Chapter 15
Deep in my heart, his desperate appeal
strikes an answering chord...
-Eugene Onegin
Music suggestions: 'Letters' by Abel Korzeniowski ('W/E' motion picture soundtrack); 'Cycling Holiday' by Nico Muhly ('The Reader' motion picture soundtrack)
It was not until the next week that Erik completed and delivered the rest of his apology to Christine. He didn't worry about whether Meg might read it; she wouldn't fully understand, for his apology was written in music.
A curious choice, perhaps, but it was his true language - far more than words – and happily, one that both he and Christine understood.
On the deepest level, words did not make sense to him, since he had spent so little of his life conversing with anyone. To him, they were hollow and deceitful. One could not lie in music, however. He thought in music, dreamt in it. It was how he felt his feelings. He believed it was the true nature of reality.
A medium as ironclad, as powerful and just as that was the only way he could possibly convey the depth of remorse to Christine.
And so, he'd done what he would never do for anyone else, and written a piece especially for her. He'd written many pieces in her honor before, but never shown them to her. How curious, that he had composed a thousand songs for her singing of ecstatic, star-blessed, resounding love and would never have the courage to show them to her, and the one he was going to show her was full of nothing but humility and regret, merely a simple heartfelt plea for forgiveness.
He'd spent every hour of the whole week on it, not sleeping, living on nothing but coffee and morphine. He had never put so much of himself into a work before. There were things in it he could never confess to any other living soul.
When he handed the score to Meg - she'd somehow contrived to leave rehearsal a few minutes early - she looked at it in surprise. "Is this all?"
All? Erik thought incredulously. 'Is music all'? How can you ask such a thing? Christine must be friends with this person for a good reason, but really, it was exceedingly distressing to hear her say such things! "Why… yes."
"What's so important about this?" Meg asked in bewilderment.
"Christine will understand," he insisted. He hoped that was true.
"Is it a code?" Meg looked intrigued.
"Not exactly," he said.
"What do you mean?" she demanded.
"It is rather difficult to explain."
"Oh, yes, I'm sure I could never understand," she said acidly.
"I simply mean… Christine has an unusual mind... a mind that works differently than others."
"Well, that's certainly true," Meg said wryly.
"I do not mean that in an insulting way."
"Yes, I know you don't." Meg pursed her lips. "Well, if it means you'll leave me in peace, I'll give this to her - I don't see what harm it can do."
Music could do more harm than anything else, he wanted to point out. Music could rip the mind apart just as easily as it could offer comfort. It was powerful. It was dangerous. It could make one feel or think anything. But he couldn't say that. Meg would surely think him a madman, if she did not already. And he desperately needed to preserve what little trust he'd managed to gain from her.
Besides, this music wouldn't hurt Christine. He'd been careful to ensure that.
Instead of voicing any of that, he simply said, "Thank you."
Meg nodded briskly. "Is there anything else?" she demanded.
"No," he said. He'd suddenly found that all he could think about was going home and resting. Writing that music had nearly broken him.
"Then please - go." She punctuated this demand with a jerk of her chin.
Erik was only too happy to oblige. He kept his promise to her and disappeared.
Meg cornered Christine backstage a few minutes later.
"This is for you," she said, holding out the music. "Shh."
"Who is this from?" Christine said warily.
"I believe you can guess."
Christine jumped. "Him?" She didn't want to say Erik's name.
"Yes, 'him'." Meg couldn't help sneering a little; evidently, Christine supposed, she thought her overdramatic.
"He came to you?" Christine said, puzzled.
"Yes, poor me." Meg rolled her eyes.
Christine glanced down at the document. "What is this?"
"He said it is an apology." Meg shrugged.
"Oh." Christine hesitated. Then, "Well, I am sorry you have been put to so much trouble."
"What do you mean?" Meg demanded.
"It is... dangerous."
"Dangerous? What, do you think it's poisoned?" Meg said dryly.
"Worse. I think it is exactly what it appears to be."
"Christine, you're talking in riddles again. It's not like you. It's only music. What harm can that do?"
"More than anything else," Christine said, her eyes wide. She was afraid, as though it were a serpent that might bite her. It was the first time, at least that she knew of, that Erik had composed anything directly to her. She didn't know what this new music held - and she was aware of what Erik's music could do, the power it contained. "I don't want it. Get rid of it."
"This is absurd," Meg said, wincing in annoyance. "Dear, I've gone to a lot of risk to get this to you. Take it."
"I tell you, I don't want it!" Christine cried, and with a violence that surprised them both, she lashed out and struck it to the floor.
Several heads turned toward them.
"Don't mind us," Meg called. "Christine is just being eccentric, as usual."
Christine rolled her eyes.
"If you don't like it you can stop playing," Meg muttered to her once everyone had gone back to their business. "What are you afraid of?"
Tears welled in Christine's eyes. "It was his music that first made me fall in love with him. This will only hurt me."
"You think this will make you fall back in love with him?"
"Yes," Christine said. Indeed, I have never fallen out of love with him... she added, but silently.
"Don't be silly," Meg said. "You have a good head on your shoulders. You know he is a fool. A pretty melody and some nice harmonies aren't enough to make you lose your senses and forget that."
"I suppose you are right," Christine admitted slowly, bundling them into her arms. "I shall stay behind a few minutes after rehearsal and look at this. Where can I play it?"
"Your practice-room."
"No... It reminds me of him."
"Oh." Meg, to her credit, accepted this without objection. She lapsed into thought. After a moment, a catlike grin spread over her face. "How about La Carlotta's dressing-room? It has a piano - a ridiculous enormous one. She isn't here- she'll never know."
"The idea has an undeniable appeal - but someone would see me," Christine said. "You're never alone in this opera house."
"No one will see. It's off in a corridor by itself." Meg winked. "Why, only last week Cecile Sorelli used it for a rendez-vous with a young gentleman, and no-one saw them go in or out. If they hadn't bragged about it to the entire corps de ballet, we would never have found out."
At last, Christine gave a faint smile. "You are incorrigible. Oh, very well."
Christine sat alone in front of La Carlotta's lavish pink-and-gold rococo grand piano, wringing her hands in her lap. In front of her was the score Erik had sent to her. Serenata for Christine, it said simply.
What could be more harmless? What could be more dangerous?
Despite what Meg said, she still wasn't sure at all she wanted to play it. A part of her had wanted to throw it away, to burn it, even, but she simply could not. That would be murder. So she had tried hiding it from herself. But her hands, almost by themselves, had taken it out from where she'd buried it at the bottom of her dressing-room locker, and brought it back here, set it back up on the piano, where it seemed to stare at her, demanding to be played.
She'd started out on the other side of the room, looking at it uneasily out of the corner of her eye - it seemed to fill the room - but slowly she had been drawn closer to it. Eventually she had come to rest on the piano bench. She'd been sitting there staring back at it for a quarter of an hour now.
She tried not to read the notes, but the temptation was too great. Her eyes were drawn to the first measure again and again, as though by a magnet. Inwardly she fumed at her father and Erik for teaching her to sight-read so well. The melody began to seep into her brain.
There was nothing for it, then. No way out but through.
Unknotting her hands, she shook them to loosen her wrists and began to play, gingerly at first, as though the keys might burn her.
She did not know what she had been expecting - that she would explode, or the world would end, or Erik would come bursting into the room, his cloak swirling around him and his hand outstretched - but whatever it was, it did not happen, and slowly she lost herself in the music.
The melody gradually became more anguished.
As each labored chord met the air, they transfigured into pure emotion, guilt and grief and anguish exploding around her. It was an apology, undoubtedly - the most sincere apology she had ever heard.
And then, at the end, a question. No answer was provided.
She was the one who could answer it, not him.
When it was over, she collapsed across the piano keys, overwhelmed. She understood now. Something he had not been able to tell her in any other way.
She didn't know yet what she would say to him. She certainly could never guess what he would say or do. But she knew she had to find a way to see him.
No matter what Meg thought - no matter what Erik wanted - she must see him again.
The music had made that clear to her.
End of Chapter 15. Thank you so much for reading!