![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charleygirlTitle: The Garish Light of Day 44/?
Author: charleygirl
Word Count: 4121
Rating: G
Genre: General, Drama
Characters Involved: Erik the Phantom, Christine Daae
Disclaimer: The Phantom of the Opera is the creation of Gaston Leroux but probably these days copyright to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Summary: Teller of tales...
THE STORYTELLER
It was strange, how soothing Christine found it to watch Erik sleep.
She had become used to it over the past few months, during those weeks when she would sit with him while he was recovering from the gunshot wound, tending to his needs and talking quietly until exhaustion claimed him again. As long as bad dreams did not bother him he looked quite peaceful, vulnerable almost, rest smoothing away the lines of care and suffering that had wrought themselves upon his face over the course of his life. Even the deformity did not look so bad when he relaxed, she had discovered; though it was still horrible, and shocking in the extreme for those who had never seen it before, when he slept it was easier to accept it for what it was, a part of him, the other half that made up the whole. Usually he would bury it in the pillow, instinctively hiding, but the black eye that had painfully swollen that delicate side of his face made such an action impossible. Christine found herself wondering not for the first time how some accident of birth could have so entirely ravaged his features, twisting the skin and muscle in on itself in some areas and stretching it paper thin in others so that the bones almost pushed their way through. The eye on that side sank back into his head, and at present the flesh surrounding it had puffed up so much that it was almost impossible to see. His lips, bloated and flaring out across his distorted cheek, were cut and split, their already purplish hue darkening as the bruises they had sustained gradually blossomed.
Thankfully the more superficial injuries to the normal side of his face were healing, the scrapes closing up and disappearing. It seemed that the men who had attacked him concentrated their attentions on the weaker half, knowing that it would cause him more pain. Christine was convinced now of the identity of those men, but she had not yet summoned the courage to ask Erik; she had no way of knowing how he might react, and she did not want him to harm himself further. He was already incensed that she had abandoned her role in Rigoletto to look after him, claiming that another absence would do nothing for her reputation as a singer. Nettled, she retorted that any previous time off had mainly been his fault, not hers, which had stymied him long enough for her to get more laudanum down his throat.
Now she sat beside him, her eyes on his still form as he breathed uncomfortably but steadily in and out. The calling card she had been given by Didier Tolbert was in her hand and she flipped it between her fingers; she wanted to know about the gypsies from the carnival, but was reluctant to involve a stranger in such an affair. Would it be possible to ask for information without revealing why? Theodora had accepted her refusal to involve the police at least until Erik was able to give an account of the attack, but Christine was sure Monsieur Patterson-Smythe was becoming suspicious as to the real reason for her reluctance to act.
“You look very pensive. Is something the matter?”
Christine realised that her attention had wandered to the small rectangle of card in her hand; glancing up she found Erik’s eyes upon her and a frown touching his battered forehead. “It’s nothing,” she said, helping him to sit up when he shifted restlessly against the pillows. He hated being incapacitated; she knew that left to his own devices he would have dragged himself back down to the cellars of the Opera by now.
“Logically it must be something,” he insisted; she tried to hide the card in her skirts but he had noticed it as she should have known he would. “What do you have there?”
“Nothing - ” she began, and shook her head ruefully as he quirked his one serviceable eyebrow at her, grimacing when the movement caused him discomfort. Holding out the card she admitted, “One of the journalists gave it to me. He was very sweet, Erik, he wasn’t one of that group of prying hacks - ”
Erik took the card, squinting at the copperplate script. “Have you contacted him?” he enquired as he handed it back, his voice deceptively even.
“No, I have not,” Christine replied.
“But you were thinking about it.” With a sigh he leaned his head back, letting his eyelids fall closed. “You want to know the identity of my assailants.”
“Erik - ”
“It is quite understandable; you are naturally curious.”
Christine regarded him hesitantly. She had been convinced that he would be furious at even the merest suggestion of contacting Tolbert; this apparently calm acceptance was not like him at all, especially given the trials they had already been forced to endure from the press. “Erik, I won’t do anything with which you do not agree,” she told him. “I was merely concerned for you, that they might come back and try to finish what they began.”
“It is unlikely. They will be moving on soon.” One eye, the left one in which his vision was unobstructed, opened again. She must have betrayed her surprise for he nodded slightly. “You had already worked out their heritage, had you not?”
“So they were gypsies...” Christine breathed. “How did you know that I - ”
“I overheard you telling Antoinette.” Erik looked slightly sheepish for a moment, before his expression hardened. He extended a hand to her, and when she took it drew her closer to sit on the edge of the bed. Biting back a groan as he tried to take a deep breath, he looked at her seriously. “Christine, I want you to promise me something.”
“Of course. You have only to ask,” she said, slightly confused as to where he was heading with this.
“I know you have already given me your word that you will go nowhere near that fair, but I want you to add to that promise one that you will make no attempt to hunt out the men who attacked me, or set a journalist on their track. They are dangerous, and were not raised in the more civilised world that you know; they are cruel, they regard anyone and anything that they see as inferior to be fair game, and that includes women.” Erik’s voice was becoming a rasp, his breathing laboured; he squeezed her hand, so tightly that Christine could not help but wince. “I have seen them do... unspeakable things.”
“Calm yourself, my Angel,” Christine implored, concerned that he was working himself into a state that could be harmful. His chest rose and fell erratically, straining against the restrictive bandages.“I promise, of course I do.”
“Good,” he panted. “Good...”
There was a long pause. She leaned forwards, brushing back his hair and stroking the good side of his face, her thumb caressing the fingers of the hand that still loosely held hers. He was silent, his breath gradually settling and steadying once more, and she thought he had fallen asleep when he said quietly, “I know there is a question you wish to ask.”
“There are several,” Christine answered truthfully, “but if you would rather not answer I will keep them for another day.”
“You already know of my degradation at the hands of those people.” Erik sounded dreadfully weary. He waved a vague hand. “Ask away, and I will answer.”
“Erik - ”
“Ask!” he snapped impatiently, and then, immediately contrite, added, “Please, Christine. This is not easy for me.”
Christine kissed his knuckles. “If you are absolutely sure.” He gave a terse little nod, and so she asked, “Did you know the men who attacked you?”
“One of them. The others were merely hangers-on, thugs eager for some fun. When they saw me I can imagine that they thought all their Christmases, if they believe in such things, had come at once.” Erik’s gaze was fixed on the far wall and the pier-glass mirror that hung opposite the bed, for once actually staring at the reflection he usually tried so hard to avoid. “Their leader is called Grigore; if he has a surname I never learnt it. It was his father who abducted and imprisoned me; as a child Grigore used to do his best to bring humiliation down upon my head, whether it was by hurling rotten fruit at me through the bars or stealing what little food or the only blanket I had. As he grew it became clear that he would be as sadistic as the brute that sired him.”
“Why now, Erik? Why should he seek you out now? It has been years since you escaped that dreadful place.”
A sneer touched his misshapen lips. “My own foolishness is to blame. I was stupid enough to believe leading a normal life would have no repercussions; that I would be allowed to finally be a man and not a monster. Those reports in the press put paid to any hope of that. When Grigore saw the sketch of the two of us that appeared in La Monde he recognised me immediately, and courting one of Antoinette’s feather-brained ballerinas confirmed his suspicions that I had not died after all. I imagine he vowed to hunt me down from that very moment.”
Christine could not help but feel bewildered. “But why do so now, after so long? Has he been looking for you all this time? What does he hope to achieve?”
“So many questions, my dear,” Erik said with a sigh.“I can answer them with just one word: revenge.”
“Revenge for what?” She clamped her mouth shut on yet another question. “I cannot see how beating you to within an inch of your life now could possibly make anything better!”
His eyes fell closed again and he turned his face away, as though he was unable to look at her, or his own reflection, any longer. When he spoke, his voice was low and hoarse.“Would you not do the same, Christine, if I had killed your father?”
________________________________________
Christine felt suddenly cold.
She knew that he had killed before; he admitted as much months ago on the rooftop when she asked him for the truth about the death of Joseph Buquet. Though he had not been responsible for the fly chief’s demise, he confessed to having blood on his hands in the past. His rescue of Madame Giry had not been clean; two men died that night with the Punjab lasso about their necks, and there must have been more for he had learned to use the weapon with such deadly effect that Buquet had told stories, heavily embroidered though they might have been, about it. Violence, whether he embraced it or not, seemed to dog his footsteps; there was so much of his life that was still a mystery.
“You are disgusted,” Erik said, blindly interpreting her silence as horror. He tried to withdraw his hand from hers but she would not let him go; in surprise he stared up at her. “I did not wish to tell you but you know I can deny you nothing. I will not blame you if you wish to run as far away from me as possible, knowing as you do now of that which I am capable. I killed him and I enjoyed it; I could have laughed aloud as I snapped his filthy neck. No other death at my hands was quite so enjoyable, quite so satisfying. I wish I could have killed him a hundred times over!” He was trying to scare her, she knew, to bring the Phantom in him to the fore, but it would not work. She was determined not to be that easily-frightened girl any longer; her world was no longer simple black and white but myriad shades of grey. The silence dragged on and panic began to flare in his mismatched eyes. “Christine? Christine, please say something,” he begged.
“There must have been a reason.” Her voice was much calmer than she expected. She turned her head to meet his gaze. “You suffered for nearly two years at his hands; was his terrible treatment of you responsible, or did something else happen to make you do it?”
“Was the daily torment not enough?” he asked bitterly.
“Have you killed every man who made your life a misery?” Christine countered. “If you are so intent now upon driving me away, why do you not provide me with a list?”
His eyes were wide in his battered face. “How can you ask such a thing of me? I will die without you, Christine!”
“Well, then, tell me what happened; tell me why you were driven to take his life. It is the past, Erik, and people change.”
“Yet, as they say, a leopard cannot change his spots,” Erik said sadly. He rested his head against the pillows, as if gathering his strength. After a pause he began, in the tone of one telling a story, “Picture, if you will, a fairground of tents and caravans, a small town constantly on the move. There are tumblers and acrobats, magicians and exotic animals; the air is alive with the smell of wood smoke and unwashed bodies; ragged, barefooted children run in and out, chased by their mothers and cuffed by their fathers. A strange language fills your ears, and raucous, intoxicating music draws you in. It is a world of fantasy and wonder, of flaming torches and dazzling tricks; any paying visitor will see only that which the showmen wish them to see, the darker, less palatable aspects of such a life hidden away in the shadows. They will entice you in and take your coin, make you laugh, make you dance, show you the colourful and the amazing before they allow you to venture into that darkness to see the creatures cursed by nature, touched by the Devil. It is all in the name of fun; human beings like to be scared as long as the fright is within their control. Goggling at those less fortunate makes them feel better about themselves; even if their lives are going nowhere and they can barely afford the rent, at least they do not have missing limbs or the face of a corpse.
“The man running the carnival is a king within his world. Though he might have a wife and a whole troupe of children that does not stop him taking whatever he wants, whenever he wishes. The women under his command know that he or one of his equally repulsive cohorts might decide to turn upon them at any time and have their way. It is an unwritten law and they accept it, as where would they go if they left the fair? The outside world is suspicious of their kind, and no one would take them in. They have no trade, no education, so there is nothing with which they might make their way alone; while the men read and write the women are kept deliberately in ignorance so that they might be more easily subjugated. I have seen the most beautiful young girls, barely at the start of adulthood, tied to lascivious men who might be their fathers, their grandfathers even, tossed about between their compatriots like toys until they become shells, old and withered before their time.
“You see much through the bars of a cage when there is nothing more to occupy your days. Sometimes, when Dumitru had had his fill of battering me, he would turn his attention to... other matters. Violence ignited his desire; as I lay in the straw I watched him take more than one girl into his caravan. When she emerged, she would usually have a bruised face and torn dress; I tried not to listen to the grunts and screams.” Erik glanced at Christine, hesitating. “I am sorry; you should not be hearing this. It is not for such innocent ears.”
“I am not a child,” she told him firmly, even though the shock consuming her must have shown on her face. She had not expected the carnival life to be easy but the reality was far, far worse than she could have imagined. Even having worked at the Opera for six years her own life had been sheltered, positively cloistered, in comparison. “I want to know; I need to know.”
“You should not. It is a part of my past I would rather forget, but I am not permitted such a luxury.”
“It is your past, and that is why I wish to know. Please don’t keep protecting me, Erik; I am stronger than you think,” Christine said. “I would rather hear the truth, even though it might be horrible, than remain in ignorance.”
He looked tired, and she felt guilty for making him talk for so long when he obviously needed to rest, but he nodded. “Very well. Usually the brute reserved his attentions for girls who were at least on the cusp of womanhood but eventually his eye began to stray. There was a child, Catalina, a tiny, scrawny little creature with matted fair hair and a shy smile; the poor thing was mute, so she would never be any use around the fair, and she was treated hardly better than a dog. She would sometimes visit me, clapping her hands in delight if I sang for her, and bring me scraps from her mother’s table. She could have been no more than six or seven. Dumitru usually liked to beat me if he felt I had not made him enough money, which was almost every night; perhaps my voice would be slightly rough, or I had not chosen appropriate pieces with which to amuse the gawping public. He waited until the rest of the camp were at dinner around the fire and let himself into the cage, horsewhip in hand. It was unfortunate that on one particular evening Catalina decided she would come to see me, to hear another chapter of the tale I had been telling her for a while, an elaborate fancy made up on the spur of the moment when she seemed upset. She arrived just as Dumitru began his fun, smacking me across the head so that I fell against the bars.”
Christine squeezed his hand. “What happened?” she asked gently.
“She saw my face.” Erik voice was emotionless now, as if he were recalling events experienced by someone else. “During our previous encounters I had managed to keep the worst of it hidden from her, but quite suddenly there it was, displayed for all to see. She screamed, naturally, even though she had no voice, and the sight of her dirty little features screwed up in terror was like a knife to my heart. Dumitru laughed. ‘You see, you twisted piece of filth?’ he cried, ‘Another child given nightmares by your ugly face! Watch her run!’ But she didn’t run, Christine, she stayed, staring at me. It was a mistake; that brute looked at her with cold calculation in his eyes and scratching at his groin he left the cage, strolling over to her. In a flash I knew that he intended her to be his entertainment once he was done with me; I pulled myself up from the floor, my head still spinning from the blow, and realised that in his lust he had left the door open. He was talking to Catalina, stroking her cheek with those groping fingers of his, grabbing her when she tried too late to run from him, and something within me snapped: I launched myself from the cage, finding strength I thought had left me, and hurled myself at him. With a roar of fury he tried to throw me off but I held on tight, my arm around his throat, desperate to cut off his air.
“We grappled for what seemed like an eternity as he did his best to knock me from his back as though I were an insect causing him annoyance. The whip was still in his grasp and the thong flailed madly around my head; it was a split-second decision to let go with one hand and catch it, not caring about the damage it might do. Dumitru took the opportunity to almost buck me off; my scant strength was failing me but I managed to get the whip around his neck and pulled on it with all my might. Strangling a man is not pretty, Christine, it is brutal and terrible, but I was elated when I felt that monster’s neck snap beneath my hands. He called me a beast and a demon, but his crimes were greater than mine.
“The enormity of what I had done took several moments to sink in. I let his body fall to the ground, knowing that I must move fast; someone was bound to walk past and find me and the corpse and then my life would not be worth a centime. To my amazement, Catalina crawled out from beneath a nearby caravan; she grabbed my hand and began to pull me away from Dumitru, into the maze of tents and wagons. I followed, barely even aware of what I was going to do next. I heard a shout from behind, and then another; she led me in and out of the shadows to the edge of the camp and gave me a push, gesturing for me to hurry. I ran, never looking back. They came looking for me but I had already learned by then how to hide. I pushed myself to the brink of exhaustion, covering several miles overnight, and arrived early the next morning in a town, where I did my best to disappear. Two months later I was in Paris once more.” Erik turned his head carefully on the pillow. There was no triumph, no glee in his face, no sense of victory over the man who had made his life and that of others a waking nightmare. He looked tired, as though drained by the effort of telling his tale to another person; Christine doubted that he had ever spoken about Dumitru’s death to anyone before. “Well?” he asked, eyes searching her features as though he expected to find hatred and disgust there. “What do you think of me now, Christine? Do you still wish to marry a murderer?”
“I cannot condone or condemn in this, it is between you and God.” She touched the little silver crucifix at her throat. “He sees into your soul and will make the final judgement.”
“But what do you see?”
“I see a man who has been subjected to unbearable cruelty, who has killed in order to protect himself and others and, no matter what he says, regrets that action,” Christine said carefully. “You had no more right to take that brute’s life than he did to hold you there against your will, but in doing so you saved that child from a terrible fate and you do not glory in his death, not any more. I see a man who can be saved, a man who is not without hope.” She reached out and cupped his cheek with her hand, stroking his jaw. “Thank you for telling me.”
A tear spilled from his right eye, trickling over the bruised, swollen flesh and the crevices in his distorted features like water down a rock fall. “Oh, Christine,” he whispered. “If only you could absolve all my sins.”
They sat there in silence for some time, the tension that had grown within the room evaporating. “What will you do?” Christine asked eventually. “Will you go after them?”
Erik watched her face again, brow furrowed. “Do you expect me to?”
“I was afraid...” She trailed off, failing to find the right words.
“Christine, no... You have no need to be afraid of Erik.” The disappointed light in his eyes was almost heartbreaking. “You have nothing to fear; he would never hurt you.”
Christine shook her head. “I do not fear you, Erik, but I do fear your temper and what it might lead you to. I was afraid for you, not of you.”
“You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say that.” Lifting their clasped hands he pressed a gentle kiss to her wrist before letting his eyes fall closed once more. “In answer to your question, I will do nothing. There is nothing to be gained from pursuing them. The past is dead; let it remain so.”
“Thank you,” Christine said, and Erik smiled.
Author: charleygirl
Word Count: 4121
Rating: G
Genre: General, Drama
Characters Involved: Erik the Phantom, Christine Daae
Disclaimer: The Phantom of the Opera is the creation of Gaston Leroux but probably these days copyright to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Summary: Teller of tales...
It was strange, how soothing Christine found it to watch Erik sleep.
She had become used to it over the past few months, during those weeks when she would sit with him while he was recovering from the gunshot wound, tending to his needs and talking quietly until exhaustion claimed him again. As long as bad dreams did not bother him he looked quite peaceful, vulnerable almost, rest smoothing away the lines of care and suffering that had wrought themselves upon his face over the course of his life. Even the deformity did not look so bad when he relaxed, she had discovered; though it was still horrible, and shocking in the extreme for those who had never seen it before, when he slept it was easier to accept it for what it was, a part of him, the other half that made up the whole. Usually he would bury it in the pillow, instinctively hiding, but the black eye that had painfully swollen that delicate side of his face made such an action impossible. Christine found herself wondering not for the first time how some accident of birth could have so entirely ravaged his features, twisting the skin and muscle in on itself in some areas and stretching it paper thin in others so that the bones almost pushed their way through. The eye on that side sank back into his head, and at present the flesh surrounding it had puffed up so much that it was almost impossible to see. His lips, bloated and flaring out across his distorted cheek, were cut and split, their already purplish hue darkening as the bruises they had sustained gradually blossomed.
Thankfully the more superficial injuries to the normal side of his face were healing, the scrapes closing up and disappearing. It seemed that the men who had attacked him concentrated their attentions on the weaker half, knowing that it would cause him more pain. Christine was convinced now of the identity of those men, but she had not yet summoned the courage to ask Erik; she had no way of knowing how he might react, and she did not want him to harm himself further. He was already incensed that she had abandoned her role in Rigoletto to look after him, claiming that another absence would do nothing for her reputation as a singer. Nettled, she retorted that any previous time off had mainly been his fault, not hers, which had stymied him long enough for her to get more laudanum down his throat.
Now she sat beside him, her eyes on his still form as he breathed uncomfortably but steadily in and out. The calling card she had been given by Didier Tolbert was in her hand and she flipped it between her fingers; she wanted to know about the gypsies from the carnival, but was reluctant to involve a stranger in such an affair. Would it be possible to ask for information without revealing why? Theodora had accepted her refusal to involve the police at least until Erik was able to give an account of the attack, but Christine was sure Monsieur Patterson-Smythe was becoming suspicious as to the real reason for her reluctance to act.
“You look very pensive. Is something the matter?”
Christine realised that her attention had wandered to the small rectangle of card in her hand; glancing up she found Erik’s eyes upon her and a frown touching his battered forehead. “It’s nothing,” she said, helping him to sit up when he shifted restlessly against the pillows. He hated being incapacitated; she knew that left to his own devices he would have dragged himself back down to the cellars of the Opera by now.
“Logically it must be something,” he insisted; she tried to hide the card in her skirts but he had noticed it as she should have known he would. “What do you have there?”
“Nothing - ” she began, and shook her head ruefully as he quirked his one serviceable eyebrow at her, grimacing when the movement caused him discomfort. Holding out the card she admitted, “One of the journalists gave it to me. He was very sweet, Erik, he wasn’t one of that group of prying hacks - ”
Erik took the card, squinting at the copperplate script. “Have you contacted him?” he enquired as he handed it back, his voice deceptively even.
“No, I have not,” Christine replied.
“But you were thinking about it.” With a sigh he leaned his head back, letting his eyelids fall closed. “You want to know the identity of my assailants.”
“Erik - ”
“It is quite understandable; you are naturally curious.”
Christine regarded him hesitantly. She had been convinced that he would be furious at even the merest suggestion of contacting Tolbert; this apparently calm acceptance was not like him at all, especially given the trials they had already been forced to endure from the press. “Erik, I won’t do anything with which you do not agree,” she told him. “I was merely concerned for you, that they might come back and try to finish what they began.”
“It is unlikely. They will be moving on soon.” One eye, the left one in which his vision was unobstructed, opened again. She must have betrayed her surprise for he nodded slightly. “You had already worked out their heritage, had you not?”
“So they were gypsies...” Christine breathed. “How did you know that I - ”
“I overheard you telling Antoinette.” Erik looked slightly sheepish for a moment, before his expression hardened. He extended a hand to her, and when she took it drew her closer to sit on the edge of the bed. Biting back a groan as he tried to take a deep breath, he looked at her seriously. “Christine, I want you to promise me something.”
“Of course. You have only to ask,” she said, slightly confused as to where he was heading with this.
“I know you have already given me your word that you will go nowhere near that fair, but I want you to add to that promise one that you will make no attempt to hunt out the men who attacked me, or set a journalist on their track. They are dangerous, and were not raised in the more civilised world that you know; they are cruel, they regard anyone and anything that they see as inferior to be fair game, and that includes women.” Erik’s voice was becoming a rasp, his breathing laboured; he squeezed her hand, so tightly that Christine could not help but wince. “I have seen them do... unspeakable things.”
“Calm yourself, my Angel,” Christine implored, concerned that he was working himself into a state that could be harmful. His chest rose and fell erratically, straining against the restrictive bandages.“I promise, of course I do.”
“Good,” he panted. “Good...”
There was a long pause. She leaned forwards, brushing back his hair and stroking the good side of his face, her thumb caressing the fingers of the hand that still loosely held hers. He was silent, his breath gradually settling and steadying once more, and she thought he had fallen asleep when he said quietly, “I know there is a question you wish to ask.”
“There are several,” Christine answered truthfully, “but if you would rather not answer I will keep them for another day.”
“You already know of my degradation at the hands of those people.” Erik sounded dreadfully weary. He waved a vague hand. “Ask away, and I will answer.”
“Erik - ”
“Ask!” he snapped impatiently, and then, immediately contrite, added, “Please, Christine. This is not easy for me.”
Christine kissed his knuckles. “If you are absolutely sure.” He gave a terse little nod, and so she asked, “Did you know the men who attacked you?”
“One of them. The others were merely hangers-on, thugs eager for some fun. When they saw me I can imagine that they thought all their Christmases, if they believe in such things, had come at once.” Erik’s gaze was fixed on the far wall and the pier-glass mirror that hung opposite the bed, for once actually staring at the reflection he usually tried so hard to avoid. “Their leader is called Grigore; if he has a surname I never learnt it. It was his father who abducted and imprisoned me; as a child Grigore used to do his best to bring humiliation down upon my head, whether it was by hurling rotten fruit at me through the bars or stealing what little food or the only blanket I had. As he grew it became clear that he would be as sadistic as the brute that sired him.”
“Why now, Erik? Why should he seek you out now? It has been years since you escaped that dreadful place.”
A sneer touched his misshapen lips. “My own foolishness is to blame. I was stupid enough to believe leading a normal life would have no repercussions; that I would be allowed to finally be a man and not a monster. Those reports in the press put paid to any hope of that. When Grigore saw the sketch of the two of us that appeared in La Monde he recognised me immediately, and courting one of Antoinette’s feather-brained ballerinas confirmed his suspicions that I had not died after all. I imagine he vowed to hunt me down from that very moment.”
Christine could not help but feel bewildered. “But why do so now, after so long? Has he been looking for you all this time? What does he hope to achieve?”
“So many questions, my dear,” Erik said with a sigh.“I can answer them with just one word: revenge.”
“Revenge for what?” She clamped her mouth shut on yet another question. “I cannot see how beating you to within an inch of your life now could possibly make anything better!”
His eyes fell closed again and he turned his face away, as though he was unable to look at her, or his own reflection, any longer. When he spoke, his voice was low and hoarse.“Would you not do the same, Christine, if I had killed your father?”
________________________________________
Christine felt suddenly cold.
She knew that he had killed before; he admitted as much months ago on the rooftop when she asked him for the truth about the death of Joseph Buquet. Though he had not been responsible for the fly chief’s demise, he confessed to having blood on his hands in the past. His rescue of Madame Giry had not been clean; two men died that night with the Punjab lasso about their necks, and there must have been more for he had learned to use the weapon with such deadly effect that Buquet had told stories, heavily embroidered though they might have been, about it. Violence, whether he embraced it or not, seemed to dog his footsteps; there was so much of his life that was still a mystery.
“You are disgusted,” Erik said, blindly interpreting her silence as horror. He tried to withdraw his hand from hers but she would not let him go; in surprise he stared up at her. “I did not wish to tell you but you know I can deny you nothing. I will not blame you if you wish to run as far away from me as possible, knowing as you do now of that which I am capable. I killed him and I enjoyed it; I could have laughed aloud as I snapped his filthy neck. No other death at my hands was quite so enjoyable, quite so satisfying. I wish I could have killed him a hundred times over!” He was trying to scare her, she knew, to bring the Phantom in him to the fore, but it would not work. She was determined not to be that easily-frightened girl any longer; her world was no longer simple black and white but myriad shades of grey. The silence dragged on and panic began to flare in his mismatched eyes. “Christine? Christine, please say something,” he begged.
“There must have been a reason.” Her voice was much calmer than she expected. She turned her head to meet his gaze. “You suffered for nearly two years at his hands; was his terrible treatment of you responsible, or did something else happen to make you do it?”
“Was the daily torment not enough?” he asked bitterly.
“Have you killed every man who made your life a misery?” Christine countered. “If you are so intent now upon driving me away, why do you not provide me with a list?”
His eyes were wide in his battered face. “How can you ask such a thing of me? I will die without you, Christine!”
“Well, then, tell me what happened; tell me why you were driven to take his life. It is the past, Erik, and people change.”
“Yet, as they say, a leopard cannot change his spots,” Erik said sadly. He rested his head against the pillows, as if gathering his strength. After a pause he began, in the tone of one telling a story, “Picture, if you will, a fairground of tents and caravans, a small town constantly on the move. There are tumblers and acrobats, magicians and exotic animals; the air is alive with the smell of wood smoke and unwashed bodies; ragged, barefooted children run in and out, chased by their mothers and cuffed by their fathers. A strange language fills your ears, and raucous, intoxicating music draws you in. It is a world of fantasy and wonder, of flaming torches and dazzling tricks; any paying visitor will see only that which the showmen wish them to see, the darker, less palatable aspects of such a life hidden away in the shadows. They will entice you in and take your coin, make you laugh, make you dance, show you the colourful and the amazing before they allow you to venture into that darkness to see the creatures cursed by nature, touched by the Devil. It is all in the name of fun; human beings like to be scared as long as the fright is within their control. Goggling at those less fortunate makes them feel better about themselves; even if their lives are going nowhere and they can barely afford the rent, at least they do not have missing limbs or the face of a corpse.
“The man running the carnival is a king within his world. Though he might have a wife and a whole troupe of children that does not stop him taking whatever he wants, whenever he wishes. The women under his command know that he or one of his equally repulsive cohorts might decide to turn upon them at any time and have their way. It is an unwritten law and they accept it, as where would they go if they left the fair? The outside world is suspicious of their kind, and no one would take them in. They have no trade, no education, so there is nothing with which they might make their way alone; while the men read and write the women are kept deliberately in ignorance so that they might be more easily subjugated. I have seen the most beautiful young girls, barely at the start of adulthood, tied to lascivious men who might be their fathers, their grandfathers even, tossed about between their compatriots like toys until they become shells, old and withered before their time.
“You see much through the bars of a cage when there is nothing more to occupy your days. Sometimes, when Dumitru had had his fill of battering me, he would turn his attention to... other matters. Violence ignited his desire; as I lay in the straw I watched him take more than one girl into his caravan. When she emerged, she would usually have a bruised face and torn dress; I tried not to listen to the grunts and screams.” Erik glanced at Christine, hesitating. “I am sorry; you should not be hearing this. It is not for such innocent ears.”
“I am not a child,” she told him firmly, even though the shock consuming her must have shown on her face. She had not expected the carnival life to be easy but the reality was far, far worse than she could have imagined. Even having worked at the Opera for six years her own life had been sheltered, positively cloistered, in comparison. “I want to know; I need to know.”
“You should not. It is a part of my past I would rather forget, but I am not permitted such a luxury.”
“It is your past, and that is why I wish to know. Please don’t keep protecting me, Erik; I am stronger than you think,” Christine said. “I would rather hear the truth, even though it might be horrible, than remain in ignorance.”
He looked tired, and she felt guilty for making him talk for so long when he obviously needed to rest, but he nodded. “Very well. Usually the brute reserved his attentions for girls who were at least on the cusp of womanhood but eventually his eye began to stray. There was a child, Catalina, a tiny, scrawny little creature with matted fair hair and a shy smile; the poor thing was mute, so she would never be any use around the fair, and she was treated hardly better than a dog. She would sometimes visit me, clapping her hands in delight if I sang for her, and bring me scraps from her mother’s table. She could have been no more than six or seven. Dumitru usually liked to beat me if he felt I had not made him enough money, which was almost every night; perhaps my voice would be slightly rough, or I had not chosen appropriate pieces with which to amuse the gawping public. He waited until the rest of the camp were at dinner around the fire and let himself into the cage, horsewhip in hand. It was unfortunate that on one particular evening Catalina decided she would come to see me, to hear another chapter of the tale I had been telling her for a while, an elaborate fancy made up on the spur of the moment when she seemed upset. She arrived just as Dumitru began his fun, smacking me across the head so that I fell against the bars.”
Christine squeezed his hand. “What happened?” she asked gently.
“She saw my face.” Erik voice was emotionless now, as if he were recalling events experienced by someone else. “During our previous encounters I had managed to keep the worst of it hidden from her, but quite suddenly there it was, displayed for all to see. She screamed, naturally, even though she had no voice, and the sight of her dirty little features screwed up in terror was like a knife to my heart. Dumitru laughed. ‘You see, you twisted piece of filth?’ he cried, ‘Another child given nightmares by your ugly face! Watch her run!’ But she didn’t run, Christine, she stayed, staring at me. It was a mistake; that brute looked at her with cold calculation in his eyes and scratching at his groin he left the cage, strolling over to her. In a flash I knew that he intended her to be his entertainment once he was done with me; I pulled myself up from the floor, my head still spinning from the blow, and realised that in his lust he had left the door open. He was talking to Catalina, stroking her cheek with those groping fingers of his, grabbing her when she tried too late to run from him, and something within me snapped: I launched myself from the cage, finding strength I thought had left me, and hurled myself at him. With a roar of fury he tried to throw me off but I held on tight, my arm around his throat, desperate to cut off his air.
“We grappled for what seemed like an eternity as he did his best to knock me from his back as though I were an insect causing him annoyance. The whip was still in his grasp and the thong flailed madly around my head; it was a split-second decision to let go with one hand and catch it, not caring about the damage it might do. Dumitru took the opportunity to almost buck me off; my scant strength was failing me but I managed to get the whip around his neck and pulled on it with all my might. Strangling a man is not pretty, Christine, it is brutal and terrible, but I was elated when I felt that monster’s neck snap beneath my hands. He called me a beast and a demon, but his crimes were greater than mine.
“The enormity of what I had done took several moments to sink in. I let his body fall to the ground, knowing that I must move fast; someone was bound to walk past and find me and the corpse and then my life would not be worth a centime. To my amazement, Catalina crawled out from beneath a nearby caravan; she grabbed my hand and began to pull me away from Dumitru, into the maze of tents and wagons. I followed, barely even aware of what I was going to do next. I heard a shout from behind, and then another; she led me in and out of the shadows to the edge of the camp and gave me a push, gesturing for me to hurry. I ran, never looking back. They came looking for me but I had already learned by then how to hide. I pushed myself to the brink of exhaustion, covering several miles overnight, and arrived early the next morning in a town, where I did my best to disappear. Two months later I was in Paris once more.” Erik turned his head carefully on the pillow. There was no triumph, no glee in his face, no sense of victory over the man who had made his life and that of others a waking nightmare. He looked tired, as though drained by the effort of telling his tale to another person; Christine doubted that he had ever spoken about Dumitru’s death to anyone before. “Well?” he asked, eyes searching her features as though he expected to find hatred and disgust there. “What do you think of me now, Christine? Do you still wish to marry a murderer?”
“I cannot condone or condemn in this, it is between you and God.” She touched the little silver crucifix at her throat. “He sees into your soul and will make the final judgement.”
“But what do you see?”
“I see a man who has been subjected to unbearable cruelty, who has killed in order to protect himself and others and, no matter what he says, regrets that action,” Christine said carefully. “You had no more right to take that brute’s life than he did to hold you there against your will, but in doing so you saved that child from a terrible fate and you do not glory in his death, not any more. I see a man who can be saved, a man who is not without hope.” She reached out and cupped his cheek with her hand, stroking his jaw. “Thank you for telling me.”
A tear spilled from his right eye, trickling over the bruised, swollen flesh and the crevices in his distorted features like water down a rock fall. “Oh, Christine,” he whispered. “If only you could absolve all my sins.”
They sat there in silence for some time, the tension that had grown within the room evaporating. “What will you do?” Christine asked eventually. “Will you go after them?”
Erik watched her face again, brow furrowed. “Do you expect me to?”
“I was afraid...” She trailed off, failing to find the right words.
“Christine, no... You have no need to be afraid of Erik.” The disappointed light in his eyes was almost heartbreaking. “You have nothing to fear; he would never hurt you.”
Christine shook her head. “I do not fear you, Erik, but I do fear your temper and what it might lead you to. I was afraid for you, not of you.”
“You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say that.” Lifting their clasped hands he pressed a gentle kiss to her wrist before letting his eyes fall closed once more. “In answer to your question, I will do nothing. There is nothing to be gained from pursuing them. The past is dead; let it remain so.”
“Thank you,” Christine said, and Erik smiled.
