When Christine Daaé had picked July 19th as the date she would move into her new apartment on the Rue Scribe, she had clearly not foreseen that it would be the hottest day of the year. With temperatures up to a sweltering 40 degrees Celsius, she had cursed her luck more than once as she was carrying boxes full of clothes and books and kitchen appliances up the stairs to the fourth floor – the apartment itself had been recently renovated and was perfectly comfortable, but apparently no one had thought it necessary to renovate the entryway and common areas with it, and so the building still had no lift. By the time she had moved everything upstairs, assembled her recently acquired Ikea furniture, which she found out was definitely not an easy feat on her own, and unpacked all her stuff, she was drenched in sweat and covered in dust, yet too tired to drag herself to the shower. She could not even open a window, since all that would accomplish was to let in more heat.
She had almost apologized for the way she looked (and smelled, she felt an apology was warranted on that account as well) to the guy delivering her takeaway pizza half an hour ago, but the moment the scent of food hit her nose, she had grabbed the box out of his hands, shoved some money at him, and slammed the door in his face, running up the stairs in a last burst of energy to devour the food like a starved animal. After two bites, as she felt her body heat up even more, she realized she probably should have gone for a sandwich or a salad instead of a hot meal. She finished more than half the pizza anyway, putting the remaining slices in the fridge for the next day.
Once her hunger had been sated, she collapsed onto the couch and planned to stay there for the rest of the evening. Tomorrow she would start her new job as a tour guide at the Palais Garnier, another step into the unknown. It was frightening, this starting over from scratch, although she supposed it was better than what she had been doing before. She supposed staring at the walls of an empty apartment, listening to the howling sirens of ambulances making their way to the nearby hospital and shedding tears she did not know she had left could hardly be called living. She could not keep mourning like that forever, hiding from the rest of the world, haunting that place of sorrow like a ghost. Her dad would not have wanted that for her. Once she had understood that, she had scraped together her last shreds of courage and decided to move out in an attempt at leaving behind those painful memories. She had come off of sick leave and started teaching at a local high school again only long enough to finish her contract and earn enough money to pay the deposit for the new apartment. And now she would start afresh. A new start for a new Christine, for she would never be the old one again now that her father was gone.
But she did not want to think about any of that now. There would be plenty of time to worry about her new colleagues and new responsibilities and new everything else later. For now, all she wanted was some hard-earned peace and quiet. She turned on the TV, switching channels until she stumbled upon a Friends marathon. For some reason, she found watching the show always managed to calm her down when she was feeling anxious about the future, and it proved effective tonight as well.
She had just started to doze off, somewhere halfway through the third episode, when she was rudely awoken by an unexpectedly loud noise from the apartment above hers. Or maybe the noise was not that loud at all, but the walls and ceilings were thin enough for it to seem that way. It only lasted a couple of seconds, too brief for Christine to identify in her half-asleep state. She did not particularly care to know what it was anyway, as long as it did not disturb her again. Unfortunately, any hope that it was only a one-time occurrence was quickly dashed as the sound once again broke through the silence, long enough this time for Christine to recognize it for what it was: the tuning of a violin.
A hundred pictures flashed before her eyes, like fireflies illuminating the dark corners of her mind, so many memories, happy and melancholy and bittersweet all at once, all because of that single sound. Just like that, she saw him again, as clearly as if he were standing right in front of her, alive and well. How many times had she sat on the living room floor of her childhood home, listening as her father tuned his precious instrument, as meticulously as if he were about to perform at the Salle Pleyel with the Orchestre Philharmonique instead of giving a private rendition for his daughter? She still heard the magical melodies he used to pull forth from those strings in her dreams.
But this was not her father playing. Her father, God rest his soul, had been a professional. His colleagues at the Philharmonique used to call him one of the most gifted violinists of his generation. Her upstairs neighbour on the other hand might be nothing more than a novice, for all she knew, and Christine knew all too well what that might sound like, too. No, this could not be happening. She was not about to let the peace and quiet she had longed for all day be disrupted by the terrible wailing of a beautiful instrument being abused by its inexperienced owner. Her exhaustion all but forgotten, she was already halfway out of her seat, ready to march up the stairs to the fifth floor and give her neighbour a piece of her mind concerning appropriate rehearsal times.
Until they began to play in earnest.
To her consternation, the music that originated from the fifth floor apartment was not the shrill screeching she had expected. On the contrary, these were some of the most heavenly sounds she had ever heard in her twenty-six years on this earth. She recognized the music being played as Paganini's Caprice no. 5, a piece even Gustave Daaé had struggled to master. Although she was loath to admit it, the talent of her upstairs neighbour seemed to surpass even that of her beloved father. Their performance sounded so effortless, as if they were playing something as easy as Happy Birthday rather than a piece that was notorious for its incredible speed and extreme technical difficulty.
When the song was over, Christine immediately mourned the loss of those exquisite sounds. Nothing remained of her earlier annoyance. Instead, she was tempted to knock on the mysterious performer's door and beg for more. Luckily she soon found embarrassing herself that way was unnecessary. Paganini was followed by Brahms, and then Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov and Dvorak, all those favourites of her father's which she had not heard in years, all performed with a brilliance she had never heard before. It was the kind of music that brought tears to her eyes, its execution flawless, and still full of so much feeling, a wave of emotions washing over her with such dizzying force that she sank back onto the couch, unable to move until the performance was over, the spell finally broken.
All throughout the next day, her thoughts kept drifting back to the resident of the fifth floor apartment. A glance at the apartment's doorbell had taught her the violinist's name was E. Perrault, but a quick Google search did not make Christine any the wiser. If E. Perrault was a professional musician, which she could hardly believe not to be the case, they clearly did not perform under their own name. Maybe her dad would have known who this Perrault person was. She even wondered if the mysterious musician might be an old colleague of her father's, but if he had known a fellow violinist with such talent, surely he would have mentioned them at some point. One thing Christine was absolutely sure of: if they were a professional, she had never heard them play before. She most certainly would have remembered that.
On her second night in her new apartment, she settled on the couch with a glass of wine, turning on the television but immediately muting the sound, waiting with bated breath for a possible repeat of the previous evening's recital. She was not disappointed. She was surprised, however, to find it was not the familiar sound of a violin greeting her tonight. This time, the glorious notes raining down on her from above were played on a flute.
Spending a lot of time at rehearsals with her dad when she was young, Christine had had plenty of opportunity to study all the different instruments a philharmonic orchestra consisted of. She knew every instrument had its own challenges, and every conductor had their own favourites, but the flute had always seemed one of those instruments that was not very popular with all that many people. She had once heard someone say – whether it was a conductor or a musician or an audience member she could not remember – that there was only one thing that sounded more horrible than a flute, namely two flutes. Although she knew it to be true that it was notoriously difficult to get a group of flutists to play exactly in tune together, she still thought it was a beautiful instrument, and she was convinced that if all those critics could hear her neighbour play now, they would soon share her opinion.
Clearly Perrault's talent was not limited to the violin. They played the flute just as brilliantly and with just as much feeling. How was that fair? Wasn't it enough to be a musical genius on one instrument?
For the next hour, Christine was once again treated to one of the best concerts she had ever been to, and all for free and without so much as leaving her apartment. She feasted on a wide variety of musical pieces, from vivace to largo and back to prestissimo, all impeccably executed. Most of the pieces she recognized, and although her knowledge of the musical catalogue for flute was not that extensive, she was convinced she heard a few original pieces as well. These compositions were unlike any music she had heard before, so overwhelming and devastating in their beauty, transporting her to a place far away from the busy, noisy streets of Paris, where nothing mattered except for the music. Just as the night before, she felt bereft when it was over.
Soon the nightly performances became an integral part of her routine, the thing that kept her going throughout the day, the reason why she looked forward to going home. Perrault played for exactly one hour every evening. At first, the violin appeared to be their preferred instrument, with only an occasional appearance of the flute, but as time passed Christine found out they were a virtuoso on the piano and the harp in equal measure as well. How was that even possible? (How they had managed to get a harp and a piano up to the fifth floor without a lift to begin with was another, less burning question she would consider later.) How had one person succeeded in perfectly mastering four different instruments? Most professional musicians she knew could only ever manage to play one with that level of skill. Maybe her neighbour was immortal and had already had several lifetimes to practice. Or maybe it was not one person, but a whole family of musical geniuses living in the upstairs apartment.
Whatever the truth of it was, every single night Christine had the urge to climb the stairs to the fifth floor and introduce herself as Perrault's biggest fan, to beg them never to stop playing. Yet she never acted on that urge. Instead, she kept deliberately lingering in the hallway whenever she left or returned home, hoping to run into her idol, with no success. No matter how long she waited, hiding in the shadows like some creepy stalker, she never saw or heard anyone come or go. Was she going mad? Was it possible that there was no one living there at all, and that this was all in her head? Maybe the loss of her father had driven her to imagine all this divine music, as a way for her to feel close to him again.
If that were the case, her imagination was certainly persistent. Every night for weeks on end, she kept hearing Perrault play. Usually there was only classical music on the programme, but one night in early September, that changed. The piano concerto by Chopin she had been listening to, enraptured, for the past five minutes, came to a sudden stop, jarring her out of her trance. She heard what she believed to be a loud groan, followed by complete silence for about half a minute, and then, just when Christine had started to worry that maybe Perrault had suffered a heart attack and might be dying behind their piano in this very moment, the music started up again, except this time it was a different song. It sounded familiar, although it took her a few bars to fully recognize it. It was a pop song she had often heard on the radio lately, one of her personal favourites. She quietly hummed the melody, and when the chorus started she could not stop herself from singing along.
She did not get further than a single line before she was interrupted by a discordant chord of notes, as if the pianist had randomly dropped their hands on the keys. Had they heard her? Were they upset by her singing? She hadn't been out of tune, had she? Or maybe they just disliked the sound of her voice. There was only one way to find out. When the music took up again, starting at the beginning of the chorus, Christine once again sang along, loud enough that she was certain her accompanist could hear her. This time the melody did not stop.
There must be something in the water
'Cause every day it's getting colder
And if only I could hold you
You'd keep my head from going under
Singing again after all this time felt like a relief, like coming up for air after swimming below the surface for too long. As she closed her eyes and let her voice remember what it was like to produce music, she realized she had not sung even once in the eighteen months since her dad had died. She tried to ignore the painful stab of knowing that that would have disappointed him. Christine knew he had tried to hide it because he did not want to pressure her into a future based on his desires rather than her own, but she was aware he had secretly hoped she would follow in his footsteps and turn music into her profession. Maybe if he had lived, she might have. But when he fell ill, music had been the last thing on her mind. Her singing, though a big comfort to her father, stopped being a comfort to herself. After he died, she could only associate singing with his pain and her own sorrow, and so she had stopped. Until now.
When the song finished, Christine anxiously waited to see what would happen next. Would more popular songs follow, or was it to be a one-time occurrence and were they to revert to classical music again? She never found out, for instead of the beginning of a new song, she heard movement overhead, and a door slamming shut. Then footsteps sounded on the stairwell and suddenly there was knocking, no, more like a loud banging on her door. Instead of wondering why her upstairs neighbour was suddenly standing at her door and what had them so upset, which should have been her first reaction, the only thing Christine could think of was that she was about to finally meet the mysterious virtuoso. At last she would be able to put a face to the man or woman who had gifted her such glorious music. She only hoped her singing had not ruined things, and that whatever happened next, she would still get to hear them play in the future.
Now that the moment was there at last, Christine found she was almost too nervous to face whoever was waiting for her on the other side of the door. As the knocking continued, she slowly made her way to the hall, taking a steadying breath and wiping her suddenly clammy hands on her jeans before turning the knob and opening the door.
She did not know what or who she had expected to find, but the person standing in front of her was certainly not it. Facing her was a man, although her overactive imagination suggested that ghost was probably a better term to describe him. He was tall and lean, so skinny it could hardly be healthy, dressed in all black, with dark hair and a frantic look in his strange yellow eyes, which seemed almost luminescent in the darkened hallway. He was very pale, or at least as far as she could see, for when she looked closely she noticed that half of his face was covered by a mask the same shade as his sallow skin.
She barely had the time to take it all in before he blurted out, "You have the voice of an angel." No introduction, no greeting of any kind, just that one sentence, spoken with such intensity, as if they were the most important words he would ever speak. Even his rich voice sounded like a musical instrument, played with the skill only a master musician like him could manage.
"Oh," was the only thing she could think of to say by way of reply. Later she thought the polite thing to do would have been to thank him for the compliment, but everything about this situation was so strange she could not think straight. When after several uncomfortably quiet moments it seemed like he would not offer anything else, Christine said, "You must be the greatest musician I have ever had the pleasure of hearing." He made no reply. The two of them stood there, simply gaping at each other in awkward silence for what felt like hours, until the man suddenly seemed to recall where he was and what he was doing.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled, "I should not be here. I'll go now."
"No wait!" Christine begged as the strange man turned to go. "Will you not tell me your name? So I at least know who to thank for all these private concerts?"
He did not answer immediately, instead quietly gazing at her as if she were a riddle he was trying to solve.
"Erik," he finally said. "I am Erik."
Christine didn't know any Eriks, and she hardly knew anything about the man standing in front of her, and yet she thought the name suited him. Erik Perrault. It was a good name for a musician. She could already see it printed on posters and programmes, although the fact that he was wearing a mask gave her a first indication as to why he might prefer not to be in the spotlight.
"Well, Erik, I hope you will allow me to enjoy many more evening performances. They are the highlight of my day. You have a remarkable talent."
"It is nothing," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. "It is your voice that is truly remarkable. If I believed in God, I'd be inclined to think you were an angel sent down to earth to show us mere mortals what heaven sounds like."
Again, Christine had no idea how to react to such a compliment. His words were as ardent as his gaze. Wishing to escape those eyes which seemed to burn right through her, she shyly ducked her head, acknowledging his remark with a nervous giggle that was very unlike her. At his next words however, her eyes immediately snapped up to meet his again.
"Would you like to come upstairs with me?"
Her face must have turned the brightest shade of red imaginable at the implication of his question, because he quickly seemed to realize what he had just said.
"To sing, I mean!" he quickly amended. "Would you like to come upstairs to sing for me? Please?" The last word sounded almost unnatural out of his mouth, as if he had never needed to use it before and his lips and tongue were unfamiliar with its shape. She wondered why her singing for him would be important enough to be an exception.
Everything in Christine was yelling at her to run, to forcefully close the door in Erik's face and forget any of this had ever happened. A masked man she had never met before was standing at her door, telling her she sang like an angel after one song heard through a wall, asking her to come upstairs with him and looking at her as if she held all the secrets of the universe. Yet she could not bring herself to make him leave. This was the man who had produced such exquisite music, so devastatingly beautiful it hardly seemed human, and he had complimented her voice. Could she really be blamed for wanting to know more about him?
"Okay," she replied with a confidence that surprised even herself. She did not understand what he had heard in her voice that made her so special, but how could she possibly decline an invitation to sing with someone as musically gifted as him?
The barest hint of a smile appeared on his masked face as he extended his bony, long-fingered hand to her. She accepted it without hesitation, letting him lead her to the fifth floor, towards the light of his music.