“No one will ever recognize you.”
“Now it is your turn.” He applied spirit gum along my jaw.
“Oh, no–not a false beard again! Taking the dreadful things off afterwards is such a nuisance.”
“It hides the shape of your face. I shall also wax your mustache.”
“You know that I loathe mustache wax. It is acceptable only for would-be emperors, cavalry officers, and circus strong men.”
Before long I had a reddish beard of a different hue than my brown hair and mustache. Holmes applied a reddish wax to my mustache, curving each end to a point. He then blacked out a tooth, dirtied a few more, and jammed a blue cap similar to a French gendarme’s on my head.
“Very good. You are an inspector from the gas company. We are examining the footlights and checking for leaks.” He strapped a carpenter’s leather tool belt about his waist. “I am your somewhat stupid assistant. Can you speak French gutturally, low and raspy in the throat.”
“Quelque chose comme ça?”
“Perfect!”
“I hope I do not have to speak too much. My throat is still inflamed.”
“We shall need you to do the talking because you have no accent. Remember, too, that you are a lower-class sort of person. Refinement and politeness are definitely to be avoided.”
“I think I shall enjoy this.”
“Good.” He withdrew a packet of cheap Turkish cigarettes. “These would also help create the right impression.”
“Not when I begin coughing and choking. Besides, would it be wise if we are checking the gas lines?”
Holmes began to laugh, gently at first, but soon with an unrestrained merriment that was rare. “Henry, Henry–you have me! How could I be so incredibly obtuse? This will make a nice bit of business. You will reprimand me and continually admonish me to put out my cigarettes.” He lit a cigarette and let it dangle uncharacteristically from the corner of his mouth. “Here. Carry this.” He gave me a large wrench from his belt. “And slouch.”
“All the things my mother forbade.”
“Exactly so.”
Holmes might not have mastered the lower regions of the Palais Garnier, but the middle part he knew quite well. We went upstairs, down a corridor, and came out on the right wing of the vast stage.
“Let us attempt to get as near as possible to our two lovers. Remember, Henry, you are in charge. I know that you are at heart a thespian, bearing the histrionic French blood of our family in your veins, and I have complete confidence in you. Play the petty, smug official with an inflated view of his importance. Lead the way.”
Swelling my chest and assuming what I hoped was the air of a minor tyrant, I started forth. Two men working at the set glanced briefly at us, then began hammering again.
“Begin with the footlights,” I said imperiously. Holmes gave me a wary look, then advanced. No one would have ever believed this fearful, stupid workman was the world’s foremost detective and one of the greatest minds in all of Europe. “Put out your cigarette, imbecile!” He complied fearfully, then we knelt before the float and peered down at the lamps at that end. Holmes unscrewed the fastenings which held the glass cover over a burner.
Christine and the Viscount sat a few feet away, and we heard them clearly. For the next two hours we endured the most trivial and insipid conversation imaginable while Sherlock “checked” each burner of the innumerable footlights on the gargantuan stage. In all fairness, even the discourse of the noblest and cleverest lovers must sound ridiculous to all but themselves. Nevertheless, the Viscount’s constant flattery, lines such as, “You have the finest pair of eyes I have ever seen,” or, “You know, my dear, you are quite, quite lovely,” combined with Christine’s high, rippling laughter soon grew tiresome.
Even seated, she hung upon his arm as if worried he might escape her, and he often clasped her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. In my experience, those couples most given to ostentatious displays of affection are most lacking in the genuine article. One sees a pair of love doves closely entwined for some six months or so, then mysteriously, they vanish, only to soon reappear, each joined to a new partner in devotion. Michelle is not given to these public displays, but in private I am certain no woman could equal her passion.
Later, the two lovers came on stage and wandered about, examining the sets going up for Faust. The Persian had left the main floor, and Holmes soon spotted him watching from the wings. At one point Christine came over and smiled at me.
“Bonjour, Monsieur. I have not seen you before.” I scowled by way of reply. “What are you doing?”
“Checking for leaks.” My voice croaked so I doubted even Michelle would have recognized me.
“Keep a civil tongue in your head, my good fellow!” The Viscount was put off by my truculence.
Christine only laughed and seized his arm. She wore a striking aquamarine dress which emphasized her tiny waist and slender hips. How good it was to have the wretched bustle out of fashion so you could once again discern something of a woman’s true shape!
“He is only doing his job,” she said.
I noticed Holmes staring somewhat lasciviously at her. For an instant I thought the look genuine, then realized he would never so willingly betray his true feelings. “Here now, beef head,” I said. “Keep your eyes fixed on that there burner.”
The Viscount frowned, but Christine laughed again. She disengaged herself from him, then raised her arms and spun about twice, her skirt opening up. She reached center stage, then slowly sang some scales, starting low and going up a full two octaves.
“What are you doing?” the Viscount asked.
“Singing.” She sang the scales faster, then burst into song, her high lyric voice filling the vast empty auditorium of red and gold. I recognized the melody from the conclusion of Faust, Marguerite’s triumphant outpouring as the angels come down to save her and carry her up to heaven.
The strangest expression came over the Viscount, one blending fear, admiration, and simple confusion. He seized her arm, and her music stopped. “You are hurting my ears,” he said loudly.
For an instant the anger showed in her green eyes, then she laughed that same tiresome laugh. “What a compliment!”
“Come, my beloved, you know that I admire your singing, but...”
“It hurts your ears.”
“You merely startled me. I have never heard you sing so close to me. I did not realize it was so... loud.”
She gave him a hard, ironic glance which was truer than her earlier looks of loving idolatry. Rather bewildered, he turned and wandered toward the rear of the stage. “Oh, I say, Christine. Someone has left a trap door open. I wager a person might break his neck if he fell down there.”
Holmes was working on a lamp, but I was watching Christine. Her expression of lively good humor vanished. She went white, her eyes and mouth widening with fear, then she rushed to the Viscount’s side and seized his arm, not amorously this time. “For God’s sake, be careful, Raoul–be careful!”
His smile was stiff and smug. “You have shown me all your empire above ground, Christine: this vast auditorium, the dressing rooms, the dance foyers, the wings and flies overhead there; but you have not taken me below ground. Strange tales are told of the lower parts of the Opera, tales every bit as bizarre as the fairy stories of the Bretons. Shall we descend together and explore the underworld?”
“Never–not on your life! It is nothing to joke about. The cellars and the lake are his– his alone.” She drew him forcefully back from that black square gaping up at them like the grave.
“So he lives down there?”
Horror contorted her face, but by sheer will she managed a grotesque smile. “Of course not! Sometimes I wonder if you are quite sane.” She pulled again at his arm, but he shook her off abruptly.
“If I am sane? Why then are you so fearful? Shall we have a look?”
“No!”
Her voice had hardly ceased when the trap door slammed shut with a l
oud bang. The noise made me and the workmen on the sets start. Christine put her fist over her open mouth, and the Viscount took a step back. His laughter was strained.
“Let us go somewhere else–somewhere higher. Soon it will be dark. Please, Raoul–please.”
“Oh very well.” He smiled as if he were only indulging a whim, but I could tell that he, too, was shaken. He let Christine draw him toward the wing.
Holmes stood up; his eyes briefly went out of character, revealing a strange fervor. “Time for a smoke, huh?” He jerked his head in the direction they had gone.
“Oh, I suppose so,” I said.
The sounds of the Viscount’s and Christine’s feet on the metal staircase echoed softly across the huge stage. Holmes lit his cigarette, but his eyes remained fixed on the shadows above us. Suddenly his arm jerked up, his long, bony finger pointing.
“There, Henry–do you see him?”
It was so dark offstage that I saw mostly shadows above us, the faint shapes of innumerable ropes and the metal stairways fading into the gloom. “Whom?”
“A shadow–there.” He pointed again.
I laughed. “The whole blasted place is nothing but shadow.”
He slipped a wrench back into the leather tool belt, then unfastened the buckle and set the belt down on the floor. “We must follow them.”
My steps were tentative, and I faltered before the metal stairway leading up into the blackness. “I saw nothing. It is too dark. You must be mistaken.”
Holmes dropped his cigarette and crushed it under foot. “I shall go alone.” He started up at a brisk pace.
I took a deep breath and tried to quell the fear clutching for my heart. “Wait–I shall come, too.” I seized the cold iron of the rail, then took a step.
“Do not look down, Henry. Only do not look down and you will be fine.”
“Yes,” I whispered. “I shall not look down.”
He stopped abruptly and whispered, “Hush.”
Above us the Viscount said, “Slower, my dearest–why hurry so?”
“We must go higher, as high as we can.”
Holmes turned to me, his face a white oval in the shadow, comical looking with the black beret, red nose, and enormous mustache. “They are going to the roof,” he said softly.
“Oh, damnation,” I groaned.
We passed one of the ephemeral metal landings which one can see through. Round and round we went, my right hand always clinging to the railing. My hand was damp, clammy, and I held my head so rigidly straight that my neck soon felt stiff. Pondering how far below the stage was, I occasionally considered looking down; a wave of fear would wash over me, making me vow to abstain from such foolish reveries. This resolution never held for more than a minute or two; before long the same lunatic thoughts recommenced.
We passed the higher levels where banks of lights sat, including the spectacular limelights, and at last we came to the bells I had heard about, huge, curving shapes of brass all in a row, glistening faintly in the darkness. What if someone were to ring them? This close my hearing would be damaged, but worse yet, in the confusion I might clap my hands over my ears, stagger about, hit the rail, and plunge over.
“Are you all right, Henry?” Holmes whispered.
“No.”
“You are a brave man. I know how fearful and irrational a phobia can be, and you...”
A reddish-yellow light suddenly burst through the darkness above us, a black silhouette blotting out part of the light. “Oh, Raoul, let us go outside. We shall be king and queen with all of Paris at our feet.”
I nearly bumped into Holmes. His hand seized my arm. “Steady, Henry.” As we stood silently in the darkness, I became aware that my legs were shaking. Holmes was laboring to breathe silently in spite of being winded. “They have gone outside. Only two or three levels remain. Try to...”
Abruptly a black shape passed before the light, eclipsing it for an instant like some moon. “Dear Lord,” I murmured.
“My shadow, the one I saw earlier,” Holmes said, his tone faintly ironic. “Courage, Henry. It will not be long now. You will feel better once we are on the roof.”
“The roof.” My voice gave me away.
“You will have solid ground, or at least something akin to it, up there, not this flimsy metal. It makes even me somewhat edgy. Come on.
We climbed two more flights and stepped out onto the landing near the open doorway. “Wait,” Holmes said. I complied, flattening my back against the wall near the door and keeping as far from the railing as possible. Holmes glanced outside, then said, “Follow me.” He slipped past the open door and continued along the catwalk. I attempted to go forward while at the same time keeping my back against the wall, the result being more a sidestep than a walk. The catwalk turned, passing over the front of the stage far above the proscenium arch. Some light came from the depths below, but above was only darkness; the stairway had led higher, the stage roof being taller than the auditorium dome.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“There should be another door at the opposite end which also provides access to the roof.”
It was dark enough that I would have had to lean over the rail to see the ground below; thus I tried to pretend that I was not very high.
“Ah, here we are.” Holmes slowly opened the door, the brilliant reddish-yellow light making us both blink. “Remain here for a moment.” He stepped outside.
I stood there, back to the wall, the cool evening breeze wafting across my face. My hands were still sweaty, but the light and the air were comforting.
Holmes reappeared. Although the bulbous red nose and the big mustache remained, the character of the loutish workman was gone, replaced by Holmes’s usual intensity. “Come along, Henry, but keep very still.”
The air was wondrously cool and fresh, the clouds overhead a brilliant pink from the setting sun. I was so happy to be outside, away from the darkness and skeletal metal stairways, that seeing the roofs of Paris below did not have the usual terrifying effect upon me. If the lake and Erik’s abode were the underworld, then this truly was the celestial realm, the summit of what the Viscount had called Christine Daaé’s kingdom.
Distantly I heard her voice. Holmes headed for the auditorium dome. The copper hemisphere and its ornamental ridges had weathered green, but the “lantern,” a small structure at the summit with openings for venting the gas chandelier, was gilded, the gold dazzling under the fiery sky. A row of grotesque masks topped the lantern, the black holes of their gaping mouths contrasting with their golden faces. Other faces, women carved in stone, ringed the bottom of the dome, and below them was a stone wall interspersed with windows, a golden lyre set in each casement. Holmes stopped before a window, then started around the dome. Behind us the stage roof rose to its triangular peak some thirty feet higher; and there, at the summit of the Opera, stood the greenish statue of a naked Apollo crowned with a laurel wreath and holding his gilded lyre to the heavens. Beside him crouched two muses, Music and Poetry, if my memory served me.
We crept forward. The voices of Christine and the Viscount grew louder. Before the dome was the rectangular roof covered with lead tiles which was above the grand stairway. The two lovers stood near the outer perimeter wall, their backs to us.
“But you must go!” Christine’s voice was shrill.
“I shall not. I have already told the Commodore to find another man for his Arctic voyage. You must have known a pretended engagement would not be enough to satisfy me.”
“Your brother... He will be furious.”
“Most assuredly, but why should we care? My inheritance is no longer under his control. Let Philippe sulk, if he will. Christine, I can take you away from here. You can be free of this Erik once and for all.”
“Is it possible?” Her voice was full of anguish.
“Yes, of course, if only we love one another.”
She began to cry. “Oh, I cannot bear to go back, but I promised him. It is so dark and col
d under the earth. I am too young to be buried alive. I pity him, truly I do, with all my heart and soul, and yet he is so horrible, so deformed. The most awful thing was when he wept, the tears in the dark eyes of that ghastly, tortured face. Without reason, without justice, he is damned, and so am I, Raoul–so am I!”
“What utter nonsense! You must know that I love you, that I adore you. Do not cry, my Christine. I am no genius, nor a musician, but I do love you. I know I can make you happy. I can give you anything you want, anything at all.”
“Can you, Raoul?”
“You know I can. Run away with me–now, this very night.”
“I–I cannot. I gave him my promise.”
“But he forced you–he forced you!”
The Viscount clenched his fists. The warm, rosy light was fading, the sky all awash with a sinister crimson, as if it were dying, bleeding into night. A strong, sultry wind blew upon the couple, carrying their words back to us.
“Who is this monster who has such a hold over you?”
Her reply was faint, hardly more than a whispered breath carried by the wind. “Erik.”
“Who is this damned Erik! For God’s sake, Christine, you owe me some explanations! Tell me, he does live underground, does he not?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me!”
Christine nodded wearily. “He was my Angel of Music. Wait–you shall hear all. You are right, I owe you, my dearest, that much at least. I heard his voice many weeks ago, many months even. I cannot remember when I did not hear that voice. I asked him if he was the Angel of Music whom Papa had told me about, and he said he was. He taught me to sing, Raoul. Oh, how he taught me! My voice was weak, silly, and stupid, but he made it burn with beauty like a pure, hot flame. Every day he worked with me, but it was our secret until the gala. ‘You are ready now,’ he said. ‘Show them,’ and I did, but then, then...” Her voice grew hushed. “You came, and everything began to change. ‘Come to Perros,’ he told me, ‘And you will hear me play ‘The Resurrection of Lazarus’ even as your father did, at the very stroke of midnight.’ And he did–I heard him.
The Angel of the Opera Page 18
