Chapter 7

Viva il vino Che ci allieta ogni pensiero (Here's to the wine that makes every thought a happy one)

E che annega l'umor nero (And that drowns a black humour)

Nell'ebbrezza tenera (In soft intoxication)

-'Cavalleria Rusticana', lyrics by Guido Menasci

Music suggestion: 'The Carnival of Venice' - Niccolo Paganini and Joshua Bell

They met often.

Over the next few weeks a peculiar sort of trust developed between them. Theirs was an arrangement full of secrets on both sides and deceit on his, but the connection between them was somehow deep and genuine in spite of it.

Christine began to notice something curious. She liked him even better as a human being than she had as the Angel.

Every day she found herself thinking how glad she was that she knew the truth about him now. Her lessons with him were the highlight of each day; Mondays, when she rested her voice and so they didn't meet, seemed to drag by. And what was curious, he often contrived to find a reason to meet those days anyway, and though it could not have any possible advantage to her artistry, she always accepted.

It doesn't make sense, she often found herself thinking. I should not trust a man who insists on wearing a mask everywhere he goes. Honest people don't do that. It isn't natural. And yet I cannot keep away from him.

Perhaps people are right about me. Perhaps I am wrong in the head after all.

The Opéra Populaire's new production of Il Muto was to open in a month. Following an unusual decision by the managers - one that threw the entire company into disarray and sent Monsieur Reyer and the artistic director into paroxysms - La Carlotta would be sharing the role of the Countess with Mademoiselle Christine Daae, who would be her alternate during matinee performances and on Saturdays.

Only La Carlotta and the managers were happy with this turn of events. The great diva relished her days off as an opportunity to inform everyone what an extraordinarily fragile instrument her own voice was, as though that somehow was proof of its rarity and quality. She took to spraying her throat with salt water from an ornate golden bottle at frequent intervals, and sometimes refused to speak for whole days (a state of affairs which didn't trouble anyone except herself), which she thought would add to her mystique.

"It is a heavy burden I bear," she was often heard saying on the frequent occasions when she deigned to break her vow of silence.

But if that was true, it was a burden she relished.

Christine, for her part, was happy too.

Her voice had blossomed. She was able to do things with it that she would not have believed possible even a year ago.

Privately, she could not help agreeing with Erik that the opera was rather insipid. But she didn't much care. She was being given the chance to sing, and that was all that really mattered to her. She would have sacrificed almost anything for that.

However, the city's rumor mill assumed another reason for her happiness.

They had read in the gossip columns that after her first night in the role, a certain Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny, had thrown a party in her honor in a private dining-room at the Café Anglais, in which the crème de la crème of Paris society had assembled to fête her gifts.

How could a young lady - a penniless foreigner, no less - who had attracted the attention of one of the richest and most celebrated young men in the country not be glad? Nothing else could possibly be required for a woman's happiness.

And indeed, Christine was pleased with his attention - delighted that he remembered her, even if a bit shocked that he wanted all his illustrious friends to meet her.

Though the occasion fell on a Saturday, when the opera ran the production twice and she was certain to be exhausted well before nightfall, there seemed no way to say no.

And so, that evening, she hastily sponged off her makeup and threw aside her costume as soon as the opera was over, and a few minutes later she found herself drawing up to the elegant façade of the Café Anglais, decked out in a rented gown and jewels.

It was evident at once that Raoul had outdone himself. He had rented a vast private room, which she was escorted to at once by an obsequious and attentive maître d'hôtel, and inside a harpist was playing and waiters were dispensing champagne by the magnum. A horde of distinguished-looking and attractive guests had already gathered, most garbed in elegant black or white.

When she entered, still awkwardly fastening a bracelet around her wrist, Raoul appeared instantly.

With a delighted expression on his amiable face, he pushed his way through the crowd to claim her. A moment later she was circulated from guest to guest, names she had read in the papers flying through the air as she struggled to remember everyone she was introduced to. There were industrialists, aristocrats, politicians, even minor royalty.

All had ingratiating smiles for the Vicomte de Chagny.

All, too, were more expensively dressed - and, she felt, better-looking - than she was. There more diamonds in that single room than she had seen in the whole course of her life.

It was overwhelming. She kept wanting to turn to Meg or some other of her friends to whisper wry remarks in her ear, and remembering with a jolt that she was not here.

Above all, she wished Erik could be here. He deserved to share in the praise.

And indeed, that was not the only reason. Suspicious though he was, his peculiar, curt behavior would have been strangely comforting to her. She could practically hear his sneering remarks. She would have relished them. It would have been a kind of buffer between her and these supercilious strangers.

She felt utterly alone here. She knew she was not one of them. They did not try to make her feel otherwise.

And indeed, they were scarcely on the fish course - a tender sole dijonaise - before they turned on her.

It started as a extravagantly moustachioed marquis, one of the luminés of the event, turned to her and cleared his throat. "You are not from here originally, Mademoiselle?" he said, with polite but pointed interest.

"No, Monsieur le Marquis." Christine restrained a sigh. It seemed that no matter how many years you had lived among the French, if you had not been born there, you were never truly one of them.

"What do you remember of your childhood before you were brought here?" her inquisitor went on.

This was a test.

She could tell them the truth. There was no work for poor Papa. Sometimes there was no money for months at a time. Is that the story you wanted to hear? But she could not say that. Her father would be humiliated if anyone had ever found out that he could not provide for his little child.

"Very little, I am afraid," she evaded.

"Oh?"

She was going to have to lie her way through. Lie, or do a very neat job of manipulating the truth. "We were not wealthy, but we were honest and free." Really, Christine, you sound like a yellow-backed novel.

"Where were you, precisely?" another well-bred voice inquired from somewhere nearby.

We lived in the middle of nowhere, Christine thought.

"We were in a market town. Near Uppsala," she said, though that was an exaggeration; they had lived in a remote hamlet that didn't even have its own doctor. "There were, ah, some spectacular views of the countryside."

"Uppsala? Where the university is?" a lady's voice chimed in.

"Yes, precisely." Christine smiled, pleased that someone knew what she was talking about.

"A magnificent city," the lady pronounced decisively. "But the Swedish countryside is equally splendid. What was it like to grow up in such a beautiful place?"

People shunned us for our poverty.

"The solitude and seclusion were... refreshing," Christine invented. "The countryside... had a wild, rugged beauty about it."

Sometimes all we had to eat was the plants we could gather.

"When it was warm, we would pick wildflowers in the meadows," she went on. "Basket after basket. And sometimes there were wild strawberries, too."

But her audience did not notice the gaps in her narrative. They lapped up this idyllic vision just as if they had been reading a pastoral novel, or gazing upon a Watteau painting. It was what they wanted from her.

"Whatever made you want to leave such a paradise?" someone said.

Christine recalled the week of their journey. The bone-chilling cold of the third-class carriage that had brought her and her father to Paris. The coal smog that had settled into every crevice of the Gare du Nord, making it look more like a menacing cave than a hub of modern transport. Most of all, she remembered the grief and desperation in her father's dark eyes.

That desperation had paid off. In Paris, his gifts had been celebrated. He'd been famous, and, what mattered far more to her, respected.

But typhoid fever had no more regard for artists than it did for anyone else. And seeing him buried in a magnificent crypt in the city's most famous cemetery had been a cold consolation at best to his orphaned child.

Beating down the sickening wave of grief that suddenly rose inside her, Christine forced herself to smile disarmingly. "Who could resist the glitter and excitement of the most beautiful city in the world?"

This answer, of course, seemed perfectly reasonable to her Parisian audience.

She was relieved beyond words when this particular interrogation was over. But as the meal was drawing to a close and the guests were standing around in groups eating elegantly molded ices, it was replaced by another subject she liked little better.

A composer she'd met earlier, one of a whirlwind of wealthy and celebrated musicians who had been presented to her that evening, wove his way through the crowd surrounding her and cornered her by a window.

He was one of the few guests that evening who Christine had not felt an instinctive dislike for. Though he was said to possess immense personal wealth, enough that he could have lived out the rest of his days without lifting a finger, he lacked the air of idleness of many of the other guests. Rather, he had used his good fortune to become, it was said, one of the foremost composers of his generation.

"A triumph this evening, Mademoiselle," he said with a genial smile. "Truly a triumph."

"I thank you, Monsieur. You are very gracious."

"You must have found a very good instructor indeed," he said.

"Well-"

"-You must tell me his name - my daughter wishes to become a singer, and she will not be satisfied unless she studies with whoever taught Mademoiselle Christine Daae. Where might I look him up? Is he currently accepting new students?"

"You are very kind," she said, taken aback, for Erik had made her promise she would not tell anyone about their lessons yet. She should have fabricated some story for occasions like this. The question had been bound to come up at some point; it was a miracle it had not before. "I am deeply grateful to you, and to your daughter for her high opinion," she said. "But I fear you must disappoint her. I... do not have an instructor."

"But you must."

"I do not. That is what it says in all the reviews," Christine pointed out.

He smiled. "I know that is what they are saying in the gossip-columns. But you cannot fool me - you are not talking to an amateur. It is impossible to obtain such a faultless technique without a knowledgeable instructor."

"Thank you for the compliment, Monsieur." Christine was pleasantly surprised by this rumor. "But my technique is not faultless-" As Erik reminds me with every note- "and I am indeed self-taught."

The composer blinked at her. Was it just her imagination, or was he beginning to look annoyed?

"It is not unheard-of for a singer to study by herself," she ventured.

"Not a singer of your caliber," the composer said. "Not the sopranos who are fortunate enough to grace the stage of the foremost opera company in this great empire." He lowered his voice. "Mademoiselle, I admire your artistry. But I don't think much of performers who keep secrets in order to impede the progress of others who may have similar aspirations. You were not always a celebrity, after all. And I think still less of artists who imagine that their success is due entirely to their own genius, rather than to the myriad efforts of all those who assisted them along the way. Your instructor deserves better than to be denied by his pupil."

Yes, he does, Christine thought sadly.

At this point, Raoul, who had been looking back and forth between them as though watching a tennis match, finally broke in. "Monsieur, I do not like what you are insinuating about Mademoiselle. If she says she has no instructor, then it is the truth. And your choice of time and place to make such accusations was extremely poor."

He and the composer stared at each other for a moment. Finally, the older man nodded curtly. "I hope Mademoiselle will forgive me," he said. "She understands, I hope, that my intentions were good." But his expression was dark. He spun on his heel and walked away.

"How dare he speak to you thus?" Raoul said in outrage, as they watched him go. "It was a mistake inviting him. I am sorry."

"It was kind of you to leap to my defense, but he was right to say those things," Christine said weakly. "And I am not sure you should defend me. He can tell when a singer is professionally trained."

Raoul stared at her with a lost expression. "Yes... But you would not lie." He looked as though the idea were unimaginable. "Surely not."

Life for me has become a great deal more complicated since we were children. "Thank you for your faith in me. I am not at all sure I deserve it." Christine sighed, weighing a difficult alternative in her head. She did not want to risk Erik finding out that she had broken their pact. But she could not bear to lose Raoul's regard for her. "I want you to know the truth. But you must not tell anyone of this. I know I can trust you with this secret, my old friend."

"Secret?" Raoul said.

"I do have an instructor," Christine admitted.

He blinked. "But you said-"

"-He does not want me to tell anyone about him," Christine said. "He is very particular about that point."

"Why should teaching you be a secret?" Raoul said, looking annoyed. "He ought to be proud you are his pupil."

"Thank you," Christine said. "But he is proud. He tells me every day how delighted he is with my progress. He said he wishes everyone could know that he is my teacher." She smiled at the recollection.

"Then why-?"

"He said 'wait and see - we shall astonish Paris'."

"But you have been applauded by the Emperor. Surely by now you have 'astonished Paris'."

"Thank you. I don't quite understand myself… He shrinks from society," Christine said, explaining as much as she could understand of the matter herself. "He is very shy, I believe. And... slightly eccentric." Another immense understatement.

"Some crotchety old fellow?" Raoul said with a smile.

"He isn't old."

Raoul's frown deepened.

"He certainly is irritable, however," Christine said, laughing to herself. "He despises the whole human race."

"I don't see why a genius like that should have to be shy, or a misanthrope," Raoul said.

"He had a tragic history, I believe."

"Oh, yes, of course," Raoul practically rolled his eyes, though he caught himself just in time. "All these mysterious geniuses have a 'tragic history'."

"You think me a simpleton," she said, incensed.

"No, indeed. But I don't believe most people who set themselves up as recluses have a good reason to shun society. It is easy enough to make friends. One merely has to make one's self agreeable, which isn't nearly as difficult as some people seem to think."

Christine smirked. "That is easy for you to say. You come from one of the best families in the country. And you are handsome and charming. Everyone wants to please you - of course it is easy for you to make friends. Everyone finds you agreeable."

Raoul heard only one part of this speech. "You think me handsome?" he said blissfully.

The look of happiness on his face was so open and artless that Christine could only smile. "Everyone does, you know."

"But your opinion is more worth having."

"Thank you," she said, touched.

"Or perhaps you think I would not make friends easily if I was not a de Chagny?" Raoul said with a sudden look of irritation.

"I didn't say that," Christine said, annoyed in turn. "When I became friends with you, you told me you were just little Raoul Martin from the village, do you recall?"

Raoul laughed. "Yes. A habit I acquired very early. It is a habit I have had to give up, though, I am afraid."

"If only things were still as simple as they were in childhood." Christine suddenly felt overwhelmed by the vastness of the gap between their last meeting and now.

"Yes, but they aren't. We all have to give up our childish habit of hiding whenever it strikes us as convenient," Raoul said irritably. "Someday this mysterious instructor of yours will have to as well. That is precisely my point."

"Perhaps he may," Christine said. "I hope he may choose to come out of hiding, someday. But I cannot force him to."

"Why do you use his services, instead of someone else's, if he forces you into dishonesty and concealment?"

Christine laughed, surprised by his naïveté. "I cannot afford anyone else, of course!"

"There must be someone competitive to his rate," Raoul said. "Someone who would not impose all these absurd conditions."

"Not at the rate he charges me," Christine said.

"What does he charge-"

"-Never mind that." Christine had a feeling Raoul would be further infuriated if she knew Erik was teaching her for nothing. "I thought people like you think it's vulgar to talk about money. I had to bring up the matter, but I did not expect you to continue with the subject."

Raoul clamped his handsome mouth shut, surprised by her brusqueness.

"Besides, I do not think I could find another instructor like him," Christine said. "He does things that I do not think any other man could do."

"You speak of him as though he were a god or an angel or something!" Raoul cried.

"No, he certainly is no angel. I am perfectly aware of that," Christine said. It must have been the restaurant's ample supply of wine that prompted her to add, "You sound jealous. Well, there is no call to be. I am here with you, after all, am I not?"

"Yes," Raoul said, softening at once. "I was not jealous." Then, "What did you say his name was?"

"I didn't," Christine said. She paused. For some reason she did not want Raoul to know anything more about Erik.

Raoul squinted.

Christine hid a sigh. If she refused to tell him, he would think it highly suspicious. . "It is Alphonse Joseph Masson, if you must know."

"Hm," Raoul said.

"It was remarkable how much I learned from him even in a short space of time," Christine continued. Her raspberry ice sat forgotten in her glass. "Soon I hardly knew myself when I sang with him..."

Though he couldn't put his finger on it, something about the look in her eyes as she said that disturbed Raoul deeply. From that moment on he began to feel an unreasoning grudge against Christine's mysterious teacher, and formed a sudden resolve to find out more about him.

End of Chapter 7.

Notes:

If you were wondering about the characters' ages in this, Christine and Raoul are in their early 20's, and the Phantom is in his early- to mid-30's, as he appears.

In most respects I'm trying to be as faithful to the movie as possible. But I had to make a couple alterations. I know Christine was played by a 16-17-year-old and Patrick Wilson was in his thirties when he played Raoul. But this can't be the actual ages of the characters, because...

1. as someone astutely pointed out, it doesn't make sense that they could have been childhood sweethearts if they weren't the same age or very close

and

2. Even in that era, it would be extremely unlikely that a wealthy, aristocratic man would be thinking of getting married if he was still in his teens.

With regard to appearances, I'm having Raoul and Christine look more or less the same as in the movie, although I'm picturing Raoul younger and a little less modern-looking, and I'm hoping he got a haircut... :)

French:

Mademoiselle = Miss