When I next awoke, I expected to see Mademoiselle Giry sitting before me, but instead was surprised to see Erik sitting in the chair across from me again. He had his eyes half closed and was humming a tune I did not recognize. It almost lulled me back to sleep, but I fought the urge and tried to stay awake as I knew this may be the last opportunity I had to speak with him. I spoke quietly trying not to jolt him out of his reverie, "Bonjour Monsieur."
His eyes flew open and he regarded me with some degree of interest. "Ah, you are finally awake I see, shall we continue then?"
I nodded wishing I had my notebooks back so I could write all of this down, but I knew I would have to try to rely on my sometimes faulty memory.
"I believe we had left off during my stay in Persia, correct?" he asked. When I nodded, he continued, "When I left Persia, I did not know quite what to do with myself. I had been the servant of so many men over the years, it felt strange to finally be on my own. I wandered around Europe for a time, desperately looking for something, something to fill this void I felt in my life. I finally came back to my home in France to see my mother once again…
I had arrived early in the morning at my mother's home after having traveling all night in an effort to get there before the first rays of dawn. I did not want to arouse any suspicions from the townsfolk as they had always been frightened of me, even when I was just "the monster who lived in the mansion on the hill", they were foolish people. Thankfully, I had managed to push the horse a bit faster through the night to be at her doorstep before dawn. In an effort to try and observe some of the niceties of society, I put my horse in the stable and walked up to the door and knocked. There was no answer at first, which did not surprise me considering the hour, but after the second and third knock, I was getting impatient. Finally, the door opened a slight crack and a white face peered out from the door.
"Erik!" the woman gasped.
I bowed, "Mademoiselle Perrault."
She opened the door for me and I stepped into the parlor surveying my surroundings. The house had changed little since I was a child and took my flight from here. There were small changes though and from the look of them, it appeared that my dear mother had attempted to erase any memory that I had lived there. The piano was now covered with a heavy drapery, and the architecture books that once lined the shelves in the library were not bare and dust covered. In fact, the entire house smelled of mold and dust, almost deathlike and I shivered. "Mademoiselle, where is my mother?" I asked her.
"She is dead," Mademoiselle Perrault told me simply. When she saw my surprised look, her face crumpled, "Oh, Erik, I thought you knew. I thought that was why you came back. The funeral will be held this morning at the church in town."
My heart hardened, so she had managed to evade my presence yet again. Damn her! She could never find the time for me and even in death, she had made it so I could not pay my last respects, having the funeral in the town! In front of all those foolish, unworthy people! I paced back and forth across the prized Persian rug my Grandfather had bought my Mother when she and my father moved here.
"The house is to be given to the church tomorrow, your mother had grown quite religious in your absence," Mademoiselle Perrault told me. "You are welcome to spend the day here today and take anything you wish, I believe that most of her affects will be sold to charity after the church takes over."
I bowed again, "Thank you Mademoiselle. I will stay for the day then," I told her. She curtsied and left the room in a hurry. When I heard her small footsteps echoing in the hallway and was certain she had left this wing of the house, I tore the drapery off the piano and settled down at the bench. I sighed fingering some of the keys and thinking of how I used to spend so many evenings in front of the piano with my mother's friend Adele Giry. She was the one bright spot in my childhood, someone who understood the power of music. I remembered playing for her night after night, coming up with new tunes to try and make her smile. But all happy memories have their sad moments too, and I could not help but reflect on the night she left our home. I remembered her saying that I had helped reawaken her love of music and she would be going to Paris to join a small theater troupe that had taken her on as a ballerina, and I half wondered what had happened to her. I decided at that moment that after playing my mother a Requiem Mass tonight in the rectory, I would travel to Paris to find Adele.
He stopped there for a moment his eyes closing. "The Requiem I played for her that night was something that could not be equaled anywhere. I lost myself in that piece, pouring out my soul's frustration and sadness into it. I knew then that my passion wasn't stonemasonry, it wasn't inflicting terror on those less fortune, it was music. And so I followed my passion to Paris, to Adele and her new family, to the Opera House above us…"
