Numb silence reigned as he watched her sink to the floor in front of the mirror. Her face was a mask of worry and sadness, her confession tumbling from her lips in a torrent.
"Yes. Yes, my angel. There was... there is... no, no... there was..." Christine's fingertips fluttered against the glass, her breath shook. "There is a feeling... there is a growing pulse inside that pulls at me even now."
He stood, riveted in mute astonishment, feeling her words peel and pick away at him, like old paint on a southern-facing wall. At first, he became uneasily convinced that she was speaking of... well, if not love at least some sort of human, base affection. Not spiritual elation, but something more flesh and bone and warm and... he felt the flush start at his face and overtake him, until his entire length was nothing but hot pounding blood. Had she stopped with those words, the words that made him feel as if perhaps he had been misinterpreting her blushes and her stammers, the odd state of breathless anxiety she held herself in when he drew near, he would have done the unthinkable.
Perhaps she had been in on the farce all along. Perhaps she knew he was man and not spirit and yet continued, mechanizing a way to draw closer without startling him off. Perhaps he were the frightened animal she hoped to coax into the open, and not as he'd believed it, the other way around. Her words beguiled him, caused him to forget entirely who he was or the great chasm that existed between them. On his side of the glass, Erik pressed his fingertips against the barrier, inches away from where her beseeching face lay. They continued in a slow languid sweep, outlining the curve of her jaw until coming to rest in the hollow of her cheek. Had she stopped there, had she remained in this heavy silence, he would have given in. Without a word he'd have held her in his arms, the way he dreamed it. His suffering would have ended with her crushed against him, warm and alive and inexorably his.
Her whisper brought him back to the here and now. "But I have upset you. I feel the sadness with the aching of my bones, the throbbing of my mind madly against my soul… if I am the cause, leave me! Abandon me to torment for I am not worthy of you if it is I who causes such misery… I could not bear it. Leave me. Let me wither and die and leave this life, for I could no longer bear it. I would rather die here and now than continue and drive you from my presence" Her words, as always, tinged with madness, betrayed the underlying fear. She feared leaving the safety of this room, of their sessions. She feared belonging to the public.
He withdrew his hand, his shoulders drooping as he sagged against the wall. Wrong, wrong, wrong. How many times in his life would he let his stubborn arrogance play with his head? You fool. She didn't love him. Not as a man. She wasn't some incredible soothsayer, who had deviled out his cunning ruse. She was a girl. She was a girl he'd found emotionally crippled and had ended up breaking her further. She didn't love him, she feared him and feared this life. He'd warped and twisted her until she'd become convinced that only in oblivion would she truly be happy.
He was a monster.
Christine still knelt at his feet, penitent and supplicant, waiting for him to destroy her with a word. He felt himself cringe in revulsion for what he'd done.
"No..." the word came out ragged, he swallowed hard and tried again, "No, you are not the cause of my sadness. You must not concern yourself with anything except the task at hand. You should be preparing. This is what I have prepared you for. Every great beauty in this world is the result of careful plotting, careful thought. Everything we admire, every work of art, every piece of architecture, every line of poetry or of music, was, before it appeared, a single thought in the mind of another, an impulse from the heart. It is up to you to decide whether that thought, that impulse, takes you to glory or the asylum. Tonight you take your rightful place on the stage. Tonight you will lift the hearts of men into the heavens themselves. They will feel your divine pull, and they will tumble willingly."
And I, as always will be among them.
He felt the sentiment most keenly, although he didn't have the fortitude to speak it aloud. One impulse from him had set this dizzying dance in motion. But he was no longer in control.
For one look from her could make him the happiest he'd ever felt... and one word from her could destroy him.
"Go," he whispered. "Prepare yourself."
Leave me to suffer alone in the dark. Where I belong.
Christine's fingers slipped from the glass, her arms fell limply to her sides. For a few seconds more she lingered before rising unsteadily to her feet, smoothing the skirt beneath her.
His gloved fingers were at his temples, massaging away a headache induced by the strange sadness this entire encounter had engendered within him. He'd expected to feel such great exultation on this, the launching of her career. Yet somehow it had been tinged with such unforeseen longing and the restless tugging of doubt. She seemed uncertain, this much was true, and it made him uneasy in turn. It was almost as if she feared her appearance on the stage would take her from him completely.
The most frightening part of it all was that it was the same anxiety that plagued him.
"The hearts of men are worth nothing to me. I sing to please you, eternally – glory in your absence is meaningless. Life would be without purpose." Her voice was flat and lifeless, her eyes fixed on the rug at her feet.
Erik laughed gently in spite of himself.
"Your glory will not be in my absence. I assure you that nothing will change when you take your place on the stage tonight. The stars will continue to shine on you from the heavens. The earth will continue to move beneath your feet. And I will watch and listen as I always have. When you perform, I will always be near."
The lump in his throat refused to be swallowed; preventing the release of the words he longed and yet feared to say.
Christine, don't you realize? There is nowhere you can go that I will not follow. You carry me with you always… as I will always carry you with me.
The relationship between them, if one could call the arrangement of increasing insanity a "relationship," had been tempered thus far by a barrier through which there could be no exchange of emotion. She'd cried, she'd begged, she'd become furiously angry with him, yet he had felt the need to maintain this stony silence in response. He gave comment when necessary, direction when needed, as much comfort as he could without betraying a single moment of his own feeling.
Somehow, tonight had changed this.
He felt it growing between them; this strangled new emotion that threatened to surface, new and terrifying. In the distance it loomed, the large dark wave that he knew existed yet could not clearly see. Threatening on the horizon, ready to strike, it lingered just outside of his perception. Yes, he feared it coming, yet more than the fear that it might overtake him was the complete paranoia that, once he found himself pulled under, he would not find the comfort of those slender feminine fingers entwined with his. That he would plunge alone while she remained above the frothing death, allowing him to sink.
Tonight she played Marguerite. For the first time, perhaps for the last. And like Faust before him, he would watch in the shadows and know the honey-nectared pinprick of wanton longing. Her voice would enchant all who were gathered, and for the first time he would only be one restless admirer in a sea of faces.
Faces infinitely more pleasing than his own.
And yet, seeing her there, standing before him, refusing to move away, he reminded himself that things had changed. Tonight, more than ever before, a dream should be sought after even if it has only one small promise of hope. He had forgotten who he was in this seemingly fruitless pursuit of her attentions. He was not a person who stood helplessly by and watched something he desired fall into another's hands. He was, and had always remained, someone infinitely more clever and resourceful than that.
From that one small promise of hope he could continue to search for fragments, splinters, scraps, anything that bore the possibility of something more. Anything that was capable of resuscitating him, body and soul.
While it may be that he is doomed, that there is no hope, he would not go quietly. No, he would not lament, he would not elegy, he would not requiem this away.
And although this dance may be the one that carried him too close to the edge, the dance that finally brought him to where that looming wave breaks against the rocks, he would make it such a dance.
The knock sounded on the door, her seamstress and dresser would enter in a moment. Erik straightened himself upright behind the mirror, feeling this new resolve strengthen him. He felt confident, electric, alive.
"Go," he commanded quietly, but firmly. "You must turn your attention fully to performance. It is time for you to become the diva you were destined to be. The audience will be full of empty vessels you will command into ardent devotees. All will listen with rapture and admiration. Tonight will be yours, and I will be with you. I will be with you during your preparation, even though I remain silent. I will be with you during your performance, even if you cannot see me. Once you are finished and the accolades and applause have died, you are to return here. I will be waiting."
He felt it again, the heady and dangerous thrum of that inevitable wave. It charged the room around them, making everything bright and vibrant and full of nervous energy. With his palm again pressed against the glass he whispered, "Go," a final time and, with a newfound sense of determination, hoped for Moncharmin's sake that box five had been left empty.