Well, that means tomorrow, right? So yours truly is going to escort Mme de Chagny personally down to Coney Island. In fact I would say I am now her private guide to New York itself. And no, guys, there’s no point in you all turning up because no-one gets to go in but her, me and her personal party. So for one dirty cape I get scoop after scoop. Didn’t I tell you this was the best job in the world?
There was only one problem - my exclusive interview, for which I had gone to the hotel in the first place. Did I get it? I did not. The singer lady was so distressed that she rushed back to her bedroom and declined to come out again. Meg the maid offered me her thanks for arranging the trip to Coney Island but said the prima donna was now too tired to continue. So I had to leave. Disappointing, but no matter. I’ll get my exclusive tomorrow. And yes, you can get me another pint of the golden brew.
10
THE EXULTATION OF ERIK MUHLHEIM
ROOFTOP TERRACE, E.M. TOWER, MANHATTAN, 29 NOVEMBER 1906
I SAW HER. AFTER ALL THESE YEARS I SAW HER AGAIN and my heart made as if to burst inside me. I stood atop the warehouse near the dock and looked down and there she was, on the quay. Until I caught the glitter of light on the lens of a telescope and had to slip away.
So I went down to the crowd below and fortunately there was such a chill in the air that no-one thought anything of a man with his head swathed in a woolly muffler. Thus I was able to approach the brougham, to see her lovely face just a few yards away and to slip my old cloak into the hands of a fool reporter lusting only for his interview.
She was as beautiful as ever: the tiny waist, the tumbling hair tucked up beneath her Cossack hat, the face and smile to break a block of granite clean in two.
Was I right? Was I right to open all the old wounds again, to force myself to bleed again as in that cellar twelve long years ago? Have I been a fool to bring her here when eight score of months had almost cured the pain?
I loved her then, in those fearful hunted years in Paris, more than life itself. The first, and the last, and the only love I shall ever have or know. When she rejected me in that cellar for her young vicomte I almost killed them both. The great rage came over me again, that anger that has always been my only companion, my true friend who has never let me down, that rage against God and all His angels that He could not even give me a human face like others, like Raoul de Chagny. A face to smile and please. Instead He gave me this molten mask of horror, a life sentence of isolation and rejection.
And yet I thought, foolish stupid wretch, that she could even love me just a little, after
what had happened between us in that hour of madness while the avenging mob came down to lynch me.
When I knew my fate, I let them live, and glad that I did. But why have I done this now? Surely it can only bring me more pain and rejection, disgust, contempt and repugnance yet again. It is the letter, of course.
Oh, Mme Giry, what am I to think of you now? You were the only person who ever showed me kindness, the only one who did not spit upon me or run screaming from my face. Why did you wait so long? Am I to thank you that in the final hours you sent me the news to change my life again, or to blame you for keeping it from me these past twelve years? I could be dead and gone, and would never have known. But I am not, and now I know. So I take this crazy risk.
To bring her here, to see her again, to suffer again, to ask again, to plead yet again … and be rejected yet again? Most probably, most likely. And yet, and yet …
I have it here, memorized already word for word; read and reread in dizzy disbelief until the pages are spoiled with finger sweat and crumpled by trembling hands. Dated in Paris, late in September, just before you died …
My dear Erik,
By the time you receive this letter, if you ever do, I shall be gone from the earth and to another place. I wrestled long and hard before deciding to write these lines and only did so because I felt that you, who have known so much misery, should learn the truth at last; and that I could not easily meet my Maker knowing that to the end I had deceived you.
Whether the news contained herein will bring you joy or yet again give only anguish, I cannot tell. But here is the truth of events that were once very close to you and yet of which you could then and since know nothing. Only I, Christine de Chagny and her husband Raoul are aware of this truth and I must beg you to handle it with gentleness and care …
Three years after I found a poor wretch of sixteen chained in a cage at Neuilly I met the second of those young men I later came to call my boys. It was by accident, and a dreadful tragic accident it was.
It was late at night in the winter of 1885. The opera had finally finished, the girls had gone to their quarters, the great building had closed its doors and I was walking home alone through the darkened streets towards my apartment. It was a short cut, narrow, cobbled and black. Unknown to me, there were other people in that alley. Ahead a serving maid, late-dismissed from a house near by, was trotting fearfully through the dark towards the brighter boulevard ahead. In a doorway a young man whom I later learned to be no more than sixteen was saying farewell to the friends with whom he had spent the evening.
Out of the shadows came a ruffian, a footpad such as haunted the back streets looking for a pedestrian to rob of his wallet. Why he picked the little serving girl I shall never know. She could not have had more than five sous on her person. But I saw the rogue run out of the shadows and throw his arms around her throat to stop her screaming while he went for her purse. I yelled, ‘Leave her alone, brute. Au secours!’
The sound of racing male boots went past me, I caught the glimpse of a uniform and a young man had thrown himself on the footpad, carrying him to the ground. The midinette screamed and ran headlong for the lights of the boulevard. I never saw her again. The footpad tore himself loose from the young officer, got to his feet and began to run. The officer rose and went after him. Then I saw the ruffian turn, draw something from his pocket and point it at his pursuer. There was a bang and a flash as he fired. Then he ran through an arch to disappear in the courtyards behind.
I went over to the fallen man and saw that he was little more than a boy, a brave and gallant child, in the uniform of an officer cadet from the Ecole Militaire. His handsome face was white as marble and he was bleeding profusely from a bullet wound in the lower stomach. I tore strips from my petticoat to staunch the bleeding and screamed until a householder looked out from above and asked what was the matter. I urged him to run to the boulevard and hail a cab urgently, which he did in his nightshirt.
It was too far to the Hotel-Dieu, much closer to the Hopital St Lazare, so that was where we went. There was one young doctor on duty but when he saw the nature of the wound and learned the identity of the cadet, scion of a most noble family from Normandy, he sent a porter running for a senior surgeon who lived near by. There was nothing more I could do for the lad, so I went home.
But I prayed that he would live and in the morning, it being a Sunday and no work for me at the Opera, I went back to the hospital. The authorities had already sent for the family from Normandy and, seeing me approach, the senior surgeon on duty must have taken me for the cadet’s mother when I asked for him by name. His face was a mask of gravity and he invited me to come to his private office. There he told me the dreadful news.
The patient would live, he said, but the damage caused by the bullet and its removal had been terrible. Major blood vessels in the upper groin and lower stomach had been torn beyond repair. He had had no choice but to suture them. Still I did not understand. Then I realized what he meant, and asked in plain language. He nodded solemnly. ‘I am devastated,’ he said. ‘Such a young life, such a handsome boy, and now alas only half a man. I fear he will never be able to have a child of his own.’
‘You mean’, I asked, ‘that the bullet has emasculated him?’ The surgeon shook his head. ‘Even that might have been a mercy, for then he might have felt no desire for a woman. No, he will feel all the passion, the love, the desire that any young man may feel. But the destruction of those vital blood vessels means that …’
‘I am no child myself, M’sieur le Docteur,’ I said, wishing to spare his embarrassment though I knew with awful dread what was coming.
‘Then, madame, I must tell you that he will never be able to consummate any union with a woman and thus create a child of his own.’