Chapter 5 A life less than ordinary
"Where the devil could he be?" exclaimed the shadow. "Can he really think it acceptable to disappear into the city whenever he likes?" a fist slammed down on the Broadwood piano, making the wires inside vibrate an ominous chord. Dusk had fallen, and the grey light of evening was giving way to the blackness of night. The shadow moved nervously across the open window, looking out again to see if anything moved up the driveway. Squelch did his best to blend into the wall nearest to the door. He hadn't been dismissed yet, but he wanted to make his retreat quickly when it came.
"Master, I'm sure he's just a little tardy. Maybe if we just give him a little more time…" squeaked Miss Fleck.
"NO! Gather everyone together. No one will rest until he's safe at home." ordered the shadow.
"Yes master." Came three unanimous replies, and with muffled shuffling the loyal subjects withdrew to leave their master to his misery. He continued to pace the room, caught between his anger and the fear for his one and only son.
The boy could be hurt, dead, or have run away. He couldn't be sure which would be worse. He was ready to fly from the house himself and hunt on his own when someone tentatively entered the room. They moved slowly forward until they stood on the other side of the piano across from the shadow. A small electric lamp rested on the instrument, its light greatly dulled by an oppressiveness that filled the room. Only when standing within a couple of feet was it able to reveal the two figures.
"I'm sorry I'm late father. I had an accident in the street, but I'm fine now." said a mousey voice, made all the more smaller by his anxiety. The shadow stood silent for several moments, the battle inside vanquished by waves of relief.
"What accident Gustave? Tell me now." His voice wasn't harsh, it was imploring. This was his only son and if he was lost there wouldn't be anything left to live for, but everything to die for. Anything and everything he'd ever cared for waited for him across the gossamer bridge of death, and it was only this boy that kept him from crossing it in flames. He circled the piano, placed his hands on the boy's shoulders and looked down into his eyes. The boy looked back, not with fearful but with sorrowful eyes. He could only imagine the kind of torment he'd subjected his poor father to by his lateness.
"Nothing really, I tripped on the sidewalk. There was a nice woman who saw me and bandaged my chin. I would like to go back there soon and thank her properly." He petitioned carefully.
"Why, what have they asked of you?" questioned the father.
"Nothing, they were just very kind to me and invited me to come back for some tea." explained the boy.
"They?"
"Ur… Yes, it was a woman and her elderly mother."
"Perhaps you should spend more time closer to home, and these kind of… accidents might not happen." warned the man, fingering a patch of dirt that had smeared the boy's jacket just above his rib.
"Oh please, I promise to be more careful. It won't happen again, I swear." There wasn't anyone else left in the world who could either sway or cajole the man into making decisions, except for the child he treasured more than any life, even his own. The man sighed deeply and nodded his consent. The smile that lit the boy's features soon received the rare sight of a grin from his father. It seemed the only pleasure he could derive in life any more was in pleasing his son.
"I think perhaps I should call off the manhunt before every freak on Coney Island starts prowling the NY streets." He made a move to leave the room, but Gustave caught his hand.
"No need, I saw Mr. Gangle on the way up. Father, would you play mother's song for me?" asked the boy. The stab of pain that appeared on his father's face wasn't unexpected, and neither was it his intention to hurt the man. One of the few things that still brought them together was sharing that one piece of music, but more and more Gustave had been denied. When it was played, for just a moment in time, it was like she was there with them again living and singing. For the boy the experience was sweet, but for his father it had become increasingly bitter and painful.
The man gave his son a pained grin, reluctantly consenting and moving to sit on the piano bench. Gustave followed and settled next to him, trying not to allow his eagerness to overshadow moment. The melody began softly, like the waves of the ocean caressing the shore on a calm and clear spring day. Slowly but surely it grew as the tide of emotion swelled. It filled every sense and stroked the soul. Gustave knew better then to sing the accompanying words, but he couldn't help the compulsion to start humming. Just when its warmth had touched his heart it abruptly ended.
His father was quietly sobbing beside him. The strain of the day coupled with the well of grief within him had overflowed. Gustave tried to reach out and embrace him, but he arose quickly and withdrew into the darkness of the room where the lamplight didn't reach. The boy sat bereft, feeling once more that he'd failed for his sake and his fathers. He got up and headed to the door, muttering offhandedly that he would get something to eat from the kitchen than go to bed.
When the door closed it landed like a thunk in the man's chest, echoing with the empty void inside him. Christine had told him that all he needed to do was love and live for their son. But the stark reality was that he didn't know how. He'd never had a taste of normalcy or family. He had no notion of how to express the love he held for his son and felt negligent in his failure.
His romance with Christine had been very brief and raucous. It hadn't had to stand the test of time. It had started out as a kind of friendship, but limited to the relationship of teacher and student before blossoming into an obsessive infatuation. Now there was a tense standoff between his son and himself. There was Gustave, needing him while his father squirmed like a fly caught in wax. Would he have been better off with the Vicomte, that lazy lie about who'd gambled away his family's fortune? No, he would never have been able to let the boy go. He was the only person in the world left there was any connection to, as well as being the man's hear.
The once phantom had built a substantial fortune since arriving in America, and not just from the park, freak show and theater that were his first ventures. He'd also invested in the railroad, tobacco, and acquired interest in both overseas and locally commodities. He purchased land in NY, Canada and the Caribbean, hoping to retire one day to a tiny island nation, awash in the light he'd so long been denied. His was a shadow empire whose foundation he wanted to ensure would stand strong for a very long time so that his son and his children would not face financial struggles. Whereas the thought of future generations might stir another man, he saw it as a world still far beyond him.
If Christine had still been alive, she would have guided him into a bright future for them all and taught him how to give and receive love. But without her his heart had finally begun to shut down, it did not burn as it once had even when he was deprived of her voice. His senses and imagination had dulled, making him a pale reflection of the artist he'd been.
For a time he and Gustave had bonded over the management and development of Phantasma. Now it had become more of a hobby for him, no longer the focus of his financial stability. Besides, the tragedy and scandal of Christine Daae's death had resulted in a rush of attendance to the park. People were hungry to be exposed to a world where death and danger were just a stage away, kept safely behind a glass partition or tethered to a leash. The draw was inexplicable, and the man found it despicable on some level, but it afforded him the opportunity to collaborate with his progeny.
For a time father and son worked together to give attendees unearthly music to accompany the otherworldly creatures they featured. His freaks danced and paraded for the masses, thrilling the little boys and beguiling the little girls while spellbinding the parents into a state of grim fascination. With Gustave's input, his father had completed projects for rides and attractions that awestruck park goers.
In that first year it kept a smile on Gustave's face, only periodically tempered by the grim memory of his mother's passing. For the man it was both torturous and ruinous. So much of his soul had been wrapped up with the love of his life that she'd become the driving force of his dreams and fantasies. It was her voice that had been the pulse of his existence. Now that voice had been smothered forever and a dead silence had taken its place.
He did love his son, who neither blamed nor accused him of guilt in what had happened. Regardless, he felt set adrift on an unknown sea with the responsibility of keeping his son afloat without the aid of a preserver. He didn't pray to god, but he prayed every moment of everyday to his angel of music to save them both. Thus far there'd been no answer, and his will to go on dwindled with each passing moment.
He poured all that was left of his hopes and desires into his son, but he saw with each passing day that coldness was seeping into the young man's spirit. All the promise and potential was in danger of being sucked into darkness, the same darkness that had been a mark of the phantoms existence. He could not allow the burden of his cursed life to weigh upon Gustave, but he couldn't see the way to stop it.
The man let his head hang against his chest, feeling defeated. How could he fix the situation? He understood the boy was searching for something to inspire, someone to lead him. He sympathized with the wanderlust that infected someone of his age, but he couldn't come up with a way to deal with it.
He felt so inadequate, nameless and faceless. His upbringing and adolescence as a circus freak had been anything but normal. As far back as he could remember he'd been treated like an animal, beaten into submission whenever his willful nature asserted itself. At Gustave's age the man recalled being chained, tortured, and punished for his constant attempts to escape and violent tendencies towards his handlers.
As for any healthy examples of loving family or caring role models he had none. The closest he'd ever come to connecting with another creature emotionally was the friendship he'd had with a stray cat that followed the troupe across country. The animal would often crawl into the dirty hay bed where it slept curled up against his flank. It was the only physical contact he'd had with another living thing that didn't involve pain and humiliation.
Now, as a grown man somewhere in his forties, the man still didn't have a context from which to deal with the basest of human needs apart from food and lodging. The only connection that he could share was that which music and art allowed, but even that had its limits where the human heart was concerned.
The bond between two people needed nurturing, especially for the sake of a motherless boy. How could her ever expect to live up to the challenge. He'd even considered sending the boy away to a boarding school or finding a nice family to adopt him, but it felt too much like abandonment and the man knew he wasn't strong enough to separate himself from his son. Gustave was a lifeline to him, the only thing keeping his head above water in a sea of grief and suffering.
He was too tired to eat, too tired to play the piano, and too tired to hope. He pulled the chord of the little lamp to return the room to darkness, undressed and slipped into bed. The man didn't expect the relief of sleep. He knew that he'd be lost in a forest of memories until falling briefly unconscious, but those memories were like sustenance to him and their promise allowed him to look to the sunrise of a new day.