Oh, take this longing from my tongue,
Whatever useless things these hands have done.
Let me see your beauty broken down,
Like you would do for one you love.
- Leonard Cohen, "Take this Longing"
The thick velvet curtain of the confessional swishes closed behind me. The wooden booth smells of wax and the perfume of the woman who was in here before.
The grille slides open and a dim gold light filters through into the booth. The priest mumbles a prayer that I barely hear. He coughs, my signal to go ahead. It has been a long time, but one does not forget.
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been seven years since my last confession. I accuse myself of the following sins. I have not heard the Holy Mass in all that time."
Seven years ago. It was 1864, my last year as prima ballerina in the troupe of the Opera Populaire. A fractured ankle led to too many wobbles, too much hesitancy, too many near misses, and I knew my days were numbered. I had applied to M. Lefebvre for the position of dance mistress but had heard nothing. Nonetheless, I still had hope as I whirled around the practice room in a particularly difficult fouette, fighting the fear.
A movement by the door, a dark reflected motion across the mirrored room, and there he stood silently, watching me twirl. I stopped and gripped the barre. His loose dark cape and soft felt hat pulled down to half-conceal his face made him look almost louche. He had grown taller and broader in eleven years.
When I had seen him last, he was a boy of fifteen, who with angry tearful shouts insisted that he was leaving, he wasn't going to rot in this old mausoleum anymore. They'd given up looking for him for the murder of the old gypsy, he was sure. There was a whole world out there, and he was going to see it.
Not many letters in the past few years, I said to his dark stillness silently reflected in the practice room mirror, the marred side hidden from my sight but glaring at me in the glass. Who knew if you were alive or dead?
He glided over to me on silent cat-feet, and when he bent over gracefully to kiss my hand, my heart seized up inside of me.
What elegant manners, I remarked. Then, as if we were still young and free with each other, I pulled off his hat. He flinched away and sudden anger darkened his face. Have you seen some physician? I asked. There has been a remarkable improvement.
There was a physician in Egypt, he replied. But I still prefer, Madame, not to be stared at, and he retrieved his hat from my grip and placed it low over his head once more.
When he left, he had been only a few inches taller than I. Now he towered over me by a head at least, and his man's voice echoed deep and full from the chest.
So what are your plans here in Paris? I asked.
I know how to build now, he said. I have plans for that cavern down by the lake, the one we used to explore together. That is, unless someone else has taken up residency, and he laughed, not exactly pleasantly. He had left a passionate boy, and returned a hard man who served up sarcasm lightly sprinkled with bitterness.
How will you live? I asked. What will you do?
Who knows? he said casually. Every theater is supposed to have its own ghost, is it not? Perhaps the position here is open, and I shall apply forthwith.
He took up his residence in the cavern by the lake, and at first I barely saw him, then not at all. Once, just once I went down through the tunnels to find the old cavern, but he had somehow diverted water from the lake and made it run it through the channels where we used to walk. Now there was nothing but water through the old corridors, as far as I could see. I called his name and received only echoes in reply.
M. Lefebvre continued to hesitate and make excuses. When he said that his niece was under consideration for the post, I lost all hope.
Then one morning Lefebvre summoned me. His angular white face quivered and when he brought his cigarette to his mouth, ashes tumbled over his desk. You are the new mistress of ballet instruction, he said. You start in two weeks. I want you to submit a budget to me, tell me what you'll need for the following year.
This is unexpected, but I will accept with pleasure, I replied, and he glared at me, more frightened than angry.
You have some unusual friends, he said.
Excuse me? I asked. My mind raced. What friends would I have like that? Count Lockerbie came to mind, but I had not heard from him since he returned to Wales to marry.
Never mind, he said. Just know that I expect the best from you, ankle or no ankle.
Back on this cold New Year's Day, back in this little golden cell, the priest gives a subtle cough.
"Lust. I do not know how many times, Father. I cannot count them."
"Are you married?"
"No."
"Is he married?"
"No, Father. He is not married."
"Are these sins of thought, or word, or deed?"
"Thought. Just thoughts. All the time."
"Do you find yourself in a near occasion of sin?"
"I cannot avoid seeing him."
"Then you must ask the Blessed Virgin to help you resist these thoughts," he says gently. He is a kind priest, far kinder than the last one of seven years ago. "She lived a life entirely unstained by lust. Follow her example."
He sounds old, very old, I think. He's heard all this before, and I know that I can tell him anything.
That spring in 1864, I moved into the small flat in the Opera Populaire reserved for the ballet mistress. After settling Meg and Christine into their dormitory with the other ballerina students, I unpacked my few boxes. First to come out were his letters, all twelve of them. Twelve letters in eleven ears. I re-read every one as I had a hundred times, tied them back up in their black ribbon, and set them on the top of the bureau where I could always see them. I could not count how many I had written him. I dared not wonder if he still had them.
As I lay awake tossing, or combed my hair before the vanity mirror when I couldn't sleep, I could feel him in the recesses of the great building, beating like a heart inside a giant's body, beating to match the pulse inside mine.
He slipped through the years and the shadows in a whisk of movement, a twirl of cape, and started calling himself "The Opera Ghost." Then he decided to love Christine, and started wearing a white mask. I knew without being told that he wanted to take her away, that his restless heart wouldn't be content to keep her here, to share her with everyone she had known and with whom she had grown up.
If you leave, I thought to him, willing him to hear me through all the silence of the cellars, my life is over.
So I did everything I could to smooth the path for the young Vicomte. I saw how he brushed past her on that first afternoon, and her crestfallen sorrow. I tried to comfort her, Mother, Meg said later that evening. Of course he didn't recognize her, how could he after so many years? My daughter is too kind, too optimistic, I thought acidly. Christine recognized the Vicomte. We always recognize them, even when they pay no attention to us. I know this from bitter experience.
Wait until tonight, I told my daughter. That lovely young man will notice her then, you will see.
This plan was laced with danger, however. It put the Ghost and I at cross-purposes. We both schemed from our own motives and I kept mine secret, for if he caught me thwarting his desire, he could strangle me like an unwanted kitten.
Joseph Buquet's gruesome death seemed to fling her into the young Vicomte's arms. For three months we saw or heard no "ghostly" manifestations. "Elysian peace," everyone called it, but to me it was the peace of the dead, of the deadness in my heart.
How often had I watched the Vicomte surprise Christine after rehearsal, call for her, put his arm around her, or try to kiss her, only to be so delicately yet firmly rebuffed. Yet in her cool and remote way she always left him with a sliver of hope, and so stalwartly he pressed on, never discouraged by her turned-away face or her close-pressed lips.
My only anxiety was that his parents would forbid the match. He was their youngest, however, the child of their middle age, and deeply precious to them. Anything he wanted he could have, and he wanted Christine.
The wedding date was set, although Christine chose to keep the engagement quiet. The girls squealed and cooed over that magnificent clot of diamonds which sparkled like the inside of a pomegranate, one filled with ice crystals instead of tender red seeds.
No one asked her why she wore it on her neck, understandable since they were young girls lost in their romantic dreams, and didn't know much of men and their ways. Jules Giry had been a rough man full of passion, a miner with a thick energetic body, and even now it gives me a pang to think of it. Jules, ah, Jules would have beaten me had I worn his ring around my throat.
Then came last night, New Year's Eve, the night of revelry.
My costume was severe and not meant to entice. I made a stiff and unpromising geisha in unyielding black, flipping my fleshless skeleton of a fan. Perverse, antagonistic, unalluring - that matched my mood, such a contrast to my soft dove of a daughter with her feathery decollete. When we twisted the tarantella I looked regretfully at her, so beautiful, so fresh, so full of life, and wondered what drain my own youth went down in so short a time.
I felt him approach even before the lights went dim. It was the same sense I had when he moved silently through the halls or climbed amid the flies, as if the air suddenly became charged with motion. Some glimmer made me look to the top of the grand staircase as a light shone off his sleek black pelt.
Where was Meg? I rushed to her side and put my arm around her, knowing how curious she was about our ghost of flesh, and vowing that never while I had strength in my body, never would she come under his razor gaze. Perhaps he would brush through the crowd and disappear; he had been known to do that before at these masques.
Then the dancing air gelled and the ballgoers stopped with it. I confused the fading of the lights with the dimming of my vision, and feared that I would swoon. But it was the great gas globes themselves that darkened.
There came one click of a boot on the step, followed by another, slow and deliberate. He descended the staircase, a panther clad in fire who showed his teeth, lashed his tail, and stalked men through the skittering crowd. At the sight of those fangs they darted back, terrified of his hunger and yet hungry themselves, desperate to flee him yet eager to be his prey.
His eyes burned blue fire through the black eye sockets of his death's head mask. He threw down his challenge, delivered his insults, and a mad desire flew up in me like a jet of flame.
I thought I had wanted him before, but until that moment I had no idea what wanting meant. I was ready to walk over to him in front of all those hundreds, to prostrate myself at his feet, and say for him and all to hear, My life for you. Anything for you, and I would have meant it. I would have killed Joseph Buquet all over again for him, if he hadn't already done it. I would have given my body to him entirely, to do anything with as he pleased, even if he only killed me and dropped me into the lake.
My fevered moment cooled and broke when Christine glided silently toward him with naked tenderness in her eyes, and suddenly the panther curled up into a gentle purring ball under her eyes' caress. It took a long time for her to reach him, and all the while his anger faded to longing.
We all watched hopelessly, helplessly as Christine's moment flared and passed, as he dissolved into fire and disappeared before our astonished eyes. Meg leaned up against my shoulder, her bosom heaving, two bright red spots on her cheeks, every muscle in her body tensed and ready to run. Unlike myself, who through caution and planning and hesitancy lost whatever moment there might have been, she was ready to shoot toward this flaming death without a single thought, like a pure white arrow of instinct.
Oh, that I never would have seen him, my love red as death, erect as flame, because even in the very womb of Holy Mother Church, in this dark wooden box where grace is engendered every day anew, he is seared into my eyes, burned into my soul, and I will never be free of him.
I might as well continue my confession. "This one is complicated. Someone was killed, murdered. I suspect who did it."
A moment of silence, and then the priest says, "Was there direct cooperation on your part?"
"No, Father. I didn't know what happened until it was over."
"Did you see this person actually do it? Did he admit it to you?"
"No, Father, but I strongly suspect."
"Did you wish it to happen?"
"Yes, Father. He was a bad man, very bad. . I feared for my daughter when he was around."
"Every mother's heart is a reflection of the Holy Virgin's most pure one. But with the mother's heart comes the temptation to vengeance."
"I also told a lie. A serious one."
"The matter was grave?"
"I don't know … it is confusing. I lied to conceal a mortal sin. My lie might conceal the sin. It might reveal it. It had to do with … with the man I think about. I lied to conceal something he did."
"We all walk in confusion, daughter," he says, and the tenderness in his voice brings tears to my eyes.
I close my eyes briefly, and I find myself back in the dim hallway outside my room. The young Vicomte followed me to my room last night right after I pulled him out of the mirrored chamber, just one of the many traps my dark cat of the night had placed around the Opera to catch a stray mouse. The Vicomte's blood was up and he insisted that I speak with him. He begged and pleaded for answers. He smiled, not because he was happy, no, but because he wanted to ingratiate himself to me. He nodded his head insistently and the motion waved his golden hair. I wanted to touch it, and was instantly ashamed. He was so young. I could have been his mother.
Please, Mme. Giry, he begged. Please.
I told him of the gypsy fair and how I first saw his rival in a cage, his face a raw wound, his slender naked chest broken and fragile. They beat him, I told the Vicomte. They pulled him by the hair to show his horror to the world, and the young man flinched.
I will never forget the sound a man makes when he is strangled, or how his eyes bulge from his head, how his tongue protrudes all black and swollen from his mouth. I didn't think a boy of ten had the strength to pull the rope that tightly around the neck of so big a man. But I didn't tell the Vicomte that.
Then came the lie, that the predator stalking through the backstage and cellars had known no life except that of a recluse in the fundament of the Opera Populaire. A venial matter, perhaps, except for the reason I told it in the first place.
I wanted the Vicomte to feel sorry for my sad ghost. He was a young man, generous-hearted and full of feeling for Christine, and as one of chivalrous upbringing, would scorn to hunt down someone whom he pitied. Only a worthy opponent would stir his blood to contest.
So I did my best to fill him full of pity, adding that one falsification to make a story even sadder than it was. In his pity I hoped he would forget the insults to him, that he would simply take Christine away with him and go, just go.
And it would have worked. The Vicomte would have taken her away, except for one little thing. I let him sit on guard outside the dormitory after our conversation in my room, even though I knew that if a dark shape in the night wanted to spirit a willing Christine away in the blackness before dawn, no brash young man with a sword stretched across his lap could prevent it.
I hadn't counted on Christine rising early this morning to slip past her fiance, to head for the cemetery where she had met her "Angel of Music" so often before, in those days when he would play the violin concealed from her sight, crouched and hidden within her father's tomb.
They brought the Vicomte de Chagny back from the duel sweating, exhausted, and bleeding. Sweet Christ forgive me, my first thought was for another's safety, not the wounded man. I followed Christine into the cloakroom as she hung up her cape and seized her by the arm, crying out madly, Where is he? Has he been killed?
Her eyes filled with alarm. He's downstairs, waiting for the physician, she said, and then her mouth formed into a wide "O" of understanding. We left him there on the ground, she said. In the cemetery.
Wounded? I demanded. Alive or dead? Tell me, girl, I snarled, and she really did look frightened of me.
He was unharmed, she whispered. But he was angry, terribly angry, cursing and calling down vengeance on us all. I let go of her arm, almost pushing her as she ran to the Vicomte's side.
The physician took hours to get there, roused no doubt from his own bed of recovery from last night's festivities, and by the time he arrived, the Vicomte had lost an alarming amount of blood. We moved him into La Carlotta's dressing room, it being the largest and best appointed. Christine sat by the Vicomte's feet as the physician blearily studied the gaping slice on his arm.
What made this? he asked.
A sword, Christine answered.
The physician snorted in disgust. The first day of the New Year, and already the young bucks are dueling. Over you, young lady? he said roughly.
She shrank back, and the Vicomte rose up protesting, I was cravenly attacked and justifiably defended myself.
Oh, I'm sure, the physician said. But this wound is odd, not clean like the slice from a blade.
He attempted to put some stitches in it, unsuccessfully. The pale, brave Vicomte neither winced nor cried out as the needle and catgut repeatedly tore through the wound that would not close.
The edges are soft, the doctor remarked. Fascinating. Let me take some of the blood. We'll send it to the Pasteur Institute for analysis; perhaps there's some kind of poison in use here.
He tied the wound up tightly, pulling the edges together with the force of the bandage, and soon the Vicomte's men carried him away in his carriage.
The priest says, "Is it a lie you can remedy?"
"It's too late. The damage is done. The lie itself was about venial matter, but the consequences were mortally sinful. To … to the man himself. The one I mentioned."
He sighs heavily behind the grille. "My child, this is your confession, not his. Is he a Catholic?"
"He was baptized a Catholic, I know that. But no, he does not live his religion."
"Then pray that he comes to the cleansing fountain of penance, and do not encourage or cooperate in any wrongdoing yourself. What else, daughter? Have you more to confess?"
"No, Father. For these and all the sins of my whole life, especially any I have forgotten, I am heartily sorry, and ask for pardon and penance."
"Go back to Holy Mass, daughter, for without the strength of the most precious Body and Blood, you will not have the will to resist your temptations. Avoid the near occasions of sin and realize that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. You know the statue of the Blessed Virgin as you come in the church?"'
"Yes, Father."
"For your penance, kiss her feet ten times, to cleanse your lips and provide satisfaction for false witness. Then pray the Ave Maria and Pater Noster five times each. Now make a good Act of Contrition."
"Forgive me my sins, O Lord, forgive me my sins…"
"Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus, et dimissis peccatis tuis, perducat te ad vitam æternam. Amen."
"… I know my sins have wounded Thy Tender Heart …"
"Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen."
"… O My Jesus, forget and forgive what I have been. Amen."
"Passio Domini nostri Jesu Christi, merita beatæ Mariæ Virginis, et omnium Sanctorum, quidquid boni feceris, et mali sustinueris, sint tibi in remissionem peccatorum, augmentum gratiæ, et præmium vitæ æternæ. Amen. Go in peace, my daughter."
I will never know peace, never know peace again, but I go to the pew to say my penance anyway. I hear a click, and the priest comes out of the confessional.
He's a grey little man, shabby and bent over. Then I see his face, and I can't help but gasp. It's scarred with a thousand cuts, as if someone worked over it with knives. I wonder if he's been tortured in one of the colonies. The Opera Ghost's face is maimed on one side, but his is far worse, brutally incised all over from brow to chin. As he shuffles closer, I see that he isn't that old, just bent and broken.
He hears my sharp intake of breath and looks over, smiling. As my love's red feline passion provoked me to frenzy, the priest's warm glance melts my heart with compassion. It is the most loving look I have ever received. No mother, no husband, no lover has ever come near to it.
Lamely he moves down the aisle and kneels at the altar, right in the center. The candles cast a white glow about him. His cassock is strange, not like the usual black serge skirt, but more like a long woolen coat. We are the only two in the church, and then suddenly I am alone.
The old priest has vanished in a wink. I blink my eyes once, twice. Perhaps he walked around to the side door. But no, he was in the center of the altar rail, kneeling on the steps, framed by white light. I would have seen him had he stood up.
Now that he is gone, the tenderness inside me collapses. Above the faint residue of incense and furniture wax I catch the delicate odor of roses, and softly, despairingly, I begin to weep.