And he gave a demented laugh.
That damnable, unstoppable voice of the ventriloquist was everywhere!… It entered through the spyhole… passed through walls… it was all around us… between us… Erik was there!… He spoke to us!… We braced ourselves, were about to grapple with him… but Erik’s voice, quicker and more elusive than the voice of the echo, had jumped back through to the wall again!
Soon we stopped hearing anything at all, for this is what happened:
Christine’s voice: ‘Erik! That’s enough of you and your voice!… Please stop now!… And tell me, why is it getting so warm in here?’
‘Very warm,’ agreed Erik’s voice, ‘it’s becoming oppressive!…’
Then Christine’s despairing voice: ‘What’s happening?… The wall is getting hot!… It’s too hot to touch!…’
‘I’ll tell you what’s happening, Christine, my sweet: it’s happening on account of “the forest in the next room”!…’
‘What do you mean, “on account of the forest”?’
‘Didn’t you notice that the forest was a jungle in the Congo?’
And the monster’s laughter grew so loud and so menacing that we could no longer hear Christine’s desperate pleading!… The Viscount yelled and beat his fists against the wall like a madman… I could no longer restrain him… but it hardly mattered for every other sound was drowned by the monster’s demented laughter… even the monster could not have heard anything else… And then there were brief sounds of a struggle, of a body falling on the floor and being dragged away… a door slammed… and then nothing, nothing all around us except the blistering silence of noon!… in the heart of an African jungle!…
• • • • • • • • • • • •
CHAPTER 25
‘Any old barrels!… Barrels!… Any old barrels for sale?’
The Persian’s Tale Continued
I HAVE explained that the chamber in which the Viscount and I found ourselves was a regular hexagon lined from floor to ceiling with reflecting glass. Since those days, certain shows and exhibitions have featured exact replicas of such chambers. They are usually called a ‘Hall of Mirrors’ or a ‘Palace of Illusions’. But their creation was entirely Erik’s own, as I know because I was there when he built the first chamber of this type in the era of the Rosy Hours of Mazanderan. All that was needed was to place a decorative object in one corner, a column for instance, to create an instant Palace of a Thousand Columns, for the combined effect of the reflection expanded the actual chamber by creating six further hexagonal chambers each of which was multiplied ad infinitum. In those days, to keep the Sultana amused, he had dreamed up a decor which became a ‘temple innumerable’. But the Sultana soon wearied of this basic optical effect, so Erik turned his invention into a torture chamber. For the architectural motif installed in one corner, he substituted a tree made of iron. Why was his tree, which was perfectly lifelike with its hand-painted leaves, made of iron? Because it needed to be strong enough to withstand the most frenzied onslaught by any ‘patient’ locked up in the torture chamber. We shall see, twice, how the illusion thus created could be changed instantly by bringing into play two additional motifs by means of rotating painted reflective inserts located in each corner. These revolving inserts had three distinct faces and slotted flush into the angles made by the silvered wall panels, each face having its own decorative motif which appeared as the insert revolved.
The walls of this singular chamber offered the patient no handhold or refuge. The decorative motifs were invulnerable to attack while the walls themselves were lined with reflective glass plate thick enough and tough enough to be safe from the fury of the poor devils locked up there who, in any case, were empty-handed and barefooted.
It contained no furniture. The ceiling could be brilliantly lit. An ingenious system of electrical heating, widely used since, allowed the temperature of the walls to be raised at will and thus provide the required ambience.
I have insisted on giving these exact details of an entirely rationally engineered invention which, with just a few painted branches, created the supernatural illusion of an equatorial forest scorched by a midday sun, so that no one will doubt the balance of my mind or feel entitled to say: ‘The man’s mad!’ or ‘He’s lying!’ or ‘He must think we’re all fools!’1
I could have told the story like this: ‘When we got down to the lowest level, we found an equatorial forest scorched by a midday sun.’ But I should have been met with a reaction of blank amazement. Not that I am striving here for any particular effect. My purpose in writing this account is solely to narrate exactly what happened to the Viscount de Chagny and myself in the course of a dangerous adventure which for some time occupied the full attention of the police.
I now return to the facts where I left them.
When the ceiling suddenly lit up and the forest sprouted all round us, the Viscount was more stunned than can be easily imagined. The unexpected appearance of an impenetrable forest whose innumerable branches and trunks reached out for us with never-ending menace sent him into an alarming state of shock. He rubbed his eyes as if trying to drive away a sight that belonged in a nightmare and he blinked like a man who, on waking, has difficulty rejoining the real world. For a moment, he even forgot to listen!
I have explained why the appearance of the forest came as no surprise to me. So I was able to listen for the both of us to what was happening in the room next door. My attention was drawn less to the ‘innumerable’ decor (which my mind easily dismissed) than to the reflective panels which produced it. In places the glass was cracked!
Tough though it was, there were scratches and even some ‘starring’. It proved beyond doubt that the torture chamber in which we were trapped had already been put to use!
Some poor wretch whose feet were not as bare nor his hands as empty as the guilty criminals tortured by the Rosy Hours of Mazanderan, had clearly fallen into this ‘fatal hall of illusions’ and, driven mad by fury and frustration, had lashed out at the mirrors which, despite minor damage, had relentlessly gone on reflecting his torment. And the branch of the tree on which he had ended his sufferings had been placed in such a way that as he died, he had the supreme consolation of seeing a thousand others dangle with him at the end of their rope!
Yes! Joseph Buquet had been here!
Were we to die as he had?
I did not think so. I knew we had several hours before us and I intended to put them to better use than Joseph Buquet had known how.
Did I not have a detailed knowledge of Erik’s inventions? If I was ever to use what I knew, it was now or never!
I at once dismissed all thoughts of escaping from that damnable chamber by going back the way we had come in. I would not waste time trying to find an inside catch for the pivoting stone which sealed the passage to the third level for the simple reason that it was physically impossible!… We had dropped into the torture chamber from too great a height and there was no furniture to help us climb up to the passage, nor would the branch of the iron tree or even the shoulders of one of us have been any help.
There was only one way out: through the door which opened into the Louis-Philippe salon where Erik and Christine had been. But if that exit looked like any other door on Christine’s side of the wall, there was no sign of it where we were… We would therefore have to open it without even knowing where it was. It was a tall order.
When I was quite sure that we could not expect any further help from Christine Daaé and I’d heard the monster taking—or rather dragging—her out of the Louis-Philippe room so that she would not interfere with our punishment, I decided to start work at once, by which I meant I would begin looking for the secret mechanism which would open the door.
But first I had to calm the Viscount down. He was striding around our little clearing in the jungle as if his mind was about to snap. Gesticulating and shouting wildly, he was not making any sense. Snatches of the conversation between Christine and the monster which he�
�d managed to hear, despite his distraught state, had contributed in no small measure to push him to the edge. Add to that the magic jungle and the burning heat which was beginning to make his face stream with perspiration, and you will not find it hard to understand that the Viscount was beginning to get dangerously overstressed. Despite all my urging, he was not in the mood for restraint.
He walked this way and that, without reason or motive, making a dash for a non-existent gap, thinking he had found a path which would take him to the horizon and after two or three steps crashing head first into the reflection of the illusion of a forest!
As he did so, he went on shouting: ‘Christine! Christine!’ He waved his pistol about, calling to the monster at the top of his voice, challenging the Angel of Music to a duel to the death, and cursing the jungle that wasn’t there. The torture was having a terrible effect on his unprepared mind. I tried to neutralize its impact insofar as I could by trying to make him see reason. I made him touch the mirrors, the tree, the branches painted on revolving inserts with his fingers. I explained how the laws of optics accounted for all the tricks of the light which were bombarding us. We were not vulgar ignoramuses and we were not going peacefully, like lambs to the slaughter!
‘We are in a room, a small room, that’s what you must keep telling yourself. We’ll walk out of here when we find the door. So let’s start looking for it!’
I promised that if he let me get on with it and not disturb me by shouting and running around like a lunatic, it would take me less than an hour to find the secret catch.
At this, he lay down on the floor, as people do in woods, and said that since he didn’t have anything else to do, he would wait until I’d found the way out of the jungle! He also added for good measure that from where he was ‘the view was very fine’. (In spite of all I’d said, the mirage was still affecting his mind.)
Ignoring the jungle, I selected one glass panel and began testing it all over, looking for the weak spot which had to be pushed to make the section of wall swing open according to the system of doors and traps devised by Erik. This ‘weak spot’ could be a small mark on the glass, no bigger than a pea, but it concealed the spring which had to be released. I looked and looked! I felt as high as I could stretch. Erik was about the same height as me and I supposed he would not have positioned the spring higher than he could reach—this was not just an assumption, it was my only hope. I resolved to proceed along these lines, without any second thoughts, to a thorough exploration of all six reflecting panels and then, if required, of the floor.
Although I felt and pressed the panels with the greatest thoroughness, I was also conscious that I had to move quickly, for the temperature continued to rise and we were literally baking in our incandescent jungle.
I had been working in this way for half an hour and had inspected three of the panels, when my concentration was broken by a muffled moan. I turned round. It was the Viscount.
‘Can’t breathe!’ he groaned… ‘All these mirrors are reflecting this infernal heat back and forth!… Are you going to find that blasted spring soon?… Don’t be long or we’ll roast to death!’
I wasn’t unhappy to hear him talk like that. He hadn’t said one word about the jungle and this made me hope that his mind could hold out for a little longer. But then he added:
‘My one consolation is that the monster has given Christine until eleven tomorrow night. If we don’t get out of here and save her, at least we’ll die before she does! Erik’s Requiem for the Dead can be used for all of us!’
He took a deep breath and the hot air almost made him pass out…
Since I didn’t have the same desperate reasons as the Viscount de Chagny for accepting death, I muttered a few words of encouragement and then returned to my panel. But as I turned and spoke, I made the fatal mistake of moving a few steps with the result that against the dense tangle of the jungle that wasn’t there I could no longer say for sure which was the panel I had been working on! I was forced to start all over again and choose one at random!… I could not hide my frustration and the Viscount too saw that I would have to begin again at the beginning. The realization was a fresh blow to him.
‘We’ll never get out of this jungle!’ he moaned.
He began to lose hope and as his hopes faded he began to forget that he was surrounded by mirrors. He grew even more certain the jungle was real.
I went back to my searching… and groping… The pressure soon began to tell on me too… for I found nothing… nothing at all… In the adjacent room all was silence. We were completely lost in the jungle… with no way out… with no compass… no guide… nothing. And I knew exactly what would happen to us if no one came to our rescue… or if I failed to locate that spring… But try as I might, all I could see were branches… beautiful, admirable branches which rose straight in front of me or spread out elegantly above my head… But they provided no shade! That was entirely to be expected, of course, given that we were in an equatorial jungle with the sun directly overhead… a jungle in the Congo…
The Viscount and I had several times taken off our coats and put them back on again, for at times they made us too hot but at others they protected us against the glare and heat.
I was still in good heart. But the Viscount seemed to have ‘cracked’. He said he’d been marching continuously through the jungle for three days and three nights, looking for Christine Daaé. From time to time, he thought he caught sight of her behind a tree trunk or gliding among the branches, and he called to her with a desperation which brought tears to my eyes. ‘Christine! Christine! Why are you running away? Don’t you love me?… Aren’t we going to be married?… Stop, Christine, stop!… Can’t you see I’m exhausted?… Have pity, Christine!… I shall die in the jungle… far away from you!…’
And then in a semi-delirious voice, he added: ‘I’m so thirsty!’
And so was I… My throat was on fire!…
But though I was now squatting on the floor, I still went on searching… searching for the spring which would open the invisible door… searching even more urgently now for I knew that the jungle was becoming more dangerous with the approach of evening… Already, the shadows of night were gathering around us… it was happening fast, exactly as it does at the equator, suddenly, with virtually no twilight…
Night in the jungles of the equator is always a dangerous time, especially when the traveller, like us, has no means of making a fire to keep wild animals at bay. Briefly abandoning my task, I tried to break off branches which I intended to light with my dark lantern. But I too was brought up short by those damned mirrors. But it was a useful reminder that we were dealing only with the image of branches…
The day departed but the heat did not lessen. The very opposite… It was even hotter now in the blue light of the moon. I told the Viscount to be ready for action with his pistol and not to stray far from our camp. Then I went on searching.
Suddenly, we heard the roar of a lion. It was ear-splitting and very close.
The Viscount whispered: ‘It’s nearly on us!… Can’t you see it?… there!… through the trees, in that thicket!… If it roars again I’ll shoot!…’
And roar again it did, even louder than before. The Viscount fired. I don’t think he hit the lion but he certainly shattered one entire panel.
I saw the result next morning, at dawn. During the night, we must have covered a great deal of ground for we now suddenly found ourselves on the edge of a desert, an immense desert of sand, shale and rock. We were not tempted to exchange forest for desert. I stretched out next to the Viscount, exhausted by the effort of searching for but not finding the secret mechanism.
I told him how surprised I was that we had not been exposed to further scares during the night. I knew from experience that usually the lion came first, then the leopard and sometimes buzzing swarms of tsetse flies. They were just stage effects, of course, and very easy to create. While we rested before setting out to cross the desert, I explained that Erik produce
d the lion’s roar with a tabor or long narrow drum with an ass’s skin stretched over one end. Across the skin was laid a length of catgut tied in the middle to a second length of catgut which runs the entire length of the drum. All Erik had to do was run a glove dusted with rosin up and down the catgut and, depending how he ‘played’ this ‘string’, he could reproduce exact imitations of the roar of a lion or leopard or even the buzzing of a swarm of tsetse flies.
The Phantom of the Opera (Oxford World's Classics) Page 31