silence in my dressing room. There's nothing I can do, there's no way to reach him now that he has chosen to leave me; our separation is as final as death. He's never going to come back.

I've lost him, just as I lost my father… but this time it's my fault, I've brought it all on myself. I've destroyed everything with my own hand and there are no words in existence that can express my grief at the loss.

In the depth of my despair I finally confided my secret to Raoul, willing myself to believe he was the one person in the world who would understand. Ten years ago we had both believed in angels, in ghosts and demons and things that go bump in the night. Bravely sitting alone in a dark room, we'd told each other horror stories that made us cling to each other in delighted terror. Two against an adult world, we'd shared childish dreams and confided our most foolish thoughts without fear of being laughed at.

Raoul did not laugh at me now, but even before I had finished speaking I knew what a terrible mistake I had made. In the slight stiffening of the arms that held me, I felt the involuntary withdrawal of belief, an instinctive response of pure common sense which told me, more plainly than words could ever do, that Raoul had grown up and left me playing quite alone on some solitary, nonexistent seashore.

He looked extremely worried, made me sit down, and proceeded to ask a lot of questions that left me in absolutely no doubt as to what he was thinking. Was I having headaches and dizzy spells? Had I seen a doctor? Perhaps I was working too hard; perhaps I ought to see a specialist.

"In what?" I demanded coldly. "Psychiatry?"

He looked terribly embarrassed as he got down on his knees and took both my hands in his.

"Now, don't put words into my mouth, " he said uneasily. "All I'm saying is that perhaps you ought to think of leaving the stage for a while and have a complete rest. "

"You think I should be locked, up, don't you? You think I belong in a lunatic asylum!"

He groaned and pressed my hand against his lips.

"I don't think anything of the sort. But I really am very worried about you, Christine, and I do think you should take medical advice."

In silence I withdrew my hands from his, and after a moment he got off his knees and went to fetch his hat and gloves.

"I have my carriage outside. Will you let me take you home?"

"No. Thank you, but no—I would prefer to walk. "

He nodded, sighed, drew on his gloves, and reluctantly prepared to leave. In the doorway he turned to look back at me.

"You'll think about what I've said, though… consider taking a holiday at least?"

"
I shan't need to consider it. 1 have no part after tomorrow night until we give
Faust
again next month. I shall have all the time in the world to rest
."

"Oh… well, in that case, perhaps…"

I stared at him so stonily that he lapsed abruptly into uncomfortable silence.

"I'll say good-night, then, " he continued awkwardly after a moment, and at length, receiving no response from me, he closed the door.

When he had gone I turned to look at the huge, ominously silent mirror.

Had it really happened or was it only a dream? Perhaps I should seriously think about seeing that psychiatrist after all…

*

Before I saw Christine I thought I already knew all there was for a man to know about the bitterness of love.

But now I understood why the manuscript of
Don Juan Triumphant
had always defeated me. What had I ever known of love… childish fantasies… schoolboy worship… simple, earthy lust? I'd grasped only the counterpoint, never the theme, but now there was no shield of ignorance to spare my senses. I looked directly at the sun and was knifed by its pitiless, searing light.

I was a prisoner inside the cage of my own body, shut up day and night with a hot, hard, throbbing agony from which there was no respite or relief except in morphine. The dosage was rapidly escalating to a suicidal level, and from the white hell of this drugged intoxication there began to emerge a music almost beyond human comprehension. Music that no one would ever dare to play in public; music that raped the auditory senses, violated the listener's body, and threatened the equilibrium of the brain.

All the tenderness and all the hatred ever generated in the world from man's most basic instinct was captured between the staves of that manuscript.

And still it was not enough to grant the final release that would let me forget, let me rest.

Tonight I went back to the mirror and waited for her, walled up against reality, suddenly facing a truth that I had spent my entire life denying.

I was not set apart from the rest of mankind, hermetically sealed by my disfigurement from its most turbulent and treacherous emotion. I was no longer a cold, contented genius, a reigning king or even a ghost.

I was just a man… just a very desperate man, finally prepared to commit the ultimate theft.

I left the stage this evening in low spirits, reluctant to forsake the theater and enter that unwelcome state which is

euphemistically known in our profession as "resting." A lonely flat and a yawning maid were all that waited for me now, and the prospect of the silent weeks stretching out ahead filled me with growing despondency.

But as soon as I walked into my dressing room I was aware that the very air around me pulsed as though it were electrically charged, and I was suddenly filled with a powerful foreknowledge of joy.

He is here, I'm sure of it. In spite of his anger, in spite of his silence, I know now that I am forgiven; and surely such forgiveness can only mean one thing.

Mortal, immortal, it no longer matters, for love transcends all barriers and I am confident now that he is as helpless against its brutal grip as I am.

Tonight I shall beg him to take me with him, away from this world where I don't belong, which is so full of mocking strangers. Tonight I am ready to relinquish the earth and everything upon it in exchange for my Guardian's beloved presence. Death is a price I no longer question or fear to pay. This past week has been enough to teach me that without him there simply is no life for me at all.

There is nothing left for me to do now except lay down my pen and wait…

Music and the swift turn of a mirror on its pivot permitted me to take her hand and draw her down through the labyrinthine passages to the lake that divided our two worlds. Wrapped in the shroud of my voice, blind and slavishly obedient, she came with wordless joy, following me over an unending bridge of song until at last we stood in the house beyond the lake.

Now was the time to stop and let silence betray my wicked deception, but my voice was drunk on its own power and refused to let the dream end yet. I rocked her on the sweet tide of my music until she slept in my embrace and then for a long time I simply held her, cherishing the weight of her body in my arms and the slight pressure of her head against my shoulder. So light and fragile! She seemed no more than a child… a dead child lying in my arms.

I wanted to hold her like that for all eternity, but with the passage of time her slight weight became an intolerable, leaden burden that made every muscle in my body scream out in protest. At length I carried her through to the second bedroom and laid her down upon my mother's bed, covering her tenderly with a shawl and watching the pale material slowly settle and cling to the outline of her form, enveloping her with a warmth and intimacy that I could never share. If it's possible to be jealous of a shawl, then I was wickedly jealous.