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At 8 years old, Raphael has memorized the streets of Paris.
He’s memorized the times that all of his favorite street performers come out, and he always keeps a coin or two in his pocket. He’ll pick up anything he finds on the ground, because that means whoever that little penny belonged to either doesn’t want it anymore, or has totally forgotten about it.
He pushes his round glasses up on his nose, and he can see again. He tugs on his father’s shirt, asking for permission to go up to the stage. The man gives him a nod, and the little one expertly flips a coin off of his fingers and into the air. (He’s been practicing that one for a few weeks or so. Now he can do it confidently, and it makes him grin.) It creates a stylish entrance that makes the street performer laugh. “Come on, mon ami!” he shouts, the music picking up just a bit.
The little boy dances, and his constant exercise betrays him not. All the running he does throughout the great city has kept his endurance strong, and he leaps through the air, not a breath wasted, none heaved out. His heart is pounding, and the adrenaline keeps him going for what feels like forever. Sweat flies off of him, shining in the light of the streetlamps as they come to life. They have no wooden stage, no props, no actors. But this is their spotlight. And when the song reaches its climactic end, the dancer and the musician take a bow.
And a head of red hair skips and bounds all the way home. He can’t stop smiling, even as the rush fades away and his little performance becomes but a memory.
At 11, Raphael has made some friends, but family always comes first.
His dad is still his role model, he’s the one who taught him to do everything. Since his mum died when he was so little, he has very little memory of her. And being an only-child, he was never influenced by the gentleness of a woman. Instead, he was taught a French man’s classiness, and he doesn’t mind dressing up in a suit and tie every once in awhile.
Fashion is something he holds in high esteem. He’s never had that much money, living in a small apartment, so he treasures his nice clothes. He associates them with the fun, dirt-poor drinking parties he goes to with his dad. Of course, he was never interested in the alcohol, and he’s never had a sip. But he began to associate the scent of wine with a tip of a black fedora, and a spotlight shining on him (a real one this time).
He’s never stopped running. His dad has taught him to be safe and to be careful, so he’s started exploring the back alleys, scurrying away when trouble comes chasing behind him. Wearing his glasses has started making him feel weak, so he’s gotten used to blurry vision, and he’s agile with or without it.
The people that do make him feel safe are vastly different from him. A history buff, the old lady down the street (if she could be considered a friend). He feels lonely sometimes, so he begs his dad for a dog, but the answer is always no. A boy can dream, though.
At 13, Father shows his son the world of art.
He shows his little son, eyes sparkling behind the frames of his glasses, a secret atelier full of paintings.
Candles hang from the ceiling, and the little boy wonders if this is why he hasn’t gotten to see this lovely secret until now. He’s seen Father locked up in this room for hours some days. When it rains, after all, they both stay home. And with the tireless time that Father’s put into all of this… for all of it to burn over a silly child’s mistake would be tragic.
Raphael has spent his whole life surrounding himself in music, so the world of colours and brushes is foreign to him. He’s seen artists selling their works on the street before, but he’s never given them more than a passing glance.
Most of the pieces, after all, are dull. In art, brightness seems to be looked down upon, and Raphael longs for something exciting. He longs for the jazz that the Africans and the Europeans brought to life. He yearns for a trumpet playing a scratchy, golden melody; he wishes for a piano with its starry staccato notes. He likes the way the saxophone is smooth, a sweet legato across a harmony. If art was brighter, he told his father, then maybe he would learn to paint.
“Impressionism is making its rise, you know?” He squashes some berries in his hand, and wide eyes watch intently. He drops what’s left into a small pot and puts it over a fire, and when he dips his brush into it after a while, he swashes a bright red onto an empty canvas. He uses another pot to get another colour, and before they know it, the canvas is full of random, colourful brush strokes.
“Is art always supposed to show things that are real? Like people and animals and buildings? That’s all I’ve seen,” Raphael said softly, his eyes still locked on the painting. “But this looks so nice, it feels like a waste not to call it art.”
“Anything is art if you want it to be. In a way, music is also art. Dancing is art. And while music and dance can make us feel things that remind us of reality, they can take us away to another world as well, filled with neon lights and stars that fall from the sky.” He smiled warmly. “This is abstract art. Not a lot of people like it, but I do, even if I don’t paint it often.”
Raphael then begins to try and make “abstract” art. He makes a few pieces that his father praises. But every time he does, he sees his father’s eyes clouding. Like art is something he should stay away from.
One day, the little one asks him why. And that day, he cried for the first time in a while.
Four grey walls surrounded him in his infancy. A little red-haired child was taken out of the hospital for a few days only to return dizzy and screaming. The doctors would silence him with expensive medicine, taking the sick little one into their care, days and nights spent trying to heal his sickness.
So much time was spent in those waiting rooms, the hours wasting away. No more money, no more nothing. So the young child’s father took his passion for art and turned it into something else, and began copying famous paintings.
He’d break into museums, and nobody would ever know he was there: he stole famous works, putting exact replicas in their place. When he visited the scene of the crime the next day, no cops were looking for suspicious people, there was no sense of alarm. Nobody even knew about it, not even his son.
Until today, that is.
Raphael looked around. He’d never known anything about the world of art, but supposedly he was sitting in a room full of invaluable paintings. Priceless. Until his father sold them away, paying off the hospital with the money he received. The only fast way to make money was to commit crime.
Raphael never picked up a brush again. He decided he would keep dancing. He would keep himself healthy.
At 15, Father leaves.
It’s snowy and cold, their path is shown clearly in footprints that follow behind them. There are two sets, and they split apart.
The redheaded boy is left alone in the winter. Usually, he could follow after any trail that’s left behind: by asking around, he can figure out where someone’s headed. But his father stepped into a car, not even sparing a look to his poor son. The one who looked up to him. The one he had spent fifteen years together with. The one who had learned classiness, elegance, and chivalry from him. The only one who cried when he left. There are tracks left behind, but the snow is already working to cover them up.
When he turns around to look at the pair of footprints, they’re already beginning to fade as well.
The world is all white and sparkly, but to him, it’s black and stagnant and lonely. Even with all the people around him, he suddenly feels like he’s all alone. He forgets how to move, and his legs give out. He stares at the ground, curling into a ball, because this is the first time he’s felt alone for years.
Sure, he could roam the streets of Paris. And Father was getting busier and busier lately, but when Raphael came home, a familiar figure was always waiting for him with open arms. “How was your day? Did you have fun? Did anything interesting happen?”
No. Not today. You could call it interesting if you wanted to. But saying it like that made it feel like it was so much less than it was.
He feels the snow brushing against his hair, he sees a coin on the ground. It has a peculiar mark on it, something he’d never seen before.
Is it a clue?
Until now, he’s never been anything but a dancer. He’s spent his whole life dancing to street performers, finding the styles he likes, spending hours and hours at home improving his coordination and balance. But now, he needs to be something different.
He goes home, and it feels lonely. He’s never returned to an empty apartment before. He throws off the jacket he was wearing in front of his father and stuffs it into a drawer he’s never used before. The snow starts to melt, dampening the wood. He doesn’t care. He puts on a suit and tie, finishing the look with a familiar fedora atop his head. From now on, he isn’t just Raphael. He will be Phantom R.