So, here it is: the long-anticipated supper, which I've been longing to write for the last four months! The last chapter's reviews were fascinating to read, guys – thank you for all your thoughtful comments, and please keep them coming! It's a huge help to me to have that feedback. In answer to Phantomy's question re Mme Giry: sometimes facing the mysterious and frightening is the only way to rob it of its power. Erik has a dangerous hold over Christine, and Mme Giry is trying to help her break it.
Trivia for this chapter: the painting referred to here is Manet's In the Garden (1870); and the history of Almost a Fantasy is true.
Chapter 18 – The Moonlight Sonata
The invitation said eight o'clock; it was now five minutes past the hour. The front door was still shut.
Christine dragged her eyes away from it and fixed her gaze on the rug at her feet. The geometric patterns stood out clearly in the bright light of the parlour, and Christine tucked her heels to the divan where she sat, mechanically flexing the arches up as though rising on pointe. The pose made her feel like a dancer in a garden scene, a soubrette perched daintily on a swing, awaiting her rendezvous. She slammed her feet flat and stood up, annoyed.
"I'm going to help Josette in the kitchen," she announced to a surprised-looking Meg, who stood by the piano, leafing through a perfunctory book: A Young Lady's Needlepoint Sampler, Vol. III.
"Meg, you don't embroider."
"And you don't cook." They both glanced to the doors to the dining-room, through which they could hear Madame Giry discussing something in the kitchen with Josette.
"Christine, you can't leave me here alone," Meg pleaded. "What if he comes now?"
"Then I'll hear the door and come back."
"I'm not opening that door!"
Christine looked at Meg's wide eyes and softened her tone. "Are you frightened?"
"Aren't you?"
There was a knock on the door.
Christine's heart thumped, and an icy tide rose all the way to her throat, spreading out as heat over her skin. He was here. It was not the concierge or a neighbour or anybody else, it was him, she knew it. For what seemed like minutes, she and Meg stood motionless, looking at one another.
"No," Christine said. "I'm sick and tired of being frightened."
She took the embroidery book out of Meg's unresisting hands, closed it gently and stowed it on the bookshelf above the piano.
Then she crossed the room to open the door.
He had raised his hand to knock again. For a second, Christine saw nothing except that closed black-gloved hand, frozen near her throat; then her gaze flicked along the arm and shoulder of his jacket, and then to his face.
In the reflected glow from the parlour his features were almost painfully bright, cut in half by the white line of a bandage that was his mask. She saw a shadow on his cheek where he had shaved. He looked at her, and his lips came apart a little, as if to breathe.
Erik, her mind prompted.
"Monsieur," she said.
Slowly, he lowered his hand.
There was a crease at the corner of his mouth that Christine had never noticed before, and another where his brows jutted together, pushing at the mask. The bandage seemed to cling to a normal line of cheek and brow, and Christine realised he had padded the linen to give it that shape. In a peculiar way, it seemed almost ordinary.
He stood motionless over her as she watched him, as though he did not mind being seen in the light. For one head-spinning moment, Christine felt there was a mirror between them and she was the reflection. He was real.
He was dressed just like any other city gentleman: polished shoes, immaculately tailored suit, silk top-hat. His own dark-brown hair fell from under the hat on the unbandaged side. It was long enough to give him a bohemian edge – and in that off-handed shrug at fashion Christine saw yet another step he had taken away from the Opéra, and into the world. He had moved on.
He cleared his throat. "Mademoiselle Daaé."
The voice was his, but subdued. He sounded sincere, calm and polite, as though the ruined lives did not matter. An architect.
"Monsieur Andersson." Christine dipped her head in a stiff greeting. "Welcome. It is good of you to come... busy as you are. You honour us."
He gazed back at her mildly.
"The honour is mine." He smiled easily, startling her, and glanced past Christine's shoulder to where Meg and Madame Giry had come up behind her. "Madame Giry – Mademoiselle."
"Good evening, monsieur," came Madame Giry's level voice. "Do come in."
Christine moved aside to admit him into the parlour. She stepped back as he passed, afraid of a touch, even accidental. He brought with him a faint scent of the street, a whiff of summer dust and horses and tobacco that faded almost before Christine could become aware of it. There was nothing in it of the lake, of opera, of murder.
Christine held out her hand to accept his hat and gloves. She felt watched, as though she was on stage.
"Thank you." He put them into her hand without touching her, and turned away. Christine set the things on top of the chest of drawers. A kind of hurt calm was seeping into her. He had a new life.
"Come through to the dining-room, monsieur," Madame Giry said, leading the way. Christine caught Meg's anxious eyes for a moment as they followed, and tried to look brave for her sake. She owed it to Meg and to Madame Giry to get through this evening, to forgive and forget, so that all of them could move on. Just as he had done.
They took their seats around the white-clothed table. Christine felt part of an awkward tableau, a sculpture group in wax like the awful doll in Erik's lair. He was seated across from her and Meg, with Madame Giry was at the head of the table, her back to the little balcony. Josette, happy enough to be paid for an extra evening's work, bustled about in her usual dimple-cheeked efficient way, filling bowls and setting out the wine.
Christine saw Madame Giry give Erik a long, appraising look, as though she too was trying to come to terms with the changes, but she said nothing. Josette left; the soup bowls steamed.
Beside her, Meg fumbled with her napkin and nearly dropped it, stifling her exclamation of dismay. Christine decided she had had enough.
She looked straight at Erik. A guarded flicker crossed his face behind the mask, as though he was not sure what to expect, but Christine only said graciously, as if addressing one of Raoul's friends in his parents' salon: "I hear you are an architect, Monsieur Andersson."
"I am."
Their two voices sounded distorted in the small room. Christine felt her lips twitch nervously, not quite a smile. She pressed on.
"May I ask what you are working on now?"
His reply was equally correct: "A courthouse for the municipality of Sedan, mademoiselle. The office is hoping to complete the project this year – but as you can imagine, the war makes it difficult to avoid delays. I intend to spend some time there myself to ensure the thing is done properly."
"I see." Christine tried to assimilate this. He spoke as freely of his future as if he had no past.
"There are some who say the war is just about over," Madame Giry cut in to steady the fledgling conversation. Christine cast her a grateful glance. "You do not agree?"
"I rather doubt that either side should be satisfied with the siege of one Prussian city, when there are half a million troops still at the border," Erik said.
"Then this victory they have been celebrating will not be enough?"
"Saarbrücken is only a small city, madame; the victory is of little consequence."
There was something so hypocritical, so false in hearing him discuss the war like anyone else that Christine could not stand it. She put down her spoon with a clank.
"You seem well-informed on the subject. Monsieur."
The bare half of Erik's face became instantly immobile, completing the mask. When he spoke, his tone was acidly polite. "You mean to say – for a man who three months ago crawled out of a sewer."
Christine heard Meg and Madame Giry stop breathing. The words echoed around the room with the aftershock of a whip.
She held Erik's eyes, refusing to back away. "I would not have phrased it so uncharitably."
"Indeed? And what would you have called it?"
"A larger room in the Opéra than was home to the rest of us. And more comfortably appointed."
She continued looking at him. The pause stretched unbearably, like a note held down on an organ. Then at last, the coldness dissolved away from Erik's face.
"Of course," he said, breaking off a piece of bread, "there was the rising damp. I doubt it was a problem you experienced in the dormitories."
"Perhaps not," Christine conceded, returning to her own plate. "But we had rats."
"Ah, yes. Difficult to catch, but excellent with red wine sauce."
Meg gave a small snort of laughter, next to Christine, and somehow that took the charge from the air. Christine breathed, and then the four of them seemed to come to life.
"You didn't really eat rats?" she ventured, and for a moment Erik's eyes seemed to laugh, more warmly than she could have imagined:
"What makes you believe I stopped?"
"What nonsense," Madame Giry huffed, pretending she was not amused. "The dormitory kitchens cooked plenty to go around."
"Maman!" Meg was horrified. "You stole food?"
"Give our guest some credit, Meg. He was more than capable of stealing it himself."
"I see you are determined to reveal all of my secrets," Erik said, with a note of caution in his voice.
Madame Giry fixed him with a serious look. "Yes, Monsieur Andersson. I am determined to do exactly that. Pass the salt, please."
Josette brought in the second course a few minutes later, and looked startled to find them all talking, even the strange gentleman with the bandaged face. They moved from topic to topic, meandering through architecture, the differences between buildings in Paris and the provinces, the disruptions to rail lines. Erik told them a little about the town of Sedan, and the surrounding villages. Christine tried to picture him sketching buildings, walking out on the street with people all around, in the daytime... It was difficult, but it was not impossible. Neither he nor anybody else brought up theatres or music, or darker things, and Christine was content to leave those dangerous subjects well alone.
Madame Giry mentioned their recent visit to an art exhibition, where they had gone as much to see the paintings as to escape the madness of the war-fever in the theatres and streets:
"I confess, I have small appreciation for that sort of modernity." She raised her shoulders in bafflement at the new direction taken by some of the younger artists they had seen: crude brushwork and sketchy lines, awkward poses and ripples of unexpected colour. "It seems little more than the skill of putting an impression to canvas, without bothering with the details. It is no more a painting than the recounting of a ballerina's movements by an enthusiastic theatre patron, complete with hand gestures, is a ballet."
Here Madame Giry waved a hand melodramatically, as a speaker might do in imitating a dance number. Christine and Meg laughed, and when Christine stole a glance at Erik, she saw that he, too, looked amused. The effect was strangely pleasing.
"It might not be like regular art, but I liked Manet's garden," Meg said, helping herself to more of the chicken Marengo. "The morning light on the path – it looked so real."
"It must be nice to be able to do that," agreed Christine. "To take what you see and put it onto a canvas, just that moment."
"It's what they try to do, I think. Capture the light."
"A dangerous pastime," said Madame Giry, "trying to capture that which ought to be free."
Before the conversation could take an awkward turn, Josette brought in coffee and sweets. Christine smiled to herself. She had never imagined Erik liked marzipan.
When the meal was done they returned to the parlour, somehow managing to arrange themselves around the few available seats. Christine shared the worn divan with Madame Giry, and Meg took one of the armchairs. Erik sat down in the other chair, leaning one elbow against an armrest in a way that made him seem almost relaxed. Christine saw his eyes linger a moment on the piano in the opposite corner of the room.
"Will you play something for us?"
The words escaped before she could have time to stop them.
It had seemed so natural to ask it in that moment of peace, as if they were gathered for a genuine social occasion, as if this was normal and real. Christine sensed an uncomfortable silence opening out around her, gaping wider and wider as Erik sat up, his back turning rigid. She could see his eyes, but his expression told her nothing.
"What would you have me play?" he asked quietly.
Christine could think of no polite way to take back her words. She felt Madame Giry's hand come to rest on her shoulder, keeping her calm.
"Perhaps just a short piece," Madame Giry said evenly. "I daresay we should have a good fifteen minutes of music before the neighbours come to add the vocals. If you would do us the honour, monsieur."
Erik looked back to the instrument.
There was the strangest mixture of yearning and contempt in that look, as though he wished he could destroy it. Then without another word, he rose and went over to it. He sat down at the bench and opened the lid, his foot finding the pedal.
He did not even look at the keys. It was as if the piano did not exist. He simply lowered his hands to touch it, hesitating only a moment at the contact – and there was music.
The first notes were almost inaudible.
Christine caught the sound on the very edge of silence: simple, dark, disturbing. Three rising notes, repeated again and again. Trying to rise up, going nowhere. A moment's change, then nothing. Three rising notes, the bars of a cage and a shadow on the wall behind them, lurking.
Following an instinct she could not understand, Christine rose and went to stand beside the piano. The music changed, and did not change. Another theme cut across it as a shaft of light from a window of a cell cuts through the gloom, and the three rising notes were subdued by it. Subdued, but not silenced. The shadow remained. The shaft of light trembled, hovering as a reflection over black water: it spoke of longing, of the fear of the night. It trembled, pleading with a desperate breaking voice, pleading love...
He shut the lid.
Christine jumped, as if he had slammed it on her hands, and yet he had closed it very quietly, simply stopped in the middle of a bar. Three rising notes, silenced.
Erik sat, looking down at the polished lid.
"Do you know the music?"
Christine heard the question, but did not see him speak the words. He did not look at her and she felt invisible, aloof as a ghost.
"Yes," she said. Her own voice shocked her. It was too clear, too strong. "Beethoven. The Moonlight Sonata."
"That is the name given it by others. Beethoven called it 'Almost a Fantasy'. Do you know why?"
Erik raised his face to her and Christine saw a dark stain in the white fabric of his mask, beneath his eye.
She shook her head slowly. "Perhaps because... It's dedicated to a woman he loved. Contessa Giulietta Guicciardi."
"Is it?" he asked indifferently, even though Christine thought he knew the dedication as well as she did. "But, you see... On the margin of the manuscript, he wrote this."
Erik lifted the piano lid part of the way, and with one hand played a phrase.
"Mozart?" Christine wondered, and then recalled the fragment. "Don Giovanni."
"You remember the scene," he said, not as a question.
"It is after he – after Don Juan kills the Commander."
"Murders him," Erik corrected her. "You must always say what you mean, and what you mean is murder. A beautiful melody, is it not? 'Almost a Fantasy'."
He shut the lid, and stood up. Christine did not know what to say; the room had retreated somewhere, into the distance.
"I don't understand what you mean."
There was something ghastly in the smile Erik gave her: it was frightening not because it was mad, but because it was precisely the opposite. He was sane. He was completely sane, and he stood before her with the music still filling the space between them, and Christine did not know if it was a hymn to love – or to gruesome, unrepentant murder.
"I'm sorry," Erik said. "I came here because I wanted to tell you that, mademoiselle. I am really very sorry."
Christine stared at him, appalled. In her mind, the insidious funeral dirge played three rising notes, going nowhere, repeated.
"Could you forgive me?" the architect asked. "One day?"
"I... suppose so. Perhaps one day."
"Then I thank you for your generosity, and for a delightful evening."
He turned around, and the rest of the room came into being again.
Christine realised Madame Giry and Meg were standing in the middle of the parlour, watching them in uncertain silence. They had not heard their words, and Christine felt a stab of anger that nobody had intervened, that they had allowed these few brief moments to happen. It seemed an eternity since the music finished, and still she could hear it now.
Erik put on his hat, took his gloves, and gave a small, courteous nod to each of them in turn.
"Good night, Madame Giry. Mademoiselle Giry."
Madame Giry shook herself slightly, as though dispelling a dream. Then she went to see him to the door. "Good night, monsieur."
The door shut. Christine heard his footsteps on the stairs. Three notes, repeated.
"Well, that wasn't so bad." Meg bounced on her toes, stretching her cramped legs. "Was it? Christine?"
Christine darted past her to the window. She caught only his silhouette crossing the pavement, a gentleman in a top-hat striding over the patch of light from the streetlamp. He disappeared.
She let the curtains fall shut. An entire evening, she thought. An entire evening with him, and he never once called her Christine. He was sane, he knew exactly what he had done... But she did not know what he meant by his music. Forgiveness, he said. For being a murderer? For deceiving her for so long? For love?
"What did he say to you, Christine?" Madame Giry asked gently.
"He asked for my forgiveness."
Madame Giry looked relieved. Christine gave her a crooked smile, the best she could manage. It dawned on her that, just as Madame Giry had hoped, there was no longer a ghost in her mind. He had disappeared along with the angel, the madman, the murderer... So many masks, and there was nothing left. He had turned into an architect, he was no longer here. There was no ghost with her.
And without him – who was she?
It was not until later that night that Christine remembered her ring. She wondered what had become of it.