Screams of the Locust
A/N: "What they do with their bodies affects their souls" is from C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters, and I've borrowed it here.
It took the train an entire day to go from Brussels to Paris. From my bag I drew a magazine full of serial stories, then replaced it. No one had shared my compartment since Compiègne and so I drowsed more comfortably than when I shared it with others. Then I woke and tried to read again, but the serials themselves seemed sleepy and domestic, with errant husbands returning home or daughters fighting energetically to retain their virtue. One seemed sinister, with a mysterious lady who might have been a werewolf or vampire, but it faintly repelled me and I had no inclination to continue.
Would Jacques be there? I was almost certain he would, but this was the first time I had packed my bags, bought a ticket, climbed on board and deliberately met a man. But why? I pulled a little mirror from my bag and applied a bit of powder, then freshened my lips and cheeks with some rouge. The four years of difference in our age still weighed on me, and I wondered why he did not have a young mistress, a delicate girl of twenty from some Parisian shop or cabaret instead of a grandmother from another country. But my chin was still firm, my cheeks largely unlined. Some silver threaded through my hair, although it was hard to see against the white-gold. However, you can't hide the hands, I thought. Beneath the soft skin under the light lace gloves were a few sharp tendons, a little ropiness to the veins that hadn't been there a few years before.
I hadn't worn Raoul's ring.
Jacques had written me several times, asking me to come to Paris for a few days. Finally I agreed, trembling at the thought of Philippe and Martine's disapproval, feeling as though I had to sneak into corners and alleyways behind their back, and then a hot flame shot through me. I have nothing to hide. My hotel will be full of Englishwomen and thus it does not admit men. Jacques himself lives in a velvet monastery. If we choose to seek our own privacy, then we do. If not, then not. But Philippe doesn't enter into it.
It's not as if he's my father, and I laughed a bit bitterly to myself. Papa was more innocent than a child before his First Holy Communion. What would you think, Papa, if your little girl was en route to a rendezvous in Paris?
Professor Valerius grew so worried when you wanted to take me to the pardons in Brittany on St. John's Eve, Papa. It's not fitting, he said. It's not decent. Where will you stay? She's almost a grown girl, ready to put her hair up and don long skirts. She can't show off her legs like a girl of ten anymore. You let her climb up on a table, people will look at her. Isn't that right, he asked his wife, but sweet and simple Mama Valerius just shook her head. As did Papa. Why? Papa asked. What will they look at?
Now I wonder at how simple his mind had become in those last years. Was it the tuberculosis working away at his brain? Did he not remember engendering me? Or was he one of those rare types so pure that everything to them is pure as well, those who see no blots on the world because there are so few in themselves? He held me all through the night from behind, for it was cold in a Breton barn even at midsummer, his breath soft against my neck from behind, but there was no stain in it. It was the last summer we were together, and he played his fiddle like a man possessed, as he had never played before. He was like one of those butterflies that visits as many flowers as it can, knowing that when the first frost comes it will be gone and sip nectar no more.
The swaying of the train rocked me like Papa's arms. Lill-jänta ... lill-jänta the wheels said in Papa's voice as they beat in rhythm. One night a couple crept into the barn where we had just laid down for the night. They were looking for someplace quiet, and Papa didn't chase them away. He just coughed gently a few times, and they tiptoed out, whispering. Then he closed his eyes and slept.
What do you think of your little girl now, Papa?
The train pulled into the Gare du Nord station, and I almost didn't want to look around the crowded platform for fear of not seeing him. Then light from the slanting afternoon sun flashed across his spectacles, and there he was, round in a cream-colored suit, his hair like dark fire swirling around his face. He waved frantically and swam through the crowd like a sleek porpoise. He bore a few orchids tied together with some baby's breath, and before even greeting me, pinned the nosegay to my lapel. Then he couldn't embrace me for fear of crushing the flowers, and we both laughed at the same time, then together leaned over them and each other carefully. I stretched on tiptoe to navigate the curve of his body, whispering, "Thank you, Jacques." Then the flowers were forgotten as I pulled him to me and kissed him full on the mouth in the middle of the Gare du Nord station.
"You've just had a pipeful," I said afterward, breathing deeply.
"I did," he answered. "You don't mind, do you? Your train was late, and there was just enough time."
"I like it. It reminds me of wood fires, and roasting apples on a stick in the fall."
"You've done that too? I could never get mine to stay on the branch. They'd always slip off, and then I'd burn my fingers." He held me for another moment and we formed a little island as the crowds swirled around us both. "Let's get a cab. The same hotel, I take it?"
"The very same." He said nothing, and I wondered, what did he have in mind? Would he have been so bold as to find a room for us? The Unic taxi wheezed a little as we chugged along. I stopped wondering what would happen, and instead simply rested my head against his soft and comfortable shoulder, my hand under his arm warm and affectionate. The entire city around me collapsed into the perimeter of his body.
"I assume I am allowed to call?" he said as we pulled up to the modest corner building, discreet and grey as a spinster's gown.
"I can receive you in the lobby." Then I looked him frankly in the face. "I would find another hotel, but Philippe expects me to be here at the Cotillion."
"About the hotel, it isn't necessary," he said, and gently stroked my cheek. "Wherever you are content, that is where you should stay."
Still slightly defensive, I went on. "He is in Paris to make a report to the Medical Society about the woman's body they found in the Opera Garnier, the one they're calling L'Inconnu de L'Opera. Philippe has arranged for the burial. We are to meet after his talk at Pere Lachaise cemetery for her internment. Perhaps you would like to listen to his lecture?"
"That I might," and he looked bright, full of eagerness. "Why not you yourself?"
"I wasn't aware that women were admitted to Medical Society lectures."
"I don't know," he mused. "Perhaps they still are not. In any event, I thought your son was going to London."
"He is, shortly. But Philippe squeezes everything in, as if there were thirty hours in a day instead of twenty-four." I didn't know what to do or say after that. "It's been a long train ride," I finally remarked, watching for his reaction. "I have to freshen up." Then an impulsive thought struck me. Why should I hide from Philippe? I've had a double life once, and have no intention of repeating it. Why should I fence around any longer with Jacques? "Come with me tomorrow. You've met my son, and you've been interested in her case, the one whom they found there. Why shouldn't you come with me when she's laid to rest?"
The taxi-driver looked around inquiringly, were we getting out? "Just a minute," Jacques said, and handed the driver some franc notes. "Monsieur Doctor de Chagny might not appreciate my presence. It's not as if we were introduced under the most auspicious circumstances."
"If there were misunderstandings, we will clear them up. I'll be honest with you, Jacques. I don't want to feel I have to hide from Philippe to be friends with you."
"Of course," he said, but he looked unsure. Then he helped me out of the cab. "May I call for you later this evening?
Tired and suddenly sad, I shook my head. "Tomorrow, Jacques. Come tomorrow at 11 in the morning, and together we'll go to Pere Lachaise."
o o o o o
The day promised brightness and heat, but soon a thick fleece of cloud collected around the horizon. I had the hotel concierge telephone Philippe's club and leave a message for him to meet me at the cemetery on the far eastern side of Paris. I hated to put on the somber black, but it did not seem fitting otherwise.
The valet rang my bell shortly before eleven. Jacques was here. Nervously I smoothed my hair and adjusted my hat. When he rose to take my arm, I noticed that although the air was cool, a thin sheet of perspiration covered his brow. He wore a straw boater hat and another light linen suit with an armband of velvet black.
The driver looked inquiringly when Jacques directed him to Pere Lachaise. Because the sun hid behind clouds, we left the rear hood of the taxi down and our words almost blew away into the street.
"So," I said as soon as I was settled. "Tell me about this great conspiracy." He looked at me blankly. "You know, Jacques. The one that the Sûreté is supposed to be covering up. Why they had you thrown out of the Garnier. Why my son was upset with you."
He gathered himself together as if slightly shocked. "Are you sure you want me to tell you? Because I didn't think you had much interest."
I nodded, go on, and he did. "But I'm glad you brought it up, as I still find it all very curious, even though I do not wish to plague you with all my speculations. I suspect that poor unfortunate woman long ago stumbled upon something of great magnitude, back when Armand Fallières was an official in the Ministry of the Interior in the late 1870s or early 1880s. Fallières just finished his term as president without any embarrassment in that regard, and now his successor Poincaré is perfectly willing to sweep away everything that came before. Perhaps our new President fears some phantom buried under these stones by his predecessor will come back to haunt him."
I couldn't conceal my surprise. Was he playing with me? But he looked perfectly sober and sincere. "I should never have told you it was a woman," I said, trying not to let my voice waver.
"I'm glad you did, as it kept me from wandering down dead ends, but it does deepen the mystery. At first I thought the victim might have been some spy searching out what was concealed down there in the cellar depths, one who might have met his end at the hands of French military intelligence."
"Military? Jacques, why?"
He looked positively gleeful. "Remember I told you that I had written about weapons developed for the Ottomans, primitive mechanical devices that could be wound up and would operate independently under certain limited conditions? No one believed the Ottoman engineers could do it on their own, even though their own men told me to my face that they had. But that's not all, Christine. The Republic was working on something like that as well, only far more sophisticated, and the project was coordinated out of a secret office within the Ministry of the Interior. I managed to find some of those old documents from decades ago, in of all places the closed sections of the National Opera library."
"If it was closed, how did you manage to get in?"
"Baksheesh, Christine. Purely by the art of baksheesh. It's very valuable when you travel in Asia Minor."
I had heard Erik use the word before. "So you paid them to get into the library?"
"After a fashion. The clerk had a particularly troublesome situation with another man's wife that put him in dire need of quick legal assistance. In any event, the documents I was able to see before I was unceremoniously escorted out told me some interesting things. First, that such a project existed at all. Second, that there were several espionage attempts against the project during the period between 1880 and 1882, probably by agents of the British Secret Service. Then, after a successful attempt to steal secrets, the project was closed, or so it seemed. Or perhaps it was just re-opened elsewhere, under new auspices, under another name."
I sat very still. It hurt to hide so much inside, especially when it twisted through me, struggling to get out. It explains so much, I thought. So that's who paid for all those "shipments." Erik hadn't lived by baksheesh alone, had he? I suppressed a tiny hysterical giggle.
He turned and our eyes met. The sun was almost overhead, but not quite, and I couldn't see his eyes in the white-hot flare reflecting outwards. But the rest of his face plainly said, You know something about this, although he was silent. Then he took my hand gently and said very low, "It's all right, Christine. I'm not fishing. When you are ready to tell me, you will."
We held hands all the rest of the way to the cemetery. As we wound around through a road inside, I saw far away the tall black figure of Philippe pacing back and forth. Silent and still stood a stooped, gnarled priest in a long black soutane. Behind him were the gravediggers smoking and resting against the cart. In this section the crosses were poor, of iron or wood or none at all. When Jacques let go of my hand, the macabre cemetery air seemed to descend on me like a weight. There had been shadows in the dark other than Erik, other than his Persian friend. And somehow a woman was entangled in it, a woman with a golden ring, a woman who was dead on the coffin cart, ready to be enfolded in the embrace of the ground.
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Erik had heard Raoul and the Persian inside the strange, hot-smelling room on the other side of my bedroom wall, and had struck out against me in rage. But he must have missed his mark, for the blow dazed me for only a few seconds. When I came to my senses, he was dragging me across the floor, out of the bedroom. The burning smell was very strong.
"What's going on? Where are you taking me?" I called out. He staggered as he walked, and I saw at once why he had dragged instead of carried me. He could scarcely keep himself upright on his own legs. He left me lying in the middle of the big red and blue carpet, then sank down into his own chair and put his hands over his face.
I scrambled to my feet, and shrieked with pain as I tried to put weight unsuccessfully on my wrist.
"Let me see it," he said, pulling himself wearily up.
I pulled my wrist close to me. "I'll die before I let you touch me."
"You'll die either way," he snarled back, and seized my arm, pulling it outwards. He moved the wrist to and fro gently. "It's not broken," he announced, and wrapped it tightly with a long strip of cloth.
"If you're going to kill me, why bind it up?" I snapped.
He looked at me wildly, as if he hadn't considered that. "Let me see the other one. It's bruised," he said, and then he began to kiss my wrists over and over. "I'm sorry, so sorry, Erik doesn't mean to hurt you, but you don't learn, you don't stop, why did you try to take Erik's bag?"
"Erik," I said, trying to keep my voice under control, "I wanted to let them out. Please let them out. I'll send Raoul away if you like."
He raised his head up, his face streaked with tears. "I don't believe you," he said finally.
"Believe me or ignore me," I said. "You've already made up your mind."
Then, as if noticing for the first time, he sniffed and said, "Your dress is foul." For I still wore Marguerite's wet, stinking costume, and in shame I started to cry a little.
"Come with me," he said, lifting me to my feet from under my arms. "Into my bedroom."
I started to struggle a little, but he put his hands on either side of my face and said, "Stop it, you clawing cat. I'm going to clean you up."
"My clothes are in my bedroom," I protested.
"You aren't going in there right now. You'll have to make do with something of mine."
I had never been in the small bathroom off his bedroom, but he steered me in and pulled off the wet dress as if I were a child. I looked fearfully into his face but he showed no sign of claiming his right to my body. He handed me a rag, saying, "Wash yourself."
I did, facing away from him, shrinking with embarrassment as I rinsed with water from the sink. It took a long time as it was my right wrist that was wrapped so firmly it was immobile. He said nothing and made no move to help me. Instead, he kept his eyes fixed on me every second, ready to grasp me if I made any untoward moves.
"You must be afraid I'll go for your razor," I said.
"There would be no point, as I don't shave, and thus have none." As I dried myself I felt a little sad to know why his face was always smooth. For some odd reason patches of hair grew on his body, but none on those ravaged cheeks.
Around my shoulders he put one of his embroidered silk robes. It had a warm caress of soft flannel lining. He tied it around my waist himself, as he had wrapped my hand so firmly that the fingers couldn't move. Out from under the robe he pulled my hair and arranged it around my shoulders. Then some deep emotion overcame him, for he picked up great handfuls of hair and buried his face into them, just as he was used to burying his face in my fur.
It felt so good to have the soaked, stinking costume off. He had not manhandled me when I stood naked before him, and that touched me. "Erik," I said, gently untangling the locks from his hands, "Thank you. Thank you for cleaning me up."
He gave a great cry, almost a sob, and stumbled through his bedroom now bare of all the morbid hangings and furnishings. "I meant what I said before," he choked out between sobs. "Eleven o'clock, so you have only a few hours. Why do you make Erik do this? For the first time in so long he actually wants to live, and now when that life slips away, he almost loses heart and fails in his resolve. Christine, it is you who makes me waver when I should remain strong. Because if you haven't fully chosen me in every way, including the bestowal your affection, then you and I will die. We will die together, and I won't need to enlarge the coffin, because everything around us," and he waved his arms dramatically around the room in great windmills of motion, "will become our tomb."
"If you are losing heart," I said, hoping still to talk him out of whatever madness he planned, "then why continue with these morbid thoughts?"
"Sit," he said as he smoothed a silk chair cushion and ushered me onto it. "We are like iron sharpening iron, are we not? We are of equal hardness, and who would have thought that such a soft beautiful woman with hair like spun silk would have such icy steel within? I was like one dead for so many years, and then I heard you, and saw you with your hair all silver in the limelight. I don't know why the lighting man picked that filter that evening, it made no sense for a peasant wedding to be lit in such cold silver-blue white. Yet it made your hair look like spun glass as you danced." He sobbed softly, "Christine, I don't want you to die."
"Then don't kill me," I said just as quietly.
Instead of answering, he curled at my feet, holding onto my sprained wrist with both hands, his tears soaking the cloth wrap. We sat there like that for a long time, and the hot burning smell grew stronger as it slowly penetrated the room. "What is that?" I asked, alarmed. "Is there a fire on the other side of the wall?"
"It's the heat of the jungle," he said, shaking his head as if coming back from far away. "Don't mind it. It won't reach us in here. Did you know that at the top of the highest mountain in Africa there is a gigantic nest, and in it the phoenix settles every thousand years, bursting into flame? The little new phoenix emerges from the ashes, but one time, the time will come when a fledgling doesn't come forth. All there will be is fire, then ash, and with no new phoenix, that will signify the end of everything. It will be the end of the world," and he began humming the Dies Irae, "earth be all by fire consumed..."
As if reminded of something, he got up and went into his bedroom. Immediately I flew to the door of my own room, but found that he had locked it from the outside. The door itself felt warm. I bent down to the crack at the bottom, and the air coming out felt far hotter than usual.
He came back carrying two small objects. "Get up," he said. "You can't get back in there to your lover unless I let you."
With a small key he opened the new ebony box that had been fitted onto the mantelpiece. It swung open from the front rather than the top. The white enamelled inside had been divided into two sections by the same gleaming black wood that made up the outside. Each compartment held something that looked like a brass gas fixture before the knob to turn it had been put on. He flipped the top over, so that the inside was exposed and we could look straight in.
"Come here, Christine, and see what I have for you. Think of it as a delayed wedding present, if you will."
The walk across that living room seemed to take a whole day, because so much dread weighed down on my shoulders. It was some kind of device, but what?
"Take these," he said. "Look at them. Get to know them well, because they are the harbingers of your fate."
Into my hands he thrust two small metal figures, which at first in confusion I thought were toys. They were two little creatures made of bronze, the first a scorpion with tail erect and ready to strike, the second a locust with its long jumping legs. There was something odd about it, and I held the jumping insect closer to the lamp to see better. Then I almost cried out, for instead of the wide eyes and narrow jaws of an insect, it had a human face with its mouth open in a kind of scream. Hair streamed behind its head and met up with its flared-open wings. It was a horrible thing, hideous, and I didn't want to touch it.
"Aren't they pretty little creatures?" Erik said. "I had them cast especially for you. This is the key you were looking for, isn't it?" and he waved the small key at me, the one he had used to open the ebony box. "What a coincidence, that it happens to be same one which opens the second door in your room. It has a poetic compactness about it, wouldn't you say? Efficient, meaningful ... never mind. Let's stick to the point at hand."
He pointed to the fixtures inside the box. "This is where they go," and he took them from me. He screwed the scorpion onto one, and the scream-headed locust onto the other.
"What are they for?" I asked, hating to hear the answer, fearing something devilish of Erik's devising.
"Think of them as outward and visible signs of your inward spiritual disposition, Christine, as sacraments of realization. But unlike the sacraments provided by the Church, which give no indication of the supposed reality beneath their mundane exteriors, my sacraments really do something. You won't have to wait for heaven to see their effects. Let's just say that I believe in grace made manifest," and he laughed at some inner joke. "One is the sacrament of life, the other of death. Curiously, both use the same matter, this fine cast bronze..."
"Stop it!" and I kicked at the fireplace tools in anger, making them shimmer and ring. "Just say what you mean plain out, and stop mocking!"
"Very well," he hissed, and I drew back, a little afraid. When Erik worked himself into a fever pitch like this, he hated to be interrupted. "I'll put it plainly, in words you can understand with no effort of thought whatever. By eleven o'clock tonight you must turn one or the other of these fixtures. They will turn all the way around into the upside-down position. Turn the scorpion, and I will know that you have accepted me entirely, will live as my wife, love me in all ways, and be true to me. Turn the grasshopper, and both you and I will die and lie together forever at the bottom of this giant mausoleum. Is that simple enough for you?"
"Why?" I asked. "What's wrong with a simple yes or no?"
"Why should bread become flesh, or wine become blood? Isn't it enough that rational words should be laid out in black and white on sober white paper? No, it's not enough, my loving wife. I want to see your small fair hand wrapped around the brass creature, and then I want to see you physically turn it. I want to feel the consequences of your refusal in the last few seconds that will remain to both of us. You will take one of these animals in your hand, or the other, and you will with your own action decide our fate. Not just your fate, but both our fates. And it will come not only from your will, Christine, but from your body as well. For just as if you choose to live you will also choose to love me with your body as well as your will, because your choice will have turned your soul to me finally, and what we do with our bodies affects our souls."
I looked long at the little bronze figures in the box. They seemed old, the metal burnished and dark. "I can't believe these are new," I muttered.
"Too much shininess would spoil the effect. I had them soaked in a little vinegar and aged."
"What will happen," I hesitated, "if I turn the locust?"
I thought he would rage at my words. Instead he sighed and sadness weighed down his face. "Then we both die at once, in a flash."
"Together?"
"Together. In an instant."
"How is that possible, that we could both die in the same moment?" For I imagined him first strangling me, then hanging himself.
"Turn the grasshopper and find out. Go, walk over there right now, and do it. When you ask a question, don't frown like that, as if you didn't want the answer. There is the box of ebony, there sits the little creature just waiting for your caress, and I beseech you, satisfy your curiosity and end my torment."
Infuriated, I cried, "Turn it yourself, then! I won't do it! Whatever devil's game you're playing, play it by yourself!" He gaped at me. Heartened, I went on, "Let Raoul and your Persian friend out of the trap, and I'll think about it. But I won't make a single move as long as they are both in there."
"Little cat, put away your claws. Do you think you can make bargains with me?" He limped into the kitchen and I followed. From his wine room he brought out a bottle which he cradled lovingly. "Eighteen-hundred and sixty-three," he said. "I purchased this Cheval Blanc when I first obtained Hausmann's contract to drain this fetid swamp on which we sit. What a price I paid for it, too. I thought I would let it fatten for twenty years before decanting it. But it didn't make it quite to age twenty, did it?" He waved the bottle at me recklessly, swinging it around, and it looked as if it were a bottle filled with dark clotted blood. "Will you have some, dear wife? It's just a few years younger than you, if you can imagine that."
I shook my head, quivering now with anger and fear.
"Never mind," he said. "You never showed that much partiality to wine, did you?" He uncorked the bottle and poured the contents into a carafe, and a dark rich smell swirled up. "You have to try this, Christine, never in your life will you experience such again. I can't imagine your sailor setting something like this before you. There are scraggly little climbing roses that scrabble up the wall, and then there is the bush in full flower, with blossoms wide as a child's face, and this is the fairest and most fragrant among all of them. Come, you'll have a taste anyway," and he set out two glasses.
I glared at him, saying nothing.
"Of course," he said, "you don't want to buy anything sight unseen, do you? Like men who hide their faces." With humorless laughter he poured some into a glass, swirled it, and tasted. His eyes closed, and he leaned his poor head back with a sigh. "I think it will meet with your approval," and he poured for both of us.
We sat in front of the fire and after the first refined, sampling sips, he downed one glass after another as I stared into the ruby pool in mine. You couldn't just swallow this wine to wash down bread or meat. It had a life of its own. Strong, compelling, it demanded all your attention. I didn't like it. After so many years in Paris, I still didn't care what I drank, as long as it wasn't bitter or sour.
"Is this supposed to be a fine wine?" I asked.
"Little ingenue, must I teach you everything? I see by your face that it's not to your liking. Never mind, in the few hours remaining to us, there's no point in trying to gild the lily of your ignorance any longer. I admit, I would have liked it a little fuller and heavier on the tongue, but a year or two more wouldn't have made that much difference anyway. Not that it will matter when that clock on the mantelpiece strikes eleven."
One tick of the passage of time merged into another. I happened to glance over at the scorpion and grasshopper sitting quietly in their box, and they glittered in the lamplight. Erik poured the final drops from the carafe into his glass, and looked critically at mine. I handed it to him silently, and he drank that, too, spilling some onto the front of his bloody, damp shirt. Blearily he looked at me and brushed at the stains, laughing a little.
Perhaps he'll go to sleep, I thought. Then I can get at that key.
But he didn't sleep. He grasped his leg and mumbled to himself, "It eases the throbbing, but what's the point, the worst sewer swill from the cafe on the corner would have done that just as well," and rolled from side to side in his chair. He closed his eyes but whenever I moved opened them wide and fixed those great black and gold orbs on me. "Time's wasting," he said at one point, slurring.
So I shut my eyes instead, and when I opened them again he was gone. In panic I leapt up, looking around wildly. His bedroom door was closed, and I could hear him inside, rummaging around and talking to himself, talking to "Erik," as if someone else were there. Then, most amazing, I saw that the door to my room was open.
Hesitantly I crept in, fearing what I should see. The air inside was warm, and when I crept over to the wall where the locked secret door stood, I cried out when I touched it, for the door was hot.
"Mademoiselle Daae?" came the Daroga's voice, harsh and raspy.
"Wait," I said. The cushioned, stinking chair had the scarves still tied to it. I dragged it over to the bedroom door and wedged it in front of it. It would not keep Erik out should he want to come in, but it would perhaps delay him a moment or so. "Yes, I'm here now."
Then we started speaking together, at once, and after a moment Raoul's voice came across too. "Slow down," the Daroga said. "One at a time. Mademoiselle, where is Erik?"
"He's in his room, doing I don't know what. He was raving, furious, and then he drank. I thought he would close his eyes but he stayed awake until I fell asleep, and I had almost no wine at all. Raoul, he's lost his mind. He has some kind of device on the mantel, and he screwed these little brass handles onto it. They're like little metal animals, a scorpion and then one like a locust, but it's horrible." Then I went on to recount Erik's ultimatum. "He says he'll kill us both instantly if I refuse him. But he's mad, how can he do that?"
"Listen to me," the Daroga said. "You too, Vicomte."
"We've found a cache of gunpowder, Christine," Raoul interrupted. "Please, you must try to get us out of here. We are almost perishing from thirst."
A sick fear seized me. "Raoul, I can't, I've tried. He keeps the key too close, and he almost broke my wrist when I tried to get it."
"No!" Raoul said, and the Persian tried to quiet him, but it was no use.
"So," I went on, "I have until eleven o'clock to accept or refuse him."
"Christine," Raoul said, "for the love of God, tell us, what time is it? You have to listen, there's something here that's terrifying."
"What? Oh, no, what? I can't bear anymore of this."
"This gunpowder," the Daroga broke in. "I tried to tell you. It lies beneath this torture chamber in which we have been imprisoned."
"Torture?" I interrupted. "What torture? Oh, that fiend, how could he do that to you? To you both? Is that why the wall and this room are so hot? Are you roasting now?"
"The room is cooling," the Persian answered. "I think that when we found the door which led to the gunpowder cache, it set up some automatic mechanism which switched off the burner. It's dark in here now, almost too dark to see, but I am reassured, because it is far better than that burning horror of desert sun."
"The gas," I murmured. "I heard it go on, and now it's off."
"And it did its work," he answered. "Erik is efficient. He replicated his Golestan creation perfectly."
"Not that we wanted to properly experience it," Raoul broke in. "But the time, Christine, I beg you, what is the time?"
A little Ormulu clock ticked on my bureau. "Ten fifty," I said, and Raoul gave a loud cry.
"So let me understand this," the Persian said calmly as if Raoul had not uttered anything at all, "the fiend wants you to tell him that in a few minutes you'll marry him, and you are to turn some kind of switch or fixture to signify that?"
"Yes," I said. "A scorpion for yes, a locust for no. He fitted them into a box on his mantelpiece, but it looked like there were some kind of pipes or tubes coming out of it."
"Oh, mercy of Allah," the Persian replied, and when I heard the fear in his voice I started to tremble too. "You know what this means, Vicomte? You shake your head, but use it, rather than just wagging it. Underneath us are many barrels, and wires, and a kind of burner apparatus nearby. No, Vicomte, I am not mad. Erik has created some kind of mechanism to ignite this entire cache, and what will set it off, Mademoiselle, will be your small hand should you refuse him."
Raoul said something inaudible.
"Yes, he would do that, for I have seen Erik in love, and this time he will not let it slip from his grasp as he did so many decades ago, even if he can only take her with him in death."
"What is he going to do, Daroga? Raoul, what is happening?"
"It is simple," Raoul said, "although I do not want to believe it myself. When you turn the locust, thus refusing Erik's hand in marriage, it will light a flame, ignite some wadding of some kind, and thus blow the gunpowder. This entire building will go up in a massive explosion." He said it with deadly calm, but his voice shook.
"Impossible," I said. "How could he build something like that?"
"You have seen what he has made," the Persian said. "You have seen men walk and turn corners on their own accord. In Persia Erik and I would talk about such things as if they were only dreams, but in Constantinople dreams became reality, and he has improved them since. I am convinced if he sets his mind to it he can build almost anything, including this elaborate device that will kill us all."
"So this is what he meant, when he said to me that 'there will be a rent in the fabric of humanity,' things like that. He said we would die together, in a flash."
Raoul must have pounded on the door in fury, for the Daroga said, "Stop, don't lose your head, man. You kept yourself together during the terrible heat, compose yourself now. We can't get out that way."
Raoul said, "Daroga, there is something else. Is there a performance tonight? Oh, I wish I knew with certainty what night it even was."
I broke in. "If it is the next night after Faust, then there will be a performance of Meyerbeer. That famous one ... Robert de Diable. If it's the second night after, I think it will be L'Africaine."
The two men talked quietly together. "Yes," the Daroga said. "I see, but it grieves my heart... however, there can't be much time. Only a few minutes, perhaps."
"Oh, please let me think a moment," Raoul said, cutting him off. I could feel my heart pounding under Erik's robe. Then Raoul spoke in calmer tones, "Daroga, please let me talk to Christine in peace. No, my head is quite clear now, I assure you."
Through the fog of my heart-sickness and the barrier of the wall came Raoul's voice, strong now and composed, and in my mind he appeared larger and firmer of purpose than he had ever been. No more was he the boy, no more the tender-skinned, soft-caressing lover whose breast I held on the roof of the Opera. Instead I heard the man in the blue uniform who ruled men on board ship, not by force or threats but by quiet command.
"You must choose the scorpion," Raoul said. "Lives are at stake. You must."
"What?" I almost shrieked. "You can't mean that!"
"Christine, think. If you refuse him, it's not just us. It's hundreds of people. You know what theater fires are like, and this would be worse. This could bring the whole building down into rubble."
"I'm not a soldier," I answered. "You're the officer who can lie down and die for your duty. I can't."
"You can," he said quietly.
"Do you understand to what hell you condemn me? You would give me to him, just like that?" Then a horrible thought crossed my mind. "You must fear for yourself. Is this your way to use me to save your own life?"
"Of course I want to live," he said rapidly. "I won't lie. But even if I had died in the torture chamber, I would still want you to do this. Don't think about me. There are five hundred lives above us, maybe a thousand. Have you ever seen someone burned all over his body? I have. One time a boiler on board blew, and the engineers were roasted. The men who died at once experienced a great mercy. The others ... You heard the Daroga. There's gunpowder down here, and some kind of wiring, a mechanism for setting it all off. He's going to not only kill you and kill himself. If you refuse him, the whole building's going to blow."
I felt myself grow cold and far away. "An army of fire giants to bring down Valhalla, that's what he said. It made no sense, but now it does."
"He did not do this on a whim," the Persian said. "This was planned for some time."
Raoul spoke so softly I could barely hear him, and I pressed my head up against the door even though it was painfully hot against my ear. "You have to turn the scorpion. If you live, you may yet escape. If I live, I will search in every corner of the world until I find you again. But if you refuse him, none of those above will have any chance of escape, including you, or me."
"If I live I will never escape him," I said, flooded with shame that I had accepted Erik's ring, accepted his body inside mine, thinking of his horrible skin, of his presence around me, filling me, suffusing me, never letting me go, inside and over and around me forever.
"You can, and you will," Raoul went on. "No one will blame you. You were forced."
"You aren't forced, are you?" came Erik's voice from behind me. "Who's forcing you?" and I jumped and knocked over a nearby water pitcher on a stand. It fell onto the stone floor where the rug did not reach, and broke into long sharp shards.
He repeated his ultimatum, and from behind the wall I heard the sharp voice of the Persian, arguing, pleading, and another murmuring lower down.
"Where's Raoul," I called to the Persian. "What's he saying?"
"He prays," came the answer. "With his glass beads he prays to Isa's pure mother Maryam, and begs of her that you will do the will of Allah without fear."
I looked at the pottery shards on the floor and thought, I could pick one up and put it in my sleeve, go turn the scorpion, and afterwards cut my throat. Then despair overtook me, because Raoul and the daroga were still locked in the torture chamber, and nothing was to stop Erik from turning it back on and killing them.
"Let them out," I whispered. "Please let them out first."
"I will not," he said. He had changed his clothes, and his vest was scarlet under his black jacket. As he paced back and forth, he dragged his leg a little. "Never," he said through clenched teeth. "Decide."
As if in a dream, I brushed past him. I walked over to the mantel and put my hands on both metal creatures, not thinking but just staring at them. The screaming face on the locust looked like Erik's. The scorpion had no face at all, just little clots of bronze for eyes. Life, or death. My death for their lives, all of their lives.
I don't want to hope, I thought. I can't do this and still have hope that someday, over the hill, will come the rescue party. If I do this, then I die. Not in the body, but in everything I was and everything I am. I will become his creature totally, and who knows, maybe he is right? Maybe I will indeed learn to love him. Perhaps my flesh will burgeon under him, and if I am indeed locked away, when he does summon me I will adorn myself and go to him gladly. All this could happen.
It will be like dying, I thought, because I will not recognize myself.
Every time I thought something would kill me, break me in two, it did not. First there was Mother's death, and the loss of the farm. But I bore it, and it was beautiful later in its own way, a fairy-tale existence, and I had Papa all to myself. Then when we moved to Paris, I thought I would die again. I didn't want to come to this big smelly city and have to talk in a strange language which I'd only studied from books. Then Paris opened as a crack in the magic mountain, to show all kinds of wonders within.
When Papa died, that was the worst of all, because nothing made sense or mattered to me anymore. But I didn't die. Instead, I went to the conservatory and sang not for Papa alone, or the faceless crowds at the pardons, but for those teachers who took my voice apart and put it together again as Erik made his automata. I became their automaton, their little wind-up canary, but there was some pride in that even if there was no zest in it.
Then one day, someone came to ignite the spark of joy, and that well-crafted mechanism of song glowed with the life of an infused soul.
I turned to him, tall, pacing, wringing his hands, muttering to himself and said, "Erik, I want to know something before I choose."
He sighed and said, "More bargaining? There is the grasshopper, just turn it. Here, give stand aside and I'll do it for you if you've lost your nerve," but as he reached for it I blocked his hand with mine.
"You say you want me to be your 'living wife.' What if I don't sing for you again? Would you still want me then?"
He laughed, so unusual because this time there was genuine humor in it. "That wasn't meant to amuse you," I frowned.
"What does singing have to do with the love of a real wife? Millions of men across the globe have wives who do not sing. Sing all you wish, Christine, or never utter a note again if that is your desire, although I do not think you can keep silent very long. You never manage to in any other regard. Sing?" and he laughed again, then grew suddenly very serious. "I want you to love me. I want you to stop being cold to me. But you cannot, can you?" He reached again to touch the locust. "I will do it myself. It is too much to lay upon your shoulders."
My hands started to shake and I gripped the little metal creatures convulsively. The little wind-up bird felt something stir inside of her, something of her own.
"So it is truly me that you love. Not the hair, not the costumes, not the applause, not the voice."
He stood to my side, the etched pits and crevasses of his face twisted even deeper with emotion. "It was always so," he whispered. "From the very start. Had you any doubt?"
That makes it possible, I thought. Perhaps in this new life I can actually live, rather than despair. Few women are loved like this. But I cannot do this with hope. There has to be none. I must extinguish it. Raoul, forgive me.
I pulled the locust from its fitting and threw it into the fireplace. Then I turned the scorpion. Erik gave a loud cry, and I looked at him in horror because he himself was so surprised. Then I knew. He had expected me to turn the grasshopper and call down fire from Muspelheim on us all. He had expected, no, had wanted to die. He wanted to use me to die. Now he had to live. We stared at each other like two damned souls shipwrecked on the shores of hell.
A great rumbling filled the room, a rush and roar of water, as if Acheron itself overflowed its great banks and ran through the bowels of the Garnier Opera. I thought I heard faint cries from within, and said in fury, "Oh, you are impossible. Did you just callously lie to me? Are you going to drown instead of roast them? Do you plan to kill them anyway?"
"The water has to get to a certain level to disable the mechanism," he said, and as we waited I bit the inside of my mouth, trying to avoid flying at him in a turmoil of fear and distrust. Then silently he turned the scorpion fixture back to its original position. Slowly the sound of water receded. "It is done," he said.
"The opera is safe," I said, hoping it were true. "But if you kill them, I will not be your wife as you want."
"Renege on your promise, and they both die."
We stood there unmoving, staring at each other, horns locked in a battle of wills. "So when will you let them out?"
"After you dress. I can't have my wife showing herself in her bathrobe."
"I need to clean myself up as well. Please turn on the water in the tub."
"You won't try anything, will you? Because you promised," and he sounded like a petulant little boy arguing with a schoolmate.
"No," I said. "I won't try to kill myself. You'll have a living woman to parade in front of Paris or take to Asia Minor if you wish, not a corpse. That was part of the bargain. Now how about your part?"
He snorted as if in disgust, and while I ran the bath, he cleaned up the broken pitcher. "Time to spring the mice from the trap," he said.
"Wait!" I called. "Don't you have to let them in through this door, the one that's locked?"
He laughed. "There are six walls, and a top and a bottom to that cell in the honeycomb, and each is its own door. I can let them in or out any way that I please. As if I would lead them through your bedroom, indeed," and out he went.
"Raoul!" I called as soon as he shut the door. "Raoul, Daroga, he says he's coming to get you! I turned the scorpion."
"Oh, God, Christine, you don't know how hard it was to breathe there, thinking that we would go up in smoke."
"Daroga, will he keep his promise?"
"I pray he will."
"Christine, I love you. I swear to you, I will find you and bring you back."
"I love you too," and a great well of sorrow opened up in me. "But you have to forget me, Raoul. You'll never get me back, he'll hide me in Turkey, or Morocco, or Algeria, any of those places ... and it will kill me to hope, day after day, waiting for you. I can't. Take my love, but forget me. I can't live otherwise."
"No, I won't believe that. You're terrified and you have had a terrible shock. Don't lose heart now. I will find you!"
"Quiet," the Persian barked. "He comes!"
There was a loud sliding scrape. Erik spoke, although I couldn't understand him, and then he laughed. A few loud cries of alarm, and there was one gentle thud like the sound a large sack of laundry makes when it falls over, then another. There were no sounds of struggle. I climbed on a chair to peek through the little window at the top of the hidden door, but the torture room was deep in darkness and I could see nothing.
I truly was Erik's now. I bathed, blushing at the memory of my last soak in that tub, wondering how I would feel the next time Erik climbed on me in some strange bed, in some city I could not imagine.
After emerging from the the bathroom I searched through the wardrobe. There was a cream-colored blend of wool and silk, soft as an angel's sleeve. I'll never want for lovely clothes, I thought as I put it on.
My bedroom door was unlocked, and asleep or unconscious on the sofas were Raoul and the Persian, while standing by the fire warming himself was my husband.
Never had I known such control, not even when turning that hated dial to release the cooling flood into the chamber of fire. Every impulse spurred me to rush to Raoul's side, while to do so would have courted instant death. The gunpowder was ruined, but it took no "little bag of life and death" for Erik to strangle or stab us in that very room.
The Persian began to stir. Erik turned around and I gave a little cry of shock. He wore a black silk mask like the one I'd thrown into the fire. It wasn't for me, I knew at once. He wanted to hide his shame from the men, yet I couldn't help but stare. I was used to his bitter face, not this blank impassive black. Through the eye holes he fixed me with a bronze glance, hard and shiny.
"The Persian will wake soon," Erik said, "but you are to say nothing to him, not a word. You are under a vow of silence now, until I can determine that you will be true to your promise."
Finally the tall brown man shook himself and opened his long lovely eyes. I brought him some tea but ignored him when he tried to speak to me. He gestured at Raoul and said to Erik, "Monsieur le Vicomte, does he live?"
"He does," Erik said gravely as he turned to the fire, staring into it. I didn't see the little screaming locust; perhaps it had melted, or he had already fetched it out. The scorpion remained in the box, right-side up now, its tail still ready to strike.
"You can't keep him, Erik, you know that. I hold you to that promise. You must let him go."
"In awhile," Erik replied like a little child told to release the puppy before he hurt it. "He will sleep for hours."
"And Mademoiselle Daae? What will become of her now?"
I tried to not look over when I heard my name. Instead, I sat pretending to read while the two men talked.
"Such a foolish question," Erik answered. "She becomes my wife in every way, body and soul." He noticed the Persian looking around and said, "You like my rooms?"
"Your mother's furniture goes well here. It is a shame I had to visit you under such inauspicious circumstances. You should have invited me sooner, Erik."
"No doubt. I don't know why you're so ungrateful, though, as I've told you that all this furniture is yours to take with you, if you wish. Or burn it, I don't care. It will be a shame to leave it all, though."
"Then don't. No one is forcing you to leave Paris."
Erik answered, "What, and live with my beautiful bride down here, like a rat in the sewer? What kind of life is that for a man or for his family?" and at the word "family" a little pang went through me. "This is why I have never invited you to visit me in Paris, as you can't refrain from telling other people how to run their affairs."
"I only interfere for your sake, Erik. Seriously, why should you leave Paris? Where would you go?"
"Very clever you think you are. What makes you think I would even tell you the truth?"
"Erik, the andarun is no place for her. She'll wither and die." The Persian spoke low and impassioned, trying not to let me hear.
"Or perhaps free of all this harassment and worry, she'll get her pretty color back and flourish. But your cup is empty, and there is more in the kitchen. No, Christine, keep reading as you are. I'm perfectly capable of pouring out for our guest."
Stretched on the couch, Raoul began to lightly snore.
Erik brought the Persian another cup of tea from the kitchen, and this one must have been drugged, for while the two men continued to spar back and forth, gradually the Persian's voice grew slurred and he laughed a little. Then he leaned his head back and while his eyes remained open, he slumped back and stared up at the ceiling with a glazed and vacant expression.
"I have to deliver a package," Erik told me. "Don't bother trying to escape with your young man; he will neither hear, nor speak, nor move for many hours. And don't try to shake or rouse him, either, as unfortunately people under the influence of that particular pharmakon have been known to stop breathing or lose their heartbeats. It would be a shame to go through all the trouble of saving him, just to kill him."
Then he strode over to the Daroga, and put his arm around the dazed man's shoulders. He leaned very close to him, with his mouth almost directly on his ear. "Get up," he said, and I almost thought I heard him address the Persian by name, although I could not hear it clearly. Slowly the daroga staggered to his feet as if hypnotized.
"Where's his cloak?" Erik said to himself, then muttered, "If it's back in the torture chamber, he can do without it." Then he gripped the Persian firmly by the arm and walked him out of the room, the big brown man compliant and obedient as a child, as stunned as a sleepwalker.
The outer door locks all clicked shut, and I stared forlornly at Raoul. Erik might have been lying when he said Raoul's breathing would stop if I shook him, but then again, he might have been telling the truth. So I put my face next to his ear and called loudly over and over, "Raoul, wake up," but nothing happened. Nor did I dare hold his hand or weep on his breast.
An hour or so later Erik returned, and when he went to pick up Raoul as well, I cried, "Where are you taking him? You promised you would let him go. You promised," and he flinched as if the word "promise" was a blow under which he shuddered.
"He's a hostage," he replied.
"So you don't trust me?" I asked.
"You haven't exactly shown yourself worthy of trust, dearest wife," he said. "I'll keep him safe and check on him."
"You're taking him to the Communard jail, aren't you?" and he nodded, silent. Then horror more desperate than any so far washed over me. I had been to those prison cells underneath the Opera and knew there were more chambers than rooms in a rabbit warren. Raoul could disappear down there forever; he could scream his lungs raw and no one would hear him. The injustice and travesty of it all overwhelmed me, and I shouted, "You said you would let him go. You can't keep him a prisoner."
"Do you swear on your soul to be my living wife?" he asked.
Confused, I said, "I already promised you I wouldn't kill myself."
"It's undignified for a man to argue with his bride," he said, and he sounded almost reasonable. "I expect you to be my wife in every way," and he staggered a little as if dizzy, almost falling on the sofa next to Raoul. "Why can't you love me?" he said, almost to himself. "Why can't you love me?" and he began to cry a little, then recovered himself. "Never mind, he can't stay here. Erik wants to be alone with his wife," still talking half to himself.
"Why don't you make him walk, like you did the Persian?"
"Ah, but to do that I would first have to wake him up, and then he would see you, and Erik can't have that."
"You can't carry him," I stated. "You'll stumble or drop him. You'll break open those stitches again, and start to bleed."
"How kind of you to show such concern for Erik's welfare. Never for a moment have I doubted your selfless devotion. Very well. Go into your bedroom and I will lock the door. Not a word or a cry out of you," and he placed his hands almost tenderly around Raoul's throat, "or his life will be gone in an instant. You are to remain utterly silent. Can you do that?"
I nodded, and when I heard the lock click, I pressed my ear up against the door as hard as I could. A short while later I heard Raoul's voice, thick and slurred as if he had been drinking all night, and Erik in return soothing him in tones like liquid silk. "She's here, she's fine, no, of course I have not harmed her, here, drink this, ah yes. All down, that's right. What a good boy you are. No, you can't see her now, she's sleeping. All this excitement, and she needs her rest. You've had a nice rest, haven't you? See how much better you feel?" and Raoul began to laugh, a high boyish giggle.
Then Erik gave a gasp, or grunt. "You weigh almost as much as that miserable Persian," he said. "Come on, you walk on your own. Yes, like that." I opened my door a crack and watched Raoul move slowly, unseeing although his vacant eyes were open. Erik put his arm around his shoulders and pulled Raoul's body to his own, to support him further. Even though Raoul walked on his own, Erik still staggered a little as the two of them disappeared out the front door.
(continued...)