Masque (10 page)

‘And then, when I specifically asked him to stay away, what did he do? He showed up! At the very hotel where I was staying. He came with me to my father's grave!' She stopped long enough to twist her rosary through her fingers, wrapping the beads tightly enough to restrict her circulation. She continued, sotto voice, ‘If all he wanted was an affair, I could do it. It would be a sin, but a lesser one than sacrificing my voice, my one contact with God.'

When she said that my bowels clenched, a sensation I ascribed at the time to a meal that I had improperly cooked.

She spoke again in a louder voice, pacing once more. Her small feet were wearing a thin path in the fine pile of my carpet. ‘But it is so much worse than that. When I returned home, the Countess said that there was a letter waiting for me. I opened it, thinking perhaps that it was somehow from you. It was from him. He wants to marry me. He wants me to stop singing in public, like a good bride and “save your songs only for me”. The selfish, spoiled pig! If it were anyone else on earth, I could say no and be done with it. But his brother owns the theatre, his brother Philippe who is keeping Annie as head dancer, even though she is a drunkard. In the end, the rich get everything. He will give the boy what he wants!'

The boy, she called him! As though she were older; she was little more than a girl herself.

I spoke to her then from the candle on her dresser, behind her left shoulder. I kept my voice as calm as I could manage, ‘He cannot, would not, make you lose your place if you refused him. The Opera Ghost would threaten them, and would follow through on those threats. The stage would be slick with spilled blood.'

She stared into the flame until her eyes were sockets filled with gold, ‘True, but no amount of threats could make them give me decent parts. And I would rather die than bow and spend my life as something less than I could have been.'

We were silent then. In that instant I knew that I loved. It felt like a death.

She broke the silence, looking up from the candle, her eyes meeting the nearly invisible gap in the pine-board wall, the place where I hid from her. She spoke, ‘There is something else we can try. I know that you are there. I feel your eyes on me, wherever I go, wherever your voice seems to spring from. I feel your eyes on me, and they burn.'

She dropped her gaze, and it was a mercy.

‘I also know that you are no ghost. You are a man. You love me for what I do, and you wish to protect me.'

I could not speak. How could I answer? I rested my masked forehead on a splintery lathe, my hands gripping each other. Though I had washed, the rotten stench of my body filled the small space where I hid like a dead rat wedged between floorboards.

She approached the wall, turned, rested her spine against the rough boards. Her voice was so soft. ‘Please, please don't leave me. I did not mean to frighten you. I need your help.' Her hands pressed behind her, palm down on the wood, her small fingers curled. ‘Tell me you're there.'

‘Yes.' It was all that I could manage. I did not throw my voice. The sound was right behind her. Nothing but a half-inch of wood kept our corpses apart.

Her head drooped. I could see her hair, smell it, but I was blind to her expression. Her voice was so soft, a perfect instrument. ‘If you are a man you must live somewhere. You have been a father to me. I could visit.'

Instantly a plan formed, it flared like a Lucifer stick. I could breathe again. My fingers unclenched. When my lungs were filled, I spoke to her, whispering, my near-lipless mouth mere inches from her perfect ears.

‘Christine, listen to me. You must agree to marry him.'

She gasped, ‘No!'

I continued over her protestations, ‘I said agree, not “do”. You will not have to go through with it. Agree to be his bride, accept his ring – if he is foolish enough to give it. But make the following conditions. First, that you will not be with him physically, you will not be alone with him, until the wedding has occurred.'

She turned her face to the crack, her dark lips smiling. I had never been so close to her before. When she spoke I could taste her sweet breath. ‘How very proper! Keeping the lily white for the wedding. He will like that! It will appeal to his hypocrisy.'

I laughed, continued, ‘Yes. I thought he might. But let me go on. Second, you must convince him to wait until the end of the season, say that you will not be able to break your contract. I expect that since his brother owns the theatre he will try to convince you otherwise, but hold firm in your resolve. At least convince him to allow you to sing the role of Marguerite at the debut of
Faust
. If he balks, say that you will marry him before the second show and that tuneless harpy La Carlotta will reprise the role from that point onward. Look into his eyes and tell him that your heart longs for one more moment on the stage, before you give it up forever and settle to your life in his shadow.'

Her left eye was seeking to penetrate the crack I hid behind. I could see her straining to see me and though I wore my mask I was glad that the light in her room prevented her from comprehending my darkness.

‘On the night of the show you will sing even better than usual (you and I will work very hard from tomorrow). You will have to work the whole script through. I will wait for the appropriate moment and at that time I will come and take you away. I cannot tell you when, exactly. In order for this to work your shock must seem real. I will keep you safe for a few weeks, long enough for the mystery to grow and the rumours to spread, but never fear the scandal will blow over and the time will pass in a flurry. We will have plenty of work to keep us busy. The boy is a problem, yes, and he has too much power. He is young, and impatient. But be assured that by the time you return to the surface and reclaim your throne he will have discovered another goddess to worship. I will see to it. It will be a gentle ending to the trouble he has caused.'

‘I trust you, Master. I will do what you say. Immediately. But…' She took her well-formed bottom lip between her teeth and bit. Suddenly she was a child again, how my heart yearned to comfort her, ‘how will you make me vanish? Where will we go?'

I answered very gently, ‘It is better that you do not know that yet. You are a phenomenal operatic actress, Christine, but if this is to work it must be completely spontaneous. It must look like a real abduction. You must be frightened. Go now, daughter. Do your work and leave me to mine.'

I left before she could answer, following my hidden trails, winding my way through the bowels of the Opera House, until I arrived at my home.

8.

I built my subterranean home while the siege suffocated the city above my head and my Opera House stood empty, unfinished; the ruins of what never was. There are few things in this world more depressing than unfulfilled potential. Well, never mind. My building was completed, and if it is not
exactly
as I would wish it at least it stands, as perfect a creation as the world would allow to exist.

Christine would not be ruined on my watch. Her voice was very good and getting better all the time. Soon she would be ready to bring the final, the best, plan of my life to blazing completion. I was attracted to her genius, yes, but at first only because it was a complement to mine. She could sing and act like no other. She could take even the poorest of scores and imbue it with life – soon she would overtake the masters of her craft. When her voice reached the final level of purity possible for the human voice to attain she would need to have something to sing, a composition worthy of her skills.

If my face could never be presented to the world, my music would be. Christine would be my mask. The opera that I was writing for her would prove to be my opus and unlike the Palais Garnier this design would bear my name. At least, that was my hope.

You see, my time in the carnival, my sojourn in the pit of hellish human depravity, was not wasted. Frankly, I do not believe that
any
suffering is meaningless. Only cowards choose to do nothing with their pain. I could not write down the music I composed while trapped in that filthy cage. My hands were bound and I had no tools, but I could listen to the music of my blood, and the cheerful songs of the calliope (folk tunes, base trash, a few scraps of gold in the terrible faux-joyful dross), I could build on the strains that surrounded me from the cries of the monkeys to the love-whispers of the lovers who used the sight of freaks as a catalyst for oestrus. I could memorise the notations that I wanted – and then I could perfect. After many years I had completed the mental equivalent of a thousand handwritten pages.

I had spent the last five years working steadily on the music, transferring the score from synapse to ink so that I had hundreds of pages of melodies, arias, fugues written and waiting to be arranged into story. All I lacked were words and plot. A focus for the tune. And now, thanks to Christine, it had finally appeared.

Of course it was about love; the bitter, desperate longing of the impossible unrequited, a love which spoils the moment it is tasted, the second the fruit hits the tongue. This was my ‘Don Juan Triumphant'.

You see, I thought there was no hope of happiness for us. If I could not triumph over failure, I decided that I would triumph
in
failure. If my story could not be perfect, it would be a glorious ruin; the thing itself and no false trumpery. It would be better, anyway, than a false perfection, an ending tacked on to draw in the crowds. When Christine was here with me, perhaps even sitting beside me on the bench of my organ as I composed to her voice, I could tie the threads of song together and complete my final, greatest work.

The debut of
Faust
was two weeks away. She would sing this new
Carmen
seven more times and the last three performances would be very trying for her since she would also be rehearsing
Faust
at the same time, ready to bring her innocent Marguerite to grease-painted life. In the meantime we would intensify her training. I planned on working her voice for a full four hours a day.

It was such a pity that the critics could not recognise the brilliance of Bizet. The reviews of the opera were mixed, with glad exception given to Christine's performance. She was universally agreed to be a triumphant find for those two idiot managers.

I rarely pitied anyone, but my heart broke for Georges Bizet. The critics damned his unquestionably dazzling work with the faintest of praise, while at the same time reporting that the composer was very sick, possibly dying. It would be a terrible thing to leave the earth imagining that the world viewed you as a failure.

Ah, what did it matter? The music would live. The body would compost. Such was its nature.

I had much to do: an abduction to plan, bombs to wire, explosions to plot. I had to build a place to house the girl once I'd taken her (she needed to be comfortable). I might possibly have to dispose of a few extra bodies, but that was not so much of a problem. My chambers were vast, and mostly empty. Bouquet and the architects could stand some more company.

I settled on a space I'd excavated during the first construction of the building. A chamber, within calling distance of my own but, I thought, far enough to avoid temptation. It was originally intended as a Persian-style bathhouse for the star performers and wealthier patrons to relax in. There was originally going to be a cool, clear pool carved from a chunk of cream-coloured marble. It was never completed, and never finished once building resumed. The carved marble was there, a ten-metre oval, like a boat or a half-flattened egg. The walls were tiled with Indian porcelain squares depicting painted scenes from the Hindu holy books. There were countless gods, all doe-eyed, beautiful, caught in acts of creation, destruction, ecstatic copulation.

I transformed the pool to a sumptuous bed by lining the bottom with thick silk-napped carpets and satin pillows stuffed with dove-down. I lined the walls with enormous standing candelabra so that every surface shone. There were pillars in a circle round the room, but the light from their mounted brass sconces was less flattering than the softer light of candles, so I left them cold. I brought in books on music, countless scores, to keep her occupied while I was working alone in my chambers. On an impulse I went out in disguise, a cloak, my second-best hat (it had a very broad brim), my mask tied, secure, and purchased a selection of dolls and stuffed monkeys, for her to talk to. Everything, in short, that I had longed for in my own imprisonment. Yes, I thought looking around, she will be very happy here.

Once the room was completed it was time for our lesson. There was no pretence of singing candle flames this time. I remained on my side of the wall, the dark side, where the rot was, but she knew I was there and I spoke to her directly.

9.

One week before the debut of
Faust
a small but devastating fire broke out in the secondary rehearsal room. Management blamed one of the ‘rats', the ballerinas in training. Christine's room was not badly damaged, her things were secure, but the lingering residue of smoke was poison for her throat and, since the young Comte had been continuously interrupting her private practice sessions with gifts, demands for her company, and invitations for dinner that proved mandatory (despite his enthusiastic agreement to ‘keep the lily white' by never appearing with her unchaperoned) the management agreed to allow their star performer to select her own practice space, and keep it secret from the public. They were unaware of her supposed engagement.