The Phantom of Manhattan Read Online Free PDF Page A

she was terrified of him. I found that he was himself petrified with fear if anyone came to the door and would scuttle away to hide under the stairs. I also found that he could talk, in French but with an Alsatian accent, and slowly over that month he told me his story.
    ‘He was born Erik Muhlheim, just forty years ago. In Alsace which was then French but soon to be annexed by Germany. He was the only son of a circus family, living in a caravan, constantly moving from town to town.
    ‘He told me that he had learned in early childhood the circumstances of his birth. The midwife had screamed when she saw the tiny child emerging into the world, for he was even then horribly disfigured. She handed the squealing bundle to the mother and ran away, yelling (foolish cow) that she had delivered the devil himself.
    ‘So poor Erik arrived, destined from birth to be hated and rejected by people who believe that ugliness is the outward show of sinfulness.
    ‘His father was the circus carpenter, engineer and handyman. It was watching him at work that Erik first developed his talent for anything that could be constructed with tools and hands. It was in the sideshows that he saw the techniques of illusion, with mirrors, trapdoors and secret passages that would later play such a part in his life in Paris.
    ‘But his father was a drunken brute who whipped the boy constantly for the most minor offences or none at all; his mother a useless besom who just sat in the corner and wailed. Spending most of his young life in pain and in tears, he tried to avoid the caravan and slept in the straw with the circus animals and especially the horses. He was seven, sleeping in the stables, when the Big Top caught fire.
    ‘The fire ruined the circus, which went bankrupt. The staff and the artistes scattered to join other enterprises. Erik’s father, without a job, drank himself to death. His mother ran away to become a skivvy in nearby Strasbourg. Running out of money for booze, his father sold him to the master of a passing freak show. He spent nine years in the wheeled cage, daily pelted with filth and ordure for the amusement of cruel crowds. He was sixteen when I found him.’
    ‘A pitiable tale, my child, but what has this to do with your mortal sins?’
    ‘Patience, Father. Hear me out, you will understand, for no creature on the planet has ever heard the truth before. I kept Erik in my apartment for a month but it could not go on. There were neighbours, callers at our door. One night I took him to my place of work, the Opera, and he had found his new home.
    ‘Here he had sanctuary at last, a place to hide where the world would never find him. Despite his terror of naked flame, he took a torch and went down into the lowest cellars where the darkness would hide his terrible face. With timber and tools from the carpenters’ shop he built his home by the lake’s edge. He furnished it with pieces from the props department, fabric from the wardrobe mistress. In the wee small hours when all was abandoned he could raid the staff canteen for food and even pilfer the directors’ pantry for delicacies. And he read.
    ‘He made a key to the Opera library and spent years giving himself the education he had never had; night after night by candlelight he devoured the library, which is enormous. Of course most of the works were of music and opera. He came to know every single opera ever written and every note of every aria. With his manual skills he created a maze of secret passages known only to himself and, having practised long ago with the tightrope walkers, he could run along the highest and narrowest gantries without fear. For eleven years he lived there, and became a man underground.
    ‘But, of course, before long rumours started and grew. Food, clothing, candles, tools went missing in the night. A credulous staff began to talk of a phantom in the cellars until finally every tiny accident - and backstage many tasks are dangerous - came to be