by Bethany Pope
The damage was extensive; it would take months to repair before they could open for business again, and they would have to find dancers and singers enough to make up half their cast. The dancing girls who lived were already whispering about the Opera Ghost. It was all they could do to pay off the journalists to minimalise the event in the papers.
It was very lucky for them, Mr Firmin assured me, pouring a generous measure of brandy into a glass, that Little Meg had twisted her ankle at rehearsal and so missed the show. ‘It’s very strange, isn’t it,’ he said, ‘how sometimes God brings fortune out of tragedy?’
He swallowed the slug of brownish liquor, looking with sudden shame at my brother. ‘I am, of course, so sorry for you both.’
La Sorelli had not made it. Her legs were blown to shrapnel. Mr Firmin told me later that the firemen had come upon us both up there on the stage, amid all the wreckage. I was unconscious at the feet of the hanged man. My brother was seated beside me, wailing like a wounded animal, Anna’s ruined head in his lap.
We never did find the body of Christine. There was one headless woman in white that they said must be her, but I had seen the costume she was wearing and this was not it. This was some other unfortunate, shrouded in a shift made to mimic the angelic costume my darling wore. She was taken, I was convinced of it. They did not listen, did not believe me. They took my conviction for grief and urged me to rest for a week or two before returning with my brother to work.
I took the drink they offered me and swallowed without tasting what it was that I poured down my much-abused throat. Half-deaf, my larynx scorched with smoke inhalation, I was weakened but not beaten.
Christine was alive, I knew it. She had only been stolen.
I comforted myself with the knowledge that stolen property could be taken back, returned to the person who truly owned it. I would have to hurry my recovery if I did not wish to discover her ruined. Who knew how long a monster could refrain from fulfilling the desires of the flesh? I knew that once white satin was fouled it could never be pure again. How terrible it would be to recover her, only to find that I had lost her in the eyes of the world!
It was lucky indeed that Little Meg had injured herself. It meant that I knew both where to begin my search and which questions to ask to pursue my course. Her absence, and her mother’s, blocking me at every turn could not be mere coincidence. Knowing that was half the battle.
My brother was too lost in grief (it looked surprisingly genuine) to offer any assistance. I would have to ask Monsieur Firman for her address. Then I would be totally on my own. I must hurry my search.
CHRISTINE
10.
I knew that something was coming. My master had told me enough about what he planned so that when it happened, whatever it was, I would not be too terrified to move. I knew my master well enough by then to understand that his genuine love of music, when combined with his deep sensitivity to (and need for) drama, made it unlikely that his plan would take effect at any time before the climax of the show. In any case, I was glad that I had thoroughly practised the score and memorised the libretti all the way through.
Sitting at my borrowed dressing table my face was wan in the mirror. The managers had extracted La Carlotta from her room, prying her away like a crab from her shell, under staunch threat of termination, as she had not yet fully healed and so could not use the facilities. I had not been sleeping well these last few weeks. A result, I suspected, of the stresses of hard work, enduring the company of the young Comte, and (I might as well admit it) pure, unadulterated excitement at the adventure to come. I felt like the thing that I was faking, I felt like a bride preparing for a groom.
In a way I suppose that was exactly what I was doing. Getting ready for my marriage to my art. And yes, I was excited to finally have the chance to get to know my instructor. The hints that he had let slip about his past were few and tantalising. I had to know who he was.
At this time, I was still young enough to fool myself about his nature. You see, I remembered his strange appearance at our single meeting in the flesh – that odd way he held his body, as though his joints were as stiff as a corpse’s. I remembered the strange, expressionless mask he wore, and the terrible odour that crept from the wall where he hid while we were speaking in my dressing chambers. But I thought that perhaps he was just a shy eccentric, like my father was. Certainly I knew I was a daughter to him.
I mistook my unspeakable attraction for filial love.
This room was nicer than my own, the mirror was framed, the light was better, the furniture was plush and covered with Carlotta’s fine furs. It had better heating, too. A newer brazier.
Sighing over the face I saw, the pale flesh, the bones of my skull shining through the exhausted skin, I applied powder, kohl, brought life to my cheeks with two streaks of rouge that I carefully blended with the tip of my finger. I dabbed a drop of paint, like blood, to my lips to counterfeit that healthy maidenhead glow.
I thought about Raoul.
The young fool was capable of so much unthinking destruction. He thought he wanted me to be his life’s companion while at the same time he was plotting to utterly, blithely destroy everything that was of any value about myself. He mistook my form for function, seeming for being. I sighed, if only I had been born ugly.
Wasn’t there a saint for that? Father told me. Saint Uncumber, patron saint of escaping unwanted marriages and bearded ladies. She was born the beautiful daughter of a Celtic chieftain who converted to Christianity early and longed to join a convent and dedicate herself to God. Unfortunately, her father had other plans for her. She was to serve as a pawn in a political coup, as the bride of a pagan warlord who had become enamoured with her radiant skin.
In despair, she had gone into the church to pray for release from this bondage. She asked her God to make her ugly. And he did. According to the stories, she sprouted a glorious beard, long and lush, bright ginger.
Her warlord would-be lover no longer wanted her, and her father was so ashamed of the monster he had spawned, that she earned the right to enter the convent. She packed up, shedding ginger beard-hairs all along the road. By the time she crossed the threshold, took her vows, she was as beautiful as ever – a fitting bride for Christ.
I smile a little at that; imagine, a woman rescued by ugliness! It was almost too much.
I was in a trap, my beauty was the least valuable part of myself and yet without it I could not appear on the stage. Why is it, I wondered, that women have to be everything; beautiful, talented, cleverer than everyone and all three at once to attain their ambitions while men could do what they wished so long as, of those traits, they had at least one? If Piangi had been born a woman he would have spent his life in Tivoli selling fish.
I sealed the jar of rouge, placed it back in the drawer with all the others. My lips tasted of rendered pig fat and grounded carnelian. I put my thoughts of saints away, reminding myself that I was perfectly safe. I was to be rescued.
I thought about the white dress with the hidden harness that I was supposed to wear at the climax of the fifth act. It would be so wonderful if somehow my master could make the seeming match the being and enable me to raise my arms and fly, up through the painted celling, up to where the angels were. I smiled at the thought, dismissing it.
I straightened my maid’s costume. It was nearly time to begin.
The curtain went up, on time for once, and not snagging on anything. I watched from the wings as Mephistopheles appeared and made his bargain with Faust. I thought, at first, that there was something wrong with Monsieur Jordan, the actor who was originally meant to play the monk-mocking devil – his body was much thinner than it should have been, but the voice was the same rich baritone that I had heard in rehearsals this morning. I was about to dismiss it as a trick of the light, but then the man in the cassock turned toward where I was standing and I saw the wax surface of the mask shining in the hot lights.
Seeing him there I felt an undeniable thrill,
a sharp, clear mixture of pleasure and agony running from my knees to my heart.
A part of me worried about the mask he wore. It would not be good for him if the heat of the spotlights started melting his wax features. He nodded to me once and then continued singing.
I entered when my cue came, ignoring the pleas of my would-be lover and trilling, ‘No thank you, sir: I am neither a lady, nor lovely, and I really have no need for a supporting arm!’
The opera unfolded as it would, skipping from plot point to plot point, buoyed by song. I was brought to the notice of the powerful Faust, and allowed myself to be won with fruit and jewels. Then, I had the pleasure of singing on stage with my master. When Piangi, as Faust, gave me a ring, swearing me to him, I sang to him, ‘These jewels do not belong to me! Please, suffer me to remove them!’
My master, the Devil, replied softly, thus, ‘Who would not be delighted to exchange wedding rings with you?’
And so I was seduced, and bore a child by him. I was exiled from my family, held distant from my love, felt incredible pain and expressed it (like a pustule) singing.
I was right. He waited till the end to bring down the curtain. I was in the jail, costumed in white, secured in the harness, when the first explosion rocked the stage and the chandelier crashed down and crushed the first four rows of people. I was more frightened than I had ever been (little knowing what worse there was to come), half choked by smoke and plaster dust.
I leapt backwards from the wreckage when the plywood wall that formed my jail collapsed around me. I might have been screaming, certainly I was deafened by the racket of chorus girls beating each other about the head to escape from the tumult. Suddenly my master appeared from the midst of the fire like the devil he was playing. He took hold of my waist, and I was so relieved to see him that I buried my face in his cassock, dismissing the foul smell that rose from the fibres as a product of the burning.
There was a lever behind me that I was supposed to flip when the time came for my ascension. It was a pulley connecting my harness to a counterbalancing weight high up in the rafters. He held me up, flipped the switch, and up we went. It was weighted for my body and although he was very thin, the weight was more than doubled. He must have added something to it. As we rose to the rafters I thought I saw another body falling, like a shadow, to the stage.
I found out later that it was Monsieur Jordan. Hung by his neck and then tied to the counterweight.
We landed on the scaffold where I’d had so many lessons at nearly the same moment that the other bombs detonated, casting the stage into splinters and slaughtering more innocents than I care to consider. The force of the explosion threw me to the floor and while I was struggling to stand I saw my master, lithe as a cat, his mask gleaming and expressionless, tossing a white-and-red bundle over the rail. A few seconds later it landed with a thump that I heard, in my mind if nowhere else, as the sound of meat chopped by a cleaver.
Before the fire was extinguished, before I had fully got my bearings, he had taken my hand and led me down, down through a series of ladders and secret corridors, to his dark kingdom in the massive, sprawling basement.
11.
Seen from the street, the Palais Garnier is absolutely massive. It stands on twelve thousand metres of land and rises, a marble mountain crowned with copper, a full five storeys tall. And yet this is nothing compared to the caverns which sprawl beneath the building, terrible tunnels containing chambers; some are black, muddy pits, others immaculately furnished. I never thought that such flawless beauty as in the room that he gave me could exist side by side with a mud-floored cave that reeked of the char-pit. And yet it did.
My mind was still reeling from the chaos up above, our rushed flight. It was as though I had become drunk on so much sudden fire and death. My master led me through the labyrinth, his hand gripping mine, alternately singing and laughing loudly enough to keep my eyes focused on him. The space back-stage was totally empty; the rehearsal rooms we passed looked utterly abandoned, as though they were haunted. Every living body save for ours was occupied with the rescue going on in front. I could not leave a thread behind me, or a trail of breadcrumbs to mark my passage. His voice sank into my brain, a hook to draw me forward, saving me from committing the sin of looking backwards, longing for the light.
Once, he slid aside a panel in the wall behind the manager’s office (I had mistaken it for a slab of solid marble) revealing a secret passage and a narrow flight of stairs fashioned from the same substance as the enormous Y shaped staircase in the front foyer. I thought, as the doorway shut, that this building was, in a strange way, much like my mind; a splendid surface containing strange depths, hidden even from the people who inhabit it.
I remember my father telling me something similar about music. That the audience cannot possibly comprehend the full extent of the score, for the most part they listen to the melody, but the timpani beats away anyway, underneath it, setting tone, the vital pulse, and even without understanding what is happening around them, they feel its effect.
I have no idea how long we ran round those winding corridors. I know, now, that there are many ways much more direct that the path we took. Apparently part of my master’s plan to ‘keep me safe’ meant keeping me with him, even if I ceased to wish his company.
I know it sounds foolish to say so, but it took me a surprisingly long time to understand that the explosions, all that needless violence and death, were part of his plan for effecting my rescue. I assumed that he would merely steal me after my assumption, possibly by bribing the new flie-master whose job it was to catch me as I rose. I knew, very well, that he favoured drama. I blame my dismissal of his motives on combined trauma and shock.
Certainly, by the time we emerged into my rooms (it would be some time before I saw his) leaving behind the unfinished well and the filth-floored room littered with stinking, reddish skeletons, I was utterly exhausted. Too spent to see that the walls were lined with images of Hindu idols engaged in acts of obscene play, though I did notice the enormous marble bed, like a giant egg, all padded with silk, the music stand, and all of those uncomfortably childish toys he’d brought to scatter round me.
My master bowed me through the doorway into that rich golden light, guiding me by hand to settle on the sumptuous bed amidst the cushions and the silk-embroidered sheets. I was suddenly very aware of the dress that I wore. The unspoken context.
He stood before me and I saw him whole for the first time since the night that we met. Every surface of his body was covered by cassock, gloves, his glistening mask.
When he spoke, his voice was smiling, as it should be considering how very well his plans went, ‘Well, my dear, here you are. All safe and settled.’ He retreated to a tall dresser in the corner, returning with a tray, a bottle, a small, golden glass. ‘I need to work; I must clear our back trail, and you must by now be utterly exhausted.’
‘Yes,’ I said, it was true, ‘but I am too excited to sleep.’
‘Ah, but you must, if you wish to preserve your voice for our training.’ His tone maintained its cheerfulness. He was utterly jocular. ‘And I intend for us to use the time we have before your marvellous resurrection very well indeed.’
He poured something red and very thick from the carafe. It smelled delicious.
‘In the service of that noble goal, I have concocted something good to help you sleep.’ He handed me the cup.
I felt the true weight of gold, pure, unadulterated. It was heavy in my hand.
There was no question. I drank it. The smell was as good as the taste – like liquefied roses.
I was overtaken with dizziness. My master gently caught my head in his hand (he caught the precious cup in his other) and guided me to the pile of pillows.
My last memory, before sleep overtook me, was the feel of his leather-gloved fingers trailing across my forehead in a motion that was tentative and shy.
‘Sleep well, my angel. You are safe and secure.’
And in that i
nstant, I fell from the world.
12.
I have no way of knowing how long I slept. I know that whatever drug he gave me was very gentle; my head did not ache, my thoughts were clear when I woke. I slept very deeply, and my rest was sweeter than it had been since I was a child. I was ravenous, of course, though that told me nothing. I had sung for four hours before my rescue, and singing is hungry work indeed. I need a good meal after every performance. With such an appetite it is no wonder that older divas are often enormous!
I lay there, perfectly still, for a few moments. My eyes were closed, but the light glowed through my lids. I had either not been sleeping long (something I doubted) or the candles had long since guttered themselves out and been replaced, the new ones lit.
‘Good morning, Christine.’
My master’s voice surprised me, coming so suddenly. Of course, I had no reason to believe that I was lying here alone. I sat up, opened my eyes.
‘Morning?’ I was taken by a sudden urge to yawn, and did so, blushing at my unavoidable rudeness.
He laughed. It was beautiful to hear, though eerie, emerging as it did from the closed, painted lips of the mask.
‘Morning indeed, but only just. You slept the whole night through, as I knew you would.’ He was wearing a very fine morning suit: a dove-grey vest, and an improbable top hat. He drew a gold watch from his pocket, opened the lid to examine the face of the clock. ‘In half an hour the early birds who twitter up above us will be having their lunch.’
The watch vanished, ‘You will be enjoying your breakfast.’
I motioned to rise and he waved me backwards, playfully saluting me with his hat, ‘No, no, my lady. Remain where you lie. The dining room will come to you. I expect that you are more than ready for a good meal. After your brunch, we will set down to work.’
I smiled at the suggestion, glad to have something to focus on besides horror and death. ‘And what will we be working on, Master?’