Behind the Walls
A/N: Thanks, Jennie, for looking this chapter over. Also, thanks to Laura for squeeing in all the right places.
Alberich Niemann glanced out over the balcony of the Eclectic Theater's Box 17 as the girls from the music schools filed in for their auditions. Dust covered his clothes and tickled his skin, but he remained entirely silent as their voices, piping or shrill or oboe-mellow, floated upward to his perch. He had been around long enough to know that some would stay, but most would go, into shops or marriages to artisans, or into the brothels of La Pigalle.
Listening to singers was beginning to bore him. He had been working at the Eclectic Theater for a year now, and while the lucrative task of converting the structure from gas to electric lights filled his days and many of his nights as well, he missed the smack of the chisel under his hand; the shock of the splitting blow as it moved up his arm; the nascent form coming to life under the strength of patient chipping. He missed the days when he would run his hand over a piece of granite or limestone as if over a woman's body, feeling the for the outlines of the shape he knew was inside. He used to caress these cold flanks and wonder if this was the one that would spring to life in a way he had never before experienced - one that might even step down from the pedestal like Galatea and give him a kiss.
A kiss. Even though it was chilly in the theater, an itching awoke in him as something crawled under his skin that he could not quite reach.
Well, enough of that for now. He resumed threading copper wire through ceramic tubes and placing them neatly along the gas lines which so soon now would be turned off, forever. The Eclectic Theater was finally going to be electrified. The glow of incandescent lighting would eventually fill this old temple of Thalia, as it now illuminated so many of the public buildings of Paris.
His men, most of them Algerians who had come back with him to Paris, worked in the adjoining boxes. He could no longer hear their soft voices talking in their own melodic language. They had ceased abruptly, as soon as Monsieur de Carnac gave the first snap of the baton.
Alberich could have let his men run the wires on their own, and sat himself down in one of the plush maroon chairs to enjoy the singing. However, he had found that when he worked alongside his men, encouraging them in their French, sharing their jokes and their lunches of bread and hummus, the wires went in so much more quickly. There was a bonus for completing earlier than scheduled, a large one, and he intended to earn it.
The piping and warbling continued, and he shifted restlessly, anxious over the other contract he'd won from the Eclectic Theater. The pumps that kept the old Roman bath in the theater basement needed constant attention to keep free of flooding. It might as well be my theater, he thought to himself, for in some ways it was. There was too little bureaucratic competence or money for maintenance, and the government engineers were lazy. Had Alberich not paid attention to the state of the tunnels and archways of that underground honeycomb, the passages would have flooded out long ago, or those in the theater would have choked on noxious gases, for the sewers which led to the Seine flowed uncomfortably close.
The sweat and dust irritated his face as his hand played over his rough, corrugated features. Setting down a pair of wire cutters, he closed his eyes and leaned his head against the velvet curtain.
His eyes snapped open as a rich soprano melody floated up to the dimly-lit perch, and he leaned over to see what nightingale produced such tones. She was a Teutonic beauty, a little taller than the others, with bright hair like a lambent flame. She reminded him of a fruit grown in his native Rennes, the one they called a "honey strawberry." When ripe, its flesh deepened to rich yellow with a blush of coral. The sparkling golden seeds got into your teeth as you bit into one, toothmarks revealing white firmness with a dash of pink.
Her shoulders were broad and her chest deep. The notes came from far down within her and floated up effortlessly, but she seemed disinterested and disjointed from her surroundings, as if she did not, or could not, fully concentrate on the tones. Her audition piece, "O Sorgio, Padre," should have brought everyone to tears, but she conveyed little sadness in her cold and flawless rendition.
Up floated her song, up to the velvet curtains of the boxes, and into the shadow where he stood. His heart gave a little jump as she looked straight at his shadowy niche, and then looked away as if she couldn't see him.
When de Carnac signaled for the next girl, the golden beauty walked slowly to the sidelines as if in a dream. Then she looked up and around at her surroundings, as if seeing them anew, taking them in like a country girl in Paris for the first time.
He looked around at the auditorium along with her, trying to imagine it through her eyes. Sculpted forms of twisted Indian goddesses with their halo of arms, and placid and dreaming Brahmas reclining on their side hid in the niches which ringed the room. The dome with its hanging chandelier imitated in miniature the old Hagia Sophia cathedral. Boudreaux wanted to recall the glory of that vast Byzantine city before Hagia Sophia became a mosque, and so the Eclectic Theater had a dome but no minarets. Around its circumference, painters had created gold and umber angels in thick paint which glittered like mosaic.
As the next girl chopped her way through something that sounded like a Schiller lied, the red beauty left the stage and his field of view. Entirely alert now, he wondered who she was. He had seen many of the National Conservatory and New Music Institute girls pass through the Eclectic Theater before, but where had she been? With that tropical hair, who could miss her? She would be splendid as Brunhilde, a flame within the fire, with marvelous bosom and shoulders, but her voice was blue with cold. It needed to be warmed, to be softened, to be made to glow like the rest of her.
One box over, Eugene Devereaux, business manager of the Eclectic Theater, and his musical director Evann Blanchette sat together and commented on the auditions. If Alberich put his ear up against the ventilation shaft which the two boxes shared, he could hear them clearly.
"We should sign the Swedish girl," Blanchette said.
"Isn't she the extravagant blonde?"
"More Gretchen than Marguerite, I know, but she has a good tone and stage presence. Those who like that sort of thing will enjoy seeing her in breeches, too, although she's too much the 'eternal feminine' for my taste."
Devereaux snorted, as if he'd inhaled too much water. "She'll fill the trousers out all right. As for you, everything's too feminine for your taste."
"I mean, that wild hair and figure make her look like a Valkyrie."
"She's lived in Paris for a few years, took a prize at the Institute, but only a second," Devereaux said. "Before that she lived in Sweden, a farm girl. That kind we can sign up cheaply, as they don't know what they're worth."
"I'll talk to de Carnac. Look at him down there, listening to all that yodeling. I'm surprised he hasn't started shrieking yet. But that blonde one, I liked her sound, and I'll take your word for it that she'd look good in trousers."
The two men continued to laugh, and then the sound cut off abruptly as the door to their box slid open, then shut.
The rest of the audition held no interest for Alberich, and so he left the box and headed down for the pump room cellar. There he worked busily, concerned for the erratic machine, but needing to cool his own blood as well. He put his face against the wet stone wall for only a moment. It would not do for him to spend all afternoon in the pump room, so he finished up, replaced the tools carefully and slunk out into the blue-lit corridor.
He wanted to know who she was. And there was a way to find out.
* * * * * * * *
Alberich waited in a niche in the hallway for an hour before Devereaux and Blanchette finally left their offices. He had told Devereaux he had wanted to begin the wiring in his office first, as befitted his status as director of the theater, but Devereaux had rebuffed him in irritation. He had too much to do, he said, and as far as he was concerned, there was nothing wrong with gas lights anyway. The theater's governing board had pressured him into this fool scheme, and it was only out of respect for them that he had agreed to do it. That didn't mean, however, that he would have workmen - and he gave Alberich a hard look when he said that - tromping about and cluttering up his office. He would be the one to tell Alberich when he could come in, and that was that.
So that left two alternatives. Alberich could wait, or he could act.
In the course of working in the adjacent offices, he had discovered a concealed entry to a ventilation shaft. The Eclectic Theater was full of old hidden passageways like that, and Alberich and his men used them to install their miles of copper wiring, rather than cutting through walls, as the tunnels and passageways gave them wide access through which to run wires. Money that otherwise would have gone to pay for plaster, lathe, and the plasterers' labor stayed in Alberich's pocket, and some of it always made its way into the pockets of his men as well, because he wanted them to share in his good fortune, whenever he had it.
Devereaux had made a production of locking his office door, glaring at Alberich all the time. So into the ventilation shaft Alberich slipped, crossing behind the rows of offices. He counted over three, and went into another shaft right in between Blanchette and Devereaux's domains. He didn't want to get directly into Devereaux's office anyway, but rather the one immediately adjacent, which belonged to the office administrator, René Gicard.
One interesting result of moving through the ventilation shaft was that if he turned to the right or left, and put his head up against either of the ventilation grilles, he could hear clearly anything being said inside either office. But this time there was no one to listen to, and he had to get in. Sweat ran down his back as he worked the clips which held the paneling to the wall. Normally he wouldn't have entered the offices anyway; he had no reason to, and the theater's private police patrolled the halls at night occasionally - when they weren't too drunk, that is. Alberich felt exposed and vulnerable there, but desire overcame fear.
Monsieur Gicard's employment as Monsieur Blanchette's assistant relied on his ability to scout out the best clubs for gentlemen whose tastes ran to youths of both sexes, of a particularly sullen and debased sort. In the souks of Algiers Alberich had seen young ones like that, whose despairing almond-shaped eyes lured men into doorways off the back alleys. Whether in northern Africa or Paris, the young and desperate poor were everywhere. Gicard knew precisely where to find them, and how much Blanchette would have to pay to satisfy both his pleasure and his need for discretion. Had music director de Carnac recommended the red-gold singer for a position, Gicard would have a copy of her contract. On it would be her name, and perhaps even her address.
Alberich swore under his breath at the state of Gicard's files. It was clear that his other talents secured him a position at the Eclectic Theater, rather than his secretarial skills. Nothing was alphabetized or sorted by date in the drawers crammed with contracts, correspondence. Newspaper clippings flapped wildly in his hands as he rummaged under them. The dim gaslight flickered and the spidery handwriting on the files was almost unreadable.
One thing about gas, you can never turn it off entirely. Anyone walking past the milk-glass door of the office would see his shadow inside. He slid the drawer shut and looked around, deciding where to search next.
The doorknob rattled, and swift as a fox going to ground, he dove behind the desk, waiting for the door to swing open and for someone to shove a lantern into his face. But the invisible hand that rattled the door must have been satisfied that it was locked and moved on. As he rose, his shoe poked a box full of paperwork, and in large letters, at the very top of the pile in the box, were the words "Kristina Sigurdsdotter."
Now his heart beat very fast, and surely it must be echoing out of that room and down the hall. That had to be it. As he picked it up, he knew it was hers. Paged through the standard contract, the relatively low amount on the bottom line shocked him. She took far less than she could have gotten, he knew. She obviously had no agent or protector. He ruffled through the rest of it quickly, but there was no address, just her signature in a large, clear hand, and the date of September 24, 1890.
Kristina Sigurdsdotter. How strange, the way the Scandinavians formed their names, with the girls bearing their father's first name, followed by "dotter," and the boys the same, followed by "son." Daughter of Sigurd, that made her. Anyway, that fool Gicard should have her address here somewhere, or else how would he send her correspondence? Alberich looked on the secretary's cluttered desk, on a side table, everywhere the paper piled up in stacks, but found nothing that contained any addresses at all, least of all hers.
He stood there suffused with frustration, knowing he needed to leave, but desperately wanting not to. What he sought was in this pig-sty somewhere, but where? Then, before he knew it, the door swung slowly open. Hadn't it been locked? Gicard was a fool for leaving his door unfastened, but Alberich cursed himself for the bigger fool for not checking it. He flattened himself between a massive oak filing cabinet and the corner, daring not to breathe, hoping that his dark grey shirt kept him more concealed than black would, for this late-night wandering. What had rattled the door earlier, when he had distinctly heard the door run up against the bolt?
A lantern light filled the room, but the shadow from the filing cabinet covered him. Two men came into the room and swung the lantern around.
"There's no one here," one voice said. "What are you, such a mama's boy hanging on the tit, that you can't do your watch yourself?"
"I hear the ghost has been active in the past few weeks. I don't want to run into him on my lonesome," said the other.
"What horse-faced stupidity. There's no one here. Don't drag me from the other side of the building next time. I may not be able to get you shit-canned, but I can make your lot miserable here, believe me."
Alberich could smell the brandy even from where he crouched. Then something swung around and a large object crashed, followed by a stream of obscenities. One of the theater police must have hit the work table by the door.
"Don't shove me," the second voice said.
"Idiot, I didn't touch you. Watch where you're going."
"Don't you think we should pick it up?"
"Forget it, let them get it tomorrow. We've done our job; there's no one here."
The door clicked shut and locked. Alberich hauled in great gulps of air, panting with fear and anxiety. After a long while he crept out and stepped around the table lying on the floor, with its great mess of papers spread all around it.
Mixed in with the white pile was an envelope, meant to be mailed but perhaps forgotten. At first he couldn't form the letters, as he still shook from the watchmens' visit. It's her name, I don't believe it, he thought. This letter on the floor has her name on it. And there was her address, a small side street south of the Bourse, on the less fashionable side of the boulevard.
At least Gicard kept the dressing room assignments straight. On a large board in his office, the keys to the unassigned rooms hung on their little hooks, with a blank spot in lieu of a name underneath them. There was "Sigurdsdotter," right on the board for a dressing room assignment, under the little plaque for Dressing Room Number Seven.
At the sight of that room, at the thought of the girl in that room, Alberich's entire body shook with a long, cold shudder. He stared at the key for a few moments, unmoving and unthinking. Why that room, of all the others? Why did it have to be that one? He shook his head, as if that would clear his thoughts. That explains the letter. It's got to be her notification to come in and get her dressing room key. The lazy slug didn't give it to her when she signed her contract. He snatched the letter and put it in his jacket pocket, then cleared out of there as quickly as he could, his flesh creeping with cold and excitement at the same time.
* * * * * * *
The next morning, as Alberich shopped for fresh rolls and cheese, he found a boy on the street idly leaning on a post, waiting for someone to hire him to run a message.
"Boy," Alberich called, "come here."
The grubby urchin strolled over. He was perhaps eleven or so years old, or maybe more if he'd hadn't had much to eat, and he stared at Alberich's face for a moment. Alberich fixed the boy with a baleful glance right back, then cleared his throat.
"I'll give you two francs to take this letter to the lady at the following address. Don't just give it to the concierge; find out from the concierge which one is her apartment, and slide it under the door. Then come back at once to me, and tell me which one she's in. No word of this to the lady, either. If you mess this up, I'll find you and box your ears, you scamp," and gave him a playful cuff on the shoulder.
The boy gaped. "Two francs? That's some message you've got there." He grinned and said, "A franc now, and one when I return, Monsieur. I'll have just what you need."
Alberich flipped the coin to him; he caught it delicately and expertly in midair, but didn't leave. "Were you in a war, Monsieur?" he asked in an impudent tone.
"Something like that."
"My grandfather had his arm blown off at a barricade during the Commune. He's lucky he wasn't shot, he was. Always used to curse those Republican bastards, though. You should have heard him. Hey, you look like gunpowder exploded in your face yourself."
"Smart boys know how to hold their tongue. Didn't anyone ever teach you that? Now go deliver my letter."
Off he ran, smirking.
Rue Philippe de Lyon was only a few short blocks away, so the boy was back fairly quickly. When he returned, he held out his hand for the remaining coin.
"Not so fast. Which one is her flat?"
"The second floor, on the left." He snatched his two francs, and gave a long whistle. "I'll run your errands anytime, Monsieur. Many thanks!" and off he ran again.
* * * * * * *
It seemed to Alberich as if night would never come. When it did, his limbs shivered as if afflicted with palsy, and his head spun so hard round that sleep was impossible. Finally, in the black just before midnight, he wrapped himself in dark grey clothes and hat, and walked swiftly to the block where Kristina's apartment stood. His soft boots made no noise on the pavement. The small side street was deserted, but a few lights in her building were still on, including the right-side flat on the second story.
This was a shabby, out-of-the-way street, and it still had gaslights. He wanted to see the building, nothing else. He didn't expect her to be out and about, as the church bells had just rung in the new day with twelve strokes. The air hung still and quiet. It was an overcast evening with no moon, and were it not for the one flickering light on the corner, the crooked narrow street would have been almost entirely dark. From the brooding quiet and the mostly-dark windows, Alberich guessed that the apartments contained mostly pensioners, or working men who had to get up with the sun.
There was her building, right on the corner. Instead of a building next to it stood a vacant lot. Decades ago there had been a fire, perhaps, or some other accident, but in this shabby street no one had bothered to rebuild, and so instead of another building a hole gaped, like a missing tooth in a mouth. Whatever stone debris which remained had been covered by a thick coat of vegetation. Right next to the corner building spread an enormous gum tree, whose feathery leaves and thick branches appeared to be full of stark, dense shadows in the streetlight's glare. He peered into the vacant lot, and an odd trick of the darkness made it seem to go on quite deeper than it did, and more thick foliage in the back obscured the courtyard, if there was one at all.
Suddenly Alberich was seized by embarrassment and a strong sense of being exposed and vulnerable. Berating himself for a fool, standing there under a girl's window like some moonstruck Romeo, he was about to turn and walk back to the Eclectic Theater when a short, squat man walked around the corner of Kristina's street. The man came into sharp silhouette under the street lamp, and he made for a comical sight, dressed in what looked like a rubber mackintosh and huge rubber boots, even though it wasn't raining. His shiny bald head gleamed in the gaslight, and he was almost as round as he was tall. From his pocket the little man took a small extendable tool which poked up higher and higher, until it reached the top of the light. Alberich had never seen an instrument like that, and stared motionless, fascinated.
A quick flash, and the gaslight flicked out like a lit match squeezed between two wet fingers. The man walked back around the corner, and the gaslight on the cross street went out as well. Another went dark. Now the corner of the apartment building of the one he sought stood unprotected against the night. Alberich could barely see in front of his nose now. The only light, it seemed, came from the second-story apartment on the left, which seemed to glow like a red-gold jewel against the velvet box of the dark. Its faint glow cast a brief spot of color on the bald little man's head as he came back around the corner again, then disappeared into the weedy hedge between the two buildings.
The quoins on the side of Mlle. Sigurdsdotter's building formed a prominent network carved into elaborate twisting leaves which didn't quite match the stern old facade. Someone added them later, Alberich thought, frowning at the mix of styles. But whoever had added that profusion of "new art" balcony and decoration had also covered the balconies with an elaborate grilled fretwork, also in the shapes of leaves and branches. It wouldn't take much to grab hold, and climb up the side of the building, cloaked as he was in the shadows of that moonless night.
A cold little voice inside said that this was madness, and why was he doing this? But he had to see her, had to know.
Cold without a cloak or overcoat, he ignored his shivers and up he climbed, using the prominent quoins on the building's corner as a ladder, until he reached the ledge that went around the second story. Gum tree branches poked him, but he was glad of the tree, as it protected him from any view from the street below. He inched himself carefully over to the tiny balcony, holding tight to a cold metal branch with its leafy spray, and looked inside the dimly-lit window.
The gaslight illuminated a sitting-room furnished with a medallion-backed settee and two winged chairs. In a large and comfortable maroon armchair sat an older lady with her hair in a loose grey chignon, knitting. Occasionally she would turn to speak to someone on the other side of the room, but the window was shut and no sound escaped. On the darkly stained mantelpiece sat two photographs in wooden frames, one of a middle aged man, and the second of a man quite old, with a wild mane of light-colored hair.
Then a figure passed in front of the older lady's chair, and Alberich clutched onto the stone to not lose his grip. It was she - in a wrapper of dark red silk, her hair unfettered in liquid glory. She brushed the red-blonde mass absently, and Zeus himself could not have covered Danae so ardently in a shower of gold as that rippling mass covered her shoulders. The gaslight played over those waves glistening with ruddy highlights stirred into life by her slow strokes.
His face burned, and panic collected in his stomach. He was perched like a cat burglar on a ledge on a dark Parisian side street, only half-hidden by a tree, looking into a window, and he could scarcely hold on as he trembled with hot blood moving through his body. Two stories was not terribly high, but he shook and clung to the stone anyway, trying not to fall. Against the limestone of the façade he rested his face, letting its coolness flow into him until he was calm enough to look into the window again.
The old lady got up, and Kristina gave her a kiss as the older one walked out of sight, no doubt going to bed. Alberich prepared to climb down the side of the building, but then the window latch gave a crack, and the window opened. He pulled back in terror. She had seen him!
But no, she put her head out the window, leaning forward on the sill with a sigh, drinking in the cool fall night air. He pulled his tall wide frame as close to the wall as he could, trying to hide behind the stone frame of the window, barely breathing. Over him washed her lemon water scent.
"Kristina!" the older lady's voice called from within. "I'm turning in now. Please close the window when you come to bed."
"In a minute," she replied. "It's a beautiful night, even though I can't see any stars."
Then a door shut. This was obviously not the strictest of mammas. Alberich rolled her name over several times with the tongue of his mind. Hearing it said by another person made her come to life, something like the difference between seeing the notes in score, and hearing them pour forth from the violin. Her French had a Scandinavian accent, with the influence of Bretagne, and even her speaking was music.
He dared to turn his head sideways, so to better see her strong profile with its clearly carved aquiline nose and well-defined chin. Her long, round throat rose in a soft column from her open robe, and the tops of her breasts shone white against her cherry-colored neckline. She looked out the window with no sign of self-consciousness or shame, resting her arms on the sill, with her hair falling down over them.
They must not be bourgeois, Alberich thought. No respectable middle-class mother would allow her daughter to hang out the window like that. Take all that beauty inside and hide it, before cold eyes on the street seize it for their own. She doesn't provoke, however. She is a country girl, like Devereaux said. She just wants to feel the the clear skies and air.
He could have reached out and touched her. He had seen beautiful women parade through the theater before, but compared to this fresh beauty, they were propped-up things of paint and corsets and sly, arch, seductive mannerisms. If she would only her speak again in that lilting accent, but she didn't.
Instead, she withdrew and shut the window, snapping shut the latch, and a few minutes later the light went out. Alberich calmed himself to the point where he could climb safely back down to the street.
Kristina, he repeated to himself all the way back to the Eclectic Theater, and as he slipped into the side door. Kristina, of Sweden. Oh, God, what is going to come of this?
* * * * * * *
A few nights later, Alberich slipped down a narrow, unused corridor at the end of the administrative offices at the Eclectic Theater. He turned a corner into an apparent dead-end, and pressed on a spot on the wall above a panel distinguished from its neighbors only by a faint water-marked stain. The panel slid aside, and Alberich crept into a passageway behind the corridor. The narrowly-lit space was full of pipes, some rusted and dripping. After a couple of twists and turns, he came out into another musty, dimly-lit corridor, and headed towards Dressing Room Number Seven. It was at the far end of a long, dim corridor, and as usual, it was vacant, as were the three around it. Most of the other dressing rooms nearby had been converted to storage closets. Every other room on the corridor which would have been suitable for a soloist was filled.
In the deep of night the gas lights had malfunctioned in the other dressing rooms along the corridor which housed Room Seven. Had Alberich known of it, he would have silently repaired them himself, without bothering to requisition any of the engineering staff, and Gicard would have been none the wiser. Alberich had a horror of gas leaks and the explosive fires which they caused. But whenever he had gone to Gicard in the past, it had been obvious that Gicard disliked Alberich's flat, blank expressions and remote manner, thinking he put himself "above his place," and so Gicard wasn't about to provide him with help in anything outside the range of Alberich's contract. Gicard never rushed when it came to preparing work orders, and was a stickler for policy as well as a procurer. The directives said that routine maintenance was to be handled by the Eclectic Theater staff, and so the work could wait. It would take weeks for the mechanics to actually put hand to tools and make the repairs.
That left only Room Seven at the end of the long corridor, with prop storage rooms on either side. It was a larger room with a full-length dressing mirror on the inside wall, a small boudoir off to the side which was separated by a dark red velvet curtain, and even a tiny bathroom. Shabby and ill-kept, because the maids often conveniently forget about it, Seven should have been highly desirable, but the singers to whom it had been assigned came to the office with one excuse after another, and soon found new accommodations. It wasn't just because of its inconvenient location. Strange rustling sounds were occasionally heard in the boudoir walls during sessions of late-night entertaining, and the rumor grew up that Room Seven was haunted.
Room Number Seven was no ordinary dressing room, besides its odd location and occasional odder noises and unexpected puffs of air. Twenty years before, during the disastrous war against Prussia, the theaters and other public buildings of Paris had been used for storing ordnance and rations, and for the sheltering of refugees. The great unfinished National Opera humbled itself to house a great munitions arsenal, bushels of wheat, and barrels of gunpowder. Even the smaller Eclectic Theater had its role to play, back in the dark days of that terrible siege, when even the sewers were bricked up so that no one could enter or leave the city, and death rained down from Prussian artillery mounted on the hills to the east of Paris.
After France surrendered to the Prussians, after a year of humiliating defeats, the revolutionaries called the Paris Commune took up residence inside the city walls, and made the Eclectic Theater one of their bases of operation. Since many of the Communards were carpenters, miners, stone workers, and skilled artisans, they tunneled out a termite mounds' worth of passageways and secret rooms beneath and through the Eclectic Theater. Curiously, they avoided the old Roman bath down below. At first Alberich attributed it to their love of the old buildings and ways of building, until he came to know better why the old revolutionaries had so carefully preserved the Roman bath's remains. In any event, Number Seven's remote location, lack of frequent habitation, and considerable size made it a perfect choice for such a Communard passageway.
Behind one of the walls of Number Seven the Communards had built a narrow corridor which ended at the wall of Number Seven, and there they inserted a pivoting wooden door. On the dressing room side, the door had been covered with wall board, but the damp had warped the board beneath it, so rather than replace it, someone had cut corners and covered the whole section with an elaborate Rococo full-length mirror. The door itself pivoted, so that by means of a series of latches on either side, it was possible to swing the door open into the little hidden corridor behind it.
Later, someone else had cut a hole in the door and replaced the mirrored glass with one that was silvered in a special way. Alberich had found it when he had first come to work on the Eclectic Theater contract, back in those days eighteen months before, when the labyrinth behind the walls offered nothing but endless amusement and exploration. He had decided it most likely hadn't been put there by the Commune fighters. More likely, some gentleman had it set up to provide a convenient vantage point from which to spy on his mistress. Later, Alberich had told Alexandrine of it as they sat in her drawing room with the red-lamped shade before going upstairs. She laughed so hard that her long filigree earrings swayed, and she remarked that the man might have wanted to watch his mistress sport with her other lovers, and then laughed even harder as understanding slowly spread over Alberich's puzzled face.
Later, some of the older Eclectic Theater workmen had told Alberich how, after the blockade of Paris was ended, their first step had been to go in to remove the manacles from the walls, and clean up some especially stubborn rust-red stains. One workman had gone around and sprinkled the whole room with holy water, but the men wondered if the ghosts had ever really departed.
Then one night, shortly after Alberich had begun working inside the Eclectic Theater's walls, he roamed the small corridors as he constructed schematics, planning where the trunks of wires were to go. It was very late, but he didn't have to go any longer to his small bare room in the Marais. He'd gotten Monsieur Devereaux to allow him the use of one of the larger, better-lit and ventilated workrooms down by the pumping station, and there he slept on a rough cot, surrounded by piles of schematic drawings, books on generators, dynamos, and electrical systems, ceramic tubing, copper wire rolls, and other detritus. From there he would venture into the Commune corridors, and eventually he found himself in the passageway behind Room Seven.
The Communards had fitted the room with an air shaft, and as Alberich came up to the right turn that led to the mirror of Room Seven, he could hear muffled conversation and movement coming from inside the dressing room.
The passageway angled sharply before coming up on the other side of the mirror, and Alberich walked blindly up to it. Then he stopped just in time to avoid crashing into the back side of the mirror. In front of it stood a tall naked Hera, full and lush, lifting her round white arms over her head as she pinned up her hair. Behind her, the faint outline of a man moved back and forth in the boudoir door. He might have been dressing, or simply moving about restlessly as the woman preened.
Confusion, shame, and desire overwhelmed Alberich all at once and he clumsily drew back, clattering some stones in the passageway. Immediately the singer put her ear to the mirror and said, "André? Come here - there's a strange sound." Alberich flattened himself to the wall, terrified that he could be seen through what appeared to be a clear sheet of glass, afraid that either of them might accidentally crack the glass and reveal his presence.
A tall, heavy-set man with dark hair came up to the woman from behind. Her skin shone pale against his black evening dress. The man put his arms around her soft middle, cupped her breasts, and buried his face in her neck. Then he laughed and said, "What noise? You're just trying to get me back into bed. I've told you, Roxanne, I have to go."
She turned around to kiss him, murmuring endearments, and Alberich stared until he had to look away, as his burning blood could take no more. When he looked again, the well-dressed man had put a robe of pale cream silk around the woman's shoulders. Then he kissed her a few times more, and shortly left. Alberich squeezed himself against the corridor wall, listening to her movements as she busied herself around the room. It seemed to take hours for her to dress and finally go out.
As he crept back along the passageway, he vowed never to return. No sleep came to him that night. He burned for a woman, any woman, but Alexandrine had gone to Lyon to visit her daughter in the convent there, and so instead he abandoned himself to the impersonal arms of the brothel. Afterwards, he took refuge in the workroom by down by the pumping stations, close to the silent, still water that filled the old Roman bath. The desire of his body was sated, but not that of his heart. He picked up his violin, the old fiddle bought for a few francs in the town-square market in Rennes, and walked out to the bath itself. Around its stone cold circle he walked, improvising haunting tunes far into the night. He stopped only when the cold blue dawn's light came down through the slits high in the stone walls to cast a soft pall on the water's surface.
For a long time after that, Alberich had avoided the secret walkway behind Room Number Seven. The singer Roxanne changed dressing rooms, and soon returned to London.
Now, here he was again in the silent secret corridor behind Room Seven's mirrored wall. On a mad whim, he adjusted a few of the small pulleys and linkage mechanisms, and the mirrored door creaked noisily open, making a fair amount of noise and stirring up quantities of dust.
He hesitated to enter the dressing room at first, and his stomach clenched as he went in. Puffs of dust billowed up each time he took a step, and the room smelled of old face-powder. He kept expecting Roxanne to emerge from behind the boudoir curtain robed only in full flesh. Thrusting aside the curtain, he saw that nothing remained except a pink silk scarf draped over the back of the bright blue settee. The little narrow daybed with its smooth white chenille spread and small rolled pillow looked as undisturbed and chaste as any nun's. Absently he picked up the scarf and draped it across his neck, idly feeling its softness, sniffing it for any trace of scent, but there was none except for the dust of the room.
The maids should clean this before Mlle. Sigurdsdotter ... before Kristina arrives, he said to himself with a trace of irritation.
The dim gaslight cast odd enlarged shadows on the rose-papered walls, but Alberich didn't bother to turn it up. He imagined Kristina sitting right over there at the vanity table with her loose gown open to the waist, combing her hair. Her breasts would slide within the silk of her gown as it fell open, then shut, then open again. She would roll her stockings up and fasten them right where the thigh swelled out at its roundest point. If she were vain, she might even undo her robe entirely to admire herself as Roxanne did. It would be so easy to come up here before rehearsals or after performances. He had already seen her beautiful white neck, how the collarbones disappeared entirely under the slope of smooth flesh. There was more beyond that, so much more.
Spurs of desire pushed him onward, but inside he protested. I can't do this. She's not vain. She doesn't even know how beautiful she is. I want to look at her in the flesh, not from the other side of a piece of glass.
The mirror mechanism worked from inside the dressing room as well as out, with the switch and lever concealed at floor level. It would be possible to come and go that way, if a person wanted to. Alberich sighed as if weighed down by stones, and after a moment's thought, passed through the mirror into the hallway's long tunnel of night. He stood for a few moments longer, and came to a decision.
An hour later, he came back with some black paint filched from a prop room closet, and covered the passageway's side of the two-way mirror, making it opaque. When she took up residence in the room, he would not look on her in secret. But he couldn't bring himself to brick up the vents which allowed someone to stand in the corridor and hear everything which transpired inside as clearly as if they stood directly in the room itself.
Then Alberich crept into Gicard's office for a second time. The administrator was gone on one of his famously long lunch breaks, no doubt with the managers at their favorite cafe in Montmartre. Don't push your luck, the walls seemed to say as he skirted around the wall and scrutinized the dressing room assignment board. Other things than Alberich slunk through the Eclectic Theater, and one of them played in the breeze which whistled through the ventilation shaft and ruffled his hair. You've got what you wanted here, now go.
There on the board was her name, and the key was gone, the key to Room Seven. So she had been here, and picked up the key. There was no scent of perfume in the air, but he could feel her all the same. She would walk the same corridors he did. She would tread the boards of the stage, and as long as he had his work here, he would perhaps see her.
A mad idea occurred to him. Gicard was a superstitious man, and it might just work on him. Alberich went back into the niche between the two offices, but lingered. Perhaps he would quietly stay there until Gicard came back.
He didn't wait long. Gicard returned bleary-eyed and groping for the brandy decanter which he kept on the long console table next to the wall. Alberich whispered in a light stage-voice, "Clean up Number Seven."
Gicard started up, fumbling with the glass and spilling a little on his trouser leg. "What? Who's there?"
"Room Seven is down to your usual standards. It could stand for some improvement, especially as it's about to be occupied."
Gicard's plump face turned satisfyingly pale, and he took another drink. To convince him further, Alberich blew into the grill, and a puff of dust and moving air floated out.
"Leave me alone," Gicard whimpered. "I've done what you asked. Don't I keep your box open for you?"
Alberich had no idea what the foolish man was talking about, but he decided to play along anyway. "Thank you. I appreciate that. But just do it. Clean up Number Seven, especially that carpet."
(Continued ...)