Fantôme – Chapter 2

Joseph Buquet’s death lacked both the glamour and the drama of fiction. Its mundanity truly highlights its sadness, for it can happen in any of our lives, and we never see it coming.

He was simply found dead by his own hand.

Ah, but let us first return to those costumes! That singing, the fluid movements of the dancing girls! And the greatest joy of all – novelty! The gala evening ran something like an anthology, with the sets changing between performances and each cast member, for once, given equal billing an the opportunity to bid goodbye to the old managers and welcome to the new with their favourite pieces and the classics of dance and song. The surprise of the evening was that the magnificent Carlotta, the Opera’s premier singer, was not the star – in fact, it was her very hubris which pulled the Evening Star aloft, hoisted her high enough for all to see. Neither was her rival Sorelli, who watched from the wings with her hands clasped together as the greatest portion of the evening went on. But perhaps I should recap.

The evening began with the opera giving a rendition of one of Firmin Richard’s own compositions. Although his name has not become a classic of the genre, in his day his sentimental music was quite popular with the Parisian crowd, so a respectable applause followed, and Richard gently bowed from the back of the hall. The was Mozart on the programme, with the male singers performing excerpts from The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro, and Don Giovanni. Carlotta would not come to the stage without a fanfare, so next the orchestra played the overture from Carmen, before the soprano came to the stage and delighted her numerous fans in the audience and, it is rumoured, brought a tear to the eye of Moncharmin – although whether it was because he was in the presence of greatness or because he was henceforth responsible for the great diva’s happiness and co-operation not even a witness to the night could say for sure. Carlotta’s accompanists were not visible on the stage; instead, the other singers crowded into the opera pit; and for this performance, Carlotta did not wear a costume but a beautiful gown of fashion and jewels a Russian duchess would covet. She radiated talent, and light seemed to emanate from the large rubies around her neck and wrist. The ostrich feathers in her hair were the envy of all the fashionable ladies in the audience, the Indian-embroidered silks she wore were of the highest quality and very hard to obtain. After her performance the curtain came down for Act I. Carlotta, alone on stage and resplendent in all her finery, was the image that seemed to remain behind the velvet curtain, and she was all that anybody could talk about during the interval – even the backstage rippled with conversations about her stagecraft and immense skill for manipulation. Carlotta knew all of this, and sat smirking in her dressing-room, the Indian prince who had provided her the jewels and silks sat patiently on a velvet footstool outside listening to her scales.

After the interval came The Jewel Song from Faust. This was not sung by Carlotta, who would not deign to be on stage whilst the audience was eating the last of their nuts or returning to their seats, but instead was sung by Christine Daaé, the second soprano. Daaé usually took on the role of Siébel in the opera, courting Carlotta’s nobility with her peasant demeanour, and it was considered a privilege and a challenge to her talent for he to take on a leading role. It was at this point that tongues began wagging with the night’s controversy, for although Christine Daaé was a pretty little face, so far she had showed no great talent for singing to the public. Rather, since she had been hired by the Opera directly from overseas, she was taken as evidence of French superiority in the arts – for word had spread of a greatness that self-evidently paled next to the talents of Carlotta; Carlotta, who had come to France at a young age to learn our ways of singing. This night, though, Daaé was wonderful. No words could describe the extent to which she mastered the song. Conversation ceased as she sang, there was none of the rustling of which Carlotta had been so afraid, and the singing was so transfixing that the Viscomte Raoul de Chagny almost fell from the balcony of Box Three with his eyes closed, totally ensnared by this Swedish Siren, ready to jump into the Aegean after her.

When Daaé received a standing ovation, Carlotta locked herself in her dressing-room with the sympathetic prince at her feet, and could not be coaxed out by anybody, so the next spot on the programme was also filled by Daaé. The audience never knew that Mimi’s Death Scene was supposed to be sung by Carlotta, or that her rendition of it had been Monsieur Debienne’s most favourite performance he had seen during his tenure at the opera and that it was therefore intended to be the crowning jewel of the night. They only knew that little Christine Daaé’s virtuosic singing and her innocent face was the very embodiment of little Mimi, and her death that night rang more true than any they had ever seen. That night Mimi had not been corrupted by la vie Boehme, she was every soul that had ever been loved by a member of the audience and gone too soon, and they fell in love with little Christine Daaé for filling the holes in their hearts with a vision of the heaven where their darlings were now. Before she had finished singing, the new managers had torn up the intended programme and begun a plan to put Christine Daaé on the stage more prominently, and to market her nights at the Opera as unmissable. Those who had front-row seats could hear the conductor from the orchestra pit, raving to anybody who would listen about how well Daaé complimented his arrangements and how she followed his delicate hand from the stage, without seeming to even look his way. He declared her the best sight-reader in all the civilised world, that she had managed all of this without his tutelage.

After this surprise marvel, La Sorelli’s swan contained somewhat too much joy. The dancer could not repress the smile on her face, but her motions were like air, and it seemed that she was truly attempting to escape the boundaries of the stage and fly away from an enchantment. Her joy made her movements stronger, freer, and more regal, and the audience caught the glint in her eyes even before that of her tiara, glittering in the limelight. The little ballerinettes noticed, and strained to match her, but try as they might they could not discover her secret for a transcendental performance. When La Sorelli was lifted for the last time, her body posed backwards into a beautiful silhouette and it was her prostrate body the audience saw as the velvet curtain fell – but not what was heard in the whispers that began to form once again as the gas lamps were raised in the house. The evening had been an event that would be talked about for the rest of the season, and Sorelli herself was impatient to hear the gossip. As soon as the curtain was lowered, her lithe body leaped into the wings and ran for her dressing-room so that she could become decent and rejoin polite society before the tone of the gossip had been decided. The ballerina girls looked on, dazed, as the backstage chatter began and their chaperones began to come and get them. They were unaware of the role they had played in our little drama.

***

It was as the backstage work went on that Joseph Buquet was discovered – or rather, when he was unable to be found. The set-dressers and the scene-shifters were waiting for their strongest before they began dis-assembling the tall wooden edifices and carting furniture downstairs into the stores, but Joseph Buquet did not come. The men were aggrieved, and told the stage-manager, but the stage-manager was busy and told the crew he would discipline Buquet later but they would have to start without him. The men’s grumbling echoed around the theatre until they got to the fifth cellar. It didn’t matter how busy the stage-manager was then, the man who had run upstairs would not let him continue and insisted he come down the cellar, the mad look in his eyes so unignorable that he was in a tizzy before he even came downstairs. Monsieurs Remy and Gabriel would not let Mercier the stage-manager leave the business they were conducting and so they accompanied him and the man who had fetched him. At the stairs to cellar number five, the labourer turned sheet-white and wouldn’t go any further – instead, he stepped back into the gaggle of men holding their hats and the managers went down alone.

***

Christine Daaé’s performance cast a spell over the audience, and nowhere moreso than in Box Three. The Comte and Countess were great patrons of the Opera, and the Countess regularly had musicians attend her salon afternoons; perhaps because they were so accustomed to music, hearing it had caused a detectable flush on the apples of the Countess’ cheeks and she had been among the first in the foyer after the curtain had gone down on Sorelli, talking animatedly with the Opera’s other patrons and raising her eyebrows artfully as the gossip went on. Her husband Phillipe was as great a patron of the Opera as she was, attending performances both with and without his wife, and his regular lunches with La Sorelli kept him as informed of artistic gossip as the Countess’ salons did her. Neither was expecting a new singing star, though when the matrons of Paris society beckoned the couple over they talked as though they were privy to this secret and were not surprised, except by the manner of its discovery.

Among the patrons of Box Three, however, the greatest effect of Daaé’s singing had been on the young Vicomte. Yes, we saw before that the Viscomte had to be lashed to his seat like Odysseus to his mast when he saw how this young lady could sing, and as his sister-in-law ran to the society gossips the young Raoul hurried backstage. Christine Daaé was in her dressing-room before he got there, and a line of eligible young men holding roses and chocolates was already waiting for her to emerge, but Chagny strolled past these men and took his rightful place at the head of the queue. When one of the ballerinettes came by, Chagny stopped her, gave her a gold coin and his card and sent her into the dressing-room. The girl came out alone, saying nothing, and the men behind the Viscomte smirked as he wrang his gloves in his hands and began to pace. In fact, however, a title will get a man everywhere in life, and just a few interminably long minutes later a dresser left the room, sending Monsieur the Vicomte de Chagny in after her. The men in line dropped back against the wall, letting flower petals become crushed and chocolate-box-ribbons fall askew as Chagny stepped quietly into the room before them, her greatest fans.

Raoul knew nothing of their discomfort. As he entered, Christine was looking earnestly into her mirror, not at herself but through herself. He stepped into her view, and she turned and rose, giving him her hands.

“Monsieur.”

“Please, Miss Daaé, call me Raoul, for I am your humble servant.”

“I could not, Monsieur, for I wonder that it wouldn’t breed familiarity.”

“Am I not familiar to you, Miss Daaé?

The hint of a smile crossed the singer’s face, and she invited him to sit down.

“Did you not bring me flowers or presents, Monsieur? I thought that’s what all the men in the corridor were here for – yet I see that your hands are empty.”

“Miss Daaé, you do indeed deserve to be showered in gifts, for your performance tonight was a triumph – but I did not expect to see you, and I could not give you a generic gift, intended for another. Why, you deserve the finest things of all! Tell me your favourite flowers, Mademoiselle, and the greatest quantity of them shall be yours, next time I hear you sing.”

Here, again, a wry little smile crossed Daaé’s face, but this one did not go away.

“Lavender, my dear Viscomte. I have very pleasant memories of the lavender fields in Provence, and as such they have been my favourite flowers since I was quite young.”

“Then you do remember me, Miss Daaé? You are toying with me, teasing me?”

“A lady could never tease a gentleman, Monsieur,” and with this, her smile grew bigger, “but perhaps a girl could tease a boy with whom she has played before.”

Raoul fell to his knees.

“To you, Mademoiselle, I am no gentleman; I am simply the boy who rescued your kite at the sea-side, and with whom you played in the lavender-fields every summer afterwards.”

“And I am simply the girl your nurse approved of, though I was poor, enough to let you play.”

“Miss Daaé, your manners and demeanour were enough to impress my mother and my nurse alike.”

“Then you have no desire to forget our acquaintance, Viscomte?”

“Miss Daaé, when my parents died and I had to cease my summer trips to the seaside, it was only you in my head. I tried to send my nurse to Provence so that she could tell you I still wanted to see you, invite you and your dear father to our home in Paris, but my brother refused to allow it and it is only this year that I have come into my own money and could look for you once again. When I said I could never give you the gifts intended for another woman, for any singer or dancer who took my fancy at the Opera, it is because they would be paltry next to my feelings for you. Miss Daaé, do you have happy memories of our time together?”

The singer sat down, the smile on her face grown to beatific. “Oh, Monsieur le Viscomte, you were the best of my playmates! We would be amused by nothing for hours, going door-to-door like little urchins, begging only for stories. Dancing and running on the beach, listening to my father, my dear, late father, composing or playing for us.”

“Your father is dead?”

“Yes, alas. He died just before I came to Paris, and I feared that my heart would never sing again, until – ”

A dark look came across the pretty countenance of Christine Daaé, and she told the Viscomte to leave.

“But will I see you again, Miss Daaé?”

Christine escorted him to the door, rushing the young man out. The queue in the corridor scrambled to their feet and proffered their gifts, paltry though their hothouse flowers were.

“Gentlemen, I must insist you leave me. My singing teacher and I are agreed that there must be no gentlemen callers for Christine Daaé, that the Angel of Music shall be the only lover who sustains me. No – I am afraid I must disappoint you, even those of you I may have loved in the innocent way of youth.” With this final phrase she locked eyes with the young noble, and begged him with her eyes to leave.

The men of the corridor turned tail and left the singer alone – all but Raoul, who looked beseechingly into her eyes. They were beautiful pools, full of sadness and regret, a sparkling blue that entranced him and he couldn’t bear to look away. He was so enraptured by his siren and the watery grave she pulled him into that he almost didn’t hear her whisper to him:

“Tomorrow, Raoul. At noon.”

In a flash, she was gone, the door to her dressing-room closed fast, and only the gentle heat from her body and the subtle scent of liquorice on her breath lingering to tell him she had truly spoken, or that he had been close to her at all. He stood, open-mouthed, looking at the door and half-forming words, until a solemn group of men came up from the basement in their shirt-sleeves and no hats, unceremoniously pushing him to the side for the cargo they carried. Although he didn’t know what was in their rough-shod wooden box, the men seemed sombre, and so Raoul apologised to them and hurried out of their way – a dignified way to act, for their cargo was Joseph Buquet. He was leaving the theatre for the final time.

Pushed up against the wall to Christine’s dressing-room, Raoul thought he heard the girl praying. He could hear her muffled by the wall, saying, “I sing only for you!” and thought, “Ah, but she talks only to her Angel!” Raoul was ready to leave, trusting that tomorrow Christine would tell him anything he asked, but then he heard her tears. The young man had his hand on the door to go in and comfort the young woman before he heard, clearly and distinctly, the voice of a man in her dressing-room. Raoul didn’t wait to hear what the man said, he simply strode down the corridor with his shoulders thrown so far back that his hat fell from his head at the first doorway. The Viscomte rejoined his family, saying nothing but pleasantries for the rest of the night, simply smiling coyly when asked his thoughts about Christine Daaé, the Opera’s new star soprano.

***

A cold draught followed Joseph Buquet and the men who carried him, and it was felt throughout the theatre. It was the shiver running down the spine as a dead body was taken past, felt by patrons and performers alike – but it was also a shiver of anticipation, for that night would leave ripples in the lives of those who live for the Opera.