Truth in Balance
What is truth? What happened after the final confrontation in the labyrinth? Christine discovers that the line between desire and truth is too fine indeed.
Author's Note: It has been a while, I know, but this has been brewing in my mind, so the only way to cast the demon out was to pen it down.
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In looking back after a year or three, I believe that I could still recall every detail of that my numerous meetings with Erik. It was so late an hour, and the only lamps in the dark labyrinth were that of Erik's shimmering lantern and the liberally placed blood-red candles on his wall.
I can still see the mellow light that shone over the staircase and lay in phosphorescent pools on the old Persian rugs, which were so soft and fine that I felt as if I were walking on flowers. I remember the sound of music from a room somewhere on the first floor, and the scent of lilies and hyacinths that drifted from his music room each time he retreated into his shell cushioned by the only comfort he knew – music. I remember it all, every note of music, every whiff of fragrance; but most vividly I remember Erik.
But the last time I saw his beautiful house ripped to shreds, and that weary old Persian who stood as his gatekeeper bent at the waist painfully piecing together Don Juan Triumphant…
I wished that Erik knew I never more thought of his face as…arresting. The more I saw his ravaged countenance, the more there grew upon me an uncanny feeling of familiarity; it was this familiarity that grew strangely appealing.
What happened thereafter is not something I wish to remember, but it was suffice to say that I found myself back in Erik's arms, overwrought, distressed and filled with shame. His returning embrace was sweet and winning, and it seemed that he shook with the effort to hold my shaking shoulders as I wept for his forgiveness.
I do not remember seeing the Vicomte de Chagny after I flew back to the labyrinth. All that mattered was Erik, and that paradise of his own creation that he wove around us.
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"Vicomtess de Chagny...I'm afraid that I'm going to have to ask you again. What do you remember about your husband?"
The young woman sat as memories raced through her mind. The candles that sat atop the points of the candelabra were strangely skewed, and their dancing flames bounced once, twice…and stood upright. But in the semi-circle of flickering shadows her love stood, out of reach from the piercing lights, and beyond reach of her own pale arm.
But the masked man moved suddenly out of the shadows into the unnatural luminosity; he seemed to glow impossibly even though he was dressed in all black, cutting a tall, stark figure among all that was unclear. Clearly he was a wanderer in the land of light, and a settler of the dark.
An elegantly gloved arm…a boat filled with lush cushions, and a haunting voice that sang her to sleep.
"He waits in the boat for me, and he glories in my triumph on stage as I sing."
"Your husband? He is, as far as I know, is better on a horse than on a boat," the doctor guffawed briefly.
"But – there is a boat, I remember it. An a man with a voice who made me weep, and I am filled with shame."
There was rising panic in her voice, as Dr. Villers pursed his lips. Silently he berated the Vicomte for summoning him too late; his wife did not seem, in any possible manner, to be retaining any semblance of lucidity.
"Doctor?" The Vicomtess de Chagny whispered timidly, growing bolder as Villers seemed content staying silent. "You do believe me, right?"
The doctor paused. "Who is your husband, Vicomtess?"
"My husband is the man who cares for me."
"Right…of course my lady," the doctor coaxed gently. "Now, tell me," he said slowly, as if speaking to a dim-witted child. "Who is your husband? Do you remember his name?"
"My husband…?" She thought for a moment. White roses bleeding into the passion of the dark red ones, a man dressed resplendent in black, covered with a half-mask – was that not her husband?
"Oh yes, my husband," she murmured so softly that the doctor had to lean forward in his seat, momentarily breaking the protocol that required him to sit at least a foot away from his patient. "Yes, I do remember him."
"Yes, your husband," he nodded encouragingly, suppressing his frown. Perhaps another tack was needed. "How long have you been married for?"
Her eyes sparked briefly, like a plunge of light in the shadows, before the shadows extinguished it.
"For a while, but it feels like all time and no time as passed."
"Forever?" he asked, her answer causing his brow to arch involuntarily. He watched her reaction; she nodded vigorously, falling silent once again.
"Tell me, how did you marry him?" The doctor shook his head…no, another question was needed. He tried again, "Tell me about your wedding."
She thought for a moment. After an indeterminate amount of time after her return, they had wedded. There had been doves – or were there? – but also many candles, song, and the comforting scent of his clothes, a black, resplendent tuxedo – did these matter? She thought impatiently, for all she saw was a future gilded by bright rays of hope and anticipations of joy and how such were also reflected in his eyes.
Accompanied, of course, by song, and endless music that drugged the veins.
So she told the doctor, all that her mind's eye tattooed out.
Erik, yes, that was his name.
"You said you returned to him – to Erik – when you left the labyrinth?"
"Yes…he was devastated when I left, doctor, he told me so."
"But you never spoke to him after that. Didn't you say he was your husband, Madam? Do you believe that you married Erik?"
"Why do you always ask me that? You ask the same questions all the time! Every time I see you, you tell me that…" Her eyes had begun filling with tears, and her wringing of her hands belied her growing agitation. "What do you want me to believe?" There was no control over the tears of frustration that now flowed down her cheeks. Was it not enough that she was telling him all that she knew? That Erik had cherished no hopes of bliss beyond the grave, to compensate for the evils which he felt he deserved? Surely the love she returned to him would not equal his, but would have provided that comfort that he so badly craved?
"Doctor," she asked urgently, "Tell me what happened."
Villers sighed tiredly, repeatedly questioning the validity of such an exercise when its futility was clearly proven. But the Vicomte had demanded the same, repetitive treatment, determined to pull this woman out of the trap that mysterious, strange man called Erik had ensnared her in.
"Of course, my lady. But I need you now to believe this – there is," he enunciated clearly, "no one else but Raoul de Chagny."
"That can't be true! No…there is no such thing…I…no…he…I would not believe otherwise…He…He promised! He promised that we would have a life without –" She had paled considerably, breathing in irregular gasps; a fine sheen of perspiration lined her delicate forehead.
"Christine," he cried in alarm, forgetting all measures of propriety. "You must control yourself," the doctor grabbed her upper arms roughly, dimly registering how her skin had turned cold, yet shook harder than he should have, tossing aside remnants of professionalism that he had once held as a cloak over him. "There is no Erik! Christine, listen to me!"
"But I stay in his chambers all day, and he teaches me to sing…He tells me," she whispered conspiratorially with unusually bright eyes, "I have a voice of an angel you see…"
He listened to her soft voice with increasing alarm, feeling as though a great darkness had pressed upon his chest, troubling him to shut his eyes for a moment.
"But there is no Erik, Christine! He battled your Vicomte in the chamber, and died of exhaustion the week after when the morphine finally broke his body."
"No..! No…" Christine wailed a terrifically desolate sound, standing up so abruptly that her skirts has not just untangled themselves, waving her arms frantically. "Erik is not dead…I…he…he left! I saw it but he also said I would returen to him and I did…"
"He left? No, you did, Christine! You left the labyrinth that day with your Vicomte, my lady," Villers whispered urgently, rising from his chair to steady the sobbing woman, grabbing her slender wrist on impulse. For a moment, they struggled against each other – she feeling as impervious as the dark and opaque bodies of furniture that surrounded her, and he, as increasingly hapless as a cornered hare.
Oh, the mist, the water, and his voice…and the love that she had betrayed because her heart was too small to accept…
"I more than made up for it!" She suddenly screamed, and as though that outburst had taken all her energy, she fell to the richly carpeted surface of the de Chagny Drawing room in a heap. "I returned to him, did I not, to present myself blameless once last time, even though I knew that was not…?"
"Madam…you must know that -"
"Erik's forgiveness is as precious as the diamonds in the heavens!" The Vicomtess interrupted his tentative attempt to right things.
"And he rushed to embrace me," she brokenly sobbed, "and held me when I fell to my knees and begged him to forgive me for my lack of understanding…there is…is…no Vicomte. Doctor, I do not know…what you are speaking about…"
"Do you not remember it all, Christine? You left with your fiancé, and left the phantom back in his place in the bowels of the opera. You never knew what happened to him thereafter," the doctor continued hastily, praying that he could pull a hand out of the dark waters she was drowning in. "You never returned!" He took her arm, and gently led her back onto the settee.
"I did! I told you that I saw him…he could not believe his eyes…until now, he finds himself incredulous until I place my lips upon his too assure him that it is all too true…" Christine de Chagny answered through her tears, suddenly bestowing him with a watery ghost of a smile, the intimacy of her words caused the doctor to falter in his speech. He took a closer look.
Her eyes, to which he had privately attributed a great deal of dreaminess, now contained something else that frightened him. And her smile…it was an unholy one that he associated with the unspeakable horrors of the night that he could not longer carry into the world of the rational.
Nevertheless, he tried, that last-ditch attempt that he prayed was never too inadequate, flinging the imputation of reason towards her, against the nature and mechanism of life. Taking a deep breath, he began, "Your mind, Christine, is riddled with guilt! The guilt was too overwhelming that you had to conjure a future with Erik to appease this emptiness – Raoul de Chagny was the man you married!"
Yet in his speech, he had failed to take notice of her failing breath and the pallor of her face, interrupted only by a plosive word that seemed to take away her energy…
"NO!"
"Yes, Madam…you married him, but all that you can think of is Erik, because you never could fathom the consequences of your leaving…and now, you feel that you need to pay penance for such an action; you can only think of what it must have been like had you stayed."
But he was losing her – this brittle woman-child – to the macabre world where memories and unfulfilled desires entwine; his patient's eyes now contained a blank, empty gaze, caught in a shimmering world where all things were fragile yet eternal as long as the mind romanced and wooed its frenzied thoughts. His treatment has not gone as he had expected and hoped; it seemed as if she was beyond recovery.
After a while, she spoke calmly, and unwaveringly, "He awaits me, doctor…I must go. My husband calls for me. I don't wish to see you anymore, sir."
"Madam, I must insist that your treatments continue especially after –"
"NO…I will not listen to what you say…there…there is no such thing…" The Vicomtess de Chagny fell silent for the near-hundredth time, her eyes closing in exhaustion, her unsupporting body crumbling to the floor the second time.
The doctor glanced around the room quickly, expecting to the Vicomte at the door. Instead, there was no one, except for the steady breathing of the unconscious woman who had fallen at his feet. The memories exhilarated her, he now could see; Dr. Villiers slumped in his chair, before sliding to the floor, grimly holding the young woman who had lost consciousness, wondering at her imagination that wrought necromancy in her outward and inward world, and caused her to see monstrous faces in the simplest of things.
Villers had treated many patients; there were tales to tell, and tales have been told indeed – of grisly incidents that dismembered limbs, of strange crimes, of misfortune that brought illness, of death-bed scenes, and what dark intimations might be gathered from the words of dying men; of suicide, and of the various modes by knife, poison, drowning, gradual starvation, or the fumes of coal.
But never something like this. Was there such tragedy comparable to tales of squandered love, guilt, hatred and destruction? He took out a handkerchief from his pocket, wiping his brow and glanced at his timepiece.
What else was there left to do, but to break the news to the Vicomte de Chagny?
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"Erik?"
"Yes, my love?" He murmurs to me softly as I shift slightly upon his fine silk shirt.
"Has there ever been life beyond your labyrinth? Beyond the Opera? Beyond these walls?"
He hesitated before answering.
"There once was."
"But now?" My voice raises a semi-tone in pitch and his ever-sensitive ears picks up the sound.
He chuckles in dry amusement, tracing the outline of my limp hand with his eyes, following the gentle curve of my palm to the part where my fingers were absently caressing the silk strings attached to the mask I loosely held in my small palm.
"I have my doubts. There is life wherever I see you."
For the sake of wretchedness! He can sometimes flatter so easily! His words overwhelm me – no- it is this magnificent man who overwhelms me into oblivion.
"No…I meant, well," I began uncertainly, sighing. "What I wanted to say was…life? Even here?" I gestured unnecessarily into the empty space, at once both gloriously filled with the aroma of the impossible and the odour of the visible, awaiting his verbal affirmation even though I knew what his answer would be.
We leaned on each other; I on his chest, and his heart on mine. He speaks, and I listen attentively, as a student would to her master, or a wife to her husband, and a lover to her lover.
"Even here."
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Fin-