Chapter 41
Somehow, impossibly, we had made it through the first three acts of the opera and had arrived at Don Juan Triumphant’s penultimate scene without incident, without alarm. The audience, though at first confused by the new avant-garde style of the music, seemed to be enjoying it.
My heart was torn, one half daring to hope that Erik had been content to sit back and watch with pleasure as his masterpiece played. The other half despaired, resigned to the terrible realization that he would never be caught, that this would never be over.
For the rest of my life, I would be haunted by the Phantom of the Opera.
I stood at the back of an enormous painted arch, waiting for my entrance.
Onstage, Carlotta and the chorus caroused with Marc, the bass cast as Passarino, Don Juan’s faithful right-hand man, as they readied their master’s chambers.
The men set out platters of fine food and elaborate serving ware.
The women fluffed and dressed the sumptuous bed before drawing its curtains upstage right.
I stretched while waiting, bending into deep pliés and flexing my shoulders to keep my muscles warm and limber.
I was in my favorite of Aminta’s costumes, a Baroque-style gown with a tight bodice, very full skirts, and extravagant layers of lace edging its elbow-length sleeves.
It was a deceptively sweet shade of pink, with black embroidered vines creeping along every layer of the overskirt.
Red ribbons and roses lashed up the bodice, and the skirt came only to mid-calf, allowing for Ubaldo to quickly toss the layers aside, exposing a long length of my leg as we fell into bed before the lights dimmed, ending the scene.
I caught Ubaldo’s eye now. He was at the other end of the arch, getting a final costume adjustment as the chorus’s music came to an end.
“Don Juan triumphs once again!”
We shared a quick smile before he hurried onstage, snapping his fingers at Meg, who pirouetted after him.
Her gown was theatrically unlaced, showing she’d just come from being ravished somewhere else in the manor.
She left an enormous, wet kiss on Ubaldo’s cheek, and he tossed her a purse of coins.
With a wink toward the audience, she danced offstage, heading in my direction.
She zipped by me without acknowledgment, scurrying into the wings for her final quick change.
The rest of the dancers were already milling around, dressed as leering demons and the ghosts of women Don Juan had seduced, so ruining their reputations that they’d taken their own lives to torment him from beyond the grave.
I wanted to go after her. Things between us hadn’t fallen back into our usual ease, and it rubbed at me like a poking burr. But there wasn’t time.
Onstage now, Passarino was dressing Don Juan, throwing a liveried cloak over his shoulders before drawing up the hood to obscure Ubaldo’s face, as he began to recite the order of their scheme.
The night before, Passarino had come across the lovely Aminta and—knowing she was the one woman in all of Spain who had refused Don Juan’s initial advances—invited her to join him for a secretive dinner at his master’s estate.
There, Don Juan, dressed as Passarino, would wine and dine her until “the master of the house” arrived, interrupting their fun and forcing them to hide away in a bedroom, where Aminta was meant to finally surrender herself to his charms.
“Poor thing hasn’t got a chance!” sang Marc as he departed, leaving Ubaldo to hide behind the swags of curtains surrounding the bed. He let out a loud burst of laughter, the cue for my entrance.
I fixed a dreamy smile on my face and strode out from under the archway, skirts flouncing.
“No thoughts within her head but thoughts of joy,” I sang, tilting my head to admire the vast grandness of the hall.
I removed my shawl and tossed it upon the long table before beginning to pick at the fake food dressing the plates.
“No dreams within her heart but dreams of love,” I trilled, finding the apple I needed for the start of the duet.
I took a short glance toward the front of house.
Though the strong stage lights filtered most of the audience from view, I could still sense their presence in the auditorium, filling the space with their bated anticipation.
They were waiting, breathless and on the edge of their seats, eager to see how this final conquest would unfold.
I caught a shiver of their excitement as if it were a viral, contagious thing, and my chest tightened as we—both the audience and I—waited.
But something was wrong.
Ubaldo had missed his entrance.
I wanted to turn upstage and see what the problem was—he had already been dressed in the Passarino cowl and cloak; there should have been nothing to further delay him—but I couldn’t think of how to make it seem natural with my intended blocking.
Through the glow of the footlights, I met Maestro Messenger’s stare and offered the slightest, questioning rise of my shoulder. He only shook his head, biding time while the orchestra held a painfully long vamped note.
When Ubaldo finally did emerge in a swish of curtains, the conductor sighed with relief and ushered in the underscoring instruments with a gracious flick of the baton. So eager was he to get back on track, he’d overlooked one horrible, awful truth.
That was not Ubaldo’s voice.
I froze, listening to this disguised Don Juan sing of wished silences and merging passions, backward glances and descending dreams, and I was unable to react, unable to do anything but continue with the staging.
I did not need to see his figure to confirm it.
I would have recognized the sultry vibrato of his baritone anywhere.
Erik was onstage.
Erik was masquerading as Don Juan.
I heard the approach of his footsteps, felt his presence behind me, running his hands down my arms to snatch the apple, carrying on with the staging as if we’d practiced it together a hundred times before.
And in a way, I supposed we had.
I did not doubt he’d attended—out of sight and unremarked on—each and every one of our rehearsals.
He knew this opera just as well as any of us onstage.
Better, even. He had crafted our characters, shaped our intentions and driving desires.
He had thrown the wrenches into the plot.
He had poured his blood, sweat, and tears into this music.
Who else but Erik could step in at such late notice?
I did worry over what could have happened to Ubaldo to make Erik, who’d been watching every aspect of tonight’s performance, step in, lest the show be ground to a halt and ruined.
Had something gone wrong with his costume? Had his throat suddenly seized?
I wanted to stop. I felt compelled to look for him.
But the show must go on.
It was an adage every person in theatre knew.
From the lowest supernumerary to the brightest star, from the stagehands in the flies to the musicians in the pit, we all would do whatever was needed to keep the production going, no matter how bumpy it might feel to us.
We could never let the audience catch on.
So when it came time to begin my part of the duet, I continued the ruse. I didn’t shout for Raoul or cry out to the gendarmes I knew were dotting the auditorium, stationed throughout the horseshoe like pawns ready for battle.
No.
Instead, I pasted on my most arresting smile, turned to the hooded man who was most certainly not Ubaldo, and continued with the show.
“You have brought me to that moment where words run dry, to that moment when speech disappears into silence…silence…”
I lost myself in the flow of notes, the pulsing melody. I sank deep into my character, feeling all the things Aminta felt, acting upon her every desire.
I’d once wished with all my might for this, singing on one of the biggest stages in the world, with my Angel of Music.
This wasn’t exactly the way I’d pictured it, him stepping in for another, with armed men keeping watch, but it was finally happening, and I wanted to savor every second.
I wanted to perform the best I ever had and make him proud.
The song flew by as we both dared the other to bring out the best performance we could. Our voices swooped and soared, playing over each other’s with an electric pulse. Every word dripped with seduction and power. Every note rippled with yearning and heat.
As the time came for me to pull away Don Juan’s hood, I grew nervous, unsure of what I’d find beneath when I did.
“We’ve passed the point of no return,” we sang together, and I carried out my staging, pushing aside the hood to reveal Erik and his mask.
From Box Five came a gasp so loud I knew that Raoul had immediately recognized him and understood.
There was a murmur of confusion from the audience as they realized this singer was not their beloved Signor Piangi.
I could hear the clack of the gendarmes’ shoes as they raced closer, looking for the best firing positions.
But onstage, Erik didn’t seem aware of any of it. He’d fixed upon me with single-minded intent. I was the only thing he saw.
He took a step closer, reaching up to touch my face.
“Say you’ll share with me one love, one lifetime,” he sang, changing the tune, changing the rhythm.
His words were so familiar, but I could not place them, could not think of where I’d heard them before.
They certainly weren’t part of this opera.
They were too tender, too pure, to have ever been spoken in the den of a lothario like Don Juan.
His cloak parted, and Erik took off the heavy ring that was always worn on his left hand. The gold death’s head had chips of rubies for its eyes. He held out the bauble, offering it to me with all the ceremony of a marriage proposal.
“Say you want me with you here, beside you…”
I let out a strangled gasp as it clicked into place for me. Those were Raoul’s words. Words said on a faraway beach. Words said outside of the opera. Words that Erik should have never known existed.
But of course he did.
Of course he’d been there.
And now he was using our declaration of love to ask for my already-taken hand in the most public of ways.
A spark of anger kindled within me.
“Anywhere you go, let me go too. Christine, that’s all I ask of—”
The spark spiked into a raging inferno.
Without a flicker of regret, I reached for him, but rather than accept his ring, I ripped away his mask, exposing his face for all to see.
He let out a cry of horror, trying to shield himself from the audience, but it was too late. The stage lights had shown every misshapen curve and angle with cruel clarity. He couldn’t cover it all, flashing bits of straggled hair, parts of his missing nose.
The gendarmes were at the lip of the orchestra pit, beginning to take aim.
I was dimly aware that I should move, that I should hide from any wayward bullets, but Erik moved faster, sweeping his cloak over me as we fell through a trapdoor I hadn’t even known was part of the scenery.
Above us came new shrieks and screams and the stampede of racing feet, but we were already plunging down paths of darkness as deep as hell.