"A Lover's Requiem"
Chapter I – Consumed with Fire
by peppermintoreo
"I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed." – Christabel LaMotte, from Possession
Nadir, 6 months after Don Juan the Triumphant…
I entered the desolate place, which had been trashed by the mob that came to imprison him after Don Juan the Triumphant. I sighed a breath of relief to see that the organ had somehow survived their eradication of his throne; the brutality they unleashed upon his treasures was only seconded to vicious pillages involved in wars we witnessed in Persia. Ashes of his music piled the swan bed, which had melted like a gray candle…it was rumored that a violin he locked away with a key he wore around his neck was used to light the flames. The air was left so lifeless that its frigidity made the breath escape my lips in wisps of smoke.
It was hardly surprising to see Erik's mouth was clear of air; Sweet Passion had taken Erik's fingers to mold his heart upon the keys, only to leave his need for a nourishing breath abandoned.
"In my heart's sequestered chambers
lie truths stripped of poet's gloss
words alone are vain and vacant
and my heart is mute."
I treaded among the debris carefully, attempting to leave him in peace, but I knew well that Erik had observed my presence the moment I set foot to his lair. Without taking his eyes off of the composition, he said, "Did you know, Nadir, that the pain that comes after a death of a lover does not compare to pain of merely parting with their love?" Erik tilted is head back slightly, his eyes half-closed, and began to play the ghosts of his forsaken home, once the vision of himself: the sweetest, simplest dream lighted by candles, of love and its devilish shadows. My eyes followed the words he had written for music that stood on the edges of a miserable hope:
"In response to aching silence, memory summons half-heard voices."
"Oh?" I asked as I sat down on a stool nearby. I looked at him intently...I knew for the present he needed someone to listen to him than berate him about the dangers of his place. "I was always under the impression that losing them forever could be worse. That relationship would never manifest itself between the lovers ever again." He sang on:
"And my soul finds primal eloquence
And wraps me in song
Wraps me…in song"
"That's where you are wrong, Daroga." He scratched out three measures of notes, slicing the delicate page with the blade of his pen. Smashing his ink bottle in his rush to fill his pen, he said in a faltering voice, "With death, God is kind enough to destroy all hope of ever restoring love that was forged in Passion's fire. It is child's play compared to separation with a loved one."
"If you would comfort me
Sing me a lullaby
If you would win my heart
Sing me a love song
If you would mourn me and bring me to God
Sing me a requiem
Sing me to heaven!"
"You play a requiem…a song for the dead, Erik."
"You surprise me with your assertion, Daroga. A requiem is not a song for the dead; it is a song for the survivors of the dead, for those that have lived. What else could be more fitting in describing myself in losing her?" The song began its tender crescendo, all of his desire espousing the words:
"Touch in me all love and passion
Pain and sorrow
Touch in me…
Grief and comfort
Love and passion
Pain and pleasure."
"The fact that she's only left me means that there is a chance that we can find each other again, Daroga." Tears began to leave their trail where his fingers had been on the keys. "What I want is still here, yet I cannot have it. Don't you see now, Daroga, why a requiem is so fitting?" Erik gracefully put his voice into falsetto, the sound like a cherub, the childish angel. The words were clear yet so abstract; it was so unlike Erik to treat love with such bare words, without the sensual poetry that could only describe what stirred within his soul.
"Sing me a lullaby
a love song
a requiem…"
He deepened in his need…his human need…he darkened his vibrato as tears began to slip from his eyes:
"Love me…"
"I am living more than I have ever lived, because I feel this pain! The more this misery fills me, the more I am aware of the existence of my heart…" he began to ramble. "What hasn't killed me yet haunts my mind every night. I see oceans of her face, Daroga, but remain in the desert, parched of her love! This pain, Daroga, it keeps me alive!"
His voice softened again
"Comfort me…
He pounded on the keys:
BRING ME TO GOD!"
The air was stiff as he abruptly ended the note. He recovered his breath and released a gentle melody of acceptance that engulfed us in the deep hollowness in which Erik conveyed the notes. Though his back was turned, the resonance was alluring: sound was all around me.
"Sing me a love song…
Sing me to Heaven."
His hands suddenly left the organ as if it had been heated by the flames of Hell. His voice danced upon sinister thoughts. "Is there a God, Daroga? Surely this world must be heaven or if not, hell. If there is nothing after death, everything is permitted. There was no God until she…" He grabbed onto me for dear life, his head bobbed in the space between us as he fell to his knees.
He hushed himself in an instant, where a lingering sound of metal clanging against the stone reverberated through his domain.
Disclaimer(s): I don't own The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. This story presents characters/characterizations/songs from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical and Susan Kay's Phantom, but I don't own those either. Just think about the flashing dollar signs that would appear in my hallucinations if I did!
"Sing Me to Heaven" was composed by Daniel E. Gawthrop.