The Phantom

For two years now, my day was starting the same way. First, an early rise: getting up early to have longer to do nothing sounds like a joke only until you start doing it yourself. After a shower, it's mandatory to thoroughly blow-dry my hair, otherwise it curls into ringlets and I remind myself of Goldilocks from the tale of the three bears. Instead of breakfast, I usually had a very strong coffee - after I moved away from my parents, I never got used to cooking for myself all the time. On my way to work, on the subway or in a cab, I used my phone to edit my thesis, which I had worked on late the previous night, or read books. In my field of study, of course. The time for love stories and mystical adventures was long gone. A day was considered a success if, in one of the classes I was substituting for, I managed to draw a little and maybe even post a sketch to my blog on the Internet, where they knew nothing about me except for the nickname Artemis. At the private school where I did my internship, there were actually quite few events that I could record in my internship diary and use productively for my thesis and reports. Most of my time there was spent listening to the complaints and gossip of other teachers in the teachers' lounge, checking tests and homework workbooks, and corresponding in foreign languages with foreign schools and other companies with which our school organized experience exchange programs or student exchanges. I wrote about these programs all the time, but I had never personally seen them put into practice. I had repeatedly asked the vice-principals to let me participate in foreign relations work, so that at least interacting with other cultures and trying to act as an interpreter could count toward my pre-graduation internship, but so far all of these exciting activities had gone without me, and I sat in the school library on the fourth floor with some group of ninth graders and discussed Present Perfect or Celtic myths with them. It was one of those days at the end of September, when the work and academic routine has already dragged on so long that summer seems like a sweet dream, and the cold months ahead do not promise any peace. Teachers were slowly returning from vacation, and my substitute schedule, which had been packed to the brim at the beginning of the month, had thinned out. My own university professors, having seen their students in evening classes a couple of times, let us sail freely until the exam session, having generously given us huge lists of literature recommended for individual study. And just like that, on the threshold of October, I found a moment for the first time in many days at work to breathe and try to catch a single moment of mindfulness. After the second thirty-minute break of the day, which I'd spent outside the school, breathing fresh air and pretending to chase away smoking teenagers, I stopped by the teachers' lavatory to fix my makeup. The perfectly matched, thick concealer usually didn't fail, but the last few days it had stopped covering my dark circles under my eyes. And I had to refresh it throughout the day. I still dreamt of Earl Ciel Phantomhive. I still had dreams about him at least a couple of times a month, but the lack of sleep made them unmemorable, and at last I thought I was just making up nonsense to distract myself from a difficult time in my life: the expected, but no less painful, change in my titles. On that very day, at that very moment, I had not a single thought of Ciel Phantomhive in my mind, but I imagined him again. The freshly cleaned teacher's lavatory reeked of chlorine. I didn't want to lock myself in there, and I only needed a quick swipe of concealer under my eyes, so I shut the door loosely behind me. The kids at our private school behaved as badly as they did in the public schools, but they never messed with the teacher's bathroom, so I wasn't afraid of anything. I was facing the mirror with my back to the door. I could see the gap between the door and its frame, as well as the school corridor beyond it. It was in that reflection that I saw him. The young man from the dream, the Earl of Phantomhive, floated to the periphery of my vision and stared at me through the doorway with a bright blue eye. An unidentifiable tall black shadow followed him unerringly. Goosebumps covered my entire body. Not since the drunken vision in the Sicilian hotel during the summer had I been so jaded. I opened the faucet and stuck my hands under the icy water. I should have washed my face, but I felt sorry for the makeup I'd just fixed. Instead, I folded my hands together, drew water into them, and took a few mindless sips. Droplets ran down my arms and onto my shirt. It took a moment, but I came to my senses. The panic slowly receded. I had to stand in the bathroom for a couple more minutes to let my shirt dry. In the meantime, I fixed my hair with my wet hands, which made the strand right next to my face curl up treacherously. To prevent that from happening to the other strands, I wiped my hands with a paper towel and pinned my hair up in a ponytail. A deep inhale, exhale, and I left the restroom. I promised myself: one more of these weird hallucinations, and I'd go straight to a psychiatrist. Or to a psychic to find out what that long-dead earl wanted from me. I went straight to the teachers’ lounge. The school bell had already rung, and I still had to pick up my materials for my English club class, which was waiting for me on the fourth floor. I hurried in, entered the teachers’ lounge without looking around, and immediately made my way to my assigned desk. I dug out the printouts I needed and put them in a stack with my textbooks and laptop. There was some kind of active conversation going on behind me: half a dozen teachers I knew were crowded into a corner of the room, talking to another voice I didn't recognize. I wasn't interested in another set of gossip, so I didn't listen to the conversation until English, so foreign in this classroom, came from the mouth of the computer science teacher. When I heard the familiar words, I immediately jerked up and turned around. “Oh, how do you say it?” The teacher shook his head with annoyance. “I can't... Oh! Liza!” He looked up at me. I stood frozen at my desk with a stack of textbooks and a laptop clutched to my chest. “What's-” I started, but he didn't let me finish. “Liza, you know how it's done, come help me translate something.” The teacher came over, lightly put his arm around my shoulders and dragged me into the circle of gossipers gathered around one of the teachers' desks. I had no choice but to follow him. All the teachers from the entire floor seemed to have gathered here. And it was after the bell had rung! Familiar faces flashed before me in a kaleidoscope. “We need to translate to this gentleman that-” I didn't listen any further. The computer science teacher gestured generously at the person he was talking about, I followed the direction of his hand, and everything inside me collapsed. Sebastian Michaelis, a familiar young man, was sitting elegantly at the Russian teacher's desk. As if not at all surprised by the encounter, the man smiled at me. He rose from his chair, not a crease in his gray suit, loomed over me with all his seemingly infinite stature, and shook my hand. I remained dumbfoundedly silent. “You see, how wonderful,” sounded near my ear the voice of a short young Russian teacher Luisa. “There are two Englishmen in the school, and you just wanted to translate to someone. You'll be assigned to them.” I turned back to Luisa. Am I going to be allowed to translate for them? No way! I was overjoyed at this news and greeted Sebastian more affably, introducing myself as if we didn't know each other and flaunting my fluency in front of the other teachers. Sebastian played along and reintroduced himself to me. The computer science teacher started to pester me again to translate to Sebastian some nonsense he wanted to convey to the foreigner, but Sebastian himself came to my rescue. “We must be distracting you. Do you have a class to teach?” he said suddenly in Russian with a charming accent. No one else was surprised that the Englishman knew Russian: apparently I'd already missed Sebastian bragging about his linguistic skills. “Uh, yeah, I teach an English club,” I replied. “With high school students.” Sebastian perked up immediately. “Oh, how exciting! Can I participate?” I cast a confused glance at Luisa and the computer science teacher. They and the other teachers were silent, as if it were up to me. “Of course,” I said. “It would be very helpful for them to talk to a native speaker.” “It's a deal then.” Sebastian moved confidently to the door to the hallway and opened it for me. I followed him. “It was nice to meet you. I'll see you again soon!” The man said, and we walked out into the pleasant cool silence of the school corridor. As soon as we crossed the threshold of the classroom, we immediately switched to English, which was more comfortable for both of us. Sebastian bowed to me, greeting me much more formally than he had in the teachers’ lounge. “What an encounter, knyazhna Serova.” “I'm no longer a knyazhna. My father gave up his title.” “One cannot renounce one's blood.” I had no desire to delve into the subject, but I suspected that in a more private setting, the man would ask me again what had happened. “This way.” We turned toward the stairs to the fourth floor. I gave Sebastian a sly smile: “I thought you wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. Were you being tormented?” “You too, right?” Dr. Michaelis caught me. I laughed. “You're right. Then thank you for saving us both.” Sebastian held the door for me, and from the landing we walked to the floor. Lessons were already in progress, with teachers' lectures and students' answers coming from behind closed classroom doors. We lowered our voices so as not to disturb the learning process. We had to walk to the library on the other side of the building, so I took the liberty of extending our small talk with one more question. “There were talks of two Englishmen,” I remembered. “One was you, and who was the other, if it's not a secret?” “I came to Russia with my student. About your age,” the man obligingly explained. “Quite a complex young man. The heir to a famous family name, too.” Sebastian smirked at his own thoughts and added, as if by the way: “Something tells me you'll win him over easily.” I didn't bother to ask what that meant or why Sebastian thought that. I was still wondering why the historian and his student had come to our city and what they were doing in this school, but I was already late for my lesson, and further chatter with Sebastian could have gotten me a reprimand from the vice-principals, who were in charge of marking my diligence on my internship report. So we entered the library. The high school students, eleven boys and girls in navy-blue striped uniforms with red neckties, immediately quieted down and took their seats. They usually reacted more calmly to me, but the appearance in the room of a strange man (and, in fact, a very intriguing one) made the expected impression on them. The children said hello in English. I answered. Sebastian answered, too. If the students had been younger, someone curious would have asked me, “Who is this, Elizaveta Albertovna?” But they had learned their manners and waited silently for Sebastian to introduce himself. He stood in front of the audience, drew their attention by looking each one in the eye, and then introduced himself to them in English clearly and slowly, taking into account their level of language skills. He gave his name, said that he had come from England for work, and that while he was working on his research, his apprentice would occasionally teach fun classes here on British history and culture. The teenagers listening intently were mesmerized by the news. Sebastian's student, he said, was a very talented young man who had just graduated from Harvard. I was impressed, along with my high school students. What kind of a young man was this, coming from a family of aristocrats, who had already graduated from a prestigious American university at my age...? I, admittedly, had also skipped a year of study because I wanted to graduate as soon as possible from a major I had little interest in, but it was unlikely that this young man had the same intentions at Harvard. Still with the same experienced teacher's grip, Sebastian had the students take turns introducing themselves and telling him a little about themselves. They were almost completely unafraid of him, but occasionally cast brief glances at me for encouragement. Standing next to Sebastian and leaning on the teacher's desk, I gave the teenagers a cheerful thumbs-up and signaled when they forgot a preposition or a polite “thank you” in response to wishes of good luck, for example. When the ice was broken and the students looked at the new teacher with nothing but devoted adoration, Sebastian turned to the stack of materials I had prepared and laid out on the teacher's desk. “So, what is the topic you were going to cover at today's club meeting?” he asked in English. The straight-A girls took their gazes off the man and rustled through their notebooks. “Victorian England,” one of the boys answered. “We were preparing reports on the things we liked and remembered the most for the end of our unit.” “Wow,” Sebastian looked at me with interest, ”what a coincidence. This is my favorite topic.” The man walked over to the marker board and wrote the topic of the class in perfect handwriting. “All right. Who would like to begin our conversation about the Victorian era?” Once again, I marveled at how skillfully Sebastian could lead the class and encourage my students to give confident and florid answers. Once I was sure I could leave the students to him, I began to sort through the drawer of new books. Any student could bring unwanted books to the school library and get extra points for it, so there was a lot of excitement for this campaign, especially at the beginning of the year. We received a wide variety of titles, and since they were mostly unneeded ones, the books were often very strange and niche. The school didn't keep all of them; sometimes they were passed on: to universities, city libraries, and even waste paper. But until such non-school books found a new home through ads on the Internet, they stood in the so-called “restricted section” of the library, a small back room that was locked with a key. In my free time, I loved to rummage through there. In the course of Sebastian's one class alone, I'd added two more books to that section: an esoteric reference book and an English-Hebrew dictionary. I was just returning from the back room, twirling an already curled strand of hair near my face with my finger, when I heard Sebastian finish his lesson. I was so engrossed in his discussions of the UK with my students that I didn't notice the lesson was coming to an end. “Don't forget to thank Sebastian for such an interesting lesson!” I reminded them. The children burst out in murmurs of gratitude and began begging Sebastian to conduct their next session with the English club. “And leave the wonderful Elizaveta Albertovna out of work?” Sebastian laughed condescendingly. I twitched: how did he know my patronymic? “I would have liked to talk to you more, but I have to work. I'm sure you'll find my apprentice's lectures just as fascinating.” The children were upset to hear this, but not too much. Now they were all interested in what kind of student Sebastian had. I was no less interested. The class said goodbye to Dr. Michaelis and me in unison (already without my reminding them) and walked out of the library, crowding and looking around. When we were alone in the room and silence had fallen like dust on the bookshelves, I turned to Sebastian with delight. “You're so good!” came out of my mouth. “Or rather I mean that you are a very good teacher, I guess. You obviously have experience in teaching!” I playfully elbowed the man in the shoulder. Playing along with me, he swayed a little after the gesture. “Basically all the experience I gained with my one and only student. But, yes, I must confess that I had to teach at a prestigious boys' school in the UK for a very short time once long ago.” “Don't tell me it was at Eton!” I didn't believe it, covering my mouth with both hands. “No way!” “All right, I will not tell you,” Sebastian replied casually. Suddenly, light but hurried footsteps sounded outside the library door, which had been left wide open. Had one of the students forgotten their things? I walked over to the desks standing in a semicircle to look for the missing items. “Why do I always have to look for you?” The voice said angrily before its owner appeared in the doorway. The voice spoke English, too. This time the speaker's British accent was not textbook-like, like Sebastian's, but light and natural. Never tired of marveling at the surprises of the day, I turned around. “I was told you were in the library, but what are you doing here anyway...?” The voice broke off. A young man appeared on the threshold of the library. It was the young man from my dream. At first, it seemed to me that he was the spitting image of Ciel Phantomhive from the portrait. But just after another second of looking at him in the light of the sunset, which flooded the library with a brown filter of retro photos, I was convinced that my first impression was fundamentally wrong. The boy was much taller than the portrait suggested. This young man would not have drowned in a throne-like chair like the boy in the portrait. A slender, shapely figure under a loose white shirt (of a terribly expensive brand, as I spotted a little later) gave away that, unlike the boy in the portrait, this young man had already successfully coped with puberty. His facial features were not as doll-like and feminine at all. Of course, this did not detract from his beauty. But the most important difference was his eyes. They weren't blue at all. Their dark gray, almost black hue was different from the eyes of the boy that was painted in the portrait in the nineteenth century, and from the eyes of the one that I had been dreaming about for more than six months. The boy was looking right at me, studying me as intently as I was studying him. He looked me up and down from my austere wool skirt to the annoying blond strand around at face. “Elizaveta?” he finally said with perfect Russian pronunciation. “Just Liza,” I replied without thinking. “Elizaveta, please meet my lovely student. Russian is familiar to him,but not as wellas it is to me,” Sebastian clarified with emphasis, as if his words were intended not for me but for his student instead. The man came closer to the boy and introduced us. “The heir of Earl Ciel Phantomhive, knyazhna Elizaveta Serova.” The name struck me like a thunderbolt. “Ciel Phantomhive?!” I cried out. It all felt just like one of my bizarre dreams. “There’s no way this is real!” Overcome with excitement, I rushed closer to the young man and scrutinized him even more carefully. “You can’t possibly be the heir of the Earl Ciel Phantomhive, son of Vincent Phantomhive?” Ciel, who at first hadn’t taken kindly to my impolite approach, regained his composure and smiled proudly. “You’re on the right track. We’re very closely connected.” Ciel bowed deeply and kissed my hand. “A pleasure to meet you, knyazhna.” “I’m not a knyazhna anymore,” I had to remind him again. “Just Liza, please.” “Ah, yes, I’ve heard,” Ciel caught himself. His British accent flowed like music. “Albert Serov publicly renounced his title as Duke. My apologies.” I felt embarrassed for putting my new acquaintance in an awkward position. “It’s fine,” I raised my hands placatingly. “He spent years coming to that decision. You’ve probably heard about his, uh… progressive views.” As I spoke, Ciel never took his piercing gaze off me, as if searching for something—but failing to find it. “So, does that mean you’ll be teaching our students about your homeland’s culture and history?” I asked, changing the subject. “Yes, me,” Ciel pursed his lips and shot an irritated glance at his teacher, Sebastian. Through gritted teeth, he added: “I’ll do my best.” Trying to steer the Englishmen away from a topic uncomfortable for me, I’d apparently stumbled into one uncomfortable for them. Clearly, Ciel hadn’t taken on this lecturer role willingly. But when working under such a renowned historian, sacrifices must be made. “How old are you, anyway?” I couldn’t help asking. His boyish face made his age hard to guess, leaving me with a wildly broad range of possibilities. Ciel and Sebastian exchanged another glance, this time sharing a knowing smirk. Apparently, the student’s age was part of some inside joke between them. “Nineteen,” Ciel finally answered. So young! And already a Harvard graduate! I fell silent, stunned. Both young men shared the quiet with me. The atmosphere grew awkward. “So, how does the heir of the great Earl Phantomhive fare these days?” I asked. I failed to sound calm—or even just mildly interested—and all my emotions spilled out unprofessionally. Both foreigners chuckled at my enthusiasm. “I mean…” “If you’re so curious, Elizabeth, you can see for yourself,” Ciel said conspiratorially, as if revealing a great secret. “Are you done for the day?” “Yes,” I replied eagerly. “Care to join us? We have some business tonight, and we could definitely use a good translator,” Ciel said, his tone almost enchanting. “Of course!” I immediately gathered my things from the teacher’s desk. “I just need to drop these off in the teachers’ lounge .” As if on cue from some unseen stagehand, Sebastian moved to the door and held it open for me and Ciel. “No need to rush. We have all the time in the world,” Ciel assured me as we stepped into the empty school hallway, deserted after classes. He confidently led our little group toward the faculty room as if he had the school’s layout memorized. Sebastian, bringing up the rear, leaned slightly toward my ear. “Don’t believe his flattery,” he whispered, barely audible. “He’s not what he seems.” I didn’t answer, just stared at the mesmerizing heir’s back. I still didn’t know what—or who—to believe, but I dearly hoped this new acquaintance would bring some clarity to my suspicious dreams.