Chapitre Deux: Le Apparition
"And so I asked who he was," Christine explained to her adoptive mother, Mamma Valerius, over dinner that night. She had hardly been able to wait to tell her—Mamma had always held on to the hope that the Angel would come. She had an unshakable faith in the supernatural—so much like Christine's mother—which the girl had revered since her childhood.
The kindly woman nodded, enthralled by Christine's story. Her dark Romanian eyes, even under heavy, wrinkled eyelids, were bright with eagerness of hearing the girl's encounter with the divine. Her attire was as simple as Christine's—an unadorned dress and a well-worn apron. The pewter cross hanging from her neck was the only piece of jewelry she owned. "And vot did he say?" she prompted impatiently, passing Christine a bowl of stew. Her worn sleeve whispered sadly as it brushed against the cracked, empty butter dish, and Christine looked away, feeling a hint of her depression return.
"He didn't say anything," she sighed, absentmindedly staring out the dingy window at the early September frost. She had never seen frost in September in France before. Thinking that it was promising an unusually cold winter, she shivered and looked away. "Just silence."
The old woman looked very excited, brushing aside the fact that the strange voice had not identified himself. She ignored the dinner they were supposed to be eating, deeming such a miraculous event much more worthy of her attention. "It must be ze Angel! You can do no harm by asking him!"
"Do you think he'll come again?"
"Oh, child, of course he vill! Ze Angel is here to help you!"
Christine smiled politely and mulled this over, drawing lines in her stew. Of course that's what Mamma would say. The few perfect notes she'd ever hit, the single compliment she'd received from a patron of the opera—to Mamma they had all been signs that the Angel had come. Christine's hopes had been raised numbers of times in the past few years, and the Angel had never come. But could it be? Could the Voice really be the Angel her father had promised her? It was almost too wonderful to imagine.
Please, Freya, she prayed, hoping the goddess would be sympathetic to her plea, please let it be the Angel!
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After the next night's performance, Christine entered her dressing room with a mixture of fear and excitement whirling in her mind. What if, after all these years of waiting, the Angel finally appeared to her and continued her father's teachings? The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. After all, what else could the Voice be, but an Angel? She confidently strode over to her vanity table and sat down, listening, waiting.
But the Voice never came. After three hours of loitering, pretending to be preoccupied with rearranging the items on her dresser, combing through her hair, and making sure her costume was in perfect condition, she gave up. Sighing, she stared at her reflection in the vanity mirror.
"Perhaps the stress just got to you," Christine told her reflection wearily. "If there was an Angel, surely he would've come by now." Defeated, she threw a patched shawl over her shoulders and started for the door.
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Christine barely touched her dinner, far too depressed over the Angel to pretend for Mamma's sake that she enjoyed the cheap, bland food her guardian was able to afford. As if it hadn't been a trying enough day—a terrible rehearsal, a chastisement from Madame Giry concerning her lack of dedication, and the continued nonappearance of the Angel—she still had to come home to a pathetically-tiny tenement and a small plate of beans and some old lettuce to remind her of the pathetic poverty in which she lived.
She shifted her weight slightly, and the stained chair on which she was sitting tottered upon its uneven legs, an unwelcome reinforcement to the extent of her destitution.
"Vot is ze matter, dearest?" asked Mamma Valerius in concern. Christine had been able to sense Mamma's muted excitement for the past few days since Christine's encounter with the mysterious Voice, expecting Christine at any moment to announce that she had spoken with the Voice again and that he was the Angel of Music, come to rescue them from their poverty and elevate Gustave Daaé's talented daughter to the role of opera diva. All through dinner she had waited for Christine to speak, growing impatient with excitement.
Christine knew it was unkind of her to keep Mamma in suspense as she was, but she couldn't bring herself to say that the Voice had never spoken or made his presence known again; it was bad enough wondering within herself if it hadn't been the Angel—if he had abandoned her—if he had even come at all—if the Angel even existed—without making her fears concrete by speaking them aloud. She drew a trail through the tiny mound of beans with her fork, growing more and more depressed as she wondered if the Angel would ever come.
"'As ze Voice still not returned?" Mamma asked, trying to study Christine's expression in the dim light.
Christine sighed and set down her fork. "No."
"But it had to have been ze Angel!"
"Or a stagehand pulling a prank," she said gloomily, plucking wilted petals from the flowers resting in a cheap purple vase on the table. "Or my imagination." She wanted the Angel to appear so badly that it was a depressing possibility that she had just dreamed up the whole thing.
The part of her that needed to believe in the Angel protested at this thought, commanding her to stay strong in her belief of the Angel.
Christine made a derisive sound and yanked a brown petal free with unnecessary force, causing it to disintegrate between her fingers. All her life, she had believed in the Angel so strongly that she had molded her speech, her actions, every comportment to be more pleasing to the Angel's eye. And what had it gotten her? He had never appeared. She was tired of trying so hard, and tired of the ache of constant disappointment.
"But it has to be a sign from God!" declared Mamma. Christine said nothing, and after a moment, Mamma put her hand on Christine's comfortingly. "Ze Angel vill come."
Christine snatched her hand away. "What if he doesn't?" she snapped. "What if he never comes? What if the Angel isn't even real?"
Mamma looked astonished. "But ov course he is real, mine child. Vot are you saying?"
"I've been waiting my whole life for the Angel to appear, and I can't stand to have my hopes quashed again! And if he was real, why hasn't he appeared by now? Aren't I good enough? What if—" She stopped suddenly and shoved her chair away from the table so that she could stand, causing the vase of wilted flowers to totter before Mamma caught it. "I don't want to talk about it anymore," she declared.
Mamma set the vase back in its spot on the tiny, wooden table before replying. "My dear, vhy are you so vorried? It is ze Angel, I'm certain."
Christine stood furiously. "I said I didn't want to talk about it!" she snapped, and stomped off to her room.
She locked the door and slammed the window closed, but thoughts of the Angel, accompanied by pain, bitterness, and disillusionment, plagued her unceasingly through the night, preventing all chance of sleep.
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The following day she avoided the dressing room, dreading the terrible silence she would hear from its walls, confirming the nonexistence of the Angel and the end of all her dreams. But after Madame Giry put her foot down, refusing to permit Christine to practice in her street clothes, she was forced to enter the room anyway to fetch her ballet costume.
When she entered the room, a foolish part of her half-expected the Angel to be there. But the room was dark and uninhabited, the only sound coming from the passersby in the hallway.
After she had changed into the silky white tutu and ballet slippers—making as much noise as possible while doing so, to keep the crushing silence at bay—she ran a brush through her hair, out of habit, though it hardly mattered anymore; without the Angel to elevate her to divahood, she would remain a penniless ballet rat until she died.
She moved to throw her dress into the pile overflowing from the shared closet, but then stopped suddenly, contemplating the dull, unadorned cloth, patched in numerous places, boring, ugly, and poor, promising her a future of the same material. She would never live up to her father's dreams by herself. She would be doomed to a pathetic, undistinguished existence in a foreign country, scraping for every penny for the rest of her life.
Tears rolled off her cheeks and stained the dress in her hands, turning it an even darker, more dismal grey. The Angel wasn't coming. No one was coming.
The loneliness and despair pressed in on her, as if the very room were shrinking, until she struggled to breathe. She couldn't bear to believe that the Angel was real—to perpetuate the disappointment that clawed at her heart after so many years of waiting—but even worse was believing that he did not exist. The two sides warred within her, clawing, screaming within her chest, making her heart beat faster and faster and the malicious silence roar in her ears.
"ANGEL!" she cried, falling to her knees. She shrieked his name over and over, so loudly that it made her throat burn, until her voice succumbed to hoarseness and was overpowered by her sobs. Still there was only silence, more deafening than any noise, damning her to poverty and failure….
"Angel," she said one last time, softly, knowing it was hopeless, and buried her red, burning face in the dress she held.
And then, at long last, after she had given up all hope, she heard the Voice speak:
"Christine."
His voice was low and tentative, as if he were unsure of himself. She scrambled to her feet, not bothering to wipe the tears from her eyes, forcing down all the faith and happiness that bubbled in her chest. She had to be in control. If it wasn't the Angel, she would be crushed if she allowed herself to hope again. She had to be calm and practical. Just the same, she couldn't keep a note of desperation from her voice as she asked,
"Are…are you the Angel of Music?"
There was a silence, a thousand times worse than the one moments before, tearing Christine's heart apart with doubt, fear, and despair. Just when she could endure it no longer, the Voice spoke, hesitant,
"Angel of Music?"
His tone gave her the answer she had been dreading. A sob escaped her lips, and she hung her head, unable to bear the weight of such bitter disappointment.
"Christine—"
"Go away!" she cried, as the tears began flooding down her cheeks again, fast and scalding. She collapsed onto the floor, the jarring pain it brought to her knees accentuating her agony. "Go away and leave me to my misery!" The rough, old floorboards were driving splinters into her hands, but the pain was drowned out in her anguish. "Without the Angel I'll never be anything! Just a stupid, penniless chorus rat who can't do anything right and will never live up to her father's dream!" She gasped for air as the sobs wracking her body intensified, pulling her hands away from her eyes and clutching her chest in an attempt to get enough air. "I might as well die here!" she sobbed, and prayed for the gods to strike her down where she knelt.
"Christine, please," cried the Voice desperately, "please don't cry! You're not stupid, or worthless, or anything you just said!"
"Leave me alone!" she wailed. "Without the Angel, there is nothing! No point, no purpose, no chance! Leave me to die!"
"But Christine, I—I am the Angel!"
She sniffed and didn't bother to look up. "Oh, right, sure," she said dully, too worn out from her outburst to yell. "Then why did you sound so confused when I asked if you were him?"
"Because I—wished to test your faith in the Angel," he said, his voice growing stronger and more certain as he continued. "I have come to serve as your instructor, dear Christine, and to help you fulfill your father's dream. Please don't cry anymore."
A small, final tear made its way down her cheek as she, stunned, tried to process this abrupt change in her fortune. "You—you're really the Angel?"
"Yes."
"Why have you not come before?"
"I was aiding another deserving artist, Christine. I came as quickly as I could."
"And…you'll really help me to become a diva?"
"If that is your wish, then I shall work night and day to see it fulfilled," he said, in a voice so strong, so sincere, so devoted, that she was forced to smile as his warmth filled her.
She was silent for a long moment, clasping her hands and thanking the gods for answering her prayers, as her heart's wild, rapid beats slowly calmed. Finally she raised her head and asked, "When do we start?"
"Whenever you wish," he replied.
"Now, Angel—let's start now!" For a moment she heard no reply, and said hurriedly, "Or do you wish me to call you something else? Father also called you the Skrípi av Songr—that's Norse for your title—should I call you that instead?"
"No…no, 'Angel' will do just fine."
"All right." She waited again, then prompted, her excitement making her rather impatient, "Well? Aren't we starting now?"
"Very…very well, Christine…but don't you have ballet practice a few minutes from now?"
Her ecstatic smile turned into a pout. "I don't want to be a ballet rat one moment longer! I want to be a diva right now!"
"That will take time," said the Angel.
"Hmpf." She considered it for a moment. She had waited years for the Angel to come—she supposed, now that he was here, that she could wait a little while longer to be the diva of the Opera Garnier. "I guess you're right."
"Go to practice, then, Christine—we'll begin your lessons tonight."
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As Christine skipped out of the dressing room and down the hall, happy and smiling once more, Erik leaned heavily against the wall of passageway, uncaring as the cold bricks sapped the warmth from his body, and covered his face with his hands. How could he have done something so utterly stupid? Now she believed that he was an angel! How could he have lied to her so cruelly?
The porcelain mask chilled his fingers, and he yanked his hand away and cursed as remembrance of his deformity made his situation seem even more awful. He—such a disgusting creature—shouldn't be speaking to anyone as beautiful and pure as Christine Daaé, not even through a wall. If she found out that the so-called angel who had promised to teach her was really a monster….
He sank down to his knees, unable to take the weight of the guilt he had brought upon himself. But he hadn't had a choice. He hadn't been able to stand listening to her cry. Singing to her two days ago had been the only way he had been able to think of to alleviate her despair.
After a few minutes of cursing himself, Erik sighed and stood. There was nothing he could do about it now. And perhaps—just perhaps—he would be able to help her achieve her dreams while he dealt with his mistake.
Readjusting his mask, he started the trek back down to his caverns. If he was going to play the part of an angel, he needed to find a Bible as quickly as possible.