The Phantom of the Opera (Oxford World's Classics)

by Gaston Leroux

  And then he had added something which Christine had not understood:

  ‘Yes or no. If it’s no, then everyone is dead and buried!’

  But I understood exactly what the words meant, for they were a terrible confirmation of my worst fears.

  ‘Can you tell us where Erik is now?’ I asked.

  She said he’d probably left the house.

  ‘Could you go and find out?’

  ‘No!… I’m tied hand and foot… I can hardly move.’

  When we heard this, the Viscount and I could not contain a cry of fury. The salvation of all three of us depended on Christine being free to move about.

  ‘But we must save her! We must go to her!’

  ‘Where are you exactly?’ Christine asked again. ‘There are only two doors here in my room—the Louis-Philippe room I told you about, Raoul!… One door through which Erik enters and leaves, and another which he’s never opened in my presence and warned me never to open it because, he said, it’s a very dangerous door… the door to a torture chamber!’

  ‘That’s the door we’re behind, Christine!’

  ‘You’re in the torture chamber?’

  ‘Yes, but we can’t find the door.’

  ‘If I could drag myself that far!… I could knock on it and you’d know where it was.’

  ‘Is it a door with a lock?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, there’s a lock.’

  I thought: From that side it opens with a key like any other door. But from the inside it opens with a spring and a counterweight and it won’t be easy to find the catch.

  ‘Mademoiselle Christine,’ I called, ‘you’ve got to open the door for us!’

  ‘But how?’ she answered, with a sob in her voice… We heard the sounds of a body straining every sinew, clearly making every effort to free itself of the ropes which held it.

  ‘We’re not going to get out of this unless we fool him somehow,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to get hold of that key!’

  ‘I know where it is,’ answered Christine who sounded exhausted by her strenuous efforts. ‘But I’m tied up tight!… The villain!…’

  And we heard a sob.

  ‘Where is the key?’ I asked, and I told the Viscount to be quiet and let me do the talking because there wasn’t a moment to lose.

  ‘In the next room, he keeps it by the organ with a second small brass key which he also said I was never to touch. They are both in a small leather pouch which he calls: his little bag of life and death. Raoul! Raoul! You must get away!… everything here is mystery and danger!… and Erik will become completely insane!… And you, there, in the torture chamber!… Go back the way you came! There must be a good reason why that room is called by such a name!’

  ‘Christine!’ said the Viscount, ‘we are going to leave this place together or we shall die together!’

  ‘Then we’re going to have to make sure that we all get out safe and sound,’ I murmured, ‘but we mustn’t lose our heads. Now, why did he tie you up? You can’t escape and he knows it!’

  ‘I tried to kill myself last night! After he brought me here unconscious, half-chloroformed, the monster went out. Apparently, he was going, or so he said, to see his banker!… When he got back, he found me with blood all over my face from beating my head against the wall…’

  ‘Oh Christine!’ groaned Raoul, and a sob sprang to his throat.

  ‘So he tied me up… I’m not allowed to die until tomorrow night, at eleven.’

  This conversation through the wall was much more ‘stilted’ and much more tentative than it is possible for me to convey as I transcribe it here. Often we would stop in the middle of a sentence because we thought we’d heard a creak, a footstep, an unusual movement… Then she would say: ‘No! No! It’s not him!… he’s gone outside!… I recognized the sound made by the stone in the lake wall closing behind him!…’

  ‘Mademoiselle Christine,’ I said. ‘The monster tied you up and the monster will untie you!… All you’ve got to do is play him along!… Remember: he loves you!’

  ‘But how’, we heard her say despairingly, ‘can I ever forget it?’

  ‘Just remember that he does and smile… plead… say the rope is hurting…’

  But she broke in: ‘Hush!… I can hear something… it’s coming from the lake wall!… It’s him!… Leave now!… You must get away!…’

  ‘We couldn’t leave even if we wanted to,’ I said quickly in a way that would make her take notice. ‘We can’t get out! We’re trapped in the torture chamber!…’

  ‘Hush!’ Christine breathed again.

  We all stopped talking.

  Heavy footsteps, treading slowly, sounded on the other side of the wall. They stopped. Then again they made the floorboards creak.

  We heard a deep sigh followed by a horrified scream from Christine and then Erik’s voice.

  ‘Please forgive me for appearing with my face uncovered! I’m in a sorry state, am I not? But it was the man’s fault! Why did he have to come ringing my doorbell? Do I bother strangers? He’ll never bother anybody again. It was the Siren’s fault.’

  There was another sigh, even deeper and more menacing, and it rose up out of the lowest depths of a human soul.

  ‘Why did you cry out, Christine?’

  ‘Because the rope is hurting me, Erik.’

  ‘I thought it was because I’d frightened you.’

  ‘Erik, untie me… I’m already a prisoner here.’

  ‘You’ll try to kill yourself again.’

  ‘You gave me until eleven tomorrow night, Erik.’

  More footsteps on the wooden floor.

  ‘I’ll do as you ask… after all if we’re going to die together… and I want that just as much as you do… Oh, I’ve had enough of this life too… just a moment, don’t move, I’ll untie you… all you have to do is say one word—No!—and it will all be over for everybody!… But why wait until tomorrow night at eleven? Ah, I remember, because it’s the proper way to do these things… I’ve always been a stickler for etiquette… for ceremony… so childish!… We must always think of ourselves first in this life!… and of our death… the rest is sideshows… You’re wondering why I’m soaking wet… Ah, my sweet, I was wrong to go outside… It’s not a night to be out in!… And also I think I’ve started to see things… The man who rang the bell and woke the Siren—if you want to know if he’s still ringing it you’ll have to look at the bottom of the lake—well, he reminded me of… There, turn round… better now? You’re free… Oh no! Your poor wrists… did I hurt them?… that in itself deserves punishment by death… And speaking of death, I must sing my Requiem for him!’

  As I heard those ominous words, I suddenly had a presentiment… I remembered what happened when I too had come calling… and unwittingly set off some electric alarm… I recalled the two arms which rose out of the ink-black water… Who was the poor devil who had wandered on to that lake shore this time?

  Thinking about him, whoever he was, prevented me fully appreciating Christine’s smart work. But the Viscount was muttering the magic words in my ear: ‘She’s free!’… But that other man? Who was he? The same as the man whose Requiem Mass we now heard being sung?

  The singing was sublime and full of rage! The entire house by the lake rang with it… the very bowels of the earth shook with it… We had been pressing our ears against the wall of mirrors so that we could hear what Christine Daaé had been doing to save us. But now all we could hear was the sound of his mass for the dead. Yet it was more like a mass for the damned… It reverberated deep in the ground, like a devil’s roundelay!

  I remember how the Dies Irae he sang hit us like a storm. Around us the thunder rolled and lightning flashed… Of course! I’d heard it before!… He’d made the stone jaws of the human-headed bulls sing it from the battlements of the palace of Mazanderan!… But I had never heard it sung like that, no never! He sang it as though he were the god of thunder!…

  Then all at once the voice and the organ stopped so unexpected
ly that the shock made both the Viscount and me recoil several steps from the wall… And the voice, suddenly changed and rough, rasped out a question, with every syllable distinct and ringingly clear:

  ‘What have you done with my bag?’

  CHAPTER 24

  The Torture Begins

  The Persian’s Tale Continued

  THE voice repeated the question angrily:

  ‘What have you done with my bag and my keys?’

  Christine Daaé could not afford to show fear any more than we could to feel it.

  ‘Was that why you asked me to untie you, so that you could take my keys?’

  We heard the sound of running feet… It was Christine returning to the Louis-Philippe room as if she were seeking sanctuary by our wall.

  ‘Why are you running away?’ barked the furious voice which had followed her… ‘Give me back my bag, will you?… Remember, it’s the little bag of life and death?’

  ‘Listen, Erik,’ sighed Christine, ‘since it seems to be settled that we are going to live here together, why shouldn’t I have them?… Whatever is yours is mine…’

  But her voice shook and we were painfully aware that there was nothing we could do. Quelling her terror was clearly draining whatever energy she had left… But it would take more than childish ruses and teeth that chattered with fear to get the better of the monster.

  ‘There are two keys in it, that’s all… But you know that… so what are you up to?’

  ‘I merely wanted’, she said, ‘to look inside that room, the one I’ve never been in, the one you always keep locked… Just female curiosity!’ she added in a tone which she intended to be light but sounded so false that it merely increased Erik’s suspicions.

  ‘I don’t like inquisitive women!’ he retorted, ‘and besides you should be more careful. Never heard of Bluebeard?… Enough of this, give me the bag! Give it to me!… Let me have that key!… Curiosity killed the cat!’

  And we heard him laugh as Christine screeched with pain. Evidently he’d just grabbed the bag from her.

  It was this that made the Viscount snap. He could no longer hold back a cry of rage and frustration which I almost managed, with some difficulty, to stifle on his lips.

  ‘What was that?’ said the monster. ‘Did you hear it, Christine?…’

  ‘No!’ cried the poor girl, ‘I heard nothing!’

  ‘I thought I heard a cry!’

  ‘No!… Don’t be silly, Erik!… Who do you think is going to cry out in this place?… If anyone cried out it was me, because you were hurting me!… I never heard a thing!’

  ‘How glibly you say that!… You’re shaking!… You’re anxious!… You’re lying!… I did hear a cry!… There’s somebody in the torture chamber!… Ah, now I’ve got it!…’

  ‘There’s nobody there, Erik!’

  ‘I understand!’

  ‘Nobody!’

  ‘Could it be… the man you want to marry?’

  ‘I don’t want to marry anyone!… as you very well know!’

  Another ugly snicker.

  ‘Not to worry, it’s easy enough to check… Christine, my love, we don’t have to open the door to see what’s going on in the torture chamber… You want to see? You can if you like… Come on!… If there really is somebody inside an invisible spyhole will light up… just look up there, near the ceiling… All you do is pull back the black curtain and put the lights out in here… first the curtain… now the lights… Don’t be afraid of the dark, you’ll have your make-believe husband to keep you company!…’

  Then we heard Christine’s terrified voice:

  ‘No!… I’m afraid!… I’m afraid of the dark!… I don’t want to know about that room anymore!… You’re frightening me, as if I were a child, with all your talk of torture chambers!… So I was curious, I admit it!… But I’m not curious anymore!… not the least curious!…’

  And the thing I was most afraid of now began to happen, automatically… Suddenly we were bathed in dazzling light!… Everything on our side of the wall was brilliantly lit. The Viscount was not expecting it and was so taken off guard that he staggered. And that raging voice howled all around us:

  ‘I told you! There is somebody in there!… Can you see the spyhole?… It’s lit up!… Near the ceiling!… Whoever is behind the wall can’t see it!… But climb up this folding ladder, that’s what it’s for!… You’ve asked me what it was doing here often enough… well, now you know… It’s here so that you can look down into the torture chamber… Curiosity satisfied now?’

  ‘Torture?… What sort of torture goes on in there?… Erik, just say you’re trying to frighten me!… Tell me, if you really love me!… Really there is no torture, is there?… You made it all up!…’

  ‘Take a look for yourself, my sweet, through the peephole!’

  I couldn’t say if the Viscount next to me could still hear Christine’s faltering voice, for he was too busy coping with the unprecedented assault on our eyes… I of course had already seen it, all too often, through the spyhole back in the era of the Rosy Hours of Mazanderan… So I could concentrate on what was being said in the adjoining room and try and think of something we could do, some decisive step we could take.

  ‘Go on, take a peep through the little window!… You can tell me who’s there!… and what his nose looks like!’

  We heard the ladder being put against the wall.

  ‘Up you go!… No!… On second thoughts, I’ll go myself, my sweet!’

  ‘No!… I’ll go and see!… Let me go!…’

  ‘My sweet girl!… How sweet you are!… How so very sweet of you to spare me the trouble at my age!*… But you must tell me if he’s got an attractive nose, won’t you!… If people only realized how lucky they are to have a nose… a real one of their own… they’d never go anywhere near my torture chamber!…’

  As he said this, from above our heads, we distinctly heard Christine say:

  ‘There’s no one there!…’

  ‘No one?… Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure… no one…’

  ‘That’s all right then!… But what’s the matter, Christine?… You’re not going to faint, are you?… why would you if no one’s there!… pull yourself together, there’s no need to get into a state seeing that there’s no one there!… But how do you like the scenery?…’

  ‘Oh, very much!…’

  ‘There, that’s better!… You’re getting over it now, aren’t you?… Good, good!… No more need to get upset!… What an amazing house, don’t you think, that has actual scenery in it?…’

  ‘Yes, it’s like the Musée Grévin!… But Erik, there aren’t any instruments of torture!… You gave me a terrible fright!…’

  ‘Why, since there’s no one there?…’

  ‘Did you build that room yourself, Erik?… It’s really very beautiful! Erik, you are a great artist, truly you are!…’

  ‘I am a great artist, after my own fashion…’

  ‘But why do you call that room a torture chamber?…’

  ‘It’s very simple. First, what did you see?’

  ‘A forest!…’

  ‘And what do you get in a forest?’

  ‘Trees!…’

  ‘And what do you usually see in trees?’

  ‘Birds…’

  ‘Did you see any birds?…’

  ‘No, I didn’t see any birds…’

  ‘Well, what did you see? Think!… You saw branches! And what was one of the branches?’ said that menacing voice, ‘a gibbet! That’s why I call my forest a torture chamber!… Do you follow? It’s a joke! It’s all a joke!… I don’t say things the way other people do!… I don’t do anything like other people!… But I’m so tired of it!… exhausted!… weary of having a forest and a torture chamber in my house!… of living here like a Great Magician inside a box with a false bottom!… I’ve had enough of it all!… I want a quiet apartment, with ordinary doors and windows and a loving wife in it, just like other men!… Surely you can understand that, Chri
stine, I shouldn’t need to keep on repeating it!… A wife, like other men!… A wife I could love, I’d take her out for walks every Sunday and make her laugh on all the other days of the week! There’d never be a dull moment. I’ve got more than one sort of trick up my sleeve, and I don’t just mean card tricks!… But if you like card tricks, I could show you some! It’ll help pass the time until eleven o’clock tomorrow evening!… Christine, oh Christine!… Are you listening?… You’re not saying anything!… Tell me you love me?… No, you don’t love me!… No matter, you will! There was a time when you couldn’t bear to look at my mask because you knew what was under it… And now you look at it and forget what it conceals and you no longer push me away!… People can get used to anything if they want to… really want to!… Plenty of young people who are not in love before they marry become besotted with each other afterwards!… Oh, what am I saying!… But you’d never have a dull moment with me!… For example, and this I swear before the God who—if you see sense—will marry us, I am the greatest ventriloquist alive!… no one can throw their voice better than me!… That makes you laugh!… Perhaps you don’t believe me!… Listen!…’

  I knew what the monster (who really was the world’s greatest ventriloquist) was doing: he now proceeded to dazzle Christine, to divert attention away from the torture chamber!… But it was an elementary miscalculation!… She was thinking only of us!… Several times she begged him, in the sweetest voice:

  ‘Put the light out in the little window, Erik!… Put it out!…’

  For she was quite right in thinking that there was some horrible significance attached to the light which had appeared in the spyhole, for the monster had talked about it with such sinister relish… But there was one thing that must have allayed her immediate fears: when she had seen us both behind the wall, in that dazzling blaze of light, we were still standing, alive and well!… But she would have felt infinitely more reassured if the light had been extinguished…

  The monster had just started his ventriloquist’s act:

  ‘There, I lift my mask a little… just a little… See my lips? Or what I have that pass for lips? They’re not moving!… My mouth is closed… Or what passes for a mouth is closed tight… And yet you can hear me speak!… I’m speaking with my abdomen… It’s perfectly natural… that’s why they call it ventriloquism, meaning “belly-speaking”!… It’s a well-known fact: listen to my voice… where do you want me to throw it? Into your right ear?… or your left ear?… or the table?… or those little ebony boxes on the mantelpiece?… Ha! You’re amazed… now it’s coming from the little boxes on the mantelpiece!… Do you want it to come from far away?… or from close to you? How do you want it? Loud? Sharp? Nasal?… My voice can go anywhere!… everywhere!… Listen, my sweet, it’s in the small box on the right hand side of the mantelpiece, listen to what it says: “Should I turn the scorpion?”… and now, listen to what it says in the box on the left: “Should I turn the grasshopper?” And now, hey presto, it’s in the little leather bag… What’s it say? “I am the little bag that holds the keys of life and death!” And now, abracadabra, it’s in La Carlotta’s throat, deep inside her golden throat, La Carlotta’s throat of tintinnabulating crystal, by God!… And what does it say from in there? “It’s me, Mister Toad, I’m the one singing ‘Which like a spell now tightly holds me… skaark! And a sweet, soft melody enfolds me… skaark!’” And now it’s inside a chair in the Phantom’s box and it says “The way she’s singing tonight could well bring down the chandelier.” And now!… ha ha ha ha!… now where is Erik’s voice?… Listen, Christine, my sweet!… Listen!… It’s on the other side of the door of the torture chamber!… And what am I saying? I’m saying “Woe betide those blessed with a nose, a real nose of their own and yet come poking it into my torture chamber!…”’