Phantom (44 page)

"What a bloody impertinence!" I exclaimed.

"I knew I could rely on you to think so." He was obviously a little mollified by my open anger. "It's an unforgivable insult, is it not? They want to make me look a fool, stuck away out of sight in such inferior seating. They mean to humiliate me in public. Well, they can go to the devil and take their miserable offer with them. I wouldn't dream of attending now! I shall stay at home and read a book instead."

"Oh, Charles, don't be a fool." I sighed. "Don't you see that's exactly what they want you to do?"

There was a little silence between us. It wasn't until the words were out that I realized I had used his Christian name. He looked taken aback, even a little bemused, but his expression was not one of displeasure—oddly enough, rather the contrary.

"You have to agree this is a calculated political attack," he said uncertainly.

"Of course it is. But you must brazen it out—shame them all by attending and you will be vindicated by your own achievement, I promise you. This is your moment, the culmination of fifteen years' enslavement to a dream. No one can take it from you now except yourself. Even if they choose to seat you in the cellars, you are still the foremost architect in France. You have to attend… if you don't, you'll spend the rest of your life regretting it. And regret is a very poisonous emotion, it warps and distorts every aspect of a man's life until there's nothing left but bitterness and despair. Don't let them make you bitter."

He looked at the counterweights of the chandelier.

"Sometimes your compassion shames me," he said quietly. "Of course I shall attend. Will you be there, Erik?"

"Yes. You won't see me, but I shall be there, watching, as your great triumph is unveiled."

"Our triumph," he corrected firmly. "Our triumph, Erik."

And to my great astonishment he insisted on shaking hands with me.

It was a night to remember, the fifth of January, 1875. From my hidden vantage point high above the Grand Escalier I watched the crowds arrive. A host of preening, posturing members of society lined the stairs of cantilevered marble, some of them the poorer for a thousand francs, the cost of a ticket obtained through the unofficial channels of the the open market. I, who had paid nothing for the privilege of seeing kings and queens pass beneath my contemptuous gaze, was amused by the blatant bowing and scraping I saw taking place down there. However many monarchs and emperors she may dispense with, France retains a sneaking admiration for blue blood. The instinctive urge to crawl and curry favor with one's superiors is as ingrained as the stench of onion in a peasant's hands. King, emperor, president… it doesn't matter what they choose to call them, the undignified groveling continues in spite of Communes and revolution. Equality, liberty, fraternity—they are simply illusions of the deluded poor.

We were treated to Meyerbeer that night, Meyerbeer, Rossini, and Delibes. I could see the audience scanning the
premiere loge
with their opera glasses, searching in vain for a sight of Garnier. At the end of the performance he was spotted as he descended the Grand Escalier and there was a great burst of impromptu cheering and clapping.

"Bravo, Garnier! Bravo, bravo…"

He glanced up once toward the ceiling, as though searching for something, then, overcome by the tremendous ovation, he bent his head and hurried out to his carriage, clutching his wife's arm. I was too far away to see clearly, but I know he was in tears. Recognition is sweet, and no one deserved it more than he, a great architect… a noble man. I was very glad the public had chosen to vindicate him in this spontaneous and exuberant manner. I felt neither jealousy nor resentment. The acclaim of men meant little to me now; I had outgrown my childish need for applause.

At last the evening ended and they all went to their homes, those stuffed tailor's dummies and their mincing, overdressed wives. I was left alone in the silent splendor of the the great double-horseshoe staircase, lit by the huge candelabra on either side. King, emperor, god… I was now free to walk through my domain unhindered by the vulgar crowds.

walked all night, visiting every area of my kingdom, using my skeleton key to open and shut two thousand five hundred doors. But when I crossed the huge main foyer with its ten crystal chandeliers, I instinctively averted my eyes from the mirrors. These cruel instruments of suffering abounded everywhere in the glorious upper reaches of my palace, and a single careless sideways glance was all it took to give me a sword thrust of pain. But all beauty must have its imperfection, all happiness its share of sorrow. The mirrors reminded me why I was here, why I could never bear to leave this place and build again, as Garnier would.

The urge to create had been burned out of me during those fifteen years of ceaseless labor, and in its place there was only the need to possess.

To have and to hold, from this day forward… till death us do part…

I knew that night that I had relinquished the outer world for good.

There remained one little problem to vex my splendid isolation.

Ten thousand francs a month I had promised Jules in an insane moment of arrogance. I didn't need to keep that ridiculously extravagant agreement, of course; I had the power to hold that unfortunate little man in fear for the rest of his natural life. But I hated broken promises and dishonored pledges; I hated going back on my word. Disappointment is such an
exhausting
emotion—all that energy dissipated first in painful hoping and then in futile, hopeless resentment. It's like waiting for a birthday present that never materializes…
Horrible
!

So, ten thousand francs a month must be found with some alacrity or within twelve months I would be a pauper once more. And that really would rather annoy me! One grows accustomed to a comfortable income, you see, money pads the edges of so many unpleasant situations in life; it makes one wonderfully independent. And quite apart from Jules I had some expensive habits to finance. I liked to be tastefully dressed by exclusive tailors; I liked my cloaks and dress suits and shirts to be made exactly to my requirements from the very best materials. I wanted all the beautiful books in the world to line the walls of my library; I wanted the most advanced scientific materials available for my researches. I needed morphine and occasionally a little food; Ayesha liked smoked salmon and caviar… Really, I could not possibly think of managing on less than twenty thousand francs a month.

Absurd! That sort of money was not to be had for the asking! Or was it? Suddenly I had the most wonderfully outrageous idea.

The idea itself was not exactly new; only the application of it.

Years ago, as I worked alone upon my secret passages, it occurred to me that what a mausoleum the size of this badly needed was a ghost. Ghosts are a testimony to the past; they give a building character, a sense of mystery and hidden allure.

"There really ought to be a ghost," I had said to Garnier with mock severity, when we began work on the Opera once more; and he just laughed heartily, said the budget wouldn't run to one, that the minister would have an apoplectic fit at the suggestion, and how did one order them anyway?

"Put an advertisement in the
Revue theatrale
," I suggested innocently.

"Oh, yes?" he inquired with delight, losing for once those harassed furrows which had aged him twenty years since our first meeting. "And how do I word it? 'Wanted, one ghost, experience and good character required. Ability to sing tenor would be considered an advantage.' "

"That ought to do," I said seriously. "I'm sure you'll be besieged with offers."

"Yes," he said, wiping the tears from his eyes. "I'm sure I will be. A ghost indeed… Erik, I should be out of my mind by now without your droll little comments to keep me sane. A ghost… yes, that's very good… I must tell that one to Louise."

And he went off laughing.

That was all I had intended at the time—to make the poor hounded wretch laugh. He'd been seriously ill for months during the occupation by the Commune and he didn't look nearly strong enough to face the struggle that lay ahead with the Third Republic—the threats of the minister, the personal accusations of fraudulent malpractice and mismanagement that would continually be leveled at him as the cost of the Opera spiraled upward… Yes, the ghost was no more than a joke at first, intended to amuse a sick man with many worries. It was only later that 1 began to see certain possibilities for myself.

Wanted, one ghost, experience and good character required…

It might be amusing to apply for the post. After all, I did have experience. I'd been a ghost before, and a damned good ghost too. I'd driven my mother half out of her mind before I was ten and then I hadn't even been trying. I'd had a vocational training, as it were; surely this was a role which lay well within my range.

It was just a game to begin with, permitting myself to be glimpsed occasionally as I stalked the upper corridors, appearing and disappearing at will via my carefully concealed trapdoors and hidden passageways. A series of little tricks and illusions added mightily to my awesome reputation among the corps de ballet, silly children for the most part, who dearly loved to be frightened half to death by a shadow and a disembodied voice. Soon they could talk of nothing in the dressing rooms but "the ghost." Those who had actually seen me were privileged beings, entitled to respectful silence whenever they began to embroider their tales. Dreadful little liars, of course, all of them, but who cared? Certainly not me! There is no legend without artistic license, no tale that will not benefit from the fertile imagination of the storyteller. And what imagination those girls had! Better than mine at times; sometimes I took notes for future reference!

So the game was already well established when I began to see how it might gain me rather more than a good laugh. The Opera Ghost was growing weary of his role as an un-paid amusement. Perhaps it was time he applied to the management for a salary.

The more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea. The corps de ballet were already calling me "the Phantom of the Opera," an intriguing soubriquet which appealed to me very strongly, until I realized that it would mean signing my ransom notes
P. T. O
. One did not wish to descend to the ridiculous!

O.G
. I became and
O.G
. I have remained.

But I still liked to think of myself as the Phantom…

Looking back, the whole thing was quite criminally easy to arrange.

I was blessed with two managers, neither of them mental giants and one of them surely the biggest fool in the history of theater. Poligny! Ah, dear, credulous Poligny, your interesting little personal vices served me as well as your simple mind. I frightened you out of your wits that night in box five when you first heard my voice. For after all, a ghost who knew so much about one's dubious private affairs had better be humored, had he not? Particularly when his terms were so reasonable.

Twenty thousand francs a month and box five on the grand tier to be reserved exclusively for my personal use.

Extortionate?

Hardly! A really efficient ghost is hard to come by these days; and no one could say I didn't give value for money in my own way.

Poligny left box five as white as a sheet, with instructions to write my terms into the lease of the Opera House.

I expected a prolonged period of struggle, particularly from his partner, Debienne, but one swift manifestation of my displeasure was sufficient to bring capitulation from them both. My reputation, swelling out of all proportion among the corps de ballet, had done most of the work for me. Everyone already believed in the ghost. It was unbelievable how quickly I obtained my power over them and how seldom I was obliged to crack the whip in order to remind them who was the master here. A little magic, a little clever ventriloquism, and they were mine for the taking.

Through similar means I obtained the worthy services of Madame Giry, the box keeper; and with this old lady acting as go-between, I established an entirely foolproof system of receiving my unorthodox allowance. Oh, they tried to track me down, of course they did; but their consistent failure only increased their fear of me, and Poligny would not hear of involving the police—he had far too much to hide.

Once the pattern of my life was set, my existence proceeded with ceaseless regularity along a bleak and empty continuum entirely untroubled by emotion. I listened to endless operas and studied voice with cool composure. I wrote notes to the management whenever I had cause to raise some matter of grievance; a little missive from O.G., arriving mysteriously on a desk through the locked doors of the manager's office was guaranteed to put Poligny out of humor for the rest of the day! Sometimes I complained just for the pleasure of winding him up like a clockwork toy. Occasionally I even interfered with casting. I made sure that Madame Giry's little daughter, Meg, was promoted to be leader of a row—the child could dance as well as any of the others and it cost me very little effort to make her widowed mother smile with pride. But by and large I remained aloof and totally indifferent to the insularity and mediocrity of the performances. Very few people went to the Paris Opera for the quality of its music; they went to see and be seen.

I was indifferent to most things by that time, anyway— middle aged, well past the angry frustrations of youth, a tall mourning candle burning steadily down into a pool of black wax.

All emotion and regret was behind me now that I had willingly embraced the existence of the living dead. I never expected to feel anything again…

Six years passed peacefully enough; I knew, because I had religiously marked each day off on a calendar. It would have been all too easy to lose track of time in the eternal darkness and start the slow downward slide into oblivion; to sink into the complacent carelessness that would inevitably result in capture. I daresay I grew more eccentric with each passing year, but I was determined not to lose my faculties or my fastidious social standards. Jules saw to it that my dress suits were kept immaculate and that I never needed to wear a shirt more than once. The first room I had completed in the house had been my glorious bathroom with its exotic green marbled bath. Later I added a guest bathroom beyond the second bedroom. God knows why, I certainly had no intention of entertaining anyone! It just seemed the done thing at the time.