by Paul Kane
“I must.”
The veil was raised, in the manner of a groom lifting the veil of his bride on their wedding day to plant a kiss on the lips of his betrothed. Nothing can be more grotesque or appalling an idea in view of what actually greeted our eyes.
I beheld the face of a rotting corpse. No. Half a face. Which, far from diluting the impact, only served to throw it into heightened obscenity by contrast. One eye was lustrous, that of a poor, frightened doe, the other lidless, shriveled, and blistered. The skin on one side flawless and pure, that of a beautiful woman, yet on the other—pitiful thing!—almost non-existent. She was eaten to the bone. I can only describe it, absurdly, as resembling the surface of a burnt sausage. Even that is inadequate. Her right cheek was gone, a flayed cavern in which I could count the teeth in her jaw and see her pink tongue wriggling, her right ear nothing more than a gristly stump. All this absorbed in an instant, and not forgotten in a lifetime.
I heard a death rattle, which was Madame Jolivet breathing with the horrid restriction her injuries compelled. Yet she held Poe’s eyes without self-pity. And to his credit, he did not avert his gaze.
“Who did this?”
“We do not know.” Guédiguian whimpered and sandwiched his hands between his thighs. “That is why we are here. It happened three weeks ago. Madame has not been well enough to move until today.”
“You’ve spoken to the police?”
“We told them everything.”
“Tell me everything.”
“We had just begun rehearsing La Traviata. I had fired the conductor for being a drunk.” Guédiguian began to pace back and forth behind her chair, occasionally tweaking it with his fingers as if to steady himself on a rolling sea. “I was calling in favors from old friends to ensure the production didn’t run off the rails, but everybody was excited about Madame playing the part of Violetta. I knew it would be a complete triumph.”
“How many of the cast had worked with Madame before?”
“That is not vital at this moment.” Poe cut me off, his eyes never leaving the diva. “Please describe the incident as clearly as you can remember it.”
“I must speak for her,” said Guédiguian. “The merest exertion of the vocal chords causes her unbearable agony. She will never sing an aria again.”
“Madame, not only has your body been cruelly abused,” said Poe, “but so too has your soul. In that regard, justice is your only balm and my expertise—my considerable expertise— is at your service. Are you happy for Monsieur Guédiguian to continue on your behalf?”
Now self-conscious, the woman lowered the veil before nodding. Her face covered, she became perfection once more. And I could breathe freely.
Poe turned to the manager. “Pray continue.”
“One day during rehearsals, at about four in the afternoon, Madame retired to her dressing room for a nap. She gave her boy a swift instruction that she was not to be disturbed. She undressed, put on her dressing gown, and lay on the day bed while upstairs the new conductor, Francesco Mazzini, put the orchestra through their paces. Half-dozing some minutes later— but not too much later, because the music had not changed, it was still ‘Sempre Libera’—she remembers hearing the door open, thinking nothing much of it—perhaps it was the boy again, with flowers from an admirer, after all a day did not pass without her receiving some token or other. Suddenly, but not with horror, she felt liquid on her face. It had no obvious odor. Though momentarily startled, she presumed it was water— though why anybody would splash water on her face mystified her. She could only think it was a silly prank. Hardly had that thought begun to materialize when the substance began to burn. And when it did not stop burning, and when she felt the cheek under her fingers turning to mud, she screamed. Screamed till her lungs burst. Horribly, for a few seconds the singers next door took the high notes to be her practicing, then the truth...” The man’s thick hair hung lank. “I’m—sorry...”
“Please, monsieur,” Poe urged. “For Madame.”
“There is little more to tell.” Guédiguian waved a hand spuriously. “The hospital did what they could. They still are doing. But her face is a ruin. Her life is a ruin. They can rebuild neither. If she had a husband... but now...” He swallowed the thought, shaking his head, regretting he had even given it form. “Who would do such a thing? Who?”
“The police conducted interviews?”
“Endlessly. The chorus were becoming hoarse from repeating where they were and with whom. I think the paperwork must be longer than La Comédie Humaine.”
“Word count is only an illusion of achievement,” said Poe. “Over time, and with increasing desperation, the core, the essence, becomes obscured like a diamond lost in a bush of thorns. What is the name of the officer in charge?”
“Bermutier.”
“Henri Bermutier. Not the sharpest bayonet in the army, but count yourself lucky you didn’t get that lazy pig Malandain.”
“It was Bermutier who pointed us in your direction, Maestro. He said if any man in Paris could find the solution to the mystery, it was C. Auguste Dupin.”
“Naturellement.” Poe explained that his method demanded he have unfettered access to the scene of the crime, and our new client assured us of his every co-operation, together with that of his numerous employees, whether performers or artisans. “The tea is stewed to the consistency of an Alabama swamp. I shall get us a fresh pot.”
“We—we shall decline your kind offer, monsieur...” Guédiguian accurately read the signal of his companion tugging his sleeve. “We have to go. Madame, you see, she is tired... The slightest exertion...”
Speaking for Poe and myself I said we understood completely and any other questions could be answered in the fullness of time.
Neither had removed their coats. Guédiguian offered La Jolivet his arm. Once more Poe took the lady’s hand and kissed it, and I sensed she was thankful that he did. Charm sometimes trumped his insensitivity. Otherwise life in his company, frankly, would have been intolerable.
“There is something else I should say, which I fear will shock and displease you.” Guédiguian turned back, knotting his scarf. “This incident has rekindled backstage rumors of a fantôme. Tongues are wagging that the production is cursed, that the opera house is haunted, that this is merely the beginning of a concerted spree of malevolence from beyond the grave...”
“It always displeases me,” sneered Poe, lighting a cigarette from a candle, “when I have it confirmed that the imaginative excesses of the poorly educated know no bounds. But shock? No. I would have been shocked had they not.”
“But—beyond the grave? Monsieur Dupin, I confess to you, I was brought up in fear of the Church and in fear of God...”
“Then good luck to you.” Poe jangled the bell-pull to summon Le Bon. “But there is no beyond in matters of the grave. There is only—the grave. The Conqueror Worm and all his wriggling allies in decomposition. If this abominable act tells us anything, it is that the creature we seek is flesh and blood.”
“I wish I could be so certain.”
Behind Guédiguian, the woman’s back was turned, like a silhouette cut from black paper. A long curl of fair hair, colorless as flax, lay on the night-blue of her shoulder. The man placed his hand against her back, and they were gone, like phantoms themselves.
* * *
“The quantity used was small, so the assailant must have been close. Very close.” Our carriage took us at speed down the Avenue de l’Opéra. To Poe the imposing five-story buildings either side, which had eradicated the medieval city at the mercy of Haussman’s modernization, were invisible. “Sulfuric acid, by the lack of odor. Used to pickle silver by jewelers. Readily dissolves human tissue, prolonged exposure causing pulmonary incapacity and tooth erosion. Severely corrosive to most metals, and shows an unquenchable thirst. If a flask of it is allowed to stand uncovered, it’ll absorb water from the air until the container overflows, so must be handled with the utmost care. In highly diluted form it is a
vailable as a medical laxative. Used in horticulture to eradicate weeds and moss. Also as a drain cleaner...”
“Paris has good need for drain cleaner, I’ll give you that. It out-stinks London.”
“London has a perfume by comparison.” He blinked languorously, acknowledging my presence for the first time in minutes. “Paris was born in filth and blood and other liquids, my dear Holmes. Violence is its beating heart. And freedom will be the death of it.”
The Opéra Garnier was not to my taste, but had to be admired. A triumph of engineering, indeed of artistic will, it captured something, if not everything, of its era. Completed only a few years before, the neo-Baroque masterpiece had been commissioned by Napoleon III as part of his grandiloquent and massive reshaping of Paris, designed unashamedly as a flamboyant riposte to the established opera houses of Italy. Over a fifteen-year gestation, its construction had been held up by multifarious incidents and setbacks, from mundane lack of funds to upheavals such as the Franco-Prussian War and the demise of the Empire in favor of a new Republic. As a visual statement, its Imperial glory suddenly spoke only of the former regime in all its dubious splendor, and the politicians, freshly warming their rumps in the seats of office, were inherently ill-disposed toward its existence. The most that was done, in the end, was to change the Opéra’s official name on the entablature fronting the loggia from “Academie Imperiale de Musique” to “Academie Nationale de Musique.” Happily for the craftsmen involved, a difference of only six letters.
Personally I saw the edifice before me as a resplendent example of grandeur and folly in roughly equal measure. With sunlight gilding the figures of Music and Dance on the façade and Apollo atop the dome, it was almost impossible to conceive that such an odious crime could have happened under the aegis of such gods and noble virtues.
“Another disfigurement. Almost a prediction, if you believe such nonsense.” As we climbed the steps to the entrance, Poe pointed out Carpeaux’s sculpture, which had so shocked the Puritans of Paris in its erotic depiction of La Dance that ink was thrown over its marble thighs. “Ink. Acid. I know some critics where the two are synonymous.”
If we had doubted the atmosphere of superstitious dread permeating the company, we soon found it illustrated when the doorman almost leapt out of his skin at the sound of our rapping. Poe introduced himself—as “Dupin,” naturally—and proceeded to interrogate the individual, a sapeur-pompier with a wooden leg, about his actions on the afternoon in question. The fellow was adamant that nobody had entered or left the theater on his watch and he himself never strayed from his post until the doors were locked.
We ascended the Grand Staircase with its balustrade of red and green marble and two bronze female torchières in the direction of the foyers.
Poe sniffed like an eager bloodhound as we were surrounded by immense mirrors and parquet, more colored marble, moulded stucco, and sculptures.
“These are the mirrors in which the audience watch the show before the show.” He looked at the vast room in reflection, and at his own. “This is where they see each other, and themselves. And find themselves on the upper step, or the lower. The inane dance of the socially inclined and the artistically disinterested. I’d wager by law of averages that of the myriad citizens crammed in here on opening night, at least five are murderers.”
“A sobering thought.”
“On the contrary, a thought to turn one to drink,” said Poe. “I should know.”
We had lied to the doorman. Our appointment with Guédiguian was at three. It gave us a full hour to explore unhindered, an opportunity my colleague took to with relish. He had been given extensive floor plans of the Opéra, but nothing, he said, was a substitute for the application of the senses. If there were gods that deserved statuary, Poe declared, it was Sight, Smell, Touch, Taste, and Hearing.
And so we roamed the interweaving corridors, stairwells, alcoves, and landings. Before long it was not hard to imagine a clever infiltrator scampering from floor to floor or room to room unseen. Skulking round the Romano-Byzantine labyrinth, several times I wished for Ariadne’s ball of twine, fearful that we had lost our way, while Poe counted his footsteps into hundreds, storing myriad calculations of I-knew-not-what. But then, I seldom did.
A swell of music rose up and I was momentarily reminded of the old adage of a dying man hearing a choir of angels. The gas-lit passageway gave the notes a dull, eerie resonance, making it tricky to know whether the source was near or far. But when Poe opened a door and we stepped into a fourth-level box overlooking the stage, the voices and orchestra took on voluminous proportions.
The tiny figures before us were dwarfed in a five-tier auditorium resplendent in red velvet, plaster cherubs, and gold leaf. The magnificent house curtain with gold braid and pom-poms was raised above the proscenium. And presiding over all—in fact partly obscuring our view—hung the magnificent seven-ton crystal and bronze chandelier which alone, if you are to believe the controversy, cost thirty thousand gold francs.
I am marginally more familiar with La Traviata now than I was then, and could not have told you in those days they were rehearsing Act Two, Scene Two—the soirée at Flora’s house, in which Alfredo, here a beefy man with the build of a prize-fighter, sees his love, the former courtesan Violetta, with Baron Douphol. After winning a small fortune from the Baron, he bitterly rounds up the guests to witness her humiliation— “Questa donna conoscete?”—before hurling his winnings at her feet in payment for her “services.” Whereupon she faints to the floor.
“She faints in Act One, too,” said Poe, paying less attention to the stage than he did to the fixtures and fittings of the box. “Never a good sign.”
“More to the point, Guédiguian hasn’t wasted any time in finding a new Violetta. I presume that’s her understudy.”
Poe arched an eyebrow.
As we listened to the guests turn on Alfredo—singing “Di donne ignobile insultatore, di qua allontanati, ne desti orror!”— Poe could no longer bear the pain and left the box, muttering that high art was invariably highly dull. The art of the street, the Penny Dreadful and barrel organ, he found more rewarding, he said—and more honest. “I don’t know about you, but I have seldom been accompanied by an orchestra in my moments of intimate passion.”
“But is there a clue in the play?” I caught up with him in the corridor.
“Why would there be?”
“I don’t know. Do you? I’ve never stepped in an opera house before. I don’t even know what La Traviata means.”
“The Fallen Woman. It is based on La Dame aux Camélias, a play in turn based on a novel by Dumas, fils—in turn based, some say, on a lady of his own acquaintance. The play was a big success when I first arrived in Paris, especially after it was vilified by the censors.”
“For what reason?”
“A high-living prostitute depicted as a victim of society? Especially when she never sees the light? In London, I believe they tried to get an injunction to stop it. But then, it is never entirely a bad thing for a work of art to be pilloried by the Church. In America they say the plot is immoral, though no worse than Don Giovanni. Here, it was first performed at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Place de Chatelet with Christine Nilsson in the title role. Too chaste-looking for a harlot, if you ask me.”
“You saw it?”
“Yes, which is why I abhor opera with every fiber of my being. Rarely does an art form offend all the senses at once, and the buttocks more than any. Nothing less than the crucifixion of Christ should last more than forty minutes. And God forbid that Judas should sing about it. Though, given time, I’m sure he shall.” Keeping up his sprightly pace, he turned a corner. “The truth is, my dear Holmes, I endured this mellifluous obscenity once and did not care for it. In fact, I walked out.”
He strode on several yards before replying to my unspoken question, but did not turn to face me.
“You see... the soprano was too old, too obese... almost to the point of being flabby, to play—t
o conceivably play, with any hope of conviction—the part of a young woman dying of consumption.” His face creased and twitched with the most intense inner agitation. “That she sang with such—abnormal gusto, with superhuman energy—with such buoyant, lustrous, glowing health. And the fact that she was applauded. That people cheered...”
He had told me before of Virginia, his cousin and child bride. Her icy pallor, cheeks rubbed with plum juice to fake a ruddy complexion. Her dry lips enlivened briefly with the color of cherries. The coughing of blood onto a pure white handkerchief. He had also, once, intimated that the disease gave spells of excitement, even desire; that there was an aphrodisiac quality to the fading bloom. I think it was this that haunted him most of all. I cannot imagine what he had suffered. To bear helpless witness to a death so inevitable yet so gradual. To see loveliness—one’s very reason for living—wither on the vine, and all around feel harangued by the prejudice of others, not knowing whether to blame habits or heredity or himself. Then to be there as the leaf takes to the wind, leaving its heavy load behind...
“From the opening music we are in the presence of death. Eight first and eight second violins portray the frail consumptive. Curtain up on a party scene. We are told the hostess is seeing her doctor. I know that feeling well. I have been in that scene, that room, many times. She wants to enjoy life fully because it is fleeting. Parties will be the drug to kill her pain. I understand that too. They drink a toast because love is life. Fervido. Fervido... A fever... A passion...”
The female voice rose again, distant as the angels.
“It is a lie, as all Art lies. There is no aria at the end. There is only the incessant coughs, the swelling of joints, the loss of weight, the cadaverous emaciation, delirium, torment—and, if one is lucky, the uttering of a lover’s name.”
Straightening his back he walked on, anxious not to meet my eyes, though he would never have admitted it. No more was said on the subject. He had closed a heavy door and I knew I could not open it. Only he could do that, when—and if—he wished.