Invitation: A Phoenix of the Opera Story
HE HAD BEEN living on scraps. Even in the short time since the disaster, he had grown gaunt, shedding weight as if he meant to be bones and to lie down in his grave. There was a sharpness to the angles at his shoulders and hips. His clothes sagged in mourning for their lost splendor.
Meg looked away, distraught by the evidence of his desire for death, angry with him for his weakness. The scarred, damp walls of the underground vault yawned like an open grave. She shivered and drew her cloak tight around her.
He had not come here, in flight from the mob, to escape death but to welcome it on his own terms. All his former strength had turned against him. He, his worst enemy.
At first, Meg had thought his apathy was a sign of her victory, for he no longer ranted against her or demanded that she leave him. She began to come and go as she pleased. Teach me, as you taught her. She came and sang for him, her voice a pale echo of Christine's. The love of the music, not her voice, certainly not her talent as modest as it was, drew his reluctant observations. She took these as capitulation to her designs. Soon, however, she realized that the lessons she had coaxed out of him were no more real than Carlotta's tears on stage. His consent was indifference. Her presence meant nothing to him. How could it? He was no longer there himself. Vacant, a shell of what he had once been.
How long would it take to stoke the fire that had burned so fiercely in him? How long would she have to wait to see once more the intractable will return to those eyes?
On cat's paws, Meg approached him. He lay on an outcropping of stone, his forearm across his face. Around the edges, she could make out the irregular texture of his cheek, the scarlet hue of the disfigure flesh that had always marked his fate.
He stirred in his drowsiness, turned his back to her. "What do you want?" Rolling thunder, his voice resonated in the hollows of the grottoe.
So much anger. It buoyed her, a distant light on a dark sea of despair. It promised a path to shore. Anger was hope, a sign that his will had not yet been broken.
"Here," she said to his back. She held out the folded sheet of paper, waited for him to turn to see what she had brought. But he lay as still as the rock, the expansion of his ribcage the only evidence of life. "Maman says that you are to come to our apartments and dine with us tonight."
She waited, counting the beats of her heart. Then he unfolded with the languor of a sloth, lowering his legs to the ground, rising to a sitting position. A slight turning of the head to glance at her, keeping the blighted side of his face averted. He nodded toward the floor, jaw clenched. There he had dropped his mask.
"You don't need to…"
"Give it to me." There it was again—the spark of will in his voice and anger in the heavy brow, a shine to the eye as it fixed upon the mask.
Meg picked up the mask and brushed the surfaces clean of dust and grit. Then she handed it to him. Once it was in place, Erik stood and walked past her with no regard whatsoever for the invitation that she had brought him. Instead, he rummaged through several wine bottles until he found one not quite empty. He swished the contents, raised the bottle to his lips, and drank.
Meg watched the hard knot in his throat rise and fall with each swallow. He did not stop until the bottle was drained. He set it among the others.
"You can't keep drinking your meals." She knew it was a mistake the moment she said it. She should cajole, soothe, and persuade him.
He grabbed one of the bottles by the neck and threw it across the vacuous cavern. It crashed against the stone wall at Meg's back. She cringed at the sound of broken glass, squeezed her neck deep into her collarbone. Shards scattered on the floor, barely inches from her.
"You have no right to be here!" he howled, a wounded and desperate creature. "You have no right…"
Before he could grab another bottle as a weapon, she rushed forward and swept them out of his reach. They rolled and clinked against each other on the rough surface of the floor.
"You don't have to do this." Her voice, no longer sweet or docile, matched his anger with frustration and the certainty of truth. "It won't change anything. Not one thing that has already happened."
His eyes fixed on her, his lips peeled away from his teeth, and these clenched. His hands balled into fists, but he made no move to strike her.
She stood her ground.
"Do you want to hit me?" she asked, with only a touch of wonder in her voice. The brief burst of frustration and courage that had propelled Meg forward had spent itself. She could feel her knees tremble.
Inch by inch, he, too, abandoned his threatening pose. His body released its tension, a sighing of muscles and sinew.
"Why, Meg? Why won't you just leave me in peace?"
Again, Meg heard the strains of defeat. She wanted to sob, but she bit her lower lip and held out the sheet of paper for him to take. "This is an invitation to dinner. We expect you tonight. Come just after sunset."
He stared at the lavender sheet, so neatly folded, but he did not lift a finger to take it. He turned away.
Before she left him, Meg set the invitation under an empty wine bottle next to the cold stone perch where he lay staring up at the dark ceiling.
#
ERIK DREAMED OF running along the flies above the stage. Below him, a performance of Rigoletto. Christine was sitting on Carlotta's back as if the older woman were a rug. Face down on the stage, the diva beat the boards with feet and fists but could not budge Christine. No one paid any attention to the Diva's rant. Center left, the ballet corps pirouetted and rushed downstage and upstage, back and forth, endlessly, red smiles painted on the alabaster skin. Erik laughed, but his laughter was impossible to hear over the jubilant score the orchestra was playing. From behind him, Madeleine Giry's voice rang out, even over the din below, which continued but softened now, as if the stage were miles instead of feet below Erik.
She stood on the narrow beam of the wooden bridge, heedless of the heights, arm bent at the elbow, hand on hip, a thin cane in the other hand. He asked her what she was doing up in the flies. It was dangerous. If she lost her footing, she would fall. He glanced over his shoulder to see the stage miles and miles below them.
"Fall? Who do you think you are, Erik?"
Before he could ask her meaning, she grabbed the ropes on either side and began to jerk and swing them.
It was not possible! He lost his balance. He reached out for a rope, anything, but even the boards beneath his feet were gone. He fell backwards, staring up at Madeleine. She looked down at him, a scowl deforming her features. From behind her skirts, Meg, incredibly small, peered down at him. He could see her tug at her mother's skirts, pleading voicelessly with Madeleine. Erik continued to fall, his stomach in his throat, unable to catch his breath.
At any moment, he would crash to the stage, his bones pulverized from the incredible distance of his fall.
Meg reached out for him, her arm stretching across the gulf. "Sh. We've prepared all your favorite foods."
He blinked. Meg served him, from a tureen the size of a wine cask, a rich, dark broth with bits of carrot and chunks of meat. He was sitting at a table that spanned the stage from wing to wing. Carlotta was gnawing at a leg of some animal that must have been the size of an elk. Piangi dipped his fingers in a bowl and brought the dripping brown chocolate to his mouth. His eel-like tongue lapped the sauce from his fingers one by one. Across from him, stage left, sat Madeleine. She buttered a croissant and took tiny bird-like bites from it.
He became aware that music was rising from the empty orchestra pit. Christine danced around the table, a worried frown on her face. Looking through and around Erik, she stared out towards the audience as if looking for someone.
He thought if he could reach out and touch her the next time she spiraled past, maybe she would sit with him. But Meg stepped between them, and Christine spun on tiptoe to the far end of the table.
"Here, try this. We made it special for you." Meg lifted the lid on a large silver platter that sat in front of him. "It's only for you."
A drop of clear liquid hit his hand. He looked up at Meg to see that she was weeping. She held the lid and nodded at the platter. When Erik turned to look down, he gasped and pushed as far away as he could.
Despite the roasted skin and the apricots stuffed in the open mouth, the features were clearly recognizable.
So, Raoul had also been invited to dinner.
#
ERIK BROKE FROM the depths of the dream with a howl. His shirt was drenched. The last images lingered. On the silver platter, Raoul's head, the skin browned crisp from the oven, cooked apricots stuffed in his mouth, slices of roasted potatoes and onions like garlands around his neck.
He thought he might be ill. An acidic taste at the back of his throat.
He stumbled across the cavern floor to his barrel of drinking water. He dipped the ladle into the water, drained it, and dipped again until his thirst was slaked and his stomach settled under the cool weight.
He leaned on the rim of the barrel, breathed, and tried to shake off the horror of the dream. Would he ever sleep in peace again?
Dreams had often plagued him. But since the disaster, there had been no respite. When he closed his eyes, he was forever cast into his own private hell. Set upon a rack, he lived real and imaginary torments.
Raoul. He had certainly wanted to kill him. Only Christine's love for the man had stayed Erik's hand.
A touch of lavender caught Erik's eye. It lay pinioned under an empty flask. It would stay there until the rats ate it, for all he cared.
He turned his back on the sheet of paper, but he could still see it. A challenge. In the dream, he had dined with them. Against his will. And to his horror. Was he afraid? Was he cowering in dread of a simple dinner? Was he such a coward?
Madeleine Giry had saved his life. She had done his bidding. Without her, survival in the bowels of the opera house would have been nearly impossible. Cut off from the world above, madness, if not death, would have been his fate.
Betrayal. He tried to ease the tightening in his chest. Had she not been among them? His enemies, who prepared a feast for him, a feast of gendarmes and chains to carry him away to prison. Was she not a conspirator—along with Christine, his sweet Christine—in the trap they had set to catch the Opera Ghost?
He swept the empty bottle aside and picked up the lavender sheet.
#
"MEG, ARE YOU sure about this?" Madeleine placed the hot croissants in a basket lined with a linen cloth. She covered them with the edges of the same cloth to keep them warm.
"He's starving himself."
"But will he even come?"
Meg lit the candles, for it was far darker inside than out. On the far horizon, a glow remained from the setting sun. Dusk, not yet night. "He will. He must."
"Ma petite, despite my warnings, you have always been obsessed with this man. He's dangerous, Meg. I, too, once thought that I could save him. But the violence is…"
"Don't, Maman. Let's not argue again."
Mme. Giry sighed and returned to the small kitchen.
Meg glanced through the doors of the balcony to the diminishing light. The balcony opened over a small, private garden. Their rooms were well situated, three floors up. Not far in the distance, Meg could just make out the hollowed, burnt remains of the Opera Populaire. The fire had blackened its roof, part of which had collapsed onto the floors below. Disputes over the property title had stalled any efforts to restore or to remove the building, and the behemoth was destined to remain a blight on the landscape for an indefinite time.
The light was fast fading.
"He won't come until it's dark," she told herself. And yet she kept listening for him, an eye always on the door, willing him to appear on the other side in the hallway.
"The stew will scorch if we do not start soon," Mme. Giry called from the kitchen. "How long should we wait?"
A shadow fell across the tablecloth.
"I hope I have not made you wait too long." Erik stood on the balcony. "I came up the lattice. The garden is nice, but it has no roses." In his hand, a spray of forget-me-nots.
"They're beautiful." Meg took the flowers from Erik's gloved hand. "Come, sit." She left him to go to the kitchen. "He's here," she whispered to her mother.
"I know. I heard." As Meg arranged the flowers in a vase, her mother carried out a large serving bowl of stew. "Vite, ma petite."
"I'm coming." Meg took in a deep breath too excited to note the gentle fragrance of the bouquet.
#
ERIK DRAPED HIS cape over a side chair by the balcony doors and sat at the head of the small table. He was relieved that it was nothing like the one in his dream. This table easily accommodated four. Six would be cozy. More would prove uncomfortable.
He noticed Madeleine staring at his gloves. He hesitated only a moment before removing them. He laid them to the side of his plate.
The smells from the kitchen had already greeted him on his ascent. By the time he had reached the balcony, he was weak with hunger, his mouth watering and his stomach twisting like an irascible rodent inside him.
"Let me," said Meg. She took his bowl and served a steaming ladleful of stew. He swallowed several times as she set it before him. "Lamb, root vegetables, chick-peas, onions."
"A country recipe," added Madeleine from the opposite side of the table. She took a bite, then another.
Erik held the spoon as if it might struggle to get away. He forced his fingers to relax. He could feel Meg watching him, waiting for him to begin. He dipped the spoon into the rich brown broth, brought it to his lips. The warmth and scent of basil and thyme, a hint of sage, a bay leaf or two, made his eyes water. The taste of it on his tongue unleashed his ravenous hunger.
"Pass Erik the croissants, Meg."
Reluctant to stop, but unable to resist the smell of warm yeast, Erik took the first croissant from the top. He dipped half of it into the broth. In two bites, the croissant was no more. He realized that he was eating like a glutton when he heard the absence of sounds around him. Madeleine and Meg both had stopped to watch him.
He set the spoon down and dabbed at the gravy on his lips and in the corners of his mouth. "May I have another croissant?" he asked. Without a word, Meg passed him the basket. He took one and put it on a side plate, thought better of it, and took another and placed it by the first.
After the stew, Madeleine served the main course—roast duck in orange sauce with sautéed green beans, a side of mushrooms in butter and wine sauce. Next Meg brought out a salad of cold vegetables drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette. Wine came with each new dish. Meg topped off his glass, whenever it was low. All too soon, he felt mildly dazed by the warm comfort of the wine and the fullness of his stomach.
"I hope you've room for dessert."
"Meg thought you might like something exotic, a Spanish recipe." Madeleine came and removed his empty plate. She disappeared along with Meg into the kitchen.
#
COLD, SWEET, CREAMY. The Spanish flan, a thick custard—eggs, sugar, vanilla, cream, an afterthought of cinnamon—lay under a thin glaze of burnt sugar. The first bite slid down his throat, soothing every ache that he had ever had in his life. For one glorious moment, he forgot everything but the pleasure of the milky sweetness. He scraped the tines of his fork across the surface of the saucer to scoop up the last drops of caramel nectar.
"Would you like more?"
He handed the empty plate to Meg and nodded.
Madeleine sat back in her chair across from him and smiled. "You haven't been taking care of yourself, Erik."
Meg set another serving on a clean saucer in front of him. He took a bite and savored the subtle vanilla cream as it coated his tongue. But Madeleine's tone had unsettled him, his pleasure, muted by a stab of betrayal.
"It's gone. Everything." He held back the accusation that surged at the back of his tongue. So, too, was Madeleine. She had always been there for him, had given him refuge, had eased his imprisonment in the caverns below the opera house with small kindnesses and later had acted as his emissary to the world above.
"You went too far, Erik."
He pushed the small plate away, stood. Hands braced on the table, he leaned forward. "You told him where to find me."
"Erik, lower your voice. Our neighbors will hear."
"You let them into my world!" He would not, could not lower his voice. She had betrayed him. "I trusted you!"
"You killed Buquet."
"He deserved it."
"You took Christine against her will and would have…"
Stunned, he waited for her to finish. But she stopped herself in time.
Meg sat, head bowed, her blond hair screening her features.
In a softer voice, Madeleine began again. "You destroyed your world, Erik. Not me, not even the count. You."
He knew the sound of truth. Was that not why he had buried himself in his own hell?
"It's done now. You can't undo it. But you don't deserve to die alone in that crypt of yours."
Meg was making muted, choppy noises, straining to keep back the tears. What could he say to her? He was unworthy of her pity.
He cringed to see himself through their eyes. They thought him capable of such wicked deeds. Surely only a monster would…
"I let them go." The words were for him alone. He hadn't meant to say them out loud. Then with a surge of hope, he repeated, "I let them go."
Tears crested in Madeleine's eyes. Her chest swelled, and she smiled at him. "Yes. Yes. You did. And that's why…"
Pounding. Three times. "Open the door." The wood shook with the force of their blows. "This is the police."
"The neighbors!" whispered Meg. Her face streaked with tears, the tip of her nose red, she whispered, "You must go quickly!" She pulled at Erik's arm.
"Vite, mes enfants. Vite." Madeleine waved Erik and Meg toward the balcony. She drained the wine from Erik's glass, collected glass, saucer, napkin, and utensils from his place at the table, and rushed them to the kitchen.
Erik knew it was useless. Would they not be waiting below in the garden, too?
When Madeleine reappeared, Erik was still present, the gendarmes pounded again on the door, demanding entrance. Then, a brief silence before they rammed the door. The wood began to splinter.
Erik shook his head. Nowhere to go.
#
THE DOOR CRASHED free of its hinges and plummeted to the floor. Three officers tumbled in after it, one falling prone on top of the felled door.
Erik grabbed his cape, stepped onto the back of the officer who had fallen forward with the door, punched his fist into the center of a second officer's face, and rammed his shoulder into the third officer who had remained standing just inside the threshold of the door. The force of his assault pushed the man hard across the narrow passageway and into the door of another apartment.
Before they could recover, Erik jumped over the railing and bounded down the flight of stairs three steps at a time.
The officer in the hallway was the first to react. He rushed down the stairs just seconds after Erik. Before anyone else could give chase, Meg screamed. She stepped over the prone man who had just begun to scramble to his hands and knees. She grabbed the gendarme in the doorway, whose nose Erik had likely broken, by the lapels of his uniform. Shaking him as hard as she could, disregarding the stream of blood oozing from his nose and upper lip, she babbled on about the horror and fear she and her mother had experienced at the hands of a stranger.
"He climbed the wall to the balcony. We were so frightened. I don't know what we would have done had you not come."
The formerly prostrate officer struggled to his feet, but Meg had positioned herself in the doorway with the other gendarme who now attempted to get away from her. She kept her grip on his uniform, wedging their bodies firmly between the doorjambs.
"Out of my way!" shouted the gendarme who found himself trapped on the wrong side of the doorway. He yanked Meg's hands free of his colleague's uniform and pulled her away. Meg stumbled back into the room. The two officers scurried down the hall and then the stairs, blowing whistles and calling out to their comrade.
"Will they catch him?" Meg whispered to her mother.
"No, ma petite. They would be better off chasing their own shadows than pursuing the Phantom. The night belongs to him.
#
MEG LISTENED FOR several moments. At last, the distant strains of a violin. He was safe. She let out the breath she had been holding now for what seemed days since the incident at the apartment.
With a surer foot, she made her way through the dark tunnels, stopping every now and again to listen to the complicated piece that he was playing. Louder and clearer the notes. Light from her lantern diffused through the passageway, penetrating the limits of darkness. As she approached, the walls began to draw back; the corridor widened. Above, the ceiling opened and vaulted. The echo of the notes reverberated from a thousand surfaces on the stone walls. The effect was orchestral, and Meg shivered with the awe that she sometimes felt in the cathedral at high mass or during a particularly moving performance in the opera house.
Just around the corner. She was nearly there.
The music reached its crescendo. She waited until he completed the finale, until the last echoes of the final note drifted far, far away into the belly of the earth.
She slipped around the corner. His back to her, he wiped the surface of the violin and placed it in its case, a babe laid to nap in its cradle.
"I've brought a basket," she said, knowing that somehow he already knew of her presence.
He searched among scattered sheets of composition paper filled with notes, a tuning fork, a straight razor, soap, wadded cloths, wax and resin for the violin, a rolled length of cord, and a triangular fragment of glass from a much larger mirror until he found one of his masks. She looked away, the act struck her as intimate and private, while he arranged it in place.
"Why have you come?"
They had not seen each other since the events at the apartment. Madeleine had insisted Meg wait for a decent time to elapse in case the authorities were watching them.
"I've brought provisions: a basket of fruits, cheeses, and bread. Things Maman and I thought that you might want. There's fresh butter and milk, too."
The temperature in the caverns below the streets of Paris was always cool, often bitingly cold. She exhaled, expecting to see her breath. Not so cold. Not yet. Perhaps the candles gave some warmth?
"What were you playing?" she asked when the silence persisted.
"Nothing you know."
"Your own, then?"
He never answered the obvious. It made conversations difficult, but she was becoming used to him. And perhaps he was becoming somewhat used to her?
"I was hoping we could have a lesson."
At last, she had gotten his attention. Despite the mask, she could see him frown. It was in his eyes, in the way the mask itself would shift, in the downward tilt of the chin. She could also see when he was pleased. Such was the case as she drew out the fresh bread wrapped in cloth and set it on an outcropping that might serve as a table.
"It is so much better with butter, and of course we have some marmalade that a neighbor of ours makes. You like apricots and peaches, don't you?"
He came forward, like a recalcitrant tomcat, survivor of too many battles, scarred and wary. Oh, if only he were as easy as a cat. She would have him purring in her lap. He would lap the cream from her palm.
She watched as he buttered the bread, sniffed at the marmalade, and then spread it thick over the top. She watched as he took that first bite. How embarrassed he seemed when a groan of pleasure escaped his lips.
Yes, it would take time, but eventually he would recover from his wounds. He would come to trust her.
He slipped the last chunk of the bread into his mouth, barely chewed before he swallowed. He licked the crumbs and sticky residue from his fingers and began to explore the other delights she had brought him.
"Would you like more?" she asked.
He stared at her for several long heartbeats before he answered.