Masque (13 page)

Christine instinctively leapt back, thank God for that. The false wall of her prison fell forward, revealing that she was already wearing that fantastic white dress, her body wired for flight, her aborted ascension.

I saw the robed man, the painfully thin devil disguised as a monk, rush forward and catch her in his arms, dragging her away from the wreckage to hide in the shadows. My spirit thanked him for that. I thought he was saving her.

By this time the first shock had passed, and I found that my body could move again. I thrust myself from my seat, determined to reach her no matter what obstacles, no matter what vermin bled in my path. I would take her in my arms and carry her to safer earth. I fled from the box, my brother shouting behind me, begging me to find his Sorelli, as I ran down the long, temporarily empty Y-shaped stairway that led to the main entrance.

I pushed through the gilt doors, opening into a sea of screaming bodies. I was trampling down the aisles (I am afraid that I knocked down a child in my haste, a girl bleeding from the forehead) in my hurry to find the body of my love. I thought that Hell was here already.

I was not prepared for the tragedy to grow much worse.

Another series of explosions planted beneath the footlights rocked the stage so that it bent and fractured like a reed in a storm. The curved edge of the stage bent up, torn from its moorings. The lamps scattered everywhere. There was no doubt now that this was sabotage. I know the sound of dynamite; I was fond of such explosions as a child.

As the dust began to settle and the bodies which had blocked my progress had been either blasted to bits or pulled to safety in the floodlit hallway, I felt a hand on my elbow. It was my brother. His face was shriven in dust, crossed like it is on Ash Wednesday. He was weeping freely, though whether they were tears of grief or a reaction to the thick clouds of oily black smoke, I could not then tell. My ears were ringing so loudly that he had to shout to be heard. (I found out later that my left ear was bleeding. It never fully recovered hearing.) We pressed forward together, moving more carefully. He was more cautious than I was, avoiding torn limbs where he could. I trampled over them. I knew, in my heart, I was seeking a corpse.

In the end I found one. Philippe made his hands into stirrups, as he had in my childhood, after buying me my first horse. I mounted the stage and nearly collided with the body of the man who had been meant to play Mephistopheles. He was hanging from a rafter, suspended by the throat and revolving slowly, back and forth. In the thick dust, the smoke from the fires that the ushers were already struggling to extinguish, I could just make out his features.

He was too thickly built to be the man who had taken my treasure. That devil had a face that, the few times his cowl fell back and showed it, was shiny, as smooth as an egg. This man's features, though bloated, were prominent, cragged with age.

The truth was too much for me, shock had caught me up. My darling had been stolen and there was nothing, now, that I could do. I fell to the floor in a faint. By the time I revived the worst was over. I was reclining in the manager's office, on a fine leather couch. My mouth still tasted of smoke, but someone had been kind enough to bathe my face in water and wipe the blood from my hands with a soft, cool cloth. The managers told me that the bodies had been cleared, the survivors paid off and tended, the fire extinguished at long last.

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.