I had a thousand words for him. Tired of keeping the hurt inside of me, I marched to the cellars, one more time. I needed to stop that situation. It didn’t matter to me if he was going to be even more violent. I had to talk with him.
It always seemed like I needed to talk to him, to say anything that might make him give me the chance of getting closer. Every step I took downward that day was heavy with the knowledge that I couldn’t go on without him.
When I reached the wine cellar I had been to before, the place was deadly silent. I had a strange feeling of heaviness over my head, the weight of all the lives and the dozen floors on top of me, compressing the passionate personality of that man.
Gazing around the room, I noticed the peeling paint covering the wall, where some old graffiti read ‘vive la France.’ “He was prisoner of that building, just like the poor men locked inside the catacombs during the Commune,” I thought.
Looking through the keyhole again, I saw him in there. It was strange that such a beautiful drawing room could be on the other side of the door. I felt my heart jumping, knowing I had to do something more than spy. I thought of what he had said the last time I’d seen him...and I thought also of how much I came to want him...feeling angry and feeling cheated, those thousand words wanting to come out of my mouth. He had to give me something in return!
I looked inside again. He was standing before another door, across the room. His frame seemed to be made of lead, dark and rigid. Suddenly he turned around...
I gasped harshly, a mix of utter horror and shock, and swallowed an intense scream, burning inside my throat. What in the world was that in front of me?
My mind was empty, I wanted to cry out, I wanted to run away, I wanted to shun that image from my head!
I hadn’t expected to find this underneath the mask...at least not that hideous and abominable!
The more I looked at it, the more I shook my head, as if I could change what I had in front of me. I couldn’t stop staring, I couldn’t take my eyes from that grotesque sight. It was hard to believe it could exist, that it was alive...and that it was the face of the man I’d been fantasizing about.
I couldn’t imagine that I would feel so much repulsion, for something that attracted me so much! Despair overwhelmed me completely, and I bounced my head repeatedly against the wall, nervously trying to convince myself it was not true.
His face was as ghastly bony as his hands, supporting an incredibly thin and pale skin. Underneath it a pattern of muscles, unnaturally tense, forging a thousand expressions mixed together, in a unique curse to the world.
It was as if something that had been dead a long time had came back for one more breath of life, moving and talking like any other being. And this abhorrent thing was the man I was in love with, or at least I thought I was!
I cried, totally horrified, feeling destroyed before this reality. How could things be the way they were? I sobbed deeply, trying to keep silent, trembling; and forced myself to look again at...him.
His jaw was extremely narrow and accentuated, somewhat inclined to one side, making his lips twist in such a gruesome way they could barely touch. The skull, misshapen, held no nose, showing in its place a dark sunken area through which I believe he could breathe.
And somewhere between those twisted features, deeply placed on their sockets, his eyes looked somewhat shiny and peaceful, full of an eternal sadness.
My throat was closed, I breathed heavily. What was to be done? I bit my own hands while I stared at his fate, utterly disturbed. What in the world could have happened to him to make such a deformity possible?
How could life take such horrendous paths? Taking this reality in changed everything, and yet, nothing. It was my dark man who was standing there. The Phantom. But I was not sure what I felt anymore.
Who was this man? What was this man? “I should have never gone there, I should have never seen his face,” I thought. I could have gone on with my infatuation for as long as I wanted, and perhaps - who knows? - it might have even pleased him. “But what kind of false feelings would those be?” I reprimanded myself. A feeling that can last only as long as I don’t see his face, that is, I don’t get to know who he really is? I don’t think that is what I want. I don’t think that is what he would want. But...what could he possibly want from me?
Oh, he would certainly kill me mercilessly if only he knew what I had done! He was such a proud man, nevertheless! No, even if I was still in complete shock from the revelation, I couldn’t see him as an insensitive creature. I couldn’t deny that underneath his deformity lay the most compelling and wonderful man I had ever met!
I could feel my little head spinning wildly, cracking in the effort of understanding and explaining everything. And whence that happened, all kinds of dark and strange feelings were rising inside of me, I was losing control of myself.
“Poor Phantom,” I thought, pity invading me. “So that was why he was doomed to live in such a place, always behind a cruel mask!” I remembered the stories about the Phantom of the Opera...so he actually heard some people describing him, even if not so faithfully, and he had people running away from him in despair.
I felt relieved that I’d gotten the chance of knowing the truth without letting him know my reaction. If he was closer to the gentle man he had shown himself to be than to the monster he looked like, I guess I would have supplied him with a great deal of pain, if he’d known the fear and horror he had inspired in me.
The knowledge I had acquired impressed on me a feeling of responsibility. I knew too much about him, and I couldn’t betray him! I realized and assumed a commitment to him that he was completely unaware of, and I promised myself I would be true to it. I would try to see past the fear I had so intensely inside me now.
My legs shook in distress when I stood at last. I didn’t know what to think. But there would be enough time for that. I just wanted to go back to the surface, to my “sunshine world”, as he had said, for I’d had my share of shadows for that day.
Get your own Free Homepage