The next day, Mademoiselle Giry met me in a café near the newspaper's main offices. She told me that her Mother was feeling ill that morning and she didn't want me to waste any time on my article, so she said she would meet me and tell me about the time when the Opera Ghost ruled the Paris Opera. I smiled, happy that this was turning into such a fortuitous meeting.
"So Mademoiselle, what can you tell me about the Opera Ghost?"
"Well, I am not sure how much my Mother has told you about the events at the Paris Opera before it was burned," she began quietly, putting her small hands around the china teacup.
"To be honest, Mademoiselle, she has not told me anything about the opera yet. I believe we had just stopped shy of her coming to Paris."
"Ah, well, perhaps a little background then?" she said. "Mama had spent several years in Paris touring with various theater companies while the opera house was being designed and built. During this time, she met my father (bless his soul)," she whispered bowing her head. "I was born shortly before the opera house was completed and Mama had lost her job as a ballerina because of her pregnancy, and my father had died from smallpox shortly after she discovered she was pregnant. Thankfully, the manager of the new Opera Populaire was looking for someone to be the ballet mistress, and Mama took the job in exchange for room and board. And shortly after she accepted the position and the Opera was completed, I was brought into this world…
My earliest memory of growing up is of a man who would come into my room at night and sing me to sleep. I first remember seeing him when I was a small child. He was dressed all in black with a shimmering white mask covering half of his face. I only remember seeing him then for a moment before I drifted back to sleep, but I saw him many more times as I was growing up, always late at night and always he would sing such beautiful, haunting melodies. He seemed like such a nice, kind man, and I remember trying so hard to stay awake so I could ask him questions. I tried to ask him who he was once, but he shook his head, smiled and kept on singing.
I even asked Mama who he was, and she would just get this faraway look to her face and say he was a musical genius. Little did I know that the same man who would sing me to sleep at night was the same as the Opera Ghost who tormented the managers. I didn't learn that until many years later when a young ingénue named Christine Daae came to us. She and I were the best of friends, let me tell you that, but somehow there was always a part of her that I could never reach, and I think my Mother's musical genius friend found it in her and brought it out into the open where we all could appreciate the true beauty that music can bring.
I remember shortly after Christine came to live at the Opera House, she would tell me these stories of a voice she heard in her head at night, singing to her, telling her how beautiful she was, and how someday she would be the Diva here. After growing up hearing the other ballerinas tell tales of the "Opera Ghost", I laughed and told her not to be silly, it have been her imagination. She insisted though and told me that she didn't think it as the ghost, she thought that her father had finally sent her the Angel of Music, who he had told her would teach her to sing. I didn't believe her much at first, but over the years, she did seem to be getting better and better with her singing and I knew she would soon to be too good to stay with us in the corps de ballet.
This was about the same time that Mama finally told me about her friend, about how she knew a very talented young man when she was younger and how she found him again at the Opera House.
"Ma Petit, he has been with us our entire lives," she told me. "Remember when you were a young girl and you would ask about the man you would sometimes see in your bedroom singing to you? That was him," she said.
"Mama?" I had asked not quite understanding.
She held me close and told me how after she had left, his mother passed away from a terrible illness and he had wandered around the globe learning various trades until he finally settled in Paris to work as an architect and master mason on the Opera Populaire. "When we came to live here, he came to me one night. You were still a baby then, and I had been up for half the night taking care of you because you had been sick. He appeared in my room as if out of thin air. I was startled and surprised to see him there. I remember asking if it were really him."
"Yes Adele, it is indeed me," he said stepping closer to me.
"Erik, what in the world? Where did you come from?" I asked him looking around the room trying to figure out where in the world he may have entered from.
He laughed and smiled a mischievous smile, "Come now Adele, you know how I loved the study of architecture! I was one of the architects of this place, you don't think I couldn't resist putting in a few sliding doors, secret passages and the like."
I smiled at him remembering how he used to pour of the architecture books in his mother's library. "Ah yes, I imagine you just couldn't resist Erik! So, tell me, have you taken up residence in Paris somewhere?"
His eyes dropped to the floor, "Somewhere in Paris, yes."
"Well, where? I would be glad to come by and visit some time," I said.
"Adele…" he started and then stopped his eyes coming to rest on the little bundle in my arms. "Who is this?"
I moved the blanket aside to show him my daughter, "This is my daughter, Meg. I hope that someday she can follow in my footsteps in the ballet here."
He moved closer in and caressed Meg's cheek. "She's beautiful Adele. I'm sure she will be a terrific dancer, someday prima ballerina if I have anything to say about it!"
I sighed, "Oh Erik, let her earn it honestly."
"I will Adele, I will," he said and just as soon as he had come, he vanished again before my eyes.