Thanks to a devoted old friend of my father I was admitted to the best ballet company of whole France, and a glamorous career was predicted to me. I was young, gracefully built with a cute face, and that combined with my god given talent to dance like no other of these lovely budding young ballerinas made me the most promising ballet star.
On a sunny warm Sunday afternoon my parents intended to take me to fair as a reward for an excellent performance these days.
They have heard that some
gypsies were wandering around with attractions that no man had
ever seen before and that wherever they pitched their marquees
masses of people streamed there just to have a look at all these
hailed attractions.
Since then I am asking myself every single
day why I had gone there. I wished I could turn back time only
not to have to look into his eyes again. Even now in my darkest
dreams, more than sixty years later, I see myself as this
innocent young girl standing in front of his cage, staring at him
unable to scream, to cry, to talk, only feeling disgust and
endless compassion at the same time.
(I always understood and admired sweet little Christine for her incessant faith and love she had shown for him – perhaps no one could have ever understood her as good as I was able to...)
The gypsies had lots of weird, odd, disgusting curiosities, and although even a little girl like me knew that these vagabonds steered things somehow in the right direction I laughed at their creatures and at their wealth of ideas.
But then it came to the last of those cages where an immense crowd of people has formed. I laughed on the other side of my face before I knew it. All of a sudden I heard people screaming with such incredible intense that it made my heart swell. Women fainted, children cried pitifully and men were paralysed with fear.
With every little step that I headed for this terrifying cage I knew deep down inside that it would be better to stop, turn around and run far, far away.
But it attracted me like an invisible thread – I could not stop walking as if I was in a trance. I felt my mother grabbing my hands but I could break away from her – and then suddenly I stood there, right in front of the cage, with nothing between me and this – creature inside than bars.
Oh my beloved Meg, one and only daughter, meaning of my life, even now after all those years I still feel my heart bumping, feel this terrible dismay inside and the fright that makes me trembling like a leaf.
What I was seeing was not an animal, but oh Lord! it was not a human being either. It – he was not much older than me, just a little emaciated boy unless your view went up to his face – his face, Meg!
His skin was yellow like
parchment, his face without a nose, only a hole instead –
his whole face was an only disfigurement! (I know you did not
believe poor Bouquet when he described him, the phantom, but now,
now I am able to tell you that every single detail was the whole,
dreadful truth, and it even was worse...)
I was an innocent girl
that had never seen bad things, hideous people – each day I
looked into my mirror I saw a pretty, perfect face – up to
this fateful moment I had not even known the meaning of
disfigurement.
I opened my mouth but I was
unable to scream as if my lips were sealed. My heart was in my
mouth, my body trembled, and I wished to faint.
But instead I
just stood there, staring at his deformed face and asking myself
whether I would have to die right now after looking straightway
at the – death.
Then I looked into his eyes. My sweetheart,
my darling Meg, all my life I would never be able to forget these
eyes – these eyes full of hate, loathing for these
sensation-seeking human beings (to whom I also belonged, I must
admit) and full of a frightening craving for murder!
Yes, even at
the age of seven, never touched on cruelties like this I quickly
recognised the desire for murder in his eyes.
It seemed for me as if I
could guess his thoughts, as if I could hear – hear, Meg!
– everything he was feeling and thinking at this moment.
Being only a young boy he was not able to hide his thoughts safe
behind a motionless, unapproachable facade as he used to do
later.
But beside hate, loathing and craving for murder I
strongly sensed further emotions that corroded his mind... those
were deep grieve as if someone closed had caused him endless
suffering (the same grieve I felt again more than 30 years late
when he found out that his Christine was engaged with the young,
handsome, hothead Raoul) and true pain about the horror his
looking caused these people around his cage.
We looked at each other
without saying a single word, and suddenly he cried
"Go
away!”
At this one moment when he raised his voice –
his divine, unique voice, his instrument of power to make people
sad or happy whenever he liked to – I felt deeply ashamed.
In my whole life I have never felt this shame again. I felt
ashamed to stare at a human being like I would stare at an exotic
animal, I felt sorry for the pain the gypsies had obviously
caused him, and I felt great compassion for his disfigurement.
My
common sense watched an animal, but my heart saw the truth, the
one and only truth: a child who should have been with a loving
mother in a safe home never to experience all the pain that this
boy had experienced up to now.
I did not even noticed that tears
ran down my cheeks, and I did not move when my father lifted me
up and carried me away.
Forever away from this monster but not
knowing that destiny would bring us together again many, many
years later...
Now – facing my death
when writing this lines I feel again great sorrow for Erik, for
the ingenious man, the poet, the painter, the musician, the
architect.
With his birth he was condemned to die, his whole life
he hid himself away behind a mask – but it was not only his
disfigurement he wanted to hide, it were also his feelings, his
emotions.
Two persons in his life have had the power to change
his dreadful vegetating away – solely two...
The first one, his weak
mother Madeleine (as you see I have conscientiously gathered
information of his life, dear Meg, just to let you know that it
was not his only fault that things went the way they actually
went) failed in creating him a life he truly deserved, and the
other one, Meg... I am confident you know who I am thinking of
right now.
Yes, sweet dainty Christine Daae in her innocence with her charming voice has had the power to make a man out of a killing monster.
But still, my beloved daughter, it is not yet
time to talk about your best friend.
On to Part III
Back to the Diary Index
