What's in a Name (ch1?)
27 May 2023 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeSticking this up here un-proofread and un-edited for consideration: this would be my putative first chapter, to be submitted on its own as the challenge entry. There are 3330 words here in about 19 pages of manuscript, which suggests that the full story could sneak under the line at about 7500 words in total; on the other hand, for reading purposes this makes a nice self-contained episode, it focuses in on the idea of the name Chrysostome, its drawbacks and how he manages to get rid of it, and lengthwise it feels like a comfortable read (it's a customary chapter length by my usual standards). I still have a suspicion that reading the whole thing in one gulp might feel a bit like hard work...
Edit: as expected, the whole thing was of course riddled with typos and creatively miscopied phrases :-p
What’s in a Name?
“He should not have been born, and having been born, should have had the good grace to die and spare the world from the spectacle of his existence. Nobody had ever made any secret of that.” Written for Writers Anonymous “What’s in a Name” challenge.
“Il me répondit qu’il n’avait ni nom, ni patrie, et qu’il avait pris le nom d’Érik par hasard” — Ch13, La Lyre d’Apollon
A/N: It was always my head-canon that Erik never reveals his real name, even to Christine, simply because it was actually Narcisse or Hyacinthe or something else terribly embarrassing! As for the name of Erik, of course, he acquired that ‘by chance’...
His own father referred to him, when he was forced to acknowledge the boy’s existence, as ‘the creature’ or ‘that thing’. From other adults in their neighbourhood he had overheard worse names, such as ‘monster’ or ‘unnatural spawn’; he had known since he was old enough to walk that by his very existence he was a stain on his family, and a target whenever he showed his face for casual stones “to drive the devil out”. He should not have been born, and having been born, should have had the good grace to die and spare the world from the spectacle of his existence. Nobody had ever made any secret of that.
His mother, buxom, devout and all too often smelling of wine —and this, too, he knew from what he had overheard, had been brought about by his birth— had bestowed upon him the fanciful name of Chrysostome in a fit of fervour, since his father had refused to name the deformed little creature at all. Old Mother Albine, who had been in attendance at the birth, had told him once, cackling, that the horror of his face and the sickly colour of his skin had been such that everyone had believed the infant already dead. He had been left to one side on a pile of soiled linens, with a cloth drawn across to hide him from his mother’s sight, while Albine and the other women worked to deliver the afterbirth. He had drawn his first breath without human assistance, and clung to life with a thin, outraged cry.
“There we were, all ready to pop you into a little coffer and bury you,” the old woman announced with relish, “and strike me down if you didn’t start up with that voice of yours, loud enough to raise the dead. And that’s how we knew you weren’t no corpse, but only the living spit of one that the Devil had seen fit to put on this earth alive...”
She turned away and spat, and the final words were all but lost in a mumble. “...More’s the pity.”
But she did not say it to his face. None of them ever dared say it to his face, where two feral yellow eyes stared out with an intensity beyond his years from sunken sockets, and grey, flaking skin stretched parchment-taut across misshapen features that resembled for all the world a shrivelled skull.
He had learned very young to use that stare for his own ends. People did not love him, but they could be made to fear him at least. Malice was repaid by malice, and tormenting from the older boys gave rise to all the ill-luck and ‘accidents’ his quick wits could devise. He had learned his letters faster than any of them, even if well-meaning Père Lejeune, who kept the school, could never quite look at him straight on, or bring himself to call upon him to answer in front of the class.
Other people, he had concluded, were very stupid. For one thing, a great many of them believed that he had the Evil Eye, and that was self-evidently not the case. For no matter how diligently he attempted to stare at them, they were still alive.
He had not died at birth, though they whispered behind his back that it would have been for the best. His voice had saved his life, and demanded care and nourishment, and his mother, devout church-goer that she was, had christened him Chrysostome in response to the seeming miracle, out of some half-remembered litany of saints. Perhaps she had thought it would speed the sickly baby more swiftly to heaven, on his inevitable departure to join the angels — for how could any child so deformed hope to survive, when so many children born healthy were taken before their first birthday?
Perhaps Saint-Jean-Chrysostome had smiled down upon his tiny namesake. Perhaps the boy’s own iron will and grudge, even in infancy, against a pitiless world had served to keep him clinging to existence. But scrawny and hideous as he was he had thrived against the odds, and grown from a babe in arms to a solitary, watchful boy.
His father rarely spoke to him at all, and never by name, preferring to spend more and more time shut away with the accounts of his masonry business, or to slip off and spend his hours in the house of the widow Gaudet, where the boy had once followed to see what they did, and spent an instructive afternoon observing, with detachment, through the back-bedroom window from a perch in the tree opposite. He had said nothing at home, preferring to file the knowledge away in the mental book of secrets that might, some day, be used to advantage against their perpetrators. Already he had acquired quite a store of these, and would turn them over in his mind at night for comfort, as another child might have sought refuge in a well-worn toy.
His mother was the only one to call him Chrysostome, and her he despised, not so much for her failure to love him, but for her pathetic attempts to do so. To his older sisters —and the lack of younger siblings was also somehow his fault— he was Chryssot for short. When it amused them, which was often, they would pretend to shorten it still further, and address him simply as “Sot”, or “petit Sot”, in a mockery of affection: “Eh, eh, petit sot — little fool...”
It was, of course, the nickname adopted by all the boys at school, despite the half-hearted efforts of Père Lejeune to stamp it out. “Oh, but Chryssot doesn’t mind, mon Père — do you, Sot?”
He did not know which he hated most, his stupid name or the children who saw it as one more excuse to jeer. He had watched an albino rook being mobbed by its fellows once. Humans were no different.
There were others who were the butt of jokes: Vincent, the baker’s son, with the wet dribbling gash of his hare-lip, and Jean-Jacques, the idiot boy who had fits. But for all their afflictions they were accepted in a way that he was not. They looked hopefully up at their tormentors, eager to belong; he observed the world out of cavernous eyes with a contempt and detached intelligence that could not be forgiven.
The other children were not his fellows, and never would be. He was not club-footed, or touched in the head, or malformed in any way that folk memory could understand. Like a dog-headed calf, he was a monstrosity that had no right to exist — and still less to judge others and find them wanting.
It was so easy, for instance, to steal and make sure someone else was blamed. And he owed them nothing, after all.
It was a travelling show that appeared almost magically overnight, and set up camp on a piece of waste ground towards the Rouen road. His older sisters were warned by their mother that they should not go anywhere near the encampment, which was enough in itself to excite any boy’s curiosity; he did not bother either to waste time asking if he might go to the show, or to take any ticket money with him, although he could easily have extracted a few sous from her purse.
Instead he simply slipped off as soon as it was dark and waited for the first performance to begin. It was not difficult for a thin, agile boy to wriggle under the lacings at the back of the tents, and watch the whole show from the shadows.
For a touring provincial show, the acts were of surprisingly high quality, but of course he did not know that. The animal acts he found rather tedious, from the seal with a ball on its nose to the fluffy little dogs that paraded in skirts; the stilt-walkers and the tumbling clowns were more to his taste, and the Armless Lady, who demonstrated incredible dexterity with her feet and toes. Best of all was the Amazing Mazzini, who produced fire at the snap of his fingers, and whose conjurings and illusions, carried out with a snarl and a sinister laugh, could surely, surely not be real magic... but the small, fascinated observer could not, however hard he tried, work out how it was done.
But it was not the show itself that made the greatest impression. When the last act was over he had wormed his way hastily out under the canvas at the back, and hung around in the darkness outside. He saw the animals being put back in their wagons and the performers, sweating and grinning, stripped of their bright costumes, wolfing down fried potatoes and ale as the ticket booth came down and the sawdust was shovelled up. One of the midgets from the clown parade was in command, directing the rest in a sharp, guttural voice, and bantering with the strongman, who had shed his lion skin to show a grimy singlet. The Armless Lady and her counterpart, the Living Skeleton —revealed, without the ghoulish lighting and greasepaint, to be disappointingly no more scrawny than the boy himself— were working alongside the others, shoulder to shoulder, bony arms and dextrous toes making light of boxes and lashings, and no-one seemed to find anything odd in it.
I could do that. For the first time in his life he felt an ache of ambition: a desire to emulate adults who did not seem to him stupid or tedious beyond belief. There was money in the show, he’d seen that from the heavy bags of coins brought out of the ticket-booth, and there was the promise of horizons that stretched far beyond Rouen, where he had never been. That Living Skeleton is pathetic. If someone gave me greasepaint and showed me the trick of the fireflash, I could do better than that right now.
He could catch snatches of the gossip that was flying backwards and forwards as they worked, comments not meant for outsiders’ ears, about slow-witted townsfolk and sharp practice over permits, back in Rouen, and a chicken pilfered along the way. The view from those who did not belong. Who did not seek to belong, but travelled through with a scornful eye and wits keen enough to make of the world whatever use they could.
I could do that. It came to him again more strongly, ideas already beginning to flower in his mind. If he went home now and was caught, he’d get a scolding from his mother, and no doubt a whipping from his father if the latter could bring himself to look at him long enough to do it.
The boy turned and faded unobtrusively away into the night, beginning to strip off his coat and jacket with some reluctance. Half an hour later he returned in his shirt, shivering, and made haste to worm his way into the haven of a haynet under one of the wagons.
He had counted on waking early before he could be discovered. But between exhaustion and over-excitement his body betrayed him, and he slept heavily, to awake to strange surroundings and an angry curse.
The midget who had been in charge last night was staring under the wagon, hayfork in hand. Their eyes were almost on a level.
Still only half-awake, the boy wriggled eel-like in a single swift movement from his hiding-place and shot back out of reach under the wagon, which had come to a halt on the open verge of a road he did not know. He heard a hiss as the other caught sight of his face.
Everyone in the neighbourhood was accustomed to his appearance, no matter how much they might seek to avoid looking at it. But he had plenty of experience of the effect he had on strangers. For once it hadn’t even raised a scream, which was mild, considering.
“Name of God...” The midget’s accent was strong, and his voice oddly pitched; for a moment it was hard to make out what was being said. The tines of the fork were still poised, but for now, at least, whatever threat he’d been about to unleash on the intruder had clearly gone missing. “Name of God, lad — what happened to you?”
“Nothing happened. I was born this way.” The words came out thin and less defiant than he’d intended. He returned a fierce glare. “I want to be one of you.”
“Out of the question. I’ll have no truck with runaways — or infants.”
“I’m not—”
“Come on, lad, out of there. You’re going no further, so we might as well see you... and from what I make out, that’s something to behold.”
“That’s right.” He raised his chin, trying for as much dignity as he could manage. It was difficult when you were crawling out from under a wagon stripped to your shirt and covered in hay.
The confrontation had begun to attract attention, and there was a gathering circle of performers from the other wagons surrounding him as he emerged. He heard audible gasps, and one woman cut herself off on a curse in a language he did not know... but there was no screaming. No hurled rocks.
“Something to behold...” their leader muttered again, the thick accent half-swallowing the words. His gaze held nothing but fascination, and an almost professional interest. Despite his stumpy arms and legs he had a barrel chest and unshaven jaw, and no-one seeing them side by side would have taken him for a child. “From birth, you say... and head to foot?”
“That’s right.” A thread of bravado. “Want to see?”
“Guntram, enough — for shame!” An old woman had pushed forward out of the crowd, a blanket bundled in her arms. “The lad’s in his shirt and shivering.”
She draped the blanket round his shoulders as he clutched at the rough warmth gratefully. “What’s your name, laddie?”
“Jacques.” It came out without conscious forethought; he had long since learned to lie as easily as he breathed, and he would not be Chrysostome one moment longer than he could help. He caught at the first name that crossed his mind. “Jacques. And I left my clothes down by the mill-race last night so no-one would come after me. It’s a bad place to swim. A boy drowned there last year, and they didn’t find him for a month. They won’t bother to look beyond that — or think to go chasing after you.”
“A pretty cool customer, if you please!” Guntram, the leader, broke in roughly. “I told you, we don’t take runaways, or any fool boy that dreams of a travelling life. For a handful of sous I’d take you back to your parents myself and see you whipped into some sense.”
“They wouldn’t thank you. They’ll be glad to be rid of me — my mother will cry for a morning, and then be too guilty to admit it’s a relief to have me gone. And my father hates me. They’re all scared, back there, and they think God made me some kind of monster... or else it was demons’ work. They think they’d be better off if I somehow didn’t exist.” He stared back at the midget; stared down at him from his own spindly height. “People are stupid, and easy to trick. They can’t see anything beyond the ends of their own noses. You —you of all people— have to know that.”
Guntram’s lip lifted into an ugly snarl, but the old woman let out a crow of laughter and pulled the boy away towards the crowd, enveloping him in a strong-smelling embrace. He was surrounded by waves of stale sweat, of the piss of old age, of unwashed wool and rotting teeth, bad liquor and spilled snuff, with an undertow of moulting dog... but he carried his own reek about with him, he’d been told that often enough, an odour that clung to his mouldering flesh unless he scrubbed himself raw, and returned even when he did so. He looked like death; his flesh bore the scent of decay. It was a long time since he had been close enough to anyone for the knowledge to trouble him. He shrank back a little now.
The old woman did not seem to care. She clapped him on the back with another great guffaw. “‘Stupid, and easy to trick.’ Said like a true showman, and bright for his age. That face of his is worth a fortune, if you keep it under wraps. Light him just so, and audiences won’t just gasp — they’ll scream, and pay to come back again to work out how the trick was done. Never you mind five-legged foals, or monkeys sewn in mermaid tails; this lad is solid gold.”
She dug a broad finger into his side. “Are you sickly, child? Simmy here is forever taking chills on account of his figure, without enough meat to keep him warm.”
Simmy must be the erstwhile Living Skeleton. Best not to let him see the newcomer as a direct threat. Not yet.
“I’m strong — much healthier than I look. And I can do other things. I can plan tricks, and I can sing. Père Lejeune used to let me sing in church from behind the screen.” It had been part of the young priest’s ineffectual kindness, but the boy’s voice had proved good enough to take Père Lejeune by surprise... and give rise to additional jibes from the others at school. But ideas were boiling up. “It could be an angel and devil act. You could hoist me on a rope — and then I come down, and the light changes, and I throw off my white robe...”
He could almost see it now. Picture the crowd spellbound under his control, sentimental sighs transforming at his whim to screams of horror—
“Grand plans indeed, for a newcomer.” But Guntram’s words implied an unspoken assent that was not lost on anyone, and from the assessing look on his face, he too was envisioning the possibilities. “You’ll need to come up with some kind of stage billing... just what did you say your name was?”
For a lurching instant, thus addressed, the boy could not remember which lie he’d come up with on the spur of the moment. He was quite certain that Guntram, amused, was aware of that.
“J-Jacques,” he managed, angry, and got a shake of the head.
“Won’t do. We’ll bill you as Kolzhak the Deathless, from the far steppes — how about that?”
“Kolzhak.” It had a good ring to it; a hard, angry name that you could bite into. But he wasn’t going to give anything away. “It’ll do — I expect.”
“Hark to him!” The old woman guffawed, looking from one of them to the other. “He’s as high and mighty as you are, Guntram, and brim-full of notions besides. You come along with old Linnea, young master Kolzhak, and we’ll see what we can contrive to veil that face of yours so as not to warn the punters in advance. And for the dear Lord’s sake, someone find the boy some trousers!”
What he really wanted, he thought, letting himself be dragged along unprotesting in Linnea’s wake, was a chance to learn the secrets of that magician, Mancini or Mazarini or whatever his name had been. (Born a Gugelhupf or Groshomme or something equally uninspiring, no doubt.) But ways could be devised. Secrets were there to be found out, however jealously guarded they might be.
He still did not know where he was, save that it was on an open road that led away from home and everything he had come to hate about it. It was a road on which, whatever else might happen, he would never be Chrysostome again.
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Date: 2023-05-28 01:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-05-29 01:30 am (UTC)I'm not certain that is necessarily a good thing if the chunk is to be submitted as a standalone story ;-)
I'm tryng to avoid the 'poor persecuted widdle Erik' trope -- as well as the entirely uncanonical 'rapist gypsy Javert', for which we have Susan Kay's "Phantom" fanfic solely to thank! Erik *is* seen to be persecuted as a child (although canon doesn't actually say that; I think it's probably pretty inevitable in a small-town setting, however), but he is also seen to be oddly disjointed and morally ambiguous even at that age. There is something uncomfortable about him mentally even if, as the narrator, he is not himself conscious of that...