Meyerbeer! Thank God I hadn't bothered to attend for weeks. There is a very commonplace talent if I ever saw one, a man who thought spectacular stage effects would compensate for the mediocrity of his music. The only things worth remembering in
Le Prophete
were the roller skaters and the horse! At least Mozart knew that music must speak for itself.
Don Giovanni
, now, that was truly memorable; and
The Magic Flute
—charmingly whimsical —amusing! Although of course we didn't have anyone at the moment who could do justice to the Queen of the Night. I had yet to hear a soprano
acuto sfogato
who didn't sound like the whistle of a demented peanut vendor. Mercifully, it was a role that lay well outside the range of La Carlotta. Really, that woman's voice left me stone cold. What a great pity our current leading lady never felt the urge to go back to her native Spain…
tossed the program aside with a gesture of contempt and studied my pocket watch with a sigh. Seven o'clock in the morning—time I was no longer visible on the premises.
As I stood up, the newly installed electric lights in the auditorium were lit unexpectedly and I shrank back against the hangings in fury. Damn them,
damn them
! Who was it now? Not scene shifters by the sound of the high-pitched laughter.
Silly, giggling chorus girls no doubt, ballet dancers escaped from the unending regime of rehearsals in the dance salon behind the stage. Normally I would have had a little good-natured fun at their expense, given them a new tale with which to terrify their wide-eyed colleagues, but today I wasn't in the mood for foolish pranks. I felt strangely tired and out of sorts; that peculiar sensation of constricting pressure was back in my chest. I simply wished they would go away and leave me in peace.
A chord was struck in the orchestra pit.
"
Meg
!"said a girl's nervous voice. "For pity's sake, you'll be heard and then there'll be trouble. You know we shouldn't be here."
"Oh, don't be so spineless, Christine Daae, no one's going to hear us… except perhaps the Phantom."
"The
what
?"
"The Phantom. Don't tell me you've never heard about the Opera Ghost! My dear child, what sort of dream do you live in? Everyone knows about the Opera Ghost. No… don't laugh! It's true. Look… you see box five up there on the grand tier… that's his. Always has been as far back as anyone remembers. It's never sold at the box office, even on a gala night. They say it would bring terrible bad luck on the whole theater if it was."
"How do you know all this, Meg Giry?"
"Never you mind how I know, I just do that's all. We know a lot about the Opera Ghost, Ma and I, but it isn't safe to talk about it here. And you'd better believe me for your own good—he doesn't like people who don't know how to show a proper respect, and when he's angry terrible things happen."
"What sort of things?" I heard real alarm enter the other voice now.
"Awful things!" said Meg cheerfully, "truly
awful
. The floor in our dressing room starts to run with blood…"
Up in box five I blinked in surprised amusement. That was a new one! Little Giry should be writing Gothic novels, not prancing around the stage dressed as a water nymph!
"… disembodied hands come out of the wall and crawl across the stage," continued Meg with glee, "and people just disappear and are never seen again alive. Like Joseph Buquet."
"I thought that poor old man hanged himself."
"Oh, that's just the story that was put around by the management to prevent a panic. Everyone who knows
anything
agrees it was the Opera Ghost who did it."
I frowned. This I did not like so well. Little Meg had better watch her wagging tongue. I had engineered her promotion to leader of the row; I could just as easily reverse that arrangement when I spoke to Poligny tonight.
"Of course he's not always angry," Meg added absently. "Sometimes he's quite kind… Look, I shouldn't say this, it's a secret, but he's been very generous to Ma and me—he gave me a chance, you know, got Monsieur Poligny to notice me."
Silent and resigned in my hiding place, I abandoned all thought of humiliating Meg. She was only a child, only a silly chattering, harmless child who had no idea that she was annoying a cantankerous, aging monster…
"It isn't the first time he's made changes to the cast, you know, Christine. Ma says the Opera Ghost knows everything about music and that Monsieur Poligny relies on his judgment entirely. Why don't you sing for him? Wherever he is he'll hear and perhaps he'll make changes for you too."
"Don't be silly, Meg!" The girl sounded suddenly very-uneasy.
"Are you afraid of him?"
"No, of course not! As a matter of fact I don't believe a single word you've told me about him!"
"Yes, you do! You've gone as white as a sheet!"
"I think we ought to go now."
"Oh, Christine, you're always so serious, you never have any fun! Listen, Ma says that
Faust
is the Opera Ghost's favorite production, you know the role of Margarita, don't you?"
"Yes, but 1 haven't—"
"Oh, don't be such a wretched little coward! Sing for the Phantom, Christine. Let him hear you! Who knows what may come of it."
The girl sounded frightened to death, and I suddenly felt rather sorry for her. If she couldn't stand up to little Giry's bullying, she had no future on the stage as a prima donna— probably couldn't sing anyway. But I might as well listen, I really had nothing better to do at the moment, and I could always put my hands over my ears if it was too painful.
I sat back in my chair indulgently and, as Meg's inept fingers fumbled for the right chords, prepared to be quietly disappointed.
When the girl began to sing, I leapt from the chair as though I had put my hand upon live wires and received a fatal voltage.
Oh, how strange!
Like a spell does the evening bind me!
And a deep languid charm
I feel without alarm
With its melody enwind me
And all my heart subdue…
Oh, it was certainly painful, quite unbearably painful… but I had no desire to put my hands over my ears!
Perfect pitch, a crystal clarity of tone, no weakness in either register… this girl possessed a near perfect instrument!
And lacked the inner will to play it!
I had never heard a voice so sweet and true, nor one as utterly
negative
. Her boundless potential lay almost wholly untapped, like a rich vein of gold buried beneath the dead weight of strangling indifference. There was nothing there except faultless technique. She sang without soul—no expression, no joy, no sorrow…
nothing
! It was like listening to an extraordinarily talented zombie!
There was something terribly wrong with this girl, a near extinction of spirit that made her voice affect me like a cry in the dark. She was dying slowly on that stage, drowning in my ears… I couldn't bear to listen a moment longer. I must not think what I might have made of that lovely, lifeless voice had it only been entrusted to my care.
But first I must see what she looked like; I must know so that I could take great care never to listen to her again by some monstrous mischance. A second time would surely drive me right out of my mind!
Forgetting my normal caution, I moved from the shadows to the velvet-hung ledge of the box and looked down. I looked out into the bright light of the auditorium's new electric globes.
And the knife that I had dimly feared all these months buried itself to the hilt in my throat.
Her name was a stranger's, unfamiliar and foreign.
But she was not a stranger to me.
I knew this girl…
Beneath me now the horseshoe auditorium lay dark and silent once more, its lights long since extinguished.
For a long time I remained slumped in that armchair in box five, risking discovery with dull indifference. I felt as though I had been disemboweled; I was shaking from head to foot and I could not get my breath.
It had to be a hallucination, an optical illusion created by the lights and my troubled mind. The morphine was slowly rotting my brain, dragging me down into a morass of incoherent, impossible dreams.
And yet I knew what I had seen!
I couldn't wait for Poligny now, I'd have to deal with him another day when I had my wits about me. I had to get away from this place quickly, crawl back to the safety of my lair, and hide like a mortally wounded animal.
At no time during my entire residence at the Opera had I been so vulnerable to discovery as 1 was on that desperate flight below. I blundered through the corridors, taking no heed to move with stealth, neither knowing nor caring who might observe my progress. My left hand was so numbed that the pivots of the stone in the third cellar refused to yield to me at first. I clawed at the mechanism with a cry of rage and my fingers were bleeding before the stone finally responded to my clumsy touch and admitted me to the sanctuary that lay behind it.
I vowed that I would never go back above the ground again. I would stay here, like a hermit crab in its shell and drown myself in my music. Somewhere in the labyrinth of my mind I would find a grave deep enough to bury this shameful longing; if I burrowed fast enough, like a demented mole, it would be possible to escape from the pain… the unimaginable pain!
Yet everything that met my gaze here in my precious home now filled me with bewildered horror. I saw, as though for the first time, that my room was a mortuary chamber and my bed was a coffin.
A coffin!
Everywhere I looked my eyes recoiled in shock from the evidence of my chosen existence; I stared in cold disbelief at the residence of a corpse.
What was I doing here in this tomb? I was alive! I was
alive
!
I was alive and I had never lived.
Ayesha leapt from the pipe organ to welcome me, but now there was no comfort in the warmth of that soft, sleek little body. The touch of her fur was just a horrible mockery and I turned from her fawning affection with revolted despair.
Like a house with no foundations, unable to resist the first tremor of an earthquake, my existence had tumbled all around me in ruins.
I suddenly saw that there was nothing left for me here.
No refuge.
No place to hide.
Hell is not a place, it's a state of mind and body; hell is obsession with a voice, a face, a name…
I was obsessed with Christine Daae, irretrievably and disgustingly fixated with the desire to possess what I knew I could never have. It was as though I had lain nearly half a century in suspended animation and now awoke to the ravages of sheer animal hunger.
I tried to stand back and mock at my weakness with sneering detachment, to tell myself it was utterly
indecent
to feel the lovesick yearnings of a callow boy at my age. My lust was an obscenity which must be scourged out of my hateful body.
I punished myself without mercy for the wickedness of wanting. I set up a mirror and forced myself to look into it, without the mask; I withheld my morphine until I was a shaking wreck…
But still 1 wanted her…
I began to lie to myself, to cheat and deceive that other half which cried out that this could not be, this must not be.
Oh, yes
, said this newly awakened side of me with masterful cunning
, I know all about
that
, I accepted
that
ages ago, I'm only going back up there now to amuse myself, truly… Look, you can rely on me to be sensible. Have I ever not been sensible? Have I ever shown you up, made you ashamed of me? I think you might trust me to behave now
.
He was very strong, this other side of me, ungovernable as a wild stallion and terribly clever. 1 began to listen helplessly to his insidious whispering.
You only want to see her, that's all, just to see her. What's wrong with that, you gutless fool? Listen… I'll tell you what you ought to do now…
And so it began—the shameless plotting and scheming to establish communication between Christine and myself.
A series of minor misfortunes befell her succeeding dressing rooms, so that eventually she was resettled exactly where I wanted her, in a long-disused room at the end of an unfrequented corridor. Here in this room many years ago I had taken the precaution of installing a system of pivots behind the huge mirror to conceal the old Communard road which led down to the lake. The poky, inconveniently placed chamber was highly unpopular with artistes and said to be haunted; I had driven out more than one hapless occupant with a little subtly applied ventriloquism.
But I was glad of this room now, glad of the glass which showed itself to Christine as a mirror and to me as a window. Night after night I stood behind the wall and worshiped her in silence while her dresser combed out her lovely dark hair. 1 saw her face gazing sightlessly into the little mirror on the dressing table. Her eyes were always distant and preoccupied, ineffably sad as they searched the mirror in a hopeless quest for something that was never revealed. Often, just before the curtain rose, she would sit very still with her hands pressed against her temples, as though listening intently for a voice she could not hear. I knew by now that her father had died some time back, that they had been inseparably close, that she still mourned his passing with an unnatural and unhealthy intensity. Such quiet, controlled, and yet infinitely destructive sadness made me ache to comfort her even as my eyes devoured her.
I knew this child was not a natural survivor. The world would crush her under its cruel heel without compunction, never seeing the delicate petals that lay bruised and trampled in the mud. Spiteful rivals, unkind critics, ruthless managers, and dubious patrons… I cringed at the pain that inevitably lay ahead of her. Without the protection of a strong man she would be destroyed body and soul by the brutal demands of a notoriously callous profession.
The cruel familiarity of her features still stunned me with grief. She was a lovely, wilting flower that I longed to rescue from the strangling creep of weeds. I wanted to plant her safely in the labyrinth beneath the Opera House, to hide her from the world so that no one else should ever find her, hurt her… take her away from me. I could make her grow—I
knew
I could make her grow—if only I dared to reach out and lift her from the barren, acrid soil that was stifling her natural talent.