Chapter 18

Émilie found she could not understand this new man who had her father's face but was not the father she remembered. He did not play with her and hardly talked with her. He never talked to her mother or of her mother. Émilie had never known Erik's Christine, but she found herself missing the woman. Though not as much, she guessed, as Erik missed her.

He returned to teaching her with a fervor he had not had since she was learning to read. Only now he was harsh and impatient. Rages were frequent and oppressive. Before, Émilie had responded to each of his tempers in kind, her own personality just as volatile and twice as logical. But she did not understand the despair of loss and so did not understand Erik. Now instead of returning his words, she withdrew into herself.

They no longer went for their walks on Sundays and Émilie's ballet lesson became her only escape from her cellar home. She had never loved the dark rooms. She liked the sun and the wide open spaces of the opera house. The cellar was a prison with walls made of memories far older than Émilie and far beyond her understanding. Yet her imagination made the attempt all the same. It was a vivid imagination, and days without escape made it fevered. Émilie could see sadness like shadows, sliding through the doorways, making the house darker and darker. She liked to sit on her bed and watch the shadows creep in.

"Émilie."

She had to look away from the door. Erik was too bright, like a picture of an angel she had seen in a book. He wore his white porcelain mask and it reflected all the candlelight in the room. He wore his mask more often since the day she had asked for her own.

In the mirror in the ballet room, she had studied her face. She had studied the other ballerinas, and the stagehands, and Madame Giry and Uncle Nadir. What made a face beautiful? What made it frightening?

"Émilie, shall we have our lesson now?" Erik asked, impatient with her distracted reverie.

She smiled and slid off the bed. "Yes, papa. Will you teach chemistry today, please?"

"I will teach what I want to teach. Don't be insolent. Come."

He gave the lesson in chemistry in his study. The entire time, he stood at her shoulder, correcting and giving no praise. When she was done, he patted her hair and bade her leave. As soon as she was out of the room, he locked himself inside.

The door to Erik's bedroom now gaped open, wood shards and dark space. It had been so since the strange day Nadir had taken Émilie to her ballet class and returned her to an Erik who had started at her as if she wasn't real and faltered as he returned her hug, as if he didn't want to touch her. She sensed something was wrong.

"Papa, a kiss, please," she had demanded, hysteria making her voice high.

Normally he rushed to kiss her when she asked, like he thought it a reward. Yet now he hesitated so long that it seemed he wouldn't do it. And when his lips finally brushed her hair, he seemed distracted and he drew away quickly.

Émilie considered that if other people found Erik's face hideous because it was different from theirs, maybe he found her face ugly because it was different from his. She frowned, filed thought away, and resolved never to trouble him for a kiss again.

Now Émilie picked her way through the ruined door. She had been in the room a few times before and found nothing of interest. Mostly it was dusty and empty. Not empty of things. Bookshelves were filled with trinkets and old volumes. There was a shattered mass of pipes and ivory and wood that she could not fathom and papers cluttered every surface. No, there was no end to the things in the room. It was empty of spirit. This was a dead room, more lifeless even than the rest of the house, and she did not like to be inside.

Now she returned for the sheets and sheets of yellowed paper with unintelligible scarlet writing. Émilie had seen them before and paid them no mind. What use were lines and dots on a page? She had tried half-heartedly to decipher them as she would any other language, but her father had no books of any use and she felt, even though the door was now open, that she was not permitted to ask about anything inside.

Today, her interest had been rekindled. Normally during her ballet lessons, Madame Giry directed the girls' steps with counting. Not so for this lesson. A man had come in to accompany them on a piano, as Madame Giry had called it.

The result was beyond anything Émilie could have imagined. It was noise certainly, but of its own class. Something that caressed her ears, even the harsh and discordant notes, building and breaking, speaking in a language more beautiful than mere words and of things not otherwise expressible. It reminded her of…She couldn't think what. The first sound from the piano had frozen her in the middle of a pirouette, causing the girl behind her in line to collide with her and knock them both to the floor.

"Émilie, what's wrong, child?"

"Sorry, madame, but what is that?"

"What is what?"

Émilie pointed to the instrument by way of explanation.

"You mean the piano? It's an instrument. It makes music."

"Music?" she repeated reverently.

The pianist spoke up at that. "You mean you've never heard music? Aren't you the opera gh-"

Madame Giry shushed him. To Émilie, she said, "May we return to the routine now?"

Obligingly Émilie resumed her place. During one of her breaks, however, she had stood behind the man at the piano and watched over his shoulder as he turned the markings on the sheets in front of him into sound. They were the same markings as on the sheets in her father's room, only in black instead of red.

She didn't linger long in Erik's room today, only enough to realize the construction of metal tubes and wood had likely been another instrument like the piano before it was destroyed. And to slip a sheet of music into her dress sleeve.

When Erik took her to ballet the next day, she kept the crinkly paper down the front of her leotard and moved carefully so it wouldn't rustle. Luckily Erik was too preoccupied to notice the few times it did move. After class was over, she went right to the accompanist and said, "Please, monsieur, how does it work?"

He gave her a questioning look before explaining which notes on the paper corresponded to which keys on the piano, what different notations meant, and how one would go about playing certain things. She listened intently and understood all.

When he had finished, she pulled the stolen music from her bodice and asked, "Can you play this?"

He studied it for a moment before saying angrily, "Is this a joke? No one can play this. It's impossible. Now if you'll excuse me, rehearsal is starting."

Émilie took his place on the bench as soon as he was gone. He had left the sheets for the ballet and she studied them for a moment before tentatively pressing a key.

At the clear, piercing note, she drew her hand away as if shocked.

What power was this? She could produce the same sounds as the pianist? Could just anyone do this?

She pressed the key again and then the one next to it. She pressed two at a time, three at a time, several with both hands, eleven or twelve with splayed fingers. The last was a terrible cacophony of noise, but the first hesitant notes had sounded pleasant. She played those keys again, already able to see the scale of sounds like a picture in her mind. Émilie imagined Erik could explain the theory behind it all, the beautiful language that opened before her. He would know why it worked. But even without his knowledge to help her, she could play little melodies of her own making and read the music sheets. Following the accompanist's hasty instructions, she picked out the first few bars, as he had called them. Then she stopped.

It had sounded well enough.

So she played the whole thing through. It was wonderful and pleasing to play, to hear. She couldn't explain what she felt, but it was entrancing. She played again. And again. And again.