In Living Memory

It was in the obituary of the national paper. He saw it and the first thing he did was read it five times more.

Christine Daaé, dead? Never! In all his dreams and thoughts and memories, she had been alive and young and beautiful. But dead? He swallowed painfully and tried to imagine her with her eyes closed and her skin pale, unfeeling and unmoving. Like a marble statue.

In the paper, she had been referred to as Christine, Countess de Chagny, a title that seemed clumsy when attached to her name. So she married the boy, after all, he mumbled...Yet he had to reprimand himself sternly; none of them were boys and girls anymore. Him least of all. He could feel age creeping stealthily into his once limber bones. Years ago, he was able to scale stone angels and the stage ropes of an opera house! But then they all burned down...And he ran away, through the looking glass and into a world that hated him no less, no more, than the one he left behind. Now, the only light left shining for him had been put out. With a sizzle and a pop. Or had she faded slowly, fading like the embers of some steamy fire? Either way, the angel had really gone to heaven and left the rest of them in hell.

A trip to Paris was called for.

No doubt his opera house was repaired, its rafters rebuilt and the dome repainted. The chandelier replaced. A chuckle made its way past his lips. The chandelier! What memories! And a living girl in his arms as he descended back to his prison. It could have been his haven, had only she stayed. But she needed to leave; she had an appointment! An appointment with Raoul de Chagny and some un-named priest at the alter. He even gave her the wedding dress he'd made, then watched her sail away wearing it, the white of her body seared into his memory.

And the ring! The pretty diamond ring that her young man had given to her. She had in turn given it to him, pressed it gently into his palm with her quivering, porcelain fingers. Christine Daaé could not be dead! All his senses, all his logic, told him that it was someone's idea of a malicious joke. Yet he pocketed the diamond and got on the train, all the same. Verification is no crime. And I need a change in scenery.

A hood and a mask. All he needed to fade into the background of a million holiday travelers. Like the ghost he was, slinking in and out of shadow, in and out of existence. The scream of a train and a chorus of coughs later, he was inside a compartment. Opposite him, an empty seat, waiting, waiting...for a person who never came. His hands closed around the fabric of a traveling cloak, palms sweaty and pale. In his haste, he had forgotten his gloves.

Outside the window, a landscape sped by. Trees were covered in white, their branches shed of bothersome leaves, waving listlessly in the wind. Houses spitting out a plume of smoke from brick chimneys sat like plump chickens in the snow. He came from a house just like that! He could still remember the smell of oldness and musty wood. Dust particles dancing across the window. Hearing people talking in the street below, yet never seeing, never taking part, in their simple and straightforward lives. His life was never simple, yet that was all he ever wanted...

When the train pulled into Paris, and the misty countryside faded to make way for a jagged city, with automobiles rolling across paved streets, he stepped off onto the platform to a wave of human beings. How hard would it be to blend in, here? Even with a face like his! How difficult? He could just slip on a shadow and drift into the sea of life, another drop of meaningless water. He smiled tersely and turned, heading to the bulk of the city. A flower stand caught his eye; someone valiantly trying to sell a few wilting petals in winter. He dropped a dark coin into the shopkeeper's hand, grabbed a single rose, and was gone before prying eyes could peer past his hood.

Not wanting to risk a cab ride, he walked. Something drew him first to his opera house, so speedily that he had no time to think that it could be gone.

Indeed, it still remained. Old, tall, crumbling. He looked at it and almost saw himself, reflected in the aging limestone and marble. Children played at the base of a very long ramp, their laughter shattering the monotony of cars and rustling leaves. A few brisk steps brought him almost to the front door, which he'd never used, not in his entire life. How easy it would've been, just to walk inside! To see!

But he didn't.

Was the stage still glamorous? The seats still rippling like velvet rubies? The statues still glimmering visages of nymphs and naiads and gods? He had pursued his greatest dreams on that stage, had performed his greatest triumphs and shown the world the power of his mind. Had acted out his greatest horrors, with the fabric of a scenery to hide him. And what of the infamous Box 5? No doubt people still avoided it like the proverbial plague, fearing him! Him! Fearing he would rise from the dusty carpet and wrap his cold arms around them, pulling them to hell...Yet only one would ever belong in his arms, only one, only one...

Another question, then: What of the house on the lake? The fragments of mirrors? The little Persian monkey, clapping his cymbals, while a tinkling melody played? Masquerade, paper faces on parade! Masquerade, hide your face so the world will never find you... Beautiful, beautiful! And of course, the main hall, where people with actual lives had danced, sweeping like butterflies and their mates across the marble. He had appeared, all of a sudden, in a flash of smoke. A jackdaw among swans, a blemish on the otherwise perfect picture...

But the cemetery! He must go to the cemetery. It's a long walk. He sees and picks up a discarded newspaper, flipping languidly to the back, searching for the names of those recently dead. Ah! Deceased: Chagny, Christine, Countess de--

CRRRRINKLE! A lie! He hurled the paper as hard as he could down a gutter. He almost snapped the rose, he was so frustrated. A horrid, horrid, lie!

Yet, if it was a lie, why were his feet still taking him to the frozen corpses of a graveyard? Why? Why?! A brutal question, to which he never received a straight answer. His pace quickened in a desperate attempt to prove himself wrong. The sooner he got there, the sooner his heart would rest in peace.

Finally: gates. They opened and he was inside, faster than he could realize what he was doing.

What was it he had told Madame Giry, again? "Keep your hand at the level of your eyes..." To avoid the horror of his noose, yes! That was what she had done. Keep your hand in front of your eyes, Madame Giry... He found himself staring at his own shaking fingers as he walked, obscuring half his vision. If he did find her grave, he would not be able to see it. Would he? With a silent roar of frustration, he snapped his arm to his side, realizing it was useless. The world was quivering, like a wounded animal. Heaving, bloating, each breath low and painful. He himself was just another injured victim of time and life. His eyes swept across the scenery, searching each and every head-stone for her name. Did he want to find it or not?!

And then...Like some sort of nightmare!...he saw it. Saw her. A proud and tall and slim ornament marked where they'd set her beautiful body into the earth, to molder, to disintegrate...He felt like kneeling, so he did, the snow melting and soaking into the fabric of his clothing. No one was here, the grave was almost bare... except for the patches littered with the dead petals of flowers that someone had laid down... Her name glistened. He traced the letters with one hand, grasping the rose with the other. There was a little picture of her smiling face. She looked old. Christine, we've all grown old...A choked sob struggled out of his throat, brittle and broken. Tears slipped from his eyes, suffocated between the skin and the dreaded mask. Reaching into his pocket, the ring emerged, laying in his palm, just where she'd set it down all those bittersweet years ago. Something else fell out with it: a black ribbon.

He wondered where it'd come from for just a moment, before wrapping it around the rose's stem. And after a brief pause, the ring was there as well, glittering like a giant tear, like a frozen snowflake. He placed the rose, now adorned with a tear and a shadow, onto the stone above her body.

She was gone...She was gone...She had always been gone, yet she'd never been unreachable. There had always been some sort of thought that one day, she'd appear at his door, come to reclaim her ring and a piece of the past. After all, he'd forgiven her for the grief she'd caused him. It had become a question, then, of whether she'd found it in her to forgive him. But it had been silly of him! Silly to imagine she'd ever be content living with a monster.

The rose was a splotch of color in a painting of black and white.

He stood and wiped the snow from his knees, then the salt from his face. Turned. Walked.

The Angel of Music glided out of the cemetery, disappeared into the world, and faded to obscurity.

And perhaps that was just how he wanted things, after all...