And Marguerite replied:
‘Ah!, how strange the silence and the evening’s charm
Which like a spell now tightly holds me
And a sweet, soft melody enfolds me…’
At this point… at that exact moment… the awful thing happened, as I said… something dreadful.
The audience got to its feet as one… In their box both Directors could not suppress a horrified cry… In the audience, men and women looked around as if to ask their neighbours for an explanation for such an unexpected phenomenon… La Carlotta’s face wore an expression of the deepest anguish, her eyes looked haunted, mad. The wretched creature drew herself up, her mouth still half-open, half delivered herself of that sweet soft melody which had enfolded her. But no melody passed those lips… she did not dare sing another word or note.
For that mouth which had been created to make beautiful sounds, that voice which had never failed her, that magnificent instrument which had produced the finest harmonies, the most difficult chords, the smoothest modulations, the fiercest rhythms, a sublime human mechanism which, to be godlike, needed only that final divine spark which alone releases true emotion and lifts the soul… that mouth had opened and let out…
That mouth had spawned…
A toad!
A disgusting, hideous, scaly, poisonous, slimy, clammy, croaking toad!
How had it got there? How could it have squatted on her tongue? Back legs braced under it ready to jump higher and further, it had crouched furtively in her larynx and leaped out with a loud skaaark!
Skaark! Skaark!… that awful skaark!
Of course, we speak here of toads only in a metaphorical sense. There was nothing to see but, by God! there was plenty to hear. Skaark!
The whole auditorium was spattered with it, so to speak. No member of the tribe of batrachians on the banks of frog-loud ponds ever rent the veil of night with a more horrendous skaark!
It had been so utterly unexpected. La Carlotta could not believe her throat or ears. A thunderbolt landing at her feet would have left her less stunned than this skaarking toad which had just sprung from her mouth…
But a thunderbolt would not have meant humiliation. Everyone knows that a toad that squats on the tongue invariably spells ruination for a singer. Some have even died of the shame.
Who would have believed it?… She had been giving her all to ‘Which like a spell now tightly holds me, And a sweet, soft melody enfolds me…’, singing effortlessly, as she always did, with the same ease with which you or I say: ‘Good morning, Madame, and how are you today?’
Now it is undeniable that there are over-confident singers who make the mistake of not pacing themselves and are conceited enough to make impossible demands on the voice which Heaven bestowed on them by forcing it to reach for notes they were never meant to sing. It is at such moments, when they least expect it, that the good Lord punishes them by inserting a toad in their mouths, a toad that goes skaark! Everyone present knew it for a fact. But absolutely no one thought for one moment that La Carlotta, who had a voice with a span of at least two octaves, would ever get a toad in her throat!
How could they have forgotten her full high Fs and unbelievable staccati in The Magic Flute? And then there was Don Juan in which she sang Elvira and in one performance earned the most fantastic ovation by singing the top B flat that her colleague as Doña Anna couldn’t manage. So what was the reason for that ghastly croak which lay in wait at the end of the gentle, melodious, quiet phrase ‘… And a sweet, soft melody enfolds me…’?
It wasn’t natural. There had to be some kind of bewitchery behind it. That croak came with a whiff of brimstone. Poor, wretched, distraught, crushed Carlotta!
The puzzled murmur that ran through the audience grew louder. If such a thing had happened to any other singer, she would have been roundly booed. But for Carlotta, whose voice was the perfect instrument, there was no anger, only dismay and alarm. Those (if any) who witnessed the monstrous dismemberment of the Venus de Milo must have experienced much the same appalled awe. And at least they saw the blows which removed her arms… and could understand how it happened.
But this? The skaark was incomprehensible.
It was so incomprehensible that for a few moments La Carlotta wondered whether she had really heard the note—was the sound really a note?—could it even be called a sound? A sound may be a kind of music—but that hellish noise which had emerged from her throat! She tried to convince herself that it hadn’t happened, that it had been a trick her ears had played on her and not an ignoble betrayal by her voice.
Bewildered, she glanced all round as if she were looking for a place to hide, a shelter, or rather for some spontaneous reassurance that there was nothing wrong with her voice. Her fingers went to her throat in an apologetic, defensive gesture. No, no! That skaark had nothing to do with her! Carolus Fonta seemed to share her view, for he was gazing up at her with an indescribable expression of enormous, childlike amazement. He was still kneeling next to her. He hadn’t moved from his mark. Perhaps he could tell her how such a thing had come about! But he couldn’t! His eyes were mindlessly riveted on La Carlotta’s mouth the way children gape at the conjuror’s bottomless top hat. How could such a small mouth have contained such a large skaark!
Now all this—toad, skaark, shock, the alarmed buzz in the auditorium, confusion on stage and in the wings (a few minor members of the company poked panicky heads out)—all that I’ve described in detail was squeezed into a matter of seconds.
But those few ghastly seconds seemed an eternity, and not least to the Directors in Box 5. Moncharmin and Richard had turned very pale. This unprecedented and totally inexplicable turn of events filled them with foreboding which seemed all the more unearthly because for some moments they’d had a clear feeling that they were in the direct power of the Phantom.
They had felt his breath on them. It had raised the hair on the back of Moncharmin’s neck… And Richard had wiped the perspiration from his forehead… Yes, the Phantom was there… around them… behind them… beside them… They could sense his presence but could not see him!… They heard him breathe… very close, so very close to them!… You know if someone’s there… They knew, truly they did!… They were convinced there were three of them in that box!… The very thought made them quake… They wanted to get out of there… They didn’t dare… They didn’t dare move or say a word which would have told the Phantom that they knew he was there!… What would happen next? What lay around the corner?
What happened next was another skaark! Above the noise in the auditorium, everyone heard their joint cry of horror. They felt they were in the Phantom’s power! Leaning over the armrest of their box, they gazed down at La Carlotta as if they didn’t recognize her. By emitting that skaark! the infernal woman must have given the signal which would trigger some horrible calamity. They were fully expecting disaster to strike. The Phantom had warned it would come! The whole theatre was cursed! Both Directors’ chests heaved under the weight of impending catastrophe. Then the audience heard Richard’s half-strangled voice cry out to La Carlotta:
‘What are you waiting for? Carry on!’
But La Carlotta did not carry on from where she had left off … Courageously, heroically, she went back to the beginning of the fatal passage which had ended with the skaark!
The noise died away and was followed by a deathly hush. La Carlotta’s lone voice rang through the huge auditorium.
‘Ah! how strange…’
The audience could not have agreed more:
‘Which like a spell now tightly holds me—skaark!
And a sweet, soft melody enfolds me…—skaark!’
The toad had begun exactly where it had left off.
There was uproar in the theatre. The two Directors collapsed on to their chairs and were too drained to turn round even if they had dared. For they could hear the Phantom laughing at them! After all this time, on their right, they distinctly heard a voice, his impossible vo
ice, the voice that had no mouth, the voice which said:
‘The way she’s singing tonight could well bring down the chandelier!’
With one movement, they both looked up at the ceiling and gave a horrified cry. The chandelier, the massive chandelier, was swinging, dropping towards them at the bidding of that satanic voice! Slipping its moorings, it hurtled down from the lofty heights of the vast auditorium and crashed into the middle of the stalls below. There was a chorus of shouts and screams, panic, a general stampede. It is not my intention to provide a graphic account of a historical moment. Readers who are interested are referred to newspaper reports of the time.* Many were injured and one female was killed.
The chandelier had fallen directly on the poor woman who had come to the Opera that night for the very first time in her life, the very person M. Richard had chosen as the new box-keeper who would replace Mme Giry, the Phantom’s own attendant. She died instantly. The next day one newspaper appeared with this headline:
‘TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND KILOS LAND ON CONCIERGE’S HEAD!’*
It was her only epitaph.
CHAPTER 9
The Mysterious Carriage
THAT fatal night turned out badly for all concerned. La Carlotta fell ill and Christine Daaé vanished after the performance. Two weeks later, she had still not been seen either in the theatre or outside it.
This first disappearance, which went largely unnoticed, must not be confused with the infamous abduction which in the not-too-distant future was to occur in such baffling and tragic circumstances.
Of course, Raoul was the first to find the diva’s absence puzzling. He had written to her at Mme Valerius’s address and received no reply. At first, he had not been unduly worried, knowing her state of mind and how determined she was to break off relations with him, even though he had yet to discover her reasons.
But his heartache had continued to grow and eventually he became seriously concerned when her name failed to appear in the cast of any production. Faust was staged without her.
One afternoon, at about five o’clock, he called on the Directors to ask why Christine Daaé had vanished without trace. Both men were now looking very worried. Even their friends no longer recognized them. They had lost all their zest and optimism. They could be seen walking around the Opera House, heads bowed, brows furrowed and pale-faced, as if they were haunted by some terrible thought or were the victims of the kind of malignant fate which attaches itself to a man and never lets him go.
The fall of the chandelier had made them liable on a number of fronts. But Messrs Richard and Moncharmin refused to be drawn on the subject.
The inquest had delivered a verdict of accidental death resulting from wear in the mechanism by which the chandelier had been hung. But it had been the responsibility of both the former and current Directors to identify the problem and put it right before it caused the disaster.
I must make it quite clear that at this point Messrs Richard and Moncharmin seemed so altered, so remote… so mysterious… so inscrutable… that many regular Opera-goers began to wonder if there wasn’t something even more terrible than the fall of the chandelier to explain the change in them.
In their everyday dealings, they had no time for anyone except Mme Giry, who had been reinstated. So there are no prizes for imagining what kind of reception they gave the Viscount de Chagny when he came looking for news of Christine. They were terse and merely said that she was absent on leave. He asked how long she would be away. He was told curtly that no date had been set, since Mlle Daaé had asked for leave on health grounds.
‘She’s ill?’ cried Raoul. ‘What’s the matter with her?’
‘No idea!’
‘You mean you haven’t sent the Opera’s doctor to see her?’
‘No! She never asked for him and since we have every confidence in her we took her at her word.’
The story did not ring entirely true to Raoul who left the Opera with his mind full of sombre thoughts. He decided—and to hang with the consequences—to call on Mme Valerius and ask her directly. Of course he had not forgotten the categorical terms of Christine’s letter in which she expressly forbade him to make any attempt to see her. But what he’d observed at Perros, what he’d heard outside her dressing-room door, the conversation he’d had with her on the edge of the moor, all made him suspect that something was going on which, though devilish enough, was definitely the work of some human agency. She had a young girl’s overheated imagination and her tender and trusting heart, her early upbringing which had ringed her formative years with a circle of legends, the constant grieving for her dead father and above all the state of total rapture which the art of music induced in her whenever it revealed its wonders in exceptional circumstances—had he not been well placed to observe this for himself in the graveyard at Perros?—everything seemed more or less guaranteed to offer fertile ground for the malevolent workings of some mysterious and unscrupulous person. Whose victim was Christine Daaé? That was the very shrewd question which Raoul asked himself as he hurried round to Mme Valerius’s apartment.
For the Viscount had a very cool head. True, he was a poet, loved music for its spiritual qualities and was a lover of old Breton tales which featured dancing elves. But above all he was in love with a fairy child from the north named Christine Daaé, though normally he had no truck with the supernatural, except in matters of religion, nor could the most fantastic story ever told make him forget that two and two make four.
What would Mme Valerius have to say to him? His hand shook at the thought as he rang the doorbell of a small apartment in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires.
The door was opened by the same maid he had seen leaving Christine Daaé’s dressing room on that memorable night. He asked if he might see Mme Valerius. He was told that she was unwell, had taken to her bed and was not at home to anyone.
‘Just give her my card, would you?’ he asked.
He did not have long to wait. The girl returned and showed him into a small drawing room which was rather dark and sparsely furnished. Two portraits, one of Professor Valerius, the other of M. Daaé, hung on opposite walls.
‘Madame says she is very sorry’, she began, ‘but she is only able to receive the Viscount in her bedroom. These days her legs are too weak to stand on.’
Five minutes later, Raoul was shown into a dimly lit room where he made out at once, in a shadowy alcove, the kindly face of Christine’s benefactress. Mme Valerius’s hair was now quite white but her eyes had grown no older: on the contrary, they had never been so clear, so bright, so childlike.
‘Monsieur de Chagny!’ she said happily and held out both hands to her visitor, ‘It was Heaven that brought you here!… Now we can speak of her.’
This last sentence struck an ominous note in the young man’s ears. He came directly to the point:
‘Madame Valerius, where is Christine?’
The old lady answered calmly:
‘She’s with her “friendly spirit” of course!’
‘What friendly spirit?’ asked Raoul miserably.
‘The Angel of Music, of course!’
Disconcerted, the Viscount de Chagny sat down heavily in a chair. Really? Christine was with the Angel of Music! From her bed, Mme Valerius smiled and, putting one finger to her lips, intimated the need for discretion.
‘You mustn’t tell anyone!’
‘You can count on me!’ said Raoul without knowing exactly what he was promising, for his thoughts about Christine, already very confused, were growing more chaotic. He felt everything begin to spin around him, around the room, around the extraordinarily doughty old lady with white hair and pale blue eyes, the blue of empty skies.
‘You can count on me!’ said Raoul again.
‘Oh, I know! I know!’ she said with a merry laugh. ‘But come closer, like you used to when you were a little boy. Give me your hand the way you did when you told me the story of little Lotte which M. Daaé had just told you. Oh, I am very fond of you, Monsieu
r Raoul. And so is Christine!’
‘… Fond of me?’ he sighed.
He was having difficulty getting his thoughts round the spirit Mme Valerius had mentioned, the Angel Christine had told him about so strangely, the death’s head he’d half-glimpsed in a nightmarish encounter on the steps of the high altar of Perros church, and the Phantom of the Opera, rumours of whose existence had reached him one evening when he’d lingered on the stage next to a group of scene-shifters who were talking about the corpse-like spectre described by Joseph Buquet before he had been found mysteriously hanged.
‘What makes you think’, he asked in a whisper, ‘that she is fond of me?’
‘She used to talk about you every day!’
‘Really? And what did she say?’
‘She said you told her you loved her!’
And the sweet old lady burst out laughing, revealing all her teeth which she had always carefully looked after. Raoul stood up, his face flushed and feeling very unhappy.
‘What’s this?… Where are you going?… Won’t you sit down?… Do you think you can leave just like that?… If you’re angry because I laughed, I’m sorry… After all, what’s happened is not your fault… You weren’t to know… You’re young… Did you think Christine was free?…’
‘Christine is engaged to be married?’ said Raoul, who was barely able to speak.
‘No, of course not!… You know very well that even if she wanted to, Christine could never marry!…’
‘What! I know no such thing!… And why can’t she marry?’
‘Because of the Angel of Music!’
‘Not him again!’
‘He forbids it!…’
‘He forbids it?… The Angel of Music won’t let her marry!…’ Raoul leaned over Mme Valerius, with his jaw thrust forward, as though he were about to bite her head off. Had he wanted to eat her alive he could not have glared at her more fiercely. There are times when minds can be too innocent, and then they seem so monstrous as to be hateful. Raoul considered that Mme Valerius was too innocent by half.
The Phantom of the Opera (Oxford World's Classics) Page 13