Masque

by Bethany Pope

  In any case, Philippe had long been contented to sit on the sidelines of the theatre, courting his vague little dancer (He was always rather conventionally romantic, my brother. He was the type who would have thought it daring to drink champagne from the toe of her smelly little shoe.) Philippe was deaf to every rumour of misfortune that haunted the cast almost from the time the doors opened, but my brother had a fixed idea of himself as a patron who could earn a profit. He funded the purchase of the contracts with a full quarter of the money that our father left him, and backed the managers he hired when they purchased the deed to the building itself.

  Messieurs Firmin and Andre were two of a kind, both short dumpy men with a flair for the theatrical, as shown by their gleaming brushed beaver-top hats, bright scarves and elaborate, waxed mustachios. Their facial hair was so pointed, so hardened with wax, that they looked as though they had swallowed a pair of tiny bulls. Speaking to the one was, my brother said, exactly as good as speaking to the other. But they were dedicated to turning a profit and eagerly obeyed his commands, so they were tolerated.

  The night that I returned to Paris (I had spent the last year on a ship learning the family business, accompanying reams of fabrics and spices from India) my brother welcomed me into his home, a massive, empty sprawl of bachelor opulence (his predilections betrayed by the filthy female undergarments strewn in the wash-chamber) and begged that I come out with him that night to enjoy the début of a new opera by Bizet.

  ‘I know you’ll enjoy it,’ he said to me, forty years old, blond, bland and grinning like a schoolboy as we jostled forward in the coach, ‘the composer has a soft-spot for gypsies and an earthy sensibility. You won’t see La Carlotta in the lead role, unfortunately. There was, apparently, a misunderstanding regarding her contract. The new girl they’ve got in to replace her, Christina something, is very young, but supposedly good for the role. And her youth will be a boon to us. The role she’s playing is apparently quite tempting. This Carmen has a lot of fire in it, a lot of amour. A lot of amour and very little dress. Nothing like a good young pair of nicely rounded … limbs filling out a delicate red garment. I expect to turn quite a profit with this show.’

  I smiled in reply, not really considering. It had been so long since I’d seen Christine that the similarities in the names he’d mentioned (he’d got it wrong, of course) did not even stir up the ghost of a memory for me. I looked out of the window at the full streets, teeming as always with beggars and the growing ranks of the bourgeois – too poor at yet to afford their own coaches, but climbing quickly towards respectability – and thought of the sea.

  After the greetings, canapés, the drinks, after that repulsive Giry woman led my brother, the managers and I to our box, after the curtain went up on the stage set to resemble a highly romanticised tobacco plantation, I became aware of the prickling of premonition. I felt the sweat pooling under my arms, forming beads like a diadem across my forehead. I knew, you see, that something was coming. She was. She did.

  When she swept across that stage in the blood-brocade silk of a glamorous peasant, singing ‘L’amour est un oiseau rebelle, que nul ne peut apprivoiser, et c’est bien en vain qu’on l’appelle, s’il lui convient de refuser. Rien n’y fait, menace ou prière; L’un parle bien, l’autre se tait, et c’est l’autre que je préfère; Il n’a rien dit mais il me plaît.’ in her provocative mezzo, while her fine white breasts trembled in her bodice and her pale, bare arms glistened in the lights, I was lost to myself, and to the world. I knew then that I must have her – no matter the cost.

  My brother knew me very well; he had been young once himself. He offered to take me to see her in her borrowed changing room. She had not been the original diva (an understudy only). She would be after tonight. Philippe would call the painter in the morning to add her name to the star, blotting out ‘La Carlotta’ first. The intestines of the opera house were filthy for a place so recently opened, bare wood and plaster where the public mask was marble and gilt, but to me each splinter glowed and every rat was beautiful – though I must say that those dancers were far more attractive at a distance. Up close, they were all tired skin, bulging leg muscles, veins, and the stench of sweat. I feared the worst for Christine.

  I needn’t have bothered. There were voices in the room, male and female; I could hear them as we approached, although they were muffled. My brother knocked and the voices stopped. Christine Daaé opened the door, looking just a little older, still very much the luminous moon-girl, my long-limbed Artemis. She was alone in the room. The candle glowed gold behind her, reflected in the mirror, gold on her waist-long near-black curls.

  She smiled at me, a small, sad lift of the lips, but did not appear to remember me at first. I had to remind her about our week on the seaside, her father, my brave rescue of her scarf.

  I invited her to dinner that night. I can’t remember what she said, but I know that she initially refused. I had to work hard to convince her. I could not understand why she would not accept me, why she withheld what I wanted. I knew that she wanted me, as I wanted her.

  Eventually she acquiesced, with bitten lip and lowered eyes. I gave her a half-hour to change before I would come back to collect her. She withdrew demurely enough, carefully latching the door. I was not offended by the sound of the lock. I turned back down the hall, softly singing her Habanera in my cracked voice, ‘Love is a rebellious bird that none can tame, and it is well in vain that one calls it – if it suits him to refuse, nothing to be done, threat or prayer…’

  CHRISTINE

  4.

  I studied at the smaller Theatre De Paris for nearly six years before the Palais Garnier opened and I finally found a chance to perform on stage as a singer. I grew from little more than a child in the filthy corridors of the old building, among the ropes, the defunct costumes, the ancient barre, polished by a thousand thighs, that the dance master brought from his previous theatre. If the hidden sections of the new theatre were as unsophisticated as the old, the facade the public saw fed my soul on a level of supreme sensuality that, I am certain, did me more harm than good. The Comte de Changy, I should say the elder Comte de Changy, took notice of me early – before I even began to be given singing roles. I am quite sure that if he had not brought me to the attention of the then managers, no one else would have noticed me, and I would have been a rat until the Countess, my patron, lost patience with (or interest in) my body and I would have found myself reduced to the same rough trade the other girls were used to.

  None of that happened, as you can see. I was noticed. It became my duty to escort his bella La Sorelli to the post-production parties Firmin and Andre threw every evening for the Gentlemen who in truth sponsored the show by buying the boxes. After the final curtain came down, I would have time for a quick draught of cheap champagne (more vinegar than sweet) enough to kill the dust from the curtain, before quickly changing into one of my better frocks and rushing off to collect our beautiful, dear, our stupid Annie.

  I changed among the other girls in a dark, clammy corner of the lesser rehearsal room. Compared to that dark space, Annie’s cramped corner room was a palace. It was still new then, though this corner had been allowed to grow a little dusty in the years when building was abandoned. A cosy space, fur lined and bright with the glow of many whale-oil lanterns. She was a sweet girl, Annie, golden-haired and nicely plump. Actually, now that I think of it, she and the Comte shared a shade, in terms of their tresses. She was messy, cheerful, always ready to greet you with a smile and what a laugh she had! How she would howl – without always understanding the joke.

  Sometimes, after a show, when she had danced particularly brilliantly, her bland face would cloud and she would suddenly begin weeping, freely, as shamelessly as a child. She could never name a reason for this. If you asked her, she would laugh, dash the tears from her eyes with one small, plump fist, and ask prettily for another glass of champagne to make her smile again.

  It was my job to see that she was properly dresse
d for company, to escort her to the room to meet her lover and the other admiring gentlemen, and then to change the subject any way I could when her natural whimsy took a turn for the disgusting as it often might.

  One night, while De Changy was speaking to his managers (this was, you remember, two sets of managers back) she started speaking to a tall, nearly skeletal man who had appeared, dressed in a cloak and dinner jacket, a fine fedora aslant, shadowing a face as bland and unlined as a new-born baby’s. Her laughter had grown its most dangerous edge, the short hairs on my neck, cheeks, and arms rose in fear. La Sorelli was sweet, and she had a good heart, but her tongue could suddenly become impolitic and there were many investors present there this evening.

  Annie and the stranger were standing at the point where the glorious stairs that make the Palais Garnier famous intersect and form an enormous marble Y, glittering in the light refracted in a thousand tear-shaped crystals that drip from the tremendous chandeliers and gaslight torches. Whoever he was, he stood terribly erect, his gloved hands hidden behind his narrow waist, clutching a fine ebony stick. My friend, who I was meant to be watching, was sloppily drunk, spreading her barely covered breasts against the wide, pink-veined bannister. I could not read his face as he looked at her, his features were oddly stiff, expressionless, but the arch of his body signalled contempt. I rushed to her side as quickly as I could, pleased that my new silk shoes did not slap against the carved stone stairs, pleased that I did not slip and crack my skull against the pavement.

  I arrived in a rush, sweating a little, my breath panting, and took my friend by the arm. I began to apologise to the gentleman.

  ‘I am sorry, monsieur.’ Something in my tone must have startled him. He seemed to flinch at the sound of my voice, like the leg of the frog Papa showed me once, reanimated with unseen electricity stored in a battery. ‘La Sorelli gets a little over-excited after performing. If you’ll exc-’

  ‘This is the gal I was talkin’ bout, mister.’ Annie slipped her flabby arm around my neck so that I smelled her sweat and caking powdered perfume. She nodded her impudent head at the managers. ‘They don’t know it yet, but trust me, Christine can sing.’

  He turned, whoever he was, and looked at me. I do not know if I can tell you what it is like to really be looked at, to feel a mind, alien to yours, attempting to bore beneath your skin and understand the composition of your true, your human bones. It is something that I am convinced few people ever experience. I looked into his odd yellow eyes (they looked like dead eyes, like the glazed, shrunken eyes of a fish left out too long in summertime) and I knew, suddenly, that the face I saw was no face at all. It was a mask.

  ‘Is this true, girl? Can you sing?’

  How can I describe his voice to you? It was a deep, sweet tenor, like rubbing raw, wet silk across my breasts. Seven words. They were delicious. I answered him.

  ‘Yes. When I was a child. I haven’t sung for years though, since my father died. I might have lost the gift.’

  ‘No.’ His voice was smiling, the painted lips never moved. ‘The gift of music can never be taken from you. Is it possible that you simply require someone to sing to?’

  My hands were clasped beneath my heart, I felt my own pulse in my fingers. I had totally forgotten about poor Annie. I never noticed when she slid to the floor.

  The stranger nodded, as though to himself. ‘It is possible. Probable. Yes.’ His eyes flicked back to mine, a quick, cold cut given by a sharp, sure knife. ‘Sing for me. Now.’

  ‘Right here?’ I looked around, the Comte and the managers were crowded in the lobby. They had moved on to brandy and fresh, expensive cigars. They might hear, but they would not interfere.

  He nodded, his body unmoving, stiff as rigor mortis, his hands clasped hard behind his back.

  I opened my mouth.

  For the first time in years real music poured out.

  He nodded once, bowing like someone unused to such motion, and left me there to scoop up Annie, who snored and drooled on to tiles that cost more per pound than her weekly salary. When I looked up again, staggering beneath the weight of her, he had totally vanished.

  It is funny, now, how much loss I felt then. It felt just like an ending. It felt like a death.

  5.

  The Opera House is like Lazarus; a beautiful resurrected corpse shrouded in tarpaulins and plaster-dust, wood shavings that slowly lost their scent of pine and cedar, softening to mush. It lay entombed all those warring years while Father and I played and sang along the northern coasts, ignorant of the battling in cities. The theatre should have been abandoned. The basement is planted with bullets and corpse-bulbs, white skulls with hair roots the scenery assistants unearth while digging soil for the annual reprisals of Romeo and Juliet. More than a few real bones have been repurposed into scenery.

  When I began my music lessons, high in the flies among the dangling pull-ropes, the Palais Garnier had just opened, but it had been an empty husk of itself for nearly a decade; I never encountered a place more ready for haunting. I have always been attracted to death. My father’s stories painted it as the better part of life, the exit to a more beautiful existence, so things of the grave rarely repulsed me. I loved that new, old building as a kitten loves its cat.

  As for the man who made me sing, nearly a year passed before I saw him again. No, I never saw him, but I heard his wonderful voice at our nightly assignations.

  He arranged our lessons for me. Three days after our meeting on the stairs (when the memory of his strange, stiff body had begun to fade and I’d had time enough to question my judgement about his mask, his face) I found a letter waiting for me, tied with a strand of black ribbon and a wax seal impressed with the Lyre of Orpheus. He had slipped it, somehow, into my street shoes while I practised with the other dancers, one leg stretching on the barre.

  The paper was yellowish, very fine, as though strands of silk were mingled in the fibres. The ink was good, thick, indelible as blood. The handwriting was terrible, as though a child had written it with matchsticks.

  Dear Miss Daae´´

  (or may I be so bold as to address you as ‘Christine?’),

  The quality of your voice is undeniable, though currently undervalued. The management has, unfortunately, mistaken an unpolished diamond for a common river rock. Your drunken friend was right about you. In retrospect, I do not regret our conversation.

  I know the look you have, the look of waiting. Patiently waiting for a promised visitor who has delayed and delayed until you begin to wonder if he is coming at all. My dear child, let me assure you (as your father did) that your wait will not be long. I will return to you everything that, in your innocence, you believe to be lost. I will begin with your song, scrape the earth from your voice and reveal the gem that has always be waiting.

  It is more difficult than I can say for me to appear in the visible world. I am rather hard for the uninitiated to comprehend. Since it is appropriate for angels to sing a little closer to heaven than the dowdy rehearsal rooms, meet me at eight in the evening on the scaffold supporting the main flies. I will see that Monsieur Bouquet has another engagement at that time.

  Do not expect to see me when you get there. It is no insult to you, dear child, to say that you are not ready to perceive me in the flesh.

  Until we meet again, I remain your

  Guardian Spirit

  On Monday night I mounted the flies, trailing the lace hem of my second best frock in the dust. I expected, knowing the habits of Mr Bouquet, a filthy slurry of rat dung and chicken bones. Instead, like a miracle, the scaffold was laid with a thick Persian carpet. There were silk cushions to rest on in between scales, a music stand laden with notations, a carafe of honey-sweetened water. The whole space was bathed in light from five hand-shaped candelabra. They were the gilt props from The Haunted Manor, painted plaster, but the effect was regal enough.

  We worked hard for many hours, though I did not realise how long until after. Time passed like a dream. It was very s
trange, for me, at first. His angelic voice seemed to spring from three steps before me, but I seemed to feel a pair of eyes on my spine. I soon grew used to it. I came to love my lessons.

  We met there for many months, until my first non-chorus singing role when I was issued a room of my own. He decorated. The rugs appeared, the cushions, and also a small music box, mounted with a leaden monkey in red silk robes. It played the cymbals when I wound the key embedded in its stiff spine.

  The tag around its neck read, in his spidery hand, ‘For a good daughter’.

  Our lessons continued.

  6.

  We rarely conversed, hardly ever spoke of anything personal. He was very careful about that, whenever I would press for details about his life, if he had one, outside of my training he would state that he was working hard, making something for me. If I pressed any further the lesson would end in cold silence, and there I would be, sitting alone before the candle-lit mirror. He had a wonderful trick of making it seem as though my own reflection were speaking from that simple, frameless bit of glass. I knew, of course, that he was really somewhere behind me, but he asked me never to seek for him and I respected that. I was getting a great deal out of these lessons and I wanted them to continue. It took months for him to even tell me his name. He never let it slip until he met me underground. He preferred ‘Master’. As my teacher, it was his right and perfectly proper.

  And yes (let me be honest now, if only to myself, to this book) his voice did sometimes sound very like my father’s. Usually when he let something about his carefully papered-over past slip. A mention of his childhood with the nuns, made while explaining to me the importance of empathy in storytelling (and singing is storytelling) or a few words about his hatred of carnivals – a funny trait, I thought, for an accomplished ventriloquist – would roughen his voice. More often he sounded, frankly, as though he had swallowed Father’s ancient violin. It stirred me in a way I found delicious and disturbing. His voice made me think of that story my father told me, of the daughter who sang so beautifully and died so young. Her father grieved so hard for her that God took pity and placed her voice into his fiddle so that every time he played, she sang for him.