Призрак оперы / The Phantom of the Opera

Chapter I

It was the evening on which MM. Debienne and Poligny[11], the managers of the Opera, were giving a last gala performance to mark their retirement. Suddenly the dressing-room of La Sorelli[12], one of the principal dancers, was invaded by half-a-dozen young ladies of the ballet, who had come up from the stage. They rushed in amid great confusion. Sorelli, who wished to be alone for a moment, looked around angrily at the mad and tumultuous crowd. It was the little girl who gave the explanation in a trembling voice:

“It’s the ghost!” And she locked the door.

Sorelli was very superstitious. She shuddered when she heard the little girl speak of the ghost, called her a “silly little fool” and then asked for details:

“Have you seen him?”

“As plainly as I see you now!” said the little girl: “If that’s the ghost, he’s very ugly!”

“Oh, yes!” cried the chorus of ballet-girls.

And they all began to talk together. The ghost had appeared to them in the shape of a gentleman in dress-clothes, who had suddenly stood before them in the passage. He seemed to have come straight through the wall.

“Pooh!” said one of them. “You see the ghost everywhere!”

And it was true. For several months, there had been nothing discussed at the Opera but this ghost in dress-clothes. He was like a shadow, he spoke to nobody, to him nobody dared speak and he vanished, no one knowing how or where. He made no noise in walking. When he did not show himself, he betrayed his presence by accident, comic or serious.

After all, who had seen him? You meet so many men dressed in black at the Opera who are not ghosts. But this suit had a peculiarity of its own. It covered a skeleton. At least, so the ballet-girls said. And, of course, it had a death’s head[13].

Was all this serious? The truth is that the idea of the skeleton came from the description of the ghost given by Joseph Buquet[14], the chief scene-shifter[15], who had really seen the ghost. He had seen him for a second—for the ghost had run away. Joseph said:

“He is extraordinarily thin. His eyes are very deep, you just see two big black holes, as in a dead man’s skull. His skin, which is stretched across his bones like a drumhead, is not white, but yellow. His nose is so little worth talking about that you can’t see it; and the absence of that nose is a horrible thing to look at. All the hair he has is three or four long dark locks on his forehead and behind his ears.”

This chief scene-shifter was a serious, sober, steady man. His words were received with interest and amazement; and soon there were other people to say that they too had met a man with a death’s head on his shoulders. And then, one after the other, there came a series of incidents so curious and so inexplicable that the very shrewdest people began to feel uneasy.

For instance, a fireman is a brave fellow! He fears nothing! Well, the fireman had gone to make a round of inspection in the cellars and suddenly reappeared on the stage, pale, scared. And why? Because he had seen coming toward him, at the level of his head, but without a body attached to it, a head of fire!

But let’s return to the evening.

“It’s the ghost!” the dancers had cried.

An agonizing silence now reigned in the dressing-room. Nothing was heard but the hard breathing of the girls. At last, a dancer, with the mark of real terror on her face, whispered:

“Listen!”

Everybody seemed to hear a rustling outside the door. But there was no sound of footsteps. Then it stopped.

Sorelli tried to show more courage than the others. She went up to the door and asked:

“Who’s there?”

But nobody answered. Then she said very loudly:

“Is there any one behind the door?”

“Oh, yes, yes! Of course there is!” cried little Meg, heroically holding Sorelli back by her gauze skirt.

“Don’t open the door! Oh, Lord, don’t open the door!”

But Sorelli, armed with a dagger, turned the key and opened the door, while Meg sighed:

“Mother! Mother!”

Sorelli looked into the passage bravely. It was empty. And the dancer slammed the door again, with a deep sigh.

“No,” she said, “there is no one there.”

“Still, we saw him!” Jammes [16]declared. “He must be somewhere prowling about. I shan’t go back. We had better all go down to the foyer together, at once, and we will come up again together.”

“Come, children! I dare say no one has ever seen the ghost.”

“Yes, yes, we saw him—we saw him just now!” cried the girls. “He had his death’s head and his dress-coat[17], just as when he appeared to Joseph Buquet!”

“And Gabriel saw him too!” said Jammes. “Only yesterday! Yesterday afternoon!”

“Gabriel, the chorus-master?”

“Why, yes, didn’t you know?”

“And he was wearing his dress-clothes, in broad daylight[18]?”

“Who? Gabriel?”

“Why, no, the ghost!”

“Certainly! Gabriel told me so himself. That’s what he knew him by. Gabriel was in the stage-manager’s office. Suddenly the door opened and the Persian entered. You know the Persian has the evil eye.”

“Oh, yes!” answered the little ballet-girls in chorus.

“And you know how superstitious Gabriel is,” continued Jammes. “However, he is always polite. When he meets the Persian, he just puts his hand in his pocket and touches his keys. Well, the moment the Persian appeared in the doorway, Gabriel gave one jump from his chair to the lock of the cupboard. He rushed out of the office like a madman, slipped on the staircase and came down on his back. I was just passing with mother. We picked him up. He was covered with bruises and his face was all over blood. And he began to thank Providence that he had got off so cheaply. Then he told us what had frightened him. He had seen the ghost behind the Persian, the ghost with the death’s head just like Joseph Buquet’s description!”

A silence followed, while Sorelli polished her nails in great excitement. It was broken by Meg, who said:

“Joseph Buquet would do better to hold his tongue.”

“Why should he hold his tongue?” asked somebody.

“That’s mother’s opinion,” replied Meg, lowering her voice.

“And why is it your mother’s opinion?”

“Hush! Mother says the ghost doesn’t like being talked about.”

“And why does your mother say so?”

“Because—because—nothing.”

The young ladies crowded round little Meg.

“I swore not to tell!” gasped Meg.

But they promised to keep the secret, until Meg, wanting to say all she knew, began, with her eyes fixed on the door:

“Well, it’s because of the private box[19].”

“What private box?”

“The ghost’s box!”

“Has the ghost a box? Oh, do tell us, do tell us!”

“Not so loud!” said Meg. “It’s Box Five, you know, the box on the grand tier[20], next to the stage-box, on the left.”

“Oh, nonsense!”

“I tell you it is. But you swear you won’t say a word?”

“Of course, of course.”

“Well, that’s the ghost’s box. No one has had it for over a month, except the ghost, and orders have been given at the box-office that it must never be sold.”

“And does the ghost really come there?”

“Yes.”

“Then somebody does come?”

“Why, no! The ghost comes, but there is nobody there.”

The little ballet-girls exchanged glances. If the ghost came to the box, he must be seen, because he wore a dress-coat and a death’s head. But Meg replied:

“That’s just it! The ghost is not seen. And he has no dress-coat and no head! All that talk about his death’s head and his head of fire is nonsense! There’s nothing in it. You only hear him when he is in the box. Mother has never seen him, but she has heard him. Mother knows, because she gives him his program.”

Sorelli interfered.

“My dear, you’re laughing at us!”

Meg began to cry.

“I ought to have held my tongue—if mother ever came to know! But I was quite right, Joseph Buquet had no business to talk of things that don’t concern him—it will bring him bad luck—mother was saying so last night.”

There was a sound of hurried and heavy footsteps in the passage and a voice cried:

“My dear! Are you there?”

“It’s mother’s voice,” said Jammes. “What’s the matter?”

She opened the door. A respectable lady burst into the dressing-room and dropped into an arm-chair. Her eyes rolled madly.

“How awful!” she said. “How awful!”

“What? What?”

“Joseph Buquet!”

“What about him?”

“Joseph Buquet is dead!”

The room became filled with exclamations.

“Yes, he was found hanging in the third-floor cellar!”

“It’s the ghost!” little Meg blurted; but she at once corrected herself, with her hands pressed to her mouth:

“No, no! I didn’t say it! I didn’t say it!”

All around her repeated:

“Yes—it must be the ghost!”

Sorelli was very pale.

The truth is that no one ever knew how Joseph Buquet met his death. The verdict was “natural suicide.”

The horrid news soon spread all over the Opera, where Joseph Buquet was very popular. The dressing-rooms emptied and the ballet-girls were crowding around Sorelli like timid sheep around their shepherdess.