The ghouls

by Haining, Peter, comp

  the voice. But it backed away and said, 'You are in no danger, so long as you do not touch the mask/ Taking me gendy by the wrists, he forced me into a chair, then went down on his knees before me. I felt that this was some terrible, eccentric person who had mysteriously succeeded in taking up his abode there, under the cellars of the Opera House. And the voice which was on its knees before me was a man! I began to cry. The man, still kneeling, must have understood the cause of my tears, for he said, 'It is true, Christine! I am not an angel, nor a genius, nor a ghost. . . I am Erik!'"

  Christine's narrative was again interrupted. An echo behind them seemed to repeat the word after her:

  "Erik!"

  They both turned round and saw that night had fallen. Raoul made a movement as though to rise, but Christine pulled him back, "Don't go," she said. "I want you to know everything here!"

  "But why here, Christine?"

  "Because we are safe here."

  "But Christine! Something tells me that we are wrong to wait till tomorrow evening and that we ought to fly at once."

  "I tell you that, if he does not hear me sing tomorrow, it will cause him infinite pain."

  "Does he love you so much?"

  "He would commit murder for me."

  "Then why, when you were able to run away, did you go back to him?"

  "Because I had to. And you will understand that when I tell you how I left him."

  "Oh, I hate him!" cried Raoul. "And you, Christine, tell me, do you hate him too?"

  "No," said Christine, simply. "He fills me with horror, but I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love. He has imprisoned me with him underground, for love! But he respects me. And, when I stood up, Raoul, and told him that I could only despise him if he did not give me my liberty, he offered it. Then he sang to me. And I listened and stayed! That night, we did not exchange another word. He sang me to sleep.

  "When I woke up I was alone, lying on a sofa in a simply-furnished litde bedroom. I soon discovered that I was a prisoner. I saw on the chest of drawers a note in red ink which said, 'My dear Christine, you

  do not need to be afraid. You have no better, no more respectful, friend in the world than myself. You are at home here.' I felt sure that I had fallen into the hands of a madman. I ran round the room, looking for a way of escape, but could not find one. I was completely alone in the silence when I heard three taps against the wall. Erik walked in through a door which I had not noticed and which he left open. His arms were full of boxes and parcels and he arranged them on the bed while I shouted at him and called upon him to take off his mask if it covered the face of an honest man. He replied Tou shall never see Erik's face/ Then he said that he loved me, but that he would never tell me so except when I gave him leave and that the rest of the time would be spent in music. What do you mean by the rest of time?' I asked. 'Five days/ he replied. I asked him if I should then be free and he said, 'You will be free, Christine, for, when those five days are past, you will have learned not to fear me and then you will come back to see your poor Erik!'

  "He said he would like to show me over his flat, and he opened a door before me. 'This is my room, if you care to see it. It is rather curious/ I felt as if I were entering a mortuary chamber. The walls were all hung with black. In the middle of the room was a canopy, hung with red brocade curtains, and under the canopy an open coffin. That is where I sleep/ said Erik. 'One has to get used to everything in life, even to eternity/ The sight upset me so much that I turned away my head.

  "Then I saw the keyboard of an organ which filled one whole side of the wall. On the desk was a music-book covered with red notes. I asked leave to look at it, and, on the first page, read, Don ]uan Triumphant Tes/ he said, 1 compose sometimes. I began that work twenty years ago. When I have finished, I shall take it away with me in that coffin and never wake up again/ 'You must work at it as seldom as you can/ I said. He replied, 1 sometimes work at it for fourteen days and nights together, during which I live on music only, and then I rest for years at a time/ Will you play me something out of your Don Juan Triumphant?' I asked, thinking to please him. Tou must never ask me that/ he said, in a gloomy voice. 1 will play you Mozart if you like, but my Don Juan burns, Christine. You see, there is some music so terrible that it consumes all who approach it. Fortunately you have not come to that music yet, for you would lose all your pretty colouring and nobody would know you when you returned to Paris. Let us sing something

  operatic!' He spoke these last words as though he were flinging an insult at me.

  "We at once began the duet in Othello, and I sang Desdemona with a despair, a terror, which I had never displayed before. As for him, his voice thundered forth his vengeful soul at every note. Love, jealousy, hatred burst out around us in harrowing cries. Erik was Othello himself. Suddenly, I wanted desperately to see beneath the mask. I wanted to know the face of the voice and, with a movement which I was utterly unable to control, my fingers swiftly tore away the mask. Oh, horror, horror, horror!

  "If I live to be a hundred, I shall never forget the superhuman cry of grief and rage which he uttered when the terrible sight appeared before my eyes. Raoul, you have seen death's-heads, when they have been dried and withered by the years and perhaps you saw his death's-head at Perros. And then you saw the Red Death at the masked ball. But all those death's-heads were motionless. Imagine, the terror of the Red Death's mask suddenly coming to life in the mighty fury of a demon. I fell back against the wall and he came to me, grinding his teeth hideously, and, as I fell upon my knees, he hissed mad, incoherent words and curses at me. Leaning over me, he cried, 'Look! Do you want to see? See! Feast your eyes, and your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Erik's face! Are you satisfied? I'm a good-looking fellow, eh? When a woman has seen me she belongs to me. She loves me for ever! I am a kind of Don Juan, you know!' And, drawing himself up to his full height, with his hands on his hips, wagging the hideous thing that was his head on his shoulders, he roared, 'Look at me! I am Don Juan triumphant!' And when I turned away my head and begged for mercy, he drew my head back to him, brutally, twisting his dead fingers into my hair."

  "Enough! Enough!" cried Raoul. "I will kill him. In heaven's name, Christine, tell me where he is! I must kill him!"

  "Oh, Raoul, listen, listen! He dragged me by my hair and then . . . and then . . . Oh, it is too horrible!"

  "Well, what? Out with it!" exclaimed Raoul, fiercely.

  "Then he hissed at me, 'Ah, I frighten you, do I? Perhaps you think that I have another mask, eh, and that this head is a mask? Well,' he roared, 'tear it off as you did the other! I insist! Give me your hands!' And he seized my hands and dug them into his awful face. He tore his flesh with my nails, his terrible dead flesh! 'Know,' he shouted, 'that it is a corpse that loves you and adores you and will never, never leave

  you! Look, I am not laughing now, I am crying, crying for you, Christine, who have torn off my mask and who therefore can never leave me again! As long as you thought I was handsome you could have come back, I know you would have come back . . . but now that you know my hideousness, you would run away for good. So I must keep you here! Oh, mad Christine, who wanted to see me!' He had let go of me at last and was sobbing dreadfully. Then he disappeared into his room, closed the door and left me alone again.

  "Presently I heard the sound of the organ, and what he played was utterly different from what had charmed me up to then. His Don Juan Triumphant (for I was sure that he had rushed to his masterpiece to forget the horror of the moment) seemed to me at first one long, agonizing, magnificent sob. But, little by little, I began to feel that it expressed every emotion, every suffering of which mankind is capable. It intoxicated me and I opened the door that separated us. Erik rose, as I entered, but dared not turn in my direction. 'Erik/ I cried 'show me your face without fear! I swear that you are the most unhappy and sublime of men, and, if ever again I tremble when
I see your face it will be because I am thinking of the splendour of your genius!'

  "Then Erik turned round, for he believed me. He fell at my feet with words of love in his dead mouth. What more can I tell you, dear? This went on for a fortnight, a fortnight during which I lied to him. My lies were as hideous as the monster who inspired them but they were the price of my liberty. Gradually, I gave him such confidence that he ventured to take me walking on the banks of the lake and to row me in the boat. Towards the end of my captivity, he let me out through the gates that close the underground passages in the rue Scribe. Here a carriage awaited us and took us to the Bois. The night when we met you was nearly fatal to me, for he is terribly jealous of you and I had to tell him that you were soon going away. At last, after a fortnight during which I was filled with pity, enthusiasm, despair and horror by turns, he believed me when I told him I would come back."

  "And you went back, Christine," groaned Raoul.

  "Yes, dear, and I must tell you that it was not his frightful threats when setting me free that helped me to keep my word, but his terrible unhappiness which bound me to him more than I realized when I left him. Poor Erik!"

  "Christine," said Raoul, rising, "you tell me that you love me, but you were free for only a few hours when you returned to Erik. Remember the masked ball!"

  "Yes, but remember also that those few hours I spent with you Raoul, were dangerous for both of us."

  "I doubted your love for me during those hours."

  "Do you doubt it still, Raoul? Then know that each of my visits to Erik increased my horror of him, for each time I saw him it seemed to drive him mad with love! And I am so frightened, so frightened!"

  "You are frightened, but do you love me? If Erik were good-looking, would you love me, Christine?"

  She rose in her turn, threw her two trembling arms round the young man's neck and said, "Oh, my dearest Raoul, if I did not love you, I would not give you my lips! Take them, for the first time and the last."

  They heard a low moan which seemed to come from far away and then rose in volume until the night was suddenly rent asunder with Erik's rage. They fled, but before they disappeared they saw high above them astride Apollo's great statue the outline of a huge night-bird that stared at them with its eyes blazing forth sparks of fire.

  Raoul and Christine ran and ran, not stopping until they came to the eighth floor.

  There was no performance at the Opera that night and the passages were empty. Suddenly a strange man appeared before them. "No, not this way!" he said urgently.

  He pointed to another passage by which they were to reach the wings. Raoul wanted to stop and ask for an explanation. But the form, clad in a long frock-coat and a pointed cap, said, "Quick! Run quickly!"

  Christine was already dragging Raoul away.

  "But who is he? Who is that man?" he asked.

  Christine replied, "It's the Persian."

  'What's he doing here?"

  "I don't know. He is always in the Opera."

  "You are making me run away, for the first time in my life, when I should have stayed. If that really was Erik we saw I ought to have nailed him to Apollo's lyre!"

  "You are getting like me now," Christine warned, "seeing him everywhere! What we took for his blazing eyes was probably a couple of stars shining through the strings of the lyre."

  And with that she left him abruptly.

  Raoul spent the next day in his preparations for their flight together. At nine o'clock that evening a carriage with the curtains drawn took its place in the rank on the Rotunda side. In front of it were three

  broughams, belonging respectively to Carlotta, who had suddenly returned to Paris, to Sorelli and, at the head of the rank, to the Comte Philippe de Chagny. No one left the barouche. The coachman remained on his box. And the three other coachmen remained on theirs.

  A shadow in a long black coat moved along the pavement between the Rotunda and the carriages, examined the barouche carefully, went up to the horses and the coachman and then went away without saying a word.

  They were giving Faust, as it happened, to a splendid house. Christine Daae unfortunately met with a rather cold reception, as the audience found it difficult to accept a debutante in such a difficult part. The singer felt that the house was against her and was confused by their attitude.

  As a result she lost her self-assurance. She trembled. She felt on the verge of breakdown. In the front of the house, people remembered the catastrophe that had befallen Carlotta at the end of that act and the historic "co-ack" which had momentarily interrupted her career in Paris.

  Just then, Carlotta made a sensational entrance in a box facing the stage. Poor Christine raised her eyes and recognized her rival. She thought she saw a sneer on her lips, and that saved her. She forgot everything in order to triumph once more. From that moment, the prima donna sang with all her heart and soul. She tried to surpass all that she had done up to that time and she succeeded.

  But at the moment which was to have been her greatest triumph, when she sang with her angel's voice, "My spirit longs with thee to rest," the stage was suddenly plunged into darkness. It happened so quickly that the spectators hardly had time to realize what was going on, for when the lights immediately came on again Christine Daae was no longer there!

  RaouPs first thought after Christine's fantastic disappearance was to accuse Erik. He no longer doubted the almost supernatural powers of the man in this domain of the Opera where he had set up his empire. Raoul rushed through the Opera house in a mad fit of love and despair.

  "Where are you going so fast, Monsieur de Chagny?" asked a voice behind him.

  Raoul turned and recognized the Persian of the night before. He stopped short.

  "It's you!" he cried, in a feverish voice. "You know Erik's secrets. Who are you?"

  "You know who I am. I am the Persian. I hope, Monsieur de Chagny, that you have not betrayed Erik's secret?"

  "And why should I hesitate to betray that monster, sir?" Raoul rejoined haughtily, trying to shake off the stranger.

  "I hope that you said nothing about Erik, sir, because Erik's secret is also Christine Daae's and to talk about one is to talk about the other."

  "Sir," said Raoul, becoming more and more impatient, "you seem to know about many things that interest me, but I have no time to listen to you!"

  "Once more," the man interrupted, "where are you going so fast?"

  "Can you not guess? To Christine Daae's assistance."

  "Then, sir, stay here, for Christine Daae is here!"

  "How do you know?"

  "I was at the performance and I know that no one in the world but Erik could contrive an abduction like that! Oh," he said, with a deep sigh, "I recognized the monster's touch!"

  "Sir," said Raoul, "I do not know what your intentions are, but can you do anything to help me find her?"

  "I think so, Monsieur de Chagny; that is why I spoke to you."

  And the Persian led him down passages which Raoul had never seen before, even with Christine. They arrived at Christine's dressing-room and the Persian went straight to the very thin partition that separated the dressing-room from the room next to it. He listened and then coughed loudly.

  There was a sound of someone moving in the next room, and a few seconds later there was a tap at the door.

  "Come in," said the Persian.

  A man entered, dressed in the same manner as the Persian. He took a case from under his coat, put it on the dressing-table, bowed and went to the door.

  "Did no one see you come in, Darius?"

  "No, master."

  "Let no one see you go out."

  The servant glanced down the passage and swiftly disappeared. The Persian opened the case. It contained a pair of long pistols.

  'When Christine Daae was carried off, I sent word to my servant to bring me these pistols," he explained. "I have had them a long time and they can be relied upon."

  "Do you mean to fight a duel?" asked the young man. />
  "It will certainly be a duel which we shall have to fight," said the other, examining the priming of his pistols, and handing him one.

  "But I do not understand why you are risking your life," said Raoul. "You must certainly hate Erik!"

  "No, Monsieur," replied the Persian, sadly, "I do not hate him. If I hated him, he would long ago have ceased to do harm."

  "Has he done you harm?"

  "I have forgiven him the harm which he has done me."

  "I do not understand you. You treat him as a monster, you speak of his crimes, and yet I find in you the same inexplicable pity that I saw in Christine!"

  The Persian did not reply. He fetched a stool and set it against the wall facing the great mirror that filled the whole of the partition opposite. Then he climbed on the stool and seemed to be looking for something.

  "Ah," he said, after a long search, T have it!" he pressed against a corner in the pattern of the paper. Then he turned round and jumped off the stool. "In half a minute," he said, "we shall be on his road!"

  And, crossing the whole length of the dressing-room, he felt the great mirror. "No, it is not yielding yet," he muttered. Bearing against the mirror after a short silence he said, "It takes some time to release the counterbalance, when you press on the spring from the inside of the room. It is different when you are behind the wall and can act directly on the counterbalance. Then the mirror turns at once."

  "It's not turning!" said Raoul, impatiently.

  "Oh, wait! You have time enough to be impatient, sir. The mechanism has obviously become rusty, or else the spring isn't working—unless it is something else," added the Persian anxiously.

  'What?"

  "He may simply have cut the cord of the counterbalance and blocked the whole apparatus."

  "Why should he? He does not know that we are coming this way!"

  "I daresay he suspects it, for he knows that I understand the system."

  "It's not turning! And Christine, sir, Christine?"