A/N: I'm loving all the discussion in the reviews! A few bits of trivia to put things in perspective. Marriage in 1870 France was a permanent civic contract (any religious ceremony was only an optional extra): divorce was illegal, even judicial separation was difficult. Understandably, few married young; the average marriage age for women was 27. Women under 21, and men under 25, had to have parental consent, as it was a financial as well as personal transaction. Because it was financial, a huge fraction of the working class never married at all, and under the Commune, common-law partners of members of the National Guard were for the first time given the same allowance as wives (75c per day, half of the day's pay for the men serving). This is not to say that marriage was not romantic, of course it was, but it was also extremely serious.
Chapter 54 — Revolutions
"Christine…"
She vanished into the black maw of the open window, but she had seen him; he felt the glancing blow of recognition strike between them. He never did know how to hide from her. Erik hunched deeper into the alcove until his back met the heavy locked door. Something ghosted over the raw half of his head. A spiderweb. He slapped it away, flesh crawling, and pushed his hat lower, seeking the shadow of its brim. The mobiles had passed through, leaving in their wake only belched wine; no sound save the distant burr of the crowd at the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville and over it, the uneven rattle of his own breathing. Minutes crawled by, but Christine did not emerge again.
He was nauseous with the thought of seeing her and of being seen; of approaching her like this, like a beggar. The cobbled street seemed by turns to stretch and swell, throbbing in waves of pain at the front of his skull. What was she doing so long, holed up in that ugly aristocratic edifice with its two-hundred year old façade dripping wealth from every stone gargoyle? Surely she could not still be inquiring after the Vicomte's health!
At last the gate opened and out drove a carriage, so irksomely tasteful that Erik could not find a thing to fault among its oiled springs and light-spoked wheels that rolled smoothly into the road. The dappled grey horse pulling it was not perhaps in its prime, good horses having been requisitioned some time ago, but it was a fine enough specimen, and Erik could only wonder how it had evaded the butcher. No doubt the family money helped. The crest on the door winked in the light as the carriage passed him.
Ah but he was bitter, and he cared not a whit. He had checked his accounts with all possible care that morning and found only too clear a proof that he was an imbecile, a delusional freak who squandered his income on chocolates when he ought to have been buying a ring and arranging a house. What was it Louise had thundered at him, the time after she had thrust herself into their privacy? A fine dress, a wedding… But it was worse than that, he could scarcely believe how quickly money could disappear on nothing more than the basics: a barrowful of coal, lamp-oil, soap, a single restaurant meal that was not worthy of Christine but better at least than Louise's slops. He could break into the principal to buy a ring, but what was the use of that when it would only diminish further the paltry income that remained?
It was not enough for two. It simply was not enough.
He had flung a pot of ink to spill over the damned calculations, soaking book and work-table both, and even as the stain ate away the evidence, knew the rising horror of despair. An entire pot of good ink wasted, when he had accomplished nothing of what he had set out to do. Letters, he needed to write letters and obtain proof of his standing if he had any hope at all of swaying Madame Giry to his purpose. He had to have her consent before Christine would be released to him. How was he to obtain it when without his architect's salary he could not hope to offer Christine even the mean sort of life she was already living?
God was having a spiteful little joke at him, like a sideshow spectator dangling a piece of bread out of reach. Beg for it, Erik, here it is! Take this girl's soul and her body, make her yours, show the world how a beast copulates. No ring, no veil, no wedding for the likes of you.
It was unendurable. The thought of it had made him shake as with palsy until he clung to the open window of his room, ink stains from his fingers smudging the windowsill, the icy black air of the last October morning squeezing all breath from his lungs. He slammed the pane shut and drew the curtain. He would marry Christine. He would marry her and keep her in a life in which she would know no need, even if he must sink to hell to buy that life.
There were sounds downstairs, squealing door-hinges and the scrape of crates being moved.
"Where do you want these?" came a booming shout from further away, and Erik recognised Maréchal's voice. There were people in the storeroom.
What was this? A dawn meeting? The guns he had heard in the night had long since fallen silent, but evidently the spell of blessed silence was over.
"Bring those here. And the cartridges too."
Cartridges. For rifles, he realised; they were talking about ammunition.
"Tibaldi is taking the Belleville contingent to the Hôtel de Ville," — that was Jean, Erik could almost see him gesticulating as he spoke, "Montmartre must follow! He has at least five thousand with him, perhaps more."
This raised a furore among the others. "Five thousand!"
"Or more; they are foregathering now. We must join them before Trochu's men can cut in between them and us."
The house shuddered and creaked alarmingly as booted feet took the stairs two at a time: unmistakably Louise. Erik heard her panting outside his door and saw the swathe of yellow light from her lantern sweep his floorboards, before the door itself was rattled near out of its frame. The lock groaned but held.
"Andersson!" Louise thundered, all but kicking down the door. The searchlight of the lantern danced crazily around his bare feet. "It's time! We're betrayed, get up, man, get up! Get your sharpshooter arse downstairs, do you hear me? They're surrendering Paris!"
The last finally brought Erik to the door, but Louise had lost patience and left, after thrusting some paper underneath it.
Erik picked it up. There were two sheets: the torn page of an official proclamation, topped with government insignia, and a thin crumpled leaflet blazing with headlines: Metz surrender admitted; Le Bourget recaptured with 1200 men and cannon for the taking. Prussians triumphant. Surrender imminent. A cartoon depicted a grinning, demonic Bismarck wringing the arms of a grieving woman in a crenellated crown, whom Erik supposed to be Paris herself, while in a smaller caricature Bismarck was being obscenely pleasured by a likeness of Marshal Bazaine.
On the margin was a note in Jean's clean signwriter's hand, absurd beside Bismarck's bare rump:
This is the solemn hour, Andersson. Hurry. We need men like you.
Erik eased the handle open and slid soundlessly onto the landing.
The house was erupting. Jean and Louise's confederates scuttled through the pre-dawn darkness like bugs under an overturned rock, passing out rifles, collecting extra cartridge belts. They were in their full National Guard uniform and armed: an entire battalion passing through the storeroom on their way to the city, old men and young, all equally grim and prepared to fight. Paris was dishonoured but not yet broken; they would die before they accepted surrender. Erik watched them from the landing, then returned to his room and locked the door.
This was more than just another riot. This was a revolution.
His gaze returned to the ink-soaked pages on his desk, and next to it, Jean's call to arms. We need men like you.
There were no men like him.
All over the street other men were waking up, throwing on their greatcoats and running outside with their guns. Erik heard them shouting, calling to each other, stamping their feet and cursing lustily at the freezing dawn. They were ready to fight, ready to demand the justice Jean had so often talked of: a fair split of all remaining stockpiles of food and fuel, rifles for every man still standing, and the immediate election of a new government with the courage to defend its own people and the mandate to speak for them.
Honourable goals, and modest enough when considered against the magnitude of the government's betrayal. And why should he not join their uprising? Jean's extended hand promised a share of the power this world was built upon: political power, the right to command. All Montmartre knew him as a war hero. Was he not entitled to some respect to go with the title?
And if their uprising succeeded, would it not make his income irrelevant when it came to being able to offer Christine his life and his protection?
But then there was an opposing choice, another way out of the labyrinth. It was not yet too late to reach the Hôtel de Ville ahead of them to warn the government, and collect the reward due a concerned citizen who so loyally reported treachery. Then Paris would indeed be surrendered, and life would resume. He could have his position again, and an income, and Christine. Surely this was no less honourable a path, to support a government these same people had freely elected not two months ago.
Which was the better choice? Erik stared at the scraps of paper on the floor, and he did not know. He did not know.
A new sound outside distracted him: the clip-clop of donkey hooves plodding down the street.
He parted the curtains a crack and looked down. Two bony donkeys were struggling under their loads, slipping on the frost-slick cobbles. Swaying on their backs were soldiers, or what used to be soldiers: heavily bandaged lumps swathed in grey blankets, with limbs protruding at odd angles, and heads bowed so low that under the pale light they seemed faceless. The young woman leading them wore a man's greatcoat with an armband sewn with the Red Cross.
One of the wounded raised his head, and Erik recoiled from the window: the face was bandaged, and from under the linen zigzagged a black trickle of blood.
Bazeilles. The inferno — it was coming again.
No, it had already begun.
Erik snatched his hand away from the curtains as from a fire, and backed to the chair, the work-table, and the blank inky pages of accounts he could not fill.
What had he been thinking? What infernal cue was he waiting for?
Christine; she was all that mattered. He had been wrong, grievously wrong, to hesitate even a moment, to think of life as other men thought of it, in small shuffling steps, all shackled to one another. This world was no theatre, there were no rehearsals to perfect the show, no opening night for which to work. Jean's uprising, the war, the siege, the cogs in the wheels that moved the scenery, the money he needed for the privilege of leading an ordinary life, none of it mattered. There was nobody up in the flies and even if there was, the lines were too tangled to be of any use.
Here on the shelf was the velvet pouch and within it Christine's ring. There! It tumbled into his palm, and slid reassuringly heavy onto his little finger. Enough gold to fashion a new band, and a diamond to secure the start of their new life, together. The Vicomte ought to be grateful; his money could not be put to a better purpose than Christine's happiness.
Erik pulled on his boots and reached for his bandage, but could not tie it; his fingers were shaking with urgency and the ring got in the way.
What did it matter if he went uncovered? So be it! He flung the linen aside. There was no time for this. He was only a man, an invisible mote of dust in the storm. It did not matter how he looked or what he did, there would be no punishment and no reward. From now on there would be only him and Christine, together against the world.
He clapped his hat directly onto his uncovered flesh, grabbed his coat, and ran through the open storefront and outside.
"Wait!" he heard Jean shout behind him, and then Louise's perplexed, strident voice completing their duet: "Andersson! Where the devil are you going?"
Erik stopped in his tracks and whirled around, unable to resist the music of surrender that had him in its grip. The storefront and the people behind it gaped at him through the morning fog.
He threw his arms wide, letting the coat soar like a cloak, feeling the world spin around his bared deformity. The diamond glittered on his finger.
"It's my wedding day!" His feet wanted to dance. "I'm to be a married man!"
He left them staring comically behind him, goggle-eyed little people caught in the whirlwind of their lives, their deaths and their politics.
He had a wedding to plan.
The morning fell away from him, hour by hour, in the business of organising everything. He had to push past an endless stream of people who insisted on heading the opposite way, intent on their revolution, but they could not detain him, least of all when they saw his face. He made a wonderful, unspeakably joyous discovery: Christine had been right after all; in the influx of wounded men from Le Bourget, another butchered skull seemed only part of the scenery, and people around him hastened to avert their eyes. The thrill of it was intoxicating. He was getting married.
At the mairie there was a dreadfully tedious collection of papers to sign, with exotic questions about his family and the bride's, their parents and even grandparents. He had a wonderful time composing a past for himself, borne aloft on the wings of his epiphany: nobody would ever know or care what he wrote. Nobody at the mairie had the slightest interest in his compositions; they were far more preoccupied with huddling around the doorways to hear the latest news from the street.
"Your nationality?" the pimply young clerk at the desk asked, trying not to sweat too profusely with the effort of pretending the man before him had a face.
"Half-Swedish," Erik dictated, giggling like a schoolboy, "half-Persian." It sounded like a cat, he decided. He liked it.
"Mother's maiden name?"
"Mor," Erik told him. He hoped it was Swedish for 'mother', but perhaps it actually meant death. Who would know? Not this boy or the other petty clerks with his noses in the morning paper, nor the National Guard men poking their heads in and out, nor the half-blind shrivelled mushroom of a man at the next desk. The mushroom verified the existence of Erik's identity papers, falsified so long ago that by now they looked respectably real, and continued in a tone of the utmost indifference, without looking at him:
"Congratulations. Return with the signature of the lady's father."
When Erik disabused him of any hope in that direction, he continued unperturbed, "The mother then; failing that, the grandparents or the guardian. You have thirty days to register the marriage or the papers will be made null and void. Good day!"
And as simple as that, he was in possession of documents that named him the son of some poor Swedish woman by the unlikely name of Mother, and a Persian fakir who no doubt loved her most fervently, but had met his untimely end by swallowing one flaming sword too many, leaving her to find herself a sensible carpenter whose name her son could appropriate. The clerk did not ask for the whole story, being satisfied with only the names, which was his own loss: he was missing a terrific libretto. And now he, Erik Andersson, architect, was free to seek consent from the guardian of Mademoiselle Christine Daaé, singer, former artist of the Opéra.
All that was needed was the ring.
There were jewellers closer to Montmartre, but Erik did not trust them to value Christine's diamond fairly; he chose instead a little shop further west, off the Boulevard de Courcelles, which he knew from the days when it had supplied old Monsieur Lefevre with tasteful pieces of please-don't-leave jewellery to appease Carlotta. It was a quiet and tidy affair, and to his great delight open despite the chaos of the streets. The diamond was produced, checked, weighed, and signed for. The jeweller, a tired little man with a magnifying loupe that seemed welded to his eye socket, looked directly into Erik's face and sighed, his other eye watering inexplicably.
"Cannon?" he asked. Erik said nothing, but the jeweller nodded just as though he had all the answer he needed, and reached for his ink. The total he wrote far, far exceeded Erik's expectations.
"Take my advice, monsieur, and do not melt the ring. It is a fine piece. If it is a wedding-band you require, I would gladly sell you another. You may have it today, if you like. Shall I size it to match this one?"
Erik clutched at the valuation paper, and looked at Christine's ring laid before him on a scrap of velvet. Even with prices climbing as they did, Christine and he could live half a year at least on that money. No siege could last that long; he would become an architect again, and they would live as man and wife, out in the burning sunlight.
Erik gave a sharp nod, and the ring was taken away.
A quarter of an hour later, he walked out into the white daylight with a box that held a slender circuit of rose gold, simple and perfectly beautiful. Inside was a monogram composed of two letters, C and E, entwined.
He was perhaps halfway to Christine's apartment when the full weight of what he had done began to catch up with him. His footsteps slowed, and he was forced to duck under the porch roof of an abandoned building before his thundering heart could burst through his chest. Raising his hand to his face, Erik groped for what he hoped might confirm this to be only a very vivid dream — but his fingertips connected with his own slick warped flesh, and pressed into the ridge of malformed cheekbone beneath. He raked a nail over it. The pain was sudden, hot and undeniably real.
He was maskless.
The street before him was full of people, women for the most part, talking in small worried groups. Nobody was paying him any attention.
Christine's diamond was gone. In its place was a stamped and sealed document intended for the bank, with the weight and value of its component metal and stone, nothing else. Under it, folded into a rectangle the size of his hand, were the marriage documents he had acquired. And resting on top was a small box containing the plain gold band.
He was trembling all over, even his teeth chattering. What was the use of a paper? What madman sells his soul for a valuation stamp? If he lost the paper, if he were robbed — if today's uprising blossomed into some new and different reality where money no longer mattered…
Oh God. Christine had been waiting for him, he suddenly recalled; he had promised to accompany her to Chagny's new quarters. How long would she wait before she knew herself abandoned? Would she go on alone, braving the crowds?
He looked again at the things he was holding, and felt anew the strangeness of wind upon the entirety of his face. No; he could not lose everything now. He would not.
Later, he thought it had been the most agonising hour of his life, or near enough; worse than everything except the terrible last moments of his opera.
He was a sideshow freak walking the streets of Paris, carrying in his pockets another man's wealth and another man's right to call Christine his wife. He could find nothing to cover his face except a handkerchief, whose whiteness only made the scars around it so apparent that he was forced to abandon it and continue as he was. The insane sense of freedom that had possessed him before had drained away completely; he felt naked, hideous, exposed.
The banks were shut; the city was in chaos. Near the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, he saw the frayed edge of a growing crowd and could have sworn that just for a minute, Christine's music had sounded there, sung in her own voice. Clear, forceful, undeniable; it pulled him towards itself, closer and closer to the perilous whirlpool of people. Then the illusion fled and he was left bereft, his whole soul craving more.
He floundered too long at the outskirts of the crowd, embracing to his body the precious contents of his pockets and hoping against all reason that he might indeed encounter Christine, but the music must have been nothing but a trick of the ear.
Erik diverted his course at last, picking his way with difficulty between the latecomers on their way to the Hôtel de Ville as he searched among the street-signs for the address where Chagny's friend had his apartment. If Christine was not there, if she waited for him still…
But she was there. She had been at the window, and as the carriage passed, Erik was certain he glimpsed a flash of dark curls within, next to a lighter head that must have been Meg's. Christine did not need to wait for him; she had her own life, and her own plans.
He cowered in his shadowed alcove, wondering how to leave it.
Another carriage approached, and as it rolled past, Erik saw with a disturbing sense of déjà vu that it was identical to the first one, down to the dappled horse. A moment, and his mind cleared: it was simply the same carriage; it must have driven around the corner and returned.
The door flew open and Christine leaped out onto the cobbles, bare-headed and flushed, with her coat-sleeve ripped at the shoulder, rushing headlong towards him.
"Erik!"
The world slowed its spinning. He took a step out of the shadow and there was Christine, coming back to him over the dark waters of the lake, and every hiding place she touched was thrown open to the air and to the light. Her eyes were on his and the symphony in his heart was love.
He opened his mouth to explain, to warn her of his unmasked face, but did not get the chance.
Christine did not slow down at all but cannoned straight into him and took his head between her hands. It hurt. It felt wonderful.
"You're here!" Her forehead pressed to his was warm and sinfully sweet. "I knew I'd seen you there, but we drove past and… Do you have any idea — any idea at all — how much I needed you today? Tell me what happened!"
She was touching his face. Christ! They were out of the alcove and standing right in the street. Were they being watched from the carriage? Or the house? He clapped his hand to his scars, but Christine pulled his arm aside in exasperation.
"Erik! What are you doing here, like this?"
"Ah." This was it, this was the moment. Christine was waiting, but he seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.
"Here. For you."
Erik thrust the ring into her hand, box and all. Oh bravo, he mocked himself, well done, monsieur, truly an eloquent performance.
Christine held the box as though it was about to burst into flames. Erik reached over to flip open the lid. Then he took the folded documents from his pocket and showed her those as well, hoping that she would think the tremor in the paper was only the breeze.
"We will need Madame Giry's consent, of course, but you see, it is all arranged, the papers, everything. Christine? Christine…"
She had opened the document and laid one finger over her name written there.
"Daaé." Her voice was very soft; Erik had to strain to hear it. "Do you know that people like Henri Guyon," she tipped her chin at the building behind her, "they used to hear my father's name and say, oh, of course, the great violinist. But now they say, that Daaé girl, there was a scandal, wasn't there… And they laugh. They laugh at his name."
She raised her face again and Erik saw her eyes were brimming. "I needed you today, because I sang, out there in the crowd — I didn't meant to do it, but it happened and it was… Erik, I sang my own music. And I want to do it again, properly. Do you remember Monsieur Ballard, from the Folies? The one who asked us to perform. I'm going to call on him, and I need you there with me. Please."
Erik feared he would drop the jewellery box, or the precious documents would flutter down into the dirt. "The ring, Christine. We must marry within the month, or all this has been for nothing…"
She nodded, took the ring and blithely put it on her finger. "It is a lovely ring, Erik. Thank you."
He gaped, felt his head spin and barely kept his balance. "It is a wedding band!" he said stupidly. "You wear it… after… When you are married."
Christine touched the back of her hand to the corner of his mouth; a familiar gesture made new by the ring.
"We are as married as we need to be. Do the papers matter?"
Erik stumbled back from her touch, horrified, repulsed by his body's betrayal of everything he felt: Christine's ringed finger teasing his lips, her waist close enough to grasp, her mouth speaking awful, incomprehensible words.
"They matter! The papers matter to me!"
She bit her lip until it was white, and said, "Why?"
"Why? Why?!" He was screaming, he felt the force of it in his throat but heard only his blood rushing with the roar of a crowd. "Because I am a man, Christine! Did you ask the Vicomte 'why', too? No? Let me be, get out of my way!"
He shook her off, more violently than he had intended, and heard her gasp behind him, but he did not care. He had to be gone, now, before he lost consciousness, before he forgot how to do anything but howl at the walls. The carriage door was open; he just caught a glimpse of Meg's appalled face within. The driver was climbing down off his box, but he was much too slow to matter.
"Erik!" Christine cried behind him, and her voice was pure as the Angel's, and just as perfect a lie. "Erik, I love you!"
He may have laughed, he could not tell. All he knew was that he ran.