Chapter 5

One night, after a particularly gruelling night of practise, Marianne slumped, exhaustion filling her, onto her beloved stage. She caressed its polished boards, trodden for so many years by Don Juan, the Queen of the Night, Turandot and Giselle. Without warning, a nauseating wave of loneliness and sadness swept over her, engulfing her as a wave does a pebble. Memories of her father, her mother tore though her mind; forcing scalding tears to fall from her eyes, silently and desperately. Without relinquishing her recumbent posture at centre-stage, she began to sing the requiem she had planned to sing at the funeral. The sharply rendered images of lost times and abandoned hopes gave her song an added poignancy. This time she was not singing to please herself; was not imagining herself to be somebody she was not. The song rose from her very depths, filling the darkened stage with a strange and beautiful music, almost of another world in its ethereal and angelic quality. Without effort she transcended her lack of beauty, her mediocrity as a dancer, and appeared as she truly was. She was a singer.

As the requiem distended to meet its final moments, a shape moved in the shadows of the upper circle. Marianne's concluding phrase was cut short by a spasm of utter terror. Someone was watching her! Someone was up there! It was probably another one of the dancers, coming to look for her when they noticed she was not in the dormitory. They were surely laughing at her pathetic self-pity. She wanted to weep in frustrated anger and embarrassment.
"Who is that? If you've come to laugh at me you can just go!"
Silence.
"I mean it. Who is there? How dare you eavesdrop on me!"
Silence.
Her righteous anger began to be marred by fear. She had been at the Opera Populaire long enough to have heard many stories about the spirits which were said to haunt its catacombs. Rumours of ghosts were always bandied about by stage-hands who wished to impress the prettiest dancers. There was even a story of a phantom of the opera who some claimed had kidnapped the Primma Donna herself, who had taught her to sing! While not a fanciful girl, Marianne was far too young, and too vulnerable not to feel a prickle of fear and trepidation as she stared up into the dark circle.