MADAME O.G.

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Chapter 8: Years of Training

If Christine had thought she was hard-pressed to sing better, more beautifully, when she was only a ballet girl with a lovely voice, she had never imagined the rigor with which Erik intended to train her for the role of Aminta. She had been released from her ballet practices now that she was singing the prima donna role, and now had the luxury of waking up at nine or ten o'clock. For that luxury, however, she paid dearly. After singing all day in rehearsals, she was expected to report to Erik's home for more tutelage, continuing on into the wee hours of the night.

Of course, that was a pleasure – an absolute pleasure. The Phantom's voice rivaled Piangi's in sheer strength; one might even say he outstripped Piangi, since there was a clarity to each word he sang that the portly singer had never achieved. When Ubaldo Piangi sang, one could hear the years of training behind him; when Erik sang, one could hear the depth of his emotion. Personally, Christine preferred the latter, and she knew that that was how Erik was training her. She was to ignore conventions that did not suit the message! Of course, Don Juan Triumphant held none of those conventions, but in Faust, for example...

Erik could go on about purity, purity of music, by which he really meant how well the music matched the sentiment that was supposed to go behind it. Not all his ideas were entirely operatic. Christine could not say if she agreed with them all. But he was also an excellent voice tutor, helping her reach low notes that had always been beneath her soprano's range and drawing out the very highest ones that seemed too impossible to sing, helping her learn to keep her voice steady and true even as she moved and acted.

Eventually, one could have enough of even such excellent and interesting lessons, and by the night before Don Juan Triumphant was to open, she had had more than enough. It was not only that her nerves were run raw with the excitement of singing Aminta's part, either. Jammes had reported to Meg, who had told Christine, who had told Erik about the plan to depose him. However, Erik seemed to hardly care. He would not tell her his intentions regarding how to avoid their trap; he would not have her stay in his house overnight, saying that it would be too dangerous to draw M. le Vicomte's eyes now.

The Vicomte only made it worse. Christine could not decide what to think of him. She could hardly take him aside and tell him the truth, and perhaps that would not move him from trying to trick Erik into being arrested. After all, the Phantom of the Opera did demand an exorbitant salary. It was blackmail, she supposed, to any court – although she could not find herself angry with him. Raoul was a rich man, after all, and MM. Firmin and André hardly less so. They could part with a few francs in exchange for Erik's magnificent opera!

Raoul, however: perhaps he had other reasons for searching out the Phantom. No. Being honest with herself, she knew he had other reasons. One of her strongest childhood memories was the Little Lord (as he was called at the time by anyone who knew him) kissing her on the cheek. They were on the beach. She had dared him to do it. "There, Lotte!" he cried out, laughing at her eight-year-old's expression of disgust at a boy touching her like that. He had been summoned away by his nurse; it might have been the last time she'd seen him. The look that was in his eyes then was the same as the one she'd seen after returning from Erik's home for the first time: a little besotted, a little proud of catching her out in a dare she'd not wanted to see completed (or, in the later case, in a lie).

The look in his eyes at the bal masqué, however, was one she had never seen. If she named it, it would be 'suspicion,' or perhaps 'jealousy.' It was difficult to tell the difference between the two. But she had given him reason enough to feel either, so she could hardly blame him.

That was the difficulty. She could not blame Raoul for his actions any more than she could condemn Erik for his. One or the other of them, however, had to be right, and the other wrong! It was a simple moral choice, but it seemed that so many hours spent in the grey twilight of the opera-house's cellars had rendered her unable to see things simply as black or white.

These thoughts made her reach the shore of the waterways in a very distracted state. She noticed Erik poling the gondola towards her, as he always did if he was not already waiting, long before he noticed that she had already arrived. Once she was in the boat, she tried to start her warm-ups to no avail. She was too wound up, and nothing would unwind her.

He was silent, bearing with her, for some time, but that had to end. He was never a patient man, at least not regarding song. The gondola drew up to the shore of the lake; he helped her out but then stalked away, as though he had no use for someone who could not sing.

"Erik," she sallied. "Erik – I'm sorry. I shall be able to sing tomorrow night, I know I shall. I've practiced so much, I know it will be fine..."

"It cannot be merely fine. It must be perfect," he said, with the fierce tenacity that only genius creates. Christine could read the tension, now, in every line of his body. When calm he held himself erect, a princely posture. When not, he hunched a little, as though making his tall frame smaller. He was just as badly off as her, she realized. They were both pained from their long days and nights. How could she be so foolish as to think he was not watching her in rehearsal, to think that he didn't have a hand in every aspect of this opera?

The miniatures in his toy opera-house had been repainted. Don Juan embraced Aminta atop the catwalk that crossed the stage in the first act of Don Juan Triumphant. Beneath them there was a pit for a real flame. The one on stage would be only crêpe-paper.

"I can't promise you perfection," she said. "No one can. Take off your mask and play me something different, Erik. You walk on the edge of madness, and one more night of worrying about your opera will send you right over it."

He turned abruptly to face her and there was a moment in which neither moved. He searched her face for ridicule, for anger or exasperation. There was none – well, perhaps a little bit of the last, but that could be overlooked. She won the unspoken argument. Casually he removed the half-mask. "I shall do anything to please you."

It was the first time he had played for her, truly played for her. She had heard him composing during nights in the dormitory, yes, and he had sung to her and played to accompany her voice. She had even heard him at work while she was in the underground house, hidden away in the bedroom. She had never asked him to simply make music on that great organ. It was magnificent. It was a mass of some kind, and when he sang "Kyrie eleison," she believed that he was truly asking for forgiveness, but she did not know what for.

"I did not know you attended church," she said delicately, when his hands at last dropped to his lap.

"I do not," he said. "But I shall attend church once more in my life. That was a wedding mass, Christine."

A great stillness came upon her. Thoughts flitted rapidly through her mind. She had not actually realized, not actually believed that it would come to this. Doubt filled her. Could she live a life with Erik? Could she – oh, Raoul! After the bal masqué she knew he was hers for the asking. He was so perfectly formed, a nobleman, only thinking of her own safety. Would she damn herself if – if –

Unable to make sense of her inward feelings, she turned outward and saw for the first time the apprehensiveness in Erik's eyes. He would force her to marry him if she would not. She believed him to be capable of it. But he wanted her to love him! Oh, he so wanted her to stay with him, she realized. That starveling way he tried to pretend he was indifferent to her touch, his voice leading hers to greater heights, the glorious duet of Don Juan Triumphant, it was all only him, all encompassed in him.

And it was that which decided her, freed her to move and respond. That music was something no one else could touch, not Raoul or any other suitor. She soared in his song, and she would rather give anything up but that. For the music he made she would grow accustomed to a hundred ruined faces, survive a hundred rages like that she'd set off when she'd first removed his mask.

"So it was," she said, smiling. "It was beautiful. You composed it, didn't you." It was not a question. No one else would use disharmonies in that precise way, would suddenly allow them to collapse into a joyous and entirely whole melody.

"I have left the Opera Populaire more often in the past six months, all for you, than I ever did in the six years prior," he said, in a seeming non sequitur. "I have made preparations. Do not concern yourself with the Vicomte, tomorrow night. Think only of your song."

He stood, pushing the bench away from the organ, and descended the staircase to the gondola's mooring. "You need rest, Christine. I shall see you back through the flooded halls."

Very formally she came from where she had been sitting on the divan and accepted his help into the boat. Very formally he settled her there and gracefully pushed off into the deeper waters. They were silent, for a time, still nervous about more things than the performance.

As she stepped out of the boat onto the opposite shore, Christine turned to ask one question. "Erik," she said. "I do not know what – what I shall be called, after we are wed."

For a moment he was discomfited; then he answered shortly. "de Becque, Christine," he said. "Mme. de Becque."

He poled the boat away from her quickly then. She did not know the meaning of his haste, but she barely noticed it. Her mind was too full of the coming performance and whatever would happen after, with the police. The only thought she could coherently form was this: At least Mme. de Becque is better than Mme. O.G.!

End Chapter 8.