Chapter 37.

Meg looked at her mother, "Was it really scary to leave all of your friends behind knowing that you would not likely see them again? I mean I could not imagine doing so, especially leaving with a man that you were afraid of."

Christine nodded in agreement, "Yes, at the time it was terrible for me to do so. I felt as if my world had collapsed around me. My feelings towards your father were conflicted: at one moment I clung to him in fear that I would lose my last tie to the past; on the other hand I both feared and resented him for taking me away. I had spent most of my life in France; even Sweden was but a distant memory. France felt like the only home that I had ever known, and the opera company was my family, and Far was buried there and Raoul." Christine added distantly as she recalled half forgotten thoughts from that time. Even after all of this time Raoul's death still affected her. "I could not help myself for mourning Raoul's death, even if I knew in my heart that I did not love him in a romantic way. We had made such grandiose plans for once we were married and free from our worries."

A trace of bitterness ran across Erik's face twisting it into a painful sneer, "By their 'worries', your mother means me."

Christine gave him a defensive look, "That comment is unworthy of you, Mon amour. We resolved that matter long ago. You have nothing to fear. Raoul is long dead and cannot lay claim to me any longer. You own my heart completely, as he never did."

"I wonder if de Chagny still looks better than I do? Knowing him even his skeleton is probably handsome." Erik added jealously, ignoring her previous comment."

"Why do you still say such things? Clearly you know that I adore you by now, yet sometimes you get into one of your dark and moods." Christine replied in frustration.

Erik's face relaxed and his bitterness fled. He gave Christine a penitent look, "Forgive me, Cherie. At times I can still be a complete fool. It is only that the thought that you had made plans with another man and that you were left with me, made my old jealousies resurface. I cannot help but to believe that if Baudouin hadn't come along you most likely would be married to Raoul and still believing me to be a monster."

Christine looked at him in frustration, "How do you know that I wouldn't have begun to have doubts about my relationship with Raoul before we would have married? As you said so yourself, you and I had much more in common than he and I. Those kisses that we shared, they haunted me all the way to Cherbourg and beyond, I am sure that they would have done so even if Raoul had lived. On the road to Cherbourg, I could think of little but wanting to test your lips again. I had begun to wonder whether or not you had corrupted my memory of them, and that you had somehow hypnotized me into thinking more of them than they possibly could have been. After all, I had previously found you to be vile and ugly. I could not understand how, if that had been so, I could I have found those kisses to be so exquisite. Yes a part of me had softened towards you further after hearing more about your unhappy childhood, but that explained nothing about my obsession with repeating those kisses. I stole more than one glance in your direction, hoping that you wouldn't notice me doing so, to try to figure out what the attraction might have been without resorting to repeating them. Certainly not your face, it had haunted my dreams and caused me nothing but nightmares for many months. But those deformed lips haunted me now.'

'In the past all I had wanted, for so long, was to be free of your terrible face, and away from you. Yet there I was still sitting beside you, as trapped as ever. But then, as I watched you, I had begun to notice you more as a man and not an object of fear or a phantom. I scanned your body and found that your form was so perfect, like the Greek and Roman statues that I used to view. Then my eyes slowly crept up to the unmasked side of your face, I viewed your profile and found nothing to be wanting in it. To my surprise it was astonishingly classic in features and quite sensual. Your long dark eyelashes rimmed and framed your expressive golden-flecked emerald eyes, and you looked almost normal, and indeed handsome, from my angle of viewing you. I continued to obsess with kissing you once again to prove my memory wrong. Yet at the same time these thoughts made me feel so unclean, defiling the very nun's habit that I was wearing, thinking about you in such an impure way. And then, as if you could feel my eyes burning into you, you turned towards me and caught my surreptitious gaze and I blushed in shame.'

'Everyone who had ever advised me before that time, even you, had raised me to be an innocent. In our talks you had repeatedly reminded me not to simply give in to my carnal lusts without waiting for love, like some of the other girls did. I remembered how you explained that to do so would cheapen my value, especially to men. Yet at that moment I could think of little else but continuing my desire to kiss you, to settle the matter once and for all. After viewing you was I still truly repulsed by what I believed to be your hideous face and angry, murderous disposition? If so those inhibitions seemed to disappear during that last ride to Cherbourg. I had to content myself with staring out at the countryside to keep myself from fantasizing about you and your lips."

Erik smiled, "To think that, at the time, I thought that you were staring at me because you were completely disgusted by what you saw. I wondered whether or not you were still absolutely terrified at the possibility that I might force you to marry me once again. I had thought to allay your concern by explaining that I would do no such thing, that I had regained control of my wits and would henceforth behave in a fatherly manner towards you; to my surprise you responded in exactly the opposite way to what I had expected. You were angry, so angry that you looked as if I had slapped you instead of offered you exactly what you had wanted in the past."

Christine turned to the children and explained, "Your father told me to, 'Rest assured, that he had absolutely no intention of ever proposing marriage to me again. He assured me that he had purged his mind and heart of any inappropriate intentions towards me again. He apologized for his rash and ill thought out behavior towards me in the past and that it had been a product of his own sick and twisted mind; that he had since regained control of. That he would leave me once I found a proper male protector, and that he would even give me away at my wedding to that same man should I need him to. His only requirement was that I find someone who would love me for what I truly was, and not for what my future husband wanted me to be."

Erik shrugged, "I thought that I was being a perfect gentleman, by assuring your mother that I would not act in an inappropriate manner towards her ever again. I had meant it so that it would make our passage to Canada less frightening to her, yet first she yelled at me; and then, inexplicably, she burst out into tears. She would not tell me what was bothering her. I did not understand her reaction and neither did Darius. We just looked at one another helplessly wondering what at all that I could have said to make your mother react in such a manner. I could find no fault with any of what I had said. Of course women and their emotions were then, and even sometimes now, a complete mystery to me. It wasn't like I had had much experience with women, or anyone else, other than Nadir and Antoinette, up until then. There was not much subtlety in either screaming in fear, or taunting me. Hate is a very honest emotion and that was what I had been accustomed to, thus I was even more clueless than the average man was, and most men find women to be more mysterious than the Sphinx of Egypt."

Christine remembered, "Your 'offer' was the exact opposite of what I really wanted in my heart. I told myself that I was feeling sorry for myself, having to leave all of my friends, and France behind, but that was far from the real issue. You see I wanted your father to fight for my love and he was doing just the opposite, giving me up to a man of my choosing. I found it to be insulting and I told him so."

Erik smirked, "Little did I know that she was with the man of her choosing already. I never would have guessed from the somewhat vinegary tone of her voice that she harbored some dulcet feelings towards me, a man who she had repeatedly rejected, and found utterly amoral and repulsive. She expected me to clearly see and then deduce the change in her feelings towards me. Yet she did not quite know it for herself. While Mother Jeanne had told me so, I had dismissed her suggestion as one borne of a confluence of both wishful thinking and guilt. After all, I had told myself, what would a nun know of carnal love? It was not like she herself had ever been touched by a man, so how would she perceive another's feelings when she had never tasted that sort of love either?"

Christine added, "Because Mother Jeanne was still a woman, despite her taking her vows of celibacy. She had been a midwife, and a nurse, and an advisor and counselor of many women. It doesn't take falling in love yourself to notice it in another. She was a very intuitive woman, and knew exactly what my emotions were. In all honesty, our feelings for one another were perfectly clear to almost everyone but us, and perhaps, briefly, Darius, but in time even Darius understood what was really going on. All that I knew was that I found your words to be devastating and wanted to make you feel as hurt as I did, and so I lashed out at you intending to do just that."

Erik gave her a wicked smile and continued, "She called me a 'manipulative and repulsive toad, and told me that it was no wonder that my mother rejected me at birth, that I had no heart, and my soul was as twisted as my hideous face,' even Mother Jeanne's mouth dropped open when she heard those words spring forth from your mother's mouth. She looked at me in fear, wondering whether or not I would realize the source of her knowledge about my own mother. Of course I already had told your mother that my mother had rejected me at birth on that last night in my lair, but Mother Jeanne did not know that. In the meantime I had not realized that she had told your mother about the circumstances surrounding my birth."

Christine laughed, "I felt sorry for poor Darius, as well as Mother Jeanne. Being caught in the middle of our war could not have been easy. A part of Darius was still a little fearful of you. After my diatribe, I could see his eyes grow wide in shock and fear. I think that he was waiting for you to wring my neck, and did not know what he would be able to do to control you and that notorious temper of yours."

"Yet, I was more confused than angry, since I half agreed with your mother's assessment about my true nature at the time. You see I already was aware that I was repulsive. All that I had to do was look in a mirror and I was reminded of that unassailable fact. As for her other accusations, while I questioned why they had been brought up just then, I could understand why she found me to be manipulative, and even why my mother rejected me. Also, I realized that if she believed that I had no heart then it meant that my attempts to salvage my pride about my embarrassing attempt to beg for her love had succeeded. The part about my soul did hurt my feelings, but I attributed it to the fact that she believed the other things that she had said, therefore it would follow that my soul would be rather twisted." Erik admitted, "After she finished crying, your mother would not speak to me for the rest of the journey to Cherbourg. She attempted to harass me further by speaking to everyone else but me, about the most mundane and boring topics that she could find to bring up, just to annoy me. She waxed poetically about such scintillating topics as the latest Paris fashions with Mother Jeanne, as if the old nun would have some use for them. Then she started comparing the fabrics used on European gowns to those used in the Near East and asked Darius for his opinion as to which he preferred, and wanted to know what sort of dresses the women in Persia liked. If I attempted to answer she would either ignore me or glare at me. I pretended to be indifferent to all of it and closed my eyes to take a nap, each time I closed my eyes she would find some way of making an unpleasant noise to wake me up. When I would grumble at her, she would give me a sardonic smile."

Christine admitted, "Yet to me you seemed so annoyingly nonplussed by the whole situation. It bothered me even more than your previous behavior back at the opera house. At least back then, I knew what you wanted and what you were thinking. This new Phantom was so commanding and remote that I could not recognize the one that I had known in him." Christine admitted. "It made me feel even more alone than I had before. In Paris, after Raoul was murdered, at least I had the comfort of knowing that you cared about me. You took that one last piece of stability away from me and it petrified me."

"And here I thought that I was being the stable man that you needed. A non-threatening well-behaved gentleman like your sainted Vicomte," Erik teased.

"I wanted you to behave as you always did, to show me that you still wanted me," Christine explained.

"You mean your lapdog Christine? No Cherie, as much as I still adored you I was never going to behave in such a humiliating fashion ever again. I was not going to let you see my vulnerable side so that you could render another blow against it thereby returning me to that broken man that I had become in the end," Erik reminded her, "I was not a man who was comfortable with allowing anyone to see that part of me, least of all someone who so clearly had such a low opinion of me, even if I did still love you desperately."

Christine smiled, "I am glad that you changed your mind and trusted me once again."

"Only because you changed your mind about me, and proved to me that you wanted my love and would not use it as a weapon against me. Given my terrible upbringing where I had been treated as subhuman, my pride and dignity were the only tools that I had to maintain my sense of remaining in control of my own life and destiny. I would not let even you take that away from me ever again. I had let you do so once, and never wanted to do so again," Erik explained.

Christine added her own point of view, turning to the children, "Of course I was only beginning to learn about your father's past, I still had much to learn before I would begin to understand him and why he would react in the ways that he did. I was looking at his behavior through the prism of how normal men acted, and your father could never have acted in that manner, because he had never known any form of normalcy. But I was still very young and, in many ways, still childish. I did not grasp the fact that he had never been taught to behave like a normal man. He was trying his best to do so but at that time it was all new to him. No one had ever given him the opportunity to behave in a normal manner. "

Erik added, "We ended up teaching one another because in so many ways we were exactly the same. Your mother was still young and raised in an abnormal environment as well. We eventually taught one another how to behave in a more appropriate manner but in the meantime it was a miracle that we did not kill one another."

Christine laughed, "At times I most certainly wanted to kill you, but I wanted to kiss you even more," she sighed.

"That was surely one thing that we agreed on. Beneath my attempt at appearing nonchalant, I was a burning cauldron of unquenched passion and full longing for your mother's love. Of course, as I said, I thought that she wanted anyone but me, thus I suffered greatly to maintain my calm, which went entirely against the grain of my nature," Erik added.

"Our passion was a tinderbox waiting to explode. It was only a matter of time before it did." Christine added.

"It did not do so until after we were onboard the ship and headed to Canada. Our close quarters set our fires burning at even a higher, uncontrollable flame." Erik explained and then continued, "We did not board the ship as the de Chagnys and travel in first class. At the time my plan was to use his name to only to obtain title to his property in Canada so we could sell it; and then use his money to live on until we could get established in Canada. The so-called 'de Chagnys', a couple that we hired to impersonate them, were also headed to England and would then board the Tararua to New Zealand. We retained our identity as two priests and a nun heading to Canada to take up our positions there. Mother Jeanne had gladly given us the proper paperwork to show the authorities that we were heading to the new Trappist Monastery Northwest of Montreal. It had just been established by a group of French Monks from Abbaye de Bellefontaine in Maine-et-Loire from which they had been expelled from France by the French Army."

Christine added, "I found it to be rather strange that you claimed that you had left for all that time to plan our escape route, yet it was Mother Jeanne who had handled all of the arrangements."

Erik explained "She gave us two sets of 'introduction papers, one for the Monk's at St. Austins Church in Liverpool, and the Carmelite Monestary at Maryton Grange, near Liverpool, the others for the Abbaye in Oka and the Carmelite Monastery in Montreal. Given all of those institutions' ties to France, it was not inconceivable that two Trappist monks could be escorting a young Carmelite to these places. Also beneficial was the fact that these orders required much solitude, therefore explaining our reclusive habits. The disguises and paperwork looked completely legitimate to the authorities since they were issued on the convent's stationary. It was a stroke of great fortune that I had thought of Mother Jeanne, when I fell ill, it was a better and more comfortable plan then the one I had previously thought of.'

Originally we were going to make the crossing directly from Cherbourg to New York hiding among the masses in steerage class, and entering the United States as a trio of traveling gypsies. I was to be a magician, Darius my manager and your mother as my assistant. The story would have been that we were on our way to join a freak show on Coney Island. From there we would have slowly made our way to Canada. But that idea was wrought with issues; to begin with, someone might have recognized me as the Phantom of the Opera, or even Le Mort Vivant. It also was possible that someone might have recognized your mother. Sister Jeanne's way was far less risky and first explained why we would be going to Liverpool, and then to Quebec. I felt that leaving for Canada from Liverpool instead of Southampton would be far less risky for me since Liverpool was much further from France and therefore less likely to have anyone on board who would recognize any of us."

Christine cut in, "You were very evasive when I asked you exactly what our plan was."

Erik replied, "I was still not sure whose side you were on. Sadly although I loved you as strongly as ever I could not trust you with any of the details. I would only tell you what you needed to know to get us to the next point. You were a fine little actress despite our mutual mistrust for one another. You executed each stage of our escape brilliantly. I almost believed that you were a Carmelite nun, especially since you practiced your silent treatment on me. I heard nary a word from you all the way to Liverpool. You only spoke to me when it was completely necessary."

Christine giggled, "You told me that Carmelite nuns take a vow of silence. I was merely doing what you asked of me, like an obedient servant."

Erik growled, "Yet you remained rather talkative towards Darius, at least when the three of us were alone. I began to get a little jealous of Darius and glared at him most evilly. He made every attempt to reaffirm to me over and over again that he had no romantic interest in you at all."

Christine replied playfully, "I had no interest in him either but I was still angry with you for what you had said. I also was angry that you lied to me by claiming to have left the convent to make arrangements when it was clear to me that Mother Jeanne had made them. I wondered what else you might be lying to me about. I started to wonder if perhaps you were in cahoots with Baudouin, and he killed Raoul and Philippe to help you secure me, and to help him to obtain their fortune. You have to admit that it could have been a possibility, you are definitely someone who was manipulative in that way."

Erik replied, "Perhaps that might have been a better plot than the real one, because we would not have had to hide at all. But alas I had no relationship with Baudouin whatsoever, and I hardly would have trusted him. Still I give you some credit for your paranoia about me. Your plot that you invented was definitely plausible, even if it was completely wrong. It took you a while to realize that I truly was on your side and protecting you, even after Mother Jeanne had explained to you about my past, and about her knowledge of my nature."

Christine replied, "Darius came to me and asked me to treat you better and to give you a chance. On the rare moments that we were alone together, in private, he claimed that he was sure that you would explain everything to me once we were safely settled in Canada. He repeatedly told me that you were essentially a good man, and that I should listen to your side of the story before making such rash judgments against you. He would shame me when he did so. Darius is such a dear man, and has been a good friend to you."

Erik replied sadly, "Yes, I had mistakenly believed that he still thought of me as a daeva, a demon in his religion, or at least as the murderous Angel of Death, but his familiarity with me over the years, and the Daroga's influence had turned him into a true friend to me over time. His friendship was another of Nadir Khan's gifts to me. I had begun to call Darius my doostam, or friend, to give honor to the death of my first true friend, whom I had cruelly withheld that title from. I would not make that same mistake again with Darius. While he will never take the Daroga's place he is still a good friend to me."

Christine observed, "He has been a good friend to both of us, he has remained our eyes and ears for all of these years, serving us loyally."

Erik smiled, "And I have rewarded him for it. Darius has become a rich man. I even imported his bride, Azarin, from India. She is one of the most exquisitely beautiful women that I have ever seen, with the exception of you, Cherie. No one can ever be as beautiful as you are in my eyes," he cooed in his silken voice.

Meg interrupted, "Imported her? You mean Tante Azarin did not know Uncle Darius before marrying him? They are almost as lovey dovey as you and Mother."

Erik smiled, "He has been my eternal slave since then. He had been a very lonely man, and I still had a man in Tehran who owed me a favor or two. He went to the Parsi community in Gandhinagar and secured him a bride from a good Zoroastrian family of noble blood. It was very satisfying to play cupid for him, after all, he had done all in his power to do the same for us."

Erik turned to the children and explained, "Uncle Darius repeatedly worked to bring down the barriers between your mother and I. I think that a part of him wanted to do so because he always loved to prove the Shah wrong. Nasir al-din used to taunt me that I would never be able to find a loving and living bride. Uncle Darius had heard the Shah repeat that slur against me many times while he had been in the service of the Daroga."

Christine remarked, "Your friend chose well. Azarin is so sweet and loving. She is a wonderful mother."

Erik smiled at Christine, "I had to find someone almost as angelic as you. In no small way due to the efforts of Darius and to Mother Jeanne, we managed to find happiness together despite ourselves."

Christine replied lovingly, "Yes but perhaps we might have done so eventually anyways."

Erik sighed, "Perhaps. But we were both so stubborn in our own ways. That alone might have kept us apart. When I think of exactly how much I misunderstood you, and you me, if Mother Jeanne had not shared her thoughts with Darius, we were just as likely to have parted in mutual anger. From my view, I did not understand the nuances of your behavior. Your continuing mistrust of me might have blossomed into a new attempt to escape from me. Perhaps, in time, and given the right provocation, I might have written you off as a lost cause. I did not have any real desire to hold you against your will, not anymore. I had long since realized that it was a situation that would have never worked, no matter how much love that my heart held for you. A happy marriage requires two willing partners."

Christine smiled, "Fortunately it never came to that. I stayed with you and cooperated with what you wanted despite my fears. By the time that we set sail for Canada from Liverpool, I willingly boarded our ship."

Erik turned to the children and explained, "We had chosen an indirect route to Canada just in case we were being followed, to obscure our tracks a little bit. Once in Liverpool, we booked two Second Class staterooms on the SS Parisian of the Allan Line, a very modern steamship based in Montreal, which made regular crossings between Liverpool and both Quebec and Montreal. We decided not to travel in first class because even with our disguises, someone would be more likely to recognize us in first class. The opera was patronized by the upper crust British, as well as the French, two priests and a nun heading to a monastery outside of Montreal was hardly going to attract much notice, and sure enough we didn't. We spent much of our time in "quiet seclusion" playing our parts as two priests and a nun. To the casual observer we were exactly what we pretended to be, but of course we were not, nothing could be further from the truth. The unquenched passion between your mother and I had escalated to a new level. Fortunately it would not remain unquenched for much longer."