White Roses
A/N: The atlante that appears to hold up the roof of the fifth cellar was borrowed from the 2004 POTO movie.
The cool winds from the sea have turned into a sirocco of August heat blowing up from the south. A swan died in the King's garden yesterday and from the way the newspapers reported it, some would like to give it a state funeral. Gardeners all over Brussels collapse in the heat as they struggle to keep the brown and withering plants watered.
Two letters from M. Peillard greeted me upon my return from Paris. One was signed by his secretary and I settled the account at once. The other was personal, written in a flowing copperplate you see so rarely now in this modern typewriter age.
"My dear Madame de Chagny,
Our morning visit was a bright spot in a dull August, so bright, in fact, that its luster has not diminished with the passage of time. At first I thought that I had offended you in some way by referring to strange events long buried in our National Opera's past, or perhaps I should not say "ours," as you have not lived in Paris for many years. But out of past affection for both our city and its crown jewel that sits at the center of all its roads, I thought perhaps you might want to claim its ownership as something we might share in common, even if for you it has been three decades since you made this fair place even fairer with your presence.
After our conversation, it occurred to me that I had endured long without a respite from my solicitor's labors. In a happy coincidence of circumstance, I discover that I am both able to take a holiday and pursue my journalistic ambitions simultaneously. Le Monde has agreed to purchase a story on the upcoming state visit of the Prussian delegation to Prince Leopold of Belgium regarding the Prussian respect for Belgian's neutral status. Now to speak with Belgians and Prussians, one must go where they are, that is, to Brussels. The trite expression, to "combine business with pleasure" might seem on the surface to apply here, but it is not so, for if by business it is meant some disagreeable activity which contained no joy at all, in this instance it would be entirely erroneous. Madame de Chagny, it would be a pure multiplication of pleasures to be able to call on you as well as the Prussians.
Or if this is too forward a request, please disregard it entirely. I hope sincerely that you will not find it so, and remain,
Cordially yours,
Jacques Lalonde Peillard"
It had arrived in a large envelope unfolded, and I recalled from long ago that one never folded a letter sent to royalty. I still haven't answered it.
Anki wrote, too. She, Philippe, and the children are all back together again in the breezy Grobbendonk farmhouse, and they want me to come to escape the heat. The children, she says, are sorting their seashells and like South Sea Island savages use them as money to buy toys and small favors from each other. Johannes had to have baths of weak tea to soothe his sunburn. Now, back from the seaside, they prepare to leave for London, and would I come to help? Further, can I accompany them to London for several weeks while they get settled?
So I prepare to close up my house, because it makes no sense to go to London, back to Brussels, and then to Perros. I can sail from London to Perros, and have trunks sent on ahead. I've rented a farmhouse away from the beaches now ringed with bathing resorts and hotels, and can walk the kilometer or so to the sea.
For Perros-Guirec calls me. The sea there in September and October is rough and grey, the rose-red rocks dull on overcast days, but those rocks are still beautiful to me, thrown about on the shore like balls or blocks discarded by giant children. The old women in black mourn husbands lost at sea or crushed beneath the daily load of farm work and I will sit beside them in the churchyard. I will remember one night of exquisite sweetness and pain when I thought the gates of heaven had really opened up before me, when my father and the angel whom he sent both pulled through my heart the strains of an enchanted violin. I don't know who possessed whom. Did an angel animate my imagination of my father, or did the spirit of my father infuse the body of a man pretending to be an angel?
It didn't matter, for that night I knelt in the snow before my father's iron grave-cross was the closest I have ever come to the other world. It doesn't matter that I soon found it out to be all lies and deception. Something came through Erik that night, something slipped in between his fingers and the strings, between the catgut and the bow. Something walked abroad on the beach, where Erik followed me but carefully hid out of sight behind the rocks, singing and sighing, only to slip away when Raoul called out and came upon me from behind.
Erik might not have been the angel of music himself, but that didn't mean there wasn't one.
Yesterday for the first time since Raoul's death I took a grey rather than black dress from my wardrobe. For propriety's sake I sewed two strips of black velvet on either side of the collar tabs. It felt shocking, almost provocative to go to our family's grave site yesterday in that soft dove grey. The white rose bushes that marked Raoul and Isabeau's plots were devoid of flowers as was usual for the season, but the rose hips weren't as firm and fat as I liked. I badgered the sexton until he brought two full cans and saw to the watering.
On a little stone bench I sat. Normally the willows grew right up to the edge of the pond, but the hot wind had done its work and between the water and the trees spread a broad expanse of browning grass. I tried to light two little candles in their votive glass to rest on their graves, but the hot wind kept blowing them out. What would make Raoul happiest? I wondered. A long boat came to mind, graceful of bow and full of sail, and at the helm he cut through a churning violet sea. Skillfully he threaded his way through islands scattered like beads of a necklace when the string breaks. Dressed as a little cabin boy, Isabeau ran free of all the limitations suffered by our sex as she scampered up and down the wooden deck, or climbed like a monkey up the mast to spy far horizons with her eagle-sharp eyes.
Then tears stung, so that I had to blink. These stories, are they not the sea-walls we construct to hold back the inevitable waves of the dark? Angels behind the walls of the dressing room, or the spirit of fathers who walk the earth and play the violin, are they all comfort without substance? Then Raoul was very close, almost as if he sat on the stone bench next to me, but instead of feeling comforted I shivered, suddenly very much alone. A man wrote me a letter, I told him in my heart, and I don't know what to do. Perhaps it's nothing. Perhaps I deceive myself. I love you, I said to him silently, I love you as none other because you were good and kind and so many beautiful lives walk the earth because of us, and not just the children you engendered, also the one you fathered in every sense but one, for Philippe is your son as much as Erik's.
There was a woman who died in the Opera many years ago, I told him. But you know that already, perhaps you have already embraced her in the fellowship of that other shore. I think she met her death at Erik's hands. It frightens me, my dead love, that Philippe touched with his fingers the bones of a woman that the father of his flesh had slain. I don't know why Erik killed her. Perhaps you have already found him and you know. I think she revealed his shame to him, either by taking off his mask or uncovering some even deeper stigma, and in a fit of despair and passion he slew her. So does our son need to know? Too many secrets have passed. Too many times did I turn away from him when all he wanted was to know. For like Erik, Philippe contains depths that most people do not plumb, and in his heart and mind I think he already suspects. Whom do I protect with my silence, my silent love? Him, or myself?
The peace of your rest is beyond any disturbance I might cause. But this man, another man, do you wish to rise and haunt him, to frighten him away? Do you wish to hold onto me even across the vast river of time that separates us? Should my heart stay closed and shut up, should I slip into black and grey obscurity, or shall the red thread run through me one more time before the dark breaks through the wall to wash over me for good?
No answer came. I walked over to the lake's edge without fear of staining my shoes in the marsh, for under my feet was only the brown baked grass. The faint green stench from the water reminded me of the lake under the Opera. M. Peillard in his letter said nothing about my singing history, nothing about digging in dead piles of old yellowed newspapers for articles about the infamous Mademoiselle Daaé, such a promising singer, she could have been another Swedish Nightingale, whatever happened to her? Perhaps he's saving it for our meeting, I thought, and then I knew that I would let him call on me when he came to Brussels for that boring diplomatic spectacle in which I had no interest. I trembled even though the day was far from cold, and a warm breeze stirred up little ripples on the placid surface of the green lake.
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
That morning, the last in which I ever woke in Erik's rooms, I rose early and confronted him as he prepared to leave for the morning's marketing. I was going too, I said. He refused, and I insisted. I shivered a little, not knowing what he would do. But after a few more refusals, he sighed in resignation.
"Very well. But don't complain of boredom. Leave your fur and cover your head with a scarf, as I don't want to be mobbed by people who might recognize you."
He gave me a thick black knitted shawl to wrap around my head and shoulders, and out we went into the cold blue morning dusted with faint snow. I looked up into the cold wispy sky and thought, This is my first day of freedom.
"This was your mother's," I said, looking at the shawl's finely-knit wool stitches. He looked at fish spread out on a table, poked them, felt their gills just as I would have done, but he refused to answer. The fishmonger smiled at me, then commented, "So Monsieur, you have just gotten married, then?" He turned his ruddy face to me, smiling. "He must have let you stay in bed while he did the marketing, up till now at least." I blushed, embarrassed and a little guilty. This man knew Erik, and the fish he gave him were good, firm-fleshed and fresh. It didn't matter to him that Erik's nose was skewed and unnatural, or that his eyes were black-ringed as a polecat's. The fish seller looked me over frankly, and even under the heavy black wool I felt revealed. It will shame Erik when I leave, I thought. It will shame him in front of this man, and suddenly I felt sad and alone there in front of the crowded morning market stalls.
"It's just that he doesn't trust me with the purse," I answered, and the big man took it as a joke, for he smiled even wider.
"You have to trust her sometime," the fish seller said to Erik. "Some day you may want to lie in bed in the morning yourself. And some days the marketing doesn't get done at all." He winked, and Erik reddened a little. The man wiped a spot of blood off his hands onto his already-spattered apron, then turned to the woman next to us.
"Can't you keep silent?" Erik said under his breath as we looked over a pile of limp, brown-tinged artichokes.
Guilt made me irritable. "Why should I keep silent? I'm not a woman of Persia. Anyway, these aren't worth buying. They've been bitten by frost on their way to Paris. Look, these peas over here are better. Were they grown under glass?" I asked the woman in the kiosk.
She nodded. "We started them right before Lent. You won't find any fresher."
Erik glowered at me but bought the peas. "Were I unencumbered, this would take half the time."
"Some of those tiny potatoes, too," I pointed. "Look, they're like eggs, so small."
"Madame knows a value," the woman said, glowering back at Erik. I tied the potatoes up in my handkerchief.
"We need a basket," I remarked as we went up and down the street from stand to stand.
"Give your packages to me if you don't wish to carry them. Women, always complaining."
"Men, always complaining about women." A smell filled my nose, so like the bread he brought home fresh most mornings, a beautiful rich odor of yeast and butter and herbs. "Is this your favorite boulangerie? The breads you buy are wonderful."
He smiled a little then, just a softening of the mouth around the edges. A pang went through me. Why was it easier to like Erik once I had decided to leave him?
On the way back we stopped at a cheesemongers, where he picked a small white round, plump and blue-veined as the thigh of a goddess. It would go with the raisin loaf we'd gotten from the baker's.
He unwrapped and sliced in the kitchen, and quietly I slipped into my room, where I packed my things into my carpet bag. The dresses he had made for me I left hanging in the mahogany wardrobe, and the beautiful silk undergarments remained in the lingerie chest of drawers. It seemed wrong to take them. I debated a long time over the stockings, soft and shiny as a moth's cocoon, and finally stuffed them quickly in my bag before I could change my mind.
He had already told me that after the performance of La Juive I was to go home until the next week's performance of Faust. I looked for my papers, the suicide note, a letter I'd started to Raoul, the strange random notes I'd made the night of the Masked Ball, some pages I wanted to paste into my daybook at home, but none of them were there. All that remained were a few pieces of the gold-edged ivory stationery, and what was now a stub of the golden pencil. He's taken them, I thought. I could go look in his room, I know where he keeps his papers, in a sliding-door cabinet next to the organ. Mine are next to his, I can almost see them.
Let him have them, I sighed to myself as I rested my carpetbag down by the front door. They will either comfort him, or he'll burn them. But I will write him, a long letter, to explain everything. Everything that I can explain, that is.
"Why do you want me to stay with Margot and Mama Valerius next week?" I asked as I sipped the foamy Turkish kahvese, trying not to burn my tongue. The blue-streaked cheese was soft instead of crumbly, and it spread like silk over the raisin-thick bread.
"Why do you make me repeat myself endlessly? I'm finishing my funeral Mass, and when I work, I like to work uninterrupted. Besides, I have a shipment that awaits delivery."
"A shipment?"
"Do you think I make automata simply for my own amusement, to scare ballet girls trysting with stagehands? I know you have avoided my workroom," and here he hung his head, for it saddened him that I would not look any longer at his rubber and silver creations. "If you cared to put your curiosity to better use than you do, you would see that I am ready to make a delivery, and it would be better were you not here. I can hardly think that such boring business would hold your attention."
"Not to offend you, Erik, but I hate how they look. Their eyes just stare at you, yet they're blank, because there's nothing behind them."
"These particular ones are not humanlike automata," he said. "They're more specialized than that. Think of them as fulfilling the functions of arms and legs. They're really most ingenious. Are you sure you would not like to see them?"
The last thing in the world I wanted was that. Images flew across my mind of severed body parts, of arms that dragged themselves across the floor, of hands that scuttled behind cabinets, of legs that twitched or worse yet, hopped across the room of their own accord. "Not now," I said, feeling the blood leave my face. "I don't have to see every sign of your genius to believe in it, Erik."
He mused over me, weighing me with his sight as thoroughly as his hands had tested the substance of my breasts. "I love you for your belief," he said. "In the final moment before death takes me, in that moment when death will take us both, because I cannot imagine dying without you, Christine, in that final moment what I will take into hell with me is the certainty of your belief, and though I crackle like a roast on the spit, I will hold your belief close to my heart and it will cool me even in the midst of the flames."
A little anger shot through me, and then I saw that he did not mock. I said lightly, "Hopefully you won't take yourself into hell at all. Not that you believe in hell, anyway."
He laughed. "You believe in so many things, not just me. It is piquant, bittersweet."
"Whose fault is that? Who told me he was an angel?"
"Did I ever say that exactly? I don't recall it that way. You heard into it what you wanted to. If you believed that, it was drawn from the well of your own mind."
"That was true for a time, Erik, until that day I asked you flat out if you were the Angel of Music of whom my father spoke, and you agreed."
"You were immature then, still in so many ways an adolescent. As old as you were, you could not tell metaphor from literal fact. For you cannot deny that I was your 'angel of music' in a sense. Did I not inspire your voice, win for you a triumph of which Paris still speaks, a triumph which you will repeat tonight? To say that I was your 'angel' - I believe the priests call it 'mental reservation.'"
"Another term for lying."
He set his coffee cup down and looked at me with a fierce glittering gaze. "Just what did you think was going on?"
"I don't know," and suddenly it all seemed so cheap, so much a farce, a bad comedy. "Do you know how much I hated the ugliness all around me?" I said, and he drew back, tears starting in his eyes. "No, no, don't misunderstand me, no. I mean the ugliness of this city. The ugliness of my life. Did it occur to you that perhaps your pretence of being a disembodied spirit was the only joy I had? The only beautiful thing I could take with me throughout the day?" He looked blankly at me, so I went on. "I wanted it to be real. I wanted there to be something beautiful, just something, somewhere, that wasn't a story or a myth or a picture or a statue, but that was real. I thought it was you."
"I am real," he whispered.
"Of course you are," I said, twisting the ring around on my finger. It felt very loose. I'd better be careful, I thought, or I will lose it, and then that particular anxiety seemed ridiculous. You'll have to give it back. How will you do that? What will you say? and suddenly this new idea, this bid for freedom seemed like the foot-stomping of a child who tells his mother he is running away from home, but will be back by tea-time.
"I grow restless," he said. "Let's walk along the lake, for the walls close in on one."
We went out to that glistening shore. "Shouldn't you shut the door behind you?" I asked.
He laughed. "Erik has his traps. No thief is going to get past my gatekeepers."
We went away from the Rue Scribe path towards the rowboat which lay tied to a little stone pier. In dismay I protested, I didn't want to get in the boat and get my skirts wet, but he gestured towards another path around to the side. We went on a walkway of flat paved stones until we came to an open cavernous area, and in the center of the lake stood a great square column many meters thick. Out of the mute stone he had carved out only the roughest outline of a massive man who seemed to hold the entire weight of the ceiling above him on his shoulders.
"Atlas," I breathed out. "Erik, it's magnificent. It looks as if it has been here centuries."
"All monuments come to an end. All cities, all temples, all are simply stones piled upon stones, and piles can be toppled, and will be."
"That's a dismal thought."
"It is a real thought," he answered. "You said earlier you hungered for the reality beneath the dismal surface of the world. You are always asking about Persia, well, this story I will tell you as we walk has the advantage of being both real and about Persia."
So we circumscribed the lake with the great Atlas at its center, and around that mighty form the whole vast cellar seemed to turn. Erik's voice grew lyric and beautiful as it always did when he told a story.
"A king went out to battle against a host far more powerful than he. Because weather, the courage of his men, and fortune all smiled upon him, he took the field. However, when he rode out across the battle plain and saw the broken standards, the trampled flags, and the crushed and bleeding bodies of the defeated host, he grew sad instead of joyful. That very day he called half of his wise men to his private chamber.
"The first half heeded the summons and dressed in their brightest robes, thinking the king had called them to his chambers to celebrate. They brought wine and sweetmeats, and entered the king's chambers laughing and chattering like the ravens that feasted on the fallen. The king took one look at them and sighed. 'O Magi,' he said to them, taking note of their fat glistening faces and greedy hands, 'I have brought you here to satisfy a most urgent request. I want you to tell me something that will always be true, no matter what shall pass in either heaven or on earth.' Confused, the men looked at each other, at the paintings of dancing girls and lovers entwined on the walls, but there were no answers there. They eyed the wine they'd brought, but the king made no move to pour any.
"Finally the oldest said, 'Oh Pivot of the Universe, this can always be said with utmost certainty. You, O Shah, will always be victorious over your enemies, just as you were today.' Upon that, the angry king tossed their tidbits out the window to the dogs that roamed below, ripped the tall embroidered caps from their heads and had them thrown into prison.
"The second group came in the next day. No doubt they had heard of the fate of the first, and so they wore their most sober garments of dark yellow, for that is the Persian color of mourning. They came with little whips in their hands, preparing to weep and flog themselves over their shoulders, just for show of course, as their whips were made of silk and would not bruise the skin of even the tenderest child. Again the Shah posed the same question, and again the men pulled their beards and shot perplexed glances to each other.
"Shaking, the eldest of them finally said, "O Foundation Stone of the World, this will always be said. You, O Shah, will always experience the happiness you feel on this day of your greatest triumph." The king, no longer angry but rather filled with the cold deliberation of rage, threw their silk whips into the fire, ripped their magi's hats from their heads, and had the guards give them thirty-nine lashes each with catgut tipped at the ends with lead balls.
"Then the whole court trembled with fear, for there were no wise men left, and the king neither ate nor slept as he struggled with his question. Finally, as he sat one day on the Peacock Throne with his beard untrimmed and his face haggard, he heard a great disturbance in the outer court. 'We found this man spinning in circles in the courtyard,' his guards said. 'We tried to throw him out, but he insisted on seeing you. We told him the Shah-in-Shah had no time for piles of rags such as him, but he insisted that he could tell you the answer to the question you sought.' Then the guards bowed and retreated backwards a little, for one never turns his back on the Shah.
"The man came forward, dressed in long skirts of brightly colored wool scraps all stitched together, and only rope sandals on his feet. He smiled at the king, who said wearily, 'Are you not afraid to meet the fate of my magi?' The patchwork man just smiled. 'Lay before him refreshment,' the king commanded, and a slave set down strawberries with powder-fine sugar to sprinkle over them.
"The man washed his hands but did not eat. 'I have the answer you seek,' he said, picking up a pinch of the powdered sugar and blowing it with a puff into the king's face. As sugar flew up in a cloud, the guards pulled their swords and the women behind the screen cried out in terror. But the king laughed long and hard, and the ragged man laughed with him. 'This too shall pass,' the king finally said, and the other man nodded. 'This can be said in all times, in all places. This too shall pass away.'"
Erik stared at me, waiting. I looked at the rough-hewn stone man, and all of the weight of the entire structure seemed to fall on his columnar shoulders as he rose pillar-like out of the great wide lake. "It's hard to believe this place could ever fall down."
"Some of the ancients believed that perfection must be destroyed, lest it spoil and tarnish with time, thus losing the title of perfection. Rather than wait for time to bring about the fall, they brought it about themselves when at the zenith of their accomplishments, rather than at the nadir."
"Then no one would make anything at all, because everything spoils if you leave it out on the shelf long enough."
"A blaze of light, or slow decay?" he said, but not to me. It sounded as if he were deciding something. Before, it would have made me impatient. Now I serenely watched Erik drift away into his own thoughts.
"Erik, there's something I'd like you to tell me. Why did you leave Persia? And why are you and Daroga no longer friends?"
He rounded on me, suddenly angry. "Why do you care about that pathetic Persian?"
"It's not that I care about him so much. But his story lies close to yours. I want to know."
"So I am now your Scheherazade, and for every story I tell, another day goes by when you do not kill me?" He sighed heavily, an emotionless sorrow of the kind when one no longer has any hope, and his face was still angry. "It is a small price to pay, although it merely staves off the inevitable. Kill me you will, for someday you will leave me, and on that day we will both die."
Fear leapt to my throat. "What? What are you talking about?"
"Tell Erik," he said. "Swear to Erik that you won't leave him." He gripped my arm and I saw myself suddenly at the bottom of the lake.
"I can't swear to that," I said, thinking as fast as possible. "For instance, I might die first. Then you might say that I had left you." I swallowed, hard, and he saw it. He gripped tighter, and I squirmed. "Don't, that hurts. Do you want me to go on stage with a black and blue arm?" and he dropped it as if it were a coal.
"Yes," he said, not touching me now but riveting me with his eyes, "that would be one way for you to leave me. There's an easy answer for that one, though. So much better to lie down in the coffin together, wouldn't you say? No bereavement, no mourning, no long years of despair at the other's passing."
What was this mad talk? "It's not always so easy to arrange," I said, trying to keep my voice from cracking. He folded his arms and walked away with that resolute stride which told me he had no more to say. I trotted a little to catch up with him. "I want you to tell me why you left Persia," I insisted, anything to brush aside this gloomy and baffling turn of the conversation.
"Very well," he said as he slowed down. "Scheherazade will sing once more, even if it is only to mention that worthless Persian, and only since you insist. Even in his own country he was a nonentity, a failure. He was supposed to help me with the Golestan prison, although I ended up doing all the work. Then the Khanum decided he needed a wife. She made for him a much better match than his father could have, but he hadn't even the initiative to find another two or three for himself. And that wife gave him only a few miserable girl-brats before she died."
He headed for a narrow stairway that wrapped part of the lake shore, and I groaned inside at another slippery climb. At the highest point he called out in ringing bell-like tones, "Are you skulking about, Daroga? We're going to talk about you, perhaps you'd like to come out and listen." Only his echoes answered.
Then we walked through a cloister-like passageway covered with a series of low curved arches, with a wall on one side, and the lake on the other. He spoke to walls, to the lake, to anywhere but me. "My friend the Daroga and I had built for the Shah his courthouse and prison. It was full of obscure passages, entrance ways, as well as listening chambers and stations all around. The drawings were supposed to be kept in a locked room, guarded by men hand-picked by Nasir himself. But Nasir had a weakness for boys with beautiful long black locks and melting smiles. It turned out that his infatuation of the moment was such a one whose name was Ayaz. This Ayaz was also the close friend of the Khanum's nephew, that derelict. This beautiful young man the Shah put in charge of guarding the document room.
"I never found out exactly how it happened, but one morning before the sun even had a chance to bake the dust of the courtyards, guards pulled me from my bed. They ignored my protests, saying it was on the Daroga's direct orders, and they dragged me before Nasir himself. The Shah's mother sat behind a screen, whispering loudly to the few other women with her, and I could feel her glee.
"I wasn't the only one whose sleep had been interrupted that morning. Seated across from me, terrorized and sweating, was the Persian court official who served as the British liaison, the man who carried messages between the two Crowns. Ayaz threw down a large leather bag full of folded-up drawings onto the table between us. They were mine, architectural diagrams of all the concealed exits, entrances, and tunnels of the new prison. I see your face, Christine, you are as bad as the Persians themselves. You think I would sell out to the English? There's no point in continuing."
"Please," I said. "I did wonder, given what you've said in the past about kings and emperors."
"The liaison officer of course pleaded innocent, as did I. To determine who was lying, Nasir decided to throw us both into prison for 'interrogation.' Nasir liked to think of himself as an enlightened monarch, and while his prisoners were tortured, he declined to use the word itself." He stopped and leaned up against a square stone column, barely holding onto his control.
"Oh, Erik," I said, lost for words.
"They didn't get far with me, as they spent a great deal of time arguing as to whether the French embassy should be notified first. Some said yes, because the embassy would most certainly leave me to my fate if I were thought to be spying for the British, and others said, no, go ahead and find out the truth before telling them, in the event the French embassy would mount a protest. Meanwhile, the screams of the liaison were piped into my cell daily by arts of my own design, to win my cooperation and brighten my stay. He shrieked for three days. Later when a very angry guard brought me the day's rotten fish and moldy rice, he threw in the tidbit that the diplomat had suddenly expired, and they could get nothing more useful out of him. It seemed it would be my turn next."
"I don't understand. Why would the British even want your plans?"
He shrugged in exasperation. "Because, you foolish naif, the Persians had just lost their eastern territory to British guns. They were terrified of an English invasion, fearful of being made a vassal state like Egypt or India or the Kingdom of Afghanistan. That's why Nasir tolerated the French, as they were a kind of buffer against the British."
I rubbed my head, trying to piece it all together.
"I never knew why my friend came for me that fourth night at such terrible risk to himself. He had drugged the guards, and killed the young long-locked Ayaz with his own hands. We carried the dead Ayaz with us, and it was terribly hard, as the body was heavy. We traveled by oxcart, dressed as farmers. When we got to the Caspian seacoast a little boat was waiting. I watched my Persian friend dress Ayaz's corpse in my clothes, then mutilate the man's face and the rest of his body besides. They left him on the shoreline for the crabs to finish off the rest.
"A coracle not much bigger than a washtub bore me north to Baku, where I sheltered for a time with Azerbaijani Turks who had long memories of wars with the Persians and admired my escape. It was they who helped me find my way to Constantinople. My friend went back to the Golestan with a dramatic tale of pursuit, thwarted at the end by my unfortunate drowning, washed up on the shore to be pecked to shreds by the sea-birds. The Khanum didn't believe it for a moment, of course, but there wasn't much she could do, and anyway, it slaked her nephew's thirst for revenge even as he and the Shah both mourned the loss of one they loved."
"So you didn't see your friend after that."
"Not until we met quite by chance in Paris, after the Exposition Universelle in 1878, where he was attached to the Persian delegation."
"And so he stayed in Paris."
"Yes," Erik said, with tiredness or irritation, difficult to discern in the gloom. "And so he stayed, and betrayed me. He told the Grand Oubliette of the Universe that he suspected I was still alive, simply so he could remain in Paris at his government's expense. You see how he wronged me."
"Erik," I said, "from all that you have told me of Persia, I don't blame your friend for not wanting to go back there."
He whirled around, eyes blazing gold in the dim gaslight, his tone knifelike. "Do you dare take his side against me?"
"Of course not," I said, suddenly afraid.
"Then keep silent, as you know not of what you speak. He arrested me in Persia and allowed me to sit in prison, waiting for my turn to be chained to the block, to suffer under the hooks and the knives. Why should he not betray me now to his king?"
"He has not, so far," I reminded him. "Besides, from your story, he saved your life."
"And he never lets me forget it, either. Always harping, always picking, always reminding me of that. One day he will infuriate Erik beyond all reason, and Erik will not be responsible."
We walked back to the house by the lake in silence. He shut himself in his room, and when I walked by his door once, I thought I heard the muffled sound of weeping.
o o o o o oo o
I didn't return that afternoon to the dark long apartment on Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. Instead I went directly to my dressing room, where I packed a few more things into my worn upholstered bag. On the dressing table lay a pair of fine grey gloves. So many relics of Erik, everywhere I looked. I took out the stockings and shoved them into one of the dressing table drawers, cringing as they snagged on a splinter of wood.
I picked up one of the gloves, and as I fingered its supple leather, a thought struck me like a wet fish across the face. Were I to leave Erik, Margot would leave, for I could not pay her. From her I got the distinct sense that Erik paid well, far better than what most men would have. She had not told me her earnings, but bragged more than once that no other nursemaid in Paris drew what she did. There was no word from M. Richard on any additional contracts. Worries, apprehensions, fears all fought for the forefront of my imagination. Mama could be left alone for short periods, and with Adèle for a little longer. But what would happen in the future? I had heard stories of elderly people who wandered down the center of the boulevards, or blew out gas lamps thinking they were candles, and then lit a match. And if Mama could not be left alone, how could I work?
He must get a lot of money for his "shipments" to afford all this, I said to myself. These thoughts stayed with me as I stood on the dais in one of the costume shops, where a pert seamstress pulled and snipped and stuck me with pins to punctuate her running chatter. Finally she had me as she wanted me. "See, good for you taking that long holiday. You've even got a bit of embonpoint now, and we know that's what the gentlemen all come to see, don't we? On your last fitting, I thought I would have to find some fillets to push you up a bit, but no. That's good. Last year I had a girl who lost one right on stage. She leaned over and it fell right out, and someone kicked it into the pit. It landed on one of the cellists, but he didn't miss a note. This blue velvet," she went on, "perfect for your hair. Now we unpin you, and I stitch. You could have come in earlier, you know."
I swept through the performance of Halévy's La Juive like an automaton myself. Carolus Fonta sang the Jew Eléazar, who had found his adopted daughter Rachel as a tiny infant, crying in the burning house of his greatest enemy, the Italian magistrate Brogni. Eléazar raised the infant girl as his own as a Jewess, not telling her of her Christian origin. But when as a woman she loved a Christian man, he allowed her to be cast into the flames rather than reveal her true parentage.
But Eléazar was no embodiment of evil. When Fonta drew his short frame up to his full height, flung his wiry shoulders into an attitude of deepest despair, and mourned from the heart his decision to let Rachel die unknowing for the crime of loving a Christian, all other hearts were moved, and mine too. As I peered at him from backstage, the tears ran down my cheeks unchecked. A little wardrobe mistress shook her head silently as she passed, and returned with a box of powder. Foolish woman, she seemed to say, you've heard this scores of times, why cry now, as she patted my cheeks dry. Yet Halévy's tale of a despondent, despairing man who would kill the one he loved rather than see her with someone else rang through me like a mourning bell.
After escaping the deafening applause I fought my way towards the costume wing. The critic from Le Temps, the one who had mocked me not more than six weeks ago by saying, "It is as if she has fallen in love for the first time," wedged me into a corner of the hallway. Bound by the wall behind me, the crowds to either side, and his vast bulk which refused to let me pass, I choked on his champagne-scented breath laced with cigar smoke. Then I saw he was drunk and wobbling, and pushed him aside easily. "Wait!" he called. "Don't you want to hear what I have to say?"
Against my judgment I paused and turned around. The crowd around me stopped to stare. "Speak," I said. "But don't block my path like that."
His stomach swayed a little, then the rest of him followed. "Miss Daaé has indeed fallen in love, as we suspected," he grinned. "But we maintain that her lover is Death himself, for never has a Rachel gone to her demise with such rapture in her eyes, such glory in her voice, such dedication in her heart."
A few people laughed. "Brava, la Daaé!" some others cried. Almost blind with tears now, I pushed my way through the crowd and turned up the wrong corridor, traveling along one that led me back to the rotunda rather than to the privacy of my room. A few other critics were encouraged by the first one's success at attracting my attention and followed, calling my name. Someone stepped on the back of my costume and it ripped. Crying now in earnest, I turned around and forced my way through the crowd. The admiring sighs of just a few moments before turned to indignant remarks, "What's she doing?" "She's lost her mind." "He's not one to insult, certainly." "She's let it all go to her head."
A warm arm went around me and pulled me up against a solid, firm side, and for a second I fought. "Christine," he said under his breath, "Christine, follow me," and a cool hand took mine as the resolute man wound his way through the crowd. It was Raoul in full dress uniform, and the crowd parted to let him pass. Braid sparkled on his chest as he strode through the throng, pulling my hand but not hard or forcefully. A few journalists and other hangers-on followed us to my loge, but they pursued at a respectful distance. "Give us an interview, Lieutenant!" one called out. "A naval officer," said another. "That'll make a good read tomorrow."
I tried to insert the key in the lock several times but couldn't, so Raoul took it from my trembling fingers and tried himself. The crowd milled about the door, pushing into us. One stout woman waved her libretto in my face, begging for an autograph. Raoul's hands shook too, but he finally managed to get the jammed lock to release. He waved me into the room, then turned one fierce final look on the crowd. "She knows how to entertain her guests, I imagine!" came one catcall, then another. In disgust Raoul slammed the door in their faces, and the laughter and shouting died away.
"Do you have any brandy?" he asked.
I sank down onto the sofa, face in hands. "You want brandy now?"
"Not for myself. But you could use some."
There was a little in a bottle in the sideboard, left over from my first night at the National Opera, when Fonta and a few of the chorus women came to my room and drank a toast for luck. "I don't have any proper snifters," I said as I waved Raoul over to it. "You'll have to use tumblers."
He smiled. "That's no difficulty," and brought two for us. He sat next to me, and raised his glass. "To the most splendid Rachel I have ever heard or seen." I paused, and he misinterpreted my hesitation. "Just a taste. It will calm your nerves, and I can't see a few sips hurting your throat."
With a weak smile I obliged him.
"I have never heard you like that," he went on. "I thought you were remarkable the night of the inaugural, when you sang Juliette. But tonight you surpassed yourself. It must have exhausted you, you look so pale and wan, and you were so full of passion and energy before."
The brandy went down smooth and warm. I could still hear footsteps and laughter in the halls, but fainter now. "They're waiting for you out there, you know. Waiting for you to leave, so they can follow you."
He glared at the door, then set his glass down on the side table. "It's like a charivari," he grumbled. "Next thing you know, they'll start banging pots and pans," and I gave a little shiver. "You're still in costume," he said, and suddenly I was intently aware of my bare arms, my exposed neck. "Did you want to …" and he looked at the curtain which concealed the little boudoir.
"Do you mind?" I asked. It took me a long time to get out of Rachel's garment. A few buttons flew across the room, and I scrambled to pick them up. There was no bed in my boudoir, just a sort of couch or day-bed piled with cushions, and I looked at it longingly, weighed down with fatigue. All I had in my wardrobe was the soft grey dress Erik had made for me, and a morning wrap. To appear before Raoul in the morning robe seemed faintly indecent, but I didn't want him to see or compliment Erik's dress. I quickly cleaned my face and emerged to find Raoul pacing across the small room.
"That blue becomes you," he said, and blushed a little at my robe.
"Blue becomes you as well," I answered. "I've never seen you in your braid."
"One of my senior officers, Commodore Delacroix, invited me to join him in his box. His wife accompanied us as well," and then he blushed genuinely, down to the roots of his bright hair. It wasn't the officer's wife who had made him blush like that, I knew.
"And someone else," I remarked.
"It was a bit of an ambush, I will admit. Her niece."
"But there you were in the hallway. You didn't go to supper with them afterwards," and it struck me, the niece must have been terribly hurt. I saw him through the eyes of this unknown girl, and a great sorrow washed over me.
Raoul took my hands. "I claimed fatigue, a sick headache. I wanted to see you," and his words tumbled out heedlessly. "Two days ago, when you didn't write, I thought you had left Paris for good and that I should never meet you again, that you'd finally done it, and whatever terrible bargain you had made with … with that man had finally been fulfilled."
"Hush," I said, shaking despite the brandy. "Please don't speak of it."
"Then my brother told me you were performing the next evening, and it was as if hope returned, as if life itself had come back to me." He pulled me towards him, and a great battle began on the field of my heart. Pull away, one side said. There's no purpose. He will never marry you, not when commodores of the French Navy are waving their nieces under his nose and inviting him to supper. There will be hell enough to pay tomorrow, when Madame Commodore and her niece read the gossip about how Lieutenant Raoul de Chagny disappeared into the dressing room of a notorious singer. I rested my head under his chin and he stroked my hair tenderly, brushing a few strands away from my cheeks. A little grease paint that I had missed stained his fingers, and I fumbled for my handkerchief. "Never mind," he said, and when he lifted my face, the other warring faction took the field. He loves you, the bright general under that banner said. Even if he will not marry you, he loves you, and isn't this what you wanted? To have someone take you away?
It would be possible, I thought, and the emotion made me swoon a little. His hands were soft on my hair, fingers exploring around my ears, and he played with my teardrop earring. I thought he would kiss me, for his mouth hovered that close and the kiss inside struggled to get out, but he pushed it down and instead brought me down to his chest, where he held me close and rocked me back and forth. I squirmed a little and he said, "What's wrong?"
"A brass button, sticking in my cheek."
"Such a tender cheek," he said, and brushed it with his lips and soft moustache. Then he looked at me soberly, full of intent. "You will laugh at me, perhaps, but I must tell you. Christine, I want to kiss you, so badly that it burns me. But I have never kissed a woman before, not counting my sisters and aunts, of course. Never have I given a woman the kiss of love. No, don't turn away. You know I love you. I had promised myself not to tell you, not to burden you with it, because you are not free. But you are so beautiful, and I love you so much that it tears through my heart." Then he twisted away. "No, don't rest your hand on my breast like that, I can't bear it."
"No man has kissed me, Raoul," I said. "Not counting Papa, of course."
"Then why this vow?"
"You have never made a vow?"
"I did," he said, all seriousness now. "When I was seventeen. My brother, as you know, is a dedicated man-about-town, and my sisters were always asking him when he was going to marry. My uncle Comte August de Chagny was becoming bitter about my brother's unmarried state. But Comte Philippe lived, and still lives, largely for pleasure. I don't complain, that's not my purpose in telling you this. I remember the afternoon so clearly. I went to confession and afterwards lit a candle to Our Lady, and promised her that day that I would only give my heart to the woman who would become my wife. So many men in the academy and of my class dallied with mistresses, and they mocked me. For there was another part of that vow, and I prayed to her that she would help me keep it, that not only would my heart be pledged to my wife, but my body as well."
I shook my head, and he looked up, anxiety over all his features now. "Laugh," he said. "Everyone else does. You should have heard my brother when I told him in a fit of enthusiasm, when I forgot that this kind of vow is never to be spoken of, but meant to be kept in the heart alone and lived. Now this is the second time I've spoken of it, and you no doubt would like to join the chorus."
"No," I whispered. "That promise is very beautiful. But I'm not worthy of it."
He pulled me to him again, harder this time. "Do you know why I don't kiss you?"
Looking away, I said, "Because you are afraid you will not stop."
"You know my heart as if you lived inside it."
"Don't stop," I whispered. "Why should you stop?"
He stood up, and a blaze of white and gold, blue and scarlet filled the room. "From this sofa to the couch in your bedroom is perhaps five steps. I'm not a statue, Christine. My heart isn't glass or ice." Then he swooped down and in one swift, exhilarating movement picked me up, crushing me against the buttons and braid on his chest. "Five steps, and I make you my mistress." He laughed, a little wild now. "That would make everyone happy, wouldn't it?" He spun me around, as if making for the boudoir, and his mouth was very close to mine. "You hold me in the palm of your hand, and even now you do not struggle. You don't call out, you don't fight me." Closer he put his face to mine, and ran all over my cheeks and nose with his lips until I closed my eyes and sighed, mouth half-open. Kiss me, I willed, put your mouth on mine and I will leave with you tonight, leave with you forever, anything you want.
He gave a great sigh himself, and set me down gently so that I stood before him like a penitent, eyes closed, listening to him breathe.
"Why do you stop?" I whispered, hiding behind my eyelids, not wanting to look at how bright he was.
He tilted my face up gently, and brushed my mouth with his fingers. "Because you are not free. Because you do not love me. Because you will not marry me."
"You can't marry me. You are as bound as I am."
"We shall see."
I sank to the couch and he knelt at my feet, resting his head on my knee. "What are we going to do, Christine?"
"I don't know," I answered, wanting to stroke his hair but unsure now, unsettled about everything.
"I'm not your fiancé. I won't pretend to be any longer."
"No, of course you can't."
"I should walk out of here and never see you again. That is what a sane man, a rational man would do. But I have been neither sane nor rational since the first evening I saw you perform, when I first read your name in the program."
"Which night was that?" I said, a little ashamed that I had never asked.
"You sang Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni."
"The night I understudied," I said, at once all ice inside. "The singer had been killed that day, a horrible thing. We didn't know until intermission. All I knew at first was that she hadn't shown up for her costuming. But when the news hit backstage, the whispering started almost at once that I was unlucky, a jinx, as if I'd done it myself. I could barely sing in the second act for the shock."
"I never noticed you were shocked," Raoul said. "Put your hand on my hair like that, yes, just like that. It didn't matter to me how you sang, for I only saw how beautifully you moved. Philippe cringed once or twice and remarked that you looked distracted, that your voice was cold for such a warm peasant girl, but I ignored his carping and complaining. They guillotined the man recently, you know. Her husband."
"It's just horrible," I said. "I don't want to think about it." He pulled himself to his feet and reached for his hat. He's going to leave this time, I thought. When he goes through that door I will not see him again. He'll go on board his ship. Or perhaps he'll marry his Commodore's niece and she'll use her aunt's influence to keep him in France, where I'll sing at some admiral's party and watch him from across the room.
He held his hat but made no move to put it on. "I want to see you tomorrow. Not in these rooms, nor in yours. I want you to come out with me, stroll through the Jardin du Luxembourg, get some sun and wind on your face."
"I can't, Raoul. You know that. I'm not to leave the Opera with you." Desperate, I searched. "I know what we could do. Have you ever been up in the flies, in the fly-tower above the stage?"
He looked at me, irritated at having been refused, but eyes glistened with interest. "Have you?"
"No," I admitted, "but I would like to. If you look up from the stage, it seems to go on forever, a castle in the sky full of ropes and wheels and gears. Let's go, please? Anyone can walk through a garden, but to go up into the fly-tower…"
He gave a little bow, the play back in his eyes. "Mademoiselle, I would be glad to accompany you to the forest of the flies. Now, tell me where your coat is so that I can fetch it for you."
"My coat?" I said, confused.
"You're not going to stay here all night, are you? It's unthinkable you should go home alone. You're coming with me. My carriage hasn't gone anywhere, the coachman's a good man, and so you'll ride with me to your apartment."
Erik never mentioned this possibility, I considered. I may see Raoul in the Opera, and in my apartment. He never forbade transiting with him between the two places.
The night had warmed, and Raoul's gentleman's brougham sat two, and was snug inside. We passed by the Opera Comique and sat in the throngs that had just emerged. He took my hand and caressed it as we talked of our upcoming meeting. Then he put his arms around me and I nestled into him, glad for the thickly congested streets, the carriages waiting in line to cross the boulevards, the party goers from a cabaret who spilled out by the dozens and walked heedlessly down the center of the street, laughing and rollicking as if it were still Carnival season.
The coachman called from outside, "It's a mob scene, Monsieur le Vicomte, all the way up ahead as far as I can see. Would you like me to turn off and try a side street?"
"No," Raoul called. "No one is counting the minutes here. Just stay the course." Our faces almost touched as we breathed, mingling our own air with the cool night mist, so that when he finally did kiss me it was as easy as breathing. Light at first his lips brushed me, and he tasted good, salty and a little sweet from the brandy. Tenderly he ran his lips over mine, tasting me with gentle pressure. He took my face in his hands and said my name, over and over, until I reached up and covered his mouth with mine. I had had a man inside my body, had shaken with desire that threatened to break me into pieces, but nothing was like this first kiss, this stroking of mouths with soft lips.
Then two shy tongues touched and then withdrew, a little unsure. This first kiss contained all of him, all of Raoul I had known through time. Soft on my mouth was the wet boy on the seaside dragging a limp piece of red silk. Sliding across my lips flew the friend who jumped from boulder to boulder on the Cote-du-Nord shore and chased crabs which we roasted on sticks over the fire. He broke their red shells and gave me the sweet meat inside. There was the man who sat in my garden choked with shyness and then kissed my hands so sweetly, and all of that man summed himself up in the shy moist movements of his mouth over mine.
The kiss is the man, I thought. His lips felt thin at first, but that was because he was reserved, and as I pulled gently on his lips with mine, they softened and swelled, opened and relaxed, until he drew me deeply inside his mouth. I was glad that in the midst of all my ruin, of all my shame, at least I could give him this mouth of mine for his own.
When we broke apart the street swam before my eyes. I hadn't noticed that we had moved, yet there was my building hovering over me grey and gaunt. He reached stiffly, awkwardly for the door but I said, no, no, don't escort me inside. He protested, he could not treat me so disrespectfully, but I begged and pleaded, don't.
He kissed me quickly but deeply once again, and then with a sigh let the coachman help me out. I walked backwards from his carriage, still feeling him on my mouth, hating to sever our gaze, and through the window his lips moved silently, "Tomorrow … tomorrow."
(continued…)