Author's note: Here, part of Susan Kay's Phantom is featured to describe a meeting between the Phantom and part of his scarlet past – one of the changes I've added to this version of my retelling. The parts from Phantom throughout the rest of this phic are indicated by ' marks and italics, FYI. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Sir Andy, Ms. Kay, Mssrs. Yeston/Kopit, M. Leroux, and whomever else I may be forgetting own POTO. I don't, which I regret, but one can't waste one's life brooding about things one doesn't have at the moment.
Chapter Eight –
Nadir Khan
The Phantom narrates…
'I remember the evening very well. It was…1881 and a cold, cheerless Paris mist had shrouded the city, bringing an early dusk. Seized by a sudden desire for fresh air and exercise, I ventured out into the dark streets some considerable time before theater hour. The hood of my opera cloak hid the mask, and thus attired I safely escaped notice from passersby. To anyone who saw me I was simply another…Parisian, hurrying home out of the cold and threat of approaching rain.
I had reached the Rue de Rivoli and was brooding resentfully on the sad, blackened remains of the Tuileries palace when a rising wind whipped away the last of the mist and began to drive storm clouds overhead. As I turned to retrace my steps, the heavens opened; rain lashed down in torrents from the leaden sky and within minutes the street was awash with water. When you can no longer bear to get wet with total indifference, you know you are getting old.* I raised my hand imperiously to a passing brougham cab.
The cab drew into the curb some distance ahead and waited for me. Almost immediately a man coming out of an apartment block on the same side of the road saw the cab and began to hurry toward it with an exclamation of delight. I saw nothing of him except his back, but he was wearing an opera cloak, like myself, and at this hour I could guess his destination with very little trouble.
"My cab, I think, monsieur," I hissed with a hostility that made him step aside in surprise.
Instinctively averting my face from his gaze, I swung into the carriage, slammed the door shut, and rapped my gold-topped walking stick on the dividing wall.
"To the Opera!" I said curtly, and sat back waiting to be obeyed.
To my astonished fury the door opened and the carriage rocked gently beneath the weight of the man who climbed inside.
I looked up, but the oath on my lips never took breath.
"Drive on, fellow," said this impertinent intruder calmly. "It so happens that I, too, am bound for the Opera. This gentleman and I are very well acquainted and I know he will be very happy to share the journey with me…Is that not so, Erik?"
I could not reply. All I could do was stare at Nadir Khan with numbed disbelief.
"Will that be all right, monsieur?" shouted the driver uncertainly.
"Yes," I snapped. "Drive on!"
As the brougham lurched out into the open road, Nadir took off his opera hat and his gloves and laid them on the seat at his side. The first thing I noticed about him was his hair. Once black and luxuriant, it was now thin and very gray, making him look at least sixty. I was shocked at the change in him, shocked and horrified.
"Well, Erik," he said, "this is indeed a pleasant surprise." '
Now, at this point in my story, I fear that the details of my past must come to light – as if anything about me could ever be described with such a word. Light.
I had been born in Rouen. My mother, Madeleine, had been quite young and very beautiful, but her husband – my father – had died shortly before my birth. From the instant that my mother had laid eyes on my face, deformed from birth, she had hated me. The first thing that I ever wore was a mask: silk then, and the first cage that I had ever been placed into. My mother had despised me, had been frightened of me, and had abused me, which was all I remember of her. I was never allowed to leave the house, and the only true friends I had ever called my own had been my mother's pet spaniel, Sasha, and one of my mother's childhood friends. Sasha had loved me, in her dog-like way, and my mother's friend, Antoinette, had always treated me with respect and kindness whenever she had come to visit. Still, I had seemed doomed to an eternal captivity within the prison of that house in Rouen, held back from the world by the chains of my mother's hate and my horrific face.
Then, one day, I could no longer stand it. I ran away from my mother and my prison, and soon met up with a gypsy circus that had been traveling about on the road. The cruel, villainous ringmaster of that circus learned of my freakish face and I had become a captive, yet again. I escaped the circus eventually, after several years of abuse and torment as the resident freak show specimen, and roamed all over Europe, letting my footsteps take me to any number of places. When I was living as a magician, singer, and musician in the snowy land of Russia, a man who claimed to hail from the distant land of Persia appeared in my dwelling one day, saying that he came to me at the behest of the Shah of Persia, who wished for me to come and perform some of my wonders at court. Somewhat against my better judgment – but with nothing better to do, as Russia was beginning to bore me – I decided to accompany this man back to his homeland.
Of course, that man was Nadir Khan: the Daroga, a powerful law officer in the Persian court. He became a sort of conscience to me, perhaps even what might have been called a friend, which is something that I hadn't had for quite a long time. He acted as the voice of reason – of humanity – during my stay in Persia, and we both owed each other our lives on several occasions.
In Persia, I had soon found myself playing the part of one of the most exalted, feared, and powerful men in the Shah's court: an architect, magician…and executioner. His mother, the beautiful but cruel and manipulative khanum, grew an unearthly interest in me, and when I displeased her, she arranged for my punishment with both rage and glee. I repeatedly defied her, and finally, she grew tired of playing little games with me. She attempted to have me poisoned, but somehow I survived this. As is obvious, she then resorted to more open tactics – she sent Nadir to have me arrested, tortured, and then executed. Nadir helped me to escape, and I saw nothing more of him for several years.
' "That is entirely a matter of opinion," I retorted, trying to hide my conflicting emotions behind a thin veneer of sarcasm. "What the devil brings you to Paris after all this time?"
"Oh"– he shrugged – "I have been here for many years now, ever since I was released from Mazanderan."
"Released?" I echoed, with grim foreboding. "How long were you held?"
"Five years." he said with indifference.
I looked out the window at the rain-lashed streets and my hand tightened on the walking stick with a mixture of rage and grief. Five years in a Mazanderan jail! No wonder he looked more than sixty…It was a miracle he had come out alive!
And what on earth was I going to do now, faced with the one person in this world that I could not simply remove from the dark paths of my solitude?'
The conversation became even lovelier from there. Nadir and I somehow got off onto the subject of my current occupation and living place, through some slips in my guard, and he quickly reverted to his ever-irritating conscience character, asking me quite pointedly where exactly I lived and, when I refused to tell him, why I did so. We reached the opera house and I quickly swung out of the carriage, warning him sternly to keep to his own business and not interfere with mine. I explicitly told him to stay away from my home.
But, of course, he wouldn't listen.
I knew that.
He never did listen to me, even when my commands were for his own good.
* * * * * *
'One evening…I returned to my house to find the alarm bell ringing. I knew there was no one on the lake…so it had to be the torture chamber!**
My heart gave a sickening lurch of fear as I considered who it must be.
Turning off the electrical supply, I rushed into the chamber in a breathless panic. The room was still hot as a furnace, but it was in pitch darkness now and I could only dimly see the blacker outline of a body which swung from the iron tree in the corner.
I stood absolutely still, paralyzed with horror, too shocked even to cry out.
Why? Why must the only victim of this virtually obsolete mantrap be my honest, stubborn, foolhardy friend? It was my fault…all my fault…I had known what he was like, I should have dismantled the whole device as soon as I knew he was on the premises.
Nadir, I warned you…I warned you to keep away!
It was a long time before I could conquer my revulsion and horror sufficiently to cut the body down and switch on the lights.
The blackened, distorted face and the bulging eyes were almost unrecognizable; it was a full minute before I suddenly realized that I was not looking at Nadir at all, and my relief was so great that I began to laugh hysterically.
Returning to the drawing room I sat down at the piano and played Chopin's Prelude in B minor, sotto voce, until I was calm enough to go back and examine the body with indifference and rationality.
The clothing alone was sufficient to place it now: I knew this man.'
It was Joseph Buquet, the senile old chief of the flies. How he had stumbled upon my dark underground world was beyond me – perhaps he had somehow lost himself in the cellars beneath the opera house. It was an easy thing to do, if one didn't know his way around well enough.
As I did.
So it wasn't Nadir, but another man entirely. I felt remorse at his death, for it had been part of my home, my torture chamber, that had killed him. And yet…yet it was really an accident, after all. I had taken the proper precautions to make certain that no one came here, as I had no wish to have a hand in anyone's death, preferring instead to live my life in quiet and in peace…except for my tumultuous, yet somehow exhilarating relationship with Christine, Nadir's occasional meddling in my affairs, and my current occupation as the Opéra Populaire's resident ghost.
There wasn't much else I could do except to take the unfortunate fellow back up to the surface and arrange him so that it appeared as if he had committed suicide – as, in a way, he had. I looked on the whole situation with a bit of pity then. He must have had a hard enough life already; if I had really wanted to, I could have even said that his death had been a mercy.
Nadir would not believe that I could have such thoughts, but I could.
And did.
This episode over with, I went back to my home and turned my thoughts to the upcoming performance of 'Il Muto', where my beautiful Angel, Christine, would sing and outshine all of the other stars in the sky…
* * * * * *
Author's note: YAY! I'm much more happy with this now that I've added Nadir in; it just makes it so much better. You have to love Nadir too…he may annoy the heck out of Erik, but he's a great guy. Onwards, to 'Il Muto', shall we? (By the way, Cat – this chapter was for you.)
* Note: You can imagine Erik as being however old you want – I just kept that line in there to show how he recognizes the fact that he's quite a bit older than…ahem!, certain people *cough cough, Christine!* However, I didn't like his age in the book, so I'm taking him to be about in his mid-thirties here: a younger version of Phantom, but don't shoot me. It's artistic license. He's also not prone to heart attacks either in this one – I opted for the ALW version there. ^_^
** We all know of Erik's torture chamber, do we not? I thought so. I just kept this in here because I needed it for Buquet's death, but it isn't featured in the final scene with Raoul and the Persian. Sorry, but I again opted for ALW's version for this aspect of the story.