Author's Note: There is some artistic license taken in this chapter. I've tried to keep it as accurate and in-character as possible. Please keep in mind that I have not read Susan Kay's novel, which I've heard gives the account of Erik's childhood. All that I have to draw from is Andrew Lloyd Webber's movie and Gaston Leroux's novel, neither of which gives an account of Erik's life before Madame Giry rescues him from the fairgrounds.
Please, please review this chapter and tell me what you think. I apologize for taking so long to get this chapter up, I wanted it to be good, and I also had a concert band competition last night, so the past week has been crazy with preparations.
Also, brownies to Laura Kay for catching the Leroux tribute in the last chapter! It was the comment that Erik made about not being able to live up to his promise to make Meg an empress, an allusion to Erik's promise to Mme. Giry to do so if she would help him in Leroux's novel. Honorary brownies to those who said Philippe, that wasn't my intent, but brownies nonetheless to catching something that the authoress herself didn't!
Enjoy, and please review!
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Chapter 17: Wandering Child
"That was a very kind thing for you to do, Erik." Christine said as she lay in his arms that night.
"Kindness had nothing to do with it, Christine. Madame Giry is as much a mother to me as any woman could be. Certainly more a mother than the woman who gave birth to me."
"What was your mother…your real mother, like?" Christine asked hesitantly.
Erik tensed, his eyes closing. Why must she always be so curious? The last thing he wanted was to open up old wounds that were even now barely healed, even after so many years.
She is going to be your wife. She has a right to know who you are.
"She was very beautiful. She had black hair and deep blue eyes, and skin as pale as porcelain. I remember looking at her face as a young child and wondering how a face so perfect could have borne one so marred."
"Beauty is only skin deep." Christine parroted, remembering that Madame Giry had often told the ballet rats that very thing when she caught them too often preening before the long mirrors in their rooms.
"Indeed." Erik closed his eyes and pulled Christine tighter to him, recalling memories that he had long since buried deep within him, hoping to never remember. But some things were too painful to forget…
"The first three years of my life were the kindest ever granted to me. I do not recall those years—they are the only part of my life that I do not remember with the utmost clarity. The earliest memory I have is that of my fourth birthday…"
His mother, the Countess de Hunde, was seated in her dressing-room, speaking to one of the maids.
"What do you mean, Natalie, this is a special day? Whatever is special about it?"
"It's your son's birthday, Madame."
"Is it?"
"Yes. Cook wants to know what sort of dinner plans you had in mind for tonight."
The Countess shrugged lightly, peering into the mirror. "I suppose she may make a small cake. His nanny may celebrate with him. But see that he doesn't leave the nursery. I suppose this is the one day out of all days that the Count would be most displeased to see him."
Erik—except his name had not been Erik then, he had had no name, except for what his nanny called him—had run away from the door behind which he had hidden, back up to the stairs to his nursery, torn between the sadness that threatened to overwhelm him, and fear of being caught outside the nursery.
In the end, sadness won out. He had hid behind a stack of blocks—the only toys he would ever play with—and cried until his nanny found him.
She had tried to comfort him as best as she could, though he wondered why she would never look directly at him.
There were many things that he wondered. Why did people always make that strange motion over themselves when he entered a room? Why would no one look him in the eye? Why did his mother refuse to see him?
The birthday celebration was small and brief. A little cake, big enough for two people, was brought up to the nursery, and the nanny sang the birthday song for him.
There was even a small package on the table. "Look, Damon!" the nanny crowed. "Your mother has sent you a gift for your birthday!"
He grabbed for it eagerly, tearing away the plain paper. An oddly formed piece of white leather fell from the package, and he picked it up, wondering at what it might be.
The nanny smiled nervously. The Countess had told her that morning what the package would contain, and the instructions that went with it.
"Look, Damon, it is a mask. Now you can be like that famous Spanish swordsman that I read to you about…do you remember him?"
"His name was Zorro."
"That's right." The nanny helped him to smooth the mask onto his face. Once it was on, she breathed a sigh of relief. With the white material covering the right side of his face, the little boy looked like any other child. Perhaps now his mother will be able to stand the sight of him, she thought bitterly.
"Now listen to me, Damon. This is very important. You will be allowed to see your mother now that you are old enough to wear this mask. But you are never to enter her presence or leave this nursery unless this mask is on your face. If you do, you will receive the same punishment as before, when you weren't allowed to leave the nursery at all. Do you understand?"
Erik nodded, and from the fear that flickered in his eyes, the nanny knew that he would obey. "But why do I have to wear this?"
The nanny carefully peeled away the mask and lifted a hand mirror before Erik's eyes so that he could see his reflection. He had never looked in a mirror before.
There was a monster in the mirror. A terrible face that was twisted and scarred.
Erik screamed…
Christine shuddered. She could not imagine such a thing. Her father had been her closest friend and companion until his death. She wanted to say something, anything to take away the pain that she knew must be in Erik's eyes now, but there were no words to salve such a terrible grief.
"That was your name—Damon?" she finally asked, resting her head against Erik's shoulder.
"That was what my nanny called me." He laughed bitterly. "It was no name. I didn't learn until many years later, when I began to study languages, what that name meant."
Christine was silent, wondering, but afraid to ask.
Erik answered the unspoken question after a moment's silence. "It meant devil."
"But surely your father cared for you, even if your mother did not." Christine protested, thinking of how precious her own father had been to her. The idea of Erik's father loathing him as much as his mother had was unfathomable to Christine's naive mind.
"I never met my father, nor he I."
"But the Count…"
"…was not my father." Erik said, his lips twisting in a humorless smile. "When I was eight years old, I overheard another conversation, this time between my mother and one of her close friends…"
"You are such a courageous woman, to have borne this curse for so many years in silence. Has the Count ever suspected…?"
"I do not know. He refuses to see the boy. As for my silence…I can do nothing else. This is my penance, as I see it, for the sin which Viktor and I committed those nine years ago. God has punished me for the sin of adultery in causing me to bear a demon instead of a child."
"Is the deformity really so bad?"
"It is…" the Countess paused, her apt eyes catching sight of Erik behind the door. "Come here, little Damon!"
Erik stiffened and entered the room slowly, afraid that he was to be punished for disobedience. But his mother only took his hand and drew him closer, a rare show of affection.
"Take off the mask, Damon."
"Damon? Is that his name?"
"That is what his nanny calls him." the Countess replied, suddenly ashamed of the fact that she had never given the boy a name. "Take off your mask, I said!"
Erik quivered in fear, remembering the instructions that his nanny had given him. But his mother's lips were beginning to thin in anger, and he hurriedly pulled the leather from his face.
The woman across from her paled, her eyes closing hurriedly and her hand quickly moving to cross herself. "Damon…" she whispered. "…devil. This is the Devil's child, not yours and certainly not the Count's! No human child could have a face so perfect on one side and so horribly malformed on the other! You should have killed him before he drew his first breath!"
"That is what the priest who attended the birth said."
The Countess lowered her eyes and handed Erik back his mask, waving for him to leave. He ran from the room, tears already gathering in his eyes.
"But I couldn't. The perfect side of his face…it was Viktor's. Every detail of that man's face was outlined in my son's. I couldn't let the doctor kill him. So I said that he would live. And it has been my bane every since. Viktor died two months later…an accident from his horse, if it was really an accident. I don't know how the Count has never noticed that his 'son' looks nothing like either he or I, but then again, he has hardly looked at him since the day of his birth."
"You poor woman. You poor, poor woman..."
"That was how my life was for a little over eight years. No pity for me, only for my mother, the poor woman who was burdened with the Devil's child. And in the end, I was the cause of her death."
"No, Erik, no." Christine whispered, turning and wrapping her arms around his neck. "You couldn't have been responsible."
Erik's mouth tightened. "No? Then explain to me why she was a beautiful, healthy woman in the prime of life before my birth, and for eight years afterwards she wasted away until she was no more than a shadow! She was burdened by me constantly. I was her curse, her penance, her nightmare. When I was born, her life broke apart. The Count saw her as little as possible, and she couldn't bear the sight of me! With or without the mask, I was a constant reminder of the sin she had committed, the curse she had brought upon herself and the face of her dead lover! My very presence gnawed at her mind until she became a wraith, alone and unloved. She died alone, Christine! She died alone in the very room where she gave birth to me!"
Tears were streaming down his face now, his voice cracking and breaking.
"The Count knew I wasn't his son, whatever he had led my mother to believe. He threw me out onto the streets, took away even my mask. He wouldn't even give me that shred of dignity. I starved on the streets for a week before a group of gypsies came across me. They called me the Devil's Child, too, and like that woman who so aptly translated that horrid name, they believed it! And after a while, I believed it too! Gone were even the small pleasures I had enjoyed while in the house of the Count. Gone were the books that I had devoured and the music that had soothed my tortured child's soul. I became a creature, a monster, a thing. And then, one day, when I was nine years old, I met an angel for the first time."
"Madame Giry." Christine whispered.
"Her name was Couturier then. Mademoiselle Couturier. She rescued me from the fairgrounds and took me to the cellars of the building that would become the Opera Populaire. She gave me life, even if it was a life of twenty-nine years spent in darkness. That is why I call her my mother, Christine, and not the Countess de Hunde. The Countess gave me physical life, but that life was empty and shallow for over nine years. Madame Giry gave my soul life."
Christine caressed his face with her fingers and her lips, brushing away the tears. "And what did I do, my love?" she asked, nestling against him.
Erik kissed her forehead and closed his eyes. "Madame Giry gave my soul life." he repeated as he sighed softly and drew her closer into the circle of his arms. "But you alone could make it take flight." He breathed in the scent of her as her breathing grew regular and she drifted into quiet sleep. "You alone, Christine."