Chapter 39
On the morning of opening night, I woke with a startled cry, wresting myself free from another nightmare.
For three long weeks, I had dreamed of nothing but music boxes and automatons.
Sometimes I was in the rehearsal hall, surrounded by a chorus of silent marionettes as we danced to the music from a monkey’s cymbals. Sometimes I was onstage, alone, and it was I who was turning into a machine.
Usually, Erik was the puppeteer, controlling us all by clever, unseen mechanisms. But last night, it had been Raoul ordering uniformed automatons about as they descended upon the opera house, swarming like a horde of termites.
Their teeth were pointed and numerous, biting and tearing and chewing through everything they came across—the proscenium, the wings, the stage walls—to get at Erik.
I sat in my damp bedsheets for a long moment, pushing grit from my eyes and wishing, wishing, wishing I could return to sleep, but the tearing, crunching sound of the mechanical gendarmes and Raoul’s echoing commands lingered in my ears.
I hadn’t seen him in so long. Between his ordered bed rest and the frenzied rush of rehearsals, it had been all but impossible to visit.
He’d sent me flowers and letters nearly every day, filling my apartment with his adoration and my steeped guilt.
I knew he planned on attending tonight’s performance but was unsure of how strong I should envision him to be.
I also had no idea of how much mercy could be expected of Erik.
I pushed myself from bed and began an hour of morning stretches, trying in vain to empty my mind.
When I finally left the apartment, little flurries of snow raced by and the clouds overhead promised greater accumulations to come.
I pulled up my scarf, making sure it covered all of my throat, before heading to Café de la Paix.
The terrace was certain to be closed, but I could find a table at which to while away the afternoon, looking over my score and preparing for the evening to come.
I didn’t know what to expect. I wasn’t sure even what to hope for.
I wanted the opera to go well. So much time and effort had gone into it.
I wanted Erik’s music to have its chance to shine.
I wanted him to hear it as he’d imagined and be pleased.
Over the course of our music lessons, we’d formed a strange alliance, each of us needing something that only the other could provide.
We’d been warily cordial at first, then gradually warmed as familiarity and routine made us colleagues. Friends, even, if I was being honest.
But also…
I dreamed of it falling apart.
No amount of tentative smiles and gentle banter could make me forget what he had done. To Carlotta. To the company. To Raoul and me.
So I wanted Erik to show up to Box Five, ready to hear his masterpiece, and I wanted to see him caught. I wanted to watch the gendarmes cart him away and to know that Raoul and I—and the whole company—would be forever safe from the Phantom of the Opera.
The contradictory desires warred within me, churning my stomach so much that by the time I arrived at the café and had been seated, I no longer wanted anything to eat.
I ordered a mint tea, so that I might linger, then took out my score and began looking through the recitatives. When nothing else in the world made sense, there was always the music.
In the weeks of coachings with Erik, my score had grown in size as the pages were thumbed through over and over. So many notes had been written across the stanzas, and the book was full of added slips of paper, little flags indicating tricky sections to look over, to study, to perfect.
I felt like I would be trying to master this opera for the rest of my life.
“I should have known that you’d be here,” a voice said, interrupting my reverie several acts later.
I looked up, startled to see Carlotta standing beside my table. She wore a bustled skirt of slate-gray wool with a matching jacket and, other than a modestly feathered hat, was curiously unadorned. Not even a pair of earrings dangled from her. I’d never seen the diva so plain.
“Carlotta.” I wasn’t sure what to say or how to greet her.
We’d kept our distance during rehearsals, always managing to just miss each other on the daily schedules.
Even our blocking separated us, each entering from different wings of the stage, a bit of finagling I was certain had been an intentional directorial choice.
“May I sit?” she asked, gesturing to the empty chair in front of me.
My eyebrows rose. I was wholly unable to hide the surprise flooding through me. Never in my wildest dreams had I ever expected to be seen in public with Carlotta Guidicelli. “Of course. How…how are you?”
She tossed aside my strained pleasantry with a look to the heavens, as if asking for assistance. “I noticed you sitting here all alone and thought I should see how you are.” She cleared her throat. “I know we’ve not been the best of friends…”
I couldn’t help laughing out my disbelief and was relieved when she joined in. “I suppose we have not,” I agreed.
“No.” Carlotta pressed her lips together, weighing her next words.
“I’ve been in dozens of operas over the years.
Hundreds, truly, if I’m being honest. I’ve been fortunate for my career to have lasted for so long.
There are many in our profession who cannot say the same.
But this new season…this new show, tonight…
it feels like the culmination of all that.
I…” She sighed and glanced down, her eyes bright with brimming tears.
“It’s so painfully unfair to be a woman of a certain age.
You spend your life perfecting your craft, gaining the skills and knowledge which help you become your best self, but then…
because you no longer look like the sixteen-year-old lovestruck fools you’re meant to play onstage, you’re just… cast aside.”
Her lower lip trembled. It was disconcerting to see her emotions laid so raw, so bare.
I’d never looked past her theatrical artifice, her trumped-up indignation, her exaggerated persona.
Seeing her here now, so wholly open and vulnerable, I found myself wondering who the woman behind the paste jewels and furs was.
What thoughts went through her head? What worries and fears clutched at her heart?
I reached out to cover her hand. “Carlotta, I—”
“No,” she said briskly, and her eyes flashed with anger. “I do not want your sympathy. I have had an immensely rewarding career. I’ve sung for emperors and presidents, kings and their mistresses. My voice has soared as high as the angels. You may not show me pity.”
I nodded silently.
“It’s a strange thing, giving your heart to the muses, to the public.
They take and take, and at the end of it all—when you know all you’re meant to know and have the confidence to understand what to do with it—where are they?
They’ve left you. Gone and lusting after the next bright young thing.
” Her smile brought tears to my eyes. “I don’t hate you, Miss Daaé.
Even when I…even when I blamed you. I know that you were not at fault.
It wasn’t your doing. You have no more control over any of this than I.
It’s just…life. I wanted you to know this,” she said.
“I don’t blame you. Not anymore. And years from now, when you’re in my position—looking across the table at some fresh-faced girl and feeling every one of your wrinkles and covered gray hairs—I hope you don’t blame her either. ”
I couldn’t think of what to say or how to respond. I started to squeeze her hand, but she jerked it away with a little shudder.
“This production will be my final performance with the Opéra Populaire,” Carlotta announced, gaining control over her tone once more and sounding like the brusque soprano I’d always known.
“I want my public to remember me as I was in my best days. I don’t want them to see whatever is to come.
Smaller roles, older roles, roles you take just to hang on for another show, another season.
That is not the ending for La Carlotta.” She stood up with sudden resolution, and when her eyes met mine, they looked content.
“I hope tonight’s performance brings you everything you wish for, Miss Daaé. ”
“And you as well,” I whispered.
Her lip curled—it was not exactly a smile, not entirely a sneer—and then, in a swish of skirts, she was gone.