The Phantom of the Opera (Oxford World's Classics)
Page 34
‘Liar!’ cried the Persian.
Erik bowed his head.
‘I didn’t come here… to talk about Count Philippe… but to tell you… I’m going to die…’
‘Where are Raoul de Chagny and Christine Daaé?’
‘I’m dying…’
‘Raoul de Chagny and Christine Daaé?’
‘… of love, Daroga… I am dying of love… there it is… I loved her so much!… I still do, Daroga… loved her so much that it’s killing me, I tell you… If you knew how beautiful she was when she let me kiss her… willingly… she swore it on her hopes of salvation… It was the first time, Daroga, my very first time, you hear?… I never kissed a woman before… She was alive, so alive and I kissed her… and she was as beautiful as if she’d been dead!…’
The Persian was on his feet and, overcoming his qualms, dared touch Erik: he shook his arm.
‘Are you going to tell me if she’s alive or dead?’
‘Why are you shaking me like that?’ said Erik, his voice thick and slow. ‘I told you… I’m the one who is going to die… Yes, I kissed her, and she was so alive.’
‘But now she’s dead?’
‘I tell you… I kissed her on the forehead… she did not shrink from my nearness!… She is so pure!… Is she dead?… I don’t think so, though it’s out of my hands now… No! She’s not dead! And if I hear that anyone has harmed a hair of her head…! She is brave and good!… Did you know, she saved your neck, Daroga, at a time when I wouldn’t have given a snap of my fingers for your damned Persian hide! No one was thinking about you. What were you doing there with that young oaf anyway? You were both going to die! But by God, she begged me to let her young man live! I told her that she’d turned the scorpion and that meant that she’d agreed to marry me of her own free will. I said you can only be engaged to one person at a time, which was no more than the truth. But you, Daroga, had ceased to exist, I repeat: you were nothing, and you were doomed to die with the other intruder.
‘But listen well, Daroga, you were both yelling like men possessed because the water kept rising. Christine came to me, opened those beautiful blue eyes, and swore, on her hopes of salvation, that she would consent to be my living wife! Until that moment, I had always seen deep in her eyes that she would be my dead wife! This was the first time I saw her as my wife while she still lived, my living wife!… She meant it, she’d sworn on her hopes of eternal salvation!… She wouldn’t try to kill herself… the bargain was struck… Within minutes, all the water had been returned to the lake and I was pumping you out, Daroga, though I really thought you wouldn’t make it!… But you did!… And I’d agreed terms! I was to take you back to your apartment on the surface. When I’d got shot of you out of the Louis-Philippe salon, I went back there alone.’
‘What did you do with the Viscount de Chagny?’ broke in the Persian.
‘You must understand, Daroga… I had no intention of taking him up to the surface straight away… He was my hostage… But I couldn’t keep him in the house by the lake either, because of Christine. So I locked him up safe and snug, chained him up—a whiff of Mazanderan opium had left him limp as a rag—in the old Communards’ dungeon which is in the furthest, most deserted part of the Opera’s cellars, deeper down even than the fifth level. No one ever goes there and no one would hear any cries for help. Then I calmly rejoined Christine. She was waiting for me.’
At this point in his narrative, the Phantom apparently stood up so solemnly that the Persian, who had sat down in his armchair, felt obliged to do likewise, as though obeying the same impulse and with the strong sense that he could not remain seated at such a solemn juncture. The Persian added that, despite his shaven head, he took off his astrakhan fez.
‘She was there, waiting for me!’ went on Erik who began to shake like a leaf, overcome by his memories, ‘waiting for me, straight-backed, alive, like a real living bride, having staked her hopes of salvation… When I walked towards her, shyer than a little boy, she did not turn away… no… she stayed where she was… she waited… I even think, Daroga, that she… just a little, but just like a living bride… that she even held her forehead out to me to kiss… and… I kissed her!… I did that!… and she did not die of disgust!… and then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, she stayed at my side after I’d kissed her… just like that… on her forehead… Oh how wonderful it is, Daroga, to kiss another person!… You cannot imagine it… but I can… My own mother, my poor, wretched mother, never let me kiss her… she would turn away… and make me put my mask on!… Nor did any other woman!… Never ever!… Never once!… You do understand, don’t you?… such happiness!… I wept!… I went down on my knees, tears streaming down my face… I cried and I kissed her pretty feet!… Ah! You are weeping, Daroga… she wept too… my angel wept!!…’*
As Erik had told his tale, he had sobbed aloud. The Persian had not been able to hold back his own tears either as he listened to the man in the mask who, shoulders heaving and hand on his heart, had almost choked, torn between pain and joy.
‘Oh, Daroga, I felt her tears fall on to my forehead… hot tears… sweet tears… her hot tears ran down inside my mask!… they ran into my eyes and mingled with mine!… they trickled onto my lips!… Her tears, on me!… Listen, Daroga, to what I did… I tore off my mask so that I wouldn’t waste a single one of her tears… and still she did not turn away!… and she did not die! She stayed alive, to weep… and she wept her tears on me… with me… we wept together!… Almighty God! you gave me all the joy the world can offer!…’
At this point, Erik collapsed, gasping, onto the chair.
‘I’m not ready to die just yet… but the time will come… soon… until then let me cry,’ the man in the mask told the Persian.
But a moment later, he resumed:
‘Listen, Daroga… listen carefully… as I knelt before her, I heard her say: “Poor, unhappy Erik!” and she took me by the hand!… From that moment, I was a faithful dog ready to die for her… that is exactly what I was!
‘In my hand I had a ring, the same gold ring I’d once given her… the one she’d lost and I had found… a wedding ring!… I slipped it into her tiny hand and said: “Here, take this… it’s for you… and for him… Let it be my wedding present to you both… a present from poor, unhappy Erik… I know you love the boy… don’t cry!…” In her gentle voice she asked me what I meant… I explained… and she saw at once not only that I was just a poor dog ready to die for her but also that she could marry her young man whenever she liked because she had wept with me… oh Daroga!… as I said those words it was as if I had cut my own heart into pieces. But she had wept with me!… she had said: “Poor, unhappy Erik!”’
He was so overcome that he was obliged to warn the Daroga to look away, for he couldn’t breathe and would have to remove his mask. By his account, the Persian, himself almost engulfed by pity, moved to the window where he deliberately focused on the tops of the trees in the Tuileries Gardens so that there was no possibility of glimpsing Erik’s face reflected in the glass.
‘Then I went and released the boy and took him back to where Christine was waiting… I saw them kiss in the Louis-Philippe salon… Christine had my ring on her finger… I made her swear that when I was dead, she would come one night, through the gate in the Rue Scribe, and secretly bury me with the gold ring which she was to go on wearing until that time… I told her where she’d find my body and what she was to do with it… Then she kissed me, for the first time, here, on the forehead—don’t look, Daroga—my forehead—no! don’t look, Daroga!—and they left together… Christine had stopped crying… but I cried on… alone… Daroga, if Christine keeps her promise it won’t be long before she comes back to the house by the lake!…’
Erik fell silent. The Persian had not asked any other questions. He had been reassured that Christine and the Viscount were safe. No member of the human race who heard what was said that night could have doubted the weeping Erik’s word.
There was nothing left to say.
The Persian went with Erik as far as the door of his apartment. Darius helped him down to the street where a cab was waiting. The Persian, watching from a window, heard him tell the driver: ‘Take me to the Opera!’
The cab disappeared into the night. The Persian had seen poor, unhappy Erik for the last time.
Three weeks later, L’Époque published this brief announcement:
‘ERIK IS DEAD.’
EPILOGUE
SO ends the true story of the Phantom of the Opera.
As I observed on the first page of this book, no one can doubt the reality of Erik’s existence. Too much irrefutable evidence is now so generally available that virtually anyone is in a position to follow Erik’s exploits and their role in ‘the Chagny Affair’.
There is no need to recapitulate here the tremendous effect it had on public opinion in the capital. A diva abducted, the Count de Chagny dead in such unusual circumstances, his brother reported missing and the three lighting hands drugged at the Opera!… what excitement, passion and crimes had punctuated the romance between Raoul and the lovely Christine!… Whatever had become of the wonderful but mysterious soprano whom the world would never hear sing again?… She was portrayed as the victim of the rivalry between the two brothers. No one had any inkling of what had really happened, nor did anyone understand that the disappearance of Raoul and Christine simply meant that they had fled the limelight in order to enjoy their happiness which, after the unexplained death of Count Philippe, they had no wish to expose to the glare of publicity… One day they had got on a train which took them north from the Gare du Nord… Perhaps one day I too might take a train from that same station and go prospecting around the lakes of Norway or silent Scandinavia in search of perhaps the still living traces of Raoul and Christine, and of Mme Valerius too, for she also disappeared around the same time!… Perhaps one day I shall hear the solitary mountains of the North of the World echo with the voice of one who once had known the Angel of Music?
Long after the case—unsolved thanks to the unintelligent handling of M. Faure, the examining magistrate—was officially closed, the press still returned to it from time to time in the hope of getting to the bottom of the mystery, still wanting to know the identity of the monstrous mind responsible for planning and engineering so many crimes and disappearances.
Only one popular newspaper, with a keen ear for backstage gossip, had actually gone so far as to state: ‘The monster was the Phantom of the Opera!’
But even that claim was made with the paper’s tongue firmly planted in its cheek.
The truth was known only to the Persian. But having been turned away once by the police, he never again attempted to repeat the experience after Erik’s visit.
In his possession was crucial evidence which had been sent to him, along with the sacred relics, by the Phantom. It fell to me to fill in the remaining gaps, which I did with his help.
I kept him informed daily about the progress of my enquiries and he pointed me in the right direction. He had not been back to the Opera for many years, but his memories of the place were extremely accurate. I could not have had a better guide to assist me in exploring its remotest corners. He also told me the best places to get at the facts and the best people to interview. He it was who urged me to knock on the door of M. Poligny when the poor man was more or less on his deathbed. I had no idea he was so ill and I shall never forget the effect my questions about the Phantom had on him. He stared at me as if I were the devil incarnate and gave me a few disjointed answers which nevertheless confirmed (and that was what really mattered) the tremendous impact which the P. of the O. had made at the time on his somewhat irregular private life (he was what is usually called a rake).
When I gave the Persian the meagre results of my visit to M. Poligny, he smiled a thin smile and said: ‘Poligny never knew to what extent the infamous villain (sometimes the Persian spoke of Erik as though he’d been a demigod, at others as if he were scum) had run rings round him. Poligny was superstitious and Erik knew it. Erik knew a great many things about the public business and private affairs of the Opera. So when M. Poligny heard a mysterious voice in Box 5 upbraiding him for the life he led and abusing the trust of his co-Director, he did not wait to learn more. Convinced that he had heard the voice of God, he believed he was damned and it was only when the voice demanded money that he finally realized that he was being strung along by a master blackmailer of whom Debienne was also a victim. For various reasons both men were tired of running the Opera and departed without making any further efforts to investigate the elusive Phantom who had made them sign up to the ruinous “memorandum of agreement”. They bequeathed the entire mystery to their successors, heaved a great sigh of relief and left, having laid down a burden which had nonplussed both of them and amused neither.’
Such was the rather dim view the Persian took of Messrs Debienne and Poligny.
While he was on the subject, I asked him about their successors. I expressed surprise that in his Memoirs of a Theatre Manager, Moncharmin should have given such a full account of the P. of the O.’s misdeeds in Part I and then said more or less nothing in Part II. To this the Persian, who was so familiar with his Memoirs that he might have written them himself, commented that I’d find the whole business explained if I’d take time to think about a brief passage in the second part where Moncharmin returned to the subject of the Phantom. Here is the passage in question which is of particular interest since it gives a very straightforward account of the way the business of the 20,000 francs ended:
‘With regard to the P. of the O.,’ wrote Moncharmin, ‘certain of whose fanciful exploits I recalled at the beginning of these Memoirs, I have only one thing to add and it is this. With one fine gesture, he redeemed all the trouble he caused my friend and co-Director and, I cannot deny it, myself. I assume that he eventually realized that a joke can be carried too far, especially when it involves large amounts of cash and a high-ranking police officer. A few days after the disappearance of Christine Daaé, at the very time which we had arranged to meet M. Mifroid in our office and were about to tell him the whole story, there on Richard’s desk we found a large envelope. On the outside the following words had been written in red ink: “With the compliments of the P. of the O.” Inside it were the very substantial sums which he had temporarily and amusingly managed to extract from the Directors’ strongbox. Richard immediately took the view that matters should be left there and no further action taken. I agreed to endorse Richard’s point of view. All’s well that ends well—don’t you agree, you mischievous P. of the O.?’
It is quite obvious that Moncharmin, especially after the money was returned, went on believing that for a short period he had been the victim of Richard’s waggish imagination just as for his part Richard remained convinced that Moncharmin had invented the whole business of the P. of the O. as retaliation for pranks which had been played on him.
This was my moment to ask the Persian how the Phantom had managed to purloin the
20,000 francs which had been secured inside Richard’s pocket with the safety pin. He said he had never actually looked into this minor detail, but if I examined the location myself I would doubtless come up with the answer in the Directors’ office, provided I bore in mind that Erik was not known as a Master of Traps for nothing. I promised the Persian I would do so as soon as I could. Let me say here that the result of my investigations was entirely satisfactory. Indeed, I never dreamed I would ever find so much irrefutable evidence to show that the strange happenings attributed to the Phantom did really happen.
The reader is also entitled to know that the Persian’s narrative, Christine’s papers, the statements given to me by those who served under Messrs Richard and Moncharmin, by little Meg* (sadly, the worthy Mme Giry has since died) and La Sorelli, who has retired to Louveciennes—the reader, as I say, is entitled to know that this body of information, which provides documentary proof that there really was a Phantom and which I propose to hand over to the Opera’s archives, has been corroborated by a number of significant discoveries of which I think I can justly be proud.
I have not, however, succeeded in locating the house by the lake. As a final act, Erik had destroyed all the secret entrances to it. But I remain convinced that it would be easy to reach it if the lake were drained, as I have several times proposed to the Ministry of Fine Arts.1 But at least I was able to find the Communards’ tunnel, though the planking has rotted in places, and also the trapdoor through which Raoul and the Persian dropped down into the lower levels of the theatre. In the cell dug by the Communards, I found initials scratched on the walls by those who were held there, and among them an ‘R’ and a ‘C’: ‘RC’? Surely this is significant: Raoul de Chagny! At the time of writing, the letters are still clearly visible. Of course, I did not stop there. In the first and third levels down, I managed to open two pivot-operated doors unknown to the stagehands who are familiar only with horizontal, sliding traps.