Prolog 1925
It was cold. The sun had already disappeared when the cab stopped in front of the ruins of the estate. Raoul hadn't spoken a word on the way there and the young priest had done the same. It was strange to return to this place again after such long time. He almost thought to hear her as she called in the house after him. Although his memories still let lively pictures appear befor his inner eye, it seemed that eternity separated him from these events nevertheless. He wished that also he had ended his journey now.
The estate looked as old as he felt. Old and left. And a little sad. For many years the Chateau stood emptily, in the past, he had rented it out for some time, later than used it where he spent the summer months, if it was unbearably rainy in London. But withour her this place seemed incomplete, as incomplete like everything was without her.
How often had he driven with the equipage over the white gravel of which withered bushes proliferated now? As lovely and fairytale, this estate had looked once. She had called it a fairytale castle. How much he missed her, Christine, his angel!
The reddish light of the breaking evening lent the balcony which once has been hers as strange gleam. Here and there pale spots darted over the weathered façade of the chateau, when the waves threw the last sun beams on it, reflected from the surface of the near lake.
His hand clung on the arms of his wheelchair, when his look was falling lovingly on the bed in which he had had plant roses so many years ago. White roses always had been her favorite flowers and she had cared about the flowerbed herself. After more as forty years without care nothing had remained as a neglected grounding hill, on which the weeds proliferated. He sighed. It hurt him see what had become out of their home. And he was missing her.
Shaking the head he averted the look to the rusty bars of the court entry which was decorated by the family arms. His fingers were stiff of the damp cold of the rainy fall day and he twisted the face while he tried, get them off the armrests to turn to the young priest. Sébastien would take care of it, he thought confidently. He would let sent a letter to him in the evening, and then provide that somebody made this chateau what it had been before again. And he then would make this place available to other person, perhaps as a hotel. It would be a good hotel with an almost perfect location on the edge of Paris. He sighed deeply and watched the priest a while, who silently stood besides him and stared at the greenish lake. Christine and he had thought once, not for a long time, they could start a new life here till the nightmare had caught them up once more. But this had been 1881 and Raoul seemed old to himself by now.
He mentioned the hand of the priest closed around his shoulder and felt that the young man threw a worried smile to him. The boy who had accompanied him back to Paris. It had been his wish and Raoul hadn't been able to change his mind. However he had secretly been gratefully for not having to make this last visit alone.
"It is cold, Monsieur Le Comte,", the priest finally said and broke a silence that had been something almost sacred with that. "I think it is better if we go back to our hotel. You must have a rest before our journey back to London!"
Raoul winced. This boy treated him with a warmth and looked him after as if it would be his own son. He smiled sadly. A son ... Christine had treated him so. Every time when she had the feeling to neglect him. And he had treated Christine so, within the last hard weeks of her illness. Before his inner eye her pale face appeared in the white pillows, dark sad eyes smiling still full love despite everything, He remembered well that she had promised him never to leave him until the end -- to stay with him for ever. And then she had died far too young. He blinked an annoying tear from the eye and finally nodded at the priest, completely confused by this memory.
"You are right, I am not as young as you. I should stay no longer here outside around this time."
He actually didn't mind to spend some hours still here, but one more frequently forgot apparently the time in his age. He only had expressed the desire to see his old hunting lodge once again, and not to spend the complete evening there. And he hadn't even suspected that his short stay in Paris would whirl up so many memories. This day had indeed exerted him, exerted more than he would ever admit it. First this exhibition in the upper floor of the opera and his visit with Sébastien on the old family cemetery. Now this sight of his earlier home . completely neglected. He shook his head and allowed the priest top let off the brakes of the wheelchair and shoved him back over the white gravel with the many grasses which proliferated through it by now. He cast a last sad look at the Chateau, while the priest and the chauffeur raised him together into the cab, which finally should take them back to their hotel.
The priest didn't ask any questions. He had given up because he knew that it irritated the Comte. If he wanted to tell about his wife, then he did this normally unasked. The priest had learned from the strange occurrences also some time ago, that happened in at the Parisian opera. A disfigured genius had obtained the cellars of the opera house and blackmailed the management for money, interfered himself in occupation questions. This only happend because he desired a woman whom the Comte loved, Christine. The so called phantom of the opera kidnapped Christine on the end and threatened to kill Raoul if she doesn't decide in favor of a life with him. The priest couldn't understand why the Comte voluntarily went to an exhibition in the opera which had to be a place of the horror for him anyway, he had had finally to let his life almost that night over forty years ago. All the Priest knew, was that Raoul had survived only with the help of Christine. He admired the courage of this woman to touch and even to kiss a man like the phantom, to save only around the man whom she loved. This kiss had given the life to them both. He knew that Christine and Raoul escaped with a boat into freedom and that the mob found only the empty catacombs of the opera and destroyed everything at that time. He didn't know what had become of the phantom. Nevertheless it was sure that Raoul and Christine finally got married anyway and had a short but happy marriage.
He looked at the Comte. He had got old very old. In the past, nobody would have thought that this once could become of the man, the priest saw in front of himself: a collapsed, gray, sad man with a face furrowed by deep worry lines. When Christine died, he had lost everything overnight for which he had lived0. From this day he had got older. Older and with the time he got very ill, too. But he had remained unshakeable. The priest remembered that even the outbreak of the war hadn't filled him with consternation so deeply like the death of his wife. Already at this time the Comte had been bound to the wheelchair and for this reason nobody wanted to hear something from the graduate of the military academy anymore.
After some time they had arrived at the hotel. The priest took Raoul to his room and helped him to undress himself and to put on the bed. After he had put the rolled up poster of any opera he didn't know, next to Raoul, he wanted to leave the room but Raoul held him with an exceptionally solid handle at the arm and forced him to turn to him once more.
"Wait!"Raoul slowly solved his bony fingers of the arm of the priest. "Give it to me!"
The priest wrinkled the forehead and cast a doubting look at the object which the Comte indicated now. He would have been supposed to know Raoul well enough by now, to know how it would end. Since he could think Raoul collected everything, connected with the Opéra around 1881, the time his wife had sung there. He had fitted a whole room out, omly collecting keepsakes from his wife and her former opera career around there in his London apartment. This poster seemed to be only another achievement in the size rich collection of the Comte. Sometimes he had the feeling that Raoul looked for something , one special memory, and hasn't been able to find it till now. He shook the head. He should not care. All that mattered was to covince Raoul, that the Roman Catholic church was considered as the only dignified heir for the fortune of the last Chagny. He tried to get Raouls liking already for years and only this had been the reason to accompany the old man to Paris and to listen to all the confusing stories. Admitting, the history about this phantom had actually been interesting. But his time slipped away slowly. The Comte got old and still hadn't named any heir, as far as was known to him. Sighing finally he gripped into his coat bag and did what the comte had asked him for. With trembling hands he pulled the dirty, formerly white thing which the Comte hadn't wanted to give out since their visit at the Opéra.It was astonishing that everyone at the opera remembered Raoul after so many years and, what was even much more remarkable, they left the desired things to him at a really low price. As usually Raoul had wasted sums of money to buy old scenery parts, properties for operas and outfit parts, everything to remind him of his deceased wife. He seemed more stuckly on the opera than ever since her death. All earnings of this exhibition, organized to honor itsbuilder Charles Garnier who would have his one hundredth birthday celebrated this year, should befit a good purpose. Apart from a couple of posters, some sheets of music and old oufit parts which had been partial in a really pitiful condition, they sold old sheets of music. There had been nothing worth wasting all the money, the priest thought. And he had come from London with the Comte for all this. Thoughtfully te priest crinkled hies forehead and looked at the old man. With cold, trembling hands Raoul reached for the shapeless object and looked at it for a while.
"It is strange, isn't it? It is as if it would have been waiting for me all the years there below. One told me she has been found in 1907 when one locked the phonografic notes ", Raoul declared weakly. "Christine has often talked about it. Of it and of him ..."
The priest twitched with the shoulders. An outfit part, nothing more. Somebody had to have lost it there below and long time it must have been there in the dirt, untill finally somebody found it. Actually it was was in a really wretched condition and nobody seemed to have made the effort to clean it at least.
"This is quite certainly his mask... And this notes...," he indicated a single half torn sheet of paper, that lay besides him on the night cupboard, " this is Don Juans triumph. His opera... a real masterpiece which was never performed and disappeared with him."
The priest got closer and after a short hesitation he sat down on the edge of the comtes bed. His mask? His opera? How could Raoul be sure in such a way? He was old, his eyes weren't the best any more and between the events of that time and today were more than forty years. It could be any mask from the outfit fund... as well as it could be any score a singer has lost, ... the test of a musician to compose in his leisure time. After over forty years noboby could be sure to have found remains of the phantom of the opera. His look glided on the paper shred, because he couldn't find another way to describe the sheet, and recognized notes and text of a song on it. Forehead wrinkling he tries to decipher the text which had unusually been written in red ink with the hand. Perhaps this actually was a valuable original -- a unicum. He understood nothing of notes or music, nevertheless the passage which was still got well caught his eye:
In the demon's talons
The Silence endlos swirls around me
Fear clasps my constrained soul
The silent language inside resounds
Thoughts - Silence speaks ...
In his throat, he felt a strange burning, felt that he become nervous, all inside him longed to hear these notes... this music. He didn't know the aria -- he had no idea about operas and he wasn't interested in them either and nevertheless only the possibility which offered this music seemed to captivate him. He forcefully put the piece of paper from his hand again. "What was on so important to these remains paper to go to Paris for it?" Clearing himself, he turned his look towards Raoul.
"I quite don't understand why you seek his music. Haven't you been running away from him for all your life? And now you are pleased about an old piece of paper with notes and a mask which could be just as good out of any other old opera?" he asked irritatedly, about his own sudden curiosity to be able listen to this music. For this reason he really wasn't here now. "How can you be so sure? How can you be lucky after all you told me about this...man?" The priest shook doubtingly the head. Raoul had never talked about the phantom differently than of a monster.
Trembling the Comte touched his hand and pushed it gently.
"It was his life's work", he said confidently, " once he wanted that it is buried with him, but I couldn't fulfill this wish for him. He has written the opera for her, still before he knew her and I will bring what remains of it back to its right place now. He would have wanted it so. Christine has talked so often about Don Juan and I think she has regretted to have never performed it in front of an audience. I know this music and I won't be able to forget it. I hear it every day of my life since I have fled from Erik in this boat." The Comte ceased and looked at the mask. It hadn't changed. It still looked just the same as in that evening when he had already given up his life. Leather, covered with soft white fabric, which was teared at some corners now. Also it was been the victim of the time too, but it and this sheet of music were the only, what still remained of Erik's existence. Nobody should have the opportunity to hear this opera or even to publish it once again. No, not after everything what had happened.
"Erik... was the phantom?"the priest asked and tore Raoul apart from his thoughts.
"Yes, he was. But with the time I learned to mention him at his name, has Christine did." He sighed. "And this aria was the last I heard when we fled with the boat out of the catacombs. He sang it for Christine as a farewell. It resounded like a lament through the catacombs. I haven't heard it since then any more but my head has never forgotten it ... and Christine hasn't ... She has often sung it secretly when she thought I wouldn't get it. He called it 'Hellfire' . It has been sung by Christine only a single time on stage" His look got melancholy when he stroked the mask almost tenderly. But this could't be the thing he had looked for all the years.
The priest got up and stepped to the window. He opened the curtains and saw on the streets of Paris.
"She surely was like you. She has had the melody for all her life in the ear. I have heard that one can particularly intensively remember the worst minutes in his life."
The Comte shook the head.
"No, this wasn't so. It surely weren't the worst minutes in her life. She has missed Erik every single day of her life. And, if you actually think that Christine Erik has kissed to free me, I must disappoint you. She hasn't stopped up to her death loving him and I have needed a long time to see this. I still hear his lamenting voice ... singing this song"
The priest closed the curtains and turned away. He disliked to penetrate into the life of the Comte so deeply. In addition, he had made up his mind about Christine till now. This beautiful, young woman. What the Comte said now didn't fit in his ideas at all. But he didn't want to burden the Comte further and made movements to go.
"Please stay!" Raoul exclaimed.
"Monsieur Le Comte, I really wouldn't like you ... I think you really need rest now. The train goes tomorrow very early and the journey to England will get exhausting for you!"
"Be silent and sit down!"Raoul gave him roughly. "If I tell it to nobody today, I will never do it. I would like that somebody finally learns what has happened at that time."
The priest sat down once more. He knew that he should obey better. The Comte had developed the peculiarity to get very insulted if one didn't comply with his will. Well, who wanted to offend the one from whom the Roman Catholic church expected to achieve a considerable sum of money?
" I know, anyway what has happened at that time . ", he threw in weakly. If he was honest, he didn't even feel like listening to the experiences of the Comte for the repeated time, no matter who much it fascinated him.
But Raoul shook definingly his head.
"You know nothing! You have no idea what happened, after Christine and I had fled ..."
The Comte fetched a deep rattling breath once again and clenched his chest anxiously with the hand. He then started to tell the story which had heavily weighed on him so long. A story which was quite different than the priest had expected it.
