Chapter the Third

I woke as the first hazy light of false dawn began to touch the eastern horizon. In the first moments, my mind muddled by sleep, it seemed to me as though I was still a boy, with all the long years of my life before me, and that the sordid business that became my story had not yet occurred. This blissful ignorance, like the birds that scattered as I roused my mangled body, were frail and had dissipated entirely before the focus had fully returned to my eyes.

Paris too was already beginning to awake, and I knew that I must seek some seclusion, unless I wished my death to be the public sport of Her noble citizens. I stood, my formal attire much maligned for my recent adventure, and sought out some familiar avenue to safety. Was I to return then to my Opera House? I thought not, for there I should surely loose hold of what senses I was in possession of, and then I would die and Christine would not come back to me.

I must speak with the Persian directly, that was what I had to do. But I needed my mask, and my mask was in that damnable cellar where I cowered like a rat for the last years of my life!

It couldn't be helped, I would have to go back to the Opera House and retrieve my mask, to make myself presentable for the public eye.

Now, Leroux reports that I told Christine I had invented 'an ingenious mask'- one that would create the illusion that I was a man like any other, and in fact this was not entirely false. It is true in that Leroux was correct, I did say it, and it was also true that I had invented such a mask.

I simply had not yet created it. In short, the mask in question was currently only theoretical. The fact that it would remain theoretical indefinitely, owing to my impending death was definitely beside the point.

What sort of mask was it, you may ask, to let me walk among strangers unnoticed? Well to begin with it was hardly a mask at all, in the traditional sense; it would have to be nearly remade every time I put it on or took it off. Bits of rubber it would be, tailor made to smooth my visage, and cunning paints to complete the illusion. I wondered, after years of watching Opera costumerie why I had not thought of it before when it might have been of better use.

But there was not time nor purpose for that stroke of genius now; my normal one would suffice.

I stood up, steadying myself on the trunk of the tree that had been the bed I so rarely sought for that night, and then I dashed off along the still-quiet streets, and down the first grate he saw. I was steadier on my feet this morning than I had been the previous night.

'A moment of sanity,' I noted clinically as I made my way, 'in my battered mind, which has no doubt been completely broken by recent events.'

The trip seemed to take no time at all, and the sight of my home, the phantom's august lair, was both a relief and yet somehow quite painful. There were my flowers, dying as I, but the familiar arm chairs, and my papers and instruments were all there quite as I left them, and I had another of those moments of memorial vertigo that couldn't quite believe that everything had changed.

As I went around lighting the many and varied candelabras that brought a flickering illumination to the room I wondered…

If I sat down at my desk, could I compose? Could everything be as it was, before Christine? Could I fall back into my meaningless life of wasted genius? Of composing, and pick pocketing and frightening little ballet rats? Not now, surely, not after all that had happened. My chairs looked so inviting with their velveteen maroon plush and gilt inlay, my coffin even more so besides. Could I lay in it again, as a bed, and not as a place of final resting?

Surely not now.

My mask lay discarded on a scarlet draped mahogany writing table from which it stood out brilliant in the golden flickering light.

Leroux took so little care with the description of my mask that I must believe it has been imagined in a hundred different ways. But who can blame him? He never saw it himself, and the Persian took little care with details.

It was bone white, ovular, coming to a point where it met my chin, and spreading out to points where it met the top of my forehead. It had two staring eyes and a point at the nose, and an impassive mouth. It was tied with a black ribbon. It looked like the mask of comedy or of tragedy, but removed of all expression. This was exactly as I had intended.

I lifted it in my hands and traced a black-gloved finger over its smooth surface and then I fastened it on. I no longer felt so naked and exposed. It was always like that when I put it on; sometimes it even seemed to infuse me with a demonic vitality. Without my mask I was only Erik, disfigured, aging Erik, poor Erik. With my mask on I was the phantom again, powerful and mysterious and sly. You can guess whom I felt more comfortable as, I'll wager.

Now fastidiously aware of my rumpled attire, I changed my clothing. It was more of the same of course, evening wear mostly in black, but now I chose a cape lined in deep blue rather than red, with its collar turned up; my vest was charcoal gray, and my cravat matched the lining of my cape. I donned a top hat.

There were few mirrors in my little world below the cellar, but I knew how I looked, and I thought it was quite dashing. If only, if only my features had no been so cursed, I could have been the greatest of men! I didn't even care if I was handsome, though I won't deny I wished it. I longed, oh how I longed even to be ugly, with piggy eyes, and great ears and a squashed nose. Christine would have loved me had I been ugly! Any number of women would have! If I had only been born ugly! But no, alas! I was a monster, a beast, a disfigured terror to make the victims of pox look pristine, a fiend compared to whom the flesh of a cadaver was a heavenly sight!

I brought my hand down with sudden force upon the surface of the table with a great "thump". The inkwell that sat there shuddered. My fist closed around papers and I threw them forcefully away from me. I turned on the heel of my shining black boots, my cape billowing its breeze extinguishing a candle as I stalked again from the cellar that was haunted by the ghost of my misery.

I didn't bother with the sewers, but stalked the streets in broad daylight. Let them seem me! Let them stare! Let them goggle and wonder at the man in the mask who walked like a jungle cat on the prowl.

As I made my way to the residence of the Persian and saw all the people going about their business and the lords riding with their ladies, and the men in their shops, the eye in the cyclone of my sanity began to blow away again and my anguish uncurled and poisoned my thoughts.

I would die! I would die in this cape and these gloves and this hat! In this hat I had ridden with Christine in a beautiful carriage, when I thought I could keep her. This cloak had been draped on my chair as I sweated out notes of Don Juan while Christine slept in the other room. In these gloves I had stroked her face!

Tears obscured my vision.

I would die and I would lie in my coffin surrounded by silk more beautiful than my tortured face, and while the fires of hell consumed me the one woman who had kissed my horrid face would stand by my side for a moment. Would she weep, would she weep for poor Erik? Would she mourn my passing?

Oh I was a fool, a fool to have loved her! Why had I dared? I should have stayed away I should have flown from that voice, trembling and untrained, but so, so pure. I should have fled that golden hair and creamy skin! The beast should have fled before beauty could wound it so!

All at once I found myself at the Persian's apartments a wreck of a man again.

Mask or no mask, Erik was dying.

I flung myself against the door, banging and making a spectacle of myself. I didn't care, I wouldn't live to be ashamed of myself I had decided. I all but collapsed in front of the Persian's servant, Darius, when he opened the door. I just sank to my knees there on the carpet of the man who had been my friend.

"I am dying, Daroga!" I announced, when his boots were before me and he had exclaimed in surprise at my presence, "I am dying of love!"

I felt myself being hauled inside the room proper, and allowed myself to be ushered a seat as Darius closed the door, and I was offered a drink as I sprawled myself there over the Daroga's good green armchair with its clawed feet and I sobbed.

"I am dying, I tell you!" I announced again without allowing him to inquire as to my health, "If you knew how beautiful she was, when she let me kiss her...Why, Daroga, why did I do it? I knew, knew it would end this way, and I let myself love her!"

I found myself gibbering like an idiot unhinged, my tears falling in the Daroga's brandy, and I remembered. I didn't mean to, but all the same I couldn't help it. My memories went back to the pace where I had met Christine and began my all to brief career as the Angel of Music.