The hollow sound of my shoes reaching the last stone step announced the vast area I had entered. An instinctive act of pressing my hands against the walls to gain some extra security in the dark revealed the damp building of the cellars, irregular and slimy with accumulated grime.
Where should I start looking for him? Slowly I ventured, distancing from the well-known stairs from whence I came, my only way back to the heights, to the light.
But I was heartily seeking something I couldn't leave behind. I raised the lantern, and immediately a hundred sinister shadows appeared, as if they were hiding behind each pillar - or even from the large fissures in the rough floor. It seemed like the chambers followed a regular pattern of ramification, though, branching from a main corridor into many small rooms and tunnels, with walls made of spoiled and eroded stone bricks. Here and there machinery could be found, certainly long ago abandoned. Is it what that place was? A neglected and forgotten cemetery?
It didn't take long to find the infamous lake, opening its waters right before me, offering me a dark plunge, where I knew once I entered, there would be no way out. What about the house by the lake, I thought?
There was no sign of it. I traced the lake contours, observing some channels that flowed from the lake to some obscure further areas of the cellars, and came to an area where actually a teasing little beam of light penetrated the ceiling, from some ventilation opening to the outside. It was hard to imagine that above us could be found streets, carriages, people, and an absolutely nomal and ordinary life.
The light, however, didn't seem to be difused by the waters, perhaps because it was too dim, perhaps because that lake, the Avernus Lake as Erik had called it, was bottomless. It took a lot of logic to not believe so, looking at it. And yet I kept telling myself it was just a trick, because that was nothing more than some underground sheet of water mixed with the sewage of Paris. The smell didn't deny it.
It was no wonder Erik could live as a corpse down there. There was nothing to prove him wrong in believing he was dead. Perhaps that was where he took his relief from. Once one is dead, he loses his bonds with life and living, they can live inside his mind. It is true there is a price to pay, but he would have paid the price of being outcast, had he chosen another dwelling or not.
But I, I was not used to this dark and depressive side overwhelming me all the time. Was I really able to stand by his side, if he ever asked me so? I'd like to think I was.
I kept walking in a slow pace, partly anxious to find the way to his house, partly afraid of facing him again. But why? Probably for the same reason he was hiding down there, even though he seemed to be the strongest soul I had ever met: genuinely afraid of the consequences of exposing ourselves once again.
What seemed to be a highly improbable and fruitless journey ended up being a lot quicker than I'd expected it to be. Notice that I didn't say easier, but quicker, for there was no way of missing such a huge lake, that apparently took almost over all the fifth floor area; and I was with Erik a lot sooner than I could imagine I would be...
In my next turn, there was he, standing by the lake, as I myself had been a couple of seconds ago. His glare was downward, fixed, penetrating, as if he had never seen those waters before, or better, as if he was not seeing them even now. He was so distant from that place, he was so far from his own body...
A leaden figure, very reminiscent of a crown, or some black species that could project such a sinister profile against the least flash of light in such a dark night. He had his hat on, and his cape stirred on its brim impulsed by the bitter cold wind that blew at our feet. The only thing I couldn't tell was if he had his mask on or not, and this uncertainty kept me from approaching him for a while.
How would I act if he had it off? Would I simply pretend I had seen nothing and walk away? Would I talk with him and not mention it at all, in a polite but fake attitude? Without finding a perfect answer, I walked toward him, silently, not wanting to startle him.
I was still protected by the deep shadow of a wide column beside me, and considerably distant from him, when he said, without turning,
"Hello, Little Meg."
This welcome, said as if it was the most natural rendezvous we were having, drew me even further into the sense of the unreal. I approached him some, without answering. Still, he hadn't turned to me, proving his vision in the dark was quite supernatural.
"I knew you were coming. I was waiting for you."
How could he have known that? I hadn't said a word to anybody, there was simply no way he could have overheard me! Unless he had some sort of trap on the way down that annouced his visitors, as a vigilant gargoyle...
No, it wasn't that. And I perceived his voice to be unusual, serene and weightless.
"Would you mind me staying here?" I asked cautiously.
"No. Not at all. Come closer."
It didn't sound like him at all. I wished I could have seen him better, to make sure it was not some cloaked thief hiding in the cellars of the Opera. But what was I thinking? Of course it was Erik!
"You afraid of me? Funny...you never were..."
There was no resentment in his words. There was nothing, really. He was talking emptily, like he was communicating with me from another place or dimension.
I took a few more steps, and a characteristic smell reached me, as if I should have been anticipating it. I recognized it at once. Opium.
The light shed by my lantern illuminated a beautifully adorned pipe, standing on the floor by him. It was like nothing I had ever seen before, and I wondered where he could have gotten such an exquisite novelty. It was adorned with golden bands on meticulously carved wood, and its tube bore some mystical designs and symbols. I approached the lantern in a distracted curiousity.
"Take this light away from me!" he yelled, covering his face with his arm. When he did so, I noticed he had the mask on, and was simply protecting his eyes from the hurtful light. His instinctive act brought the picture of a vampire to my mind, but I thought it would be rather unfitting to joke right at the time.
"I'm sorry." I retrieved the lantern and turned it off. I regretted some doing so, for there was no way of not feeling apprehensive under the heavy darkness that fell on us, like melted pitch.
I took a deep breath, and the smell felt pleasant in my nostrils. I backed my thoughts to what he had said when I arrived, and asked,
"How could you be waiting for me, Erik? Have you learned how to read my thoughts now?"
He smiled under his mask and answered me, "I always knew you would come, one day. Unless I were terribly mistaken, which I seldom am."
So he knew everything? Had I been that obvious? So he had me in the palm of his hand all this time?
"It's the next step that I ignore."
God damn his riddles!
"Hiding down here is so easy...and now I watch you hiding down here as well...so easy...yet...you look so sure of your destiny, Meg... Oh, I envy you...you are always so fearless..."
Erik was definitely somewhere else, inside a dream, and that allowed him to say more than he probably intended to. How off-guard was he, I wondered.
He sat down, slowly, each movement so graceful, blending so well with that mysterious atmosphere, as he stretched his long legs, his boots lightly scratching the floor.
My eyes were gradually getting used to the darkness, and I distinguished his long fingers taking hold of the pipe and bringing it to his mouth, underneath the mask. He took a deep breath, placed the pipe on the floor again, and finally released a curled smoke cloud, waving in the air, as he leaned his head back, totally relaxed. He placed his hat, an expensive and absolutely fashionable felt one, on his lap.
"How do you like the stars tonight, Meg?"
He faced the high ceiling, and by the pleasure in his voice I could tell the chemicals had transformed it into a lascivious sky.
He had to find his ways of creating a world of his own, it's true, and not even the Phantom had always enough supernatural powers to do it without the help of narcotics. It soon became clear to me that he couldn't distinguish me from his fantasies, and probably took me as another element of his delirium.
Standing there still attached to my senses made me very uncomfortable. Unsure of the best attitude to take, I sat by his side, on the shore, crossing my legs over the cold stone floor. I shivered immediately.
"It's cold here, I'm sorry." He offered an apology, as if he was a host receiving me in his humble house. And was I so sure it was not the case?
"Yes, it is a little cold..." I repeated dully, glancing around.
"Don't underestimate this sight, Meg. The sky... It's hard to reach for the stars, when one lives way down underground," he advised.
Without touching the pipe, I could feel myself nevertheless entering some strange trance, and soon I was quietly staring at the lake, at its thick waters, with abstract thoughts spinning in my mind, like the smoke he blew in the air.
"Do you hear music, Meg?"
I shook my head, hoping I wouldn't disappoint him with my answer. He confided, "I constantly have music in my mind. Music that makes me feel like weeping for sins I did not commit, and crying over tragedies I did not live."
My rational mind had to wonder which sins and tragedies had been left out of his past...
"But when the music ends...there's nothing left here...in this cold place..." He was loaded with sadness now, and either for the cold or the loneliness, he wrapped his arms around himself and bent his head.
He inspired more despair than pity.
I knelt silently by his side, compassionately, and stayed motionless, nonexistent, clasping my hands nervously, allowing him to stroll freely through his world, hoping he would turn to me when he was back.
"There's nothing left here...for me...there has never been..."
My heart felt frozen with these regretful words. His firm voice made the scene even more touching, for he was not questioning anything, he was just repeating concepts, knowing them to be eternal, and once again trying to take them in and accept them. It's not easy to be satisfied with endless sorrow.
"Life...it's all a lie...I grieve for you," he said to no one.
I made a movement on the cold damp floor, somewhat uncertain of coming too close to him in such a state, but eager to understand and plunge into those feelings that made him who he was.
Cautiously, as if to pet a wild animal, I moved my hands until they touched his thin, scarce hair, and he didn't move at all at my approach. My fingers moved through it, and I felt myself trembling, as I knew that under my touch he had closed his eyes and taken a deep breath in, finally reaching a more peaceful state of mind. I kept soothing the few locks of hair that hang from his scalp, so soft they were! And yet his hair felt no different than I would imagine a cadaver's would.
I looked at that wretched man in front of me, and I suddenly took in the extent of his hidden fragility. Was life finally getting through with him? Entangled, on the small of his neck, were the straps that tied up the mask. I dismissed a tempting and dangerous idea.
A single motion of my body, helping myself to a more relaxed position, startled him some and Erik turned abruptly to me. He raised his head and faced me, as if he had never seen me before, and scanned me for an uncomfortable lenghth of time.
He laughed very lightly under his breath, laughing without wishing to, without really finding anything funny to laugh at. "Here we are once again," he stated, and I nodded.
He reached out for the pipe, in a natural gesture. He took a few deep breaths, delicately and sensually, in a slow motion. I wished I could have seen his eyes, I'm sure they would have been beautiful, his dense eyes so much controlled by the fantasies of the opium and the grief of his mind.
"What is going through your head, Erik?" I tried, without unsettling the rhythm of soothing his hair.
He looked at me as if he hadn't understood the question, or even if as if he hadn't realized I was in fact there before this moment, and suddenly broke in a chuckling, "Life was certainly simpler before you stumbled into my house!"
"Is it good or bad?" I asked, a little surprised by his comment.
"I haven't decided yet."
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