Where You Were

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness to the proportion.

—Sir Francis Bacon

She couldn't explain why she had come to this place. Against her husband's permission, against her own better judgment. Her husband's status had brought them many things, but not money; still, her blonde hair was girlishly curled, her fringe framing her small face, and she was attractively if modestly dressed in dark brown taffeta. They had lived for eight years in her birth country as husband and wife, but it was not the same as the years she had lived with her father in a land of riddles and mysteries.

Beyond the official trappings of the World's 1893 Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park, she was following the shadier edge, past Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show staged near the Chicago railroad station. She walked past the bright lights of the Electricity building; she swerved through Midway Plaisance and its giant, groaning Ferris Wheel, reminding her of illustrations she had seen in the papers of Eiffel's tower. She was gripping her parasol tightly in the May heat, trying to tell herself what she had seen was not . . .

"It will be good for us, my love," Raoul had said as they took the long boat crossing. "This is a premiere world event . . . nothing like this has ever been seen before." He smiled, the moustache that had once been little more than a wisp now silky blonde whiskers, going prematurely grey. "Besides, you can't have forgotten how I gave up the North Pole for you."

She shivered, in spite of herself. "I did not ask you to."

"My little Lotte, where's your sense of adventure? The—" he cleared his throat, unconsciously rubbing the miniature of his brother hidden inside his pocket watch—"unpleasantness and scandal have disappeared from everywhere but our memory. Aren't you the least bit interested?"

They'd both have a chance to practice their English, though people looked at them queerly, as the French and Swedish accents in American sounded both similar and different. They'd toured the Palace of Fine Arts and the Women's Building first, and though she knew Raoul expected her to be content, she was not. Not when she had overheard the fragment of a conversation.

" . . . human skeleton. They call it the Skeleton Dude."

"On the Midway?"

"No, outside the park, just follow the . . ."

If Raoul had understood, he hadn't said a word. Fear, dread, and a pitying kind of fascination had grabbed hold of her. She had to know. Someone had anonymously sent her a copy of the L'Époque, those eight years before, with the cold line, "Erik est mort," but somehow she had always wondered. So long she had gone without hearing the voice she had linked inextricably to her father's . . .

She could not help gasping when she saw the large, faded paper advertisement, glued to a rough piece of wooden fence. "The World's Thinnest Man. See the Skeleton Dude!" She took a deep breath, feeling her throat close. She moved her heavy taffeta skirts through the small hole in the fence.

The air was heavy with tobacco. She bit her lip sharply, stifling a cry, as a legless torso, balanced on two remarkably strong arms, scuttled by her feet. She looked down at the face of a middle-aged man with grim eyes. "Ma'am," he said with cold politeness, and darted off.

She heard the sound of children's laughter. Her face loosened as she saw a boy in a blue sailor's suit—much like Raoul's when he had been in uniform—chasing a girl in a pink gown of Vandyke lace. La petite Lottepensaità tout et nepensaitàrien . When the children turned toward her, though, she realized they were perfectly proportioned adults. She trembled, not understanding why this should frighten her. The dwarves looked at her and moved away silently.

She kept going, not certain how far she expected to go, knowing she could not turn until she knew. She saw a woman with extraordinarily long, dark hair posed in front of a mirror. She was humming something, a tune Christine felt was very familiar . . .

"Ah! Jeris de me voir

Si belle en cemiroir . . ."

Christine, despite herself, began to hum the Jewel Song along with the woman; she had not sung for anyone except for Raoul in eight years. The woman stopped singing and turned, her eyes accusatory; her incredibly white, delicate hand was combing through the thickness of her beard.

Pierced by her gaze, Christine murmured, "P-please pardon the intrusion, but I wondered if I might . . ."

"You'd better be able to pay, young missy." It was the gruff voice of a freak-show manager, when Christine turned to look at him. His loud voice startled the pair of pinheads playing ball near the bearded lady. Christine drew herself up to her full height, hoping the years had made her look less the waif than when she had poured out her soul at Apollo's feet. The manager's thick, dark brows furrowed. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm very sorry . . ." Her apology was to the growing crowd of—freaks—who were looking at her curiously. "I—I have money," she stammered, digging into her reticule, furious at her hands for shaking so.

"What's the matter with you? Haven't you ever seen a traveling fair before?"

She ignored the question, blushing scarlet. "What I meant to say was that I'd like to speak to the—the Skeleton Dude, if I may."

Silence hung like so much stale air. Pairs of eyes were regarding her, but she dared not look back, fearing she would betray herself somehow. She wanted to say she had kissed the skin of the death's-head, that she had agreed to be his living wife, and they needn't look at her so. But she had not the heart. The shame of her betrayal came back to her. "Please," she said. "I will pay for the time he spends with me."

The manager shrugged, and the crowd began to disperse. "Lionel!" he shouted. "Lionel! Stop stringing that fiddle! There's a—lady—what wishes to speak with you."

Christine took a few halting steps forward, her heart thundering, even as she realized the name she had expected—Erik—had not been spoken.

It seemed a very long time until he strode toward her with strange grace. He stopped a few paces from her, cryptically staring into her eyes. He bent at the waist slowly, dipping his tall frame for an archaic, elegant bow. Tall and thin, willowy and finely dressed in a black suit.

But he was not Erik.

"I'm enchanted, Miss . . . ?"

"The Viscountess de Chagny," she murmured, unable to hide her disappointment and relief as the wispy skeleton-man took her fingers and brought them to his lips. His hands were warm. Erik was dead.

"How extraordinary. French, are you?" The man's accent was Devonshire, but Christine had not yet the familiarity with English to decide whether it was fake or not.

"Yes," she lied, not knowing why she did so.

"Allow me to present myself. Dr. Lionel Hart. What can I do for you, Viscountess?"

"I'm sorry, I'm afraid I've wasted your time." She saw the death's-head in her mind's eye, flowing with tears, withered and yellow. But this man's face, though cadaverous, had a normal nose, normal blue eyes; whiskers grew in fashionable mutton-chops on his cheeks. "I mistook you for someone else."

The man laughed, and Christine could not help grimacing, as that laugh was so pale in comparison to—but that was ridiculous. When had she ever heard Erik laugh but in demented anger? "You intrigue me, Viscountess. There aren't many of us fashionably trim gentleman in this world." He gave her a wink. "Pray tell, did you see my counterpart in a fair somewhere?"

She shook her head. "No. I'm sure he must have been in one, at one point—" She ducked her head in shame, for she had never thought to ask. "But when I knew him, eight years ago . . ."

"Madame."

Christine looked up, realizing this had been spoken in French. She unfocused her eyes so she would not stare. Waddling toward her and Lionel Hart was an extraordinarily large woman dressed in a bathing suit of dark blue with ruffled red skirts. Her eyes were barely visible between the folds of fat around her eyebrows.

"Ah! Sophie!" exclaimed Hart. "Perhaps you can help the Viscountess. She appears to have confused me with someone else. As I recall, early in your career you toured with a—"

"That's what I was about to say." She wasn't smiling at Christine. "You'll pardon me, Viscountess, for overhearing you. But I thought you might like to know. Many years ago, when I was a child, I used to work with a man called the Human Skeleton." Sophie stared down from her considerable height at the much smaller woman. "Thought it was amusing, you know, to show a fat girl with a thin man. People love that kind of thing."

Christine gulped. Somehow she had never considered this side of Erik's life. He had always been the Voice, or the Angel, or a Ghost. Even crawling at her feet like a snake, he had not seemed quite real. Demanding she choose between a scorpion and a grasshopper, even as she had tried to kill herself, had given her no impetus to imagine him as a sideshow attraction. Erik, despite his faults, should have always have had command over himself. For it to be otherwise was an abomination more horrible than his face had been. "I see. When was this, if I may ask?"

"Around '54, '55, I should think."

Christine licked her very dry lips. "And did this man—sing? Or was he just on display?" She hated the word in her mouth. She remembered, darkly, her own adjectives: "He's working on something horrible!"

"He sang, certainly. An extraordinary voice, Viscountess. You heard Lily—the one with the beard—singing, no doubt?" Sophie sighed. "She's good, but he—he was not of this world. But I suppose you know that already?" Christine nodded. "Sometimes they would throw a blanket over him, thick enough to cover his face but enough so that he could see, and he would put on puppet shows, for children." Sophie mimicked the throwing of a cloth over her head. "As a showman, one in a million. He could make those pieces of felt and twine sing, and laugh, and cry." Her look turned dark, wan. "But they'd always take the veil off at the end—and the children would scream. Has anyone ever screamed at you, Viscountess?"

Christine trembled. She saw a young girl slip two winking hands around a man's face and pull—pull—and scream without cease. "No."

"Then you can't imagine what those children's voices did to him. I'm sure I can't even imagine."

Christine clapped her hand over her mouth so she would not make a sound—of mingled pity and shame. "Madame, might I ask you one more thing? Do—do you know—if this man's name was . . . Erik?"

"I never knew his name," Sophie stated emotionlessly. "Didn't come to the Fair willingly, I'll tell you that. Most of us can't get honest work otherwise. But he had talents. Didn't see the use of being stared at." Christine could not meet her gaze. "If you'd like to see a photograph, I might have one." Christine nodded stiffly. She was dimly aware of Lionel Hart bowing smartly to her and handing her a carte de visite for her reticule. As if in a dream, she buried the card into the small bag, where she would forget about it until Raoul, wide-eyed, asked. She followed Sophie to a tent. "Come in," Sophie said gruffly. Christine kept her eyes downcast. She had no desire to be an unwelcome guest.

"Here it is," said Sophie, handing Christine a small daguerreotype. Christine took it within her gloved hands. A very corpulent girl, perhaps five years old, stood in front of a cage. Two emaciated hands clutched the bars. A skull with streaming eyes, glowing white, peered out from behind.

"In-in a cage?" she said, forcing her tears back into her throat. "I never—I never realized—"

"He wasn't in the Fair very long," Sophie said in French. "He escaped. If he had been caught he would have stood trial . . . he had a talent for death, you see."

"That, I know," Christine said calmly.

"Are you so certain about that?"

Christine's gaze whipped up. The woman's half-hidden eyes were lazy, sullen. "What do you mean?" she asked slowly.

"You recall the puppet shows he put on?"

"Yes."

Sophie's eyebrow quirked. "Those children never saw the light of day, the last show he did."

Christine looked at her in horror, completely blanching. "You don't mean—?"

"I wouldn't have said it, but you seemed eager to know . . ."

Sophie sat down on a large bed in which, Christine suddenly realized with a start, lay a man, equally as large as Sophie. The way Sophie patted his enormous shoulder, the way she gazed softly down upon him, convinced Christine that this was Sophie's husband. She began to feel violently sick. His living wife . . . "You can have that, if you'd like."

"No, I couldn't," Christine pleaded, handing the photograph back.

"Couldn't stand to look at it longer, eh?"

"It's not that, I—" She certainly did not feel like explaining the torturous events of years ago with a woman she had just met. She dropped the photograph onto the bed beside Sophie and her husband. "I appreciate your help, and I thank you for your time—"

Sophie was turned away from her. She extended a hand behind her. Christine emptied the contents of her reticule into the fleshy palm. "Thank you," she whispered again. She turned on her heel and walked quickly until she reached the fence, where she began to run as fast as she could until she was back in Jackson Park, familiar in the sound of calliope music and the smell of waffles.

"Christine! I've been looking for you all afternoon!" There was real concern in Raoul's voice, but as soon as he saw her and threw his arms around her, it became playfulness. "You know what we promised about running off."

"Raoul . . ." she murmured. She had covered the bed beside her with her skirt, hiding the yellowed Époque clipping from his sight.

"Are you all right? I think you may have gotten too much sun."

"Yes, I'm all right. We should get dressed for supper."

When he had left her for the washroom, she uncrumpled the letter in her hand. When her husband later found the scraps of the letter in the wastebasket, she had told him this much: it was from some lawyer in Paris, a journalist who fancied himself a writer. He had spoken to the Persian before his death and Mssrs. Fauré, Montcharmin, and Richard. "A busy-body," she had told Raoul, red-eyed. "He wanted to hear the story from the lips of 'la Nouvelle Marguerite.'"

Raoul had chuckled. "It would have been exciting, wouldn't it, to have featured in some book?"

"No, Raoul," she had said coldly. Her mind was on the empty chasm five cellars below the ground, where a corpse slept at last in peace. She imagined fifty scientists scouring the earth, vacuuming the lake, exhuming his bones. Her injustice stared into her face as plainly as that photograph had.

"You are, of course, right," her husband had replied vaguely. Her thoughts turned from the City of Lights to the White City.

Author's Note.

A huge thank you to Mel for her fine beta-ing skills, the suggestion of the title, and advising me to enter the Third Morbidity Contest. Another huge thank you for everyone who read this piece during said contest and for those who voted for it. I'm bowled over. It was honestly a rather strange piece for me to write, and I'm not convinced it is as morbid as it could have been. Thanks again.