The Phantom Of Manhattan (1999) Page 9

  Three years after I found a poor wretch of sixteen chained in a cage at Neuilly I met the second of those young men I later came to call my boys. It was by accident, and a dreadful tragic accident it was.

  It was late at night in the winter of 1885. The opera had finally finished, the girls had gone to their quarters, the great building had closed its doors and I was walking home alone through the darkened streets towards my apartment. It was a short cut, narrow, cobbled and black. Unknown to me, there were other people in that alley. Ahead a serving maid, late-dismissed from a house near by, was trotting fearfully through the dark towards the brighter boulevard ahead. In a doorway a young man whom I later learned to be no more than sixteen was saying farewell to the friends with whom he had spent the evening.

  Out of the shadows came a ruffian, a footpad such as haunted the back streets looking for a pedestrian to rob of his wallet. Why he picked the little serving girl I shall never know. She could not have had more than five sous on her person. But I saw the rogue run out of the shadows and throw his arms around her throat to stop her screaming while he went for her purse. I yelled, ‘Leave her alone, brute. Au secours!’

  The sound of racing male boots went past me, I caught the glimpse of a uniform and a young man had thrown himself on the footpad, carrying him to the ground. The midinette screamed and ran headlong for the lights of the boulevard. I never saw her again. The footpad tore himself loose from the young officer, got to his feet and began to run. The officer rose and went after him. Then I saw the ruffian turn, draw something from his pocket and point it at his pursuer. There was a bang and a flash as he fired. Then he ran through an arch to disappear in the courtyards behind.

  I went over to the fallen man and saw that he was little more than a boy, a brave and gallant child, in the uniform of an officer cadet from the Ecole Militaire. His handsome face was white as marble and he was bleeding profusely from a bullet wound in the lower stomach. I tore strips from my petticoat to staunch the bleeding and screamed until a householder looked out from above and asked what was the matter. I urged him to run to the boulevard and hail a cab urgently, which he did in his nightshirt.

  It was too far to the Hotel-Dieu, much closer to the Hopital St Lazare, so that was where we went. There was one young doctor on duty but when he saw the nature of the wound and learned the identity of the cadet, scion of a most noble family from Normandy, he sent a porter running for a senior surgeon who lived near by. There was nothing more I could do for the lad, so I went home.

  But I prayed that he would live and in the morning, it being a Sunday and no work for me at the Opera, I went back to the hospital. The authorities had already sent for the family from Normandy and, seeing me approach, the senior surgeon on duty must have taken me for the cadet’s mother when I asked for him by name. His face was a mask of gravity and he invited me to come to his private office. There he told me the dreadful news.

  The patient would live, he said, but the damage caused by the bullet and its removal had been terrible. Major blood vessels in the upper groin and lower stomach had been torn beyond repair. He had had no choice but to suture them. Still I did not understand. Then I realized what he meant, and asked in plain language. He nodded solemnly. ‘I am devastated,’ he said. ‘Such a young life, such a handsome boy, and now alas only half a man. I fear he will never be able to have a child of his own.’

  ‘You mean’, I asked, ‘that the bullet has emasculated him?’ The surgeon shook his head. ‘Even that might have been a mercy, for then he might have felt no desire for a woman. No, he will feel all the passion, the love, the desire that any young man may feel. But the destruction of those vital blood vessels means that …’

  ‘I am no child myself, M’sieur le Docteur,’ I said, wishing to spare his embarrassment though I knew with awful dread what was coming.

  ‘Then, madame, I must tell you that he will never be able to consummate any union with a woman and thus create a child of his own.’

  ‘So he can now never marry?’ I asked. The surgeon shrugged.

  ‘It would be a strange and saintly woman, or one with a powerful other motive, who could accept such a union with no physical dimension,’ he said. ‘I am truly sorry. I did what I could to save his life from the haemorrhage.’

  I could hardly keep from weeping at the tragedy of it. That such a foul fiend could inflict so dreadful a wound on a boy on the threshold of life seemed impossible. But I went to see him anyway. He was pale and weak, but awake. He had not been told. He thanked me prettily for helping him in the alley, insisting that I had saved his life. When I heard his family arriving hotfoot from the Rouen train I left.

  I never thought to see my young aristocrat again but I was wrong. Eight years later, grown handsome as a Greek god, he began to frequent the Opera night after night, hoping for a word and a smile from a certain understudy. Later, finding her with child, good, kind and decent man that he was, he confessed all to her and with her agreement married her, giving her his name, his title and a wedding band. And for twelve years he has given to the son all the love a real father could ever give.

  So there you have the truth my poor Erik. Try to be kind and gentle.

  From one who tried to help you in your pain,

  A dying kiss,

  Antoinette Giry.

  I will see her tomorrow. She must know it by now. The message to the hotel was plain enough. She would know that musical monkey anywhere. The place of my choosing, of course; the hour of my selection. Will she be frightened of me still? I suppose so. Yet she will not know how fearful I will be of her; of her power to deny me again some tiny measure of the happiness most men can take for granted.

  But even if I am to be repulsed yet again, everything has changed. I can look down from this high eyrie onto the heads of that human race I so loathe, but now I can say: you can spit on me, defile me; jeer at me, revile me; but nothing you can do will hurt me now. Through the filth and through the rain, through the tears and through the pain, my life’s not been in vain; I HAVE A SON.

  11

  THE PRIVATE DIARY OF MEG GIRY

  WALDORF-ASTORIA HOTEL, MANHATTAN, 29 NOVEMBER 1906

  DEAR DIARY, AT LAST I AM ABLE TO SIT DOWN IN peace and confide to you my inner thoughts and worries, for it is now the small hours of the morning and everyone is abed.

  Pierre is fast asleep, quiet as a lamb, for I peeped in ten minutes ago. Father Joe I can hear snoring away in his cot next to where I am sitting and even the thick walls of this hotel do not deny his farm-boy snorts. And Madame is at last asleep also with a cachet to help her find rest. For in twelve years I have never seen her so distressed.

  It all had to do with that toy monkey that some anonymous donor sent to Pierre here in the suite. There was a reporter here also, very nice and helpful (and who flirted with his eyes at me) but that was not what upset Madame so badly. It was the toy monkey.

  When she had heard it play its second tune - the sounds of which came straight through the open door into the boudoir where I was brushing her hair - she became like one possessed. She insisted on finding out from where it came, and when the reporter M. Bloom had traced it and arranged a visit, she insisted that she be left alone. I had to ask the young man to leave, and get Pierre protesting into bed.

  After that, I found her at her dressing-table, staring at the mirror but making no attempt to complete her toilette. So I cancelled dinner in the restaurant with Mr Hammerstein also.

  Only when we were alone could I ask her what was going on. For this journey to New York, which started so well and saw such a fine reception at the quay earlier in the day, had turned to something dark and sinister.

  Of course, I too recognized the strange monkey-doll and the haunting tune it played, and it brought back a tidal wave of frightening memories. Thirteen years … that was what she kept repeating as we talked, and truly it has been thirteen years since those strange events that culminated in the terrible descent to the lowest and darkest cellar be
neath the Paris Opera. But though I was there that night, and have tried to question Madame since, she has always kept her silence and I never did learn the details of the relationship between her and the frightening figure we chorus girls used to refer to simply as the Phantom.

  Until this night when at last she told me more. Thirteen years ago she was involved in a truly remarkable scandal at the Paris Opera when she was abducted right from the centre of the stage during the performance of a new opera, Don Juan Triumphant, which has never been repeated since.

  I was myself in the corps de ballet that night, though I was not on stage at the moment the lights fused out and she disappeared. Her abductor carried her from the stage down to the deepest cellars of the Opera, where she was later rescued by the gendarmes and the rest of the cast, headed by the Commissaire de Police who happened to be in the audience.

  I was there too, trembling with fear as we all came down with burning torches, through cellar after cellar until we reached the lowest catacomb by the underground lake. We expected to find at last the dreaded Phantom but all we and the gendarmes found was Madame, alone and shaking like a leaf, and later Raoul de Chagny who had come ahead of us and seen the Phantom face to face.

  There was a chair, with a cloak thrown over it, and we thought the monster might be hiding underneath. But no. Just a monkey-toy, with cymbals and a musical box inside. The police took it away as evidence and I never saw such a one again, until this night.

  That was the time she was being daily courted by the young Vicomte Raoul de Chagny and all the girls were so envious of her. Had it not been for her beautiful nature she might well have invited hostility too, for her looks, her sudden leap to stardom and the love of the most eligible bachelor in Paris. But no-one hated her; we all loved her and were delighted to see her restored to us. But though we became closer over the years, she never mentioned what happened to her in the hours that she was missing, and her only explanation was that ‘Raoul rescued me.’ So what was the significance of the toy monkey?

  This night I knew better than to ask her directly, so I fussed about and brought her a little food, which she refused to eat. When I had persuaded her to take her sleeping-draught she became drowsy and let slip for the first time a few details of those bizarre events.

  She told me there had been another man, a strange elusive creature who frightened, fascinated, overawed and helped her, but who had an obsessional love for her that she could not repay. Even as a chorus girl I had heard tales of a strange phantom who haunted the lower cellars of the Opera and had amazing powers, being able to come and go unseen and inflict his will on the management by threats of retribution if they did not obey him. The man and his legend frightened us all, but I never knew he loved my mistress of today in such a manner. I asked about the monkey that played a haunting tune.

  She said she had only seen such a creature once before, and I am sure that it must have been during those hours in the cellars with the monster, the same one I myself found on the empty chair.

  As the sleep came over her, she kept repeating that ‘he’ must be back: alive and close, moving behind the scenes as ever, a terrifying genius of a man, fearsomely ugly as her Raoul was handsome, the one she had rejected and who had now lured her to New York to confront her again.

  I will do everything I can to protect her, for she is my friend as well as my employer and she is good and kind. But now I am frightened, for there is something or someone out there in the night and I fear for all of us: for me, for Father Joe, for Pierre and most of all for her, Madame.

  The last thing she said to me before she slipped away into sleep was that for the sake of Pierre and of Raoul she must find the strength to refuse him again, for she is convinced that soon he will at last appear and demand her again. I pray that she has that strength and I pray that these next ten days will hurry past so that we may all return safely to the security of Paris and away from this place of monkeys that play long-ago tunes and the unseen presence of the Phantom.

  12

  THE JOURNAL OF TAFFY JONES

  STEEPLECHASE PARK, CONEY ISLAND, 1 DECEMBER 1906

  MINE IS A STRANGE JOB AND SOME WOULD SAY NOT for a man of some intelligence and no small ambition. For this reason I have often been tempted to give it up and move on to something else. Yet I have never done so in the nine years since I have been employed here at Steeplechase Park.

  Part of this reason is that the job offers security for me and my wife and brood, with an excellent income and comfortable living conditions. Another part is that I have simply come to enjoy it. I enjoy the laughter of the children and the pleasure of their parents. I take satisfaction in the simple off-duty happiness of those all around me during the summer months and the contrasting peace and quiet of the winter season.

  As for my living conditions, they could hardly be more comfortable for a man of my station. My principal dwelling is a snug cottage in the respectable middle-class community of Brighton Beach, barely a mile from my place of work. Add to that, I have a small cabin here in the heart of the funfair to which I can repair for a rest from time to time, even at the height of the season. As for my salary, it is generous. Ever since, three years ago, I negotiated a reward based on a tiny fraction of the gate money I have been able to take home over one hundred dollars a week.

  Being a man of modest tastes and not much of a drinker, I am able to put a good part of it by, so that one day and not so many years from now I shall be able to retire from all this, with my five children off my hands and making their way in the world. Then I shall take my Blodwyn and we will find a small farm, perhaps by a river or a lake or even by the sea, where I can farm and fish as the mood takes me, and go to chapel on the Sabbath and be a regular pillar of the local society. And so I stay and do my job, which most say I do very well.

  For I am the official Funmaster of Steeplechase Park. Which means that with my extra-long shoes on my feet, my baggy trousers in a violent check, my stars-and-stripes weskit and my tall top hat I stand at the entrance gate to the park and welcome all visitors. More, with my bushy sideburns and handlebar moustache and a smile of cheerful welcome on my face, I bring many of them in who would otherwise have passed by.

  Using my megaphone I cry constantly, ‘Roll up, roll up, all the fun of the fair, thrills and spills, strange and wonderful things to see, come in my friends and have the time of your lives …’ and so on and on. Up and down outside the gate I go, greeting and welcoming the pretty girls in their best summer frocks and the young men trying so hard to impress them in striped jackets and straw boaters; and the families with their children clamouring for the many and special treats that I tell them are in store once they have persuaded their parents to take them in. And in they go, paying their cents and dollars at the pay-booths, and of every fifty cents there is one for me.

  Of course, this is a summer job, lasting from April until October, when the first cold winds come in off the Atlantic and we close down for the winter.

  Then I can hang the Funmaster’s suit in the closet and drop the Welsh lilt that the visitors find so charming, for I was born in Brooklyn City and have never seen the land of my father and his fathers before him. Then I can come to work in a normal suit and supervise the winter programme when all the sideshows and rides are dismantled and stored; when the machinery is serviced and greased, worn parts replaced, timber sanded and repainted or varnished, carousel horses regilded and torn canvas stitched. By the time April comes again all is back where it should be and the gates open with the first warm and sunny days.

  So it was with some amazement that two days ago I received a letter from Mr George Tilyou personally, he being the gentleman who owns the park. He dreamed up the idea in the first place, with a partner who exists only in rumour and whom the world has never seen, at least not down here. It was Mr T’s energy and vision that brought it all into being nine years ago and since then the park has made him a very rich man indeed.

  His letter came by personal delivery
and was clearly very urgent. It explained that on the following day, which of course is now yesterday, a private party would be visiting the park and for these people the place should be opened up. He said he knew the rides and carousels could not function in time, but stressed that the Toyshop should be open and fully staffed and so also should the Hall of Mirrors. And this letter led to the strangest day I have ever known in Steeplechase Park.

  Mr Tilyou’s instructions that the Toyshop and the Hall of Mirrors should be fully staffed put me in the very devil of a fix. For both my key staff in these areas are on vacation and far away.

  Nor are they easily replaceable. The mechanical toys in the shop, the very speciality of that emporium, are not only the most sophisticated in all America but are also very complicated. It takes a real expert to understand them and explain their workings to the young people who come by to wonder, to explore and to buy. I am certainly not that expert. I could only hope for the best - or so I thought.

  Of course the place is bitter cold in winter but I took kerosene warmers in to heat up the shop on the evening before the visit so that by dawn it was warm as a summer’s day. Then I removed all the dust-sheets from the shelves to reveal the ranks of clockwork soldiers, drummers, dancers, acrobats and animals that sing, dance and play. But that was as far as I could go. I had done all I could in the toyshop by eight in the morning before the private party was due to arrive. Then something most strange happened.