The Daaé Case (ch4)
In which Jos finally meets Christine Daaé, and she isn't - in several unsettling directions - entirely what he had expected. Chapter 4: Ah, Christine!
Even caught flushed and off-guard in her morning wrapper with a cup of coffee in one hand, Christine Daaé in the flesh was quite some lady. As exquisite as the room that framed her - why, if he hadn’t had more sense, he might have thought the place had been designed express for the purpose. Hard to see how any man could have problems waking up next to that, Jos thought, unguarded... then took stock of the set unhappiness in her eyes that was a constant silent reproach.
Plain enough to see that this wasn’t the first time she’d heard her husband slip in ashamed over morning coffee, either. When she’d glanced up, it wasn’t the face of a woman who’d spent the night worrying and waiting. It was the weary look of the wife who’d known better than to expect him back at all.
It was clear from the way she jumped to her feet, coloring up, that she hadn’t been counting on Jos, though. And while it wasn’t the first time, in his line of work, that he’d pushed his way into a couple’s rooms before breakfast on the husband’s account, it was the first time he’d gotten a look that made him think twice about whether it had been such a hot idea.
Mr. Rowl had been all for some scheme of tackling Christine at the last minute, right before the Phantasma show. Setting aside that Jos didn’t share the other man’s conviction of Mr. Y’s powers to somehow scotch their plans if given time, that set-up wouldn’t suit Hammerstein’s outfit at all. The Manhattan Opera needed to know if it still had a star, and as quick as might be - if only to see to it that Jos Perlman stayed in a job.
And so he’d gotten his guest up off the couch bright and early and scrubbed clean. In cold water, less to sober him up than because the geyser in the apartment was on the blink. On the way across town they’d picked up breakfast, a couple of shaves, and a clean collar. The Frenchman had swallowed down two of Dinny Halloran’s pick-me-up powders, and kept them down, and if he’d been a mite green about the gills he’d said nothing about the jackhammer that had to be pounding behind his eyes when he woke. And Jos had done his best to neaten up the rest in the elevator.
He’d made a good job of it, he thought now, watching Christine Daaé’s eyes widen as she took in her husband, and turning his mind back to the broken-down drunk he’d stumbled across last night. He’d made a good job of it... and health, looks, and a spark of hope had done the rest.
“Mais, Raoul-” she burst out in surprise, and got an answer back that was a gallantry if ever he’d heard one, in a language folks said was made for the purpose. Momentarily forgotten, Jos took the opportunity to cough.
“Sorry to intrude, ma’am. But I ran across your husband here last night”-no need to say how; no fool, the Daaé, she’d probably guessed-“and I got a notion from him that you might be amenable to hearing what my employer has to say. My name’s Jos Perlman. And I work for a gent by the name of Oscar Hammerstein.”
He got a glance of something like disbelief before her eyes flickered back to her husband in amazement. “Last night, in fact - there was a Hammerstein?”
Her English was a shade better than his, it seemed to Jos, though he had to allow they were both fair at it for foreigners. But on her, the accent was enchanting.
He was fast forming the view that just about anything Miss Daaé did was enchanting. No wonder Mr. Y had set his sights on her... and small wonder she’d gotten her poor devil of a husband tied up in knots. How could a guy hope to live up to that kind of perfection, save he had a head swelled to fit the crown on Lady Liberty?
Her obvious doubt was none too flattering, though. “Sure, there’s a Hammerstein-”
He drew breath, and Mr. Rowl broke in.
“Christine, there was always a Hammerstein; he has been seeking us since we came. It was the notes, the meetings, the carriage, all that which was false. Which was him.” His voice cracked. “Listen, you must hear me. I understand now why you would do this: the secrecy, the threats, the danger to our son-”
“Gustave?” She too sounded shaken. “This is... about Gustave? You truly...”
“Care?” Silence you could have cut with a knife; even Jos caught the flinch. “I have deserved that, have I not? Yes, then, Madame de Chagny- Mister Perlman- I care. I care when my son must pay for his father’s folly. I care when an enemy dares to lay hands on a child. And - though I would gladly wring him by the neck, often and often - I care for Gustave, the one being who still brings laughter to our house. Is that so hard to believe?”
The Daaé’s eyes had filled with tears. She was not the only one.
“Your husband’s right,” Jos said softly, after a decent interval. “You don’t have to go ahead with this. Hammerstein wants you - Hammerstein needs you. There’s a gala tonight with your name on the bill, and the cream of Manhattan waiting. We can get you and the kid out of here, guarantee protection-”
“You do not understand.” She wiped at her eyes almost fiercely, and caught a tear as it started to fall. “Things have changed, and I... I cannot just leave. Not now. I- I made a promise.”
“A promise under force?” Her husband brushed that aside. “You know that it counts for nothing.”
“And...” Jos coughed again. “In any case, ma’am, I guess you could say you promised Hammerstein already.”
“But... the money.” Both hands gripped the back of her chair as she stared from one to the other of them, looking astonished. “Raoul, you told me he would pay three times what Hammerstein offered. Enough to repay everything we owe, and more. And now-”
Her husband came quickly across the room and caught her two hands in his.
“We came across the sea for what Hammerstein will pay, did we not? It sufficed then; it can suffice now. It will pay the sums that are most urgent so that we can rest both ears on the pillow.” He pulled her closer until she was gazing up into his face, her eyes searching his own. “Christine, Christine... in our marriage I have no pride left, only shame. But do you think it of me truly, that had I known- that in my own right mind I would ever seek to sell you back into his power for money; for any money at all? Come away from here with me, and I swear to you, I promise you that things will change. For you and for Gustave. Si tu m’aimes encore - ah ça! écoute-moi, Christine, bien-aimée-”
From there on in they might as well have been alone together for all that Jos could make out, though the tone of it was clear enough; the flood-gates had broken in more senses than one, and things were being said in that outpouring of French that should have been put into words long since. Said on both sides, by the sound of it... and after a while when it looked like the two of them had clean forgotten he was there, the set-up got a mite uncomfortable.
Watching a couple locked in each other’s arms hadn’t ever been his idea of spectator sport. He tried another discreet cough, sighed, and removed himself politely behind the screen in the corner. It was more to secure his own peace of mind than for any concern over theirs.
After a time, when the murmuring had shifted from passionate to something more domesticated, he risked a cautious peek. A peal of laughter from Christine Daaé greeted him.
“Mister Perlman, you must forgive... I think we have embarrassed you.”
They had, but... in that moment he would have forgiven anything. If she’d been enchanting with sad eyes, it seemed to him she was nothing short of adorable when she laughed. Her hair was tumbling down over one shoulder, and if her husband had looked ten years younger and vulnerable last night, right now - hand in hand, and seemingly unaware of it - the two of them together struck him as nothing more than a pair of kids who might at any minute go pelting breakneck down the street out of pure excitement. Save, he amended mentally, that they were kids who’d clearly just worked out the difference between boys and girls, and weren’t about to forget it in a hurry.
His own face had split in a somewhat sheepish grin, and he got a smile back from her in return that was an overspill of happiness you could warm your hands by. Jos looked away with a conscious effort, and cleared his throat. “Well, if your lady wife’s agreeable to the idea, Mr. Rowl-”
“Mister Rowl?” For a moment she stared between them blankly; then she broke into fresh laughter. “Oh, the steward- Raoul, I had forgotten-”
It sounded... different when she said it, Jos allowed, flushing. More French. But she came towards him with such a pretty air of apology that he couldn’t hold the mockery against her.
“Truly, you must forgive me; it is... shock, I think.” She laughed again, a little helplessly, and slipped her arm through his. They were much of a height, and she was smiling straight into his eyes. It was something like being struck by a sledgehammer, or else downing a quart of forty-proof; Jos caught his breath on the crazy thought that a guy could make his fortune if he could somehow bottle her. Essence of Daaé, guaranteed... or should that be “Mrs. Rowl”?
He had to choke down a fit of the chuckles under the show of a strangulated cough. He sure was getting light-headed...
Christine looked at him a little anxiously, pressing him down into a chair, and he waved a hand in reassurance. “I’m fine, I’m okay. Listen, ma’am, we’ve got to get you out of here. Get the boy away somewhere safe-”
“Where is Gustave now?” Mr. Rowl’s voice was urgent, and his wife was clearly bemused.
“In bed...” She glanced round to the inner door of the suite, which was still firmly shut. “Still asleep, or at least I hope it. You know that he has bad dreams - and for him yesterday was a little hard to bear.”
She’d gone a shade paler, like she’d remembered something she didn’t much care for, and now she caught at her husband’s arm. “But, Raoul, he is in no danger, I swear it! He would not hurt him, not one hair of his head. And if we leave-”
Neither of the two men could make head or tail of this. Jos got to his feet, frowning. “But Mr. Y did use threats on Gustave to get you to sing - right?”
“Yes, but-”
“And you believed him? You were angry and scared?”
“Yes, but-” She had let go of her husband’s sleeve, and her hands were twisting together now. “Please, you must believe me... things have changed.”
Jos knew evasion when he saw it, and it hurt a little; he’d been dumb enough to think better of her.
“I guess you’re going to have to explain, ma’am.” He made it as gentle as he could. “There’s a lot riding on this... and the safety of the kid besides.”
“Christine, he hates us!” Her husband’s shoulders had tensed right up, and his hands were clenched. “What is it that has changed? How can you be so sure?”
“He does not hate us. He- he is desperate, that is all.” She bit her lip. Jos saw the half-truth coming, and winced. “And yesterday, he... he heard Gustave sing.”
“Is he so good, then?” Jos thought back to the Laverick kid: the best little deadpan acrobat he’d ever seen. Mr. Y wouldn’t lay a finger on the talent, that was one thing everyone knew. But the talent in this act was the Daaé herself. “Gustave - is he that good?”
“Raoul does not think so.” She smiled a little at her husband’s flushed protest, and dealt him a loving look. “Gustave is a child, Mister Perlman, and he sings as a child. But for a child, he has promise. And he has my voice: the voice that he has sought across all these years. Yes, there were threats, but... they will not happen now. Gustave is as safe as... as I.”
It was plausible enough. Jos admitted to himself, slowly, that it could even be true. But experience told him there was something very wrong about that kid that his mother was covering up.
Still, it was none of his business. All McWhirter cared about was for him to get her to sing. And she couldn’t stay here, where Mr. Y could put the kibosh on the whole affair the moment he got wind of it.
He put the pressure on, not too hard at first, dropping a word or two about ‘artistic honor’ and a waiting audience and mentioning Signor Bonci, booked expressly to star with the great Daaé. Then he slipped out the Hammerstein contract with the Vicomte’s name already on the bottom where the cash was concerned, just waiting for the artiste herself to sign. And her husband put his arms round her with soft words and straight out implored her not to let Mr. Y catch her voice back into his old snare.
“When you sing for him, you are no more yourself - you know it! I beg of you-”
Christine Daaé tore herself loose and backed away from them both, eyes wide like a wild thing in pain. “Snares, traps... you see him still as a monster, both of you, a great spider above us all with victims in his web. But if he is a monster, it is one we too helped make... and beneath the cunning and the rage there is a man, a man alone in the dark with only music as salvation. I gave him my word, not for fear but for love and pity’s sake. One song. One single song, Raoul, then we are free to start again as it should have been. I promised this one thing, so very little - and to him it is so very much.”
A loyal type, the Daaé. Too loyal for her own good. Jos had his own views on quick-made millionaires with fraud and blackmail as their stock in trade, but he kept that part to himself. He’d just had a notion.
“Say... just what did you promise? A performance, right? His music - your voice?”
An uncertain nod. Jos looked across and caught Mr. Rowl’s eye, unable to keep the grin from his voice any longer. “But I’m guessing he never said where...”
For a moment they traded glances, the full possibilities sinking in; then the other man let out a kind of a whoop and made as if to fling himself upon Jos’s neck. Jos sidestepped hastily and found his hand enveloped in an enthusiastic grasp.
“My friend, that is sublime! Of course! She will sing at the Manhattan Opera - and we shall simply send him an invitation.”
Christine had gasped, as if caught between hope and fear. “Oh- do you think-”
“A ticket?” Jos nodded. “Sure. McWhirter - my boss - he’ll fix it. Might have to be the gallery though; the best seats are all sold out.”
She shook her head quickly, eyes cast down. “No, the gallery, it would be better - for him. He cannot be seen...”
Her husband murmured something that sounded like ‘lodge number five’, and she turned on him. “And Raoul, there will be no police! If he comes, then he comes; he has done nothing to harm us. Not this time.”
She got a eloquent shrug in response, but right then Jos had the feeling the young man with the dancing eyes would have agreed to anything.
“Of course. If we are to forgive him Gustave”-a tiny flinch from the Daaé that betrayed more to the watcher than to the oblivious pair-“then it seems the victim here is Hammerstein. And if it agrees to him-”
“Oh, Hammerstein won’t take action against Mr. Y,” Jos assured them. Beneath old Oscar’s dignity, for one thing, to admit he’d been a rival for the Daaé’s charms with the owner of a Coney Island show. And for another, said freak-show owner had bought himself a sight too many connections up at Tammany Hall.
He looked from one to the other. “Then it’s decided?”
“I greatly hope he does not come,” Mr. Rowl admitted, with a rueful glance at his wife. “But yes - agreed.”
Christine Daaé said nothing at all. But she took the contract Jos held out to her, and the pen he uncapped with a flourish from his pocket, and signed her name - her married name, he noted with interest - beneath the dotted line. Then she smiled at him suddenly, and leant forward to kiss him very gravely on the cheek.
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