Chapter III: About Grief
After my first meeting with Erik, I returned home in a daze. What kind of man was he? Who was he to more or less forbid me to talk about him, even to my own family? And why was I inclined to obey him?
It didn't seem so strange now that Little Jammes had never actually spoken to anyone who had had Erik as a professor. His students would not have admitted the fact to her. I didn't even know who his other students were, or even if he had any at all. And then there was the mask... No, it wasn't just the white mask which covered his face - everything about him was a mask, a disguise. I had been in his room with him for quite a while, and still I knew nothing about him. I didn't know what he looked like, I didn't even know when he wanted me to come for our next lesson, because, surely, he didn't mean I could come whenever I liked? That would be very inconvenient for him, since he would have no way of knowing when I was on my way. I decided I would have to return the same time next week, that was all I could do since I didn't have his phone number.
As soon as I opened the front door of our apartment, I knew something was not right. My mother was standing in the hallway looking concerned, and the door to Christine's room was shut.
"She has been in there for an hour", Mother said. "She won't talk to me, maybe she will talk to you. If only she were crying, I would feel more at ease. But now, it's just quiet. If she doesn't open soon, I think we will have to break the door down."
Mother deliberately raised her voice just a little as she said these last words.
I went to Christine's door and gently knocked on her door.
"Christine?" I said. "Are you all right in there?"
There was no answer. I waited for a minute or two, then there was the sound of a key turning in the lock on the other side. Christine opened the door and stepped aside so I could come in. She then closed the door behind me and went to sit down on her bed. I placed myself in an armchair facing her and waited for her to speak. She was very pale and had an expression of hopelessness in her eyes, a mood I had often seen her in lately. I knew she had been thinking of her father again.
"I can't sing", she finally said, shaking her head. "It's no use."
"What do you mean?" I asked, to encourage her to continue talking and get it off her chest.
"It's all so superficial, it's not real!" she went on vehemently. "All these operas, all these songs about great emotions. Great love, happiness, unhappiness - in the end it's all a show. None of those emotions are real, none of these songs can express what it feels like when you...when... It's all just a display of vocal ability. And what's the use in that?"
"I don't know", I said. I felt helpless, as you often do in the company of someone who is mourning a tragic loss. You feel you should say something, offer some consolation, but you can't find the words for fear of making it worse. And yet, that silence is the worst thing you could possibly do.
"Besides", Christine continued, "I couldn't sing if I wanted to. I just get tense, my breathing is all wrong, it's like I can't even catch my breath, much less carry a tune. It would take a miracle for me to make it through this year! I only wish..."
Christine's eyes went to the wall, where there was a framed photograph of her and her father, taken last year when they were on a holiday in Norway. She didn't have to say anything, I knew what she wished for.
Christine was not religious in the usual sense of the word, but she always did believe in the supernatural to a certain extent. We had talked about it in the past, one time when Christine and her father had come to France to spend the summer with Mother and me, during one of those long late-night conversations that always take place the last evening before visiting relatives have to go back home. Christine had confessed that she believed in ghosts and that she thought it was possible to contact dead people, and then she had suggested that whoever of us died first, would come and visit the others as a ghost. Martin had answered that if he died before his daughter, he would certainly not come back to haunt Christine, since he wouldn't want to frighten her, but that he would send her an Angel of Music instead, to make sure that she fulfilled her dream of becoming a great singer. After his death, this remark, probably uttered half as a joke, had taken hold of Christine's mind. She had talked about the Angel of Music many times, wishing and hoping that it would visit her with a message from her dead father. Whenever she was about to despair and give up singing altogether, like the day we auditioned for music college and she thought she would never be accepted, she spoke of the Angel and how she yearned for the smallest sign that such a creature existed. Today was clearly one of those days.
"Do you think the Angel will ever visit me?" Christine suddenly said, looking directly at me with her grave blue eyes.
I found it hard to meet her gaze. Personally, I didn't think there were such things as angels or ghosts. I have always been very down to earth in those matters and only believe what I see - a trait I inherited from my mother, I suppose. Nevertheless, it was obvious that Christine needed that hope right now, or there was no telling what she might do. Her mental state had already been a matter of great concern to Mother and me.
"Maybe it will, one way or another", I finally answered tentatively. After all, I thought to myself to justify what I had just said, the word "angel" can be used in the metaphoric sense, so technically, I wasn't telling a lie. However, I knew very well that wasn't what Christine had meant.
"If it doesn't come", Christine sighed, "I don't know how I will be able to go on. It's a dead end."
If she had cried or sobbed, if she had been screaming or throwing things, if she had been more dramatic about it and threatened to jump out of the window, that might not have worried me so much. But now, she just spoke quietly and calmly, as if she were stating an indisputable fact, and because of that, I was afraid.
