Page 92 of Our Strange Duet

“That’s not entirely true, though, is it? You’re always the one who finds his notes. You’re always bringing missives from him. And I saw the way you went to him just now.”

In the reflection of the glass, I saw her eyebrows shift, knitting together in pain. “Please don’t ask me to explain it.”

I touched the blade of her shoulder. “Madame Giry, please. I’ve never felt so fearful in all my life…or so beguiled. There’s so much about him, about this situation, that I don’t understand, that I can’t comprehend. So much is at stake.”

She reached out and traced her fingertip across the window before her, drawing a line down her image to split her face in two.

She was still for so long that, despite the volume of my impassioned plea, I began to worry that she somehow hadn’t heard me. “Madame Gi—”

“There was a traveling fair,” she began, and her voice was hushed and distant, like a whispered echo crossing through time, into the past. “I was just a girl of sixteen, but I remember it as if it happened only yesterday. I was in training at the Conservatoire, a young woman far from home, in a city of wonders and enchantment. When the fair came, we all begged our instructors to allow us to attend.” She turned around to face me, offering a rueful smile. “You’d never guess how strict they all could be.”

Madame Giry gestured to a short stack of crates piled off to the side, indicating that we should sit.

“Tell me about the fair,” I prodded, once we’d settled in.

“It was unlike anything I’d ever witnessed. Tumblers, conjurers. There was a bearded, tattooed woman who could tell fortunes just by holding your hand. A woman who drove nails through her nose with a hammer. Fire-eaters and stilt walkers. A magician who could escape from any knot you’d tie round him. And there were…others. Human oddities.”

“Erik?” I guessed, and a piece of my heart broke as she nodded.

“He was nothing but a boy then, maybe nine or ten. But already, you could tell he was…special. A prodigy. The barker said he was always tinkering, always drawing and creating…composing. He excelled at everything he tried his hand at, mastering it all. But they…they threw a burlap sack over his head. They locked him in a cage. They called him a freak, the son of the Devil, more monster than man.”

“Because of his face?”

Madame Giry nodded. “His poster read ‘Dame Nature’s One True Blunder.’ His own mother couldn’t stand the sight of him. She gave him to the carnival with nothing but a note begging him to forget her.”

I couldn’t help my gasp of pained sympathy.

“When I saw him…it was all too terrible. The taunts, the jeers. I didn’t understand why no one else could see what I did. There, in the midst of that dank tent and filthy straw, surrounded by such hatred and violence, was the purest soul I’d ever seen.”

She wiped at the corner of her eye with the back of her hand. It was disconcerting to see Madame Giry, normally so stoic and resolute, moved to emotion.

“What happened next?” I asked as gently as I could.

“When the barker began to sell moldy oranges to throw, our instructors made us go. But I…I lingered behind, hiding away in the shadows. I didn’t want to leave him there, alone with so many cruel strangers. During all the…excitement…our eyes met, and…” She sighed. “I would have done anything to make those eyes less miserable, to bring him any amount of relief. After the crowds had left and the barker was busy counting his coins, the boy gestured to one of the ropes holding back the tent’s flaps. I untied it, letting it fall into his cage. I didn’t know he’d move so fast. I didn’t know all he’d learned from the carnival’s magician.”

“Rope tricks,” I guessed.

She nodded. “Knots and nooses. The Punjab Lasso…The barker was dead before I could even cry out. The boy used the keys to free himself, and together, we raced into the night, running as fast as we could from the fair before anyone noticed what had happened. I brought him back to the only safe place I could think of. The Conservatoire was too crowded—someone would surely have seen him—but here…in this attic…I offered him what comforts I could: food I pilfered from the kitchens, a cloak to ward off the chilled night air, a mask…”

Her gaze drifted toward a pile of old props, then a rack of dusty costumes, and I could so easily imagine how that moment had played out, here in this very room.

“It was a volto mask,” she went on, bringing her hands to her cheeks and pantomiming the way the commedia mask would fully cover a face. “I thought it would put him at ease.” She let out a soft laugh that tinged the air around us bitter. “Perhaps it was only for my own comfort…”

She looked so lost. I wasn’t sure what to say, wasn’t sure how to bring her back to the story. “I’m sure…I’m sure he appreciated everything you did.”

Another laugh, twisting doubtful. “He remained here for four days, while the carnival folk searched for him. But eventually, everyone gave up. They thought him dead, waylaid by a band of thieves, murdered and thrown into the Seine. And he slipped away then, leaving in the dark of the night.”

“Did he tell you where he would go? What he planned to do?”

Madame Giry shook her head. “He left no note, no word, only a broken mirror and the shattered shards of the volto mask.” Again, she put both hands to her face before letting the left fall. With just her right hand remaining, she was an eerie echo of Erik’s half mask.

I frowned, picturing him as a boy, running through the dark streets of Paris with his cape flared out behind him, wholly untethered to anyone. Unwanted and unbound.

“Oh, Erik,” I whispered.

“The world forgot him, but I never could. I thought of him often, wondering whatever came of him. He was too special to just disappear. I knew that somehow, in some way, he would make his mark.”

“But he returned to the opera? Eventually?”