T'amai gran tempo, e sospirai mercede...
(I loved you for so long, and begged for mercy...)
It had been too easy.
Did it really took twenty years of patience, an unbelievably complex abduction strategy, renewed precautions to avoid every kind of escape… Two months spent together… A harsh little chat with Christine… to obtain… this? Resignation? Capitulation? Even worse, surrender, taken upon herself, after such a long fight. A renunciation strong enough to keep her standing straight on the shore, face closed, lips shut, without a tear, without a moan, as she condemned herself, as Christine's sobs were still lingering in the Lake House, along with the count's curses? Impossible! Even in his brightest dreams, even with all his imagination at stake, even in the best circumstances… Christine, a long time ago, accepted to be his living wife to save her precious little fop, Raoul, and the fool who guided him to her… but Evelina had no suicidal lover to save… Sure, fleeing did mean taking a great risk, that of revenge… but he thought she'd be brave enough to give it a try. It was the perfect time! Why didn't she flee?
The boat had disappeared, no more cries to hear… The beautiful Evelina still gazed at the dark horizon, with a cold and empty eye, then turned around, faced him and calmly smiled, as if everything was going fine, following the natural order of the events. Oh! How he was annoyed with this smile, so calm and quiet and peaceful, so resigned! And yet she was his, now! She said "I shall stay", almost without hesitate, almost willingly! And she was still there, when he got almost to the point where he would've wished to see her flee, to watch as she jumped in the boat so conveniently left there, for then, he could've hated her with all his might and sink back into his will of revenge, a feeling he got along with for so long. He never hated her that much, that little brat, that child of a woman, that mademoiselle de Chagny, who looked so much like her parents! He despised her, because she didn't flee, because she gave up just like Christine did twenty years ago, a painless resignation, because she smiled without fear, without anger, without tears. He despised her, because she ruined all his efforts to scare and destroy her. Because she avoided his traps. Because she trapped him in his own trap, no, because her very presence turned his tricks against him, because in the end she fled by staying… Ah! He hated her, he despised her, abhorred her! Traitress! She made a fool of him! And it had been so easy, so dangerously easy! Flee, you idiot, flee! Go away, and for a long, long time, never to come back again! What do you risk? The age of revenge was over, so, so long ago! Ah, women! Women who do everything but what's expected! Women who flee when they had to stay, who don't come back when they have to, who stay when it's time to escape! Those women, silent like charity sisters, when the sound of their voices was enough to fulfil his desire! Those quiet women, when he'd expect them to rebel! Those women… That woman… that one…
He wanted to turn around, no. He wanted to escape! He wanted not to see her again, let her go back from where she came, spit into her face, that snake of a girl! And yet, it was him, minutes before, who was exultating when he shouted she was hers forever, wasn't it? It was him who enjoyed the rare delight of his revenge, looking at Christine's terrified face, right? And then, he told her his darkest intentions, decisions he took right on the spot, ideas he fought against so many times, killing the ravishing Evelina, then commit suicide? He thought, then, that she'd fled, that foolish woman! That she'd take advantage of the opportunity he offered her, that she'd jump into the boat, when he wasn't there, without a second thought! And if she did, what would he have done? Run after her? He wasn't even so sure… Probably. Possibly. Maybe. And here's the doubt he never felt before! He doubted his own might! Cursed woman! He wanted to hate her, so he could kill her without regret and follow her into the grave, because he never took into account the sheer possibility that she'd stay, that she'd turn his tricks against him, that she'd look into his eyes with serenity, that she'd smile! And now, he was about to scream an absolute nonsense of words, those words he never thought to say: "how dare you try to love this monster, Evelina de Chagny, how? You can't, no one can! You arrogant prick! Who could want to become Erik's living wife?" But even words were running away from him, his breath faint, his heart faint! He wanted to rip off his mask, show her all the macabre charms of her soon-to-be husband, to shock her, to disgust her, to repel her, even more, more, more! He'd wish he could grab her hands and force her to rip off his other mask, his true face, as he once did with Christine! Anything, as long as she flees! But his hand didn't move… She was his… and he felt the ground collapse beneath his feet, the abyss swallowing him whole, and he felt powerless.
How he wanted to enjoy every bit of his triumph! Hold in his arms the one who willingly surrendered to him, his living wife! Feel the most tragic of pleasures, laugh standing right over the abyss eating his heart away, feel life pulsing in his veins, then ending it with a single shot in the head! Feel that empty body die in his arms, collapse under its own weight… Hold it tight in his arms, look at what will be left of her face stained with spurting blood… Kiss her lips, before they get icy… Carry her to the altar, for their funeral wedding… Lay her in the coffin… Lie by her side… Close the casket, leave the world behind… Then, shoot once again, in his own head, and die holding her… Together in death, both disfigured… Better, yet! Poison her, contemplate her slowly fade away falling asleep… Look at her beautiful, intact, face… Then carry her to the altar, lay her in the coffin, lie by her side, and drink his own share of poison… and die… A short, yet intense, love story! He still felt on his lips Christine's last kiss, twenty years before… Why? Why did he remember that one? Why couldn't he remember the other, the one Evelina gave him, so furtive, when they came back from their walk? Was he doomed not to remember the taste of her lips? Yet she was his! She said it!... He said it… He held her wrist to keep her from running away, but she didn't flee… He was still holding her… He let her wrist go, almost brutally. Did he betray himself? Did he show her how she shook him? And if he did, did it matter? He triumphed! He shouted it!... He said it…
Her hand freed, she didn't even try to escape. She was still quiet, dangerously quiet, with her enigmatic face bearing her sweet smile, so dangerously deceptive, that of the Unknown Woman of the Seine… Did she even guess his thoughts, his awful thoughts? Could she see in his posture, on his half-masked face, how suffering and despair were tearing him apart? Yes, obviously. How could she even stay so still, so incredibly still and resigned? And how he envied her stillness, when he felt his heart painfully wrench inside his chest! Yet, he was the one that should've been still, no, he should've been overjoyed… Twenty years of suffering, now revenged… And nothing left ahead of him. Evelina was staying, and he only saw the deepest, darkest abyss ahead. Without a word, he left and hid somewhere, away! away! Away from her, away from her soft smile, away from her calm glance…
Erik now gone, Evelina stood there for a while, then went back into her room. She heard her mother and the Phantom argue. Now, she saw the creased sheets, the hidden passage still open… Curiosity took upon her, she began to climb the stairs and went into the old dressing room, looked at the mess around her, in the middle of which stood Elvira's costume dress, majestic, untouched. She closed the hidden pathway, look into the mirror for a while, still unsure… Until then, that dress didn't even really catch her attention… But thing had changed, and she didn't know why. Maybe because this costume was intact, because it was the only thing left intact in the whole room, because it didn't move in twenty years… The viscountess warily took the dress off the mannequin, and something fell. She bent over to look at it, and withdrew suddenly. The dress fell on the ground. Under the mannequin was a single rose, tarnished, decayed… with a black velvet ribbon… A rose that waited for twenty years… that survived the fire… A rose left for her mother… She grabbed it and left it in a vase on the dressing table. Then, she hid behind the screen and undertook to put the dress on without any help. Evelina never felt so calm; in fact, she felt like an empty shell. A mannequin, wearing Elvira's wedding dress. Slowly, she fastened the lacing of her corset in her back, "à la paresseuse". Then, she adjusted the many layers of the gown, the lacings of the sleeves. Her shoes didn't match the dress well: she swapped them with those meant for her mother twenty years ago, put them on with difficulty, because of the dress she was now wearing. Finally, she put the amethyst necklace on, and straightened the gown a little.
Her reflection in the mirror looked at her with the seemingly peaceful gaze that the Unknown Woman of the Seine had when they found her, "as if she knew". Despite the unusually shaped corset, she inhaled, the exhaled and looked fiercely at her reflection, in the shivering light of a few, tiny candles. Be ready to applause, dear friends, for the play is almost over… Not quite yet… It only began… The end! It's the end! It's gonna end! It might end!... It might… some day… She'd stay… She said she shall stay… She couldn't have left, no. Not without her mother. Anyways, he wouldn't have allowed her to go: he told her so, in his fit of insane excitation, that she was his forever. She did not forger the Persian's word. Her father himself did know it was impossible to get out of there so easily, without paying the price. In the end, Evelina's decision to stay was the only possibility she had. And that was a fact. She remembered how the Persian, always mute during the whole encounter, looked at her with connivance, confirming It was the only way. And yet, she hesitated! She hesitated so much! She did want to escape, to jump in the boat, flee away from those cursed places, forever!... It was absurd. She acknowledged it. Hate is my might, she told herself, sometimes loud, sometimes in her head, still defying her reflection. Oh yes, hate Is my might… Always, I shall hate and I shall resist…
Don't lie to yourself, Evelina de Chagny… The one you hate is the one in front of you… The one who kissed him… The one that couldn't hate him… You're not hateful, you're not powerful, don't lie to yourself… You can't even hate yourself, even if you doomed yourself… What kind of nice little emotions could conceal those truths? Look at yourself: you're wearing a costume… magical… You're not true anymore… Your heart isn't truthful anymore… You let him kiss you, the one that hurt you so badly… You kissed him back… You felt compassion towards him, sadness even… That's why you stayed! Because you can't hate yourself, despite all you will… Because you think it's the only way to win… Now free yourself from those thoughts, Evelina! You didn't stay only because you felt shame, no, because you disgusted yourself. You stayed because you know it's the only way to win. You couldn't desert like a coward, no! You stood on the battlefield. You shall win. You saw his lips, his glance, his posture: he was shaking! You took him by surprise! He was so convinced you'd leave… When you said you shall stay, he didn't enjoy his victory for more than half a second… And yet he won… You stayed… You're still there… You're wearing Elvira's wedding dress… You saw your mother leave, almost fainting, moaning and shrieking with terror, in your father's arms… You saw the creased sheets on the bed, the mess in the dressing room… And with tragic joy, you go the the altar to sacrifice yourself… What do you feel? Fear? No… Not even fear, not anymore… Only resignation…
Viscountess de Chagny wiped away tears flowing silently on her spectral cheeks, then shivered… Upon inhaling deeply, she crossed the mirror and went into the hidden pathway, slowly going downstairs. The shoes she was wearing hurt her feet, she noticed it now. Could she manage to walk with such heels, with such fragile theatre accessories? Could she manage to get through the halls, with such an unusual dress? Yes… Oh! She had to.
At the other end of the Opera House, Erik was dwelling on other thoughts, also trying to put things in order inside his heart. Around him, Christine's ghost was dancing, with a face that horror decomposed, the now very middle-class Christine… Raoul's pallid and sorrowful face… If only he'd guessed, some day, that he'd find the little fop worthier than his beloved wife, ah! He'd laughed so hard!... The Persian's burning eyes… But, most of all, Evelina's torn smile, full of tragic joy… Her eyes closed for a moment, and her immense, magnificent beauty… Her face… He could never forget it… Thinking about it almost made him cry… Her pale, sunken cheeks… The forehead of a marmoreal statue… Her delicate, thin nose… The graceful eyebrows… The long, black lashes… Her closed eyes, trembling eyelids, that open suddenly and reveal emerald, velvety eyes… And those lips, those lips that brushed his own, there, those lips… with their serene smile… so peaceful… beyond resignation… Oh! How he'd happily fall asleep feeling those lips pressed against his forehead!... Sleep… and die… in the abyss… those lips on his forehead, his head on his wife's chest… and a quiet… blank… obscurity… around them…
No, he won't hurt her face. It was so full of harmony, so delicate and refined… Every detail, so cautiously drawn… How could he even think about scratching that face, when he loved the arts so dearly?... No, he couldn't… He didn't want to… He didn't dare to… If only she were telling the truth… Could she somehow become his living wife, for one, miserable, evening? Revenge tasted sweet before… Even a little spicy, when he watched her wandering in the Opera House… But soon, sweetness became bitter… then sour… One last time, revenge had the fizzy taste of champagne, when he enjoyed seeing Christine Daaé's distorted, thickened face… Then, bitterness again, when Evelina said she was his… Irony always has a bitter taste… A moment, a glimmer of death… A salty taste of tears… Now, revenge tasted like nothing anymore, not even emptiness… The end… It's the end… It's going to end… and it never ended…. And the only feeling he wanted to keep in mind for rest of his shallow life, that ephemeral kiss She gave him… He forgot it, without even noticing… Unable to remember it… Unable to relive it… And atrociously aware of its unicity… Oh! He could get all the kisses he wants out of her, now, even the most sincere ones! But that one fled like a ghost… And every human being also flees like a ghost…
He swore to himself he'd kill her. He shouted it, in front of Christine! He only waited for them to come to show them their pallid, almost already dead, daughter… Then, he'd murder her. Feels like a lie. He wanted to laugh a little, to regain composure… He wasn't even able to cry anymore. He wanted to plunge a knife deep into her heart or shoot her in the head… and he couldn't even bear to shoot at himself… When he heard footsteps in a nearby room, his face couldn't regain composure: he quickly put the mask on, in a moment of awareness, of trust in the props… and he felt silly this way, so silly, so absurdly silly, with his half-a-face under a white leather mask… But that prop earned him the only light in his existence: if it didn't unstick from his cheek, would they… would she… then…
It was, so, so, so, so deeply ridiculously, absurdly, intensely, silly!
He slipped into the adjacent room. What he saw made him dizzy; he grabbed a chair not to fall. In front of him, Evelina de Chagny was wearing Elvira's wedding dress… Christine's costume… and she was glancing at him with her calm eyes, evanescent smile… She stayed… Faithful, delicate Elvira… with her dear Don Juan triumphant… He wondered a few minutes before how she could stay so calm; now, he understood that behind her own mask, she was as hollow, abyssally hollow, as him… She stepped forward quite clumsily, like a bride going to the altar… but no one was holding her arm… Erik noticed her hesitant walk… He thought of his initial plan, that it'd be so easy for him to step forward, too, with a slim dagger in his hand… he closed his eyes, saw a part of him jump towards her and stab her right in the heart, the steal her thousands of desperate kisses while she was dying… He imagined himself shooting at this chest, enclosed in the corset, then her frail silhouette collapsing in the heavy, theatrical dress… And those red lips to kiss, that body to embrace…
He opened his eyes and noticed that, in all of his fantasies, she kept her eyes closed. Looking at her directly almost punched him in the stomach. He could kill the Evelina with her eyes closed, the one who was dead-like; he couldn't touch the living Evelina, with her big, green eyes… She had sobbed before. He did, too, but his mask hid it. She was still walking, with little hesitating steps, a hand extended in front of her in case she'd fall… He softly took her hand... They stared at each other, for a long time, quietly… Then, he helped her sit on a chair… She was still looking at him… And his burning eyes stared at her ephemeral smile… Oh! He'd gladly stabbed her, right in this moment, when they both were facing each other, ready to accomplish one of the most powerful acts of a lifetime! But why?...
"Something's awfully out of tune, isn't it?" she asked. He nodded, silently...
Canta la cicaleta
Quand'è'l sol più cocente,
E si muore cantando
E non lo sente.
Io canto e vivo,
Eppur sento nel cuore
Di lei caldo maggiore.
Così vuole il mio fato,
Se io morisso cantando,
O me beato...
(The grasshopper sings
When the sun burns the most,
And she dies singing
And doesn't feel it.
I sing and I'm alive,
Even if I feel her heart
Is even hotter.
That is my fate;
If I could die singing,
I'd be happy…)
