Phantom (46 page)

I tried to laugh.

"You really mustn't take that to heart. We all make errors of judgment from time to time."

"I wanted to preserve your unique genius," he continued inexorably, exactly as though I had not spoken, "your brilliance… your enormous capacity for good."

"I beg your pardon," I said ironically. "I'm afraid you've really lost me there. I think you must have a wire crossed somewhere."

Still he ignored my desperate banter, staring at me with a saddened disbelief I could scarcely bear.

"And this is how you repay my sacrifice," he said dully. "You become a ghost!"

He looked about to weep, and suddenly I wanted to die of shame.

"You promised me." He sounded as though he were choking on the words. "You
promised
me you would not kill again except in self-defense." looked away into the fire. The sound of the clock ticking steadily on the mantelpiece seemed to mock us both with its cozy domesticity.

"I've tried to keep that promise," I said softly.

His thin hands clenched on the arms of his chair.

"Well, you obviously didn't try hard enough, did you?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Joseph Buquet is what I mean."

I raised my shoulders in a noncommittal gesture.

"The man committed suicide. The police are satisfied of that, are they not?"

"Yes," he admitted grudgingly.

"Well, then, what has that to do with me?"

Nadir got up and came to stand over my chair.

"Do you think I don't recognize your trademark when I see it? How many suicides were there in Persia, Erik—can you even remember? Can you? Or have you wiped it all out, lost it in the mists of some opium-induced fog?"

Suddenly he paused, bending forward to seize my right arm and jerk back the sleeves of my shirt and dress coat. He stared for a moment at the mass of bruises which followed the lines of my collapsed veins.

"May Allah forgive me!" he muttered. "This is my fault. You were ready to die that night when I came to arrest you.

I should not have interfered. I see now that in condemning you to live I did no service to you or to the world."

I pulled down my sleeves, retrieved and refastened the gold cuff link which his violence had sent spinning into the hearth.

"Do you mean to betray me to the police?" I inquired with indifference.

He laughed shortly.

"Would I live long enough to do it?"

I stared at him. It was a shock to find that even after all this time words still had the power to hurt me.

"You honestly think I'm capable of that?"

"I don't know what you're capable of, Erik, not anymore —not with your veins full of morphine."

"What are you going to do?" I asked dully.

"What can I do?" he demanded, with resentment. "What can I do that isn't going to haunt me with guilt all the rest of my life?"

"Nadir—"

He turned his back on me abruptly.

"Go back to the Opera," he said coldly. "Continue to haunt the premises if it gives you satisfaction to squander your talents in this extraordinary fashion. Blackmail Poligny as you will—from what I've seen of the man I daresay he deserves it. But if there is one more mysterious death in that building—just one—I promise you I shall tell the authorities everything I know. And they'll find you, if they have to take the Opera apart brick by brick. They'll find you wherever you have gone to ground. I mean to watch over you very carefully from now on, Erik. This is the last chance I shall give you. Next time there will be no reprieve —for either of us."

I rose slowly and, collecting my stick, hat, and gloves, signified my intention of leaving. Nadir stood back and let me pass unhindered to the door.

"Erik."

I turned to look back at him, wondering if he saw past my cold dignity to the flayed remnants of my pride.

"You could have been such a very great man," he said sadly, "distinguished beyond all other members of the human race. It's such a waste—such a tragic waste!"

I went slowly down the shabby stairs and out into the street beyond. He had destroyed my complacency and my peace of mind, insulted, threatened, and humiliated me. Men had died at my hand for far less than I had meekly accepted from Nadir tonight.

I should have felt angry, but I only felt sad—sad and degraded beyond measure by the bitterness of his terrible disappointment.

I wished I could hate him, but I couldn't.

He was still my conscience.

From that day he became my shadow and I knew that every move I made beyond the lake would eventually find its way into that wretched little notebook of his. I found his persistence utterly infuriating and yet in its own way curiously flattering—almost…
endearing
. And eventually, to spare us both an intolerable amount of inconvenience, I agreed to meet him once a week on the banks of the lake, so that he might satisfy himself as to my continued good behavior.

I'm not convinced that either of us was acknowledging his true motives for this regular ritual. Ostensibly he was keeping me under surveillance and I was jealously guarding my territory, but we smiled automatically when we met and there was a vague feeling of mutual regret on parting that I was reluctant to analyze.

I was beginning to understand that he was very lonely.

He had acquaintances here in Paris, even some arrangement with a lady of doubtful reputation—to be honest, I was quite amazed at what he confided to me at times! But there seemed to be a great void in his life that he had been unable or unwilling to fill. After all these years I don't think he had ever really got over losing his wife… losing Reza.

"So there you are!" he would say brusquely, whenever I chose to materialize out of the darkness beside him. "You're late again. Don't you know I've better things to do than hang around here waiting for you to show up?"

Actually the truth was that he didn't have anything better to do, and I found that rather tragic. Christ, how could a man so innately good and kind as Nadir be reduced to voluntarily spending time in the company of a half-crazed monster? Why didn't he just have me arrested and put his misplaced guilt behind him? It was no fault of his that I was a murderer, an extortionist, and a morphine addict.

The still waters of resignation that had surrounded me now for more than six years were being relentlessly stirred by his presence. I'd finally come to terms with reality and succeeded in constructing an ideal existence in which to live out what remained of my life in numbed indifference. I had my music, my inventions, a regular income, and I was contented… I was bloody contented!

Now suddenly I was afraid.

I didn't want Nadir back in my life; I didn't want anyone. But I was glad to see him waiting for me on the far bank of the lake each week and that gladness was a deep inward terror. Because it meant I hadn't really learned to do without people after all; I'd started to need his stern criticism, his serious conversation, and the occasional outraged laughter that I discovered I could still light in him. I was groping out once more in the darkness, but sooner or later I knew that I was going to touch cold metal bars and draw back in horror at the sight of my prison. Once I

admitted to myself that 1 could still feel emotion I became vulnerable, I exposed all that painful scar tissue to the knife again. And I wasn't young and resilient anymore, I no longer had those remarkable powers of healing. I couldn't bear the thought of any more pain.

My old interest in divination had never left me, and from time to time I still consulted the tarot cards in a desultory fashion. It was a long while since they had revealed anything significant, but now of late, each time I picked a card at random I seemed to turn up
Death
.

Death
… or
the Lovers
.

I could not interpret this cryptic message, but it seemed to be irredeemably bound up with a feeling of doom that was beginning to weigh ever more heavily upon me. I felt very strongly that somewhere beyond the lake a knife was being sharpened, honed to a gleaming point in readiness for me to run upon it in the blinding light of day.

I was afraid… but I did not know what I feared.

And so, even as I walked with Nadir, talked with him, rejoiced in the warmth of communicating directly once more with a human soul, there was a part of me that looked at him with wary suspicion and wondered what part fate had assigned him in this new unrehearsed opera.

Not the lover, that was for certain. I'd seen enough girls leaving his apartments in Persia to be reassured that all his instincts were purely heterosexual.

Death, then…

Oh, God, surely not his! I could think of no conceivable situation in which I would be prepared to do him harm— nothing in this world that would make me commit such an unthinkable horror.

But if it was not his death I saw, then it must be mine.

Well, I was not afraid of death. I'd spent the best part of fifty years waiting patiently for its release.

No, it wasn't death I feared now.

It was that other inexplicable symbol.

Twenty-two face cards in a Tarot pack. Why was I suddenly so sure I should have turned up
the Fool
?

"You're very preoccupied today," said Nadir with severity. "I don't like the way you keep staring into space and forgetting to answer me. And flexing your left hand all the time… you're not trying to make me nervous, by any chance, are you? It won't work, you know."

"Don't be stupid," I said absently. "My hand's gone numb, that's all."

"I'm not surprised," he muttered. "This place is a cold as a tomb. I really don't see why we can't take coffee at your house in a civilized manner. I consider it most uncivil of you."

He was right, of course. It was very inhospitable of me, appalling bad manners in fact; but my house was my barricade against the world and I could not bring myself to breach its defenses. Once he knew its secrets I would be entirely at the mercy of his good intentions. It would be total surrender—a sort of captivity which I was simply not prepared to tolerate.

"I have to go now," I said. It was always time to go when the conversation turned, as it inevitably did, to the location of my secret lair. "Don't wait for me here next week," I added.

"Why?" he demanded instantly. "What are you up to now, Erik?"

"The present management is retiring from office." I sighed. "I expect to be rather busy for a week or so in consequence."

He frowned. "I should like to know just exactly what you are planning."

"Oh, nothing more than a little letter of welcome. You know, I consider it very poor spirited of Poligny and Debienne simply to give up the ghost like this."

Nadir's lips twitched on the verge of a smile and then, as I watched, down came all that schoolmaster dignity, like a shutter, just as it had done that night in Persia when I offered to teach him how to pick pockets.

"Surely you're not going to continue to play these iniquitous tricks on Messieurs Richard and Moncharmin." He sighed.

"Why not? It's been a very profitable arrangement up till now."

"I had hoped—"

"For what?" I laughed. "A change of heart in some maudlin access of remorse?
Confession
, perhaps?"

He turned away abruptly. "You make me very glad I'm not a Catholic," he said rather bitterly. "Just remember, whatever you decide to do now… I shall be watching you."

"You're always watching," I retorted amiably. "What a pity you never
quite
manage to see."

And handing him his pocket watch once more, I left him alone in the darkness.

I had made light of the matter to Nadir, but in point of fact this change of management was a damnable inconvenience to me. I could not be sure that Poligny's successors would prove one half as gullible and malleable as he; and should they prove obstinate, my allowance could very quickly come to an untimely end. For myself it hardly mattered—I had sufficient now to see myself out in comfort. But Jules had two sons at the School of Fine Arts, one at the School of Medicine, and six more children whose futures must be considered.

I had no intention of abandoning my commitment to a man I had quite unwittingly destroyed.

So, I would have to tackle Poligny—make sure he passed on the terms of the Opera lease before he cut his losses and ran. I needed to put the fear of worse than God in him one last time.

A curt note deposited on his desk would bring him quaking in his shoes to watch the evening's performance from box five; my voice would do the rest.

We had been through this little farce of mine many times now. Nothing amused me more than the deferential way in which Poligny approached the armchair in which he perceived my voice to be sitting, the earnest, anxious expression on his fat face as he conversed nervously with thin air. Hidden inside the enormous column of hollowed marble, which I raised and lowered exactly as I pleased, it was all I could do sometimes not to laugh out loud as I watched the absurd obsequiousness of his gestures. Short of getting down on his hands and knees he could hardly have shown me much more respect! He was indeed my very favorite victim, riddled with theatrical superstition and credulous beyond belief. It honestly amazed me that anyone so naive could possibly have any habits that would not bear public scrutiny, but there he was—a fat, stupid fish dangling helplessly on the end of my line. He had made my existence quite criminally comfortable, and I was going to miss him sadly.

We should have one last, cozy little chat before I said au revoir…

I reached box five early in the morning, well before anyone was around. There was a long uncomfortable wait ahead of me inside that hollow pillar, and since I was not eager to take up my position there a moment before it was necessary, I sat back among the shadows and read
Madame Bovary
and
Salammbo
. They say that Flaubert became a recluse in order to write; I found that interesting…

Two hours later, having finished both novels, I turned in boredom to study last night's program, which had been dutifully left on the little shelf for my perusal by my worthy Madame Giry.