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

by Gaston Leroux

  ‘I recalled the manuscript book filled with red notes and could easily imagine that such music had been written in blood. It took me on a journey through his suffering, into every corner of the abyss inhabited by the man with the devastated face; it showed me Erik banging his poor, hideous head against the shadowy walls of his own hell, avidly fleeing the gaze of human beings to avoid filling them with horror. Stunned, breathless, abject, beaten, I listened to that explosion of gigantic chords which made suffering divine. Then unexpectedly the notes rising up out of the abyss gathered themselves into one single, monumental menacing flight, into a turning, gyring swarm that took off into the heavens as the eagle soars towards the sun, and a triumphant concatenation of sounds seemed to set the world on fire. At that moment, I knew that the work was finished and that Ugliness raised on the wings of Love had at last dared to look Beauty in the face! It left me reeling! The door separating me from Erik gave way under my efforts. When he heard me he stood up, but dared not turn round!

  ‘“Erik!” I said firmly, “show me your face. Don’t be afraid. I swear that you are the most unhappy, the most sublime of men and if from this day forward Christine Daaé trembles when she looks at you, it will be because she is thinking of the wonder of your genius!”

  ‘Then Erik turned, for he believed me, and I too trusted my feelings… He raised his now unfettered hands in defiance of Destiny and fell at my feet murmuring words of love… knelt with words of love in his dead man’s mouth… The music now had died into silence… He kissed the hem of my dress. He did not see that my eyes were closed.

  ‘What more can I tell you, Raoul? You now know the full story… It lasted another two weeks… two weeks when I went on lying to him. My lies were as foul as the monster who inspired them, but they were the price of my freedom. I burned his mask. I played my part so well that even when he was not singing, he would try to catch my eye like a dog that slyly ogles its master. He was all attentiveness, like a faithful slave, and lavished every care on me. Gradually, he came to trust me to the point where he would walk with me on the banks of Lake Avernus* and row across its leaden waters with me in his boat. During the last days of my captivity, he took me out at night through the iron gate in the Rue Scribe which guards the entrance to the passageway under the Opera House. There, a carriage would be waiting to drive us along the deserted avenues of the Bois.

  ‘The night we found you there almost proved fatal to me, for he is fiercely jealous of you. My only way of convincing him he had no grounds for jealousy was to keep telling him that soon you’d be going far away… Finally, after two terrible weeks of captivity during which I was by turns wracked by pity, admiration, despair and horror, he finally believed me when I said: “I will return!”’

  ‘And you did go back, Christine,’ muttered Raoul.

  ‘I did, Raoul, and I will admit that it wasn’t the horrific threats he spoke as he escorted me to freedom that made me keep my word. It was the awful sigh he gave as he gazed at me when I was about to leave through the door of his tomb!

  ‘It was just a sigh,’ Christine repeated, shaking her head in sorrow, ‘but it bound me to the poor man more tightly than I imagined when we said our goodbyes. Poor Erik! Poor, unhappy Erik!’

  ‘Christine,’ said Raoul as he got to his feet, ‘you say you love me but it was only a matter of hours after you were free again that you went back to him!… Have you forgotten the masked ball?’

  ‘It’s what we agreed… and you should remember that I spent those few hours with you, Raoul… and in doing so I put both of us at great risk…’

  ‘During those hours, I wasn’t sure you loved me.’

  ‘Are you still in doubt, Raoul?… Each time I go back to Erik I hate him more… Each visit, instead of calming him down as I hoped, makes him even more obsessed with me!… I’m scared! Really scared!… I’m so afraid!’

  ‘You’re afraid of him… but do you love me?… If Erik was handsome, Christine, would you love me?’

  ‘How can you say that?… Why tempt fate?… Why ask me about things I keep hidden deep in my heart, where people always hide their sins?’

  Then she got to her feet too, put both her trembling arms round Raoul’s neck and said:

  ‘You are my fiancé for one more day. If I didn’t love you, I would not offer you my lips as I do now, for the first and last time!’

  He kissed those lips. But as he did so, the night which enveloped them was suddenly shattered. They fled, as if running before an approaching storm. But before they disappeared into the forest of attics under the roof, they saw, with eyes filled with fear of Erik, high above them, a great black bird of the night which fixed them in its burning gaze and seemed to hang from the strings of Apollo’s lyre!

  CHAPTER 14

  A Masterstroke from the King of Traps

  RAOUL and Christine ran for their lives, fleeing the roof where there were burning eyes which could be seen only in the darkest night. They did not stop until they got to the eighth level down. That evening there was no performance, so the corridors of the Opera House were deserted.

  All at once a strange silhouette stepped out into their path, barring their progress.

  ‘No! Not this way.’

  And it pointed to another corridor which would take them up to the wings.

  Raoul wanted to stop and find out what was going on.

  ‘Go! Go quickly!’ ordered the shadowy figure which was muffled in a kind of heavy box-coat and wore a conical toque, or ottoman fez.

  Christine was already dragging Raoul away and made him break into a run.

  ‘Who was that?’ he asked, ‘who was he?’

  ‘The Persian!’ Christine answered.

  ‘What’s he doing here?’

  ‘Nobody knows!… He’s always hanging around the Opera!’

  ‘You’ve made me act like a coward, Christine,’ said Raoul angrily. ‘You made me run away. It’s the first time in my life I ever did that!’

  ‘Nonsense!’ answered Christine, who was beginning to calm down. ‘I’m beginning to think what we ran away from was a figment of our imagination!’

  ‘If it really was Erik there, I should have nailed him to Apollo’s lyre just as they nail owls to farmhouse walls in Brittany, and then that would have been the end of him.’

  ‘But Raoul, first you’d have had to climb up to Apollo’s lyre, and that takes some doing.’

  ‘The burning eyes managed it.’

  ‘You’re as bad as me, ready to see him everywhere. But afterwards, you start thinking. What I took for burning eyes were probably two golden stars as they looked down at Paris through the strings of the lyre.’

  Christine, with Raoul in tow, led the way down another level.

  ‘Since you’ve made up your mind to go for good,’ he said, ‘I still think you should leave right now. Why wait until tomorrow? Maybe he heard what we said up there.’

  ‘But he couldn’t have! I told you, he’s working on Don Juan Triumphant. He hasn’t time to bother about us.’

  ‘But you’re not that sure, otherwise you wouldn’t keep looking over your shoulder.’

  ‘Let’s go to my dressing room.’

  ‘No, let’s go somewhere outside the Opera House.’

  ‘Never! Not until we leave for good! It would mean breaking my word and that would bring us bad luck. I promised him I wouldn’t meet you anywhere but here.’

  ‘I suppose I should be grateful that he at least gave his gracious permission for that,’ said Raoul bitterly. ‘Even so, suggesting we play at being engaged was a pretty bold thing to do.’

  ‘But he knew all about it. He said: “I trust you, Christine. M. de Chagny loves you and will shortly sail away. Until he goes, I want him to be as unhappy as I am!”’

  ‘And what does that mean?’ asked Raoul.

  ‘That’s what I should be asking you. Does being in love mean being miserable?’

  ‘Yes, Christine, if you’re in love and not sure of being loved.’
/>
  ‘Are you speaking for Erik?’

  ‘For Erik and me both,’ said Raoul, with a pensive, disconsolate shake of his head.

  They reached Christine’s dressing room.

  ‘Do you think you’re safer here than in any other part of the theatre?’ asked Raoul. ‘If you can hear him through your wall, surely he can hear us.’

  ‘No, he gave me his word he’d never spy on me from behind these walls and I believe him. This dressing room and my room in his sanctuary by the lake are mine, exclusively mine, and out of bounds to him…’

  ‘How did you get out of here into the dark corridor behind the mirror, Christine? Shall we try to reproduce your exact movements? What do you say?’

  ‘It would be very dangerous, Raoul. The mirror might swallow me up again and, instead of escaping, I’d have to go along all the secret passages which would bring me to the lake. Then I’d have to call Erik to rescue me.’

  ‘Would he hear you?’

  ‘Wherever I am I can call Erik and he’ll hear me… He told me so. He has many skills. You mustn’t think he’s just someone who chooses to live underground for his own amusement. He can do things no other man could. He knows things which are unknown in the land of the living.’

  ‘Be careful, Christine, you’re turning him back into a spirit.’

  ‘He’s no spirit. He’s a man who belongs to heaven and earth, nothing more.’

  ‘Nothing more than a man who belongs to heaven and earth!… You don’t exactly sound as if you hate him!… Are you still sure you want to leave him for good?’

  ‘Yes. Tomorrow.’

  ‘Do you want me to tell you why I want you to run away tonight?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Because tomorrow you won’t be able to make up your mind about anything!’

  ‘In that case, Raoul, you’ll just have to make me go. Isn’t that what we agreed?’

  ‘Then tomorrow night it is! I’ll be here, in your dressing room, at midnight,’ said Raoul soberly. ‘Whatever happens, I shall keep my word. You said that after watching the performance he’ll go down to his sanctuary by the lake and wait for you there. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, that’s where he told me to wait for him.’

  ‘And how are you supposed to get there, Christine, if you don’t know how to go “through the looking-glass”?’

  ‘By going directly to the lake of course.’

  ‘What! Through the various levels and cellars? Down stairs and along tunnels used by stagehands and service staff? How would you manage to keep your route secret? All those people would follow Christine Daaé and when she reached the lake she’d have a crowd of thousands in tow!’

  Christine produced a box from which she took a large key and showed it to Raoul.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘The key to the iron gate in the Rue Scribe.’

  ‘Ah, I see! The key to the passage that leads down straight to the lake! Are you going to give it to me?’

  ‘No!’ she said sharply. ‘That would mean betraying Erik!’

  Suddenly Raoul saw her change colour. A deathly pallor spread over her features.

  ‘Oh God!’ she cried. ‘Erik! Erik! Be merciful!’

  ‘Sh!’ hissed Raoul. ‘You told me he could hear you whenever you called!’

  But the singer’s behaviour became more and more inexplicable. She began pulling on her fingers, grew agitated and kept repeating:

  ‘Oh God! Oh God!’

  ‘Whatever’s the matter?’ asked Raoul anxiously. ‘What is it?’

  ‘The ring!’

  ‘What ring? For God’s sake, Christine, pull yourself together!’

  ‘The gold ring he gave me.’

  ‘So it was Erik who gave you that ring!’

  ‘You know it was, Raoul! But what you don’t know is what he said when he gave it to me: “I am going to let you go, Christine, but on condition you always wear this ring. As long as it stays on your finger, you will be safe and Erik will be your friend. But if you ever take it off, expect the worst, for Erik will be avenged!”… Oh Raoul! The ring’s not on my finger! We must expect the worst!’

  They looked high and low for the ring but in vain. It was nowhere to be found. Christine remained very agitated.

  ‘It must have been when I gave you that kiss on the roof, under Apollo’s lyre,’ she began to explain tremulously. ‘The ring must have slipped off my finger and dropped down into the street somewhere! We’ll never find it now! And what terrible dangers have we got hanging over our heads now? We must go! We’ve got to get away!’

  ‘Yes, and we must go now!’ Raoul said once again.

  She hesitated. He thought she was about to say yes… Then her clear blue eyes clouded over and she said:

  ‘No! Tomorrow!’

  Then she rushed out in a state of near-panic, still pulling and smoothing her fingers as if she thought the ring would somehow mysteriously reappear of its own accord.

  Raoul went home, extremely worried by everything he had heard.

  ‘If I don’t save her from the clutches of that charlatan,’ he said aloud in his room as he got ready for bed, ‘there’s no hope for her. But save her I will!’

  He turned out his lamp and lay in the dark, feeling the need to shout curses down on Erik’s head. Three times he cried: ‘Charlatan!… Charlatan!… Charlatan!…’

  All at once he propped himself up on one elbow. His forehead broke out in a cold sweat. Two smouldering eyes had appeared at the foot of his bed. They pierced the darkness and held him in a fixed, baleful glare.

  Raoul did not lack courage, and yet he trembled. He reached out one hand tentatively, uncertainly, falteringly towards his bedside table. He found the box of matches. He struck one and lit a candle. The eyes disappeared.

  Far from reassured, he thought:

  ‘She said you can only see his eyes in the dark. The eyes vanished in the light. But he might still be there!’

  He got out of bed, hunted around and searched the room high and low. He even looked under the bed, the way a little boy might, and suddenly felt ridiculous. He said aloud:

  ‘I have no idea what to make of this whole fairy-tale nonsense one way or the other. Where does reality end and fantasy begin? What was it she saw? What did she think she saw?’

  Then, with a shudder: ‘And what actually did I see? Did I really see his smouldering eyes just now? Or was it just my imagination! I’m not sure of anything any more! So I couldn’t swear I really saw those eyes!’

  He got back into bed and blew out the candle.

  The eyes reappeared.

  ‘Ah!’ gasped Raoul.

  He sat up and stared back as bravely as he could. After a silence which he used to screw up all his courage, he shouted:

  ‘Is that you, Erik? Man, spirit, phantom, is that you?’

  Then he thought a moment: ‘If it’s him… he must be outside on the balcony!’

  Still in his nightshirt, he ran to a small cabinet and felt around for his revolver. Gun in hand, he opened the French window. The night was very cold. Raoul stayed out only long enough to glance round the empty balcony before coming back inside, shutting the window behind him. Shivering, he got back into bed leaving the revolver on his bedside table, within reach.

  Again he blew out his candle.

  The eyes were still there, at the foot of the bed.

  Were they between the bed and the window? Or behind the glass, that is to say, out on the balcony? He wished he knew. He also wanted to know if the eyes belonged to a live human being… he wanted answers…

  Coolly, patiently, doing nothing to disturb the soundless night surrounding him, he took his gun and aimed.

  He aimed at the two, immobile tawny stars which went on glaring balefully.

  He chose his target a little above the two stars. For if the stars were really eyes, and if above the eyes was a forehead, and provided he did not miss…

  The crash of the shot shattered the silenc
e of the sleeping house… Feet were heard running in the corridor outside. Raoul sat up in bed and waited, his arm straight out, ready to fire again.

  This time, the two stars had gone.

  Then there was light, voices, and Count Philippe, looking very concerned.

  ‘What happened here, Raoul?’

  ‘I think I must have been dreaming. I fired at two stars that were preventing me from sleeping.’

  ‘You’re rambling!… Are you ill?… Please, Raoul, tell me what happened…’

  The Count took charge of the revolver.

  ‘No, I’m not off my head!… Anyway, we’ll soon find out…’

  He got out of bed, slipped into a dressing gown, put on his slippers, took a light from one of the servants and, opening the French window, stepped out on to the balcony.

  The Count noticed the clean hole in the glass made by a bullet. It was head high. Raoul leaned over the balcony with his candle.

  ‘Aha!’ he said, ‘blood!… here… there… more blood!… Excellent!… a ghost that bleeds’, he said with a nervous laugh, ‘is a poor sort of Phantom!’

  ‘Raoul!’

  The Count shook him as if he was trying to wake a sleepwalker out of deep, dangerous sleep.

  ‘It’s all right, Philippe, I’m not asleep!’ protested Raoul irritably. ‘You can see the blood for yourself. I thought I was dreaming and shooting at two stars. But they were Erik’s eyes! That’s his blood!…’

  Then suddenly he added, sounding worried:

  ‘But maybe I was wrong to shoot. Christine is quite capable of never forgiving me!… None of this would have happened if I’d thought to draw the curtains when I went to bed.’

  ‘Raoul! Have you suddenly gone quite mad? Wake up!’

  ‘Don’t start that again! You’d be more use, Philippe, if you helped me to look for Erik… a ghost who bleeds shouldn’t be too difficult to track down…’

  The Count’s valet said: ‘It’s quite true, sir, there’s blood on the balcony.’

  A servant brought a lamp and by its light they made a thorough search. The trail of blood led along the handrail, ran up a drainpipe and continued along the gutter.