The Mystery-verse unmasking scene from Erik's perspective.
She watches me with awestruck eyes, focusing on my hands as I play. Wondering if she can replicate it. I lose myself in the melody of The Resurrection of Lazarus, trying to focus on the notes and not remember the reaction of her when she heard me play. This song now—and the girl listening—are my moments of redemption. The things of beauty that can redeem, at least in part, the ugliness of my past.
Though not in full. My innocent child can never know the horrors of her father.
I finish the piece; Madeleine watches with eager eyes. Her lips are pressed into a line and she rubs them together. She wants to ask me something. I force back a memory of her doing the same thing when she was little—though she used to sway and turn like a dancer when she did that. Now, she moves with refined elegance only done among the upper-class.
"Maestro?"
"Yes?"
Her tone is hesitant and trying. "You said you unmasked yourself last night. I was wondering if…"
"You want me to show you?" Part of me quivers and shakes at her desire, like instinctual flinching, but another trembles with hope. Perhaps she remembers. But it has been so long, over a decade, since I have shown my face to anyone. My Christine and our daughter have been the only people to have seen my bare face. Not even Daroga has seen it—he cannot stomach it.
"You do not have to if you do not want to!" she cries, eyes growing wide in fear of my reaction. "I am just…curious. But I understand if you do not want to show me."
At that, she turns around, giving me some privacy. My heart is warmed by her gesture—my sweet, considerate girl! With a trembling hand, I press my fingers to the mask to remove it. While doing so I recall the first time I felt another woman's eyes on my face.
Christine…
She stalked behind me, I was so engrossed on fixing the notes in Don Juan, that I barely saw the little shadow of her elegant hand reaching for my mask. When I felt cold air against my dead flesh, I knew. I screamed and cursed at her while she ran around in fright and she finally fell. I raged at her, snarling like the animal, the monster, I had been. Then I had cried like an affection-starved child.
She gave me back my mask, my shield that protected me from the cruel stares of the world.
She unmasked me again, before a crowd of people. I took her and ran and finally forced her into the lair and like the villain I had been, forced her into that wedding dress. She had stared with hard eyes at my sorry excuse of a face.
"Erik, your face no longer frightens me. Your soul is the problem."
Finally, after she married me and she was heavily pregnant with Madeleine, she gave me an insistent look. We were lying in bed, I next to her and one hand resting on her stomach. She snaked a warm hand up to caress my face, turning my head so I could look at her. She was glowing—she looked absolutely beautiful while pregnant. She gave me her warm, sweet smile. My ingenue. My Christine...
"Erik," she said, the way she crooned my name never failing to make me love her more. "When…when the baby is born…I want him or her to see your face. To know your face and not the mask."
My smile had fallen slack. I was used to not wearing the mask around the house. Christine insisted, and I agreed. Now, I hesitated with that request, eyeing her stomach. I would not subject my innocent progeny to the horror I lived with daily. "What if it's afraid, Christine? What if the child does grow to fear my face?"
Her expression remained serious, but her eyes were full of tenderness. "Erik, from what I know of babies, they simply recognize the parent's face. Yes, one day we may have to explain it, but not for a long while. Our baby will only know you, their papa."
I reluctantly agreed despite my fear. When Madeleine was born, the first glimpse she had of me was of my face. She had cried, but that was a natural newborn reaction. It was my voice that lulled her, calmed her.
My mask is off my face now, the warm air touching my skin. It feels good to have relief from the stifling porcelain, even just for a moment.
Madeleine rambles on while I wait in dread. What if, for the first time in her life, she does react in fear? If she is afraid? She was raised a Vicomtesse; her eyes are innocent to many horrors.
She turns around. Now she sees.
She observes me with caution, with care. Her eyes, a reflection of my own, grow in surprise. Her chest rises and falls quicker, but her body remains still. Something else is in her eyes, something I've only ever seen in Christine's: compassion. My heart lurches, yearning for my wife (my Christine) while filling with love in the eyes of our daughter. Finally, a long forgotten security returns to me. Even if she does not recognize it, this young woman, my little girl, still loves me so deeply.
"Does it hurt?"
Ah, my precious, considerate child! Warmth pierces my chest like an arrow. No one ever asked me that question immediately on seeing my face. "The mask can chafe against it, but no. Are you afraid, Mademoiselle?"
The cold porcelain sits like a weight in my hands, smooth beneath my fingers. Madeleine is relieved the mask is off. I cannot forget the day I learned she feared it. I came home from work that day only to walk into the sound of my baby screaming. I tended to her. She looked at me, and promptly screamed louder. I remember the screaming child flailing in my arms, kicking and pushing me away, her voice hoarse and face scarlet red. I was shocked—why was my beloved baby now terrified of me? Christine mentioned something to me, I complained that I didn't know why she was crying, and in one rapid motion, Christine unmasked me.
Madeleine calmed a little then, and I stormed on my angel of a wife. "Why, Christine, did you—"
Her eyes went wide in fear of my reaction, but her voice was sharp. "The mask, Erik! She didn't recognize you!"
Madeleine now answers my question and there is soothing relief at her response. She sucks in a breath, trying to find the courage to tell me the hard truth. "I will not lie to you, sir, it is…" Her voice dies off with uncertainty.
"Horrid, I know." I have to tell her the story, tell her how brave and kind her mother was. "In time, my Divina came to accept my face. She was adamant that the child…" I choose different words, words that are far more personal, "that our baby would know this and not a mask." She was right. That baby, now a young woman, still does not fear the face that has been the source of nightmares for countless others. In Persia, this was one of the horrors men saw before I used the lasso. Even the Khanum, the wicked woman she was, feared the sight of my face.
"But I am not afraid of it, Maestro. Not at all. I prefer this to your mask—I am speaking honestly." Her tone is quick, thick with emotion and meant to reassure me. I can tell by the candid look on her beautiful face. Yes, she means every word. She means this more than even she knows. It must stay that way. My face helped morph me into a monster, a man with a corrupt past. Her not knowing the truth means she will not be tainted by the association. My Madeleine was the only perfection to come out of my life—she the beauty to come from ugliness, the light from darkness. She belongs to light, to life as a Vicomtesse. As does…her…
Christine…my Christine…
"Though, sir, I am wondering…you had a weapon with you that night. Your noose that you used."
Fear seeps deep into me. Madeleine was never to know of the lasso, never to know of my horrific past in Persia. I have to keep my tone casual, praying I can divert her attention.
"Your noose, sir, please teach me how to block it."
How am I to respond to such a request? No, no, absolutely not! My child would not learn of the weapon I used to take so many lives. I killed men, husbands, fathers... Yet she insists, wanting to learn how to block and defend herself. The odds of her meeting another who knows how to use a noose are rare-men with knives and guns are more common in New York-but she does not take my refusal for an answer.
My stubborn, stubborn child.
I reluctantly agree, and she thanks me.
