Masque (6 page)

I was too weak and angry to reply to this. It was all I could do to lie gasping in the straw. I felt like a fish, dying in a creel among the dried waterweed. Luckily, he did not appear to need any help in conversation. He continued, brushing my blood on to his poorly cured leather trousers and using those same filthy fingers to straighten his vest, ‘The only question, as I see it, is are you too ugly? Will you fascinate as well as horrify?'

I glared at him, noticing for the first time that the straw I lay on was piled in the centre of a garish-painted tiger cage. I was already a captive. He was standing now, supporting his bearish bulk on one of the rusted iron bars. He nudged me with the cracked toe of his black boot. ‘You are always naked? Do you ever wear clothes?'

I pushed myself up on to my elbows. It was all I could manage. Almost all. I spoke to him in my own language, ‘I have been accustomed to fine garments, Monsieur. I regret that you do not see me at my best at this moment.'

‘It speaks. French! And in an educated accent.' His grin was wide, leering. ‘Your
garments
(as you say) will hardly be fine here, but I will see that you have something to cover yourself with. After all, there will be ladies in our audience. Some of them young, and too innocent to be traumatised by that thing between your legs.' He stooped to look closer. Had I any strength, I would happily have killed him. ‘One part of you is man, at least.'

He laughed again, spat over his left shoulder. On his way out the door I asked for food to eat, water to drink and wash myself with.

‘You will have food enough, I'm sure. I sell vegetables and other things for the crowd to throw, and as for water, I will bring some. You may wash, or drink. Really, I hope that you will drink. A wild man, a primordial monster, should stink a little.'

He was as good as his word. That night the gates of the carnival opened and the crowds came in. I endured a hell that I never thought that I could speak of. It cost me something to survive as long as I did, something valuable that I am sure I will never recover. I was lucky to escape with my mind.

It was seven years before I met my master again, though I had long since finished thinking of him in those terms. He wandered, by chance, into the carnival as we cruised the coast of Nice after a four-year tour of Italy. Wandering through the lines of cages, jostled by the crowds, he recognised my voice at once. I was sitting in a pile of dross on the floor of my cage (it had never been cleaned, there were bones everywhere) dressed in a tattered brown loincloth. It had once been white. My face was exposed, but Monsieur Garnier had never been made to look at it. He would have had no reason to recognise me if I had been silent. I had not seen myself in years, but when I could think lucidly I felt the scars and pustules and knew that I was worse.

I was singing a song that the nuns had taught me long ago,
‘Au clair de la lune mon ami Pierrot prête-moi ta plume pour écrire un mot ma chandelle est mort. Je n'ai plus de feu ouvre-moi ta porte pour l'amour de Dieu.'

‘Erik?' I looked up into his fat, wide-eyed face. I did not know him, but the word he spoke itched at my brain like a phrase in a forgotten language. ‘Erik? My God, lad, is it you?'

I could not move; such shame filled me, such deep terror. I sat there, trembling in filth. He spoke to me softly, until I calmed enough to remember my life and tell him of my troubles, of my betrayal at the hands of our former foreman. It all returned to me as I spoke, along with a rising sensation of resentment that he, of all people, should find me like this! I was silent, my song departed.

Knowing that our time was brief, I hurried in my narrative, speaking as clearly as I could, clutching the bars with my hands which he touched, once, giving as much comfort as he could stand. He knew that it hurt me terribly to speak. Still, his eyes slid from my face.

I was used to baring my visage to the air, I knew how terrible it was, how the youngest children cried at the sight of it while the adolescents hurled their gobs of wilted lettuce wrapped around round apples of horse dung. How the men came from farms and dockyards to compare the hard part-healed lesions on my face to particular pieces of female anatomy. I was used to the way the young women either covered their nostrils with squares of perfumed silk and hurried past, or gawped up at me like over-bred hens drowning in a rainstorm, beginning to laugh after the horror-blanche had fled their faces and the nervous laughter bubbled up.

I'd made a lot of money for my owner. His investment paid off.

Garnier left quickly, almost as soon as I had finished speaking, after slipping me a knife so that I might slice free my wire-bound fingers. My hands were always fastened to make eating more difficult and increase the spectacle of my ‘act'. The padlocks on the door were filled with lead solder; when Garnier returned that night he brought a pair of strong bolt-cutters that sliced the lead like butter. We escaped without incident, disturbing neither dogs nor big the bull elephant that slept in its chains, and I spent the remainder of the year recovering in the sane, ivy-covered villa where Garnier rested between projects. I made a new mask, acquired new bearings, planned. There were vineyards on the property and I walked them, pacing the rows in my new tailored suits, learning the craft. At night I caught up on my music composition and architectural studies. The lush rococo forms I favoured were coming into vogue and I knew that with the right commission I could earn a lot of money while fulfilling a long-held, treasured dream combining both my prime interests. I took up boating for a while, early in the morning. I loved it then, when the world was quiet. I developed a taste for the sea.

6.

It seems to the world that politics and art are joined masters. Certainly, if one wishes to advance in the world, one must be seen to bow to convention. I will not bow, and my face was not made to wear a simper, so it would seem that my desires were doomed to be thwarted. This was not so. I paid a steep price to survive my life in the cage. Something vital was burnt out of me (and I was only half-human to begin with – I have not much spare) but something also was gained. My will was hardened. Even Monsieur Garnier acknowledged this change in me and expressed it in our relations. The former-Master became my mask, facing the world with his form and voice but strictly adhering to my decisions.

When Emperor Napoleon III decided that he wished to commission a new opera house he cleared 12,000 square metres of land on the site of his own choosing, in a green space, surrounded by many ancient, graceful trees and a few modern buildings. The Emperor himself opened the floor to submissions from architects, deciding who won on the strength of the plans. Of course I sent him my design. The signature said ‘Charles Garnier' in his own fine copperplate hand, but the drawings were mine. He was known, after all, and much more affable in conversation. He presented the blueprints before the throne.

There was never a question that we would be victorious. The Empress, I heard, had something to say about it. Charles reported to me that she greeted him in the gilded reception hall, saying, ‘What is this? It's not a style; it's neither Louis Quatorze, nor Louis Quinze, nor Louis Seize!'

Always the politician, knowing that our sponsor was within earshot, my master grinned down at her (the lady was buried beneath a wig that would have fitted out fifteen bald brunette maidens) and said, ‘Why Ma'am, it's Napoléon Trois, and you're complaining?!' Oh how I laughed to hear that!

In any case, we won, and I was hired (along with three incompetents) as an ‘assistant' to the architect. The public thought that I was meant to do odd jobs, to micro-manage, supervising the building on a menial level. This was exactly what I wanted. I could run around the site shrouded in the Persian robes I adopted and speaking in an accent, moving fast and silent on my long spider-legs, sneaking up on the workmen and ensuring that they scrimped on no part of the construction. None of the sculpted nudes which garnished this roof would experience the horror of a smashed, disjointed face.

Before construction began, I built a better mask. Painted wax above a chamois-lined mould made to fit my own strange features. I sculpted it in the style of a young, handsome pantomime rake with cherry red lips, full, coloured cheeks, and comfortable eye-holes. When I wore my sleek black wig above my scabrous skull the result was positively striking, and quite effective, provided no one attempted to come too close. As far as I know, it worked. Though, even then, there were rumours of a ghost.

The months became years as the walls rose up. The plain brick first, a skull to support the thin marble skin I made to face the world. Then the columns, the fine nude statuary with their full, luscious figures, the fine copper domes decorating the centre of the roof and the four corners, a design I borrowed from the palace of the Shah and softened for a Western audience. I supervised the construction of the foyer, lined with marble, spaces for the mirrors that I intended to fill the room with later.

The enormous Y-shaped marble staircase leading to the boxes, the centrepiece of my foyer, was half-finished when the Franco-Prussian war broke out and the city was sieged. The entirety of the national economy was diverted into war. Garnier and I continued construction, for a while, at our own expense. I made cuts where I could, in labour, not materials, beginning with the three sub-architects whose work had never pleased me well and who were largely untraceable once I laid their bodies on the soft soil of the unfinished basement. I fully intended to return and cover them, later.

We continued working in this way for a few months. Garnier and I woke each morning at four and remained at the site, hauling blocks and laying masonry as one with our minimal crew, but it could not continue. Eventually even our crippled message-boy was taken for the national guard. The city was besieged. Water and food were limited. We could not escape the gates of the town, we could not continue with the construction of the building. There was fighting in the streets.

I felt as though I were in a cage again, as though God Himself were thwarting me. I began, in anxiety, peeling the white flesh from the beds of my fingernails, until the blood flowed. I could focus on nothing, not even composing music, the passion that used to fill my nights.

I spent one entire week in bed, rising only to visit the facilities. I would not open the bedroom door, no matter how poor Charles hammered at it. When I rose from my bed at the end of this time, I was famished and my mind was filled with a tremendous, unspeakable clarity. I felt cleansed and resolved.

I wrote dear Monsieur Garnier a letter which I left prominently displayed on my favourite drafting desk, packed a large trunk and two valises with equipment and clothes (my strength rushed back to me in freedom like a river swollen by the thaw – I carried them easily) and vanished through the window into darkness to take my refuge in the basement of the Opera House I dreamed of, the seat of my defeat.

I lived there, quite happily, for some time while bullets flew and bodies fell above my head. I bought my food from the night market where my mask was never noticed and spent my days at my desk, designing fancies that I never expected the universe to see. It was strange, I could live with a ruined life – so long as the ruins were glorious. Mediocrity was and is a bane to me. This failure, being prominent, was something of a balm to my wounded soul.

Imagine my surprise when I found that after nearly five years and the fall of the Emperor, construction on my Opera House began in earnest once more, with my old friend Garnier at the helm! Of course, he assumed that I was long since dead. He grieved for me as he would have for his child, had he had one. I did not disabuse him. He had suffered enough on behalf of a friend. Besides I was a ghost by now; the Opera Ghost was what the little dancers called me. They build a fine mythology around what they thought of as my head. I helped them do it. Little things vanished, the less-talented members of the orchestra suffered minor accidents (a twisted ankle, a mysterious burn) until their places were filled with a minimum of competence. Occasionally I allowed myself the luxury of murder. I took care of that butcher who twisted the flies so that the scenery dropped at the wrong time, or rolled up in a flurry. All in all, the shows were better with the Ghost.

And all the while, in the darkness, in my underworld home, my own opus, the heart of my life, began to form, notes on white paper, seeking only a focal point, a theme to bring it whole into the world.

I have always been drawn to genius. Most of the girls were fine little fripperies, pretty enough, sweet to look at and listen to, minimally skilled. Only one shone with the sheen and weight of true gold in a pile of brass. Christine Daaé. It was my duty as a fellow artist to train her, to ready her to take that place of prominence that had so long been denied me. I found out all I could about her, listening in to conversations, questioning kind-hearted Madame Giry (a good source of information for one with the means to give adequate tips). She answered more freely than I would have expected, considering that my voice seemed to emerge from her lantern. Of all the opera staff, she alone seemed unafraid of the Ghost.

I uncovered Christine's current living situation, mourned for her when I learned about the death of her father, insinuated my way into discovering her goals. I found the ideal way to motivate her. She was not perfect, underneath the image of the muse beat the heart of a wild, passionate girl who could tantrum and storm with the best of them (not that I ever knew many), but her gifts were true and I must foster them. When the time came, I arranged an appropriately accidental meeting.