Phantom (16 page)

When 1 had finished, I sat down on a nearby rock and waited for her to come to her senses. The light of my lantern traced the curve of her breast and a thought came to me that I hastily pushed away in disgust. I did not touch her; and after a while the urgent desire to do so ebbed away, leaving me calm and cold once more, entirely in control of my body. That first adolescent stirring of desire was fierce but transient, and I felt curiously triumphant at having mastered it. I was suddenly quite warmly disposed to this girl who had made me feel that I need never fear the ravages of love. Lust was nothing special after all, simply a rush of blood, an animal instinct that I could contain and control, just as successfully as I controlled my voice. This girl was pretty but I did not love her, so perhaps God had been merciful after all and not made me as other boys; perhaps I would never love anyone. Elation and relief surged through me at the thought and I wished she would wake up so that I could begin to thank her for this wonderful sense of release. Lust was nothing, and I did not love her. I did not love her and I no longer felt the need to die of crushing misery. Everything was going to be all right after all.

She opened her eyes upon my face and looked hastily away with a shudder.

"I have never seen you before, without the mask," she whispered.

"Really!" A little of my warm gratitude shriveled, and with it all desire to thank her. "You must be the only person in the camp who has not, then. Perhaps I should charge you for the privilege of a private viewing."

Fear returned to her eyes. I sighed and picked up the mask, which lay beside me on the ground, replacing it with a gesture that had become second nature to me.

"You have nothing to fear," I said quietly. "I'm not going to hurt you. I never hurt anyone."

"But, you said… before… you said—"

"Oh, that!" I gave a little shrug of indifference. "That was only because you made me angry. I hate it when people scream at me. All those stupid women screaming and fainting around my cage—you can't imagine how much I hate it!"

She sat up a little, her eyes still wary upon me, but her breath coming with greater ease as the mindlessness of her terror abated.

"Everyone says that you are evil, that you work for the devil as an apprentice and—"

"And ride a dragon!" I finished for her derisively. "Do you honestly think I would stay with Javert if I had a dragon to ride?"

She smiled faintly. "I suppose not. How strange it is to talk to you just as if—as if you were like everyone else."

A sick cold wave passed over me and I suddenly had the horrible feeling I was going to cry… just when I had thought I was done with crying forever! That quiet, unthinking little comment completely shattered my composure and my newfound resignation.

"I
am
like everyone else!" I burst out angrily. "Inside, I am just like everyone else! Why should that seem so strange?"

She was silent, staring at me curiously, and I found I could no longer meet her gaze. She did not understand what I was telling her; but at least she was no longer afraid of me. I supposed that was something.

"What were you doing out here alone?" I asked after a moment. "Why are you not at the wedding feast?"

Something passed across her face, a fleeting look of guilty defiance.

"That's none of your business!" she said rather sharply.

I stared at her in honest disbelief, for I suddenly saw there could be only one explanation for her absence.

"You have been meeting a lover?" I breathed in awe. "A
gorgio
lover?"

She glared at me. "And what if I have?"

"Your father will beat you and drive you from the camp if he finds out," I said uneasily. I knew there was no worse crime a Gypsy daughter could commit than to betray her proud race with a gorgio. Mixed blood was deeply frowned upon.

When her angry bravado abruptly disappeared and she burst into noisy tears, I did not know what to do.

"Where is your lover?" I demanded uncomfortably. "Why has he left you here alone? Is he coming back for you?"

Her face contorted with rage and she beat her clenched fist on the hard ground.

"He promised to marry me, the Spanish pig… he promised! Oh, they are right about gorgios, filthy, lying gorgios! May the devil rot him! I hope his manhood shrivels and drops off on his wedding night!"

I was glad that I was wearing the mask, for I knew I had turned furiously red with embarrassment. Three years among the Gypsies had not hardened me to their healthy, unashamed vulgarity.

"What are you staring at me like that for?" she demanded with hostility.

"I wasn't staring."

I was hastily apologetic. Not only was she no longer afraid of me, she now seemed to remember that she possessed at least five years seniority. A cold aloofness had crept into her voice and I felt myself growing younger and more stupid by the minute beneath her contemptuous glance.

"They will come looking for you soon," I told her. "They must not find you here."

I leaned forward to give her my hand, but she recoiled in disgust.

"Don't touch me!" she spat unexpectedly. "If you touch me I shall scream until the whole camp hears and comes to find us!"

I was stunned. We had conversed like human beings; now suddenly 1 was an animal again. Then, as I looked at her face in the light of the lantern, as I saw the sly, secret smile of satisfaction cross her lips, 1 suddenly understood her purpose.

"No one will believe you!" I gasped. "No one will believe it was I who lured you to this place."

"Oh, you didn't lure me," she said simply. "I was taken by force."

"In silence?" I inquired with trembling sarcasm. "Without a single cry of protest?"

"I fainted—from terror." She was staring fixedly into the distance, as though she were watching a play being acted out in front of her. "Who would doubt the truth of that?"

No one, I admitted to myself with cold horror. No one would doubt her. I had cultivated a reputation for evil out of all proportion to my years. No one now was going to waste any time wondering whether I was too young to rape a pretty girl.

I backed away from her, shaking my head in slow disbelief. Then panic overwhelmed me and I fled back the way I had come.

I was sobbing with rage when I reached my tent. Grabbing the few belongings I had accumulated over the years, I rolled them into a sack, with a feverish desperation that seemed curiously at odds with my earlier mood of suicidal despair. Once she told her tale, I knew that I would wear the dead man's shirt. Forgetting their individual fears, the entire camp would rise up against me to take revenge for such a violation. I was not afraid of death anymore, but I was still sufficiently a child to fear the protracted torture that must precede it. They would do terrible things to me… indescribable things…

I was so wrapped up in my own terror that I did not hear the footstep behind me until it was too late.

A hand fell heavily on my shoulder.

"Well, now," said a familiar voice in my ear. "What's all this haste? Leaving, are we… leaving dear old Javert without so much as a by-your-leave?"

He twisted me around to face him, digging his fingers into a point on my neck which caused me paralyzing pain. The soft menace of his voice and the narrow intensity of his gaze held me breathless with fear.

"Leaving without a word of gratitude after all I've done for you," he continued thoughtfully. "Looked after you like my own flesh and blood and now you think you'll up and off. Oh, no, my dear… I don't think so. You don't escape from old Javert as easily as that."

As his free hand ripped the buttons from my shirt I gave a gasp of shock. The shameful, nameless horror that had been hovering above me like a breath of foul air had now descended so unexpectedly that I was powerless to struggle against his strength. As I watched him take off his belt I knew instinctively that this was to be no simple beating— this was a terror as yet beyond my imagination.

His hand slid caressingly down my body beneath the open shirt and I shivered.

"How cold you are," he complained. "As cold as the dead, ice water running in your veins. But no matter, I shall soon warm you."

"
Please
—" I jerked away from his hand and he laughed as he forced me to the floor.

I began to fight in earnest then, with a savage desperation I should not have employed simply for my life.

"That's better," he said with strange satisfaction, "that's much better. You're surprisingly strong, aren't you? I see I could not have delayed this last little lesson much longer. No one else will ever want you as I do—certainly no woman! Do you know that? Do you realize the great honor I'm about to do you? No… of course you don't. Proper little innocent you are, for all the tales they tell about you around the campfire. Pure as driven snow in spite of all your clever tricks. Well, not for much longer. This, my dear, is the end of your innocence."

He put one hot hand between my legs and then I understood; I did not know how it would be possible, but deep inside I understood what was going to happen to me.

Rape!

Why had I thought that was a fate reserved exclusively for women?

I stopped fighting and lay perfectly still, watching him discard his dirty clothes on the floor beside me.

"I see you've decided to be sensible," he remarked. "That's good, that's how I like it. A healthy struggle to whet the appetite—and then, a little accommodation."

"What must I do?" I whispered hollowly.

"Take off your clothes and the mask and then… I'll show you."

I sat up warily, controlling my senseless panic. No sudden movement, nothing to cause him alarm. I saw him relax visibly at this evidence of my weary resignation. When he turned away carelessly to kick off his boots, my hand closed on the hilt of the knife that was protruding from beneath his discarded belt.

I waited just long enough for him to turn back to me, then I plunged the knife up into the obscene, wobbling mass of flesh which concealed his gut. I was shocked and thrilled by the extraordinary intensity of my pleasure as I felt the knife slide effortlessly between the layers of skin and buy itself up to the hilt; shocked that I should register that extraordinary sensation precisely where his indecent hand had touched me.

I watched Javert's eyes bulge in incredulous disbelief, his mouth sag and quiver on a soundless gasp, his hands clutch helplessly at the fountain of blood which spurted from him when I calmly removed the knife. I gazed at the crimson torrent with dispassionate, almost academic surprise; it was as though 1 had burst a skin of wine. There was time to wonder at this curious phenomenon… there seemed to be all the time in the world.

He was on his feet, lurching desperately toward the flap of the tent, when I sank the knife into his ribs, this time striking jarringly against bone. His hands closed over mine as 1 jerked the blade free, but his strength was draining rapidly away and he could not hold me. I swung my arms free in an arc and brought the knife down for the final time, implanting it squarely in the sweating hollow of his throat.

He fell like a stone at my feet. I stared down at his mutilated body with panting ecstasy and watched his jerking death throes without a flicker of remorse or revulsion. It had been so easy and so incredibly satisfying that I could hardly believe my good fortune. Five minutes ago I had been an innocent, terrified child; now I was a man, with a remarkably efficient murder to my credit.

I felt intoxicated with power as I wiped the knife clean on Javert's shirt and tucked it into the sack which still lay on my pallet. Quietly, unhurriedly, I gathered up the sack and made my way to his tent, where I quickly located the leather bag in which he kept the profits from my performances. There was nothing furtive or frightened about the manner in which I crossed the camp and calmly took my favorite horse from the tethered group. I no longer feared discovery; no man would lay a hand on me again and live to boast of it. I was leaving now because I chose to leave; and I left not in fear for my own safety, but in contempt for my past weakness, my childish terrors, and my spineless despair.

The end of innocence…

I had outgrown the limitations of this petty little tribe of wanderers; I no longer needed the dubious protection of a perverted villain. My childhood was at an end and the world beckoned to my unique talents. I had only just begun to explore the vast empire of my mind, and now its frontiers stretched ahead of me like a far horizon. I wanted to consume every note of music ever written, to absorb all the world's knowledge, and master arts as yet unconceived by humanity. I no longer needed boundaries… wherever I found them in the future I would tear them down, forging in my wake new wonders to astonish poor credulous mankind. Creation—and destruction—were the only lusts I would acknowledge henceforth. I would be like God, an absolute force; beyond question… beyond restraint.

The end of innocence…

Like Adam I had eaten of the tree of knowledge and been condemned, in consequence, to wander the face of the earth. But my Eden was full of cruel nettles and vicious thorns… I could not look back on its loss with any regret. The chains of conscience with which a parish priest had sought to shackle me were broken now beyond repair. Losing the fear of death, I had lost all respect for the lives of others. Tonight I had been made to see that life was cheap and easily spent, a poor cowering creature of the daytime that could be snuffed out as easily as a candle's light.

Death was the ultimate power and I his eager, willing apprentice.

Murder was only another art for me to master!