A/N: Sorry about the morphine. I wrote this story 5 years ago and am just now getting it typed up, so it is rather old and written at a time where I took Kay as the New Testament to the Leroux Bible.
5.
That was how the exchange began.
It appeared that Erik did indeed have some control over how often he did take the morphine, though assuredly he always came back for more. The first few times I was well and truly startled, for I never heard him approach. I was always between some errand; bringing up more firewood or walking from the foyer de la danse to our singers' foyer. He would just be there, moving out of the shadows with a certain refined self-satisfaction. Always a faint smile on his thin, pale lips, always some hidden amusement in his grey-gold eyes that were inexorably peering out of the black papier-mâché. My attempts at conversation were generally shunned, but occasionally I got something out of him.
"Aren't you cold?" I asked him once.
He looked surprised from behind his black disguise, drawing his black cloak about him in response. "What would give you that impression?" he asked sneeringly, his expression changing to one of deep distrust. "Does the coldness of my hands perhaps offend you?"
One of his alabaster hands had found its way out his black vestment and hung in the air before him, mocking me.
"I've never even felt your hands," I told him with uncertainty, unsure why he was so insulted.
"Oh." He was obviously at a slight loss, something that did not happen often.
"I meant, as you live so far below the surface; isn't it cold down there?"
He stared at me blankly for some time. "Indeed, Mademoiselle." He turned away, looking at the ground as if lost in thought. "So cold . . . so hungry . . ."
Overhearing his mutterings probably not meant for my ear, I moved toward him. "If you're hungry, Erik, why do you keep giving me all of your food? I'm sure it's cost you a considerable sum." I gestured to the loaf of bread he had given me and was now in the crook of my arm.
He looked up again, his eyes icy. "That is not your concern."
"It's the morphine, isn't it?" I asked knowingly, shaking my head. "You've lost your appetite."
He was silent for a moment, glaring at me with emotionlessly glassy eyes. Such a peculiar yellow. I had never understood that. "Yes, I suppose it was the morphine," he murmured coldly.
"How long have you been taking it?" I asked him.
"My, my, Mademoiselle," he responded coolly, "such a penchant for personal questions. One might call you impertinent."
"Of course I'm impertinent," I responded. "I'm a nurse."
"And a facetious one at that." There was almost a smile from his white face.
"I suppose," I hazarded. "Now tell me how long you've been taking it so I can determine how long you have to live."
A sudden sound broke my concentration and reduced what had been a firm look on my face to one of fear. He was laughing. A dull, grating rusty sound; he had thrown his head back and was chuckling in morbid amusement. "You wish to know how long I shall live!"
"Don't you know the morphine harms your body?"
"Of course I do!" he vociferated loudly, advancing on me with a sudden dangerous fury. I trembled, and his mouth only grew into a grimmer line. "How long I shall live is of no consequence to me," he said quietly, nonetheless searing me with his eyes. "I would rather it be sooner than later, Mademoiselle."
I gasped. "Are you not ashamed?"
"Don't lecture me on the sanctity of life!" he roared, pacing back and forth through the deserted hall. "Do you imagine you can sway me to beg God's forgiveness and be loved into the bosom of the Catholic church? Try none of your convent speeches, Mademoiselle! You think you learned the meaning of life in your sacred school, but you know nothing!"
The air was fraught only by his rapid breathing as he fought to wrestle his ire back into the detached phantom he had been. Surprised, I was not as frightened as I should have been. I had struck a nerve, most assuredly, and the man was certainly capable of violence. I knew then that he had taken life before.
Yet he was clearly upset and strove to hide it from me. When he had calmed somewhat, he said with maddeningly politeness, "Excuse me. You have your payment . . . I must go."
And he did go. He ran and disappeared with all the cunning and speed that had first acquainted me with him when he stole the morphine. But that was only for awhile. He was back again, accosting me a darkened passage all of a sudden, melting out of the shadows as if he really was a ghost and not flesh and blood like the rest of us. I think he truly got some comic satisfication from startling me, for when I tried to seek him out, I could feel his presence yet never see him.
He would appear at the strangest times. He seemed to delight in remaining enveloped in his heavy darkness as he said, "Do you never get nervous, Mademoiselle?" There was a slight edge of anger to his voice I had not heard before.
"Come out, Erik," I evaded. "You'll get no morphine if you don't."
Yet, indeed, he did love to toy with me, which was most assuredly making me nervous. When he made no signs of showing himself, I sighed. "If you must know, you are distinctly nerve-wracking. But that has always been your intention, has it not?"
Appearing with something of a grin in his voice, Erik nevertheless addressed me in a voice that conveyed certain annoyance. "I was not implying myself. I meant that as lone females, among many men who are of less than delicate sensibilities, you and Soeur Marie Babette must be of some fortitude."
I turned to look at the tall, phantasmagoric figure he presented. I narrowed my eyes. I could not believe the morphine fiend—who I knew, from experience, was capable of deception, theft, and perhaps violence of a serious degree—was considerate of the virtues of "two lone females," as he called us. I stared at his impatient figure, rocking on his expensive black leather shoes, immersed in his fine black cloak which blurred his obviously thin frame, giving his spindly physique an element of the grandiose and macabre.
"What is it?" he sneered, his eyes filling with hate and rage. I realized he did not like being stared at. I remembered suddenly what Jean had called him—"freak." How ugly was he really underneath?
I looked down. "We have no cause to fear for our virtues. Collier and his men are honest. Besides," I added, "it's of no consequence to you."
He was silent for a moment. "They are honest, perhaps. But no man is above temptation, Mademoiselle." Suddenly his eyes glittered like the surface of polished opals.
I regarded him with some interest. His expression was muted, blank. Yet his eyes were searing with something unsaid. "And what would you know of temptation?" I whispered.
He shook his head in derision. "More than a spotless woman of God could ever know." I observed the passion with which he uttered this; his lips strained against his mask, restraining some checked tide of emotion.
"I am sure we offer little temptation," I dismissed.
"I see that you are ignorant of the evils of the world, Mademoiselle. Apparently the convent neglected certain areas of your education." All was uttered in a sharp, biting ridicule. I had noticed his raillery for the church, and it was not comforting.
"You think me too innocent. I am lamentably aware of the faults of men."
"And yet you do not fear."
"Monsieur, I do not need to fear."
His anger returned forcefully. "Are you so very virtuous, Mademoiselle, that the worldly things cannot touch you!" With alarm I realized his hands were clenching at his sides.
"No, indeed."
"Besides, with all due respect, it is not for you I fear."
I understood this more than he did. I would later learn that Erik valued all things of beauty, and of course he would feel personally responsible for a beauty such as Babette. "you are right to fear for her," I said; "she is very naïve. She has much to learn." Then I looked at him firmly. "But it is not your place. The fair face of a young sister is too delicate for the fixed glance of any man."
To my surprise, he said nothing. "You believe," he whispered, "I would want to the girl?"
I was afraid of his soft manner, that it concealed inward rage. "Did you not just tell me how flawed man is?"
"I'm old enough to be her father!"
His vehemence bewildered me. To tell the truth, I had not guessed his age. I had considered him much younger, late-twenties perhaps. There was something supple and youthful in his grace, that contrasted with the apparent mature magnetism in his eyes. I decided he could successfully be any age he chose. "How would I know that?" I finally answered. "You tell me nothing of yourself."
"There is nothing you need to know!" he retorted. "Am I not only a horrible godless morphine thief?" His eyes narrowed at me, the yellow rims reminding me of a cat's. "I know that is what you think of me."
I shook my head.
"Ah, but what does it matter? Hatred is nothing that is unknown to me."
"I don't hate you, Erik," I murmured.
He smiled sadly at me. "Don't you?"
"No, indeed," I said gently. "Now won't you take your morphine?"
He walked slowly toward me, his black cloak dancing about him in pirouetting waves. "Mademoiselle, I hope you will then accept my protection."
With rather more bitterness than I wanted displayed, I murmured, "So I suppose you are very fond of Babette."
His head turned sharply, yet his expression was unreadable. For a moment he did not speak. "She is certainly in need of protection, Mademoiselle." His eyes were stony and sharp like flints. "She has not the outraged show of virtue that some cling to."
I could not, if pressed, explain why it was this seemingly innocuous remark was such a painful barb. But if it had, indeed, been darted to goad me to a fury, it did just that. I somewhat wonder now, in retrospect, if it was not his own curious way of asking a question his remarkable politeness would not allow him to put to me by conventional means.
"You have gone too far," I found myself telling coldly. "You believe that you know all, Erik—you believe whatever position of misanthrope you fulfill entitles you to understand everyone." I paused a moment to collect myself. "No, indeed, it is not a show of 'outraged virtue' that protects me. It is the medical certainty that I will never have children."
I spun away from him, angry at how easily the knowledge still affected me. Babette's unthinking insult still hovered at the edge of consciousness, provoking me. The lack of sleep, I decided, was making me permanently emotional. I could not wonder at Erik's silent reproach for my behavior, his disgust at my lack of femininity. But then again, who was he to me? I asked myself in a distressed fury. Why did I care so for his good opinion? He had given me no reason to trust him, to think well of him. I knew he was some kind of hideous medical case that science could not treat, but also a man of great accomplishment and musical skill. But who was he really?
The sound of his voice behind me, soft and compassionate, roused me. "I am sorry," he said. "I know how this feels. . ."
His frank admission was somehow very comforting. I was tempted to turn around just to see what his grey-gold eyes held, but I could not move. I smiled slightly and said, with humor, "What is your excuse?"
He began to sputter in what I thought was shock, and when I turned his expression behind the mask was one of bemusement. "Forgive my impertinence," I said, "but you should already be familiar with that characteristic of mine." Ladies were not supposed to speak as I was. I truly was being shockingly improper.
Erik must have agreed, for he said quietly, "I should think it was perfectly obvious." And with that he took the morphine, handed me a dubious-looking but enormous sausage, and fled.