Phantom (31 page)

I was uneasy and I hoped that the building of the new palace in Mazanderan would distract Erik's attention from the very dangerous power game that he seemed determined to play.

On our return to the northern provinces I accompanied him to the chosen site—a lovely wooded eminence, half a mile outside Ashraf—and there watched him sketch until darkness fell.

"Are you ready to go yet, Erik?" I sighed at length, as hunger began to gnaw at me inexorably. "We've been here more than eight hours, you know."

"Have we?" he said vaguely. "I suppose you want to eat again. It really isn't necessary to eat more than once a day, you know. Perhaps when you get back to Ashraf you would have some lanterns sent out here to me…"

I honestly believe that from that point, utterly absorbed as he was by this project, he would have gladly forsaken court politics entirely; but he had set a ball rolling down a long slope and it had begun to gather momentum without his aid. Once the preliminary designs for the palace were completed, he began to suffer the irritations that inevitably result when a man makes himself indispensable on too many fronts. Neither the shah nor the khanum was prepared to remit their constant demands for amusement and advice. He had implied omnipotence, and consequently they did not expect him to be subject to the limitations of time and energy which confine ordinary mortals. He was a great magician, and surely a great magician ought to be capable of being in several places at the same time! He was seldom spared attendance at court for more than a day or two, and each time he was parted from the stone and mortar of this slowly rising edifice by a fresh peremptory summons, I was afraid his simmering temper would finally betray him.

The khanum was the worst perpetrator of his irritable frustration.

"I am bored," she complained, stretching languorously on the satin cushions in her private chamber, where, I am told, she had taken to receiving him separated only by a thin gauze curtain. "I am bored, bored,
bored
! What name do you give to this tedious emotion in your country, Erik?"

"
L'ennui
, madame."

"
L 'ennui
," echoed the khanum softly. "What a charmingly seductive turn of phrase you Frenchmen have. Do you ever feel…
I'ennui
… Erik?"

"Hardly, madame. Time and idleness are both necessary prerequisites to boredom, and God knows I have little enough of either commodity these days."

"Don't scowl at me like that, you wretch!" said the khanum peevishly. "You are sufficiently ugly already without twisting your horrible face in that fashion! In fact you are so incredibly and unbelievably repulsive that it's almost…
attractive
… in a strange way."

He was silent. I am told she often tormented him in this fashion, seeking to exact some unknown response, but he only stared back at her with stony-eyed contempt.

"So… you do not feel boredom, then. What, I wonder, are you capable of feeling…
Erik
?"

"Anger," he said softly, "murderous anger. You will find me more than capable of that,
madame
!"

"I think I should like to see you angry," mused the khanum thoughtfully. "Yes… I think perhaps it would be very… interesting. Anger, too, can be strangely attractive, you know… in the right person." The khanum sat up against her cushions suddenly, watching him through the thin gauze curtain with interest. "Tell me, Erik, have you ever had a woman?"

There was a tense, throbbing silence between them.

"Come, I demand to be answered," she prompted abruptly. "Are you a virgin?"

"Madame"—he sighed—"I am very busy."

"Too busy for a woman? No true man is that, my friend. Would you like a woman, Erik? I could arrange it, you know, I could arrange it very easily. And is not that what you surely desire above all things?"

Those who were watching say that his hands closed convulsively on the folds of his cloak and began to twist with a slow savage rhythm.

"What I desire above all things," he said coldly, "is to be left in peace to complete my commission without disturbance."

The khanum frowned behind the open-worked aperture of her veil.

"You think of nothing else these days but that palace. I am jealous of your ridiculous devotion to a pile of stone and mortar. My son demands altogether too much of your time, and I intend to tell him so. You were brought to Persia for my amusement—mine! And you
will
amuse me, Erik… one way… or another. I forbid you to return to the site until you have devised some new form of entertainment

… an amusing death, perhaps. Go now and think upon it." met him as he left the harem and I could see as soon as I looked at him that he was in an evil temper.

"She wants amusing deaths!" he shouted. "By God, she shall have them!"

He worked like a madman over the following weeks, and within a month it was finished—a strange, hexagonal-sided chamber, entirely lined with thick mirrors, which puzzled me intensely when I was invited to view it.

"What is it?" I demanded curiously as I stared at my own image reflected an infinite number of times.

"It's a torture chamber," he told me shortly.

"A mirrored room?"

"Mirrors can kill, Daroga… you may safely take my word for that."

His voice raised gooseflesh on my arms and made me suddenly very relieved to leave the chamber. I did not go back again to look at the
tortures
, but I know of many who subsequently did… people who spoke graphically of horrific illusions taking place within a room heated to the temperature of a furnace; illusions so real they reduced the victims to suicide within a few hours.

The khanum was delighted by the ingenuity of her new toy and three black eunuchs were duly required to present themselves in Erik's apartment, bearing variously a great purse laden with gold, a silver-plated hookah, and a plentiful supply of hashish.

He tossed the purse carelessly onto an ivory inlaid table, without even bothering to glance at the contents, but 1 saw him examine the hookah with interest and soon he was reclining on his floor cushions, with the hookah smoking efficiently between his lips.

Presently he tore off the mask and flung it across the room, laughing uncontrollably at nothing in particular, and I recognized in this irrational behavior the first signs of the drug's intoxicating influence. I had never tried hashish, but I knew of its terrible effects. Soon all his senses would be distorted beyond recognition. Time would telescope inward upon him and the faintest sound would be heard as a deafening roar; ecstatic euphoria would be succeeded by intense physical desire and a savage need for violence.

Some of the worst crimes imaginable have been committed here in Persia under the influence of this particular drug, and I fully understood why the khanum had chosen to reward Erik with hashish rather than opium. She was impatient to explore the darker regions of his incomparable imagination.

Who knew how many more
amusing deaths
still waited to be conjured from the dungeon of his tortured mind?

I lost count of the number of so-called Babi dissidents who died in the mirrored hell of Erik's chamber of illusion; I lost count of the armed men who died facing him in single combat, while the khanum looked on with satisfaction—each one a victim of the same cunning piece of catgut which I had first seen wielded with such devastating efficiency that night in Russia. The Punjab lasso was a weapon guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of the toughest warrior, a thin, merciless serpent that came to life only in the hands of its master. It amused the khanum to boast that there was no man alive capable of surviving a contest in the arena with her self-appointed Angel of Doom.

Before he came to Persia and fell under her malevolent influence, I do not believe that Erik had ever killed purely for pleasure. But with her drugs and her insatiable demand for novelty she awakened his sleeping hatred of men, releasing a demon of savage ingenuity which he could no longer control.

Increasingly, during this period, he began to escape to my estate, fleeing from the horrors of his own imagination to take refuge in the innocent laughter of a child.

"It's so peaceful here," he told me once, in a rare moment of confidence. "It's the only place in Persia where I don't dream that I am drowning in a sea of blood."

That night I introduced him to an opium pipe, in the hope that its calming somnolence would persuade him to abandon the khanum's hashish. And the following morning, still wrapped in the drug's hazy cocoon of well-being, he said he would like to visit the local bazaar. He was perfectly lucid, but the pupils of his eyes had contracted to telltale pinpoints and I knew that he would never have suggested venturing into a crowded place in daylight if he were in full possession of his faculties.

"Are you looking for something in particular?" I demanded uncertainty, as we entered the noisy lanes with their low-vaulted roofs.

"Birthday presents," he said absently, "lots and lots of beautiful birthday presents… Who are those poor twisted wretches with sticks?"

"Beggars seeking alms," I said with a sigh of resignation. "Let me deal with this, please."

I turned aside to do my religious duty, dropping a single coin of small denomination into each begging bowl as expected and receiving the customary blessings in return. When I glanced around I saw that Erik was emptying gold coins into the bowls behind my back.

"What are you doing?" I demanded with alarm.

"Giving alms," he said, mildly surprised by my annoyance. "What's wrong with that?"

"You idiot!" I snapped, as I saw the word being hastily passed through the crowd. "Surely you know better than to give such reckless sums to beggars at bazaars. You will bring every wretch in the vicinity around our heels, we won't be able to move through the streets in a minute. Come on!"

Catching hold of his cloak I hurried him through the crowds until we were safely lost in the press of camels and donkeys that constituted a caravan passing through from the coast.

The bazaar was typical of any that are to be found in Persia. Most of the shoppers were men, but the vendors were chiefly women swathed in black
chadars
, who sat beside their wares, almost under the feet of the carriages, and ignored the constant rude and colorful injunctions to get out of the way of the passing traffic.

Erik paused by a stall of brightly painted toys and selected a number of purchases which left me in no doubt of the intended recipient of his birthday presents. Numbed on a sweet cloud of opium, he was shopping with needless extravagance purely to please a blind child. And when the woman at his feet named a truly outrageous price I was amazed to see him reach into his purse without demur.

"It is customary to barter before purchasing in a bazaar," I reminded him sternly. "This wretch is asking at least four times what she seriously hopes to receive."

He glanced at the infant on the woman's lap and then at the small, pinched face peering out from behind her shoulder.

"She is poor and has children to feed. I am able to pay the price she asks without hardship. Why should I stand here and haggle with her like a miser?"

"She expects it, Erik. I tell you, it is the custom."

"
Fuck
your customs!" he said succinctly.

watched dumbfounded as he dropped double the asking price into the woman's trembling hand and waved my servant forward to collect his purchases.

"Now," he said, turning to me cheerfully, "tell me where I can buy an opium pipe and at least a crate of that heavenly poppy cake one burns inside it."

*

Reza was waiting for us when we returned, in the wheeled chair to which he had become confined during the course of that winter. He was almost entirely blind now, but there was nothing wrong with his hearing, and I saw his face light up at the first sound of his idol's voice.

"Did you get me a surprise?" he demanded eagerly.

"Yes… lots of surprises," said Erik softly, wheeling the chair out onto the sunny veranda beyond the garden window. "Come with me and see."

Come with me and see.

No one else said that to Reza now.

Only Erik.

And somehow on his lips those words never sounded sad or absurd.

I had determined to be reconciled to their odd friendship, for whenever I saw them together the sheer magnitude of their respective tragedies made me turn my back on my own jealous uneasiness. I tried to forget that my son had chosen to worship a murderer of questionable sanity.

But one day I received a fright that made me face reality at last…

I walked out into the garden unexpectedly to find my son stroking a handsome Siamese cat, collared with huge diamonds. There was no doubt over the identity of the animal. It was unquestionably the Glory of the Empire who sat there with a king's ransom around her slender neck—the Glory of the Empire, the shah's most favored and treasured possession.

"Are you quite mad!" I said furiously to Erik. "Are you determined to have us all killed for this crazy theft?"

"Stop shouting, you're frightening the child. I shall return the animal before she is missed… and who shall say then how she came to lose her pretty collar?"

I sat down on the edge of the fountain, because my legs would no longer support me.

"I don't know how you spirited her away from her guards," I said faintly, "but I do know that if that collar goes missing you will surely be the first to be suspected. How dare you come here and involve my son in this insane crime?"

I saw Reza tense and shrink closer to Erik's darkly cloaked figure.

"Father," he whispered tremulously, "please don't be angry… I asked him to bring the cat. It was only a joke."

"You foolish child!" I snapped. "This is a joke that could cost us all our heads."

Reza's eyes filled with tears, and without warning he flung his arms around the masked man, who had bent over him in concern.

"I don't want to stay here anymore," he sobbed into the muffling folds of the cloak. "I want to go with you. I want to go with you now."