Down, and Down Again

Christine pulled the black velvety cloak tighter about her shoulders and watched the girls run…But just for a few moments. Then she turned her eyes away…Her cheeks felt flushed…But not with shame. No; she told herself, there is no shame in it. And yet…She did not quite understand why she felt this blush throb the skin they had mistaken for bone. The skin they had proclaimed "blue" for her own ears to hear…Like her Ghost.

She sighed as she thought of Erik. What would he say to all this? She would gaze into her reflection, distorted, perhaps, by the curve of the silver candlestick. He would ask her what was on her mind and she would casually question:

"Does my skin seem blue to you?"

"Blue?" he would wonder.

"Like ice…or the skin of the dead?"

And then he would laugh at her nonsense and tell her that her skin was no less rosy than if it had been tinted by the flower itself. And then he would give her a rose and she would press the soft bloom against her cheek and inhale its perfume…And feel like she might cry. Cry smiling…Cry laughing…Cry in his embrace…

But she could not embrace him yet. She was still up here after all, and he was…To be honest, she did not quite know. He had said that while she was gone, he would set out to make the arrangements for their "new life." He was tired of living in a cellar, playing the Ghost. He promised her the living arrangements of a Goddess, yet she assured him any escape where they could rest in peace would do. He assured her that rest they would, rest and live. All he wanted now was to live like an ordinary man with her always beside him. She wanted that for him too. And yet, such an extraordinary man he is…

She made her way toward the gate, staying behind the columns and avoiding the rain on this leeward side of the monument. The skies thundered again, and she shifted the heavy English carpetbag she toted to her other hand as she unlocked the gate and entered the sloping passage road.

One bag…That was all she had brought back, though she very well could have brought nothing at all. Erik provided her the world. But most of these belongings were not even her own. And though she would not need them, she wanted to keep them. Memories, at least, she thought. Only happy memories of her, for she died happily, didn't she? That is what they said. In her sleep. She had been at peace since it all happened. That is why Christine really never went back to her. Christine knew that if she had, it would unsettle the illusion and rupture that peace.

"She is with her good Genius," Mamma would say. "The Angels themselves have taken my darling child to a more blessed place than any of us can hope to achieve even after we die." And the old woman really was that convinced that no harm or danger could touch Christine. And so she passed away at peace, in her sleep, and dreamt only happy memories of the years gone by when she took the poor Swedish violinist and his Angel daughter under her wing.

Christine had loved her like the grandmother she never knew. And she missed her doting, generous love, but it was better this way. Mamma Valerius would never have been at ease if she had learnt the truth about Angels and Ghosts, the truth Christine had now made her own.

And how could Christine dwell on her dear sweet Mamma now when the only thing in her mind was the empty desolation that had grown for how long she and Erik had been apart! But how long after all? Less than a week…But with Erik in his world of magic and dreams, time for her no longer had meaning and it was only the time without him that crushed down on her and continued to press her underfoot with each ticking step of the clock.

Less than a week, and already she could not wait any longer. But he was out in the world that they would soon be a part of when they left this cellar, this labyrinth at once both horrible and mystifying. The black demons that fed the red burning mouths of the furnaces and the blue mist that drifted above the cold lagoon waters into the vault air warmed by the golden summer on the outside. Outside, beyond this lair where it is night eternal, where instead of cicadas in the summer marshes, there are only the scuttling rats on the mason-cut stones that line the artificial lake.

This black lake…Where the wonderfully extravagant skiff now floated silently in the motionless water at the false dock. The lantern was dark and Christine knew Erik was not waiting for her. He was not in this building, not in Paris, perhaps not even in France. And why should he be? She had assured him she would return to him Thursday morning and it was now but Tuesday afternoon. He would not return sooner than tomorrow night. Christine missed him all the more, but she was certain if she returned to the house between the foundation walls, she would suffer much less than sitting in her old flat, still lined with the mourning wreathes, and waiting all alone for the landlord to turn over the key to new tenants.

She needed to be back here. Back home.