Chapter I: The Beginning
My first day in music college was very long. Isn't it always like that? The first time you experience something or go somewhere, time seems to stretch out infinitely. Then, as you become familiar with the impressions and you settle into new habits, you find yourself wondering where all the time went. Maybe that's why old people say that as you age, every year seems shorter than the previous one. They run out of first impressions. It's quite a frightening thought, actually.
Christine and I were both, I think, a little disappointed as we viewed the entrance of the building where we would be spending the better part of four years. Nothing in its appearance revealed that it was a place dedicated to the arts. It was a large, quite ugly, square yellow brick building, supposedly drawn by the same architect who had constructed a nearby prison. However, the crowd of students that was gathering inside seemed cheerful enough, so we went in.
"How can I help you?"
The institution secretary was a thin, friendly woman in her forties. She bore a slight resemblance to a horse and was in fact, as I later found out, very fond of riding. It was her job to help all the new students find their way to their classes.
"Meg Giry and Christine Daae", I said, as Christine seemed to have spotted someone in the crowd and was not paying attention to the secretary.
"Meg Giry, music education..."
The woman looked in a pile of paper and found my schedule.
"Your class will meet at 9.30 in the concert hall. As you can see some of your individual lessons have not been scheduled yet - you need to visit each professor in his or her room this afternoon to schedule a weekly lesson. Christine Daae..."
Chistine turned, startled.
"Christine Daae, singing. You will meet your professor, signor Piangi, at 10 in room C302. Here is your schedule. Oh, and you will need to have your photos taken for your ID cards at some point during the day. Just come in to my office and we'll arrange that!"
We thanked the helpful secretary and went to sit down in the cafeteria. It occurred to me that I hadn't even picked up her name. I asked Christine about it, but she was absent-minded again. I followed her gaze. It was fixed on a tall well-dressed young man with blonde hair and clear blue eyes. He was very handsome in a fragile way.
"Do you know him?" I asked.
"I think so", answered Christine hesitantly. "At least, he looks a lot like someone I knew as a child. But it might not be him. Even if it is, he probably doesn't remember me."
She sighed. I didn't question her further on the subject.
During the 9.30 meeting in the concert hall, I found out the difference between studying music and studying music education. While Christine was off showing her vocal skills in front of her professor and the other voice majors (so she told me later), I was with my future classmates, playing childish games - "team building", an enthusiastic young professor explained to us. We were sitting on the floor of the stage in a concert hall which was located in the centre of the main college building. In the ceiling above us was an absurdly ornamented chandelier, completely out of place and probably put there by the interior decorator in a fit of megalomania. It looked dangerously heavy and I noticed how everybody had avoided sitting directly under it.
"Now stand up and find a partner!" exclaimed the enthusiastic professor I was later to know as Mlle Popeau.
I turned around and found a small brown-haired girl standing next to me. We had time to introduce ourselves quickly - her name was Jeanette Jammes.
"One of each pair is blind, that is you close your eyes", continued Mlle Popeau mercilessly. "The other one is your guide and will lead you around the room. This is a trust exercise."
I closed my eyes and Jeanette, or Little Jammes as she later ended up being called since she had an elder sister who was a flute major, walked me across the stage.
"This feels stupid", I whispered. "It's not really what I decided to go to college for."
"Me neither", Little Jammes whispered back. "I only started music education because I didn't pass my first-hand choice."
"What was that?"
"Flute, like my sister. She's better than me, though. I'll apply again next year."
"I used to be a dancer", I confessed. "Couldn't apply though, because I was in an accident and hurt my leg."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that." Little Jammes sounded genuinely sorry. "Well, there's always next year, right?"
I didn't answer. I knew only too well that wasn't the case for me, but I couldn't bring myself to explain that to someone I hardly knew. Instead, I changed the subject.
"So, since you have a sister here, she must have told you all about the professors beforehand?" I asked.
"A little", Little Jammes said. "Who did you get?"
I thought for a while, trying to remember the names on my schedule.
"There was a M. Reyer in choir and conducting", I said, "and a Mme Dubois in singing. I don't remember the piano professor's name, it was something Russian..."
"Ivanovich?" guessed Little Jammes. "He is useless, or so I've heard. Too old. Mme Dubois is all right from what I've been told. M. Reyer is nice, but not very demanding and probably doesn't have a lot of musical imagination. He'll do a good job but no better than that. Who else do you have?"
"Several others, but I don't remember their names. There was something about my music theory professor, though. I only got his Christian name, but no last name. Surely, that must be a mistake, though? Should I go to the secretary and have it sorted out?"
I heard a sharp intake of breath behind me. Little Jammes's grip on my shoulders tightened.
"You got Erik?" she whispered.
"Yes", I said, "that was the name. Who is he?"
Little Jammes was very agitated. She started talking quietly and eerily, as if she were telling a ghost story.
"Nobody knows his last name. Nobody even knows what he really looks like, since he wears a mask at all times. He has never been seen without it. As far as I know, he has no known address or phone number. He doesn't have many students, either, only one or two every year. I think the management wants to get rid of him, but for some reason they can't, so they let him stay and do as little as possible. It's strange, really, he could be anyone! Maybe he's a witness to a terrible crime and has to have a protected identity, or maybe he's a criminal himself, or maybe he's really two different people and wears a mask to hide the fact, or maybe... maybe he isn't even human!"
I didn't quite know what to say after this dramatic ending. Little Jammes had spoken so gravely, and yet I couldn't see her face. She might be just leading me on and breaking down laughing behind my back. I decided to proceed with caution.
"So, what's he like as a teacher?" I asked.
"I don't know. I have never spoken to anyone who actually had him. A lot of people are afraid of him, even some professors. He has his room in the basement, far away from all the other classrooms, but he's rarely seen coming to the room or leaving it."
At this point, a loud announcement from Mlle Popeau made it clear that the class was over, and that we would resume our activities tomorrow. Thirty music education majors drew a simultaneous sigh of relief. I opened my eyes and blinked in the now painfully strong light of the chandelier. Little Jammes looked at me.
"I have to see my sister for lunch", she said. "Would you like to come?"
"I'd love to", I answered, "but I promised to meet my cousin in the cafeteria. She's new here, too."
"Oh well, some other time then," Little Jammes said happily. "But you simply must fill me in on all the details once you have had your first lesson with Erik!"
When I arrived in the cafeteria, Christine was already waiting for me. We took one look at the food they served, and decided to go to a nearby café instead. Over a baguette and a cup of tea, we compared our impressions of the morning. I told Christine about being blindfolded and led around the concert hall, and she just looked at me in disbelief. Then she, in turn, told me what she had been doing.
Signor Piangi was, so Christine told me, a rather pompous tenor with a high opinion of himself. He had made all the new voice students sing an aria in front of the class, and made a point of commenting on all the technical errors the singers made, even the ones that were clearly a result of nervousness rather than inability. Christine had sung Pamina's aria from the second act of The Magic Flute, a difficult but heartbreaking song I knew was one of her personal favorites. She had been criticized from start to finish, hardly being allowed to sing one phrase without signor Piangi stopping her and showing her, in his own voice, how it should be done. All the other new students had received the same treatment. All but one.
It seemed that one of the new singers was Carlotta Piangi, signor Piangi's daughter. She was a coloratura soprano and had doubtlessly received years of training from her ambitious father. However, Christine remarked, her voice was rather shrill in timbre and even though she was able to sing very rapid passages with near-perfect intonation, she lacked an ear for natural phrasing and paid little attention to the character of the piece or the meaning of the text. Nevertheless, she received nothing but praise from her father. I could see it had annoyed Christine, who has always appreciated the emotional side of music and made an effort to make conscious choices in interpretation, but the other singers had seemed dazzled by the sheer speed and agility of Carlotta's voice. Of course, it would not have been like Christine to speak ill of anyone, but in this case she had obviously considered Piangi's blatant favoritism of his own daughter an injustice not only to herself, but to several other gifted students as well, who might not possess Carlotta's self-confidence.
After lunch, it was time for Christine to meet her accompanist for the first time, and I went to fill in the blanks in my schedule. First, I went to my singing professor, Mme Dubois, to find a time for my weekly voice lessons. She was what Christine, who had more experience in the matter, would have described as a "typical voice teacher", a motherly, slightly overweight mezzo-soprano with carefully applied make-up and a certain fondness of gossip.
"Meg Giry, you say," she chatted, "do tell your mother I said hello, won't you? It's been years since I last met her, not since she retired from the Opera, in fact. Mind you, I always thought you would follow in her footsteps, so to speak! Oh, how thoughtless of me, you hurt your leg last winter, didn't you? I am sorry."
I nodded silently.
"Oh, I'm talking too much!" Mme Dubois continued. "Let's schedule your lesson, and then I would like to hear you sing something!"
After having found a time slot which suited both of us, a procedure which took a lot longer than it should have, Mme Dubois made me sing some scales and sightread a simple tune.
"Well, you're a soprano", she decided, "I can tell you haven't been taking singing lessons before, but you read music quite well, I must say, and you have a nice voice. M. Reyer will be pleased to have you in the choir, I'm sure. By the way, have you met him yet? He's a fine man, though I do feel sorry for him. He just divorced his wife of 20 years, you see. A ghastly woman, she cheated on him for years. It was terrible, he was heartbroken when he finally found out..."
"How horrible!" I said and excused myself quickly, since I had other professors to see before the afternoon was over. I could see that Mme Dubois would gladly have continued for hours filling me in on all the details of poor M. Reyer's love life.
Next, I went to M. Ivanovich, the piano professor. I quickly discovered that Little Jammes had been right in her judgment and that he was indeed "too old". I had to knock on his door several times before he heard me and answered. When I finally entered his classroom he just looked at me in amazement, clearly unaware that I was to be his student. It was only after consulting his papers repeatedly that he agreed to schedule my lessons. He was not interested in hearing me play, but gave me a copy of "Für Elise" and instructed me to play the beginning for him on our next lesson. I suspected he gave all his students the same homework.
The last person I had to see that afternoon was my music theory professor, that mysterious man only known as Erik. Having heard so many strange things about him, I was more than a little nervous as I searched for his room. I knew it was located in the basement and finally found it at the end of a long corridor. As I stood outside the door, which had no number and only the name "ERIK" scribbled in red ink by the handle, I discovered my knees were shaking. Maybe it was the darkness of the corridor, maybe the fact that all the other rooms there were spare rooms used only for storage, maybe the strange absence of any sound - whatever the cause, I felt afraid. I couldn't bring myself to knock on the door. And then I heard it: a soft, musical voice, seemingly speaking right into my ear.
"Meg Giry? Please enter!"
