Chapter Text
January 1905
Raoul didn’t quite understand what had possessed him to return to the Opéra Populaire for their auction.
The statuesque building was where so many of the memories of his youth took place - memories that were both euphoric and sorrowful, memories only a few others harbored. He hadn’t returned to the opera house since that fateful night, probably because he was too fearful to wake the dormant demons of his past.
Or maybe it was just too heartbreaking for him to return without Christine to the place where they had shared so many memories. For so long, she had been the tether connecting him to the Opéra, to music, to passion. And now she was gone, had been gone for a long time.
Raoul’s son, Philippe, hadn’t wanted him to go, either. He thought the excitement would be too much for his frail, ailing father. Raoul worried that the boy was sometimes too much like his namesake, the formidable and practical former Comte de Chagny. But even he had eventually given in once he’d seen that Raoul would not budge in his intent to attend the auction. Philippe had allowed him to go on one condition: that he bring his long-time caretaker, Sister Thérèse. She’d been looking after him ever since the doctors had diagnosed him with terminal cancer, and he trusted her with his life.
Yet, for whatever reason, Raoul was finally ready to confront his recollections now. The past twenty-three years certainly placed a new perspective on his life - had given him the comforts of space and time away - and he needed to reflect on all that had happened in 1881. All that had happened between him and Christine and the Opera Ghost and Charlotte...
Charlotte...she was long gone now, too. And to think it was all his fault.
The auctioneer, a pointy-faced man clad in a top hat, banged his gavel and drew Raoul from his reverie. He welcomed the small audience and explained the rules of bidding. Each bidder was given a number on a stick to raise when they wanted to raise their bid. Sister. Thérèse accepted Raoul’s number, serving as yet another crippling reminder to him of how he was withering away.. Many of the aristocratic childhood friends he had were still full of la joie de vivre - attending soirées, traveling the world, making babies with their younger wives, and pleasuring their mistresses on the side. Raoul had done all that once, back when he was dashing and carefree. But now, his sandy hair had prematurely grayed and his eyes had lost their lively sparkle. He was a sickly dependent bound for death at only age forty-five.
The first items of the auction were works of art indeed, but they did not interest Raoul. Lot 663 was different: a colorful poster from the opera Hannibal. Raoul fondly recalled the high of happiness he had experienced that night of Christine’s triumph, how her voice had soared, how they’d warmly reunited later in a more intimate setting. How young and innocent they were…Ah, but then that night had been the catalyst of a deep tragedy, he mused as he thought of her strange tutor and of Charlotte’s passive resentment.
Raoul murmured to Sister Thérèse to bid, and he won the poster for a mere eight francs. He’d display the poster as a memento, for Philippe to learn about his father’s past.
“665, ladies and gentlemen: a papier-mache musical box, in the shape of a barrel-organ. Attached, the figure of a monkey in Persian robes playing the cymbals. This item, discovered in the vaults of the theatre, still in working order,” the auctioneer boomed.
Raoul startled with dread when he saw the golden and red box and the detailed monkey figurine that he’d last seen far below the opera house. More memories came back to him, and he began to shake and hyperventilate. Sister Thérèse placed a comforting arm on his own. Although she didn’t know the story behind them, she knew as well as he did about the nightmares that had never gone away, even twenty-three years later. The nightmares that he would jolt awake to in the wee hours of the morning, retching and shivering in a crusty cold sweat.
And yet, he decided to buy the monkey on an impulse of curiosity. Another piece of his past for Philippe. A familiar-looking woman shrouded in black also bid on the figurine, and Raoul gazed at her, trying to place her. She made knowing eye contact with him, raising her rouged lips in a half smile. Ahh, Madame Giry…she was nearly twice his age but looked spry, ever the dancer. He’d been wrong to mistrust her, and he wondered if she’d ever forgiven him for doing so.
Madame Giry dropped her bid, and Raoul exchanged thirty francs for a figment of his nightmares. He studied the monkey carefully, stroking it. It was exactly as Christine had spoken of it, with red velvet lining and a brown lead monkey figurine. Him, Madame Giry…he wondered how many others there were who were still alive that knew of this seemingly decorative box. Would it even still play the haunting notes that accompanied Raoul’s nightmares, when the Opéra Ghost was dead? When Raoul was dead?
The auctioneer hurried along. “Lot 666, then: a chandelier in pieces. Some of you may recall the strange affair of the Phantom of the Opera: a mystery never fully explained.”
Raoul shifted in his wheelchair and glanced at Madame Giry again. The press had interrogated him thoroughly after the Opéra Ghost’s disappearance, and he’d answered their questions as swiftly and vaguely as possible. He had been eager to start a new chapter in his life, to be free…but he realized now he never had been free. He and the other key players in the event, like Giry, shut their mouths to avoid scandal and never spoke of the events again in public, and rarely ever in private. This left the hungry public uncertain and eventually the story evolved to become one of Paris’s most infamous ghost stories rather than fact.
“We are told ladies and gentlemen, that this is the very chandelier which figures in the famous disaster. Our workshops have restored it and fitted up parts of it with wiring for the new electric light, so that we may get a hint of what it may look like when re-assembled. Perhaps we may frighten away the ghost of so many years ago with a little illumination, gentlemen?” The auctioneer motioned to his assistants, who flicked on the lights of the ornate chandelier.
In Raoul’s experience, even the brightest light couldn’t banish darkness. He stared into the lit chandelier, and slipped entirely into his drifting memories of la Belle Époque.