After changing from his dance clothes, he wandered around the opera house for a while, puttering around until six. He eavesdropped at his secret listening spot and smiled at Carlotta's (the leading soprano's) usual shrill demands of the manager. He made light chatter to the young, giggly ballet girls, including the very pretty but very vague Christine. He stared up and down mysterious stairways and hallways, wondering about the rumors of the opera ghost. He tried on various wigs and false mustaches and gossiped with the wigroom attendants.
Finally, it was six o'clock and he stepped onstage, feeling better.
He looked around at the empty, dim hall and wondered if it were possible for Madame Giry to be late. He sat down on the edge of the vast stage to wait, idly swinging his legs.
Where is she? She did say six o'clock? He pulled out his father's old, battered, cheap fob watch from his bundle of belongings on the corner of the stage. Yes, six o'clock, on the dot, it certainly was.
He smiled weakly as he remembered his father's great pride at buying the watch, though even then it had been old-fashioned and second-hand. It had been when they were touring the countryside of their native England, his father playing the violin while John danced (and sang), that he had purchased it from an old farmer who could no longer discern the numbers. He wore it every day after that and constantly used it, even when it became more battered through their travels and the numbers were nearly hidden behind a scratched and rather dirty cover, even when they left England for France with the Valerius' and he no longer needed an old timepiece because the Valerius house always had a clock, even when he started coughing, even when he died. It was a small part of his father that John had been able to keep and now he wore it everywhere, almost as a salute to his father.
If I stare at the watch any longer, I might just cry.
SO! Get up, practice your dance yet again until Madame Giry comes, and don't think. That's the ticket!
Standing up, he busily brushed off his shirt and "accidentally" wiped something off his face that certainly wasn't a tear, more like dust or some dirt.
He stretched his legs, merely as a formality and a nod to the still absent Madame Giry. He was still limber from the long practice today, but it had been drilled into his head that you always stretched before you started dancing.
Now ready, he stood.
He took a breath.
He checked the stage to see if Madame Giry was there yet.
He looked for his bundle of possessions to make sure they were out of his way.
He scanned the deserted stage and seats once again, just to make sure no one was watching.
In short, John Watson did everything he could to not have to start dancing.
It was not that John hated ballet; oh no, it was much more subtle than that. He loved the music and the harmonies, but he hated the punishing routine he was forced to undergo every day just to keep both his muscle tone and his flexibility. He loathed the structured way of doing things: there was no room for improvisation or personality. He despised how dancing had become more than something he liked to do for amusement and relaxation and had now taken over his life. He couldn't do anything, couldn't treat himself after a hard performance to a warm cup of tea and a pastry, couldn't collapse onto his bed at his tiny flat after a tough rehearsal, couldn't dance to anything else, without thinking "What if this hurts my ballet?"
If he were honest with himself, he would admit that he most enjoyed (and was best at dancing) the folk dances he had learned as a child on his travels with his father. When he danced to those wild, free, almost pagan dances, he felt freedom that appealed to a part of him he usually kept hidden. But soon enough, the solid, respectable John came back and told him No.
No, don't dance to these melodies, John, because you might get confused when you "really" dance. Don't, because that feeling of freedom is wrong. Don't, because that isn't real dancing; real dancing is pain and sweat and long hours and stretching and ronds de jambs and pirouettes and Madame Giry pounding out the beat on the hard wooden floor of the stage and yelling, not freedom and laughter and lightness and no rules. Don't, because you're not good enough: if you can barely dance ballet, how can you possibly do this?
Don't sing either, though it gives you the same feeling of lightness and freedom. People might hear you and your ignorant mistakes and judge you. People might look at you with their eyes of soft, smooth silk that barely conceals the frigid hard steel underneath and though they'd say "Well done, John! We never knew you could do this! Why haven't you done this earlier?", they wouldn't mean it. What they would really mean was "Why haven't you done this earlier? Were you afraid? Did you make mistakes, like you just did in front of us? You aren't a famous tenor, though you foolishly dream about it. You are simply a middling ballet dancer."
So John hid in the solid, respectable part of himself and didn't dance his wild folk dances or sing in public. They were too far removed from the artificial world of Firmin Richard, the cantankerous but musical, and Armand Moncharmin, the tasteless but jovial, the catty microcosm of the men who ran the Opera Garnier, the universe of the managers. In this Opera, the "tasteless" sometimes won, especially in the ballet scenes, or so it seemed to John.
But when he was alone, in moments like these, he could escape and sing the operas like they were meant to be sung. He'd sing in the hallways, after checking both ends to make sure no-one was coming. He'd sing in the deserted changing room. When he sang, he could be free. One could express so much with just small differences: a trill here, a musical laugh there, a held note. It felt more pure, this idea that someone could create beauty and harmony through themselves only, without a set, without costumes, without musicians.
And now, here it was; another beautiful, golden moment of silence and peace that John would break with something close to abandon. He took a different kind of breath, the kind that filled him up so he could empty himself, pour himself into song. And he sang.
Una furtiva lagrima, negli ochi suoi spunto…
Shyly and slow a tear arose, Gleaming within her eye….
All went well until about a third of the way through. This was the tricky part- Nemorino, or whomever was singing him, held an F natural, blasted through a large crescendo into the next measure with only an eight note rest's time to breath, then vaulted up to an A flat and he could never manage to do that without either running out of breath or rushing the beat. To be able to breathe, he had to slow the tempo, but then the song dragged painfully slowly and the long note beforehand was too long for him; if he made the tempo faster, considering the long F, he had no time to breath and his magnificent A flat turned into a squeak. As the passage approached, he felt himself tense, and sure enough, he ran out of breath.
"Turn the D into a sixteenth note," a man's voice commanded.
Shocked, John wildly looked around the seemingly-empty stage and hall but he could see no one.
"Who…!"
No, that wouldn't do at all. His voice had cracked. Try again.
"Who are you? Where are you? How long have you been spying on me, watching me practice?"
Much better. Very steady. Seemingly unaffected.
The beautiful, condescending, golden voice replied, "I'll answer your terribly simple questions in exactly the opposite order you asked. I haven't been spying on you- that's considered terribly rude, or so I'm told. I was simply watching for mistakes, which you didn't make until that complicated passage, I might add. I have been observing for approximately 15 minutes. It doesn't matter where my body is- I can make my voice sound from anywhere. Ventriloquism, I've found, is a useful skill in deceiving others. And last, it doesn't matter who I am. I can be a demon from hell. I can be a cuckolded husband. I can be a cat, meowing from underneath a table. I can be a world-class consulting detective, which I am, the only one, if I may bring that to your attention. I can be the most famous and accomplished violinist the world has ever known. Or I can be an angel, sent by your father."
John leaped back and looked around wildly for the source of these penetrating words. "How on earth did you know that? Did someone tell you that?"
The man scoffed. "John Watson- do you mind if I shorten that to just 'Watson' in the future? Good, good. Watson, it's so obvious that it took all of three and a half seconds to deduce, and that's only because I've been up all night for the past two days and I'm tired. Here is a man who looks at an old, battered watch as if it is the most precious thing in the world, and yet is not poor enough for it to be his only 'good' accessory. And anyway, you take some pride in your appearance, so an old, rusty watch doesn't suit your character."
"It's not rusty-" John attempted, but the man continued to pontificate, disregarding him completely and talking right over him.
"Sentiment, then? Most likely family, because you're not married and probably don't have one particular ballet girl that you like. The most obvious choice is father, because it's such a masculine design. One, however, mustn't omit the possibility of a mother wearing her father's watch and passing it on to her son, but on the whole…. Balance of probabilities, what with the design and the fact that you are not destitute…. Father, definitely. Is he dead or far away? You would be much more defensive if it was just a case of homesickness, because crying over Momma and Papa on the farm is less masculine than crying because of a dead parent. So, a beloved dead musician father, an absent or dead mother, great- I might even say star-worthy- vocal talent but no way to bring it out. Did I miss anything?" he concluded triumphantly.
