Phantom (61 page)

"Take me!" she whispered. "
Teach me
. …"

Stunned, incredulous, scarcely able to believe in what I heard and saw, I lifted her face with trembling hands and kissed her bruised and bleeding forehead with all the uncertain timidity of a terrified boy.

And then suddenly I was no longer the teacher, but the pupil… for her arms were around my neck, her caressing hands an insistent pressure against my skull, drawing me forward with unbelievable strength into her embrace.

When her lips closed over mine I tasted the salt of tears, but it was impossible to say whether they were mine or hers.

Deeper and deeper she swam down into that embrace, pulling me like a lost pearl from the sucking mud of the ocean bed, dragging me relentlessly back up with her into the searing light of day. She kicked away the crutches of hate that had sustained me so long and made me stand with helpless wonder while her hands once more sought my face and drew it down to hers.

A long long time she held me, as though she could not bear to let me go, and when at last we drew apart, we stared at each other with silent awe, dazed by the intensity of what we had shared.

It was finished then, of course… that kiss ended everything.

The moment I knew that she was mine—truly mine—I knew I could not kill that wretched boy.

I had no trouble when I came to book box five for this evening's performance. No one looked up in horror, one hand to his mouth, no one rushed off to consult an anxious management over my heinous request. In the seventeen intervening years since I last attended this theater, staff have died, moved on, and been replaced; no one remembers the Opera Ghost now, except as a vague legend, and I daresay that no one remembers me either. I'm thirty-eight this year, but if I'm honest with myself I have to admit that I look at least ten years older. Grief and bitterness have aged me to a point where no one in Paris would now recognize me as the Vicomtc de Chagny. Not that I mind that. I haven't come here tonight to be recognized… I've come to remember and to pay tribute to my memories.

Drawing my watch from my pocket, I frown as the minutes tick away inexorably to curtain time. It looks as if Charles isn't going to make it in time for the overture! Damnable ill luck, our carriage running over that stray dog… Of course Charles was out of the door like a shot, picking the poor creature out of the gutter, never minding that his dress suit was covered in mud and blood, insisting we find a veterinary surgeon immediately. No mean feat on a Friday night in Paris!

"Look, Dad, you go on to the restaurant without me. I'll sort this out and meet you at the Opera later."

"Charles, I'm not very happy about this! Your mother would never have forgiven me if she thought I'd left you running around Paris alone in the dark…"

That smile! The irrepressibly sunny smile with which he's always resisted my tiresome authority, the smile which makes it quite impossible to protest against his quiet determination.

"Dad! I'm sixteen and I speak French as well as you do! I promised Mother I'd look after you, make sure you ate. Now, go and have your dinner, like a good fellow. I'll meet you later."

It's quite impossible to argue with Charles when he's made up his mind. Ever since Christine died he's been organizing me, providing a nonstop whirlwind of activity to stop me brooding, and I haven't had the strength or the heart to resist his well-meant efforts. It was his idea to come back to France on this visit, to make this pilgrimage to the Opera and see the famous horseshoe auditorium in which Christine knew her great triumph.

But it was my idea to book box five… and even now I'm not entirely sure what streak of perversity has brought me back to a place that was once Erik's private domain. There's nothing to distinguish this box from any other on the grand tier—same carpet, same armchairs, same red hangings and red velvet ledge. And yet I like to fancy it has a unique atmosphere, an aura of repressed memories. I like to fancy that if I spoke he would hear me. Odd, really… since Christine died I've often felt a great need to speak to Erik. It's as though I've come to believe that he has the right to know—to see at last how it all ended.

A hand on my shoulder.

"Hallo, Dad! Just made it in time after all."

I turn to look up and my heart is squeezed at the sight of this lovely boy who bears no resemblance to me or to Christine. If I ever doubted my own fears, if I ever tried to persuade myself that I was mistaken, I can't do it tonight, can't fool myself any longer. With every year that passes his features conform more closely to that portrait which I keep safely locked in a private drawer. Even Christine never knew it lay in my possession; I never confronted her with it. We kept our secrets from each other to the very end…

Charles slides into the chair beside me with the unhurried grace that sets him entirely apart from other boys of his age, and turns to give me a smile of encouragement.

"I know this won't be easy for you, Dad, but afterward you'll be glad you came and laid the ghost to rest."

My God! Sometimes I swear this boy has psychic powers, he has such an uncanny knack of touching a raw nerve with healing fingers. But of course, he only thinks of Christine… he can't possibly imagine the sheer magnitude of conflicting emotions that surge through my weary brain tonight.

The lights dim slowly in the great auditorium and Charles lifts his opera glasses from their case, leaning forward a little in his seat with taut anticipation. In a few minutes he will be quite lost in the music, forgetting me, forgetting his dead mother, forgetting everything except his need to commune with a force that's always been beyond my understanding. Music is in his soul, extends to every fiber of his being, and already in England they are hailing him as the most outstanding young concert pianist to emerge this century. Women crowd to his recitals, embarrassing him afterward with their fulsome praise and overt admiration of his good looks.

"As if it matters what I look like!" he once burst out indignantly. "It shouldn't come into it, should it, Dad? Why can't they just listen to the music instead of making cow's eyes over my face?"

Yes, Charles, at thirteen, had considered it an absolute imposition to look like a young god.

"You don't suppose they only come just to look at me, do you?" he'd asked in horror. Strange how he always insisted on coming to me with all his anxieties—always to me rather than Christine, even when he was very young and I did absolutely nothing to encourage his confidence… or thought I didn't. Some sort of poetic justice, I suppose.

Glancing at him now, seeing him safely absorbed in the music, I lay my own opera glasses quietly aside and sit back in my armchair with my eyes closed.

I have no real interest in
Carmen
, you see.

Against the darkness of my lids I have already begun to relive a more personal opera, the one in which I once quite unwittingly found myself playing a leading role.

Seventeen years ago, in the uncharted bowels of this very theater…

The heat in the mirrored chamber had very quickly reached an almost unendurable level, causing me to fling off my jacket and rip open the neck of my dress shirt as I listened in helpless anguish to the conversation in the adjoining room. Sweat was rolling off me in torrents within minutes, soaking the stiff white linen and blinding me with a steady trickle of salty droplets.

I hammered on the thick glass in impotent rage, but it resisted the onslaught of my bare fists and at length I fell back defeated, cursing savagely and gasping for breath. The air seemed to have become very thin and rarefied; I could not suck sufficient quantity into my laboring lungs, and already I was beginning to grow dizzy and disoriented. Slumping down on the floor, where it felt a little cooler, I struggled to concentrate on the terrible scene which was escalating beyond the walls of my prison.

Erik spoke at first with an icy, controlled sarcasm, but as I listened intently I detected increasing signs of insanity in his words and realized with horror that the man was now quite out of his mind. Panic seized me when I heard Christine begin to plead with him and that warning note of impending violence suddenly entered his voice. Dear God, she was making him angry, terribly angry… couldn't she see that every word she spoke only increased his rage and bitterness?
Be quiet
! I willed her silently.
Don't say any more or he'll kill you
!

I heard him shouting at her, the sound of some object being hurled across the room; I heard her ask him what he wanted… and after that I heard no more. There was a long and terrible silence which seemed to stretch on and on into infinity, and the hollow trembling that came over me sapped the last of my strength and hope. I assumed that the inevitable had happened, that he had strangled her; and if she was dead, I no longer unduly cared what became of me.

When the mirror in front of me opened of itself, I didn't move for a moment; and then with a curious, unhurried calm I paused to pick up my jacket, delaying the awful moment when I would be forced to look upon what he had done. I would not have believed it possible to pass into such a state of utter apathy; I felt tired and very, very old as I staggered into the room beyond. My brain appeared to have ceased functioning entirely. Even when I saw them both standing there, I could not at first assimilate the fact that Christine was still alive.

They were standing very close, almost close enough to touch, and Christine was staring up at him with an intensity that entirely excluded me and everything else in the room. She seemed aware of nothing but him: I would have said she was in a state of trance, save for the look in her eyes, that astonishing look which seemed not to be one of fear, but rather one of… revelation!

It was he who moved first, turned around and so afforded me a first glimpse of his horrific face. God! She hadn't lied, had she? How was it possible for anything living to look like that?

He walked away from her and approached me slowly, with a heavy sigh.

"Put on your jacket, young man, or you will take a chill," he said with quiet severity.

Incredulously, never taking my eyes off him for a second, I struggled into my tailcoat with difficulty.

"Let me see you walk in a straight line."

"I—I beg your pardon?" I stammered uncertainly.

Again he sighed, with a kind of weary patience, as though I were some particularly dull-witted child committed to his unwilling care.

"It will be necessary for you to row some distance in the dark. I have no intention of allowing you to take her in the boat until I am assured of your strength and sense of balance. Now… let me see you walk."

I crossed the chamber and returned in accordance with his gesture. Christine had not moved. She appeared to be frozen to the spot and still she gazed at him transfixedly; but, for the moment, amazement washed all thought of her strange behavior from my mind.

He's going to let us go… I really believe he means to let us go…

"You appear to have taken little harm," continued Erik gravely. "I advise small quantities of fluid at regular intervals during the next twelve hours. Please remember that excessive water will make you ill, as will alcohol…"