Chapter 10.
Raoul could not continue Erik's story. He was too overwhelmed by the emotions that doing so had wrought. He retreated into his inner sanctum and closed the door gently. Christine called to him to come down and eat dinner but he was not hungry. The fate of the Daroga still haunted him after all of these years. If only he could have saved him that night, he would not feel these crashing waves of guilt and sorrow, which occasionally washed over him like a stormy sea sucking him in. All of his present happiness was paid for by the blood of others, far more worthy than him. Why did God choose to spare him at the expense of others? He was not worthy of this ending, he was not worthy of anything, he was not a saint only a sinner, and he was no angel only a demon. Yet despite who and what he was he had been blessed with everything that he once striven for, acceptance, a family and most of all love. He stared into the darkness seeking its comfort, as he always had. In the darkness he felt strong, the equal of anyone, the darkness could mask the worst parts of him and highlight the best.
Christine knew exactly what her husband was thinking. He occasionally had these bouts of depression, 'strangely it was this sort of mood that drew us closer back then' she thought to herself. It made him appear to be more human than I had thought him to be, less dangerous and frightening. I knew then that I had been wrong about him, we both had been, Raoul and I; the real Raoul that is, not Erik the man who had assumed the Vicomte's identity. Erik was not the soulless beast that they had believed him to be, but a man, a broken man, who had chosen to imprison himself in his own cage of invulnerability rather than allow the world to see him as he truly was. Even she had once been guilty of letting his face determine what he was in her eyes, until one day she saw him differently.' Gently, she opened the door, bathing her husband in a small halo of light. Just then he looked like the celestial being that she once thought him to be. She could see him sitting on the piano bench his head placed between his hands and he was sobbing.
Christine went to him and placed her arms around him firmly claiming him and clasping his thin but well sculpted body to hers. She gave him a loving kiss on his cheek and whispered gently "I love you Erik" letting the forbidden name cross her lips once again. She had not said it out loud for a long time.
She did not let herself use it often, even in the privacy of their home. It had been a necessity that they not use it, just in case. Early on they decided that it would be best to get into the practice of never calling him anything other than Raoul for fear of the name 'Erik' slipping out unbidden, endangering all of them. Accidents do happen in the excitement of a moment. This time they had been speaking of Erik and therefore that name was appropriate for the moment. Erik such a beautiful name, and a perfect name for the man who was her husband, Raoul did not fit him at all, not because he was not an elegant man, with regal bearing. In that sense he was Raoul's equal. He was an imposing man in both bearing and nobility. Raoul was too effete for him. She wondered how Raoul, the real Raoul, would have adapted himself to the often-harsh climate of Canada, to the lack of amenities that he had been born and accustomed to. Certainly not as she did. She had been born to live in a place like Quebec, a place that was not so different than where she had grown up, the small Swedish town outside of Uppsala, Vattholma, where she lived until she was six years old. Erik had adapted himself to many places and thus Quebec was no different for him than anywhere else, except here he was completely accepted, because he had not come alone, as he had in his other past places. He had come with her beside him. She was able to, first get herself accepted, by the people of the village, and then her husband. She slowly coaxed him out of his shell and gradually they became part of the town. Raoul's name and title also bought him acceptance, even though there were no people of title in a place as remote as this. People were still in awe of the fact that a French Vicomte had made his home among them, again it gave Erik a cachet that he might otherwise never have had.
Her husband dried his tears and then gave her a troubled smile, "Why do you love me Christine? I was truly horrible back then. I destroyed everything that I touched. People who we both cared about died because of me, and my selfish obsession," He told her brokenly.
She gave him a dejected smile, "No, they made their own choices Erik, none of it was your fault. I was angry with you when I used those words against you. I was angry both with myself as well, because wrongfully I felt guilty, in my own right, for continuing to live on after that night. For living when others were gone after risking so much to try to help me. You and I survived, but I have made peace with what happened and my own role in it, and yours as well, we both made some mistakes, horrific ones but things happen for a reason and it is my belief that we were meant to be together and to be happy. You must learn to forgive yourself as well. They would have wanted us to go on and be happy. It is the best thing that we could do to honor their memory, not sit there and mope and rue our own poor decisions."
Erik met her azure gaze with his own emerald one, and once again absorbed Christine's undiminished beauty. "You would have been his, not mine had you and he not returned after I let both you go. You would have been happy with him and I would have likely been dead, which was the exact fate that I had consigned myself to. I had been fully prepared to die, and was resigned to accept that fate."
Christine nodded her head in agreement, "Yes, I suspect that I might have remained his and not yours, but I would have loved him in a much different way; a calmer and more serene sort of way. Our love would have been more superficial, safer, not fiery and passionate like yours and mine."
Erik laughed for the first time since he had allowed himself to fall into his depressed mood, "You mean more boring. Saner?"
Christine smiled, "You bring out my more passionate side, mon ange. You know how to make me come alive and leave all behind. Only with you can my passions soar beyond the ordinary. You recognized that long before I did. You knew what I wanted long before I knew my own heart."
Christine found his bloated lips burning into hers, "Stop talking just kiss me over and over." her husband ordered, "Talking is not necessary. It ruins the mood. Sing for me my angel of music. You know how much I adore your voice."
"But the children will hear. They are not yet asleep, I only just put them to bed," she reminded him cautiously. "What if they hear our music? Is it really safe for us to sing together?"
"It doesn't matter as much now they know much of our story; that I am not really Raoul de Chagny. I will tell them the rest of our story tomorrow so they will know all of it. They are old enough now that they will not betray us. He will not find us through them." Erik told her, adding, "We do not have to hide our music from them either anymore since they will soon learn that I was once the Phantom of the Opera."
"Do you really think that it is wise to tell them that? It might be a terrible thing for them to find out that their father is a wanted murderer," Christine reminded him.
"And let them find out in another way? They already know that you were once Christine Daae, the star of the Opera Populaire. How long do you think that it will take for them to put everything together and realize that since I am not really Raoul de Chagny, and that I wear a mask, who I really am? You were right before it is time for them to know everything before they find out from someone else or even read about it in old newspaper clippings or even current gossip from Paris. You know that there are occasional Phantom 'sightings' reported even now, and L'Epoch never fails to report them and even rehashes the whole sordid story just in case there is someone in France who has failed to hear of it," he added almost bitterly. "Each time the alleged witness drawings of my face grow more hideous, it has already gone from half deformed to fully so, and I am deformed in body as well, and smell like death."
Christine laughed at the ridiculous claims, they had repeatedly done so together since they both knew that it brought them yet more peace and less suspicion because Erik looked almost nothing like the monster that they claimed him to be. The more distorted the description, the less likely that the real Phantom would be linked to 'Raoul de Chagny'. They had both enjoyed the articles about Erik written by the young reporter Gaston Leroux in L'Echo de Paris. His articles were the most creative. Erik vowed that if he ever did tell his story to the world that it would be Leroux that he would tell it to, but he was not inclined to do so. Unfortunately there were too many dangers lurking from the past to allow him to do so. One of those was the Shah of Persia, who as of yet was still in power there. Canada was far from Persia yet there was always a chance that he would be discovered living there, and even now several decades later, Erik still did not trust that the man would not find a way to have him killed. He had after all defied him by surviving the Shah's order to have him executed once the palace was complete. The Shah had never intended that he would survive, and gain the safety and riches that Erik had so desired.
Christine took her husband by the hand and to his amusement led him to their bedroom where they made love passionately. Erik's lips caressed hers warmly, and his hands expertly explored her body, as hers did his. After all of these years of marriage they had both mapped every aspect of the other's body and knew exactly how to make one another moan in ecstasy. Not like the first time when they were both virgins and it was almost an accident. This time, as always they expertly played the other like a well loved musical anthem extolling their mutual love. When their passion had been spent they fell asleep entangled in one another's arms in a perfect state of trust of the other between them, not even a small measure of discord between them, not now or hereafter, but it was not always that way. The road to their current state of happiness had been long and bumpy.
The next morning the children awakened them. Gustave immediately asked their father in a worried tone, "Are you feeling better today?"
Erik answered the boy's question with a smile, "I am feeling much better son. The past makes me get more than a little emotional. There is much that I would change about it if I could go back and do so, particularly my disregard for the Daroga's advice. I would have accepted his friendship immediately instead of being so suspicious of him. But unfortunately I had difficulty discerning friend from foe back then. In fact I viewed all of humanity as a foe.
"Given what you have told us, I can understand why you would regard humanity as a foe. Father, people were not kind to you," Gustave told him sympathetically.
"Yes son that is true, but it was not an excuse for what I did for the Shah nor for any other killings. My disregard for human life inflicted unnecessary pain on many people. I was a monster son in the truest sense of the word. I can no longer defend what I did, nor should you," Erik insisted.
"So you want us to hate you for what you did Father. I will not do so," Gustave insisted. "Whoever you were back then and whatever you did you are not like that anymore. I know how much you care about our farm animals, dogs and horses, and of course us, and even our friends, once they get past your eccentricity in wearing a mask they are all envious of me for having a father such as you. You do not seem like a monster at all."
Erik smiled at his son, "Thank you for that compliment my son. Even I feel distant from the man that I used to be, but it was not easy for me to change into who I am today. I would like to think that if my mother had accepted me, or if the gypsies had never kidnapped me, or if I had not been rejected again by the Saracenis, and then exploited by the Shah that perhaps I would have been a completely different and better man even back then; but I cannot blame who and what I became completely on my circumstances. That would trivialize all of my victims' suffering and I am not willing to let that happen. If the Daroga taught me one lesson it was that one must take ownership of their own misdeeds every bit as much as their good works. For much of my life I inflicted the pain that I received right back at others, and bore no responsibility for what I had done. I believed my actions to be just and not ill intended. If someone was hurt or killed by me then it was their fault not mine for ill-treating others or me. Yet I was completely wrong in my approach. Their wrongs towards me did not give me the license to do the same to others. I could not right their wrongs by punishing them for their actions any more than I could absolve myself for all that I did wrong, just by claiming my own status as a victim. That is too easy of an approach and just plain wrong. We must own up to our mistakes Gustave, and, if we can, right the wrongs that we impose on others for our own selfish acts."
"When did you realize that your actions were wrong?" Gustave asked.
"Some very soon after I committed them, even before I left Persia," Erik replied.
"Was it the Persian who convinced you that your actions were wrong?" Gustave asked.
Erik shook his head no, "No, it was a child, a boy little older than you. He was a beggar child, but I could see by the quality of his torn and stained clothing and his noble bearing that he was once a child of wealth. At that point he was living on the streets and I watched people rush by him, and look away for fear of looking sympathetic to him. At first I thought that, like me, he might have a deformity but when I saw his face it was perfect, in fact underneath all of the dirt he was a handsome child. I wondered what he had done to become such a pariah, when I looked at him, I expected him to run away and scream like most children and even many adults did when I passed them by with my naked and hideous face, but he remained exactly where he was and looked at me with a searing hatred that I recognized as my own expression whenever I looked in a mirror. By then I was completely fluent in Farsi, the Persian language and the Turkmen language of the court, my accent was so good that it was barely recognized as foreign.'
'The boy's name was Habib Sharif al Qajar, he was a cousin to both the Daroga and the Shah. He was, in fact, more royal than the Shah himself because he bore the blood of both the ruling Qajar dynasty and the dynasty that ruled before them. For that reason his father had lost his life several years before in one of Nasser's purges. His father was one of my first executions, he died in a fairly simple style compared to some of my later ones, just a quick snap of my Punjab lasso and he was gone. His eldest two sons shared the same fate; they were not old maybe sixteen and seventeen. Their mother became one of the Shah's concubines and his daughters were married to some of the courtiers. I was even offered one to keep and was admittedly tempted, but I knew beyond a doubt that she would fear and loathe me just like all of the women of the court did, and I did not want to subject myself to such humiliation, and so I rejected the Shah's offer, explaining that I wanted to marry a Christian girl. He understood and supposedly gave her to another in my stead. I could see the relief in her eyes as I explained my decision not to take a wife or even a concubine at that time. I also reminded the Shah that a woman would only distract me from my work on his behalf. Luckily both for her and for me he accepted my excuses. Behind my back I am sure that he probably thought that I did not like women at all. That perhaps my deformity had rendered me incapable of having such urges, but the truth was that I did not want to take a woman without her consent, and I knew that I would never have a chance of gaining the consent of a woman whose father I had executed.'
'Anyhow when I passed Habib in an alleyway looking so forlorn, I made the mistake of dropping a gold rial into his cup. He immediately flung the coin back at me and spat into my face. I reeled away from him in shock, dismayed by the fact that even a beggar child, who had been rejected by everyone, found me so odious that he would not accept my charity. He had a shard of broken glass in his hand and intended upon using it on me. I stopped his thrust easily. I was well trained by the Punjabi to move away quickly from any physical threat to me, this threat was no exception. If he had been a man, I would have broken his neck on the spot for his attempt on my life, but he was only a boy so I spared him. Still my actions were enough to break his arm. He passed out from both the pain and hunger, and thus I picked him up and carried him into my palace in the heart of town. I asked one of my servants to call a doctor so that his arm could be set, but they refused.
"Do you have any idea who this boy is?" They asked me fearfully. "If you are smart you will take the boy right back where you found him and go about your business before the Shah finds out that you have been harboring him," my servant Mohammed told me.
"No who is he?" I asked innocently.
"He is the son of a traitor. He was only spared by the Shah because the Daroga Nadir Khan convinced him that he should due to the boy's youth. Still his punishment was to be stripped of all of his titles and thrown into the streets like a stray dog." The servant explained.
"But why would the Shah punish this child? He is only a boy." I asked innocently.
"A boy who will grow up to be a man. That boy carries the blood of all three of the most recent Persian dynasties including the Shah's Qajar grandfather, Karim Khan Zand, the man that overthrew him, and he has some Safavid blood in his veins as well. There are some here in Persia who would rather see this boy be Shah than the current one, but if the Shah were to execute the boy, he would be seen in a bad light, as a child killer, so he spared him for now, until he becomes a man, hoping that the streets will kill him, but no one will touch the boy either way by either helping him or by killing him. To help him is to help the son of the Shah's biggest rival, a boy who has more right to the throne according to many than he does, but to harm him is to harm the boy who should be Shah, many secretly sympathize with him, and will leave food out where they know that he will find it. You will find no doctor who will help you set the boy's injuries as the child might be the last patient that he would treat," Mohammed explained.
"Since no one else would do so, I treated the boy I knew something about medicine. When he woke up he looked at me with the same hatred.
"Why would you help me when I hate you Frenchman?" He challenged me.
"Because you are just a boy and should not be forced to live on the street like a dog," I replied.
"Do you know who I am?" he asked.
I replied, "Of course. Everyone does. You are a Mirza."
"Was a Mirza, until my father and brothers were executed and my mothers and sisters disgraced. I am the last of my family thanks to you." He added angrily. "I have often dreamt of killing you, the so called Angel of Death. A man touched by Shaytoon himself, and used by the Shah as his instrument of fear and death," the boy told me.
"I am not an instrument of either the Shah or Shaytoon as you call him. I am a man just like every other man, except for the fact that I am hideous to look upon," I told the boy.
He looked at me with hatred in his eyes, "Yet you kill innocents. My father, and brothers despite their superior blood, did nothing against the Shah. On the contrary, my father urged us to obey the Shah, because he was a strong and powerful king who in time would make us the equals of the British, French and the Russians. He was glad of the improvements that the cursed Shah was making to our country and the effectiveness of his rule. He did not and would not have ever opposed him, but that was not good enough for the Shah, he still wanted us all dead or disgraced, but could not find anyone bold enough to harm us until you came along and did so."
I looked away feeling uncomfortable for the first time, "So your father was not a traitor then?" I asked, "I did not know, at the time I did not yet know your language fluently."
The boy replied bitterly, "No, very few of the men that you have killed have been guilty, only in the Shah's mind. The Shah treats everyone as a traitor even his closest supporters like my father, and you are his favorite instrument to do so. I heard that you even dishonored my sister Fatima, by rejecting her. It was said that she was so cursed that even Shaytoon himself would not have her. She killed herself because of you."
His words hit me like daggers through the stomach. I felt very much shaken, "No." I told him in despair. "I did not want to dishonor her with my vile face and hands that is why I did not take her."
"You are a vile beast both inside and out. You are a curse to this country," The boy insisted.
"I am sorry. I did not know," I replied.
"So you did not know that you killed my father and brothers and dishonored my sister?" The boy asked contemptuously.
"I did not know what had happened as a result. I was told only that they were all traitors, and I did not want your sister to be shamed by her association with me. I wanted her to have a better husband, a man not a beast. I did not speak your languages at the time," I told him trying to explain.
"It excuses nothing." The boy admonished, "Nothing at all. I demand that you return me to where you found me."
"But you might die if you are not properly taken care of," I told him.
"I will die anyhow, and I am ready for my martyrdom. The Shah has me marked for death the moment that I am old enough to incur his wrath and then you and I shall meet again, but I am not afraid of death. I shall be a Shahid like my father and brothers. Allah will reward me in heaven. Take me back there now." The boy demanded, sounding every bit the King that he was born to be.'
'I did as he said and returned him to the spot, leaving a bag of gold coins in his pocket, and some food with him as well, along with bandages and other things. I never knew what became of the boy, I expect that he got his wish and became a martyr. Of course only a few days later I found myself in trouble over taking care of him, but the Shah did not openly tell me of the danger that I was in. He was waiting for me to complete my palace for him, before imposing his death sentence upon me. He knew that I was creating a marvel for him unsurpassed by any in all of the Middle East, and to his needs. I only found out his true intent for me, when Monsieur Khan stepped in to save me from what the Shah had in store for me."