Masque (21 page)

Philippe was fading fast by then. I could see that he had lost quite a bit of weight; even smothered as he was in counterpanes his body seemed sunken. Well, I could relate to that. I was growing fairly thin myself. His skin and eyes were yellow (that gave me a start!) and the skin sagged beneath his shadowed sockets. Even when he slept his fingers never released from the stoppered neck of the bottle he clutched.

When he saw us he smiled, called Raoul and I over to sit beside him on the bed. He laid his claw-like hand on mine and, in a broken voice, he said, ‘True love is a treasure that should never be squandered.' He pulled his brother's hand to mine so that all three of us were joined together, ‘I am so glad that you have found completion in each other. You strengthen one another, and in your love, neither is reduced.'

He died three weeks later. In accordance with his will the massive bed was burnt. He was buried with a small sample of the ashes in one hand, contained inside of a locket shaped like a heart. In the other he held a small, worn, dancing slipper.

After the funeral, Raoul said, ‘I cannot understand it. Why did he throw away his life like that? She was a fool and a whore; wholly unworthy of him.'

I did not reply; I had learned by then that it was better not to bother. Besides, I felt so cold inside that few things could fire me into any complex discourse. It was as though the shivering shock I'd felt underground had never really departed. Riding back from the funeral my teeth chattered in my skull.

It took me two more years to finally leave him. I admit, to Raoul it had probably seemed sudden. Really, I had decided before the funeral. My mind was made up in the moment that his brother joined our hands together and spoke those blasphemous words on the subject of love.

Raoul came home one night after a day-long absence. He called for me to join him in the library where he was sipping brandy and indulging in a cigar that stank like burning cat fur. He rose when I entered, offering me a seat by the fire. I gazed into the flames, lost in a robe that had fitted me a year ago, rubbing my arms to keep me free from the cold. Raoul offered me a blanket. As I was tucking it around my legs, he told me that after two years of struggle (the company hadn't played to a capacity audience since the night that I left) he had sold his shares in the Palais Garnier to a foreign investor who worked from afar. Raoul had never met the man, he did all of his work through an agent, but he seemed to know what he was doing and had already begun implementing plans designed to keep the theatre from shutting its doors. This man, a Monsieur Reynard, immediately fired the managers that I had known and hired two others more fitting for his purposes. Raoul had turned a tidy profit through these negotiations, and he was proud of it.

He could not understand why I continued to press him for the less-important details; which dancers remained, which members of the orchestra had been fired, who sang the lead roles? All of this was entirely unrelated to profit, and uncomfortably reminded him of our own unfortunate history.

Raoul looked at me, his bland face clouding with concern, saying, ‘Christine, I knew that I shouldn't have told you all of this. The doctor was right when he forbade you to attend the performances. They were unsettling your womb.' He came around behind me, massaged my neck. It felt like a stranglehold. He continued, ‘Perhaps that is why we have never had children. For the sake of your health, I will say no more.'

He kissed me, once, upon the forehead. ‘Now be a good girl, and go off to bed.'

It was the last time that I ever obeyed him.

The next morning, after Raoul rolled over on to my side of the bed, I showed him my back. He shrugged, good-naturedly, kissed me, and went down to breakfast.

I remained between two sheets, staring at the celling until I heard the front door slam and the clatter of hooves against cobbles as the white carriage rolled him off to his day at the trade-offices. I saw, in my mind's eye, the horses as they strained against the traces, their hair streaming with sweat, running until the bonds that held them broke.

I got up once I was certain that he was gone for good. I rang the bell for the maid, a girl of seventeen who favoured overlarge garments. Her slatternly mob cap slid over one eye, lending her a strange, cycloptic look. She was shocked at my orders. It had been years since I asked her for breakfast.

Once I had eaten, pastry and ham, a third of a small, jam-spread baguette, I dressed in maroon silk (bemoaning the way my figure had withered – the fabric flapped around me) and began, quickly, to pack.

I took only what I thought that I would need to live, luxurious things that had a high retail value; the jewellery, of course, what loose gold came easily to hand, all of my most expensive dresses. I took my music box, as well. The cymbals that the stuffed monkey held jangled as I slid it into the bottom of the suitcase; this was one thing that I did not intend to rid myself of. Since, as my husband, he legally owned everything that I brought into the marriage (including my person) he could have called the constable to fetch me from my adoptive mother's house. He never did, supposing that this was but a temporary illness on my part. A fever better starved than fed with attention.

As for the Countess, when I arrived on her doorstep she was ecstatic, greeting me with open arms and practically pulling me across the threshold. She had, it seemed, never approved of our union though she had hesitated to say so at the time, fearing that her disapproval would be misinterpreted. And, in truth, it might have been, although not by myself.

Immediately, she began helping me to plan my escape, her blue eyes blazing in her glorious Nordic ruin of a face. She poured the strong tea she favoured into a cup of delicate red porcelain saying, ‘Well, my dear, where to begin? You have no funds of your own, I expect. I shall hire the lawyer.' She laughed, ‘After this is over I shall finally be able to write you back into my will.'

I flinched at that. She leaned forward, patted my knee, ‘No offence my dear, but had I died he would have inherited, and I could not have borne knowing that one day, while my corpse was rotting, that idiot boy would be trampling my carpets and selling off my land.'

‘Yes,' I said, ‘he was counting on doing just that. The forest you own in Britany would have been sold to a shipyard.'

She laughed, ‘Of course he was! Why do you think he would risk attempting to clip the wings of an artist, unless the risk would pay him.' She refilled my cup. ‘Enough of that. In six months or so you will be a free woman.'

Her eyes glittered. ‘I have very good lawyers. Now is the time to discuss your future. You are still young, my pet, the whole world before you. What is it you want?'

I had to laugh with her. It had been so long since anyone had asked me that. I took her warm hand, said, ‘I want to sing.'

She squeezed back, ‘Then you shall. The Opera House has new managers, of a progressive political bent. Once you are free you will have two points of leverage; your marvellous voice – no one could take that from you – and the score you brought back from the pit.' She paused, ‘Unless you left it at that idiot's house. If you have, I could get it. Claim that you did not own it when you brought it. We'll have to have it if it is as good as you said it was, it will help with contract negotiations. I'll find proof somewhere of a previous claim….'

I interrupted her, ‘No, no Maman,' it was her turn to startle, I'd never called her by that name before. She had been afraid to ask me. ‘The score is in this very house. In the desk, in my bedroom.'

She smiled with relief, ‘So that is that.'

And so it was. While the papers were filed and my status shifted from married to separated and on to divorced, I practised every day, returning my voice almost to the height of its lustre, though there was a new veil across my lower register that added a sense of sorrow to whatever I sang as a mezzo. I had finally learned to sing for myself, wearing the roles I chose and no other. It was difficult, satisfying work, returning to myself. I was happier than I had been in years and, for a while, I stopped dreaming of the face I saw, once, deep below the surface of the earth.

In the end my guardian was right about everything. The new managers had heard about the quality of my voice, and they were indeed progressive – if that term means that they were willing to see profit in scandal. They paid me more than double my usual salary, triple if you include the fee I negotiated for the rights to my opera. And as for the scandal, the newspaper headlines shouting, ‘Divorced Diva Dares the Stage!' filled them with pride. The right kind of scandal can stuff a lot of gold into coffers. My divorce was considered exceptionally daring; they milked it for all that it was worth.

I played the role of Carmen exclusively for a full five years, to a packed house. There is nothing quite so exciting to a certain type of audience as a fallen woman, dressed in crimson, displaying her beautiful sorrow before all the world.

By the time I finally got to debut
Don Juan Triumphant
I was thoroughly sick of playing the Gypsy. My opera was greeted with lukewarm reviews; I was even then a little too old to be playing a fresh-faced maiden like Ana, and besides, I couldn't give credit where it was properly due. The critics believed that it had been written by a woman and they judged it accordingly.

In spite of that, possibly because of that, the crowds clamoured for it. I performed two encores at every showing. The seats were always sold. The intake was enormous. It still packs the house in its once-yearly revival show. Whoever the invisible theatre-owner was, he must have been pleased by the revenue. I never met him. He never wrote me any notes or contacted me in any way, save through his managers. I assumed that he enjoyed the hypocrisy of gaining profit from a source whose morality he disapproved of. In nearly fifteen years he never so much as sent flowers to my room.

But Monsieur Reynard is gone now, whoever he was. He has sold his stock to the company of Andre and Reichmann. And I am growing tired of singing the same damned roles. I do not know how long I will continue to endure it.

Sitting before my mirror now, my ageing face garbed round with plaster angels whose beauty never fades, or changes, I strip off the wig I wore on stage and let down my own sweat-dampened tresses. I am ready for a change that goes beyond a coat of grease-paint and a flattering wardrobe. The paint is terrible for the skin, in any case. A mask is no good if it cakes in my wrinkles.

In a moment I will have to dress again, don my fancy party clothes to flirt and preen with my new managers, earning my keep. I dab my neck with more of Monsieur Andre's wonderful, outrageous perfume and, God knows why, I start singing an excerpt from the redemption scene that takes place when Don Juan and Doña Ana are reunited in heaven at the very end of the play.

It is a musically complicated verse, ‘Between two worlds life hovers like a star, 'twixt night and the morn, upon the horizon's verge.' Somewhere, somehow, the music has swung again, away from comedy. But it isn't a tragedy any more, not the way I'm singing it now. If I didn't know any better, listening to myself, I would have to say that my spirit was rejoicing.

I finish, hitting all of the high tones, ‘How little do we know that which we are!'

As the last note dies, I hear a knock at my door. I shout, ‘Come!'

It isn't the girl I expected, the little foul-toothed rat who has been serving as my dresser, coming to say that the managers are ready for me to charm investors in the foyer. It's Madame Giry, dressed in her usual ratty black crepe, leaning on the man's walking stick she uses to keep the box-boys in line. There is a letter in her hand, a thick envelope, written on expensive linen paper. She smiles at me inscrutably as I take it.

My name, my old name, is written across the front in handwriting I know.

ERIK

13.

I climbed from the bed where I'd buried Christine to save her from the fumes of the Lethe and the fire from the guns. Her would-be lover had forced himself through the fog; either passion or an incredible lung capacity had rescued him from the same sleep his minions had succumbed to. I did not notice him at first. I had no time to count the numbers of the rescue party. There were nine men on the floor.

I gave the big blond a kick to test the effectiveness of my drug; the black toe of my brogue landed between his armpit and his hip. He flinched reflexively. Good, I thought. He will recover in every capacity. Christine will be pleased.

I called to her, ‘Christine! All is well. You can come out now!'

And that was when the boy attacked me. He had stalked me from the shadows, hiding behind a pillar or perhaps the large wardrobe. He shouted, ‘Monster!' and fired his gun at the same instant that I turned to face him. If his hand had not been shaking there is no doubt that I would have been dead; he was standing less than three feet behind me. Luckily, the bullet flew into the door of the cabinet, piercing a dress.

I leaped forward, striking at the gun with my foot. The sharp heel of my shoe collided with his wrist and I had the satisfaction of seeing the gun clatter to the floor. I had disarmed him, but it wasn't enough. I was, I am, more than fifteen years older than he is. The difference in prowess between a boy of twenty and a man at the edge of his prime is surprisingly vast. I was quick on my feet; I'd had some experience fighting. He was faster, and poisoned by wrath. It acted on his blood like a compound of coca leaf.