Pars Tres

Christine was stirring her half eaten, half uneaten breakfast around her plate, trying to work out enough of an apetite to fork the rest of her eggs down her throat. Her anxiety replaced her hunger this morning, but man can not live on anxiety alone. Man can not live with anything alone. Man can not live with himself alone... She thought of Erik again and knew that he would chide her if she did not eat anything. An organ concerto was pouring into the dining room from the parlor-- Raoul's feeble attempt to include himself in her world. He had left early this morning, before Christine had even sat down for breakfast, to clean up some more affairs at the bank concerning his investments in the now devastated Opera Populaire. She would have the morning to herself, a morning that would drag on so slowly that she could feel the weight of every second on her weak shoulders.

Christine tried to busy herself with some meaningless craft or another-- embroidery, crochet, drawing. It is funny the way some people can be so gifted in some fields but completely incompetent in others. She washed the charcoal from her hands, trying hard not to wonder whether Erik's drawings had been ruined by the mob after his escape. She hoped Raoul never saw them, she hoped he would never enter further into the triangle. Once she had pricked her fingers three times in an attempt at sewing, Christine gave up and retired to her bedroom. It was already two in the afternoon. Eight hours until I see him again…

Her hands felt like those belonging to the porcelain figures which decorated her shelves, heavy and delicate at the same time, as she reached inside one of her drawers and removed a sheet of writing paper. She knew that Raoul would be back in an hour or so, and that she would much rather take the time to craft her lies outside his gaze. So much was changing about her, so much of her was transforming as to make her former innocence almost irretrievable from beneath the collapsed building which was her mind. Raoul had changed too. He had been smug before, proud of his means and his happy situation, but the added triumph over Erik beneath the Opera House had given his gait a pompous bounce which Christine could already feel stabbing at her like a wasp of annoyance. How she wished to be alone, so she could live inside her mind…

She scrawled a hasty 'I love you' and signed the note. She grabbed her muffler, though she most likely would not need it, and left without another thought. True, she still had some time before her rendezvous, so she decided to make her note good and visit Meg Giry at her flat across town. With all of the publicity, Madame Giry had made off much better than some of the other staff at the Opera Populaire, allowing her the luxury of her own apartment. The journey was brief and soon Christine was facing the glowing eyes of a blondish girl who, though she was senior to Christine by several months, looked a great deal younger and brighter.

"Oh Christine! How good it is to see you. Has it been two weeks since we last met? I'll take your cloak." Meg led her friend inside and they began to walk toward the tea room. Christine was preparing an excuse for not eating with her friend, but was spared this exercise when she was struck, as though an electric current had just surged through her, by an enormous object opposite her. She was staring back into her own two eyes and the eyes of Meg beside her, looking incredulous. The mirror… is this a sign from you my friend? Have you returned to me in this coincidence?

"Christine, what's the matter? You look peaky indeed, come take tea with me."

"I'm sorry Meg," Christine said absently, still staring at the great looking glass. She wondered whether she could reach through the mirror and find her way back to that magical cavern of music and candlelight, but knew that even if this mirror were a portal to that world, the first experience of being led away to that underground heaven would be tainted by more recent regrets. "Meg, I just wanted to stop in and say 'hello', but now I must go." She retrieved her cloak from the coat tree and in a swirl of wool she was again out in the busy streets of Paris.

That was not good, that did not go the way she had hoped. But it was as though she was channeling his spirit, as though he had called to her and she was now possessed with such a madness that she immediately began to make her way to the apartment above the office of Dr. Rubis. He wanted her to sing for him, but could she do this? Singing with another man seemed to be adultery in itself, but in some ways her marriage to Raoul had been an adultery of its own sort; half of her mind, half of her song belonged to Erik.

It was eight o'clock when Christine reached the office.

But she knocked anyway. To her surprise, the door edged open and Christine was staring into the new lair of the Phantom of the Opera.

The room was a pale shadowy blue and the only notable furniture was the piano and a loveseat obviously salvaged from the wreckage of the Populaire sitting room-- pink plush and mahogany. A small wash closet was concealed behind a narrow door and a third door most likely closed away the bedroom. Christine wondered whether it actually was a bedroom, as Erik had always chosen to rest in a coffin. Or not to sleep at all.

"I was wondering when you would come," a voice said from behind the door. Erik's voice. "Please just give me a few minutes more, and sit down." Christine did as she was told, and two minutes passed by as she stared at the doorknob, waiting for it to rattle. What would happen if I just went in, if I found him half dressed, what would I do? Would he be angry or pleased? Does he expect me to burst in there? Oh confound it all! Christine got up slowly and began to turn the knob when she felt a man's hand upon her shoulder. Erik had been throwing his voice again.

"Oh Erik!" He was much further away than she had expected, than she had hoped. Why did he tempt her so? He handed her a glass of fine wine and led her toward the piano.

"Can you sing for me?" Somehow he was managing to repress his excitement, his anxiety. An A minor chord hung on the air before the two joined together in one of the later songs of Don Juan Triumphant, the ballad in act two.

In my mind I hear you sighing

Love melodies you are singing

If only I could hold you here

With me, forever and ever.

If I were not so lost and frightened

Frightened of this world above

I would join you in your hell

And make it heaven for we too.

And then we could be one,

Then I would be found

Our hearts…

Christine, captured by his melodies, ceased to sing, having lost her voice in ecstasy and astonishment. Erik played a few more bars and then turned to her, as though asking why her voice was gone. "Cat got your tongue?"

"I've swallowed my voice."

"Well, we'll have to find it, won't we?" Erik did not even stand up, but by simply reaching for Christine's slender neck he pulled her face towards his own and kissed her, trying to draw her song out through her mouth. It took only a few moments before the melodies seemed to be suffusing through the pores on her skin, his love the very medicine she needed to slake her thirst for music. But now that he had begun this, they could not go back. Christine sat down in his lap and leaned against the piano, creating a great clang of clashing notes, the devil's interval. Erik began to work over a new melody with his right hand, kneading her hair with his left. What a picture this would paint, an image lost to no mind who has ever felt a rush before the plunge. They had only a few hours left before the plunge.

She broke away for a second and whispered to him, "How long shall we too wait before we're one?"

"Christine, this is not an opera. This is real for me. Is it real for you?" His eyes were too close to focus in on properly, but Christine tried to stare back at him. She didn't know whether it was real. Did she even care? At this moment all she wanted was to throw her life away for his music, and if she had to take her body down with her, then so be it. "Christine, I will not take advantage of you in this way. You are not yourself, you are nearly mad. Look at how you shake."

"I shake for you. I shake under your touch. Your power climbs through my ears and teaches my soul to dance, as though you were a snake charmer. What am I to do? You know that the passion you seek rises up from my guts only when you speak to me, so when you find the jewels why do you not seize them?" Christine was panting from her speech, exhilarated by the moment. She wanted to remember all of this. She wanted to remember what his hair felt like, what his flesh smelled like, the look of her saliva on his lips, the exact color of his eyes. She wanted to remember what his legs felt like beneath her, the coarseness of his fingertips from tuning the piano.

"Christine, it is nearly eleven. You must go now."

"No," Christine said, but even as she said it she knew that she was not herself. This was not her subservient girlish tone, her light acceptance of what is. She actually stood up for herself. "No, I want to stay with you."

"You had your opportunity to stay, Christine. But now I must beg you to leave before I engage in any further infidelity. I'm leaving the country tomorrow to be wed."

She stared at him.

And then she hit him.

Engaged to be married? How can he be engaged to be married? A thousand questions whizzed through her head and all she could think of was how much she wanted to hurt him. She wanted him to be dead, and she wanted to go with him. In Hell, they could be together.

"Now, Christine, I must throw you out." He took her by the hand and led her outside before locking the door. But Christine did not leave.

"Erik! ERIK! I love you. Erik I need you! ERIK!" She was screaming now, and she knew that it would destroy her voice, that she would be found, that Raoul would know. But if Erik would not take her in, then so be it. "Erik!" She screamed herself hoarse and then she cried and beat at the door until she bled. Hours later, she fell asleep.