"Sufficient for me to understand why you wear that mask," said Garnier slowly, with the air of a man choosing his words now with some care. "Sufficient to make me thankful that you never entered the ministry's competition."
I glanced up at him in resentful surprise.
"What makes you so damned sure I didn't enter?"
He spread his hands in what I later learned was a rare gesture of self-depreciation.
"If you had," he said, "I should still be earning that miserable eight thousand francs a year."
It was too late to acquire the contract for the excavations, but Garnier made surreptitious arrangements for my presence on the site in spite of this.
He had offered me a position in the new
agence
, which would have given me the opportunity to work on the definitive designs, but after a few nights of agonized indecision, common sense obliged me to decline. To be imprisoned in a draftsman's office, surrounded by nineteen well-educated young men, most of whom had been students at the School of Fine Arts, was an ordeal I simply lacked the courage to face. Awkward silences, furtive whispers, staring eyes… there would be no escape from my terrible difference in such a closely confined environment. And I knew that as soon as I got my hands on those designs I would inevitably cause friction and ill feeling. I would be unable to stay silent, and the result of my outburst would be an uncontrollable violence that could only end in murder. It was better to stay away from temptation rather than let my evil temper put an end to my dream. Garnier did not press me to accept. I'd like to think that perhaps he understood.
I don't know what he said to the excavating contractor, but that man always treated me with wary respect, as though he believed my ubiquitous presence on the site to have some official capacity. Whether he thought me an
inspecteur
, a
sous-inspecteur
, or a
dessinateur
was never entirely clear, but he never argued with any of my suggestions and he was always careful to call me sir.
And so I was there when things started to go drastically wrong…
Excavating in the area of the
cuve
, the substage section of the building which descended twelve meters below-ground, they hit water.
"What the devil is it?" muttered Garnier.
My abrupt message had brought him rushing to the site and he was now peering down into the collapsing footings in undisguised dismay, his collar parting company with his shirt in evidence of his hasty toilette.
"A subterranean tributary of the Seine, by the look of it," I said grimly. "I'd say it cuts through this entire area."
Garnier raked one hand through his untidy black curls.
"Christ! Of all things… of all
places
!"
I nodded. "They can do no more unless the water table is lowered."
He let out a colorful expletive which common decency forbids me to record.
"Have you any idea what that would entail?" he said furiously.
"I'm afraid I know exactly what it's going to entail."
Pulling a paper from my sleeve, I handed it to him. He studied it for a while and then looked up incredulously.
"You are actually suggesting that I create an artificial lake beneath the stage?"
"You really don't have very much choice," I explained patiently. "You can evacuate the water during the course of construction with the steam pumps as described, but that double casing is the only means of controlling the river's flow and permanently protecting the foundations from erosion. Of course you'll have to seal with bitumen to resist seepage, but that shouldn't present a problem."
"And the cost?" he said warily.
I shrugged. "Submit the figures you think you can get out of the ministry. I will take care of any shortcoming."
"You must be utterly mad." He sighed.
I didn't contest that remark, merely spread my hands in a philosophical gesture.
"My only concern is that the work should go ahead without delay. I can't lay a single stone until these excavations are completed. And I'm not by nature a patient man, as you will learn."
Folding the paper, he placed it carefully in the pocket of his overcoat.
"Nothing stands in your way for long, does it?" he mused, looking back at me thoughtfully over his shoulder. "Why do I have this strange feeling that opposing your wishes could prove very prejudicial to a man's health?"
I smiled faintly.
"I would never advise any man to ignore his deepest instincts, Garnier."
"That sounds uncommonly like a threat." He frowned.
"I rarely waste time making threats," I said calmly.
And before he could reply to that, I walked away across the quagmire of mud to signify that our conversation was at an end.
Eight giant steam pumps worked night and day for eight months to drain the saturated subsoil, and Parisians were driven insane by the incessant pounding. I had a certain grim sympathy with their discomfort, for I suffered as much as anyone else from the rhythmic thumping, which seemed to echo in my head long after I left the site at night. I had no need to be there of course—this was not my contract—and yet I found I could not keep away.
In January 1862 the concrete foundations were poured, and as soon as the first section was cast I began work on the masonry substructure.
The outer world ceased to exist for me at that point; time no longer had any meaning. I was only vaguely aware of Garnier's trials, his bitter and protracted struggle with the government against demands for more stringent economy; but each time I saw him he looked paler and more harassed. I listened to his furious complaints with guarded sympathy and counted myself well out of that particular arena. God knows how he refrained from shedding blood at some point in those first nine years.
Nine years!
Is it really possible to let nine years slide away, almost without noticing the change of the seasons? I had never been so utterly absorbed, so blissfully unaware of frustration. On a site the size of this it was possible to largely avoid association with the other contractors, but I had already taken the precaution of creating my own secret place deep in the vaults of the foundations. A device set into the double case wall beneath the substage area afforded me a place of darkness and privacy to which I might retire whenever I was angered to the point of violence by idleness, corruption, or pure stupidity. It served me well on many occasions; in the whole course of those nine years not a single workman died by my hand and I began to wonder if I had conquered the need to kill after all.
I drove my men hard—hard enough, I daresay, to have earned a dagger in the back more than once. The distinction of receiving the highest wages on the site was doubtless the only incentive they had to bear with my tyranny. It had to be fear that made them obey my instructions with such prompt alacrity—fear and sheer financial dependence. I wasn't stupid enough to believe it could ever be anything else…
The Opera House swallowed my life whole. I arrived at the site before dawn, seldom leaving before midnight, and as the years passed, I found it increasingly difficult to leave at all. When harsh winters forced a halt in masonry work during January and February, for fear of freezing temperatures, I continued to haunt the rising building like a lost soul, often disappearing into the vaults of the theater to make strange alterations whose purpose I could hardly explain even to myself. Secret ways which no one need ever know about… invisible trapdoors… there was an intense satisfaction in leaving my unseen mark upon this building, which I, could only suppose was a fixation of my disordered mind. There seemed to be no other explanation for what, even in my own eyes, was exceedingly odd behavior.
My life was measured out in meters and each meter was a mental milestone, a little thrill of achievement, as I watched this awesome mausoleum reach up toward the sky. Monolithic Raviere limestone shafts for the main facade; sixteen columns of red Jura stone; twelve of rose granite; thirty of Sarrancolin marble… There was no end to the wonder of touch that now lay beneath my fingers, and I wandered through the edifice each night, like the shah in his harem, bestowing my caresses with wary impartiality, lest one lovely column should feel jealous or neglected. I was glutted with beauty… satiated and contented by excesses beyond my wildest dreams. The sight of the giant Corinthian columns that supported the arches of the auditorium dome made me feel like a Druid priest at Stone-henge…
Garnier, on the other hand, must by now have felt like the sacrificial sheep on the block. Year by year my pity for the man grew stronger as he battled through personal tragedy—the death of his only child being swiftly followed by the death of his father—and fought like a stag at bay to preserve the integrity of his dream. Twice in succession the government axed a million francs from the opera's credit budget; by March '67 the project was five hundred thousand francs in debt and Garnier was at his wits' end!
"You were right," he told me in despair one evening, "right in all you predicted. I should have trained as a gladiator, not an architect… I don't suppose you have two million francs about you, do you, Erik?"
I laughed and accepted the hip flask of brandy which he offered to me, not the first he had downed this evening by the look of him, poor devil—not by a long way.
"If I had, you should have it gladly," I said.
"Yes, I know." He sighed, screwing the top back on his flask with unsteady fingers. "Why aren't you the emperor, Erik. Why the hell aren't you the emperor?" can only assume that he was too drunk to know what he was doing, for as I assisted him out of the dark and silent building, before he broke his neck on the dangerous construction debris, he suddenly flung one arm around my shoulder with rough camaraderie.
"If they ever make you the emperor," he said aggressively, "I'll be the first one out in the street throwing my bloody cap in the air."
I got him a cab, since he was clearly too far gone to get home alone in any safety, and he wrung my hand hard for a moment before getting in and slumping back on the seat.
"You'd have made a damned good emperor," he said in maudlin tones, "do you know that, Erik… a damned good emperor!"
Yes… he did not normally indulge, but he was very, very drunk that night. I very much doubt that he ever remembered what he said that evening, let alone who it was who had put him in that cab…
A guarded respect had grown up between us over the years, preventing the clash of our volatile personalities which on first glance might have seemed inevitable. Garnier had a truly spectacular temper when roused, and the restraint he managed to employ when dealing with government idiots never ceased to amaze me. He didn't care what he did to keep life blood flowing into the Opera coffers; he would thump a war drum or grovel like a spaniel, whatever was required, and I admired that more than I could say. I, too, would have fought like a tiger, but I would not have begged; my stiff-necked pride would have been the cord which strangled the Opera in its birth canal.
We were astonishingly patient with each other, as though we both understood what it was to own minds that were ceaselessly and painfully awake. We shared a rage for perfection and an imagination that was in constant ferment. And so that third evening in September 1870, when he came to the Opera and found me working alone, without the mask, I felt curiously calm and indifferent toward a discovery which would normally have filled me with mortified fury.
He looked at me with shocked surprise, but he had the grace not to stare and I felt I could forgive him that first moment of paralyzed wonder. To be perfectly honest he was no oil painting himself. I had seen his singular features rather unkindly caricatured in the popular press, more than once—the angular face ravaged with lines of worry and intermittent ill-health, the eyes deep set beneath a curiously flattened skull. Perhaps it helped that he was ugly; perhaps 1 was simply too exhausted for violence, but at any rate I felt no inclination to kill him for this outrage.
He came calmly across the scaffolding that surrounded the inner auditorium cupola structure and examined the area on which I was working with approval.
"I don't know how you can see in this abysmal light," he remarked pleasantly. "You must have the eyes of a cat."
I said nothing. He was dressed for dinner and no doubt his wife, Louise, was fuming in their carriage at this very moment, waiting to go home. Surely he would not linger now…
"I'm building an opera house," he said quietly. "You, on the other hand, my friend, seem quite determined to turn it into a tomb."
I turned to look at him in surprise and he spread his hands in an expressive Gallic gesture.
"Your men say that you are killing yourself."
I laughed harshly. "You mean they
hope
I'm killing myself."
He shook his head slowly.
"That little Bernard fellow is very anxious; he begged me this morning to speak to you because he dared not do so himself."
Jules? I frowned as I considered this unexpected information. The man had seven children now to feed and educate—Madame Bernard seemed to conceive every time her husband hung up his trousers! On reflection I supposed it was perfectly natural that the man should be anxious about the source of his livelihood. Surely he hadn't dared to tell Garnier about the morphine!
"Twenty hours a day," continued Garnier slowly. "Have you no home to go to, Erik?"
Still I was silent, thinking of the dozen apartments Jules had rented for me since I began work on the Opera. Each time the pattern had been similar. First the anonymous, abusive letters, then the wanton unprovoked damage, and finally the aggressive blow or nervous tap of the proprietor upon my door.
"Please try to understand, monsieur… the other tenants have begun to complain…"
I never argued or protested, simply left with weary resignation before the violence began. I already saw there was no point in purchasing a property at Haussmann's wildly inflated prices; it would not solve my predicament, and besides I needed to husband my resources; my financial commitments were considerable and my capital was dwindling rapidly. I was no longer the enormously wealthy man that I had been ten years ago; the Opera and Jules's rapidly increasing family of hungry, ignorant little rabbits had seen to that.