Desolation Dreamed Of
Of Principles and Passacaglia
When the opera was instructed to begin rehearsing for Don Juan Triumphant on Monday morning, Christine assumed that she would meet with Erik to rehearse her aria. But when she went into the dressing rooms at their usual time on Sunday, he never came, leaving her to fend quite for herself for the rehearsal the following day. Alarm ate at her all night, for she had never gone into an opera without extensive rehearsals, and she couldn't help but doubt her skills. And when it came down to it, they were Erik's skills that he had simply imparted upon her, and without him, she feared that she would disappoint everybody.
Monday finally approached and Christine marched to the rehearsal hall, feigning confidence the entire way—pretending that she actually knew what would happen when she entered the door.
Afterall, it had only been a few days since the gala, but she was already hearing the gossip travel around the Opera House. People were calling her a light woman, claiming that she had slept with both Raoul and this mysterious phantom who was her "teacher." People claimed that she was pregnant, but quibbled over who had fathered the child. Some insisted that she herself had killed Annabelle in pure jealousy and had threatened the managers into secrecy. The list had no end, particularly now that they had no doubt of her affiliations with the legend that was The Phantom of the Opera.
Nevertheless, she forced her skin to thicken, tried to block out each and every whisper, and pretended that she didn't hear people move away as she sat down for rehearsal.
Their rehearsal was conducted with cold precision, and even the most jovial of singers refrained from cracking jokes. The tension that filled the air was stifling, and her confidence slipped once again with each breath she took. It was as if every person in the room wished her gone, and the oppressive emptiness that it sparked was something she had never felt before.
They had rehearsed for just over an hour when the door flew open and the singing stopped immediately. Christine heard the rapid sound of heads turning, but she didn't follow suit.
"Just in time!"
It was not a voice she had heard for some time—Carlotta Guidicelli, with her thick Italian accent and her condescending lilt had entered the rehearsal hall in all of her grandeur.
"Don't mind me—are we at The Jewel Song yet?" The sound of bustling skirts could be heard as Carlotta shuffled into the room and seated herself in the front with an indelicate plop.
No one said anything for several moments; no one wanted to be the one to tell her that not only was she not cast in Faust, but the opera wasn't even going up anymore. And when no one could muster up the courage, Christine finally turned her head towards Carlotta and put on a brave face.
"Faust is no longer opening. There was an accident."
The tension mounted as she spoke what no one else could bear to mention.
"An accident? But I am here—what else could you need?" she hissed with a harsh bite, and Christine swallowed with difficulty.
"Someone died," she murmured, lowering her eyes in respect. "And the Phantom of the Opera has given us a new opera to perform." She couldn't recall the last time she had referred to Erik in his spectral form, and the words felt foreign on her tongue.
"Us?" Carlotta demanded, standing back up with fury. "You're that little seamstress, aren't you? You shouldn't even be here, you little brat!"
Someone behind her spoke up in defense, and Christine let out a breath of relief. "Christine stepped in as Aida when you had your accident," the man said simply, and she heard as Carlotta moved towards her menacingly.
"Ah, so you're the tramp!" she spat, but Christine held her ground. "And am I correct in assuming you have snatched the role of Prima Donna in this opera as well?" She laughed, turning to the rest of the silent cast members. "Well, I suppose when you sleep with anyone who comes your way, you run the chance of taking a few steps up the social ladder!"
This was the wrong response, apparently; the words had barely escaped her lips when the rehearsal piano began playing furiously of its own accord and the sound of a violin reverberated throughout the room. Without missing a beat, her fellow singers dutifully began the prelude to her aria, with tritones, dissonance, and suspensions littering each phrase. And with obedience, she began her bone-chilling aria with honeyed elegance, trying not to think of how Erik was in the walls, watching her.
"Desolation dreamed of, though not accomplished, set my heart to rocking like a boat in a swell. To every face I met, I said farewell.
"I said farewell. Nevertheless, whom have I quitted?–which of my possessions do I propose to leave?
Not one. This feigning to be asleep when wide awake is all the loneliness I shall ever achieve."
Due to the vocal strain the opera caused, the rehearsal finished shortly after lunch. It was more than enough information to take in, though, even for Christine who was used to Erik's lengthy lessons and rehearsals. Her mind was brimming with his music as she prepared to exit the room, until his voice cut through it all in a whisper: Come to the dressing room.
She knew better than to deny the request, and she silently made her way to the room without a word to the rest of the cast. As soon as she had closed the door, she could feel his presence near the opposite wall and she awaited his instruction.
"It's time to rehearse," he said simply, and Christine let out a small sound of protest.
"But we just rehearsed for several hours with the music director!" she objected with a frown.
"And can you sing the entirety of the opera to perfection at this moment?" he countered, a response she should have anticipated.
"No," Christine stuttered after a moment, lowering her head.
"Then we must practice." She didn't hear him raise a violin or a bow, but the sound of the strings met her ears immediately, prompting her to begin. Her voice was tired, but she tried to fight through the fatigue and sing through the tension in her throat.
Singing for him held a different sentiment, though—she still had the insatiable need to meet his standards and she desperately wanted to please him, but she couldn't shake the feeling that he hated her. After all, her previous interactions had consisted of him lying to her, sending her away, seemingly ignoring her, and finally threatening her into performing. And yet, she could not force herself to hate him back, no matter what she did.
"You're straining your voice," he finally interrupted her and she stopped quickly, swallowing to relieve the soreness plaguing her throat. "You know better than to sing incorrectly simply to create the sound you think I want to hear. You eliminated that habit so long ago—why do you let it creep back now?" It was odd, for he was behaving as if nothing had happened since they rehearsed for Aida—no ball, no kiss, no abandonment. No engagement.
"I don't know…" she said almost inaudibly, though she knew that this was nothing but a lie.
"Yes, you do know. This is a conscious decision you are making, and I'd like to know what's so important that you risk permanently damaging your voice?" he pressed firmly.
"Because I want to make you happy!" she cried out abruptly, ashamed of the weakness in her own voice. "I just want to please you because I'm so worried that you hate me, and nothing I do seems to help!" When he didn't respond for several seconds, she covered her face in embarrassment at the outburst, fighting the urge to leave the room altogether.
"Why would I hate you?" The words were softer, tinged with an uncharacteristic mixture of regret and grief, causing Christine to drop her hands.
"You told me not to come back!" she insisted in misery as she recalled that night which she had tried to quell for so long. "And I thought that maybe you cared for me, but you never came back! And I didn't know what to do, and then that ball—I was half convinced that you would kill me too!" Never had she spoken so honestly, and anxiety flooded her veins as she waited for his response to her flood of emotion.
"I could never dream of harming you," he murmured, and she felt him drawing nearer to her. "I should never have involved you in my wretched life… I never knew the damage I would do—…"
And for the first time in her recollection, she interrupted him. "With your lies?" An unexpected hint of malice had crept in and it caught her off guard. "You lied to me about the surgery! Did you want to keep me a cripple forever?" She didn't know where she found the latent conviction to say these words, but they were somehow spilling out of her mouth without repression.
"You're not crippled," he countered, his voice rising as well. "I was just afraid—…"
"That you wouldn't have control over me anymore? I'm not a baby, Erik! But you insist on treating me like a child by hiding things from me, and you know how I hate when people feed me lies!" Her words shook and she took several unsteady breaths. "I know about the murders, Erik. I know about your past, and yet I'm still here. Does that shed no light on how I've grown?"
Perhaps part of her expected him to deny the claim and hoped that he would put her worries to rest, but he did not. "You don't know about the murders." The morbid laugh that accompanied the words made her skin crawl, but she stood her ground. "You know a minute portion of who I used to be. That does not mean a thing."
"Then tell me!" she exclaimed with exasperation. "Tell me the truth—no theatrics, no talk of endgame, no tricks—and trust that I will not run away."
"You want honesty? Fine," he said sharply after a short pause, and she heard him dragging a chair towards her. "You should sit."
"I will stand, thank you," she replied with equal frankness, hoping dearly that if she feigned valor, she could eventually find it.
"As you wish." She could sense the indefinable reluctance coming from his voice, but it wasn't long before he began. "When I was barely older than you, I travelled to the middle East—Persia, to be precise. And because of my ingenuity and resourcefulness, I found myself in service of Persian royalty—the Shah, his wife, their sisters and brothers, mothers and children alike. The khanum—the Shah's sister—was different from the rest of the royal family, though."
He stopped here for a moment, and when he began once again he started pacing across the room. "While her fellow family members were plenty entertained with magic tricks and illusions, she had far more…Sinister taste," he said bitterly, as if the words poisoned his mouth. "I developed torture chambers for her and her friends."
The words were spoken with an indifference that made Christine's heart skip a beat. "Torture chambers?" she choked, reaching for the chair that he had offered before and sinking into it. "What kind of torture chambers?"
"What kind?" he asked with dumbfounded laughter as he stopped pacing. "Anything you could imagine. Anything I could imagine. They ideas were endless. There was the oubliette, where I constructed platforms hundreds of feet in the air. She and her companions would place bets on how long it would take for their prisoners to jump to their deaths."
He continued pacing as the sepulchral quiet lingered in the room. "There were mirror chambers, creating illusions of endless forests and sweltering heat. They would hang themselves in a less than two hours." He stopped moving as he said this, and as he continued she felt him standing behind her. "I built intricate mazes where a prisoner and a hungry lion would roam, and the khanum would watch gleefully when they finally met and her victim was devoured."
"Did anyone ever escape death?" she murmured, eyes dead ahead and staring.
"No," he stated plainly, crossing in front of her. "Do you want to flee from me now that I've spoken to you with complete candor?"
Christine's mind raced, but she finally replied with resolution. "No." She paused for a moment, pushing herself up from her chair. "I don't think that's who you are anymore."
"You live your life as a fairy tale, Christine—nothing but ranting optimism," he said dismissively with chilled cynicism, moving away from her once more.
"No! There's so much more to you, and I don't believe you are defined by those acts. I can't bear to believe that you are a murderer at your core."
"Is that right?" he said slowly in a tone she was unable to read.
"At your core you are… A musician and a teacher, and much more I'm sure! But not a murderer," she insisted ardently.
"Something from Persia is still left with me. It has not disappeared from memory," he said callously, making it blatantly clear that he was trying desperately to convince her of his iniquity. "After all, how else could you account for Arcati?"
"I can't! I can't, Erik, but I know there's good in you and you are childish to pretend that you are all evil!" she cried abrasively, blindly moving towards him.
"I am childish!" Erik laughed cruelly, and Christine jumped on his words immediately.
"If you say that my finding the good in people is juvenile, then I say the same about you finding the wickedness in them." He didn't respond, and she took it as her cue that she had made some ground. "I do not believe in absolutes. There is bad in me just as there is good in you," she said with verdant hope. "You found me, remember?"
"I saw something I wanted to exploit," he replied, his voice colored with a dull aversion that sparked Christine once more.
"Or you saw someone you wanted to nurture and teach! My God, Erik, there is so much decent and respectable in you and in the world; if only you would let me show you!"
He was silent, but even she had no idea what she hoped he would say. "I wish that was possible," was his quiet response, and before she could counter him, he went on. "Take the rest of the day to relax, and we will continue tomorrow."
He wanted to say something else—she could feel it, and she didn't move in hopes that he would divulge his thoughts. She was prepared for anything that he had to throw at her, whether it was to notice that her ring was gone, or accuse of her of deception when she left with Raoul, or to leave her with another chilling threat. When he didn't say a word, she moved towards the door slowly, her mind racing with all that had been said and all that had been remained tacit. And just as she reached to open the door, the enforced silence broke as his voice met her ear: "Thank you, Christine."
A quick disclaimer before I forget, Desolation Dreamed Of is a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay who lived from 1892-1950. I am very aware that this means it is not contemporary to the time, but I couldn't bear not utilizing the rest of the poem, seeing I owe my title to it! Believe it or not, as of now there is only one more chapter and an epilogue so we will be coming to a close soon! A quick thank you to all the reviews, particularly those who send me feedback every week—inujisan, IGGYSlover, Panserik, pidpit, and many more—I look forward to your input every time I post a chapter, so thank you! I hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and please leave a review!
Until next time,
Christine