Phantom (54 page)

All I have to do is make that fatal plunge…

The dream makes me sad and terribly angry, for what's the use of aspiring to a mermaid's tail?

Even if the spider wasn't there, I don't know how to swim!

I got up at length to bathe and dress in my beautiful private bathroom of pink marble. Such opulence! It's like a Turkish bath, designed to please a favored lady of the harem. I might be the sultan's favorite, with one exception: There are no demands made of me in return for my spoiled indulgence.

Chopin's Mazurka in F minor drew me out into the drawing room at last, to take my silent position upon the sofa. Chopin had less than a year to live when he wrote this piece, and there was something sadly significant to me in hearing Erik play it now. He has not told me so, but I know that he, too, is nearing the end of his life. Nothing he does or says marks him as an invalid, but I'm not a complete fool, I have always understood that he is far more seriously ill than he will ever admit.

He didn't notice my presence
—
he never notices anything when he plays
!—
but the cat did. I saw her sit upright on the piano and look at me with hostility
.

Go away,
she seemed to be saying
, we don't need you here!

At other times I had permitted her slit-eyed enmity to drive me back into my room, but today I was determined not to give ground; I wished to hear Erik play and I would not be intimidated by a jealous feline. I stayed on the couch and watched the animal prepare for war.

She leapt down onto the center of the keyboard, fracturing his beautiful music into jarring discord. Only an animal would have dared to disturb him like that and only an animal would have received such indulgence in return.

"My darling!" he protested laughingly. The depth of love in those Wo words caused all the muscles in my stomach to tighten with sudden rage, but still I did not move to betray my presence.

Twice he replaced her on top of the piano and twice she promptly jumped down again, nudging against him with insistent demand, refusing to be ignored, pushing her head beneath his hand. I watched his hand trace the line of her body from her nose to her tail, a swooping, sensual caress that made the creature arch with unashamed ecstasy. Even in silence there was always music in those hands, a cadence which seemed to flow irresistibly through his fingertips. When he bent and kissed the delicate little skull, I found my fists were clenched against the pain.

Willful and insatiable, the cat continued to seek his attention until at last he capitulated to her demand and lifted her into his arms. With the ease of long familiarity she came to rest with her head and front paws stretched over his shoulder, and there she remained, smug and sleek with contentment, working her claws rhythmically into the dark fabric of his tailcoat.

The blue eyes, half closed with pleasure, seemed to regard me with the superiority of unquestioned possession, as though suddenly she understood that she had nothing to fear from me.

No need for jealousy, no need to flaunt her little powers of seduction. I could not hope to take him from her. I did not dare!

When Christine and I parted on the banks of the lake this morning I told her we must not meet again for a week.

This arbitrary decision to place time and distance between us—born of a disturbing sense of ill omen which refused to be satisfactorily placed—was a difficult resolution to keep when the moment of parting came. It becomes harder, not easier, each time I have to let her go. The temptation to keep her shut away down here with me is almost irresistible.

I tried to convince myself that I was simply being practical. She had her theater commitments to consider and I knew that if 1 wasn't very careful my selfishness would end in ruining the career I desired to further. No one had contested her absence up till now, during a period when her presence was not required onstage—no one except Nadir, who of course missed nothing and was now inclined, since Buquet's death, to view even the most innocuous event with intense suspicion. The death of her father seemed to have left her entirely isolated. She kept a little maid, a sad, simpleminded creature from what I gathered, who had evidently too little curiosity or too little courage to report her mistress missing. It had become grimly apparent to me that, apart from young Chagny, there was no one in the world to care what became of Christine—no friends, no relations. She might have lain drowned in the Seine these last few weeks for all the difference her absence had made to her colleagues at the Opera.

But they were due begin a run of
Faust
again on Saturday and I knew I could not permit her to miss a single rehearsal or performance on my account. She belonged to the upper world of daylight and applause; I had to accept that there would always be young men to admire her; I had to condition myself to her absence, learn to hold a loose rein, when all my instincts were to clutch and hold and smother.

I had to tear down some of the walls 1 had built to preserve myself from hurt and learn to trust her…

Of course, I did not tell her that. I said instead that I wished to have some time alone to complete my opera. Expecting to see relief betray itself in her eyes, I saw instead a flicker of resentment and puzzled hurt. She looked like a child who has been told to keep out of the way.

"I'm very sorry if I disturb you," she said, not looking at me as she spoke. "I always try to be very quiet when you're working."

"Oh, Christine, it isn't that! It's simply that your very presence in the house is distracting."

Her head flew up and there was a look in her eyes that I could not comprehend.

"Perhaps you'd find me less distracting if I possessed a tail and a diamond collar!" she said shortly.

And taking the key to the gates in the Rue Scribe from her pocket, she pulled up the hood of her cloak and hurried away.

I can't begin to imagine what she meant by that remark; it isn't like her to snap cryptic comments.

Why is she suddenly so angry?

Does it mean she won't come back?
*

"A week?" said Raoul warily. "You are not to go back for a whole week? Why?"

"Because he's busy!"

I sat glaring down at my gown
. Run along and play now, Christine, I have more important things to do.
All these weeks Erik's led me to believe that I'm the center of his universe, and now he's just going to put me out of his mind as easily as he might shut a book! I can't believe it! If I didn't know better I'd think that cat was behind this! They're so incredibly, inhumanly close that it seems perfectly within the bounds of possibility
!

Is he bored with me? Tired of wasting his genius on a miserable shrinking violet? Will he really be waiting for me on the lake a week from now?

Raoul had placed his opera hat and gloves upon the dressing table.

"Well, " he began uncertainly, "since it seems, that for once we are not governed by the crazy whims of your mad professor, perhaps you would do me the honor of coming to supper tonight."

I glanced at the silent mirror angrily.

"I'd be delighted to," I said.

When am I going to learn to interpret my premonitions with accuracy?

I know perfectly well now why I sent her away; I'd hardly been back in the house an hour when I had a second attack. Oh, not serious, not like the first, but enough to make it clear that I obviously have less time than I thought, that perhaps it would be more accurate to start thinking in terms of months, rather than years.

I'm so glad she wasn't here to see!

If I'm careful for a week she'll never need to know it happened.

*

When Raoul came to my dressing room tonight after the performance, he found me hastily fastening my cloak, and checked himself with sudden unmistakable disappointment. We'd had a wild and wonderful seven days. We'd driven out to the Bois, thrown buns to the elephants in the zoological gardens, patronized a different restaurant and theater every night; we'd laughed at the comedies, pulled faces at the tragedies, argued gaily over menus, and sipped from the same champagne glass. And I could see in his eyes now how hard it was for him to accept that this pleasant state of affairs wasn't going to continue.

"You're going back to Erik, aren't you ?" he said unhappily. "I rather hoped that after this week you would find the strength to change your mind."

I didn't answer for a moment. I was already deeply aware how unwise I had been to spend so much time with him these last few days, how terribly disloyal to Erik.

"I have to go back, Raoul, you know that. "

"
Why do you have to go back? I simply don't understand this hold he seems to have upon you. You behave as though you had no mind of your own. Christine, if you're frightened of him
—"

"I'm not frightened of him… not for myself, anyway. You need have no concern for my safety. Erik would die rather than hurt me."

Raoul came across the room and took hold of my arms. His fair, boyish face was flushed and the piercing blue eyes suspiciously bright.

"Are you in love with him?" he demanded simply.

"I don't know," I said.

He nodded and stood back, taking his hands off my arms.

"Is there any chance that you may know sometime in the

near future? Or shall I just go away for good and stop pestering you? I daresay that would suit Erik nicely, wouldn't it? I expect you might find he'd make a miraculous recovery once I was off the scene!"

Tears pricked my eyes and I turned away to pick up my gloves.

"If you had seen him, you would never say anything so cruel and heartless."

"Tell me about him!"

"I've already told you,"

"Well, tell me again. I want to hear it again!"

"What do want to hear about?" I cried furiously. "The murders… the thefts… the morphine?"

"I want to know what he looks like."

I stared up at him with sudden contempt.

"
He looks like you, Raoul! He looks exactly as you will look
—
when you've been dead for a few months! Now, are you satisfied, have you heard enough
?"

Raoul sank down on the stool beside my dressing table and leaned his head against his hand for a moment.

"You're really not lying about that, are you?" he muttered at last.

"No," I said coldly, "everything that I have told you about him is the truth. Including what I feel for him."

"I see."

He got up slowly, brought a little jeweler's box out of his coat pocket, and set it on the table.

"I bought this today. I was hoping you might accept it, but since there doesn't seem to be much chance of that, I may as well leave it anyway. I hardly think they'll want to take it back."

I opened the box with trembling fingers and the light of

the gas jets showed me a huge ruby, surrounded by diamonds.

"Oh, Raoul!" I sighed. "I can't possibly wear this for you while Erik lives."

"It was you who said he may not live much longer."

"Raoul… please!"

Again he took hold of me.

"All you have to do is tell me you don't love me, that you don't want to marry me. That's all you have to say to make me go away."

He waited in tense silence for me to speak, and when my eyes dropped helplessly away from his, he pulled the ring from its red velvet bed and slipped it determinedly onto my finger.

"I don't mind if you feel you have to hide it for now," he said. "You and I have kept secrets since we were ten years old."

When he kissed me, I made no effort to stop him, and the feeling of guilt became almost unbearable.

As soon as I was alone once more, I took the ring off my finger and hung it out of sight upon the chain that held my crucifix. As long as I wore it there it was simply a bauble, and I could persuade myself that, in my own way, I remained true to them both. I was not yet able to accept that I must make a choice between them; I still believed that as long as I confined them both to their separate worlds, I could stave off a tragedy worse than any Shakespeare ever set upon the stage.

When the Opera House had emptied, I slipped out into the streets, holding my hood tightly in place to protect myself from the cold wind. My throat was sore with the onset of a heavy cold and I had had to force my voice tonight in order to sing. That was a direct contradiction of Erik's sternest

instructions, but what could I have done? I could hardly have played the prima donna and refused to go on at the last minute. Monsieur Richard would probably have canceled my contract on the spot if I gave myself such airs. He's been in a terrible humor since all this business with the Opera Ghost began, they say he would tear a contract up as soon as look at you these days.

As I approached the gates that led to the underground passages, I was accosted by a man.

Well, not exactly accosted! The man who stepped out of the shadows shrank back against the wall when he saw me, with an exclamation of horrified apology.

"
Mademoiselle! Please forgive me, I didn't mean to startle you like that! In the darkness I thought for a moment
…"

He trailed into a silence that seemed to indicate both confusion and distress, and immediately I felt a curious concern.

"Who were you expecting to find here at this hour of night, monsieur?" I demanded, detaining him when he would have slipped away.

"No one!" he said with unmistakable terror. "I wasn't waiting for anyone, mademoiselle, I assure you!"

"Is it Erik?" I persisted gently. "Were you looking for Erik?"