The thought that Erik might be in the adjacent room with his bag of tricks decided me to try to parley with him. Obviously, it was too late to hope that we could take him by surprise. By now, he must know who his prisoners in the torture chamber were. I called him: ‘Erik! Erik!’… I shouted as loudly as I could across the desert but there was no answer… All around us was the silent vastness of that stony desert… What would happen to us in the middle of such appalling emptiness?…
We were now literally in danger of dying of heat, hunger and thirst… particularly of thirst… Eventually I was aware that the Viscount was leaning on one elbow and pointing to a spot on the horizon… He had seen an oasis!
Yes, there in the distance, the desert gave way to an oasis… an oasis with water… water as clear and still as glass… water in which the iron tree was reflected!… Ah yes!… this was the painted picture of the mirage… I recognized it at once… the last and cruellest illusion of all three!… no one had ever failed to succumb to it… no one… I strove to keep a cool head… so that I would not hope for water… because I knew that if I hoped for water, for the water which reflected the iron tree, and if having hoped for water, I was stopped by the glass of the mirror, there was only one thing left to do: hang myself on the iron tree!…
So I shouted a warning to the Viscount: ‘It’s a mirage!… only a mirage!… don’t believe that’s real water!… it’s just another trick of the light!…’ But he told me to go to blazes, as they say, and take all my talk of false mirrors, secret springs, revolving doors and my hall of illusions with me!… He was furious and said I must be mad or blind if I thought that the water we could see flowing through all those countless, handsome trees was not real!… The desert was real too!… And so was the jungle!… It was no use trying to pull the wool over his eyes!… he’d travelled the world… and wherever he’d been…
He dragged himself across the floor crying:
‘Water! Water!’
His mouth was open as if he were already drinking…
And I too had my mouth open as if I were drinking…
For not only could we see the water, we could hear it!… We heard it splashing… lapping… Do you truly understand the word lapping?… It’s a word that you hear with your tongue!… The tongue pokes out of the mouth so that it can hear it better!
And then came the most unbearable torture of all: we heard rain but it did not rain! This was a truly diabolical invention… Of course, I knew how Erik made that sound too! He filled a long, narrow box with small stones. The space inside the box was herringboned at intervals by vanes made of wood and metal. As the stones dropped, they hit the vanes, cascaded from one to the next, and made a pattering sound indistinguishable from the pelting rain of a storm!
We made a sorry spectacle, the Viscount and I, with our tongues out, dragging ourselves towards the lapping pool… Our eyes and ears were full of water but our tongues stayed as dry as boards!
When he reached the mirror, the Viscount began licking it… and I too licked the glass!…
It was burning hot!…
With cries of despair we rolled around on the floor. The Viscount put the barrel of the remaining loaded pistol to his temple while I stared at the Punjab noose at my feet.
The decor changed for a third time and I knew why the iron tree was suddenly back!…
The iron tree was waiting for me!…
But as I stared at the Punjab noose I saw something which gave me such a violent jolt that the Viscount who was already muttering ‘Adieu, Christine!’ was stopped in his suicidal tracks.
I grabbed his arm and took the pistol from him… then I crawled on all fours towards what I had seen… In a groove in the floor was a nail with a black head. I knew immediately what it was…
At last! I’d found the secret catch!… the catch which would release the spring!… which would open the door!… which would set us free and bring us face to face with Erik!…
I reached for the nail… and turned to the Viscount with a smile on my face!… the nail with the black head gave as I pressed it!…
And then what we saw was not an opening which appeared in the wall but a trapdoor which swung down in the floor.
Cool air flowed up from the blackness below. We leaned over that hole full of shadows as hungrily as if it had been a pool of clear spring water. Chins dipped into its cool darkness, we drank it in.
We leaned further and further over the black square. What was down that hole… what was in that cellar which the trap in the floor had so mysteriously opened for us?
Perhaps there was water down there!
Water to drink!
I reached one arm into the darkness and found a stone slab, then another… a flight of steps… a dark flight of steps that led down to a cellar.
The Viscount was all for jumping straight into the hole… Even if we didn’t find water down there at least we would escape the burning glare of Erik’s hellish mirrors.
But I stopped the Viscount. I feared that maybe the monster had set one more snare for us. I relit my lantern and went first.
The steps spiralled down into complete darkness. But oh the relief to feel the coolness of the darkness and the steps!
It seemed likely that the coolness came less from the ventilation system which Erik had needed to install than from the ground which, given the level we had now reached, had to be saturated with water… Besides, the lake could not be very far away!…
We soon reached the foot of the steps… Our eyes were beginning to adapt to the dark and started to make out shapes in the gloom… round shapes… on which I shone the beam of my lantern…
Barrels!
We were in Erik’s own cellar!
He must keep his wine here and maybe his drinking water…
I knew that he had a taste for fine wines…
We would not be short of something to drink!
The Viscount patted the round shapes and muttered repeatedly:
‘Barrels! Barrels! Such a lot of barrels!’
A good number of them were stacked symmetrically in two rows between which we advanced…
They were not so much barrels as kegs or casks. I assumed that Erik had deliberately chosen to have them that size to make them easier to transport to the house by the lake.
We examined them in turn, hoping that one of them was fitted with a spigot which would tell us if it had been broached at some point.
But all the casks were hermetically sealed.
We raised one a little to check if it was full. Then we crouched down and with the blade of a small knife I had on me, I set about trying to knock the bung out.
As I began, I seemed to hear a very distant, monotonous chanting sound which I seemed to recognize, for I had heard it often enough in the streets of Paris.
‘Any old barrels!… Barrels!… Any old barrels for sale?’
My hand froze on the bung… The Viscount had heard it too.
‘That’s funny,’ he said. ‘It’s as if the cask is singing!’
Then the chanting started up again, only further away.
‘Any old barrels!… Barrels!… Any old barrels for sale?’
‘I could swear’, said the Viscount, ‘that the sound is being swallowed by the cask!…’
We stood up and looked behind it.
‘It is inside!’ he said. ‘The sound is inside the cask!’
But we could hear nothing now… and all we could do was to put the whole thing down to the beaten, weakened state of our senses…
We returned to the bung. The Viscount held both hands under it and with one last effort I forced it out.
‘What’s this stuff,’ he cried. ‘It’s not water!’
He held both his hands close to my lantern… I bent down to look… and immediately snatched the lantern back and tossed it away. As it fell, it broke and went out… It would be no further use to us…
What I’d just seen in the Viscount’s hands was… gunpowder!
CHAPTER
26
Scorpion or Grasshopper? Which is it to be?
The Persian’s Tale Concluded
AND so, by descending to the lowest vaults of the Opera, I had also reached the lowest point of my darkest fears! Erik had not misled me with his vague threats against all those members of the human race! Rejected by humanity, he had fled human company and built himself an underground sanctuary. He was prepared to blow up himself and everything else in one vast cataclysm if those who lived above the ground ever tracked him down to the lair in which he had found a safe haven for his monstrous ugliness.
The discovery we had just made plunged us into a state of total shock which blotted out our own past troubles and present sufferings… Only moments before we had been on the verge of suicide; now our unique situation could not have filled us with greater horror. We understood what the monster had implied and intended when he had given Christine Daaé that odious choice: ‘Yes or no. If it’s no, then everyone is dead and buried!’ He meant: buried under the rubble of Paris’s great Opera House!… Could a viler crime be imagined by anyone wishing to quit this life in a more horrible apotheosis? The looming disaster which the foulest monster who ever walked the earth had planned as a way of defending his hiding place, would be his revenge for unrequited love! ‘Tomorrow night, at eleven’: the final call!… His timing was impeccable!… The theatre would be full of people!… crowds… all of them members of the human race!… upstairs!… on the upper, light-filled levels of the house of music!… Could anyone wish for a finer setting for those who were about to die!… Erik would meet his end escorted by beautiful women whose beautiful shoulders would shine with the most beautiful gems… Tomorrow night, at eleven!… If Christine Daaé said No! we would all be blown to smithereens in the middle of the performance… Tomorrow night, at eleven! But she had no alternative but to say: No! Surely she would rather marry Death than that walking corpse? Surely she could not possibly know that her refusal would mean an inferno of death and destruction for many of the human race?… Tomorrow night, at eleven!…
Repeating ‘tomorrow night, at eleven’, we felt our way, trying to get as far away from the powder kegs as we could and find the stone steps in the dark, for up there, above us, the light coming through the trapdoor to the chamber of mirrors had gone out.
Eventually, I located the lowest step… and then suddenly, as I put my foot on it, I jerked up straight. A terrible thought had suddenly flashed through my mind:
‘What time is it now?’
The time!… what time was it?… for ‘tomorrow tonight at eleven’ was perhaps today, maybe any minute now!… How could we find out what time it was?… It felt as if we’d been trapped inside this hell for days and days… years… ever since the beginning of the world… Everything might explode at any moment!… What was that noise?… A kind of crack!… Did you hear it, Viscount?… There… in that corner!… Ye gods!… sounds like noise made by a machine!… there it is again!… if only we had a light!… perhaps it’s part of the mechanism that’s going to blow us all to pieces!… I told you: a crack!… Are you deaf?…
Then both of us begin shouting like madmen… spurred on by fear… we trip, we scramble up the steps… Perhaps the trapdoor at the top is closed! Perhaps it’s dark because the trapdoor is closed… must get out of the dark!… even if it means going back to the deadly glare of the chamber of mirrors?…
We reach the top of the steps… no, the trapdoor isn’t shut, but it’s as dark in the chamber of mirrors as it was in the cellar!… Now we’re both out of the cellar… we crawl around the floor of the torture chamber… the floor is all that separates us from the powder magazine below… what’s the time?… we shout, we call!… As his strength returns, the Viscount cries out: ‘Christine! Christine!’… And I shout: ‘Erik! Erik!’… I remind him that I once saved his life!… But neither of us is answered!… we are left, on the edge of madness, with only an absence of hope… what’s the time now?… ‘Tomorrow night, at eleven!’… We try to work it out… we try to estimate how long we’ve been here… but we’re not thinking straight… Oh for the briefest glimpse of the dial, at the hands of a watch!… Mine stopped long ago!… But the Viscount’s is still ticking!… He says he wound it up as he got dressed before coming to the Opera… From this we try to draw conclusions which might allow us to hope that we hadn’t yet reached the fatal moment…
The faintest sound rising through the trapdoor which I vainly try to close sends us into a panic… What’s the time now?… Neither of us has a match… But we must know!… The Viscount thinks he can break the glass of his watch and feel the hands… There is a silence while he feels the pointers with his fingers… using the winder as his point of reference… Judging by the angle between the hands, he reckons it could be, perhaps, exactly eleven o’clock…
But maybe it’s not the eleven o’clock that’s turning our stomachs to water… if it isn’t then maybe Erik’s deadline has come and gone!… and it might be ten minutes past… and we have another twelve hours ahead of us!
Then suddenly I cry: ‘Hush!’
I thought I heard footsteps in the adjoining room.
And so I did! Then came the sound of a door opening and closing… and of footsteps hurrying. A knock on the wall followed by the voice of Christine Daaé:
‘Raoul! Raoul!’
We all began shouting at once on either side of the wall. Christine was sobbing, for she had not known if she would find the Viscount alive or dead!… She said the monster had fallen into a towering rage… He had done nothing but rave while he waited for her to say ‘Yes!’ but she wouldn’t… She promised she would, but only on condition that he took her to the torture chamber!… But this he had obstinately refused to do and instead issued wild threats against every member of the human race… In the end, after hours of this hell, he had gone out… leaving her alone to reflect for the very last time…
‘Hours and hours!’
‘What time is it now, Christine?… What’s the time?’
‘Nearly eleven!… exactly five to.’
‘Morning or evening?’
‘It’s the eleven o’clock which will decide between life and death… He told me so again as he was leaving,’ said Christine in a tight voice. ‘He’s terrifying!… He’s raving, he’s torn his mask off and his yellow eyes flash fire! And he keeps laughing!… He was laughing like a drunken fiend when he hissed: “Five minutes! I shall leave you alone, out of respect for your well-known shyness!… I don’t want you blushing, like some simpering virgin, when you finally say ‘Yes!’… Damn it all! I am delicacy itself!” I told you he was like a drunken demon!
‘Then he reached into his bag of life and death and said:
‘“Here! This little brass key opens the two ebony boxes on the mantelpiece of the Louis-Philippe room… In one of them you will find a scorpion and in the other a grasshopper, both exquisitely crafted in Japanese bronze and very lifelike. They will say yes and no for you! All you do is give the scorpion one half turn, no more… so that when I come back here to this Louis-Philippe room, our prenuptial chamber, I shall know you have said Yes! But if you turn the grasshopper, it will mean No! and when I come back I shall know, and my Louis-Philippe room shall then be our chamber of death!…”, and he shrieked with drunken, demonic laughter. I kept pleading with him on my knees to give me the key to the torture chamber, promising to be his wife for ever and ever if only he’d grant me that one wish… But he said we’d not be needing the key now and that he was going to throw it into the lake!… Then, still laughing crazily, he went out saying he would give me five minutes alone, for he was a gentleman and knew how a gentleman should treat a lady!… And he shouted as he left, he said: “Take care with the grasshopper!… Grasshoppers don’t just turn, they go off!… suddenly!…up into the air!… sky high!”’
I have tried to convey Christine’s jerky, feverish speech by means of truncated phrases, disjointed words and exclamation marks!… For, over the last twenty-four hours, she too
must have plumbed the depths of human suffering… and perhaps had suffered more than we had!… She constantly interrupted both herself and us to ask: ‘Raoul! Are you all right?…’ She felt the walls, which were now cold, and asked why they had been so hot!… In this way the five minutes ticked by while the scorpion and the grasshopper ran amuck in my brain!
But I was still lucid enough to realize that if the grasshopper were turned, it would ‘go off’ all right… and so would a large number of the human race with it! Obviously the grasshopper would switch on an electric circuit which would detonate the entire gunpowder magazine!… The Viscount who, now that he’d heard Christine’s voice, seemed to be his old bold self once more, quickly explained what danger we were in, we and the entire Opera House… He told her she had to turn the scorpion, and there was not a moment to lose…
The scorpion, which would signal the yes Erik longed to see, must control some arrangement which would prevent the disaster happening… possibly.
‘Go quickly, Christine!… I love you!’ said Raoul.
There was a silence. I called:
‘Wait, Christine! Where are you?’
‘I’ve reached the scorpion!’
‘Don’t touch it!’
I had been struck by the thought, for I knew Erik all too well, that he might have tricked her once more. Perhaps it was the scorpion which would set off the charge. Why wasn’t he there? The five minutes had been up for some time… and he hadn’t come back… He had taken cover!… He was waiting for the bomb to go off!… Yes, that’s exactly what he was waiting for!… He could not seriously be expecting Christine to consent freely to be his wife!… Why hadn’t he come back?…
‘Don’t touch the scorpion!’ I said again.
‘It’s him!’ cried Christine. ‘I can hear him coming!… He’s here!…’
• • • • • • • • • • • •
And there he was! We heard his footsteps approaching the Louis-Philippe room… now he was with Christine… all without a word being pronounced.
The Phantom of the Opera (Oxford World's Classics) Page 32