Phantom (58 page)

I could not stay in the house now, there seemed to be no air. I was overcome with a fierce urge to climb up and up into the cool evening breeze, somewhere very high where I might feel closer to the God in Whom I had so constantly denied belief.

It's all been a lie, you see, one long sorry lie, designed to save my pride from further hurt, to say there is no God.

In my heart I still believe in miracles. God is the greatest magician of all. He Who turns an ugly caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly is surely capable of changing distaste and fear into love.

Tonight I'm prepared to go down on my knees, just as I used to do as a very small child, and offer up one last purely infantile bargain.

"Please, God, let her love me and I promise to be good forever…"

I could pray here, but I know it's no use, I might as well be in the lowest pit of hell. I'll never be heard down here. I have to get to the rooftops of Paris, close enough to touch the stars.

The statue of Apollo on the roof of the Opera House, ten stories above the level of the streets, is about as close as I can get to heaven now.

Surely He will hear me from there!

I was so lost in panic-ridden thought as I made my way toward my dressing room that I hardly recognized the little page who ran up to me and touched his cap.

"Mademoiselle… I was asked to give you this as soon as you returned to work."

Glancing at the envelope he held out toward me, I immediately recognized Raoul's sprawling, untidy hand and my heart gave a painful jerk.

"When was this given to you?"

"This morning, mademoiselle, by the Vicomte de Chagny's driver… I can take a reply if you like, " the boy added cheekily. "Only cost you a franc for my trouble."

Instead of reprimanding him for his impertinence, I hurried the boy into my room and made him wait while I hastily scribbled one line on a piece of paper. I had no envelopes to hand, but I doubted he had the education to read what I had written.

"You know the Chagny house?"

"Us, mademoiselle. Everyone knows it."

"If I give you five francs will you run all the way there?"

The boy's pasty, freckled face split into a wide grin as he pocketed my money.

"Mademoiselle, for five francs I'll fly!"

I was too distracted to return his smile. When he had gone I began to walk up and down my room like a mad thing. I did not want to open Raoul's letter; I was certain that, after the debacle in the Bois, it would be full of cold, comet sentiments and nothing else
—
a formal severing of our engagement
.

Would he come now in answer to my desperate plea ? Or, offended and hurt as he must surely be by my conduct, would he simply tear the paper to pieces and ignore it?

An hour passed, taking the remains of daylight with it, and driven by increasing desperation, I went to the
grand escalier,
where I could see everyone who came and went both through the main entrance and the subscribers' rotunda
.

My watch ticked away another leaden ten minutes.

He wasn't going to come! He'd deserted me… and who could blame him after the way I had treated him all these weeks… who could blame him!

Fifteen minutes later Raoul finally strode through the rotunda toward the staircase. If there had been any coolness or reserve in his manner, it did not long survive the sight of my face as I ran to him.

"Christine! My God! What's the matter? Whatever has happened to make you look like this?"

"Hush! Not here! I can't tell you here, Raoul, there are too many people around. We must go somewhere very quiet where we can be quite alone. You don't mind lots of stairs, do you?"

"
Of course not… but I don't understand
—"

"Oh, Raoul, I'm so frightened!"

"If he's hurt you… !"

"
No… oh, no, it isn't like that! But I can't explain here. Let's go up to the roof. No one ever goes there after dark, it's the one place in the whole theater where you'll be quite safe from him. No… wait! Who is that foreign-looking man on the stairs? He's been watching me, I'm sure of it… And he appears to know you, he bowed
. …"

"I'm not sure who he is. Odd fellow, he's approached me once or twice now and asked some very curious questions about you. People say he's Persian. "

"
Well, ignore him! Don't catch his eye, pretend you haven't seen him! Listen… I know another way up to the roof
. …"

The last thing I expected to hear, in this windswept oasis high above the streets, was the sound of her voice in harmony with his.

Is this how You answer the prayers of the penitent, God?

Is this how You reward repentance and welcome home the prodigal son?

I came to hear Your voice and instead You choose to mock me with theirs, to show me that there is to be no divine intercession on my behalf, no mercy, no last little miracle. My infamous crimes have set me quite beyond the pale of Your forgiveness… all You wanted was vengeance upon me for those years of iniquitous blasphemy!

Well, now that You've had Your vengeance in full measure, are You satisfied? Are You satisfied, God?

Oh, yes, I believe in You… I've always believed in You! You're so infinitely cold and cruel, You simply have to exist. I've seen enough of Your handiwork in my time, and it knocks my malice into palest insignificance by comparison. Floods and earthquakes, sickness and famine, crippled adults, mutilated children… and still we come like ingenuous fools to pray for Your help in time of need! It's laughable, really… quite pathetic! God is love! Hysterically funny! Say rather that God is an idle itinerant, too feckless to care what happens on an earth created for the sole purpose of providing amusement on a rainy day!

What were You doing, for instance, all those months that I lay festering in my mother's womb? Were You perhaps in divine hibernation… taking a holiday… experimenting?

Well, whatever it was, You had a nasty shock when I appeared, didn't You? You didn't have the grace to admit You'd lost grip of things, nodded off for a moment and made a damned botch of it in consequence! We're not permitted to say that God makes mistakes, are we?— merely that He works in mysterious ways! Oh, God, what a charlatan You are! You're an amateur… You never had any training, did You, never submitted Your master's piece for inspection… never had any competition!

You couldn't bestir Yourself to help Your own Son when He cried out to You on the cross! So why should You care now about the crucifixion of a monster?

When I had finished raving at the stars like a lunatic, there was silence once more across the zinc-and lead-lined roof; Christine and Chagny had long since gone back below, absorbed in their young love and totally unaware of how they had betrayed themselves in my silent presence.

I knew everything now. The shells had fallen with relentless accuracy and blown my last feeble hope into oblivion.

I'd listened to his desperate plans for flight, heard her tired acceptance, watched him bend to claim her lovely, upturned mouth as though it was his God-given right. They'd clung together like two frightened children abandoned in a dark wood, shoring up each other's confidence with protestations of loving trust.

Tonight, when the performance is over, he is to take her away—far away to a place where I can never find her, where she can begin to forget what he calls her terrible ordeal, her intolerable burden.

An intolerable burden…

You've brought me full circle, haven't You, God? Right back to that moment all those years ago when I knew I had to run away.

Only, this time it's she who will run—run away from me as though I were some loathsome, slavering beast, an animal who can't be trusted to behave like a gentleman and do the decent thing. Oh, it wasn't the kiss that hurt beyond bearing… strangely there was a painful beauty in watching her in his embrace. If I really were her father, it would surely be a joy to see a worthy young man so passionately in love with my dearest child.

No, it wasn't that kiss which betrayed me, but the cruel and careless trick with which she intends to win her freedom. She promised to come back. She promised! And she lied! That is the final anguish… the knowledge that she doesn't care enough to put me out of my misery, that she's not even going to tell me. She's just going to run away with him and never give me another thought. She must hate me very much to do that. Strange—I never guessed that she really hated me; I must have made a damned good actress of her in the course of her tuition!

I'd like to die now. Right now, this very minute! I'd welcome the last convulsion of this tired and sluggish muscle in my chest, but by some incredible irony my heart is beating with curious serenity, as though it's never known a single moment's transgression.

So what are You up to, God? What cruel perverse little jest have You left to play? Surely You're not going to inflict a miracle cure and deny me the right to be struck down after this!

You denied me life—will You deny me death too? Is that to be the punishment for my unspeakable crimes against humanity—another twenty years of penal solitude upon this earth?

Beneath my towering pinnacle Paris spreads out in all its splendor, a multitude of lights flickering along Haussmann's neatly regimented boulevards. Nothing could survive that dizzying drop. All they'd find would be a smashed red pulp in dress clothes, unrecognizable… unidentifiable…

I have only to let go…

Suicide… the ultimate sin, the one crime we are never given the opportunity to confess. Thieves and murderers may enter heaven, but the suicide, never receiving absolution, is unable to die in a state of grace and must burn forever.

So that's why You brought me up here, God! You thought I'd be stupid enough to fall into Your trap! One rash act of folly on my part and You would have been spared the loathsome necessity of gazing upon Your ugly miscreation throughout eternity!

Well… I don't need You. I never needed You! There is a greater Master yet, one who remains loyal, even to a backsliding apprentice… a Master who reminds me even now that my indentures to him were never broken… merely postponed.

I am not forsaken! I'm no longer alone in the darkness! Before my eyes I see a thousand little devils lighting black candles along the path which leads toward the edge… the blindingly beautiful edge.

Love is a scorpion's paralyzing poison, but now a thousand little mouths are sucking it steadily from my veins, emptying my mind and preparing a black void to receive the Master's presence. I feel the grief receding, dispersing beneath the rage which is mushrooming out inside me like some monstrous fungus. All the evil in the world has been let loose tonight, whipped up into a mighty cyclone and irresistibly directed toward the high peak of Apollo's lyre… drawn to my brain like lightning to a conductor.

A cold breeze stirs my cloak, sends it billowing out around me like the wings of the Angel of Death, as I lift my head slowly to look upon my Master's awesome power and hear his solemn promise.

Beyond the edge there is no pain.

Beyond the edge you will be reborn in the glory of darkness.

Rise up and follow me…

Feeding on the putrefied remains of love, I have completed the final process of metamorphosis, swollen and blossomed uncontrollably into a mighty, all-powerful shade of hell.

All that remains to be done is for me to tear through the chrysalis of mortality and reveal the ravening black-winged creature that lusts to live.

A dark and towering shadow, rising like the phoenix from the ashes… malevolent… omnipotent…

The Phantom of the Opera!

"
There are a good three hours before the performance
—
why don't we just go now, straightaway, no hanging around
?"

"I can't do that! What if Erik should attend tonight and not hear me sing one last time! Oh, God, why have I let him talk me into this?"

"Christine! For God's sake! You're not changing your mind, are you?"

"
I—I think I ought to sing. The management
— "

"Damn the management! I'll soon settle with their nonsense! They needn't think they can hold you to any stupid contract!"

"Please… no scenes, Raoul, not for the sake of three hours. Have you got a box for tonight?"

"No. I didn't know you'd be appearing, so I didn't bother to book one."

"Run around to the Salt Boxes, then, and see what they can do for you. There's bound to be an odd seat left somewhere. "

Raoul pushed the hood of my cloak back from my face and studied me for a moment with unnerving intensity.

"I'll ask them for box five, shall I?" he demanded coolly.

I bit my lip and looked away.

"Is he going to be there?" Raoul persisted stubbornly. "Is that why you're so determined to sing?"

"I honestly don't know what he intends to do tonight. But as long as there is the smallest chance that he may attend this performance, I have to sing. Can you understand that? It's the only way I know to say good-bye to him."

Raoul looked as though he intended to argue, then all of a sudden he gave in with unexpected weariness.

"
All right, " he agreed unhappily, "if that's what you really want, then we'll wait. Perhaps it's for the best after all
—
perhaps I ought to hear you say good-bye to him. It might stop me wondering for the rest of my life whether you really only meant to say an revoir
."

If ever there was a time to put my arms around Raoul and tell him how much I loved him it was now
—
now, as I watched that fretwork of pained doubt settle over his handsome face like a fine cobweb. I'd clung to him in despair up on the roof, burying my fears in the warmth of his youth and undoubted affection. I'd wanted him to hold me forever, wanted always to see his dear, familiar face looking down on me, promising a life lived out in light, free of shadowed, unknown terrors
.