Phantom (40 page)

Paris was another shock for which I was totally unprepared.

The romantic old city which I had once explored as a wide-eyed, fugitive boy—the variegated Paris of Voltaire and Desmoulins—was being swept into oblivion beneath the hands of the emperor and his grand prefect, Baron Haussmann. As I made my way back from the demolished site of the new Opera in the grayish first light of day, it seemed to me that everything eccentric, artistic, and historic was being relentlessly destroyed beneath the imperial drive for wide-open spaces and uniformity. When I looked at the impersonal apartment blocks that were beginning to line the wide boulevards—a monument to the emperor's vulgarity, materialism, and rampant bad taste—there was a moment when I considered death too kind a fate for these tyrannical authors of destruction.

There had been much at fault in the old Paris, but it had never deserved to be gutted so mercilessly—beautiful buildings torn down for no better reason than that they simply stood in the way of progress. This was murder, rape, and wholesale pillage on a scale beyond imagination; the soul of the city had been bled white by a heartless and insensitive decimation.

I rode to the edge of the city, to the new slums where the impoverished had been driven by high rents in the wake of Haussmann's ruthless sweep of rebuilding. Many of the Parisian poor were homeless now, wandering the streets, like Arab nomads, in search of property within their means. I saw children sleeping in the gutters, wrapped in old newspapers, and my blood boiled at the sight of such cruel injustice.

It was here among the poor that I found lodgings. I had the means to stay in the finest hotel suites in Paris, but I instinctively shied away from the rejection of the well bred and the wealthy, the looks of suspicious distaste which always preceded the information that a particular hotel room or tasteful apartment was not available. Not available to
me
, was what they meant of course… a man in a mask must inevitably have some social stigma to hide. The poor were less particular as long as one could pay, but even so three landlords shut their doors hurriedly in my face before I found a man greedy enough to overcome his instinctive fear of me.

I paid the extortionate amount he required for hot water, and when I had bathed, I sat down and wrote the letter that would bring Jules Bernard from Belgium. His honest, well-dressed person, coupled with my money, would acquire me lodgings in a more salubrious area for a time, until the inevitable hounding and extortion forced me to move on. For the past five years he had acquired all my lodgings for me, and I was galled by my increasing dependence upon him, my growing inability to outface the stares of tailors and shoemakers. Whatever I required now, Jules obtained for me—everything from shirts to morphine. In Russia and the Orient it had been possible to go about my business with some degree of freedom, but here in the Mecca of the civilized world, where everything was so respectable, I felt increasingly like a hunted spider, hiding in a web. I was rapidly losing the buoyancy and optimism of youth; I knew that I would starve now, rather than sing or display myself in any way before a crowd; I preferred to work in the dark these days, unseen and unheard. And for that I needed Jules.

I knew that he would come immediately upon receipt of my letter, simply because he dared not refuse.

And as soon as he came, I would set him to work.

Six weeks later I had everything I needed.

For a respectable man Jules had turned out to be the most accomplished spy. I knew all that I needed to know about Garnier and his designs, and I had in my employ some of the best stonemasons in the region. Once Jules had passed the word in the right quarters, human greed brought the men one by one to my door to face my harsh and exacting scrutiny. I was prepared to pay for the best and I rejected ruthlessly until I found it.

On first sight of Garnier's plans my instinct had been to abandon the whole project and return to Belgium at once, for the exterior design filled me with despair. I saw at once that the Paris Opera would be ugly and unoriginal, as squat and unlovely as a huge toad planted on the bleak new Parisian landscape. I particularly disliked the colonnaded loggia across the face of the building. The whole concept was vulgar, not to say profane—and yet…

And yet it was grandiose, conceived on a scale of breathtaking ambition that brought me back to the plans again and again. It would dwarf the palace at Mazanderan with its three-acre site, seventeen floors, and five cellars below street level. This building, with its fireproof girders and many modern refinements, was reaching out to the future and represented a truly monstrous feat of engineering. Since it seemed that Garnier's gross and forbidding child must indeed come into the world, then I intended to preside over a birth which would inevitably prove difficult and protracted. It is possible to love an ugly child if you have tended it for long enough, nursed it through danger, and buried yourself in its future. In time that loggia would seem no worse to me than an unfortunate birthmark, a sad blemish that would fill me with loving pity and make me long to protect the unfortunate building from the comments of its cruel critics. It would be beautiful inside, with its magnificent grand escalier, its marbled columns, mirrored foyers, and chandeliers…

It would be beautiful inside…

When I had completed the estimate for the stonework, I wrote directly to Garnier. I knew a lot about him by now. Born in the notorious Rue Mouffetard, one of the worst slums in Paris, son of a blacksmith with social aspirations, he had only escaped his appointed place in his father's business because he proved physically incapable of working the huge bellows. A nervous, delicate, gifted man, he had clawed his way into the middle classes through his own restless industry and determination and now resided with his young wife in the Boulevard St. Germain. Excitable and eccentric, the man possessed the imagination of a true artistic genius, and I knew he would see me, if nothing else.

No true artist could have resisted the provocative flattery of my outrageous proposal.

Garnier indicated a chair on the opposite side of his untidy desk and turned down the gas lamp in accordance with my request. If he was surprised by the mask he gave no sign of it as he sat back and studied me calmly in the half light, pressing the tips of his fingers together, like a church steeple.

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear from the outset, monsieur," he said with an aggression that rather amused me. "I have asked you here tonight purely out of interest. Your proposals were so utterly
unorthodox
that I confess I could not resist the opportunity of meeting the author of such colossal impertinence. May I ask what makes you think I would accede to bribery?"

I raised my shoulders in a careless shrug.

"Every man has his price. You are, if I may say so without giving offense, relatively unknown in your chosen field and the government has naturally taken advantage of that fact in the matter of your remuneration."

He sat upright in his chair suddenly.

"Meaning?" he challenged softly.

"Meaning that while it is usual for a public architect to have his fees set at three percent of expenditure, I understand yours have been fixed at two. Why should you feel morally beholden to a government which intends to cheat you from the very outset? And you must know what will inevitably happen. Every time you run over budget you will face accusations of artificially inflating expenditure in order to increase your architectural fees. You will be comfortable, of course—very much more comfortable than you have been up till now on your annual eight thousand francs as a city architect. But you may rest assured, monsieur, that the government of this land has absolutely no intention of making you a millionaire in return for the work of a lifetime. And you will be an old man by the time this building is completed."

He laughed suddenly.

"I'm only thirty-six, my friend. How long do you think it's going to take me to complete this work? If it took ten years—which God forbid!—I should hardly be in my dotage."

I smiled unseen behind the mask.

"If you finish it in ten—which you won't!—you will still be broken in spirit and health from doing battle every waking hour of every day with cheeseparing bureaucracy and thieving contractors. You'll be a physical wreck before they're done with you, Garnier—you're just too naive yet to know it! So be sensible and accept my compensation. I offer you the opportunity to feather a comfortable little nest of your own. Is there nothing you want to build for yourself and your wife?"

He frowned, pushed back his chair with an irritable gesture, and got to his feet restlessly. A small fellow, physically unimposing, he carried himself with a certain arrogance that began to trouble me. This man was proud of his humble origins, proud enough to have defiantly settled within fifteen minutes' walk of the slum in which he had been born.

Was it really true that everyone had a price?

"Suppose my moral objections forbid me to take this money for my own use?" he said suddenly.

I shrugged and prepared to alter tack a little.

"When you receive demands ad nauseam to use fewer men and cheaper materials at every stage of construction, you may find it useful to have a little extra funding that the government knows nothing about."

He nodded, as though that was something he could better accept.

"You have submitted two estimates, with widely differing figures," he continued. "Perhaps you would care to explain your purpose in that."

I sighed; it was tedious to be obliged to spell out every last little detail, and 1 did not for one moment believe he was as simple as he was trying to make out.

"The higher estimate is for the ministry. The lower represents the true fee that I would expect to receive."

He looked at me in some astonishment.

"Those figures are quite untenable," he protested. "You would have to be operating at a loss to keep to them. Do you usually work for nothing, monsieur?"

"Only when it amuses me to do so. I am a wealthy man, Garnier—you need have no doubt of my ability to finance this little indulgence of mine… or to purchase your goodwill in the matter."

"This is a government project," he pointed out sternly.

"You must realize that there are correct channels of procedure that will bind me hand and foot."

I laughed.

"There are few things on this planet more open to corrupt practice than a government project. I could hide for many years in the paperwork generated for the Ministry of Fine Arts. The final choice of contractors will be yours."

He came out from behind the desk and stood over me.

"I don't think contracting is your normal line of business. You are an architect, aren't you?"

Again I smiled grimly behind the mask. This man was no fool. What had he guessed?

"My competence extends to many fields," I said coolly. "For the moment I choose to contract. There is no question of professional rivalry between us."

"But there could have been," he persisted shrewdly. "I think I am correct in assuming that, am I not?"

I declined to answer him, and my hands clenched automatically on the arms of the chair. The old claustrophobic sensation of caged bars closed in around me and I suddenly knew I had been a fool to come here tonight. I had been terribly mistaken. This man was as honest as the day was long. What in God's name had made me think I could get away with such outrageous madness?

"I am sorry to have wasted your time," I said grimly, getting to my feet. "Forget this happened—forget you ever saw me. I shall not trouble you again."

"One moment." He was staring at the mask with a sudden intense interest that made me deeply uneasy. "Please sit down again," he continued with a new cordiality in his voice. "I would like you to see something."

I sank into the chair with a terrible feeling of foreboding. Not since the day I woke in that Gypsy cage had I ever felt quite so deeply trapped. I realized with horror that it might be necessary to kill him now in order to escape from my own arrogant stupidity. And his wife was in the apartment.

She had opened the door to me and I had seen her suck in a startled breath before she collected herself sufficiently to direct me to her husband's study. What on earth should I do if she started to scream?

I was a fool, an unspeakable fool! When would I ever learn to keep away from people?

From a file in the bottom drawer of his desk Garnier extracted a handful of papers and passed them to me.

"I think you will recognize these designs," he said.

I stared at the papers in my hand with disbelief.

"How did you get hold of them?" I demanded passionately. "
How
?"

He did not answer for a moment. I watched him cross the room and return with two glasses of brandy. Giving me one, he sat upon the edge of the desk and took a sip from his own glass, his curiously arranged features betraying a certain repressed excitement.

"I had a tutor at the School of Fine Arts," he began conversationally, "an elderly, rather eccentric fellow who took an interest in promising students. He was a good-natured old man, very interesting in his own way—had a stock of good stories to tell, if you had the patience to bear with his rambling. Before he died he entrusted me with these papers, asked me to keep them safe… told me that if I ever had the good fortune to come across the man who drew them I would have the honor of knowing the greatest architect in the history of the world. I always thought it a pretty tale, an old man's fantasy… How old were you when you designed these buildings, Erik… seven… eight?"

I let the papers fall in my lap. For a moment all I could see was my cheerful, pompous, opinionated tutor lying silenced forever. His visits had been the light of my childhood; before it was boarded up, I had stood at the attic window for hours on end, waiting for that first glimpse of his carriage which would send me running down the stairs in wild excitement to the front door…

"What else did he tell you besides my name?" I muttered at last.