Hands
A/N: Later on there's a little whiff of "V for Vendetta." Also, Jennie, my advisor on all things Scandinavian, tells me that Christine's lacework isn't traditional, but I've let the character have a little artistic freedom...
Monsieur Gagnepain's legal offices were housed in a narrow grey building with a front door of carved ornate walnut, trimmed with brass. Brass vines grew out of the mouth of a metallic male face which formed the knocker, and they made leafy curves around the oval cut glass window below. The golden face leered at me as I touched the ring in its mouth. It seemed pinned down by the weight of vegetation pouring forth from its fat cheeks.
A valet as tall and grey and flat as the building itself let me in, staring over his half-frame wire glasses. The noise of the Paris street slowly faded as he closed that massive door, walling us inside a dark woodpanelled foyer thickly carpeted in crimson. Portraits of lawyers long dead lined the corridor. At first he didn't know whether to let me precede him, as he should with a lady, or lead me himself, as I did not know the way. I waved him on, and he harrumphed a little, as if I made his life difficult by not being a gentleman.
The law offices occupied the first floor. The two above were given over to rooms for the young unmarried lawyers, the clerks, the accountants. Raoul used to joke that M. Gagnepain was as discouraging of marriage as the abbot of a monastery, for his employees were sometimes loth to give up the comforts of their rooms above the brass-encrusted hub of activity. When they lived in his rooms, they received two meals a day, clean linens, and coal for the fire. The maids were drawn from the leanest, scraggiest, and oldest ones who could still work. They lived in smaller, poorer rooms on the top story. M. Gagnepain set two strict rules – he made no bed-checks, but his servants were strictly off-limits, and anyone who touched one was summarily dismissed. Similarly, no women were to be brought into the building, save mothers or sisters. Other than that, as long as the solicitors and clerks were at their desks at nine o'clock sharp, he asked no questions.
It was a remarkable system, and it really did encourage diligence as well as bachelorhood. The few married solicitors (aside from M. Gagnepain, who claimed that it was his sensible Swiss wife who had thought up the idea) complained that they were being unfairly punished for their married state, and he promptly gave them a bonus for each new baby. "He's a social reformer," Raoul explained when he first told me that he had moved all of the de Chagny legal business to this upstart's firm. "But he wins his cases, and that's why people come to him, even if he's new, and has no family connections."
Now, as I sipped green Chinese tea brought by the valet, I regretted not meeting the legendary attorney who over the decades had stood Paris on its ear by winning one inheritance dispute after another. More than a few of his cases involved men who tried to get their wives declared mad, so to seize their dowries or inheritances, or to have prenuptial agreements set aside (and a few wives trying to do the same.) Indignant fathers and siblings of these mistreated spouses knew whom to seek out for relief. The suffragettes of England had fêted him at a dinner, claiming he had done more to release unjustly imprisoned women than anyone else in France, but he refused to go. He had done it for one reason, and one alone, he said, the money. A fond reader of American novels, he liked to joke in the style of one such writer, "Rumors of my altruism are greatly exaggerated."
But time grinds down even the mill-wheel, and today he was no longer a young upstart, but a sick old man who had left the firm in the hands of his junior partners. Each was reputed to be as unconventional and energetic as himself, and one of those I was about to meet.
From the dim velveted waiting room I walked into glossy wooden brightness. The morning sun poured through the uncurtained windows of a large, cluttered office, so all that could be seen of the man behind the desk was the blinding glare reflecting off his glasses. Slowly into view came a round face with thick side whiskers that joined full and curly under the stubby nose. His chin poured over the starched top of his pristine white collar. The light made his glasses opaque, so I couldn't see his eyes.
"Jacques Lalonde Peillard," he said in a rich basso profundo. "At your service, Madame de Chagny." Blindly I extended my hand, and at once it was seized and cushioned by warmth, as if two pillows from the divan had risen up of their own accord and embraced me with their rough, dry fleshiness. The backs of his hands were covered in profuse, fox-colored hair. His breath on my skin was warm, too, and a little moist. Then he let me go, lingeringly, and as the sun beamed off his snow-white cuffs, he waved me to sit. The valet pulled the chair out for me.
"I'd have done it myself, Madame de Chagny," he rumbled, "but I'm too comfortable. Just got settled in this morning." In another man such breach of manners would be shocking, but he smiled warmly when he said it, settled comfortably in the wide leather chair. All the papers were laid out neatly on his desk, an oasis of broad, glossy mahogany order in that tumbling chaotic room. His hair was the same rich color as the wood, a little thin on top, but still full and curly on the back and sides.
I wanted to inquire about M. Gagnepain's health, but there was no time. Quickly he went about the business at hand, and Philippe's worries were groundless, for he needn't have been present at all. It took no longer than an hour, and afterwards Peillard rang a little bell. One of his clerks came in, a long thin man with a somber expression. "Type these up for Madame de Chagny," the solicitor said a little breathlessly, "so that she can have them to take with her. You can wait, Madame, can you not? If you wish, I will have more tea brought in."
"You're surprisingly calm," he remarked, as I squeezed lemon into a fresh cup. His he took with milk, English style.
"For what, M. Peillard? Why shouldn't I be?" I asked, genuinely curious. He rested his hands over his loose big stomach, the bare left hand on top. I thought of my own ring, which I still wore.
"Most women in your position would be in tears at the sale of a family estate, especially under the unique circumstances."
"Circumstances?"
"Having the building itself disassembled, and moved to the New World. We had some disputes about that, as I'm sure the late M. de Chagny told you." Then he stopped. "Forgive me, Madame, for taking the liberty."
"It's fine," I said. "It's been five months, God rest his soul."
"You're enduring well, I'm sure." He leaned forward, crossing his big arms over one another on the desk.
"I was never close to the family," I said, wondering if he wore no ring, as many men didn't, or if he lived upstairs in the bachelor quarters. He's a little old for that, I thought, being about forty-five, from the silvery touches above his ears. Then his warm round face encouraged me to an uncharacteristic frankness. "I married in from the wrong side of town, so to speak."
"Yes, that was clear," and even though he spoke seriously, there was a little bass laugh underneath. "None of these documents bear your family crest, and no crest was ever merged in with your late husband's."
"M. de Chagny put all that behind him as a young man. The family never quite forgave him."
"So I assumed, when gathering permissions to take to the magistrate, so that the removal of the structure might be sanctioned." Suddenly he shook himself, as if something occurred to him. "I like the sunlight," he said, "but perhaps you might not. Would you like me to draw the blinds a bit?" I nodded, and as he rose to pull the wooden blinds down over the east window, I tried not to look at his large, strong frame, how the fabric of his dress coat strained across his back, how the thick muscles in his legs pumped as he moved across the room. He accidentally kicked a volume left on the floor, and apologized.
Dimmed, the room seemed softer, more inviting. "Tell me something, M. Peillard," I said. "My late husband has told me that you are a relatively new firm. Yet when I came in through your foyer, it looked as if you'd had attorneys here that went back to the reign of Napoleon I."
He grinned, boyish. "M. Gagnepain bought them at auction. He thought it would impress the clients. He didn't even know who half those men were."
I fought laughter, then picked up a lemony biscuit sprinkled with sandy sugar. "Your wife bakes well."
He blushed, eyes crinkling behind his glasses, and with the glare gone, I could see they were medium brown, like a fox's. "I have none, I'm afraid," he remarked.
All the wiles of Paris which I never used in my youth leapt unbidden to my aid. Through lowered lashes I murmured, "Most unfortunate, Monsieur. So you are a widower? How sad."
"No, Madame," he said, faintly blushing now, "I'm a bachelor, and have never married."
I sighed, as if to say, in all this city, not one for you, then laughed a little inside. You're older than him by a good seven years, I told myself, maybe more. Some men grey up around the edges early. And if he isn't married by now, there's probably a reason. "I understand M. Gagnepain is generous to his employees," I remarked, giving a faint gesture towards the upstairs.
"Indeed," he said. "It is very comfortable here, so there are compensations. And I do have my own interests outside of the law to keep me occupied." I smiled encouragingly, so he went on, "I met the late M. de Chagny on his last visit to our office, when M. Gagnepain introduced us, informing me on all the particulars of the estate" and he rolled a pencil in his round fingers, twiddling the end, pressing his resilient fleshy fingertips with the point. "M. Gagnepain's health was failing, even two years ago."
"He's permanently retired, then?"
"Assuredly. It's his liver, failing to the point where he no longer can leave his home." His face was open and fresh like a boy's, despite the plump chin and silver-tinged hair. He's never had a man's cares, I thought. But his freshness appeals to me, it's like going on a holiday. Then we sat silently for a moment, and he fidgeted a little. "I'll see what's to be done with those papers. I expected them to be completed for you by now."
He returned with the clerk, who notarized each form as I signed it. It was formal, solemn, like signing a writ of execution. The clerk handed my copies to me and went to file the others. Since I stood, my lawyer did too, and the same awkward full air descended upon us again, as if that room of bare wood and thick books had grown too small. He filled the space behind his desk.
"The best regards to your children," he said presently. It was as if neither of us wanted to move towards the door.
"I'll tell my son, Dr. Philippe de Chagny," I remarked. "He's in Paris at present, on some medical business."
His face went pink, and he became transfixed, then almost seemed to visibly lighten, as if his round full form were being pumped full of helium, rather than filled solid with flesh. "Indeed? I didn't make the connection. Philippe de Chagny is your son? The medical doctor?"
"Yes," I said, suddenly uncomfortable, but flushed at the same time, because his eyes bored into me now, no longer soft and foxy-warm, but hot with reddish-brown fire.
"Madame," he said, breathless, "I would have never suspected, for you look far too young," and I could not hide the blush that blossomed across my cheek. "I would ask you to have lunch with me today, but some boring Justice undersecretary has invited those in our firm to the Ministry, and it would be impolitic for me not to attend. But tomorrow? You will still be in Paris tomorrow?"
"I will," I answered, as flustered now as he was, glad that I had the appointment with Martyniere, but regretting it too. "I'm afraid I'm otherwise engaged, though."
"Supper, then?" He saw me draw back a little, and then hesitated. "No, that wouldn't be fitting, would it? You still wear the black. But the next day? Surely you have shopping to do, friends to visit, and will be in Paris yet another day?"
I could stay in Paris, but didn't want to admit that. "Monsieur, I'm afraid I have responsibilities in Brussels ..."
"Breakfast, then. Before your train, the day after tomorrow. At ten o'clock."
He waited, leaning over the desk with his big, strong shoulders, and I started to chide myself for weakness, but then that laughter bubbled up inside again, something wild and fresh. Not wanting to appear too eager, I hesitated and appeared to calculate. "But you have your duties at the office..." I demurred.
"Never mind that. I will manage. Your hotel is the Cotillion, correct? As I recall, there is a cafe cat-a-corner from there."
"Yes," I answered, "with excellent brioche. They make it with golden currants."
"Have some with me there," he said. "At ten o'clock."
Breathless as a schoolgirl, I agreed and took my hasty departure, fearing that as fast as I might prop up the fortress walls of coquetry and hesitancy, as quickly they might crumble.
o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Erik wanted to show me the Communard dungeons, and so along we went down a planked walkway that twisted through low-ceilinged dark tunnels. Every twenty meters or so, a tiny gaslight flickered. Erik carried a lantern which cast a dim yellow glow on the dripping grey walls. From side tunnels cool breaths of air blew over me, invigorating despite the damp gravelike smell.
He walked ahead of me, testing for weak spots. In a slouched soft hat his head almost scraped the low ceiling. My head and neck were warmly wrapped in one of his scarves, a soft cashmere mixed with some silk. It smelled like him, sharp and a bit musky. "Don't go so fast," I called out at one point, afraid of being left, and he slowed down like a ship coming into port, tall and wide in his long cloak, but did not turn around. He filled my thoughts as his frame filled the narrow corridor ahead of me, lit into a sweeping shape of black, silhouetted by the lantern which he carried in front of him. His herbal drink and the cool, damp air of the tunnels had cleared my head, but the feel of him inside my body would not fade. There was no residual pain, no more burning or ache. What remained was the knowledge into which I had been initiated, the sensation of being opened up and exposed, of being fractured into separate parts and put back together again, but as what?
At the few rough or broken spots, he offered me his arm but did not touch me otherwise. He talked on and on about one of his favorite subjects, the draining of the swamp at the foundations of the Opera. The ragged emotional edge had gone out of his voice and he became animated, as if digging a gigantic hole and filling it with a concrete tub were the most fascinating thing in the world. Even so, I scarcely listened, only making appreciative murmurs now and again. When I had arranged the scarf in my bedroom's mirror, it half-surprised me that there was no mark on my forehead, no scarlet sign screaming to the heavens that a virgin had been deflowered. Now that I walked behind him, every step brought another awareness of some part of me so long before unnoticed, now forged into awareness by his defining strokes. A strange, solitary pride stole over me, for having endured. For having prevailed.
When he turned a corner and said, "Here we are," I expected something like a medieval dungeon out of the engravings of a romantic story. Instead, in a row ran six or eight little wooden doors with strips of iron across them. He opened one and let me peer into the tiny, earthy-smelling space. It looked like the open mouth of a grave, and I shuddered. He put his lantern up to the hole of the little crypt and inside I could see chains, most fixed into the wall, a few strewn on the earthy floor.
A horrible thought rose up. "Were you in one of these?" I whispered.
He nodded, slowly. "This one. For two weeks."
"This very cell ... It amazes me that you could come back here. And to be imprisoned, when you said you were on no one's side during the uprising."
"That's right, I wasn't. They could both go straight to hell, as far as I was concerned. But a man must associate himself with one side or another in order to live, and since I was in Paris during the siege and afterwards, the Commune was whom I would work with. They were grateful of my services, at first."
"What did you do for them?"
He laughed, short and humorless. "Munitions. They planned to rig major buildings throughout the city with explosives in their basements, set to ignite. It wasn't a matter of 'if General Thiers's army managed to breach the city walls,' it was a matter of 'when.' They thought to hold off the army advancing from Versailles with that threat, and my task was to make it so that a few buildings could be used as examples, should the Comunard's bluff be called. They didn't have enough gunpowder, you see, to put inside all of them," and here he chuckled mirthlessly once more. "Thier hopefully would not suspect that it was a bluff. That was where I came in. Certain buildings were selected to be set up with actual explosives that could be detonated, and others – the vast majority of others – were to be set up with apparatus that the casual observer would take for explosives. Anyone getting close enough to tell would risk ignition. For the dummy munitions, we took barrels of rice and put thin layers of gunpowder on top, near the igniting wires. Someone foolish enough to open one would assume the whole barrel was chock-full. Would you like to see inside?"
The worst fear I had on earth, what made my throat clench and my stomach churn, was to be in a small, entirely dark space, with no escape. For the first time it occurred to me that someone else could hate this too, and had to endure it as well. "I don't think I can," I breathed. "Erik, don't make me."
His voice was like liquid silk poured over glass when he wanted it to be. "No, of course not," and he smiled, but it was not a reassuring one. Then he stepped in, and the little cell was too low-ceilinged for him to stand. Crouching like an ape, he swung the lantern around, as if drinking in the sight. On the wall someone had scratched the letters "R" and "C" with some kind of instrument, perhaps broken stone, as the letters were large and crude.
"R.C.?" I asked.
"My cell mate," he said, speaking low and with respect. "A priest. It stands for Regina Coeli."
"Queen of Heaven, of course."
"He had a beautiful voice, one of those men who could actually chant the Mass and not just gabble it. I sang it for him one day, the Regina Coeli hymn, and he cried. 'She isn't going to help you,' I told him, and I was right, for the next day they came to take him away, but that was no surprise, as he was an irredeemable monarchist who spit both on the Republic and the Commune. They had occupied his church, taken it for some kind of office or meeting place, and it made him furious. I had to admire him, as he was one of the few truly fearless men I have ever met. We could hear the screams of the tortured men from down the hall, and after we endured listening to one terrible session, I offered to dispatch him myself ahead of time, quickly and painlessly, but that provoked a lecture which wearied me with its theological tedium, and so he met his fate."
"Why were you in there?" I asked, looking anxiously around the corridor, as if expecting red-shirted, red-capped men to dart out suddenly and drag me into one of those little tombs. "I mean, if you were helping them."
"Why? Because chaos ruled the Commune." A little whine crept into his voice. "They didn't trust me, it was the same as in Persia, and in Constantinople too. Erik performs whatever service is required of him with diligence and loyalty, and is met by jealousy, and deception, and betrayal." He looked at me, hard and darting. "The so-called 'Committee for Public Safety' was formed, and they were imprisoning and shooting anyone right and left, even each other at the end. Weeks into the month of May, when it became clear that the city would be breached and they would lose, everything descended into panic. No one was safe, everyone was mistrusted. Rather than cease their own foolish grandstanding – pretending to be medieval peasants holding off a modern army within the walls of a city – they instead wasted their few precious remaining weeks hunting out traitors in their midst.
"One of the buildings we had wired to explode, a municipal courts building near the Bourse, failed to go off. They blamed me, accused me of secretly working for Thiers. Others accused me of working for the Prussians, which was moronic to the extreme, as the Prussians were watching the Paris stand-off with great amusement, waiting to see how bad things got so they could press the Third Republic for a harder surrender. The idiots had blundered it, no doubt, yet into the pit they threw me."
"But you helped them. They were rebels, criminals."
"And the Republicans were not? The monarchists were not, for that matter? What about the Prussians themselves, who looted and pillaged their way across eastern France? All are criminals, Christine, every one of us. We feed on living things, drain the substance of life from everyone around us from our first moments of existence."
"Erik, why do you come here?"
Tired of crouching, he sat down on a block of stone that no doubt had once served as a seat. "Because it was in here that I faced my own death. I thought I would die in here. Death terrified me, even though I had become so familiar with it."
"You feared hell."
"Not hell, because I believe in neither heaven nor hell, only blackness and endless nonexistence. But the instinct to live did not die easily. In this cell I faced the black, and sometimes I like to come back and revisit that memory. You might say that in a sense, this is my place of true birth, that in the place we face our death we are truly born. And also," now he looked shy, turning away a little, "I wanted you to see it, too."
"You know I can't go in there."
"Small dark spaces frighten you, I've seen."
The choking sensation eased a little. "You blew out the candle last night."
"It was to spare you, to subject you to the lesser of two evils."
"It didn't seem like that at the time."
He put his hands on his long legs, splayed out spiderlike. "This room is like my coffin. At first I could not come in here at all, then, I stood in the doorway for a time, entered little by little. They left me no candle to relieve the darkness, only the faintest glow from the hallway came in through those bars. There were days when the coal-gas was interrupted, and I sat in total blackness. It took months of coming day after day, but I finally entered and sat right where you see me now."
"Your coffin. It's the same, isn't it?"
"You learn quickly, when you listen. Why did you go to Perros?"
I shook my head, confused. "To pay my father respects. Because it was my religious duty."
"No," he said gently, voice silken, "that's what you told yourself, but the real reason is, you went to face his death. To see for yourself, over and over, what you hated the most."
It was like uncovering a wound, peeking under the bandage every hour or so to watch it seep. "So you want me to come in there with you."
"If you can," he said.
"This place is mad," I whispered. "It drives one mad."
He kept his hands on his knees, and I could hear him breathe. "Don't turn out the lantern," I begged.
He said nothing, just shook his head, no, I won't. I took a deep breath, bracing myself. Into the cell I crept, and the smell of earth and dust and Erik's musky, slightly sweaty scent filled the little room. Something swept through me, a sense of power that I couldn't explain, a chaos of the soul and flesh. I felt I could break a column if I wanted to, one of the wide stone pillars that held up the portico of this building. Suddenly I was aware of him as a body, as a man. All that morning, since waking, I felt echoes of him inside me, and at once I knew, not with the mind but in my skin, that he remembered the same. The thought came like an ambush, It's what it means to be one flesh. You feel the other person in your body, each remembering each.
The walls were rough in the yellow light, and near the chains dark spots marred the walls. Bloodstains, and that led me to wonder at how little blood I had shed under his body. He smelled very strong, but not unpleasant, rather like a horse at the end of a hot long ride. Yet underground it was always cool, and while lengthy, the walk to the dungeons had not been strenuous. It was something different, something which rose off of him like steam. I recalled the sharp, sweet, chemical smell of our first meeting in the flesh, and had called it the smell of death. This was different. Warm, rich, out of the earth itself, it was the opposite. It was the smell of life.
Papa had bought a half-acre from a neighbor, one that had never been plowed. The neighbor hadn't wanted to plow it before, but now he needed the money and couldn't wait for the land to produce anything. Thick grass ran roots deep under the tough and clay-like ground. Papa dug the tip of the plow in, and it barely penetrated. He called the draft horse to start, and as she pulled forward, the plow slipped. In it he pressed again, while I sat on a stump and watched. Again, and again, until the sharp blade slid beneath the earth and slowly, laboriously, the great Norwegian draft pulled it through.
"The earth screams when she is first rent," Papa said, after he had finished the initial long row and paused to rest, sweating and exhausted. When he came into the kitchen, his work shirt clinging to his back, my mother looked up at him with something in her eyes that I didn't understand.
Now I did.
I shivered. The sense of power grew stronger. We said nothing for what seemed a long time, not touching or speaking, that dark unknown life hanging between us like a rich fog. When I finally did speak, it was with the hushed tones you use in church, "It wasn't your worst fear, was it? The end to everything wasn't your worst terror."
His lips moved a little before he spoke. "No," he said with a dry-sounding throat. "It was that I would be lost in the black, and still know it. That the end to the body was not the end I believed in, upon which I so desperately relied. Sometimes in the bleak hollow of the night, when I woke at three in the morning and nothing moved, not even the blood in my veins, I imagined that after lying down in my coffin for the last time I would lie dead, buried, swallowed by it, and still somehow know, somehow would still remain conscious, buried alive for all eternity." In the lantern light his eyes shone like bright unflickering gold coins.
My whole body shook in one long tremor. My fear could be remedied by a light. Erik's, on the other hand, had no cure, for there was none for the death of the body. "What happened to the priest?" I asked, after a time.
"I never saw him again, after they pulled him out of the cell for the last time. No doubt they shot him."
"But you got out, eventually."
"Two men came to the cell door and opened it. They argued over their respective orders. It turned out that two factions of the Committee wanted me for different purposes. The first was to release me, to wire up a building to go off, that would be filled with hostages. They wanted to set clusters of these hostages up throughout the districts, and were counting on Thier not to pursue the occupation further, for fear of loss of civilian lives. The second, from a rival group, had been told to bring me to serve as one of those very hostages. 'He and his cell mate can have a reunion,' he smirked, and then my heart quickened, for I knew at that time the priest was still alive.
"A quarrel ensued and the two men ended up falling on each other instead, with their knives, grappling on the floor. The first cut the second's throat and then slipped in the blood, smacking his skull against the stone door frame. I managed to reach one of the knives they'd flung, and finished him off. Then I started to work, to get out of the chain that held my leg, and that took hours, although I worked as quickly as I could, spurred on with terror that someone else would come, or worse, that they wouldn't, and I would be left to die of thirst. But the leg shackle finally came off with a good deal of skin besides, and there I fled."
"You never found the priest."
"I didn't look. I went as far down into the bowels of the Opera as I could go, to niches no one knew about, not even most of the men who worked on this great structure. If Thiers and his men really were coming, I wasn't going to welcome them into Paris myself. And the Communards knew everything about this place, as many of them had drained the swamp it was built on, or raised the stones or scaffolding, or welded the great copper sheets to the roof. It was the craftsmen who made up the bulk of their ranks. Some of the men who imprisoned me, some who had argued for my freedom, both had been men of my own crews. It was pure panic, and no one could be trusted. Only Erik could trust himself. Later I found that the Commune had simply herded dozens of hostages together, and shot them all. It only made Thiers more brutal."
"I want to sit," I said, and he shifted over, leaving me room on the long stone block, moving as far from me as he could, and oddly, inexplicably, I felt a tiny twinge of hurt. "It's savage, horrible, and what's worse, it makes no sense."
"It was war, Christine." He sounded tired, tired and old. "Rarely does it make sense."
"So it was that shackle over there," and I pointed to the broken one limp and curled on the ground.
"That one."
"I saw them drag a man away, when we first came to Paris. They suspected him of being in the Commune. The Professor told me not to look."
"I was hiding like a fox gone to ground. Later I discovered that the last week of the occupation, the French Army had poured through Paris, and there was scarcely a working man or craftsman left who had not been singled out as a Communard supporter. On one afternoon alone they shot hundreds at Pere Lachaise Cemetery, then dumped them into trenches and covered them with earth."
"No prayers, I'm sure." I said, almost unable to speak with the enormity of it.
His cold voice rang off the walls. "This is the Third Republic of which we speak."
"So that is why you live down here. Had you ventured out, they would have found you and killed you. La Revanche, the posters screamed, when Papa and the Valeriuses and I first moved to Paris. Everyone wanted revenge."
He nodded as he leaned his head against the stone behind him. The two lamps of his eyes winked out with sudden exhaustion.
"Sing with me," I said softly. Never had I asked him to join his voice with mine before. Until now, it had always been him, giving me instruction or comment or criticism, picking the material, directing my voice. But now it was I who made the request. "Sing the Regina Coeli with me. For that priest. For all of them."
"Not the Mozart," he said, eyes still closed.
"No, of course not, not the Mozart." I wanted to smile, but it didn't seem fitting, so I suppressed it. "I know a chant," and I started, "Regina coeli laetare, Alleluia," and in on the Alleluia he came with a strong countermelody, so that what started out a simple chant resounded in rich polyphonic harmony. We sang through it three times, each different, and on the final "Ora pro nobis Deum," he went off into his own Alleluia, over and over. In I joined with a harmony of my own, until the walls rang with sounds solemn and august, yet light as the dust that flicked and twinkled around the light.
Afterwards he opened his eyes, his expression almost soft. "After the priest left, I lay in this room, expecting to die. When he was there, he annoyed me, but alone, alone I thought I should go mad. He kept begging me to confess to him, but I would not. On the day they dragged him out of the cell, and Christine, I heard the bone snap in his arm as they pulled him around the corner of the door, and he still begged. When he was gone, I missed him, but they shot so many, even the Archbishop, and I am sure that he is long dead. Now I sit here with you," he sighed, and I had never seen him so ugly as in the yellow glow of the lantern that rested on the floor. No one's face is flattered when lit from below. We're meant to have light shine on us from above, otherwise the shadows are all wrong. Yet while Erik's face stretched upwards like a monstrous caricature, it was all suffused with adoration. "Regina," he breathed. "My Regina. My life."
A great surge of melancholic pity flooded me. I got up quickly, and picked the ruined fragment of chain off of the floor by the broken end which once trapped a human ankle. The sense of power which had flooded the room now changed to a wash of sorrow. Handing the chain to him, I said, "It's yours now. It can't hurt you anymore." It was smaller than I thought, and lighter. I had expected something great and heavy of iron, like in a true medieval dungeon, but this bond was small and made of light steel, bright and untarnished even under its thick coating of cobwebby dust. He must have forced the knife into the narrow opening where the two pieces came together and broken the small spring holding it shut, for it still dangled out, useless.
Silently Erik took the shackle, holding it in his hands as if he had no idea what to do with it. Clearly, it had never occurred to him to simply pick it up, or cast it aside. He brushed it off and the dirt flew up, a million tiny sparks in the lantern light. Then he put it in his pocket and bowed his head solemnly.
"I think I know why you came back here so often," I said quietly, and those gold-reflected eyes turned towards me. "It reminds you of him. For you, he's still here."
Something played over his face for only a brief instant, then winked out like the candle he snuffed in my room last night. He shook his head in irritation and stood up, brushing the cobwebbed dust off of his coat. "I've had enough," he said, striding out ahead of me briskly, not looking back, and I hurried to avoid being left behind in the darkness.
The union of ape and angel, he had called it. At first I had thought he referred to himself as the ape, with me as the angel. Now from the vantage point of years I wonder, because it was within himself that the ape and angel warred until moments such as these, when together they joined in one voice, one spirit, one body. But like a reflection of that wicked, grinning moon which shines on the water, it holds its integral shape only for a moment, for when the next breeze comes along the image once again wavers and breaks into pieces. So the ape and angel came together, only to separate once more.
o o o o o o o o o o o o o
Erik must have written to Margot, for when I returned to the apartment, a cot had been set up in Mama Valerius's large room, the brightest and most sunlit of the apartment. Mama greeted me as if I hadn't been gone at all, and resumed crocheting some kind of trim. As long as the crochet pattern was simple and repetitious, and she didn't have to count but could simply observe the stitches, she could produce lacy edging which she then basted onto petticoats or pillowcases. It made me happy and eased a sizable portion of guilt as well, to watch her so busily occupied, and I prayed that her mind's progressive failure would spare the use of her hands as long as possible.
Margot's things were neatly arranged in Mama's mostly-empty wardrobe. Our maid Adèle lived in a small room, almost a closet, really, on the top floor of our apartment building, but Erik instructed that Margot was to stay in the apartment with Mama and I, to save me any nighttime disturbances. I didn't like Margot's sly, wise glances, and was especially glad that she wasn't at home on this afternoon of my return. She had gone marketing, Adèle said, and would not return for some time, as her list was apparently extensive.
"I want to thank you too, Mam'selle, for the tip," the sandy-haired girl said as she gave a deep curtsy. I hadn't the faintest notion what she meant. Then a moment later I knew – it must have come from Margot. Erik has been giving her money, and quite generously, too. It never occurred to me then to ask how much was she skimming off for herself.
Free of Margot's boots and shawls and aprons, my small, cramped room was unencumbered once more. I touched all of my familiar things, then checked my jewelry box. Brooch and earrings and chains were all there. My own armoire was small, with a cracked door. Its wood was chipped and faded, not like the glossy flame of the cherry-colored wood in Erik's rooms. Mine now too, I told myself, without really believing it.
Absently, from the bottom of the armoire I drew a box with my bobbins, thread, and lace-making pillow. On the pillow I had worked out the underlying mesh in the shape of a curved oak leaf, with three plump acorns beneath it. It was purely a decorative design, entirely useless, and I hid it guiltily, not wanting anyone to see what a frivolous time-waster I was. It couldn't be used to trim a petticoat or handkerchief, but something about the curved round lobes of the leaf appealed to me. Perhaps I could sew it into the front of a chemise, and thus justify the time spent. The lacework drew me in with simple rhythm, in time with the click of the bobbins and the weave of the threads through the warp of the mesh. Soon I would have to go back to the Opera to rehearse, but better to forget about that for the time being.
I didn't really want to sit with Mama, but as her room had more light, I moved in there. She at least would not chide me for making something so useless. Absorbed in her own craft, she scarcely noticed my presence. As I worked, the passage of time revealed itself in the slow emergence of texture and form out of the shapeless threads, and that fleeting time slid by painlessly. I sighed in contentment.
As if from far away, I heard Adèle's small thin voice at the door. "No, Monsieur, she is to see no one. I'm not supposed to let you in," and then, in a rush of skirts and apron, Adèle stood at the bedroom entrance, bristling. "I told him, Mam'selle, but he wouldn't listen ... Margot said she had to be here if you had a gentleman caller... and over her small shoulders and slight frame stood Raoul's blond head, his face flushed, his eyes full of blue sparks.
Now that he'd come in the apartment, he looked around awkwardly, suddenly embarrassed. "She said you were here. I apologize for the intrusion, but I had to see you. Please don't make me leave."
The maid stood in front of the doorway, arms outstretched. "You really cannot come in here, Monsieur," although if he had wanted to, he could have brushed her easily aside.
"Adèle, it's all right," I said, slowly getting up.
Mama looked at Raoul with interest and put down her crocheting, squinting her eyes as if she didn't recognize him. "Your cheeks are pink, young man. Is it cold outside?"
Raoul started to stammer, astonished at the situation – a tiny maid blocking the door to Mama Valerius's bedroom, and Mama asking him casually if he were cold. I put my hand on Adèle's shoulder, to reassure her. "It's fine, Adèle. Go bring us some tea. Monsieur le Vicomte can come into the bedroom."
Indignant, Adèle gave Raoul one last hard look before bustling off. He reached his hands out to me and before I knew it, both of mine were wrapped up in his, his in mine, mine in his, it was hard to say which. I thought his hands would be soft, but instead they were covered with old callouses on the palm, of course, from on board ship. He's a junior officer, he works too. The skin under the roughness and in between the fingers was soft, a little cool from the outdoors, a bit damp probably from nerves. Our hands had a little conversation all of their own as his fingers sought mine, caressing the fingertips, he warming his on my palms.
He gripped me tightly. I couldn't look at his face, though, and stared firmly at his cream-silk ascot, in which was stuck a small glittering stickpin. But I knew he looked at me, and from his soft fast breathing, knew how glad he was to see me. He smelled cold and fresh, a little salty.
"Christine," he said soft and low. "I didn't think you would be here. I almost didn't come at all. It was just a feeling, a crazy whim, to come by the apartment. I can't even explain it, and then when the maid said I couldn't see you, all I could think was, you were here. God in heaven, she's here, and not gone for good, not disappeared forever."
"Gone for good?" Mama echoed. "Where is Christine going?"
Raoul almost said something, but then stopped. First his palms, then his whole body tensed. He had found and felt the ring. "Dear God," he said, "What's this?"
I pulled my hands away sharply. "Nothing. It's not your concern."
His eyes flashed wildly. He wanted to seize those digits at once, I knew it, but his face stiffened and he controlled himself. "You got this last night, didn't you?"
Not exactly. "It was very recent, yes."
"He gave it to you! What does this mean?"
"It's a present!" Mama Valerius offered in a bright, cheerful tone. "Christine told me herself."
He ran his hand over his face. "Yes, that kind of ring is usually a present, Madame Valerius. I suppose this is with your permission."
"Of course," she said. "Christine has told me everything."
I couldn't see my face, but I knew it had to be white with panic. The blood left my arms and legs, and they started to tingle as if lace needles were being stabbed into them. "Mama, this is private. It's not to be discussed in front of Monsieur de Chagny. I'm sure he has no interest whatever in these personal matters."
"On the contrary. I find these personal matters fascinating. For instance, it's painfully clear now that you certainly are not free to marry."
I need some time, I thought. Just a minute of time. Breathing deeply, I said, "Don't speak to me of marriage. What place can a discussion of marriage possibly have between us? Anyway, I'm not free to marry."
"That's right," Mama chirped in again. "Her Angel of Music has forbidden it."
"Really," said Raoul as he leaned over Mama Valerius intently. "Tell us again about this Angel, Madame."
"Mama," I interrupted, "we've been over this. There is no Angel. There is a man, and yes, he has given me this ring. Yes, it was a present, and I am not your wife, Monsieur de Chagny, and so therefore do not need to give an accounting to you of who gives me presents, or what kind."
"Obviously," Raoul sniffed, the warmth in his manner almost gone now. "We established this in our conversation last night, that you were a free woman, bound only to your own desires."
"Only a husband has the right to ask me these questions."
"Most assuredly. And since you're obviously no longer free, that husband will never be me."
Mama leaned over and said loudly, "Are you making a proposal, Monsieur?"
Raoul lost whatever calm he'd managed to collect. Bright red now, he sputtered, "No, why would you say that, whatever do you mean?"
In one of those increasingly rare moments of sharpness, Mama said to him, "Well, then, Monsieur, what are you here for?"
I joined her sharp gaze. "What indeed? If marriage isn't your aim."
He ignored me and directed his comments to Mama. "I am here because last night I saw something extraordinary, something that made me fear not only for Christine's safety, but for the state of her soul as well. Worthy Madame Valerius, if you care for Christine as a daughter, which I know you do, I appeal to you to demand the name of the man who gives her expensive rings, who takes her away for weeks at a time. For with him is certainly where she has been, and he has even offered, so she said to me, to take her off the stage and presumably support her in comfort. That would be bad enough, Madame, but there is something more dangerous, something far worse."
Mama clutched her throat and called out, "Monsieur, you frighten me. Don't frighten me like that. What danger is Christine in? I know she has left me, but she has come back. Now she won't go away again, will you, Christine?" I said nothing and couldn't meet her eye. Wildly she looked from Raoul to myself. "What is this danger?"
I sat next to her, shooting arrows of dislike at Raoul. As I held her in my arms, soothing her and stroking her hair, the maid came to the door. Tea would be served in the drawing room, and then she caught my glare, and backed hastily out. "Don't leave me, Christine," Mama sobbed.
"I think she would like that reassurance," Raoul said coldly.
Ignoring him, I whispered low to Mama, "You know that daughters leave their mothers." She sniffed a little, and I went on. "I'm not in danger, Mama. It's going to be all right. You will be taken care of, I have that on a solemn promise. I'll visit."
"What are you saying, Christine?" Raoul asked, cold turning to hot. "Madame Valerius, this man, this man whose name Christine will not even tell her guardian, this man," and he spit the words out, "he is definitely no angel, but more like a devil, a devil of enchantment. You say he has given Christine lessons for three months. I cannot imagine what kind of lessons these would be, except in sorcery, because I have heard him sing, Madame, and there is no sound on earth like it. My brother is far more of a man of the world than I, Madame, but although I am young, I am no stranger to fine music. He has taken me to La Scala and to Vienna, as well as our own National Opera. Never have I heard sounds so compelling, so seductive come from a human throat. Had I not prayed, had I not used every scrap of will I possessed, that voice would have seduced me as well. I would have followed it anywhere, into God knows what kind of pit. If enough people could hear it, a voice like that could compel the world and draw it into what sort of devilry I dare not imagine."
"You heard him sing?" I said, icily incredulous. "How? Where?"
"I did," and he pushed past me, suddenly concerned for Mama. "Are you all right, Madame? You're very white. Can you breathe?"
She took a few deep whistling breaths, and then started to cry again. "This talk of devils, it frightens me. Christine, what is he talking about? I don't understand. You told me your angel was kind. You said that he told you he talked with your Papa often, that he said your papa was happy. How could a devil say that?"
"He talked to Monsieur Daaé," Raoul stated baldly, and his cold fury frightened me a little. "Why am I not surprised?"
Mama looked at me, like a little child. The sharp questioning had disappeared. She was helpless and bewildered. "Who is he, Christine?"
"Tell us," Raoul repeated. "Tell this good woman, who has made every sacrifice for you, who cares about you as if you were her own flesh and blood. And you might tell me as well, because I fear this conniving seduction is making a fool of you."
"You are calling me a fool? Who is the fool, if you would waste your afternoon visiting one?"
"Christine," he said, pausing. "No, you are not a fool. But you are behaving recklessly. You do not know men. You don't know the depths to which men will go."
Oh, did I not? You are the naive one, Raoul de Chagny. I know man in my flesh now, and everything has changed. "I will tell you nothing, until you tell me how you happened to hear him sing. Were you listening at the door of my dressing room again, your ear to the keyhole? Did you peek through as well, hoping to catch a glimpse?"
His eyes flashed wild, blue fire. Oh no, I thought, I've gone too far. "I'll tell you how I know," he snapped, ice breaking off into the ocean. "I was there, in your dressing room."
"What?" I gave a small shriek, and Mama looked surprised. "Monsieur," she said reproachfully.
He looked embarrassed now, but still angry. "I couldn't let you leave, the way we parted. Yes, it was my fault. I am willing to take the entire blame on myself. I said harsh things which never should have passed my lips. It was crude and undignified, for I felt provoked, jealous. Do you understand how I could feel jealous, Christine? Is that even possible in the glacier which has grown in the space that used to house a kind and tender heart? I went down to your dressing room, thinking you would change before going home, or at least I hoped you would go home ... no, I won't bring that up again. Whether you went home last night or not, it's not for me to ask."
"She didn't," Mama Valerius said calmly.
He looked away, a trace of tears in his eyes as he struggled to keep them in. "Never mind, Madame, it's not my concern, as Christine has told me repeatedly. I only wanted to say farewell to you in a kinder way, but when I got to your room and found it empty, I hid. Don't look at me that way, I know it was the act of a coward. But there I remained, concealed behind your curtain until that uncanny serenade began. At first I could barely make it out, and I have heard that aria so many times, but no one, no one on earth sings it that way. All you have to admit is that he mesmerized you, enchanted you, and that you were beyond your own control, and no one, least of all me, will hold responsible. As I said, that music could cast a spell of passion on anyone. You are a girl, naive and vulnerable. Tell me who he is, Christine. I want to hear you say his name, and I want an accounting from him."
"He owes you no accounting," I said coldly. "And from me you will never hear his name."
"Christine is a good girl," Mama Valerius inserted. "She has always been brought up in the true religion. She was one of the first children in Sweden to be baptized after the King changed the law. She would not love a devil."
A brief image, a candle pinched out as the room went to utter black, my scream in the night. Not a devil, not an angel, just a man. Just Erik, and I sighed. "Whomever I love or don't love, I don't choose to discuss it."
"That's right," said Mama. "She doesn't want to."
Raoul's face softened, and two of the tears he'd been holding back trickled down either side of his long, thin nose.
"You do love him," he said softly. "Why can you not simply admit it? Why must you hide? I asked you last night, why go through with this farce? Does this man demand it? Why would Erik demand this of you?"
I staggered as if he had struck me. Mama asked, bewildered, "Who is Erik?" I couldn't speak. It was as if Erik had slammed me in the stomach again, as he had on the night after we had seen Raoul in the Bois. The room began to turn faintly green, and I slumped to the bed.
"Erik is that man's name," Raoul said to Mama.
I rested my head on my knees, and the green darkness passed.
"But who is he?" Mama repeated.
"Ask Christine, Madame," he said. "Her Angel of Music, that fraud, is named Erik. It is easy to see why she thought he was more than a man, for even the angels would clamber over broken boulders to hear that voice." He said the last almost tenderly, as if Erik's song had touched something deep inside him as well. I still buried my face in my lap, afraid and ashamed to look at him. Why does a name have so much power? Erik wasn't his real name. Even I didn't know the true one. A priest had sprinkled water on him, said the words, but that name Erik would never tell me. And yet to hear even his alias, to hear it spoken from the lips of someone else, made something collapse and die inside of me entirely. As long as no one else knew my shame, knew my secrets, I could pretend they were concealed from the world. But the first of them had been dragged out. What else would follow?
The children used to play hide and seek like that, a foot or frock sticking out from behind a curtain or couch. They were so easy to find, the little mites, because they believed as long as they themselves were hiding, you would never find them. If they thought themselves invisible, certainly they must be. If Erik remained unnamed, he was mine, and not subject to any normal human scrutiny. That was how he liked it, so deep below. But now someone had come along, someone who named him.
Something broke inside of me. There's something broken in me, I thought wildly, my face still hid in my lap like a child playing a hiding game. Raoul has broken it, because he's discovered Erik's name. Suddenly a wave of fear swept over me, as the realization pummeled me.
"You were there," I whispered, looking up at his anguished face. "Do you want to die? Because he will surely kill you if he suspects you were there."
"It feels as if I have died already," he said softly, and the two of us hung onto each other's words as if suspended in the air momentarily.
"Mam'selle," the maid called, "Shall I still hold that tea?"
"Yes," I said, keeping my eyes on Raoul. "Will you stay and have some?"
He wiped his own wet ones, recovering himself. "I don't wish to trouble you, or Madame Valerius. I've taken enough of your afternoon with my unwelcome attentions."
"I want you to stay," I said softly, now afraid for the first time that he would really go.
Mama looked baffled. "Are you sure that's all right, Christine? You told me that your Angel warned you against special friendships and worldly attachments."
"That was when he was an angel, Mama," I said, suddenly tired, the thin thread of headache pulling itself over my scalp like lace threads of wire weaving in and out of the skin. "Now he's a man, and it's all right."
She made some small noises and went back to her crocheting, ignoring us.
In the drawing room I poured out for him, and offered him some almond biscotti. Our cups went cold and untouched as he held my hands, just resting them in his. "So you're promised to this Erik," he said. I started to pull my hands away, and he called out softly, "No, please, don't do this to me. It's torture to think of it."
"What can I tell you? Forget him. It is a terrible knowledge I have, and you cannot share it."
"I want to share it," he said. "If you have a burden on you, I want to help you bear it. But I can do nothing if you won't speak to me, if you won't tell me."
"If you want to help me, don't come to my dressing room like that, completely by surprise. Or you may have a surprise you didn't expect."
He snorted a little, but composed his face for fear I would withdraw my hands from his.
"Are you really promised?" he asked.
"I can't marry, if that's what you mean. Please, don't ask me anymore right now." Don't make me lie to you, I thought. If you just don't ask, then I won't have to lie.
"Nuns wear wedding rings," he said strangely. "Are you saying you are some kind of nun, some sister consecrated to music?" and he laughed without humor.
"Raoul, please ..." I begged. The desire for knowledge, and the desire to keep my palms warm within his own warred within him. To hold even the tips of my fingers won out, and he sat content to stroke them, trying as best he could to ignore that outsized ring.
"Will I ever see you again?" he sighed, as all his bravado collapsed.
"Yes," I whispered. "In my dressing room. Come tomorrow in the late afternoon, at teatime. But please, please don't come unless we have made an arrangement, or I've written you first. The worst you could do is visit unannounced."
He stared as if he'd unearthed a bag of gold in the middle of a potato field. "You can't mean that. You'll see me, tomorrow?" Then his face grew hard, as if a sudden impression had come to mind. "I see. So that is where you have your rendezvous. Of course it would be ... awkward. I thoroughly understand."
"It's not like that! You understand nothing!" I protested. "If you insist on thinking the worst of me, I shall uninvite you entirely."
With an indignant expression he pulled his hands away and gripped his thighs, hard, the knuckles of his fingers whitening. "What happened to the girl I met in Perros, who rounded on me wildly at the mere suggestion that she had a man in her room? 'I do not shut myself up in my dressing room with men,' I recall you saying. Now you shut yourself up with two of them."
"He has never been inside my dressing room," I said stiffly. "Perhaps you should not come at all, then."
"No, I want to. That's the terrible thing, I want to, and yet I don't. Erik has enchanted you, and through you, enchanted me as well! Everything I should not want, I do, I hate myself, and then I want it the more."
"Don't speak his name," I whispered. "Please, Raoul, I beg you. Don't invoke it. Pretend you have never heard it. It will only bring you misery, and it tears out my heart besides."
He leaned over me as close as he could, but when I reached for his fingers to squeeze them tenderly, he waved me away. "I am serious, Christine. I cannot bear it if you touch me."
Anguish surged through me. "You're right. I am everything you say I am."
"No!" he retorted. "That's not it. Don't take harsh words of jealousy to heart. I can't bear to have your hand in mine, because I know you are going to withdraw it. That ring is only on one finger, but every other finger is bound by it as well. If you touch my hand ... Don't. Please, just don't."
Abashed, afraid, I sank down very small into my seat. "I understand."
"But this I must say, I sincerely thought after last night I was never to see your face again. I thought without doubt that this morning you would be on a train, in a coach lined with velvet, bound for some city unknown. And yet here you are." He shrugged as if to say, what do I do with you now?
Smiling faintly I said, "Since I am to sing La Juive in a little over a week, I'd better not go anywhere."
His confusion reminded me of Mama Valerius. "All right. I won't ask. It wouldn't matter anyway, because the answer would vary from one hour to the next. Tomorrow, then, and I will count every second. I trust you will be there, because you showed yourself reliable when you kept our rendezvous at the Masked Ball." Then he stood and reached for my hands.
Baffled, I offered them. "I thought you didn't want me to take your hands in mine."
"You drag me down into madness," he whispered, and pressed my fingers up against his breast so that they sank into the soft velveteen of his afternoon vest. I stroked it absently, the fabric so soft, the flesh so pliant through the fabric, and a little hum of pleasure moved through me. Then at once I thought, I am disgusting, I have no right, and I dropped away abruptly. "No, no," he murmured, "Come back, little hands," and he tried to bring them up once more, but I hesitated. He sighed and kissed my right one, lingering a long time on the back, sweeping it with his moustache.
Then he flung away from me. "You're right. Everything I say, I do the opposite. You have taken me and turned me inside out. Do you see how long that vow lasted? Not a minute. But I am done with this vacillation. Tonight I pray for fortitude, because I cannot spend my life peering through the fence into a garden I'll never enter."
I sighed, standing there in the slanting twilight, not knowing what to do with my hands or my heart. "You're right. It's better not to. I won't put you to the test again." Three months earlier, I thought. Why couldn't you have returned three months earlier?
"Do you still want me to come?" he implored, and I nodded, wondering if I would ever feel his silky grasp again.
He picked up his hat and bowed courteously to me in a motion simple and precise and sweeping all at once. "Then I shall. Tomorrow, then," he said, and was gone.
I went to the window and watched him turn down the street to the right, fearing that some catastrophe might drop out of the sky on him at any second. Then, I happened to glance up the street, and from the opposite direction of Raoul's departure came Margot, laden with packages. As Raoul crossed the road, she stopped and scrutinized him momentarily, then started her slow, lumbering pace again. She couldn't recognize him, I thought. She's never seen him. At least, I hoped not.
(continued...)