A/N: A long chapter to reward your patience, with lots more Erik. If you want to return the favour, please do share a thought or two in your review - anything that caught your attention or made you think. That kind of feedback is invaluable, and it really does help me write.
Chapter 38 — Household Effects
The sea was without form, and void, and from that formless darkness a forest of blades was rising. They were coming. They were coming for him, for Christine, for the Egrots. The city walls were smoke, the fortifications a vast chamber of mirrors, and he the only one who understood, the architect of their doom. The city was surrounded. The sea was lapping at its gates. He stood upon the highest place, the heights of Montmartre, with Christine at his side holding a loaded rifle, and behind them amassed a crowd of those who remained, all armed, all ready to die: Madame Giry and Meg, the Vicomte and Egrot and Louise Gandon, and the hundreds of others en garde. And they sang. The music kissed with blood, it thrilled and seduced and vowed victory was at hand. But he knew. He saw the faceless armies drawing nearer, felt the ground shuddering with the thunder of cannons, and he knew no music could keep it back. The city was surrounded but it was him, him they wanted.
"Shoot us," the voices shrieked into his mind. "You who are damned, what does it matter now? Kill again. Save them! Save yourself…"
"Take me!" he bellowed, and plunged weaponless into the sea, drowning as they closed over him, hearing only the screams of the dying above, all those he had left to die, Christine...
"...and expects every man to do his duty. The city will never be defended by fewer than three hundred thousand rifles; the fortifications are unassailable; the enemy will find no way in. Take heart therefore, and stand firm. Paris will not falter. Paris will stand."
I am alive, Erik thought, even as he was becoming aware of Madame Giry's distant, steady voice reading aloud from whatever this hideous proclamation was supposed to be. He sat up, dizzy at the unfamiliar, sunlit room. There was no sea; he had never even been to the seaside. The darkness receded. Why was he on the floor? It took a minute to place it: of course, the parlour. The piano stool with Christine's music book upon it, closed and tied again. The pillow had been placed under his head - Christine's doing? Her music, he had touched her music, her slender fingers guiding his hand. Her music. It returned to him now, light as the air he breathed.
He glanced down at himself: he still wore the sheet, wrapped tight like a shroud, and the shirt beneath it. His suit was presumably hanging still where he had left it - through the dining room, from where the voices of Madame Giry, Meg and Christine were now coming. It was a predicament he had not anticipated, thinking to be gone before daybreak… But the sleepless nights of his flight from Bazeilles had demanded payment. He tried to remember Christine leaving him, and could not.
A rap on the door made him grasp at his face by instinct; the bandage was in place.
"Erik?" Christine's voice. "Are you there?"
Erik managed to stumble to his feet; she must have heard this because the door handle was lowered and his suit was thrust through the part-opened door in a rustle of fabric.
"Thank you," he said, catching it. Christine did not let go but paused on the other side of the door; he could hear her breathing as they held the fabric between them. A mad part of him wanted to pull that door wide to catch her by the waist, to kiss her hard on the mouth, to stand at her side against the world and sing.
Christine's voice was pitched low, for his hearing: "I'm glad you slept. And that you are here."
She released her hold, letting him take the suit, and shut the door before he could think of how to reply. He heard her footsteps going back towards the kitchen.
He tried to order his thoughts as he dressed, marshalling the long list of things that needed attention if he was to keep hold of what little of this new life had been left to him. Clothing. Money. A home. His work, if any was to be had in this godforsaken city… The sheer depth of this newest fall threatened to drown him in despair if he was not vigilant, but Erik kept his thoughts moving. He would not succumb to it, he refused. Christine's voice still drifted in from the other room, and her music - a willowy, delicate, unbreakable thread - still pierced and held every shadowed corner of his mind. He had done all within his power to bring back her Vicomte and, damn it, he was permitted this much: one small triumph.
They were all in the dining room, reading the morning papers together when he came in, Madame Giry at the head of the table with Meg and Christine at either side. Christine looked up when he entered and her gaze flickered ever so slightly over him, taking in his appearance in the sunlight. Erik felt heat rise to his neck, but she did not look displeased, only perhaps a little flustered, and her smile was uncertain:
"Good morning. There is coffee in the kitchen-"
"Cold coffee," Meg added with a glance at the clock, as Christine went on:
"-and porridge." She held up her hands at Meg in surrender: "I tried!"
"And succeeded! It's congealed beautifully, you could sculpt with it."
Christine laughed, a sound so unexpected and free that Erik could only marvel at it. He wondered guiltily what it would feel like to draw that sound from her.
Madame Giry looked up from her paper. "These headlines may be of interest, monsieur."
She lowered the broadsheet so that Erik could read the bold type: "Mystery of the vanished patient: Americans insist they are not treating Prussians".
Erik blinked, looking from Madame Giry to Christine: "Prussians?"
Christine sighed. "They thought you did not want to give your name. They see Prussians everywhere now, it is a mania."
"Only the real ones have been hounded out," Meg said with feeling, standing up from her chair. Erik saw she had already dressed to go out, lacking only gloves and hat. "I promised Monsieur de Gas to go to the auction today," she said to Madame Giry, "they are clearing the apartments of those who left, even the art."
Her mother frowned as Meg came around to give her a kiss, but said only, "Do not stay long; I misike these news of the roads from the city being closed. And whatever Monsieur Trochu may proclaim, his three hundred thousand rifles are not much comfort when they arm the angry men of Belleville."
"And Montmartre?" Erik asked.
"Montmartre too," Christine confirmed. "They have their own officers, I've seen them drilling near the cemetery. Wait, Meg, I'll see you out."
She gave Erik an apologetic look as she passed: "Please help yourself. I promise the porridge is very nearly edible."
Erik stared after her as she and Meg went to the door. He had the sensation that all this was a costumed rehearsal for a drama he did not recognise, and the part he had taken was not his own. Yet he had never imagined Christine this way, easy in her own home, surefooted and unafraid and lovely.
"What will you do?" Madame Giry's voice was very quiet, but still it made him jump. She was looking at him carefully, testing him as one might test a new course laid at a construction site, to see if it will hold.
He looked towards the kitchen. "I believe I have been instructed to eat."
"That is a start."
She waited, patient and implacable.
"Then I must discover what has become of my lodgings in Montmartre. And my employment."
"You do understand what it is you have returned to? We are made into an army, expecting a war. Even Monsieur Duchamp has been forced to decamp, and theatres are outlawed. There is only one employment this grim new Paris will allow: with the Garde Nationale,upon the ramparts. Will you take it up?"
Erik found the answer was simple: "No."
Madame Giry's brows quirked as she considered this, then her gaze went to something behind Erik. He turned and saw Christine had returned.
"I heard what you said about Montmartre." She paused, looking from him to Madame Giry and back. In her hands was the dry poppyseed rattle, and she absently scraped a fingernail against it, back and forth. "I should like to go with you, if you do not object to waiting until I am back from the Ambulance. It has been some days since I was at the cemetery, and Madame Giry is right, it is no longer safe to go alone."
"Indeed?" Madame Giry closed the newspaper and set it down. "And which of you is to chaperone the other?"
Erik cleared his throat. "I regret I cannot; I must set my affairs in order, and soon." He bowed in turn to Madame Giry and Christine. "I thank you for your hospitality. Once again, I am in your debt."
Christine acknowledged this with a minute nod, as though she had expected no different. "All right. Stay a moment - I'll go, uh, carve you some porridge."
Erik stood back as she went past, wanting nothing more than to stay.
o o o
The auction was held in what had been a concert hall, now mute and sad under a veil of dust. The tall windows were open on both sides, lending the hall a bare, transient feel. The seats were all full; with so little entertainment to be found, even an auction drew crowds: women mostly, curious to see their former neighbours' possessions, but a few men, art dealers or salesmen, many in uniform even if they were not now on duty. Meg sat beside Monsieur de Gas, himself out of uniform today, though she knew this meant he would likely be back at the fortifications by the evening. Before them, furniture and paintings and rickety household pianos were paraded upon the dais at the front, each lot in turn unceremoniously dispatched by the fall of the hammer.
"And sold!"
She was not sure what it was they were waiting for; Monsieur de Gas bought nothing but merely sat with his eyes fixed on the dais, his hands folded over the carved handle of his cane.
"Another one," he said, drawing her attention to the painting brought out before them."What do you think, mademoiselle?"
It was a small oil in a heavy round frame, a mundane little still life destined from to decorate somebody's dining room. Meg regarded it carefully, then shook her head. She felt ashamed of herself for this, for dismissing as worthless this small thing from the life of a stranger now gone away. It must have meant something to them.
"And another," said Monsieur de Gas as a larger picture was brought forth in its turn.
Meg took one look, and felt a new wave of shame - this one she recognised. It came from Helena's drawing room, a family portrait painted in a stilted, fussy way, an unattractive picture but painful all the same to see it here. Monsieur de Gas noticed her agitation:
"What is it?"
"Nothing… It is nothing remarkable. As art." Meg knew she had to be honest but it hurt. "It was Helena's."
To her astonishment, Monsieur de Gas raised his hand. Nobody contested it; another minute and the hammer struck, making the terrible painting his. Meg stared at him in puzzlement.
"How many were there?" he asked, without looking away from the dais, where yet another heavy frame was already being lifted into place.
Meg understood now. "Just two, I think. They were not wealthy."
"All right. Do not distract me now, there may yet be something of interest here, with such perfect light... But if you see the others, you must say."
"You mean to return them to her family?"
Now Monsieur de Gas did look at her in surprise. "Naturally. These are of no imaginable use to anyone else." He returned to watching the auction, adding, "And I detest this business of trading art. Even this dismal sort of thing."
Meg thought about it. "It is different, I think, when it is not like this. When it is by choice."
"Dear girl, nobody sells their work by choice, not the work that matters. Least of all, to the highest bidder."
"What if the person buying it understood it? What if they needed it?"
"Needed it." Monsieur de Gas huffed, but after a moment leaned back in his chair, the way he did when he was pleased with a morning's progress. "You are an interesting case, Mademoiselle Giry, for one so young. I imagine you could be quite persuasive if you put your mind to it. Perhaps I ought to introduce you to some people, should we be fortunate enough to survive what is coming."
Meg decided not to ask what he meant, but returned her attention to the remainder of the auction. If they survived this… The roads out of the city were blockaded, bridges blown up; at the train stations she had seen dead lifeless engines sitting upon their tracks, eerily silent. The armies that surrounded them were somewhere out there, still invisible. It was enough to make her understand why even Monsieur de Gas had joined the National Guard. Surely anything was better than this interminable, nerve-wracking waiting.
o o o
It was with immense relief that Erik discovered the bank functioned still, and his income had not vanished into the chaos that had swallowed so much else. Money was a basic necessity; he had been taught this lesson early and well, when he had been a penniless little freak hiding in the sewers beneath the gilded opulence of the Opéra. There was only so much he could do with the scraps of charity from the ballet girl who was not yet Madame Giry, herself close to destitute were it not for the meagre salary to which she had been entitled. That salary had given him an idea, one of which the ballet girl did not fully approve, but which even now was proving exceptionally useful. Twenty thousand francs a month was a respectable sum. His salary as an architect had been less generous, but that too had been useful while it lasted.
The question now was: how long could he live upon the interest alone, without touching the principal? A dreary calculation, but one that he knew he would need to make soon. The alternative was a uniform and a rifle, and one franc fifty per day to stand upon the ramparts, and that, he would not do. Not today, not next week, not until the Prussians spilled over the formidable walls that surrounded this imprisoned city. He had had his fill of it, the filth and agony and the blood on his hands. Christine had held those hands, had led him, blind, through her soul's music. The thought of soiling them again was repugnant.
He was not giving up. There had to be a way to survive this, to become again the architect, a man worthy of forgiveness. A man who had the right to the ring he still carried.
But a man would fight, he thought. In this maddened world, mirror-flipped, where the sin of murder had become every man's duty, he would once again become an outcast. The grisly joke was on him.
Preoccupied with these thoughts, he discovered he had come much too far; he had meant to find his old room at the Gandons' store but had wandered instead all the way to the end of the street, where a little dance hall was wedged between two narrow apartment blocks. He recognised the building and the peeling red sign hanging above the entrance, promising music and a night of lively dancing, but something had obviously changed: the doors were open wide although it was barely noon, and the sounds that emerged from within were anything but musical.
Driven by curiosity, Erik walked inside, past the narrow grimy mirrors in the hallway and into what should have been the main hall. It was as gaudy as he expected, from the panelled walls to the zinc and glass chandeliers, but the orchestra pit was full of boxes, some opened to reveal piles of leaflets tied with thin cord, others sealed shut. A crowd had gathered in the hall, their attention directed to the stage, where men dressed variously in black suits or workers' blouses, and a handful of women in kerchiefs and aprons, were engaged in a series of orations. A few of them Erik recognised from the covert meetings he had witnessed at the house of Jean and Louise; these were the same speeches he had heard many a time, about the rights of workers and the fairness of pay, but never so loud or so openly. They had come out of hiding, he realised, all those proponents of revolutions. They had not had to overthrow the Empire in the end, it had crumbled under its own weight, but still they held their grievances close, only the targets had shifted:
"Every man receives his franc fifty for each day served," proclaimed one working-class man, "but that's only the Garde Nationale. What of those battalions of Bretons they brought in? Or the zouaves? How much is their pay, I would like to know?"
Erik did not stop to listen to the rest, but walked back out onto the narrow cobbled street, squinting against the sudden glare after the dimly lit hall. Neither Jean nor Louise has been in that meeting, so he held some hope that their store had remained open, and that his room might be unoccupied. This last seemed less likely now than he had supposed earlier that day: he had not counted on the hordes of peasant families who, fleeing the Prussians, had taken up residence within the capital. They were everywhere evident by their clothing and their rough patois, and Erik would not have put it past Jean to take pity on one such and install them in his house.
There was no sign of peasants or indeed anyone elsewhere he reached the store. The shutters were down and a rusted padlock held the side gate shut. That was new, and Erik wondered if thievery and disorder were indeed on the rise. He knocked on the shutters once, then stood to one side, to have a better view in case somebody did open them. Nothing, they were not in.
Erik lingered beside the store, thinking. He must try to find elsewhere to live, but was wandering the streets the way to do this? It would be best to ask around, perhaps, to have a recommendation - but how did one start? And where was he to go now for all the trivial but necessary things, from candles to writing paper?
A group of people were advancing uphill towards him, from the direction of rue de Clignancourt, deep in animated discussion. Another red club, Erik thought, breaking up their session. But in a few moments he saw a familiar shock of red hair among them, and sure enough, there was Jean carrying a book, and beside him, the broad-hipped figure of Louise Gandon. Erik had never imagined to be so pleased to see them.
They broke away from the group and stopped outside the side gate without noticing him, still talking animatedly. Jean squeezed Louise's hand and held it tight, while she beamed at him, ruddy-cheeked, for all the world as if they had just managed a coup between them. The Prussian encirclement, the advancing cannon, the burning towns and the twelve thousand men still imprisoned near Sedan and the rest of the fortresses, did not seem to perturb their marital harmony in the least. Erik felt a sharp pang of futile, irrational jealousy.
Jean went to embrace his wife, but stopped suddenly as Erik stepped out into view.
"Good day." He raised his hat to both of them. "I trust the Republic is faring well this morning."
"Andersson! Now this is a surprise." Jean lowered his arms from Louise's shoulders and she turned also, her forehead creasing in amazement when she recognised him.
"Well, well," Jean said. "We had thought you long gone."
He offered his hand and Erik shook it.
"I was. But I had reason to return. I confess I was hoping to find my former room-"
"Room's here all right," Louise interrupted, jerking her head up at the window, "but we've not got space for tenants, not anymore."
Erik saw Jean frown at this, and thought the rejection was not as certain as it sounded. "I require little enough, madame. And naturally I am more than happy to compensate you for the inconvenience."
Jean rubbed an ink-stained finger against his nose. "Listen… Things have changed around here, Andersson. We're working for the future now, and Louise is right enough, there is not the space. But come in if you will, and see what you think."
Intrigued, Erik followed them through the side gate and round the back, into the storeroom. Thus far, it looked exactly as he remembered, and to his relief, there were no chickens in the courtyard and no other sign of any peasant invasion. The back of the store was full of the usual boxes, once filled half with soap and half with propaganda, but Jean's folding trestle table that he had used for signwriting had disappeared.
"After you," Jean said, indicating the stairs. Erik went up ahead, ducking his head out of habit as he came to the low lintel, then waited as Jean leaned past to unlock the door to what had been his old room.
The missing trestle was at once explained. The work table that Erik had used for his sketches was piled high with papers, and signs and drawings in various stages of completion covered every surface including the bedstead, cascading gently down onto the floor. The small spaces between were taken up by tins full of brushes soaking near the washstand, bottles of ink, wads of cotton rags, and drawers overflowing with compasses, paper blades, perforating wheels and other paraphernalia of what had apparently become a thriving workshop. The curtains had been tied back from the window and the little room was flooded with daylight.
"All out in the open now," Jean said proudly. "No more skulking in the shadows, hiding from the gendarmes."
"About bloody time," Louise said from the doorway.
"Impressive," Erik agreed absently, completing his inspection. It was manifestly no longer a living space, but at least the furnishings were still there, and he decided it would do well enough. "It reminds me, in fact, of my previous quarters. The same miscellany of thought, though I believe something is missing."
Jean looked surprised. "What's that?"
"Me."
From the doorway, Louise voiced her opinion of his presumption with a string of quiet expletives, but Erik continued to address Jean, the idea now crystallised in his mind:
"It seems you have work enough for ten and no shortage of materials, but only one pair of hands: your own. Unless I am mistaken, you could make use of a skilled assistant. This is not architecture, I grant you, but there is regrettably little need for architecture at present. As Madame Gandon so perceptively pointed out," - he nodded in Louise's direction - "it is a bloody time."
The initial scepticism in Jean's expression was gradually replaced by a thoughtful look, first at his overflowing work table, and then, more speculatively, at Erik.
"Are you offering to assist me?"
"Just so. I believe you would find my draughtsmanship more than adequate to your needs. And I would be pleased to aid you in outfitting a more appropriate workshop downstairs, which you would certainly require should you desire to work on any placard too large to be moved here. With two, such a job would be trivial, would it not?"
"True enough." Jean half-turned to see what Louise made of this unexpected offer, but her gaze had remained unfriendly and her entire bearing made it clear that she had no interest in seeing Erik resume his tenancy:
"Look at him, would you! All bluster and fine words, but what's beneath all that, hmm?"
She came forward, letting the door slam behind her. Her finger pointed square at Erik's chest. "You don't give a shit about the likes of us, none of what Jean's worked for, so don't you think you can smarm him so easy now. What'd you come back for, really?"
Erik forced his body to relax, to ignore the finger jabbed at him like a weapon. This mattered, he could not get this wrong. He searched for the words.
"Well?" Louise demanded impatiently. "Lost your voice all of a sudden? Why don't you sing it, like that little nightingale you left behind?"
Erik felt his face grow stony beneath the suddenly ill-fitting mask. "Sing it," he repeated slowly.
"Louise, leave off," Jean protested, but Louise put her hands on her hips and stood her ground, the picture of working-class indignation. It would have been humorous, had her words not seeded a terrible suspicion in Erik's mind.
"How," he said, very carefully and clearly, "could you have heard Mademoiselle Daaé sing?"
"With my two ears," Louise retorted, "and damned if it didn't near break my heart to hear it. I won't go to church but that girl has the voice of an angel. I tell you, it made me tremble."
"She sang… for you? Here?!"
Louise shrugged. "For herself, I imagine, but I know little enough of these things. What I do know is, she's an odd one: I saw her nearby, thought I'd have a word with her - but she's not so simple, your young mistress. She knew you'd be back all right, and here you are. So again I ask, you with your tales of going to build in the midst of war: what is it brought you back here? Have you another plan like you did at the Opéra? Is the Daaé girl mixed up in it? I tell you, I don't know what you really are - but I will not have you use my house to hide out. If Jean says stay then well and good, but you'll be honest with us, and you'll keep your sordid business out of here. That fair?"
Erik looked from her to Jean's bemused, but intelligent eyes, then to the rest of the room turned workshop. He did not need it, he could find somewhere else - but all he could hear was the ghostly sound of Christine's music, weaving together what remained of his soul, an exquisitely painful surgery. This room held echoes of the night she had come for him, of her fingertips against his mangled face, her mouth shaping his name, the taste of her skin. The idea of her here, singing alone as she had not done since the Opéra, singing for this coarse woman who understood nothing… It was absurd. And yet it had to be true. A voice like an angel...
"I returned for one reason alone," he said at last. "It is neither sordid nor any of your business. My offer, as it stands, is more than fair: will you take it?"
"All right, all right," Jean said, "that is enough dramatics. You're welcome to stay and I will certainly not refuse your assistance. As to the girl," he made a placating gesture at Louise, "that is your affair and not ours. But my wife is right: if you are planning some mischief or you are the sort of man who thinks little of honour - then you'd best find someplace else."
Honour, Erik thought. They all loved it so, this strange abstraction that turned men into murderers or fodder for cannons, but which had nothing to say of the kind of man who drew a woman to him with song, bound her with music, begged forgiveness - and yet did not, could not, let go.
"Very well then," he said, wanting suddenly to be out of this room, anywhere but here. "I have business in the city but I shall return with the month's rent. You may have my word on that," he glared pointedly at Louise - "as a man of honour."
A man of honour. He wondered what the oh-so-honourable Vicomte de Chagny would say to that.