Phantom (39 page)

They didn't often argue; no one won arguments with my mother, certainly not Mademoiselle Perrault, who always looked as though she wouldn't know how to say boo to a goose. But that night she was angry enough to have raised her voice above my mother's, and I, like the obnoxious child that I was, had crept down from the attic to listen outside the closed door.

"I don't know how you can begin to think of doing such a thing, Madeleine! He won't be four until the summer!"

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" my mother had retorted irritably. "I'll be back from Rouen by nightfall. I'll lock him safely in his room with the dog, he'll be all right. He knows how to use a chamber pot, and I'll leave him food and drink—not that he'll eat it! I don't know why you're making all this fuss, no one's likely to run off with him, for God's sake!"

"Well, I don't think it's right, Madeleine, I really don't… a child of that age to be left alone for so many hours…"

The upshot of this curious conversation was that Mademoiselle Perrault came to look after me for the day while my mother was in Rouen.

I remember it very well. With my mother's iron hand removed I proceeded to behave like a perfect little beast. I swung on the curtain rails and frightened her half to death by hanging upside down from the top of the banister. It's a good job we didn't have a chandelier…

"Don't do that, Erik dear!" she said with a helplessness that only made me swing with more vigor and daring. She always called me
Erik dear
, as though it were my given name. I used to think it was very funny and mimic her behind her back, until my mother grew angry and beat me for the impertinence.

"Please don't do that, Erik, you know your mama would be very cross if she saw you."

But Mama wasn't there, that was the whole point; Mama wasn't there and under the timid supervision of this mouse-faced lady I was suddenly free to do exactly what I wanted.

While she was washing dishes in the kitchen, I went into the drawing room and climbed up to the top of the glass-windowed cabinet. There was a box of chocolates there, a very big box, left over from Christmas; I took off the pink ribbon and Sasha and I ate the lot between us.

A little later Sasha was sick. I was feeling decidedly odd myself by that point and before I knew what was going to happen, there were two horrid brown messes on the beautiful carpet that my mother prized so highly.

Sasha at once slunk under the table, with her tail between her legs, and I hastily followed her example. I began to cry then, for I knew that when my mother came home I would be beaten for this most heinous crime while Sasha— poor, poor Sasha—would be put out in the snow, in disgrace, for the rest of the night.

We were still huddled together under the table when Mademoiselle Perrault found us.

"Don't cry," she said kindly, when I was finally persuaded to crawl out from my hiding place. "I shall clean everything up and your mama need know nothing about it."

I remember staring at her dumbfounded.

"Aren't you going to tell her?" I whispered in disbelief. "Aren't you going to tell her how naughty I've been?"

"No, dear," she said, getting down on her hands and knees with a bucket of soapy water. "That can be our little secret, can't it? Now, why don't you be a good boy and find me some old newspapers?"

I never put another spider on her shawl after that…

This nervous, anxious, well-meaning lady had taught me to respect all members of the weaker sex. She had dropped one pearl of purity into my soul, and even now, after all these years, it was still there, displacing a little of the dank, disgusting sludge of depravity. I had done many terrible things, but I had never harmed a helpless woman.

Not all women were helpless, of course. There was the khanum… God knows she came closer to Allah in my presence than she ever guessed on more than one occasion! I suppose my senses were deceiving me, but there were times when I honestly began to wonder what that bitch really wanted from me. Times when I almost believed… but that is absurd, I flatter myself! And yet… perhaps there really are women like Javert, with a taste for the bizarre and the obscene. I often wondered what it would have been like to bury myself in all that warm pulsating wickedness, prior to killing her…

But by and large they were unworthy prey, women, fragile creatures who already seemed created to endure too much suffering; cruel husbands, childbirth, and early death… And it's really very difficult to kill someone when all your inner instincts would oblige you to take off your hat first!

"Are you still afraid of spiders, mademoiselle?" I demanded suddenly.

"Oh… yes!" She gave a nervous little laugh and edged away from me nearer the hearth. "Such a silly, childish thing, was it not—your mother never had any patience with me over it. Oh, dear… I should have been prepared for this. After all, I placed an advertisement in the
Presse
as soon as I realized that—that she did not have every long. I hoped against hope that you would see it, but it seemed such a unlikely chance, after all these years, even allowing for the circulation of the
Presse
… After all, we did not even know if you were still in France, let alone Paris. She often spoke of you, Erik…"

I turned away abruptly. Did she think me a child still to be comforted by tinsel fantasies and pretty lies? My mother had hated and feared me. Why pretend now that it had been otherwise?

"When is the funeral?" I asked harshly.

"Tomorrow," Marie whispered. "There won't be many mourners… just a few acquaintances that she made after… well…
after
. …" She spread her hands helplessly and I nodded curtly to signify my understanding. "I think perhaps it would not be wise—"

"I have no intention of attending the event," I assured her, and hardened though I was, her palpable relief hurt me. I did not need to be told what scandalized horror would attend my presence in the graveyard. The last service I could render to my mother was to allow her to be laid to rest with the dignity that had been so dear to her.

But at least I could play my requiem for her…

Sitting down at the old piano, I quickly lost myself in the music, my fingers caressing the keyboard with ecstasy. Music was the secret sanctuary of my soul; music was my god, the only master I would ever serve again. 1 wished I could build a monument to its glory, a shrine where I could worship and revere. It would be a fitting act of homage to raise a mausoleum dedicated to the splendors of harmony and lyric, a wonderful fusion of my deepest creative urges. Something vast and resplendent… something on a scale never before conceived… an opera house perhaps…

My mother had often spoken of the need for a definitive Parisian Opera House. Like most people who have failed to realize a childhood's ambition she had considered herself something of an authority on the subject; and certainly public interest in a permanent Opera House for the capital dated back over a hundred years. More people than my mother had felt heatedly on the subject and Professor Guizot's strong opinions on optimum location and auditorium shape had informed much of my studies under his guidance. Delighted by my natural interest in his pet obsession—I had learned to love opera at a very early age—he had consequently directed me from the works of Blondel to those of de Chaumont, Damun, Patte, and Dumont. Those last months before I ran away I was so deluged by contradictory material that I am sure that even then I could have put together a reasonably lucid exposition on the need for a topologically expressive exterior. I had never been to Paris, but the professor had shown me extensive street plans and once amused me by entering a furious dispute with my mother over the relative site merits of the Place de la Concorde over the Butte des Moulins. I remember that he was well and truly routed by my mother's passionate indignation.

"Ladies," he told me later, polishing his steamy glasses when we were alone once more in the dining room, "are regrettably incapable of arguing a point without resorting to emotion. You may take it from me, Erik, that the Butte des Moulins offers a far superior situation."

"Arrogant man!" snapped my mother when the professor had gone. "The Butte des Moulins will never in a thousand years be considered an elegant quarter of Paris. It would be an utter social travesty to build there. The Place de la Concorde is the
obvious
solution!"

Personally I had considered they were both wrong, but I was far too well brought up to say so at the time. I would have placed the Opera in the very center of Paris, as befitted a great monument which would inevitably become the social hub of the city. The Boulevard des Capucines seemed to me the obvious place—but no doubt the arguments would go on for another fifty years before a decision was finally made…

I became aware of Marie hovering uneasily at my side, and I stopped playing abruptly.

"Don't stop," she said quietly. "That requiem is your own composition, is it not? Your mother—"

"Would have dearly loved to hear it played?" I sneered. "Mademoiselle, I outgrew my need for fairy tales many years ago."

Suddenly Marie rushed to the cabinet in the corner of the room and began to pull out sheets of my old childish designs.

"There was never a day when she did not think of you, Erik. Look, do you see? She kept everything—everything that reminded her of you."

I stared at the papers tumbling out on the floor. They proved nothing to me except that my mother was a notorious hoarder who could throw nothing away. We had lived entirely surrounded by relics of the past: Grandfather's architectural library… Grandmother's English jewelry… looking at the hearth now I could see a stack of newspapers that must be many weeks old.

Marie was ferreting in the drawers, bringing out a wad of legal-looking documents which she thrust into my hands.

"The deeds of the house, details of your grandfather's stock investments," she explained feverishly. "They were all to be left for you in a bank vault in Rouen. It's there in her will if you don't believe me."

Guilt, I thought, with a flicker of remorse for my heartlessness… guilt is surely the saddest of all human emotions. But guilt is not love; it is a fire that consumes without giving warmth to those embraced in its tangled coils. Poor Mother…

Wordlessly I gathered up my old musical scores and designs and threw them on the fire. Then, while Marie stood with her handkerchief pressed against her mouth, I bent mechanically to gather up the newspapers and send them the same way.

I never read newspapers. I had no interest in the present; only the past and the future excited my imagination these days. The antics of the Empress Eugenie were no concern of mine…

My God, some of these papers were six months old and turning yellow. But one was recent enough… thirtieth of May, 1861. My eyes were drawn inexorably to the leading story:

Garnier Wins Commission for Paris Opera House.

I stood up with the paper in my hand, devouring the article with numbed outrage. Charles Garnier, aged thirty-six, winner of the public competition held for the design of the new Paris Opera…

Public
competition?

I wheeled around on Marie.

"What do you know of this?" I demanded, taking an aggressive step toward her. "What do you know of it?"

She didn't know much, but it was sufficient to supplement the article and fuel my uncontainable fury. Architects, both professional and amateur, had been required to submit their designs anonymously in that competition, their names and addresses in a sealed envelope…

I crumpled the newspaper in my hand and walked away from her quickly before my hands fastened around her neck in sheer ungovernable frustration. The initial round of the competition had opened in December… and it had been December when I was first struck with that devastating feeling of restless unease. Lacking the means to interpret my premonition… intuition… whatever it was… I had let precious months slide by. Because my own supreme indifference to the affairs of men prevented me from purchasing something as simple as a newspaper, I had lost my only chance of circumventing the strict, hierarchical system that normally governed public architectural appointments in France. I had lost by default to a young, barely known architect, a previous winner of the Grand Prix de Rome…

It was too late to design that shrine to my one pure and unsullied love. I had betrayed my music—and betrayed it by the worst of all human crimes: uninformed ignorance!

The urge to kill became so strong that I thought I should die of it.

Garnier… Charles Garnier… be very glad of the miles that separate us tonight!

The terrible silence in the room was punctuated by my ragged breathing and Marie's gasping terror. She was white with fear when I turned to look at her, and immediately I was ashamed. This poor, pitiful little woman deserved only kindness at my hands. I must be calm; I must channel this fury and turn my unseemly thoughts away from murder in this house of death; I must remember my promise…

An hour passed according to the clock on the mantelpiece, an hour in which I did nothing except sit staring into the dying fire. Calmness returned to me at length in the wake of resignation and new resolve. I accepted that it was too late to create the original design. But it was not too late to stand on the site and watch this great mausoleum rise beneath the guidance of my own hands.

It was not too late to build!

I left the old house in Boscherville shortly before dawn, leaving my mother's body in the care of her faithful friend. Marie would keep the keys to the house and await my instructions; I trusted her discretion implicitly.

I left without returning to look one last time upon my mother's dead and unlovely face. The beautiful features, delicate as a butterfly's wing, were buried safely in the mists of my memory. I could not wipe them from my mind, but there was a certain comfort in knowing that I would never see that face resurrected.

She had never existed for me outside an illusion.

She had never existed; and now at last I could forget her forever.