III
After that lunch, he sent me to my room to take a rest—a siesta, he called it, something he'd heard about while in Spain. He said I looked very overwhelmed. I felt in need of a rest, too. I couldn't think, and I had to keep reminding myself to take deep breaths. Once I was in my room, I tried to talk myself back into sense. He intended to keep me for a month, and was a month so bad? No, not really. At least, I didn't think so. Lately, I'd noticed time flying: school years slipping by, summers disappearing in a heartbeat, and holidays going so quickly I'd wondered where the time went. A month, hopefully, would pass in that way. Why was I so worried, anyway? When my nerves refused to quiet themselves, I resorted to an old stand-by that had usually worked in the past. I made a list. I wrote down my worries and thoughts about the whole situation in an attempt to make sense of it.
-I have no idea where in the world I am. If I have to find my way home from here, how would I do that?
-I can't see outside; that bothers me. I feel closed in. There are no doors or windows I can spot. He usually has to point the doors out to me.
-Am I a prisoner here? Will I have to stay inside this house the whole time and never be on my own away from him at any time?
-Why didn't Mother or Father ever tell me? I'm sure they would have told me if they felt safe doing so. Did they never tell me because they felt it was dangerous? But why wouldn't they feel it was safe? Could it be this man is dangerous? Mad?
-I'm very confused. He could be my father, but then, he could be someone else entirely, and this could be his revenge on Mother and Father for escaping from them.
-He's a little frightening. The way his music drew me on like that earlier today is worrisome. He could hypnotize me and keep me here just by playing some music.
Once I'd made that list, I made another, this time listing things that intrigued me.
-He has black hair, I have black hair, and Mother and Father have blonde and brown hair. He could be telling the truth.
-We're both voracious readers, and we have the same favorite authors on our shelves.
-We both like music. (Then again, this doesn't mean much, so do Mother and Father.)
-Travels. He mentioned travels? To where? It looks like Persia and India, if one's to judge by all the little knick-knacks he has about the house. Some things, though, I don't recognize. So, where has he been?
-He is rich. (Think of all the Charvet suits!) So, how? What does he do for money?
-How did he learn to cook? Was it just trial-and-error, or did someone teach him the basics? If that's true, then who did and when?
-Why are all of the doors hidden in some way? Is it to keep me from finding the way out or to keep others from finding the way in? (Both?)
-How does he do his shopping when he doesn't want others to see him? Those suits and the food didn't purchase or deliver themselves or magically grow in the cupboards! So, how is the shopping done?
-How would he mail his letters?
-What would happen if he became hurt or ill? Would he be all on his own with no one to help him?
-Why does this house have two bedrooms (or more, I haven't seen all of it) when he clearly planned to live alone?
Obviously, this man intrigued me a good deal. I folded the papers up and tucked them away in the desk for later, and then curled up on the chaise-lounge for my "siesta." I didn't know if he would respond badly to my not doing exactly as I was told or not. I hardly knew how much he expected of me in terms of obedience, but I decided not to take any chances.
I became bored very quickly. Very, very bored. There was nothing for me to do, and I really didn't want to read. My cure for boredom at home or school was to go outside and wander about for a bit in the woods, but here I couldn't do that. I was sure he hadn't meant for me to read or occupy myself, but just to rest. How could I rest when I felt bored enough to lose my mind?
According to the clock on my mantel, it was three in the afternoon when he knocked on my door and came in. I welcomed his arrival: it put an end to boredom, and it meant that I didn't have to pretend to rest anymore. Immediately I sat up, eager to do something other than lay there and stare at the molded plaster ceiling.
"Well, Phillippe, do you feel more like yourself?" he asked, sounding friendly. "You look better."
"Much better," I said, not really wishing him to know that I'd been bored out of my skull. "So, what are we going to do now?"
"Anything you like," he said, sounding as if he were smiling underneath the mask. I was getting the feeling that he really wanted to please me, and that he wanted me to like him.
"Could I see the rest of the house?" I asked, feeling my curiosity rise.
"Of course!" he said, sounding eager to show it off. "There's not much else to see, I'm afraid, but there's more."
He showed me the kitchen first. He had the most modern stove that it was possible to buy, as well as the best kitchen implements and containers. Bunches of herbs hung from the ceiling, and a small cold room showed me how he could shorten his shopping trips to once a week instead of once a day. After the kitchen, he showed me his room. It was done in shades of red, and there was a four-poster bed with a canopy. There was also an organ on one wall, and I could see scores on the music stand. On a table lay a violin, and I was certain that it was a Stradivarius! There were bookshelves (more than in my room), and they were full to the top. The walls were covered: drawings, architectural sketches, paintings, and floor plans were tacked to a sheet of pine wood that had been nailed to the wall. It was like the notice board at school. In one sketch, I saw Mother and Father: they were in their wedding outfits, and I looked at Erik wondering why he had drawn that.
"They didn't know I was there to witness their wedding," he explained. "I was up in the choir loft, and later that night, I drew that picture. I draw pictures of all the things I want to remember."
"But I thought you wouldn't want to remember that," I said, trying to understand.
"Why shouldn't I?" he countered. "I loved Christine, and if I couldn't marry her, I at least wanted her to be happy, after all. I realized that when I let them both go. And, strangely, some part of me wanted Raoul to be happy, too. I suppose I began to feel for him as I would a younger, if annoying, brother. I began to want happiness for both of them, and that made seeing the wedding not as difficult as I thought it might have been."
"If you thought it would be difficult, why did you go?"
"I'd always wanted to see her in a wedding dress," he said quietly, his head tilted to one side. "You have to admit, Phillippe, that she looked wonderful in it."
She did. He went on to show me other drawings on the walls and portfolios of his work, explaining what he planned to do with this or that, or the experiments he'd done with countless little oddments that I'd seen scattered over a table in the corner. He showed me an even two-dozen sketches he'd done of Mother, standing, sitting, or asleep. "She'd fallen asleep in her chair over a book, and I couldn't resist the chance to draw that scene," he explained, reassuring me that he hadn't crept into her room at night to draw her.
He took me back to my room then, saying that there was one more room to see on the other side of it. It was a large, empty room with nothing in it.
"Why is this here?" I asked, mystified as to what it was for.
"Well, I no longer had a purpose for this room after your mother went away, so I emptied it out and closed it up," he told me, looking around. "I'm still trying to decide what to do with it. Christine begged me not to use it anymore, and the easiest way to avoid that was to dismantle it."
"Why? What was here?" I asked, not understanding.
"Well, it was the safeguard to the rest of my home. If someone found his way in here he would be trapped, but I've closed it off to the outside now. No one can get in, and very few people realize I'm here."
"You make it sound as if the house were hidden somewhere," I said thoughtfully, looking up at the ceiling.
"It is," he said, putting a hand on my shoulder and leading me out of that room and back into mine. "I'll show you the outside of the house, and then you'll understand."
He led me out into the drawing room and into a small entryway. He closed the door to the house behind us before opening another door that led to the outside. Compared to the inside of the house, the outside was very dim and cool. It smelled musty, and it took me a minute to realize that it wasn't outside at all. No, we were underground somewhere! His home was at the edge of an underground lake. Incredible!
That was when I realized something very disturbing. It was likely that no one ever came here. It was even more likely that if I were in trouble and needed help, no one would hear me calling. If he were to suddenly go mad and try to kill me, I would be at his mercy. If I needed to run away from him, how could I run across a lake? Even if I managed to swim across, how would I find my way to the outside world? If I managed that, then what was to guarantee I was anywhere near home? How would I find my way back to Mother and Father? That drug could have played with my sense of time, and I could have been drugged more than once. I could have been drugged for days or even a few weeks and taken altogether out of France!
Before I could panic, he began talking, and I realized that I had to keep him from guessing what I was thinking just in case I had to actually run sometime. He told me how he had built the house under the building, got gas and water piped in, and how he'd rigged up a warning system that let him know if someone was coming. Finally, I could not keep from asking.
"What building are we under?" I asked, staring up at the support structure above me.
For an answer, he pulled out his watch and examined it. "Well, let's see. It's five o'clock now, so they should be beginning."
"Beginning what?" I asked, surprised.
That was when I heard it. There was a gradual swelling of sound, and then I heard it. Music. The sound of a symphony.
"Ah, I love to hear them rehearse," he said, tilting his head back to hear.
We were under the Opera!