Masque (20 page)

And yet, they were sentient. I had to remind myself. Those eyes looked at me and knew me, loved me, and that knowledge struck me like a knife. I wiped my reeking mouth with the back of my hand, knowing that if I could only stand to love a mask it wasn't love at all but a delusion unworthy of enduring.

The strange spell that had held me to the chair, the shock of sudden cold and trembling, had passed. I found that I could move. I tried to speak, ‘Erik.'

I had forgotten about Raoul.

The young man was still standing there, holding the mask in one hand and the revolver in the other, aiming the black muzzle into his captive's chest. When I spoke he wheeled round to face me, dropping the mask to the floor with a clatter. He said, ‘Close your eyes, Christine.'

I saw him bring his foot down on to the face that I knew, deforming the wax with the weight of his body, destroying it irreparably. It flattened, then shattered. He said, ‘Close your eyes. I'm going to get rid of the monster. You don't need to see this.'

How could I have stopped him? I was totally unarmed. True, the fallen men around me had hold of their guns, but when I tried to rise and reach them my legs gave way beneath me and I fell to the ground. The sound that I made, landing on tile, distracted Raoul. He turned to see what had happened to me, jerking as he squeezed the trigger so that the barrel pulled a little to the left as it fired. Not that it did any good for Erik.

I saw a gout of blood burst from the new hole beneath his ribs, I smelled the burnt stench of cordite and smelled something terrible, like a dead rat with a burst stomach split by the sun on the sidewalk. I tried to scramble to my feet again, my legs felt like blocks of wood beneath my white skirts.

Raoul looked at Erik, face flooded with disgust, about to fire at him again. I called out to stop him, ‘Raoul, no! Help me!' I gave into my weakness.

The boy shoved the still-smoking gun into his belt and left the body where it hung. He came, running, to my aid, taking me in those well-formed arms of his and laying kiss after kiss on my cold, wet face. I had no idea that I was weeping until I saw the glimmer of my tears on his red lips. He stroked my hair, drew me up into the heat of his body, so that I leaned against him as we sprawled across the floor.

‘Christine, Christine, you can stop shaking.' He rocked me in his arms like a colicky child, ‘The monster is dead, and you are safe now. You are safe, and pure, and we shall be married. You'll leave here with me, I'll carry you, we'll go out and get help for my brother and the men.'

I could not take my eyes off the corpse.

Raoul struggled a little, lifting me back into the chair. He was winded and still aching from his wound. He would need assistance rescuing his men. I watched him thinking, pacing the floor between Erik and myself, coming to conclusions. Finally he stopped and turned to me, ‘I'm going to need some help, my darling. You cannot walk yet, you cannot come with me. The monster is dead. You are safe now.' He looked to the lightly breathing bodies on the floor, ‘My brother will need a doctor's care.'

He came to where I was sitting, lifted my hand to his lips, ‘Christine, my darling, I must leave you here for a few minutes. One of the doors we passed opened out on to the street. I must go there and get help. Any help I can. I will have to leave you here for a few minutes.'

I shook my head, how could I remain in the same room as the body of the man that I had betrayed with my silence?

‘Christine, you'll be safe, I swear it. You will be safe. I will not be more than a few minutes.' And with that, he left me, fleeing through the doorway he had entered through into the darkness, seeking out the light again.

I knew that I did not have more than a quarter of an hour. Raoul was moving quickly, spurred by grief and fear. Soon this cavern would be filled with people, prying eyes, policemen. They would take Erik's body, drag it into the daylight, naked. I could not allow that to happen. I had to make a decision.

I forced myself to stand, expecting to find myself sprawling again. My legs held. Somehow I made it over to the pillar he was pinned against. I hate to admit that I was fighting my own repugnance at the sight of him. Every step I took forward I had to force. And then, when I got there, I had to look. You see, I thought I owed him that much at least, an unflinching, unafraid look, into his eyes. It almost didn't matter that he couldn't see it.

And then I closed my eyes, strained my body up on tiptoes, and kissed him once upon the lips. Blind, they felt human. They tasted sweet, still warm.

I drew back, as though burnt. I thought I felt a breath between them.

I reached forward, touched his neck. There was a slow, strong pulse.

Examining the wound I saw that the bullet had passed through the flesh above his left hip and exited again, lodging in the tile behind him, sundering a painted Krishna from his woman. There was a chance, a small one, that it had not pierced any major organs, that the stench of death that emerged from the wound was just the odour of himself.

Moving in a panic now, I fetched the chair and stood upon it and undid the rope that bound him to the wall-sconce. I used a paring knife from the hotel trolley to split the strands and left it there, in a pile with the rope. Erik was very thin, I did manage to catch hold of him beneath the shoulders and lower him to the ground without either dropping him or getting much blood on to me. I could not lift him, I wasn't strong enough.

I laid him out flat onto the tiles, lifted his jacket and shirt up far enough to expose the wound. It was clean, like a cored apple. I fetched the scarf that I had used to bind my mouth and wet it again in the water from the basin. I used this to bind the wound, hoping that it would stop the bleeding, I pulled it as tight as I could. I watched the white scarf turn red. It would have to be enough.

There was no place I could drag him but my bed, so that was where I took him. I drew him the few feet across the floor, entering the depression and hauling him in after me. Once he was settled I checked his breathing – still strong – and before I covered him, while there was still time, I ran to my desk and wrote him a note. Ten words on a white slip of paper that I folded into his pocket before covering him up with layers of silk rugs.

I knew my time was very brief now. I had to hurry. I scrambled out of my bed to cover my tracks. Thank God, there weren't many. A few smears of blood on the floor, easily wiped up. I was disposing of the rag I'd used when I heard Raoul coming at the head of what sounded like a small army of men. Knowing that I would have to answer fewer questions if he seemed to find me unconscious, I sprawled out face down on the floor and began breathing shallowly. It was only half acting. I was beyond exhausted.

I heard the boy cry out when he saw me, felt him lifting me into my arms, checking my face, my throat, laying kisses on my eyelids. I opened my eyes to put a stop to it.

The fear fled his face, the ruddy colour coming back to it. He spoke to the people who had followed him into the room, ‘She's alive! He did not kill her in his escape!'

A shadow fell over me, a middle-aged policeman hunkering down to speak, ‘The fiend is not here! Are you certain that you shot him?'

Raoul looked angry for a moment, gestured over to the pillar. ‘You'll see his blood there. The place where the bullet passed through his body. There is a hole in the wall.'

A deputy, I knew his rank by the small size of his hat, examined the wall and said, ‘The lad's right, sir! This pillar is all bloody. And look,' he lifted up a piece of rope, the pearl-handled paring knife, ‘this is how he done it! He must have had the knife up his sleeve the whole time. He must have been waiting for this opportunity.'

The Chief looked at me with new respect, laying his fat hand onto Raoul's shoulder, he said, ‘Your fiancée is an incredibly lucky lady.'

Raoul hugged me close to his breast, rocking me gently. ‘Yes, she is. We both are.'

The police searched the rooms, as far as they dared to, but of course no one thought to examine my bed. I asked the officer who searched Erik's room to fetch me the folder he found there, a black bound thing, full of musical notations: the full score of Don Juan, nearly completed. I hid it as soon as I returned home to the Countess. For five years the manuscript remained obscure in a drawer, growing a shroud of its own fine dust. It eventually made my name as a singer, and the revenue from it has supported me adequately for the last fifteen years.

They needed twenty men to remove all the bodies.

I left first, on a stretcher. Raoul insisted.

After a search that lasted two days and turned up nothing (an anxious time for me) Raoul decided with the managers to seal up the secret passage leading from the office to the hidden stairs. They used a solid slab of marble this time, to keep out the Ghost. In addition to this, every outdoor entrance they found was filled with earth and cemented over. The newspapers said that it was an appropriate tomb for the Opera Monster. Who knows, if Erik did die (and I have no way of knowing otherwise), I would say that was right.

Philippe woke from his slumber in his own huge bed, the day after his adventure in the basement. He had no memory at all of the week proceeding, and he had to be shown the letter that Madame Giry wrote to convince him that any of it had happened at all. The soldiers recovered in a charity hospital, and were totally paid off.

As for me, I lost everything. In order to avoid a scandal I volunteered nothing of my motives, agreeing with everything that Raoul surmised. Not even my fiancée could keep my name from the papers, but I was depicted as the delicate victim, who stayed pure. My name was touted through society. I found myself much in demand at the ‘better' kinds of parties, where the people of the theatre could never go.

Raoul and I were married three weeks later, in the church in Brittany. The priest performed the wedding without charging us. I wore a new snowy dress, a hand-made lace veil, and the roses in my bouquet were white. The Countess and Philippe were our only witnesses. We honeymooned for two weeks in Florence. I settled in to being a wife. It was a life without song.

15.

I sang
Don Juan Triumphant
again tonight, it was the tenth revival tour. The opera is a perennial hit, and I am always, always cast as Doña Ana. It has got to the point that I feel like I am playing a parody of myself as I once was; the passionate, dark-haired post-adolescent who wanted nothing out of life but the freedom to sing. Well, I finally have it. It comes at a cost.

I stood under the new, hot gaslights, greasepaint melting down my face, my greying scalp itching beneath the wig I wear, a mockery of my own former chestnut curls. I clasped my hands above my white dress, in agony at my loss of innocence, singing, ‘For oftentimes it is when Pegasus seems winning the race, he sprains a wing and down we tend, like Lucifer hurled from heaven!'

Byron would laugh, if he were not so long buried. Erik and I inverted his romantic parody, applying his lines to our own script in a way that held the plot before a mirror so that comedy reversed itself to tragedy. Well, now it has become comedy again. The Don Juan that I sing to now on stage is fifteen years my junior. He woos me like a gentleman rogue; I simper like a girl.

Leaving the stage, I knew that Raoul was out there, somewhere, in the audience. He comes to watch every one of my performances, though since the divorce was finalised in court (a scandal I weathered, though it nearly did unseat me from my chances at fame) he has respected my wishes, ceased sending his sad little flowers, and stopped attempting to contact me after the final curtain winds down.

It has been over a decade since the last time I found him, uninvited, in my rooms. I am certain that Madame Giry had much to do with that. After the suicide of Little Meg (who could not live without beauty), she was, in pity, promoted to House Inspector in charge of security. She is the first woman to ever hold that position and, at sixty-five years old, she remains effective in the role. There have been no more robberies in the foyer; she routed all the pickpockets. There have been fewer fights among the Lords. I needed her help. Even after the first round of paperwork went through the courts I am convinced that Raoul still believed that someone else, some unseen presence, was forcing me to leave him. He couldn't understand why on earth I would want to leave the life he built for me, safe in his shadow, where the only thing that worried my pretty little head was maintaining my body to build status for him.

Even after five years of marriage I doubt that he rightly heard a single word that came out of my mouth. Of course, by the time we were married, when I buried my hopes in favour of him, nearly every word I spoke was couched in lies. It took me half a decade to build up the nerve to start telling the truth.

By that time my luck had turned. His brother Philippe, poor man, never recovered from the death of La Sorelli. I remember going with Raoul to visit him, three years after my abduction. We found him lying in his enormous bed; it was absurd in the small rooms he took in the Hotel de Bouvier after ceding the mansion to my husband as a wedding gift. He called the bed ‘the site of my greatest joy in life' and insisted that it make the move along with his other, more portable possessions. I believe that the workmen were forced to remove the two huge panes of the picture window that the room boasted – a feat they managed, somehow, without breaking either sheet of glass – in order to force its passage to the room.