Chapter XIX: Proceeding with Caution
"Sometimes when I sing I don't know myself."
Christine looked at me earnestly. During the weeks that had passed since she had started rehearsing her role in The Rake's Progress she had become increasingly pale and tense. I knew that she was once again being tutored by Erik, but every time I had brought up the subject she had answered evasively. Now, however, the performance was only a few days away and her words suggested that she had finally decided to take me into her confidence. We were sitting at our usual table in the café, one of the few places where it felt safe to discuss these matters.
"What do you mean, Christine?" I asked.
"When we first began it felt like I was only learning how to express myself more freely through music. But now... my voice is still mine, I can recognize it, and yet it is as if I'm not the one creating the sounds. I don't possess that talent, that genius. It's all him."
"Erik?" I said encouragingly.
"Yes, and it frightens me! It is as if he is singing through me. Sometimes I can hear emotions in my voice which are foreign to me, things I never felt, never experienced. How did they end up there?"
"Do you want it to stop?"
Christine covered her face with her hands and shook her head.
"I don't know", she said indecisively. "When I'm away from him, when I'm here or at home, I usually feel like it's a nightmare, and that all I want is a normal life and a normal voice that is only my own. I feel like I am losing myself and that I have to escape somehow or I will go mad. But when he sings, or when I sing under his supervision, the music swallows me up and it's like I am a part of something I can't even begin to understand, and then I don't ever want to leave."
She paused for a moment to think.
"That is why I have to ask something of you", she continued.
"Anything I can do to help..." I said.
"The day after the performance of The Rake's Progress, I'm leaving on the de Chagny scholarship tour. I will be away for six weeks, and I can honestly say I will be glad to go. It will give me an opportunity to sing on my own, without any teacher, and it will also give me some time to think over what I want to do in the future. You see, Meg, I'm considering to leave France and go somewhere else to complete my studies, possibly the United States. Maybe I'll even drop out of school altogether and try my luck as a professional singer. I am sure I could never find another tutor like Erik, but perhaps it is for the best, in the long run. You see, I want happiness, a real life besides the one where everything is music and nothing in the outside world matters. That is Erik's life, because he has been deprived of everything else - that is why he has such phenomenal abilities. But he is anything but happy."
"So what do you want me to do, then?" I asked.
"Make sure I go", Christine said. "Force me if you have to. Keep an eye on me during the performance and see to it that I am on my plane the next day. I know Erik says he is happy for me and encourages me to do my best on the tour, but I am afraid that if he knew I might not be returning, he would not let me leave. He would find a way to pull me in again, and I don't trust that I would have the strength to resist him. You know what he can do with his voice."
I nodded.
"There is another thing", Christine continued, a little awkwardly. "I have asked Raoul to come with me on my tour. He has been very kind to me during these last months, and I have been seeing him from time to time. We have found that we still care a great deal about each other, just like when we were children."
"I knew that the first time I saw the two of you talking", I smiled. "I am very happy for both of you, you make a lovely couple."
Christine blushed.
"I wouldn't go as far as to call us that just yet", she objected. "But I have to admit I have thought about it many times lately, even to the point where I have pictured what our future children might look like!"
She laughed, a brief, happy laugh before her face clouded over again.
"Erik mustn't find out", she said gravely. "I don't know what he would do."
"Did you tell Raoul about Erik?" I asked.
"Yes", Christine said. "I told him the whole story, and then I asked him the same thing I just asked you. But I didn't say anything that might lead Raoul directly to Erik, because I feared what would happen if they ever met."
"Raoul strikes me as the heroic kind", I said.
"He would do anything to protect me", Christine confirmed. "When I told him about Erik, Raoul's first thought was to go after him. But I couldn't let that happen, I made him understand it would be too dangerous."
"It still is a very dangerous game, for all of us", I said. "If you really wish to get away that desperately, wouldn't it be safer to just leave now without warning? The opera's just an opera, after all - a school project, nothing more."
Christine shook her head.
"I couldn't do that to Erik", she said. "I promised to sing for him."