Chapter 8
When they were finished hugging, Erik let Gustave look over the car. He was astonished by it. Gustave then begged to see what other marvels that Erik had made in his lab. Erik showed the boy some of them, even letting him keep a small automaton as a toy. He took him around his lab and showed him each of his inventions.
Gustave was visibly impressed. "You really are a wizard of sorts. I have never seen so many wonders in one place. I hope that you will let me spend some time here with you learning how to make things like these."
Erik smiled "Of course I would like that, but I frequently work without my Prosthetic face. I need to have complete visual acuity to avoid injury. Are you sure that you could stand looking at it for so long?"
"I am looking at it now and I have already told you that it does not bother me. As you said you are made of the same materials as anyone else. It is not your fault if you look a little bit different. Could we design and build something together?" Gustave asked.
"Certainly whatever you would like." He pointed to a pile of scrap metal. "Perhaps you could start by helping me organize these we might be able to reuse some of these. I have been meaning to sort them by myself but have been busy with my horseless carriage." Erik told him.
"What are they from? Why did you scrap them?" Gustave asked.
Erik told him "They are the remains of all sorts of devices that I have worked on over the years, such as a device that uses radio waves to transmit music, a camera that lets you take a photo in less than a minute and a prototype for a flying machine. I scrap most of them after I finish. I make them to pass the time, now that I have given up my music. When they are complete I take them apart."
"Did they work?" The boy asked curiously.
"Of course they worked, Gustave, I do not stop until they work perfectly. It is not my way to waste time on useless things." Erik told him.
"Then why do you take them apart? Surely you could sell them and make a lot of money, like Mr. Edison." Gustave asked.
Erik shrugged dismissively "I have no need for money, Gustave. I have more than enough money for you, your children and even their children to live on. When I was young I dreamt that I could change the world for the better with the many innovations which clutter my mind. I spent much of my youth looking for a place where they would accept me and let me work in peace, despite my monstrous face. To my horror I realized that there was no such place for me. Wherever I went I found only hatred and fear directed towards me. I know now that humanity will always force me to remain in the darkness as an outcast. There is no place for me in their world, so I see no point to sharing mine. In the past, particularly in Persia, those that deigned to use my devices used them only to do harm to one another, or to feed their own greed. I intended them to be used for good, but was forced to twist them into something bad. I do not intend on giving anyone such power again."
"I am sorry that you have been rejected but wouldn't these marvels help you gain acceptance?" The boy asked.
"It doesn't matter to me as it once did, but that was long ago when I still hoped to find acceptance and love. I no longer care about either anymore. In my experience to covet such things has led me only to grief. I only live to punish myself for my sordid past." Erik told him sadly.
"But I am here now. I will accept you, and I could love you too." Gustave told him.
"I will love you and protect you, but eventually you must leave me. I bring nothing but suffering to anyone that I care about. I would not want to bring such to you. When it is safe for you to do so, I will find you a proper family to live with so that you can live a normal life. You could never live a normal life with me in it." Erik told him.
"But why would I leave you? You are my real father. We have just found one another." Gustave felt hurt and rejected by Erik's words.
Erik looked at him sadly "I am not fit to raise you, son. I am a murderer and a monster. You said it yourself on the day that we met that only Raoul de Chagny could ever be your father. If I kept you, you would grow to hate me as everyone else does. I have family in France who might take you if they knew of you. I have a brother and a sister. They live in Bretagne. They might be persuaded to look after you with the proper incentive. Perhaps they have children, so you could have brothers or sisters to play with. I have not seen them since I was a child but I am sure that they would treat you well. You are a well behaved and handsome child."
The boy grew angry; feeling rejected "Why wait if you want to get rid of me? Just do it now. You are right you are a terrible father, the worst ever. You don't have to bother with me." he told him tearfully.
He stormed out of the room and went back to the house, Erik followed closely behind him. When they entered the dwelling, Erik sent Darius to find Simone to take care of the boy. Nadir and Darius had been shocked to see them come in together. They had been trying to get Erik to spend some time with the boy since he had arrived; but Erik had stubbornly insisted that as soon as the threat to the boy was over that he would send him back to France and find him a guardian who was better suited than he was to raise a child.
Nadir told Erik pleasantly "I am surprised to see you together; you have been sulking about ever since he arrived. I am pleased that you came to your senses. But what did you say to upset the boy?"
"The boy interrupted me. He was bored and needed some stimulation, apparently he finds all of you to be lacking in useful diversions for a seven year old child. Perhaps we should hire a tutor to instruct him in matters that a young Vicomte should learn." Erik told him dryly.
"Why don't you teach him yourself, you are very well versed in most subjects and it would be a way of bonding with the boy? He appears to have your intelligence, without your inability to get along with others." Nadir observed.
"I intend on spending some time with him but do not want to bond with the boy too much. It would only make it harder for me to let him go when the inevitable happens and he leaves me. The boy should not have to share my fate and stay up here on this mountain isolated from the rest of the world. Someday soon, he will want to be with other children, and live like a normal child in the real world. It would be unfair to the boy to remain up here with me forever." Erik told him. "The boy is upset because I told him of my plan. He doesn't understand that it is best if I find a better situation for him, one where he would have a real family."
"Why let the boy go? Why don't we all leave this place and go back to a real city, even Paris, and live among people again. You have perfected your prosthesis and yet you are more isolated than ever. No one would even have to know that you were once the Phantom of the Opera. You are wealthy and still only in your early forties, yet you act like your life is over. Be the man that you were meant to be and start living once more. I do not understand this need to make yourself miserable" Nadir averred in frustration. He had tried to get Erik to go back into the world forever. He had not left the property in many years.
"You have a lot of nerve to ask me why Daroga. What would be the point of setting us up for tragedy? In the past I wanted only to find a woman to love me, but it is an impossible dream for me. I would have to remove my prosthesis at some point, if I was to pursue a woman and then she would run as fast as she could in the other direction. Even Christine ran from my face when she saw it, and I had been her friend and guardian for almost ten years, yet still she was afraid of me. There is no point for me to live among humanity, no matter how I might try to look like a human; I will always be hideous just below the surface." Erik told him.
They had had the same argument hundreds of times over the years and it always ended the same way. Both Erik's heart and soul had been broken too deeply for him to risk it happening again. He was unwilling to risk what remained of them again. It was not the first time that Nadir cursed Christine for the events at the opera house. If she had only accepted Erik in the beginning, their love might have stood a chance to live, but she had denied him and betrayed him several times. Even when she had seemed to change her mind, Erik had been brought so low that he would not allow her to share his dark fate. He had decided that he was not good enough to have a happy ending to his life. Nadir remembered how Erik had once been as a young man, before he had brought him to Persia, before they had fled to Paris. He had still not given up on mankind even with his own horrific treatment by the gypsies. He had believed that he would find a place somewhere where he could be accepted for his many talents. After Paris he decided that he never would be.
On the ship to America a despondent Erik told him "Christine wanted to come with us, but I left her to be with her boy. She is too good to be subjected to a monster such as me. I would destroy the very thing that binds us together her goodness and innocence. It is reflected in her voice, it defines it. To keep her with me would debauch her. I would bring her down to my level and ruin her. She would have grown unhappy with me and missed her boy. Leaving her behind was the only unselfish thing that I have ever done."
"Erik, if this is true then she was not the right girl for you. But you should not give up on the world forever. It is wrong to give up just because you have not found your place yet. Perhaps it will be better in the New World where misfits from Europe have been coming to escape from the confines of the old. I heard that these Americans worship innovative people such as you who can provide them with wonders."
Erik looked at his friend and told him bitterly. "I will make enough money to buy a place far from the eyes of my fellow men. I will live out the rest of my days like a monk. You do not have to stay with me once we reach New York. I can head west on my own."
"I have dedicated my life to helping you, doostam. I owe you as much for bringing you to Persia, and for the many kindnesses that you have provided me. I will not let you die alone, as much as you would like to." Nadir told him stubbornly.
"Then you have condemned yourself and Darius to being entombed with me. I shall never change my mind, and return to the world of man. I despise humanity and in return it despises me. If you choose to share my fate, it will be on your own conscience not mine for I have warned you." Erik told him bitterly.
His mind wandered back to the present "I will continue to try to bring you back into the world, doostam, as I have done for many years. As long as I have breath in my body I will do so. Allah has given me this task as penance for what I did to contribute to this attitude on your part. I will see it through. I hope that someday you will listen and open up your heart and your mind to let the light back into it. You believe yourself to be a creature of darkness, but I know differently doostam. You could be a light to the world if you could stop feeling sorry for yourself." Nadir told him.
Erik hissed bitterly "Do you forget who I really am. I am the Angel of Death, doostam. Shaytoon's own dark child, condemned to live in the shadows away from the community of man. Not even my own parents could accept me."
"No Erik, you are no such thing. You are a man like any other. You claim that you are not worthy of us but the reality is different. To you, the rest of us are unworthy of you. You arrogantly set yourself apart from the rest of humanity and complain about your cursed face. You say that it keeps you beneath us but the truth is that it is the opposite, you do not think that we are worthy of your love. That is why you destroy your inventions and never leave this place, even though you have perfected your prosthetic. That is also why you want to send the boy away. You no longer have that mask to hide behind, but it was never the mask that kept you apart from your fellow. It was your own hubris. If you are any sort of man, you will apologize to Gustave and tell him that he is welcome to remain with us forever."
Erik growled "If you were not my dearest friend I would silence you permanently for what you have just said to me, but I will overlook it this time. You try my patience with your misguided attempts at telling me how to handle my son. You are trying to turn one the most unselfish decisions that I have ever made into an abomination. You know, dear doostam, exactly who and what I am. You have seen me at my worst and you know damn well that I am a monster and not worthy of being a father. Even if the boy is now willing to accept me it does not change what I would subject him to. How can I let the boy waste his life living with a monster?"
"I see nothing of the sort. I see only a man who has put himself through unnecessary pain to protect himself from being hurt once again. The boy was ready to accept you and have a relationship with you and you threw it back in his face and hurt him, as you have been hurt. But the boy is innocent, he is not your parents or a gypsy, the Shah or even Christine he is your son, and he came to you to offer you his friendship and you threw it back at him at a time when he must be suffering over losing both of his parents. The only parents that he has ever known and you have given him nothing." Nadir told him his anger mounting.
Erik stormed out of his room angrily and locked himself into his suite. Nadir could hear the boy crying in his room and silently cursed his stubborn old friend. He was too wrapped up in his own pain and martyrdom to see how wrong that he was behaving. He remembered back in Paris when he tried to get Erik to realize that his behavior at the opera house was scaring Christine away. If he had listened back then, perhaps the boy would have already known him as his father. Christine might not have turned to the Vicomte to escape from him. Perhaps the two unfortunate deaths would not have occurred at the opera, and Christine and Erik would have remained in Paris. He knew that he could not tell his friend that, Erik might finally lose his temper completely and use his Punjab on him. Erik had come so far and yet could not control that darker side of him. How many years had Nadir prayed to Allah that Erik would finally see beyond the darkness inside of him and accept himself as a full-fledged man? Would he destroy Gustave as he had done with his great inventions? Or could he be made to see beyond his own hurt and find the man who is trapped inside him, held prisoner by his own pain and insecurities from his past?
Erik knew that his old friend was right; of course he wanted him to be so. For a moment he felt the stirrings of his old hope arise when the boy had accepted him even after seeing his cursed face. The boy seemed to signal that he was ready to allow Erik to become his father, but at the last moment Erik drew back, in his heart he realized that it could never be. No one could truly love a creature such as him. He was doing the boy a favor by leaving him alone. In time the boy might see that he was distancing himself out of love and selflessness, but then why did his decision feel so wrong? He could hear the boy wailing it matched his own tears. It reminded him of the same empathy that he once felt for Christine. For a time he was a comfort to her in the darkness. Perhaps the Daroga was right he should at least go in and apologize, and try to make him understand that he was thinking of Gustave's needs and not his own. He would love to let his inhibitions go and simply love the boy, but was it the right thing to do?
He reluctantly admitted to himself that he felt more alive, and less hollow, than he had in years. He dreaded the rebirth of these emotions that he had long suppressed just to keep his sanity. Love, hope and empathy were weaknesses for him. In the past these emotions had lead only to sorrow for all that they touched when they emanated from him. But he could feel his own insides burn with torment and he knew that he was too late. He did care about the boy and could not see him suffer. He was his own son, born of his love for the boy's mother. He could not turn his back on the boy, just as he could never resist his mother. He had to comfort him. If the boy would truly be upset to leave him, he would not have the heart to force him to do so.
His decision made, he steeled himself for rejection, but still gently rapped on the boy's door. He did not want to talk to the boy through walls like he had done with Christine. He wanted to get it right this time and behave as a normal man. The problem was that he was unsure as to how to approach him. He was not good with people. It had been years since he had to use any social skills to speak with someone. Nadir and Darius had put up with his gruffness and mood swings; they had little choice if they were to continue to live with him. No one had ever comforted him as a child or dried his tears, even his nanny had kept her distance she was kind to him, but never showed that she cared for him, truly cared for him in any way. He had comforted Christine successfully but it was her own father who had set him up for success. He did not have to come to her as a man, only as an angel and he could play that role well. Their relationship was based on that deception that he was not human. The boy knew differently about him, he had already pronounced him a man like everyone else.
The boy acknowledged Erik knock with a firm request that he go away.
"It is me, son. I would like to speak with you." Erik pleaded through the door.
"I don't want to see anyone, especially not you. You have made your intentions towards me perfectly clear. You want to send me to live far away from you, with strangers. You don't want me here, just like you did not want Maman."
Erik wanted to fix the boy, but it was easier to repair objects than relationships. He could make almost any inanimate object but a person's heart was hard to repair. His own heart had been broken so many times that it was beyond repair. Perhaps that was why Nadir was right, he was terribly broken, he did not know how to heal either himself or the child.
"Please Gustave" Erik implored using his voice. "I could speak to you through walls like I did your mother when she was your age, but surely you know that I am far from being an angel. I am not very astute at talking to people. I have not had much experience with it for a long time."
He heard the boy sigh and then he told Erik "Alright, you can come in, but I have little to say to you."
Erik gently opened the door. He could see that Gustave's eyes were reddened from tears he felt guilty that he had made the boy so unhappy. He needed to explain himself and do something to help the boy feel better. The boy looked at him defiantly.
Erik stumbled with what to say to him "Gustave, son I did not mean to hurt your feelings. I had only your best interests in mind when I said that perhaps I could find a family for you. Nothing in my life ever ends, uh well happily. I do not want you to share my fate."
"Perhaps if you treated people better they would be nicer to you." The boy retorted.
"That would work Gustave if I were a normal man, but you have seen my face it is not the only part of me that bears scars. Your mother once told me that my soul was as distorted as my face, and she was right. I do not know how to speak like a normal man because my life has never been normal. Do you understand me at all?" Erik asked the boy in frustration.
"Not really." Gustave admitted.
"Let me show you". Erik removed his robe and unbuttoned his shirt, revealing his scarred chest. "These scars were not put there by God, as those on my face were; these were my gift from mankind. When I was your age, I was forced to live in a cage and display myself like a circus monkey. I had no toys or fine clothing or even a roof over my head. I was given only spoiled food to survive on, but most of all hate. For this reason it is hard for me to trust or to love anyone. "
The boy looked at him in shock his anger vanished.
"I'm sorry, Father. I did not understand you. I thought that you did not want me." He told him.
Erik sat down on Gustave's bed and peered into his aqua eyes, they were so like his own. "Of course I want you son. I would be a fool if I did not. You are the only really good thing to ever come from me. I just do not want to see you hurt. You have already suffered enough by losing your mother and Raoul. I would rather remain alone than see you come to grief from linking your fate to mine. So now do you understand why I do not want you to get too close to me? It is not because I do not love you or want you. It is because I want to keep you pure and safe and innocent, as your mother once was when she was a child. To be near me is to court death and danger. Nothing good will ever come of it." Erik told him sadly. He looked away. He did not want the boy to see his tears.
The boy put his arms around his father's waist. "You are wrong, Father. You are not bad with people if you try. I don't care what you say I think that we should try to get to know one another. You know a lot about many things and I want you to teach me. My papa used to take me hunting and fishing, taught me how to ride and even about girls. You know a lot about music and inventing machines. I have seen your library so I know that you know other things as well. I want you to teach me, and maybe I can teach you some things too like how to talk to people better and make people like you more. If they got to know you maybe they would treat you better and you would not have to be alone anymore. Would you try father?" he pleaded.
Erik looked at Gustave. "If that is what you truly want boy. We could try, but I am afraid of the consequences."
"But as long as we love one another everything will be alright. That is what Papa used to tell me." Gustave told him.
Erik laughed sardonically mumbling to himself "Omnia Vincit Amor. The fop was full of platitudes. Easy to teach when the world admires you."
"What do you mean?" Gustave asked.
"Never mind child, I was thinking out loud. Love has only brought me sorrow until now Gustave. It has been a long time since I either looked for it or believed in it." Erik mused mournfully.
"You did love my mother though? You admitted that you did earlier." he challenged.
"Yes I did son, I used to believe that she and I were soulmates. That she would make my music take flight and that I could make her spirit and my voice combine. I thought that she would ease my loneliness, and I hers if I could get her to see who I really was, underneath my grotesque face. I was a young fool" He told Gustave bitterly.
"I will make you believe in love again father. Maybe someday you can get married and have more children. I have always wanted a brother or a sister." He told Erik.
"No son." He said quietly "Your mother was the only woman that I was capable of loving. She was unique. I will never find another like her."
Gustave smiled "I don't believe that. I will find you a wife. Then you and I will both have a big and loving family just like you always wanted."
Erik laughed "Now you sound like Nadir. I am afraid that I am too old to believe in fairytale's son, but if you really prefer to stay with me than live with a real family then I would welcome that. I did not mean to make it sound like I wanted to reject you. I just want to see you happy so that you can have the opportunities that my face has made it impossible for me to have."
Gustave approached him and put his arms around Erik's waist. "I will never leave you father. I promise you that. I don't mind having a different sort of family, like we have here with you, me, Nadir, Darius and even Simone if I could get her to like you."
Erik was touched at his words and he stooped down to hug him. "You really are an exceptional child Gustave, like your mother. You have a very kind heart. I will keep you with me, and never send you away if that is what you truly want. We can, as you said, teach one another. I will show you all that I know and when the time comes it will all be yours, in return you can teach me how to act around people, and how to be a good father."
"You already are a good father. I only told you otherwise because you hurt my feelings. I thought that we had become friends." Gustave told him.
"Thank you." Erik whispered tearfully. "That means everything to me. Then we are alright with one another? You are not upset with me anymore?" He asked gently.
"We are more than alright. Thank you explaining yourself to me and making me understand. I love you Father." Gustave told him.
"I love you too son." Erik replied hoarsely. They embraced once more and held one another tightly once again.
