The Phantom of the Opera (Oxford World's Classics)

by Gaston Leroux

  ‘Why didn’t La Carlotta appear on the night of the gala concert? Why was I chosen to replace her? I have no answer to these questions, but sing I did… and I was inspired as I had never been before! I felt as light as if I’d been given wings and for a moment I thought my ardent soul had left my body!’

  ‘Oh, Christine,’ said Raoul, his eyes moist at the memory of that evening, ‘my heart beat in time to every note you sang that night! I saw the tears on your cheeks and I wept with you. How could you sing and cry at the same time?’

  ‘Then everything started to spin,’ said Christine, ‘I shut my eyes… and when I opened them again you were there, by my side! But the Voice was there too, Raoul!… I was afraid for you and pretended not to know you and laughed when you reminded me of the time you rescued my scarf from the sea!

  ‘But no one can deceive the Voice!… It recognized you!… And it was jealous!… For the next two days, it made my life impossible!… It said: “If you didn’t love him, you wouldn’t keep avoiding him! If he were just an old friend, you’d just shake his hand as you do with all your old friends… If you didn’t love him, you wouldn’t be frightened of being alone in your dressing room with him and me!… If you didn’t love him, you wouldn’t send him away!…”

  ‘“That will do!” I told the angry Voice. “Tomorrow I must go to Perros, to visit my father’s grave. I’ll ask M. Raoul de Chagny to go with me.”’

  ‘“As you wish,” came the answer. “But know that I too will be at Perros, for I go where you go, Christine, and if you are still worthy of me, and have not lied to me, I shall play the Resurrection of Lazarus at midnight, over your father’s tomb, on his violin!”

  ‘And that was how I came to write you the letter which brought you to Perros. How could I have been so gullible? And how, given the increasingly personal nature of the Voice’s interest in me, how could I not have suspected some trickery? But I was not in control of myself: I had become its Thing!… And the weapons it had in its armoury were more than enough to fool somebody as innocent as me!’

  ‘But surely,’ cried Raoul, breaking in at this point in her story when she seemed to be tearfully protesting the total and utter innocence of a mind too naive for its own good, ‘surely you soon discovered the truth?… Why did it take you so long to wake from your horrifying nightmare?’

  ‘Discover the truth!… Raoul!… Wake from the nightmare?… But I only began to have that nightmare on the day I discovered the truth!… No, don’t speak!… Not a word!… Forget all I said… but now, when we shall soon leave this heaven and go back down to earth, pity me, Raoul, pity me!… One night, one dreadful night… yes… it was the night when so many terrible things happened… the night Carlotta believed that she had been turned into a hideous toad on stage and started croaking as if she had lived all her life in a pond… the night all the house lights went out and the chandelier crashed like thunder into the stalls… That night people were killed and injured and the whole theatre was filled with groans and screams!…

  ‘… that night, in the confusion, my first thought, Raoul, was both for you and the Voice, for at that point you occupied equal places in my heart. My mind was quickly put at ease at least about you, for I’d seen you in your brother’s box and knew you were in no danger. As for the Voice, it had told me it would be at the performance and I was afraid for it, really afraid, as if it had been “an ordinary person of flesh and blood and therefore capable of dying”. I was afraid the chandelier might have silenced it for ever. At that point I was on stage and so distraught that I was ready to run into the stalls and look for the Voice among the dead and injured, but then it suddenly struck me that if it was safe, it would already be in my dressing room and would soon put my mind at rest. I rushed back to my room. The Voice wasn’t there. I locked myself in and with tears in my eyes begged it, if it were still alive, to reveal itself to me. The Voice did not reply.

  ‘Then all at once I heard a long, wonderful, plaintive sound which I knew well. It was the lament of Lazarus when he hears Jesus’s voice and first opens his eyes and sees the light of day once more. It sounded like my father’s sobbing violin. I recognized his bow strokes which used to transfix us, Raoul, on the byways around Perros, and it was the same sound which had cast a spell over that night in the cemetery. And then from that unseen, majestic instrument came the joyful hymn to life as I at last heard the Voice singing the commanding, jubilant words: “Come and believe in me! Whosoever believes in me will live again. Walk! Those who believe in me shall not die!”* I cannot describe the effect the music had on me. It sang of life eternal at the very moment when poor wretches crushed by the chandelier were breathing their last… It seemed as if it were ordering me too to come to it, to stand up and walk. It retreated, I followed. “Come and believe in me!” I believed in it, I went to it… I went and by some extraordinary means my dressing room seemed to grow longer and longer as I walked… Clearly it was done by mirrors… for the mirror was directly ahead of me… And then, suddenly, I was outside my dressing room without knowing how I’d got there.’

  ‘What?’ Raoul interrupted her. ‘You didn’t know how? Christine, Christine, you must have dreamt it!’

  ‘But I wasn’t dreaming, Raoul! I was outside my dressing room and had no idea how it had happened. You saw me vanish from there once, so you might be able to explain it. I certainly can’t!… All I can tell you is that one moment I was standing in front of the mirror, the next it wasn’t there. I looked for it behind me… but the mirror was gone and my dressing room was gone and I was in a dark corridor!… I felt afraid and screamed!…

  ‘It was pitch dark all around me. Some distance away, a faint red glow lit up an angle of the wall, one corner of a crossroads. I screamed again. Only the sound of my voice filled the space between the walls, for the singing and the violin had faded into silence. And then suddenly in the darkness a hand took mine… or rather something bony and cold which held my wrist fast and would not let go. An arm trapped my waist and supported me… Filled with horror, I struggled for a moment; my fingers slid along damp stones without getting any grip. I stopped struggling, I thought I would die of fright. In this way I was marched along towards the faint red glow; we stepped into its light and I saw that I was in the power of a man wearing a long black cloak and a mask which completely hid his face… I made one mighty effort: I dug in my heels, my mouth opened to scream out my fear but a hand closed it, a hand I could feel on my lips, on my flesh… and it had the taste and smell of death! I fainted.

  ‘How long was I unconscious? I could not say. When I opened my eyes, I and the man in black were still surrounded by deep gloom. A dark lantern on the floor lit up a running spring. The water flowed directly out of the wall and drained away into the ground near where I was lying. My head was resting on the knee of the man in the cloak and the black mask and my silent companion was carefully bathing my temples, a gesture which, though kind and thoughtful, I found more horrible to bear than the brutal fact that he had just abducted me. His hands were gentle but did not smell any the less of death. I pushed them away weakly. I asked in a whisper: “Who are you? Where is the Voice?” The only answer was a sigh. And then a warm breath blew over my face and vaguely, though the gloom, next to the black outline of the man, I made out a white shape. The black shape hoisted me on to the white shape and to my astonishment I heard a delighted whinny. I murmured: “Caesar!” The animal started. I realized I was slumped on a saddle. I recognized the white stallion from Le Prophète which I had so often spoiled with sugar lumps. One night, a rumour had gone the rounds of the theatre to the effect that he had vanished, stolen by the Phantom of the Opera. I believed in the Voice but I had never believed in a Phantom. But now a tingle ran up my spine as I wondered if I was not the prisoner by the Phantom! From the depths of my being I called out to the Voice to save me, for I had never imagined that the Voice and the Phantom were one and the same! Have you ever heard of the Phantom of the Opera, Raoul?’

  ‘Ye
s,’ said Raoul. ‘But go on, Christine, tell me what happened after you were put on the white stallion from Le Prophète?’

  ‘I stayed absolutely still and let myself be led away… Gradually a strange torpor overcame the terror into which my hellish predicament had plunged me. The black shape still supported me and I made no further attempt to escape. I felt a strange peace descend on me and I thought I must be under the benign influence of some drug. I was in full possession of my faculties. My eyes grew accustomed to the darkness which was pierced at intervals by dim lights… I reckoned we were moving along a narrow gallery which I imagined must circle the whole area of the Opera House which, below ground, is vast. Once, just once, I had previously been down into its depths which are prodigious. But I’d stopped at the third level, not daring to go down deeper into the earth though there were two further levels into which an entire town could have fitted. But the people I’d seen made me turn back. Down there are demons, black from head to foot, who feed boilers, wield shovels and forks, stoke braziers, fan flames and, if you go near them, frighten you suddenly by opening the red-hot fire-holes of the furnaces!… While Caesar calmly carried me on his back through that gloom peopled by nightmares, I eventually made out in the distance, very far away and very small, like objects seen the wrong way through a telescope, the same black devils servicing their red-hot braziers and furnaces…* They appeared… and disappeared… and reappeared as we twisted and turned… And then they vanished for good. The shadowy figure of the man was still holding me in the saddle and Caesar walked on sure-footed and not needing to be led… I could not give you even a rough idea of how long that ride through the night lasted. I only know I had an impression that we were going round and round, going down in a fixed spiral into the very bowels of the earth. Or was it my head going round and round?… I don’t think so. No! My head was surprisingly clear! At one point, Caesar lifted his nose, sniffed the atmosphere and quickened his step. I felt the air grow damp and Caesar stopped. The gloom had lightened. We were bathed in a bluish glow. I looked around to see where we were. We had come to a stop on the edge of a lake whose leaden waters stretched away into the distance, into the gloom… But the blue glow lit up the bank sufficiently for me to see a small boat moored to an iron ring on the jetty!

  ‘Of course, I knew it was all real, that there was nothing supernatural about the sight of the underground lake and the boat. But remember for a moment the exceptional circumstances which had brought me to that shore. The souls of the dead as they reached the Styx never felt greater trepidation than I did! Charon himself* was not more grim or silent than the black figure which ferried me in that boat. Had the effect of the drug worn off? Had the coolness of the place been enough to restore me to myself? But my torpor evaporated, sensation returned and with it my terror. My ghostly captor noticed for, with a quick gesture, he dismissed Caesar who ran off into the darkness of the gallery where I heard his iron shoes clatter on echoing steps. Then the man jumped into the boat which he untied from its mooring ring. He took the oars and rowed with rapid, powerful strokes. Under the mask his eyes never left me and I felt their still gaze like a physical weight on me. The water made no noise around us. We glided through the bluish glow and then we were again swallowed up by the dark as we reached the shore. The boat struck solid ground. Again I was carried in his arms. By now I had regained enough strength to scream. And then, I stopped, dazed by light, a brilliant light which suddenly illuminated my surroundings.* I leaped to my feet. I felt strong again. I was in the middle of a drawing room which I thought at first was furnished and decorated with nothing but flowers. They were magnificent but also vulgar, for they were tied by silk ribbons in baskets like the ones they sell in shops on the Boulevards, hothouse blooms like those I used to find in my dressing room after every first night. In the middle of this fragrant, very Parisian setting the dark figure of the man in the mask stood with his arms folded. It spoke:

  ‘“Don’t be afraid, Christine,” it said, “you are in no danger.”

  ‘It was the Voice!

  ‘I was as angry as I was stunned. I leaped on the man and tried to tear the mask off so that I could see the face of the Voice. But the man in black spoke again:

  ‘“You are in no danger provided you do not touch my mask!”

  ‘And he gently took me by both hands and sat me down.

  ‘Then he fell on his knees before me but did not say another word!

  ‘Such respect revived my courage. By making everything so clear and bright, the light also gave me back my sense of reality. Extraordinary though it was, all that had happened now seemed part of the world of mortal, visible, palpable things. The wall hangings, the furniture, torches and vases, even the tasteless flowers in their gilt baskets—I knew exactly where they’d come from and how much they had cost—limited my imagination to a drawing room as pedestrian and unsurprising as many others, though they could never be accused of being located in the bowels of the Opera House. I was very probably dealing with some deranged eccentric who for some reason had ended up in its deepest cellars as a last resort, just as many others, with the silent complicity of the management, had made permanent homes in the attics of that modern Tower of Babel where men and women plotted and sang in many languages and loved in every tongue known to humankind.

  ‘Only then did it dawn on me that the Voice—I had recognized it under the mask which had not muffled or hidden it—was there, kneeling on the ground before me. And it was the Voice of a Man!

  ‘I hardly gave any thought to my desperate situation, I did not even wonder what would become of me and what dark, coldly tyrannical purpose had led me to this room, like a prisoner to a cell or a slave to a harem. No, no, no! I told myself: the Voice is merely a Man! And I began to cry.

  ‘The man, still on his knees, clearly understood the meaning of my tears, for he said:

  ‘“It’s true, Christine!… I am not an angel nor a genie nor a ghost… I am Erik!”’

  Once more, Christine paused in her tale, for both young people thought they’d heard the echo again, behind them, of the name ‘Erik!’… An echo?… they both turned round and suddenly saw that night had fallen. Raoul began to get to his feet, but Christine held him back, kept him close to her:

  ‘Don’t go! You must hear the rest of it here!’

  ‘Why here, Christine? The night is chilly. You’ll catch cold.’

  ‘All we have to fear are trapdoors, Raoul. Here we’re on top of the world. There are no traps up here… besides, he won’t allow me to see you outside the theatre… This is no time to cross him… We mustn’t arouse his suspicions…’

  ‘Christine! Christine! Something tells me it would be a mistake to wait until tomorrow evening… We should go now, tonight!…’

  ‘I told you: if he doesn’t hear me sing tomorrow night, he’d never get over it.’

  ‘It must be difficult not to want to hurt Erik and also to want to escape from him for ever…’

  ‘You’re right to say that, Raoul… because if I go it will kill him…’

  Christine added in a muffled whisper: ‘But it cuts both ways… because if we run away he might kill us…’

  ‘Does he love you that much?’

  ‘There’s no crime he wouldn’t commit for me!’

  ‘But he must live somewhere… We could try to find him. If Erik is not a ghost, we can talk to him and make him see reason!’

  Christine shook her head:

  ‘No, no! No one can do anything to stop Erik!… All we can do is run!…’

  ‘But if you were able to run away, why did you go back to him?’

  ‘Because I have no choice… And you will understand why when you know the way I left him…’

  ‘Oh! I hate him!’ cried Raoul, ‘and you, Christine, tell me… I need you to tell me so that I hear the rest of your extraordinary love story with a cool head… say: do you hate him too?’

  ‘No,’ said Christine simply.

  ‘Then why are you telling me
all this?… You love him, it’s obvious! Your fear, your terror, it’s just another sort of love, the most delectable kind, a kind that you won’t admit to,’ Raoul explained bitterly. ‘The kind that gives you a thrill when you think of it… My, my! just think! In love with a man who lives in an underground palace!’

  And he leered at her.

  ‘So you want me to go back to him?’ Christine broke in abruptly. ‘Take care, Raoul, I told you once: if I did, I’d never come back!’

  A deathly silence fell on all three of them… the two young people who talked and the shadow, behind them, who listened…

  ‘Before I answer,’ Raoul said at length, slowly and deliberately, ‘if you don’t hate him, tell me what feelings you do have for him.’

  ‘Feelings of horror!’ she said… She spat out the words with such force that they drowned the sighs of the night.

  ‘That’s what’s so terrible,’ she went on, becoming increasingly agitated… ‘He fills me with horror and yet I don’t hate him. How could I hate him, Raoul? If only you’d seen Erik at my feet in his sanctuary by the underground lake. He blamed and cursed himself and begged me to forgive him!…’

  ‘He admitted he had tricked me. He loved me! He gave me his undying, tragic love!… He abducted me for the sake of that love!… He imprisoned me with him deep in the earth for the sake of love!… He respects me, but he crawled before me, he groaned and wept!… And when I stood up, Raoul, when I told him I would go on despising him unless he immediately gave me back the freedom he’d taken from me, then—and this is hard to believe—he offered to let me go… I could leave whenever I liked… He was even willing to show me the secret way out… except… except that he stood up too and I was forced to remember that though he is neither phantom nor angel nor genie, he is still the Voice, for he began to sing…