Ch 3

He is his mother by appearance, thank God. The dark curls of hair, the eyes that match. His face is hers if she were a man. I watched as he came through the door and for a moment forgot that I should be furious with him for abandoning his lessons in search of adventure. If I had been blessed with his cherub face most certainly I would have roamed as freely as he desires without consequence. But that is not the point. It is different to be the charge of another's life, to make the decisions and see them enforced.

"Where have you been?" I asked grimly, keeping my voice low and lips straight.

He ignored me, just as I assumed he would. He went about removing his jacket and underlying brocade vest and tossing them on my bed, which he knows I cannot stand. He hesitated a moment, then hastily folded his garment and placed them onto the coverlet with much greater care.

He was growing far too fast for the clothes Madeline had purchased a month ago. The seams looked like they were about to burst, the buttons giving way as soon as his fingers slide over the satin covering. I watched him in the mirror as he brazenly stared back at me as if he dared me to ask him again. I obliged.

"Alexandre—"

"Why didn't you tell me?" he demanded as he whirled around to face me.

"Because I do not serve you, boy," I replied smoothly.

His nostrils flared, his face flushed as his anger escalated. I know his temper. It is my temper as well, though my frustrations were borne of denial while his are borne of being a spoiled brat.

"I wanted to see her."

"Why?" I demanded. I rose from my place at the desk in the corner and folded my arms over my chest. To him I am a monolith in the room, a dark brocade tower. My power over him has faltered since he discovered a note tucked within Madeline's coat pocket. The sneaky boy. I should have punished him but his stealth impressed me.

"Because," he muttered. He could say no more. His throat had tightened.

"That is not an answer," I said under my breath.

"Because I want to know her," he shouted, his chest heaving. By the look in his dark eyes I knew he wanted to throw something at me, to add to the ugliness he knew was before him.

"You don't need to know her," I growled back. Not yet. Not until I decided to allow it.

Alexandre was beside himself. "Whether you like it or not, I will see her," he spat at me before he walked stiff-legged from the room and slammed the door behind him.

It was quite some time before Bessie found her nerves again and came out from under the bed. She nudged my hand to pet her and I glanced down at the long face staring up at me, begging for a kind word. That beast had become my only companion since she came into my home. One cannot always be fastidious when it comes to relationships and that damned dog with her sad eyes and wagging tail had sadly become my greatest confidant. I slipped her part of my supper under the table, she loyally sat at my side for hours on end and looked up at me as though I were the entire world.

"This," I said as I felt her tongue flick along my palm. "This is what I will go to hell for."

Yet strangely I had no regret in using my flesh and blood to ensnare Christine.

Meg and Christine kept up correspondence over the years. At first I had intercepted a handful, but then Meg made certain she gathered the post before I did and I was cut off from the woman I loved and desired. Of course, I was not so easily deterred and eventually I read every single letter that had come from Mademoiselle Daae—and to me she will forever be Mademoiselle Daae. A thousand times over I had caressed each line in hundreds of letters, memorized each word and then burned it in the hearth so that Alex would not find it.

Yet just as I always knew, he stumbled upon one.

That was how I discovered that Madeline had received a letter from Christine. How long the two had kept in contact I cannot say, though I imagine it had been the entire nine years. At least eight, when Christine first dropped Alexandre at the doorstep as a screaming, red-faced ball of rags.

I loved and hated her in that moment when she rang the bell and shoved her son—my son—our son—into Madeline's arms. She had frantically glanced behind her as she explained a feeding schedule for the wailing infant. Nothing she had said registered in my mind. She had refused to see me. Utterly refused to see me! I stood out of sight, anxious as would be any man who suddenly realized that one encounter nine months past resulted in this thing that was screaming in an ungodly pitch.

Beyond all of my fears and hatred, I loved her for giving me this child. And I wanted to make dozens and dozens more with her. But she left. Disappeared. She simply abandoned her own child in Madeline's hands and flew down the steps and into the streets. I had wanted to go after her but I either chased after Christine or took the nameless child from Madeline's arms. She had not been willing to hand me my own son. I suppose I do not blame her for that.

I swore one day I would tell Alex how he came to me. How his own mother had abandoned him and how she now had two legitimate daughters of her own with the man she chose over my affection.

I knew in my heart that I could not tell him he had been abandoned, no matter what he did or how much he asked. It would shatter his heart. The pain of my own mother's rejection has not yet dulled, not in all the years since I have grown to manhood without her nurturing touch. My own mother had sat quietly in laudanum induced stupor, rocking back and forth in front of the fire while my father beat me bloody in the cellar. I recall only a handful of times I had called out to her, begged her to save me, but she did not react. As far as I could recall, she had not once said my name. To her, I did not exist.

In a different way, Alex has suffered by simply being my son. He is fed, he has never once been bruised by hand, but he has still suffered.

He has many questions, and he doesn't understand that I have some of my own for his mother. For eight years I have wanted answers:

Why did you give him to me? Why did you remove your own happiness and allow me joy? Why do you give me hope that you love me?

Ch 4

It comes as no great surprise that Christine is the first woman who allowed me to take her to my bed. The first time it happened quickly, the two of us tearing away at each other's clothing in a desperate, primal need to mate. I still remember as she faced away from me and I entered her how she swore that the first time it was impossible to create a child. Her body wouldn't know what to do, how to accept my offering. Her temple, I had thought at the time, would discard a gift from the devil.

Five weeks later she gifted herself to me again unexpectedly. Being a virile man, I followed her, my heart hammering as she undressed before me, surrounded by warm candlelight. She looked like a beautiful dream I did not deserve.

After our first encounter, I wanted to make love to her every night for the rest of our lives, to this woman who was the reason I lived. I wanted very much to satisfy her, to prove to the beautiful woman who gave me more than I should have been given that I would honor and cherish her.

But as she hurried into her skirts and buttoned her blouse, the innocence in her eyes turned venomous. She told me she was with child, with our child. My eyes filled with tears, both of gratitude and trepidation. I started to profess my love for her, for the lovely Christine, but she whipped around, pointed her finger at my chest and told me not to say another word. There were ways to rid her body of the unwanted life, she said. Ways to undo what I had done to her. Christine looked at me, eyes narrowed and accusing, as if I had taken her against her will.

"Intercourse early in pregnancy terminates the child," she said with a vicious smile. "You have been its undoing. You and your selfish desires to take and take and take."

I fell to my knees before her and begged her to give birth to our child. How I wept and clung to her ankles, how I howled in anguish at the thought of something I had given her out of love destroyed. She allowed me to kiss the hem of her dress, and despite the humiliation I felt in doing so, I accepted what she offered. I would have done anything she asked, anything at all.

Christine could be cruel when it suited her mood. She said she would terminate the pregnancy if by some act of the devil our second coupling had not jarred the fetus loose from inside her. While I remained submissively on my knees I heard her say she had agreed to marry the de Chagny boy. He would never even know, she swore to me, that her virginity had already been claimed. She would prick herself with a needle to show him that she bled and he would be none the wiser.

She rejected my final plea and left with the man she said she truly loved. The last time I saw her, I cradled the ring she had placed in my hand and cried for the child I had thought already destroyed. I had not simply lost Christine. I had lost everything.

Alexandre coming into my home, as you would imagine, was an unexpected delight. Through the letters from Madame and Meg to Christine, I learned that she had taken a sabbatical of sorts. She traveled up into Sweden where no one knew her. It is there that I believe she gave birth near the Baltic Sea.

There was never any mention of the child being alive in her letters. She only said that she was alone, which I knew meant she was without her precious new husband. I wonder still what she told him was her reasoning behind her leaving after weeks of marriage. She could have—if she wanted to—pass the child off as theirs but I know she had reservations. I, of course, had reservations on the birth even though I desperately wanted this baby to survive.

If the newborn appeared as I had at birth there would have been questions asked. In hindsight I see that it was wise for her to venture north. I only wonder what she would have done had the child been born a replica of my macabre appearance. Released it to the sea? Accepted the horrid beast?

In the years since she disappeared, I found no one to replace the cavern in my heart that she left. Christine has become a sore within my mind that I want to dig deeper. I will not forget her nor let her go. She belongs to me. She is part of me and I am part of her. Alexandre is proof of our union.

But she is not the only woman I have been with physically.

Darkness crept with a heavy hand over Paris. I could still hear the churn of crowds and commotion streets away as the Exhibition swelled with more admirers. I glanced out the back window into the garden and the stone house on the other side of the high stone fence.

Julia had left the light on in the second window. Just the sight of her invitation aroused me in every way.

What exactly led to our paths crossing, I do not wholly remember. It may have been that I pursued her, or it may have been that the suffering widow first approached me. Such details are unimportant. What matters is that she has given me somewhat of a normal life in that I come to her and we find fulfillment in one another, usually while laying in her bed.

She is my mistress, I suppose. There is no money exchanged between us as I am not the sort of man who would pay for such encounters. It is not purely the sex that I desire. I have too many years behind me to think only of the immediate gratification. I want more.

Julia has been perfect in that sense. She has provided mental stimulation as well as physical. Julia knows of my pension for sweets, my love for Alexandre, the damned dog, and my tolerance for Madeline. She has spent many nights listening to me grumble over my music and that bastard critic Luc Testan, but Julia does not know me like Christine knows me. No one in the world knows the way my heart aches quite like Mademoiselle Daae.

Julia was irritated with me that night. I saw the frustration pinched on her features the moment I walked quietly through the back door and into the small kitchen. Her daughter, Lisette, was already tucked into bed just as Alexandre was asleep in his room or silently reading by candlelight.

I said nothing as I entered. I simply stood and waited for to speak her mind.

"Did you see her?" she asked, her arms folded across her chest. I knew she would be first to speak as she was not very receptive to my plans for seeing Christine at the exposition.

"Indeed."

"And?" she prompted. Her body stiffened, her lips a thin, straight line.

I stared at her, at this woman that has warmed so many of my nights but who has failed to nestle into my heart in the same manner as Christine.

My hand ran over the first button of my vest as I ignored her comment. Even though I was fairly certain she would not be undressing, I made an attempt to salvage the night. I suspected it had all gone to hell the moment she heard that Christine was singing at the inauguration. But by the time I saw her standing with her light brown hair loose over her shoulders and a simple deep purple dress I couldn't help myself from at least hoping to end up on top of her. My reaction reminds me of something Charles Lowry has explained. He met a fellow once, Ivan Pavlov I believe. The light in the second window is like a steak before a dog. I see it, thus I want it. This Pavlov is perhaps onto something. He's young still. In time perhaps history will remember him with fondness.

Julia snickered in disgust and I stopped what I was doing and turned my head to the side.

"She sang beautifully," I offered.

Her eyes rolled back in her head and she started to turn away. "Did she see you?"

"No." The question irritated me.

My answer seemed to satisfy Julia for the moment. Her oval face softened, her hazel eyes claiming me with a long, unwavering gaze. We both wanted the same thing. Something physical first, then perhaps more when the exchange of heat and sweat and passion was over and we were more than rutting beasts caught in a tryst. On most nights Julia invited me over for conversation in the parlor that always ended with me following her up the stairs to her bedroom. Tonight we would reverse our routine-or so I hoped.

My vest was nearly off when she placed her palm to my chest. "Was she still beautiful?" she asked in a husky voice.

The perfume she wore tempted me to lie. The scent of sandalwood told me that if I wanted to take her to bed, all I had to do was say no, Christine has not aged well. But I admit I am a fool. Thus, I told her the truth.

"She will always be the most beautiful. woman I have ever had the pleasure of seeing."

Julia didn't bother looking me in the eye. She simply pulled her hand from my chest and turned away. "Good night, Erik," she mumbled as she started up the stairs.

Well, hell, I thought. I suspected after my confession, it would be quite some time before she lit a candle in her bedroom window and invited me over to see her again.