Gift Five and a Half
"A Gift From Erik"
(Part II)

CHRISTINE DAAÉ'S JOURNAL

I am so happy here. I am happy and content. I enjoy living in this house with Erik. I never want to leave Erik. I am glad I married Erik. Erik is the most wonderful husband. He is helpful and attentive, and smart - so very, very smart. I have never met a man as smart as him, nor as talented and clever. I am lucky to have my husband, whom I love very, very dearly.

I love my husband Erik.

Many hours passed since Christine had scratched that last spiteful pen-stroke upon her journal page. She had only ceased in her bitter scrawling when the page grew too wet from her tears for her to possibly continue on, and now she laid across the disheveled bed with her face planted firmly into the bedspread.

Let him read it, Christine sulked, crinkling her nose nastily against the snot-ridden silk until she could no longer breathe a fresh breath. Let him read it and weep. It's what he deserves.

In the meantime, while the book dried as a heap of crumbled pages on the floor, she found herself all out of tears. It was not that she was no longer upset… but just that she had apparently found the human limit on sadness. Apparently there came a time when the body decided it had been too sad for too long, and suddenly stopped responding to any further misery.

Without her tears, though, she found herself with very little else to do beyond pressing her face into her mattress and wishing for death. She couldn't say who she wished it for particularly – for him or for her – but perhaps it really didn't matter at all, for without one the other would surely die soon after. All was equal in the end.

Thus was the nature of her thoughts.

Hours passed her by in that stuffy room of hers – of his, actually, since it was his house and his furniture – but actually it wasn't even all his, was it? These were his mother's things, this was his mother's furniture, he was his mother's abominable creation…

He had said she had died. No, he hadn't even said that. He said he had collected all this musty furniture from his dead mother's house. For all Christine knew, that woman could have been dead her whole rotten life. Had she ever actually lived? What sort of woman could give birth to such a terrifying, repulsive creature as Erik? Could such a woman truly have ever walked among other mortals in the land of the living?

Christine almost laughed at the ridiculousness of her own thoughts. Of course Erik's mother had lived - a dead woman cannot give birth to a living child! The dead cannot even copulate - and for them to try, amongst themselves or alongside the living, would most certainly be a sin worthy of the most eternal of punishments!

After all, there was a reason she found Erik's skeletal fingers upon her skin so revolting…

But still her thoughts went on, for where else were they to go? She thought then of Erik's father, and how little she knew of him. Erik had said nothing of the man; she suspected he knew just as much. Perhaps in her mind she could imagine a family for him – a fitting family that he deserved. She thought of a man with a curled and thick mustache… Erik couldn't grow a mustache. His father certainly could.

His father was probably all the things Erik never was. He was probably a polite, sociable man. A man of good company and good spirits. One who never spoke too loudly or too harshly, and who always treated his wife with respect.

A man who had a wife.

Then again, Erik never spoke of him. Perhaps he never knew his father. Or perhaps he did. Perhaps his father was a brute, just the same as Erik – or worse. Perhaps Erik's father hated his mother for giving birth to such a monster. Perhaps he scalded her with burning insults and made her whimper in the corner. Perhaps he unlooped his belt from his pants from time to time and whipped her senseless. Perhaps he even hit her outright with nothing but his bony fists for daring to lock Erik in the attic. Perhaps he liked to torture her with Erik's presence. Perhaps he didn't let Erik wear a mask. Perhaps he made Erik sit at the family table for dinner and wouldn't let him leave until he ate every last crumb. Perhaps he made Erik sit with them even longer than that and partake in their dinner conversations well into the night. Perhaps he made Erik ask to be excused from the table when he grew too tired to sit upright. Perhaps he made Erik kiss her good-night before he went to bed. Perhaps they all lived a very normal life.

And perhaps, maybe, Erik had more of a normal home life growing up than Christine ever had - and so truly, then, he had no real right to complain after all these years…

Suddenly she became overcome with a desire to hurt him, just hurt him, purely, the way he had accused her of hurting him so many times before. He deserved it, didn't he? She'd been so patient with him, and for what? He didn't deserve her kindness! And, really, if he believed she meant to hurt him every time before, despite all evidence to the contrary, what was the difference in actually doing so for real for once? How good it would feel to finally have him do something she wanted! For - for if he would not smile when she tried to make him happy, perhaps he would cry when she tried to make him miserable!

She leapt from her bed, half the silken spread coming with her even as she tripped over her own skirts, and ran to her writing desk. There was something, somewhere in its drawers, that she had brought from her house so many months ago. It had been her mother's - a treasured trinket of no monetary value - and she loathed to part with it when it held such a sentimental value to her… but what better gift for her to give to Erik, which would crush his heart to receive, than something that would crush her heart just the very same to give away?

She found it under a mess of papers tucked hastily in the top drawer of the desk. An unsent letter to Raoul from her first stay in this horrible little house… a page of Erik's freakish Don Juan that she stole and never gave back… and, oh, here it was all along, that stupid marriage certificate she couldn't find this morning – she tossed them all aside, fluttering to the floor without a shred of care, and plucked the trinket out of the drawer.

This will be it, then, Christine thought as she held the little thing in her hand. This will be the gift that he will hate the most.

With a calm fury, she laid the thing out on her desk surface and rooted around again in her drawers for something to put it in. She found a velvet box that held a pretty bracelet Erik had purchased for her. It easily must have cost more than a small fortune, with its luxurious gold base and carnelian detailing; and yet for all the trouble he went through to acquire it, she found herself tossing it coldly to the side, just as she'd done with the stack of papers, and ripping out the lush padded base in order to stuff her own cheap trinket inside.

There. With an ascorbic sense of accomplishment she clasped it shut. It rattled a bit when she moved it, so after a little bit of thought she opened it again and stuffed one of her fresh handkerchiefs inside. Something for him to blow his terrible little nothing-nose with, when his inevitable tears began to run…

She tied one of her satin hair ribbons to it - the lavender one with the lace frills that he'd given to her for her second quarter-birthday - just to make it seem more like a gift… and then she was done.

A knock stirred at her door, and without a second thought she threw the box back in her desk and slammed the drawer shut.

Because of course she couldn't give that to him. Even in this indignant state of hers, she wasn't that cruel. It was a nice fantasy, albeit a heartless one, but in the end… it would have to remain as just that. She simply couldn't do that to him. It wasn't right. And despite everything… despite all the pain he had inflicted upon her… he didn't deserve to be hurt like this. He didn't deserve to be hurt at all.

No one did.

"Christine?" Erik called through the door, tapping his fingers lightly against the wood. "Are you awake?"

This routine again, though…

"Erik is sorry, Christine."

He's only apologizing because he thinks I'd like him to, not because he's actually sorry…

"Would you like some air, my love?"

Of course I would – wait, what was he offering?

"Air?" she called back haltingly. "As in – fresh air?"

"I have cleared my schedule," he replied, more hopefully. "We could go sit up in your dressing room with the door cracked and the window open in the hall… or we could go up to the roof… no, not the roof, I suppose, unless you wanted to… but we could even take a stroll in the Bois, if you so wish…"

The Bois! Oh, truly, she must be dreaming! Erik would never willingly let her out of this sordid cage he'd trapped her in. There had to be some sort of joke in what he said, some riddle he had yet to reveal the punchline to. There was no way he could possibly mean to actually let her out.

And yet –

They actually went!

It was as dark as before when they left the Opera house, but Christine expected it and found herself far less disappointed this time around. They went by carriage to the Bois, and were deposited somewhere along the shore of a long lake full of inky black water. And, surely, it would have been nicer to walk out in the sunlight again for once… but at this point, to just stroll under the soft white moon, with Erik's grip like iron on her arm, was a compromise Christine was far too willing to make.

He wore his sparkling glass nose, affixed to his face with a piece of piano wire, rather than that horrid porcelain mask he had initially tried with her. It shifted a little with each step, so he walked as rigidly as possible… which in turn made Christine walk rather stiffly as well. It was not the graceful promenade she had imagined it'd be, all those months ago when he'd originally threatened her with his dreams for married life, but there was a gentle flutter in her heart when she realized they'd fallen into a strange sort of pattern with each other. Somehow, each time her right heel tapped the ground, his left shoe found its place right beside hers, falling against the paving stones together as a unified step forward.

Conversation was hard to get into, despite Erik being the one to suggest the outing. He remained tightlipped and stilted, even as Christine prodded him several times in an attempt to quell his anxiety.

"Would it be more comfortable for you if you removed that thing?" Christine said at one point, gesturing hesitantly at his nosepiece. She found it difficult to call it that outright, for fear that he would react poorly to her verbal acknowledgement of his lacking of such an important facial feature. "No-one is around to see."

"You may not see them, but there are always watchers around us when we walk above the ground," Erik said, his shifty eyes cast to the side of the path. "See, there - those two ladies? Wave hello, Christine, it's the polite thing to do."

He raised his hand woodenly at a pair of women, who were standing beneath a gas streetlight and dressed in some rather conspicuously tailored dresses, and Christine found herself waving, too, with a small strained smile upon her face. The women returned the absurd gesture, though they seemed perplexed at themselves for doing so.

"See, Christine?" Erik said in her ear, as they moved past the foggy circle of gas-light that was painted upon the pavestones. "They did not stare and scream, because Erik was a gentleman and didn't let them be scared by his ugly face."

"But they are staring," Christine said, casting a look behind her at the confused women still watching them.

"Oh, they will," Erik agreed. "We can't stop people from staring once they've seen us. I've never been able to, anyway. But it's to be expected, you must understand. We are walking through the Bois at midnight, after all!"

"Perhaps if we had gone during the day, we would have garnered less attention…"

"There will always be people looking at us," Erik promised, "no matter the time of day. I personally do not care for it one bit – that is why I live where I do. But you, my love… I know you feel a little differently. We are very different people."

"Not so different," Christine murmured.

He paused for a moment before agreeing, with a slight smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Not so, indeed…"

He pulled her further along, until the reached a path that brought them so close to the water that she could almost step in its Stygian shallows. When they had set out at first, Christine had found it very hard to make things out in the darkness. Now, though, her eyes had adjusted - and with the help of the moonlight, which had turned an unearthly shade of pale green, she could see as clear as if it were daytime.

With a single slender finger, Erik pointed out various dark trees to her, from palms to cedars to sequoias, guiding her eyes through the deep foliage to explain where certain exotic species had been planted to grow. He chattered about the exotic orchids and cacti that could be found further in, nearby the greenhouse, and then suddenly stood up straight and cupped his bony hand to his ear. Christine stopped and listened too, just in time to hear a quiet hooting which seemed to come from up above. When she looked, Erik laughed and told her that the owl in question was actually sitting on a branch about eye-level with them to their left… Owls can be quite the ventriloquists, he told her with a giddy grin. He seemed to know a great amount about all the nature around them - and when she said so, he explained nonchalantly that he had been to the Bois many times before.

"I am a recluse only from human society, and even from that just barely. I am a man, Christine, and I must eat like a man from time to time. Where did you think those groceries came from?" He shrugged and gestured to the path that stretched before them. "I try to enjoy what little joys of Paris I am allowed. I might not partake in the crowds, but I am very much similar to any other normal man. So I buy my groceries in town, and I walk on the paths in this park, and I take a night in at the Opera when I so choose."

"You must not have come here in a long time, though," Christine remarked.

"And what makes you think that?"

"Well, we've been living together for many months, and we've never come here before…" She furrowed her brows, and then laughed as she caught the realization: "Oh! Have you been coming here without me all this time?"

Erik averted his face from her gaze as he pretended to look up at a particularly high branch on a tree. "It tends to get rather stuffy in that damp cellar…"

"You never thought to ask me to come with you?"

"Oh, Christine…" Erik sighed wearily. "Please, my love, we were having such a nice night. Let us not argue right now."

"Fine," Christine quipped shortly. "But let it be known that I do enjoy breathing fresh air for once, and I would appreciate it if you brought me out here more often."

"I shall have to make a note of that," Erik said smoothly, before lightening up his grip on her arm just a touch. "Though, I must wonder if Christine would be thoroughly displeased if we did not visit the Bois every time we went out."

"Are you saying…?"

"There is no reason why we cannot go out like this," Erik said, as if to convince himself. "And seeing as Christine has not yet tried to run…"

"I will not be attempting that again," Christine vowed. "Please, Erik, try to understand that I was very frightened and overwhelmed back then, and I did not know what I was -"

He squeezed her arm in a gentle reminder. "I asked for us not to argue right now, Christine. Please, let us move on from here."

They walked in amiable silence for some time after that, passing by shrubs of candy-making fruit and trees of sugared syrup, tracing a path through the blackened forest that only their night-adjusted eyes could see. From time to time they'd pass through a spot where the light of the moon would shine through the trees, and then all of the pearl buttons that Erik had painstakingly stitched into her pink gown would shimmer with an incandescent glow, and his nose would glint and gleam like a jewel set upon his face. A cool gust of wind blew through the tunnel of trees and, without a shawl or scarf, Christine found herself drawing near to Erik for warmth.

"Christine, you must not -" he started, pulling away from her.

"I am cold, Erik," she told him softly. "Can you not bring yourself to even hold me?"

He held her arm in such a way that she couldn't get closer to him than she was, and studied her face intently. "It would be better for us both if I could refrain from doing so."

"And yet I am still cold."

"And yet you are still cold," he agreed.

She shivered harshly. "What if I get sick?"

"It would still be for the best."

"And if I develop pneumonia?"

"Then, too, it would be better."

"Oh, Erik…" Christine sighed. "We are outside and I am cold. I am asking you to hold me. Why can things not be as simple as that?"

"I did not tell you the weather," Erik mumbled. "I should have told you. Then you would have brought a cloak…"

"But I did not, and now I am cold. Please, Erik."

"I could have told you… but I did not, and now you have nothing to cling to except – except -"

She planted her foot down, and halted their walk. Patiently, she demanded of him, "Did you plan for this?"

"No… I just did not think to tell you. I did not remember," he said gloomily. "And now Christine has no choice but to cling to her dastardly Erik…"

"You cannot blame yourself for this, Erik," Christine said as she shivered again. "Please, Erik. Let things be simple for a change. Let us have this until we return to your house."

He shifted his eyes, and was less than convincing when he retorted, "Let us not argue about this, Christine…"

"Yes, Erik," Christine murmured silkily, leaning towards him. "Let us not."

He accepted her in his embrace, snaking an arm around her lower back to bring his warm cape around to envelope them both. The smell of mothballs and decay overwhelmed her senses, as it always did when he drew near, and she fought against herself not to pull away now that she finally had him so close.

"Was that so hard?" Christine laughed, willing herself to breath through her mouth.

"It was honestly not," he smiled back, looking quite in awe of where his hand was now coasting along the small of her waist. "On the contrary - it is hard to restrain myself with you, my love."

"I wish you never would."

"I wish that, too."

They continued down the way, until they reached the very end of the forest and could see through the wrought-iron fence to the sleeping town on the other side of the sparkling Seine. They took a rest from their stroll beside it, gazing out between the narrow black pickets, wordless in their respective, dreamy musings.

Doubtlessly, the night was smoothly rolling along… in time it would be dawn, and they would have to return to their strange little world below the ground. Who knew what would happen from here? Christine didn't want to think about it. She didn't want to know – and as she cast a side-long glance at Erik, and saw the soft contentment upon his face, she realized he knew just as little as her.

Had she been unfair to him? He didn't know what he was doing. All he wanted was to be happy… just like she did. And he wanted her to be happy, too, just as she wanted him to be happy. But they were both inexperienced with love and all its complicated entanglements, and neither of them knew how to maneuver in such precarious positions. Could she fault his paranoia? His doubt? His distrust? How could she blame him when she responded in kind to all of his advances? What was he supposed to think? What did she want him to think?

Regardless - it was wrong of him to hold her as a prisoner in his home. Nothing could happen as long as they remained down there, like warden and hostage.

But still… still, it was nice to breathe the fresh air for once.

"Thank you for bringing me out here," Christine said, pressing her rosy cheek into the warm wool of his coat. "I have missed the world."

"And your world has missed you, too," Erik said softly. "You know, Christine… it was never my intention to keep you locked down there."

She quirked an eyebrow up at him. "Truly?"

"Yes… and just so you know, I have offered to bring you up before," he said. "You just never accepted."

"I don't think I realized those offers were real."

"Of course they were. I am not cruel, Christine - just lonely. The only requirement I ever had was for you to stay with me."

After some deliberation, he pointed across the water.

"Look at all those houses," he said reflectively. "I have built many houses in my life… perhaps I had a hand in some of those, too."

"They are very pretty."

"Yes, they are," he agreed, and peered down at her from behind his glass nose. "Would you like to live in a pretty house, Christine?"

"I would," she answered, "as long as you were there, too."

The corners of his lips turned upwards in the faintest of smiles. "That's very nice of you to say."

"I wasn't lying."

"I didn't say you were."

He guided her away from the fence, with a slower grace than before, and returned them to the path. Still he held her in his arms, a little more comfortably, and she found a spot to place her own arm around his tiny waist.

They meandered now, following tiny dirt trails into the thicker heart of the woods. Erik took back up his chattering, ambling between the strangest topics, jumping from knives and spiders to stars and dreams. His face turned wistful at one point, at which he said, without prompting:

"I purchased a flat on the Rue Scribe."

It caught her off-guard. He said it with the least urgency she'd ever heard from him, as like a subtle anecdote he'd just been reminded of. But he did not continue to speak after that, only looked at her for some sort of acknowledgement.

She met his eyes and nodded, indicating for him to go on. Let me in, Erik.

And he did.

"It was around the time we met. I've always wanted a normal life, as you know. That seemed an easy enough way to pretend." He turned away. "Sometimes I go up and pretend I live there. I have sometimes stayed there for days at a time. I share walls with neighbors. I hear them move about. Sometimes I let them hear me. I boil water for tea and let the kettle ring for a minute or two longer than I should before I shut it off. I wear my hardest-soled shoes and walk around the wood floors at the earliest hours of the morning. I hammer nails into the walls as if to hang up paintings… I'm afraid I am a rotten neighbor, honestly. I play my violin for hours up there. I like to keep the window open, for the fresh air, but I can't bring myself to stand near it. The music doesn't mind the walls, though, and so it goes out and bothers the people in the street. A beggar girl down below used to clap when I finished. I think she was glad for the peace and quiet. I haven't heard her in quite some time, though. Not since last winter."

They side-stepped a branch of a thicket that had over-extended itself into the path, as Christine mulled over his words. Then: "If you've had this house all along, why have we spent so long in that cellar?"

"I can't let my fantasies get the better of me. I have great difficulty drawing the line between the real and the imagined. You, of all people, should know that by now."

She did, of course. And she also had that very same problem. Memories of the Angel of Music came back to her, far more vivid than ever before. "Could you show me your flat one day, at the very least?"

"I'd rather not. It's nothing I'm proud of."

"Could you pretend to be, though?" Christine asked. "For a little while? Just until we go back down?"

He eyed her curiously. "And what would you have me pretend?"

"Tell me what our life would be like if we lived there. What would you want? What would we do?"

He spun her a tale of happiness and joy. It was just like Erik to dream, after all, and it was just like Christine to cling to his arm and listen, as they walked about those tiny dirt trails in the black heart of the Bois. He rambled on about the neighbors they would have, and the friends that would visit them. They would throw parties and be well-liked, prominent members of society - no, perhaps not, he amended when she made a face, perhaps we will be homebodies and keep quite to ourselves. But still, he said, they would happily receive their nosy, pesky friends anyway, with open arms and happy smiles, and their friends would gift them linens and sashes to drape about their walls, full of good blessings and good intentions, and once on a summer's day, they might have a friend stay with them for a while, and they would talk long into the night about nothing - and carefully stay away from the topic of everything - and then when their guest went to bed, Erik would discretely whisper to Christine a joke about how poor Monsieur So-and-So must live such a sad little life that he truly has nothing better to do than visit us every day of the week! And eventually they would grow a little weary of his visits, but they would always welcome him in regardless, and in the morning they would send him off with a little fruit and a lot of wine, and bid him adieu until the next time he came knocking, which would only be a short while later...

Finally, they emerged from the trees and found a dismal black cabriolet waiting for them at the spot they had begun their stroll. Erik helped Christine climb up into the carriage bed, and then sat himself on the bench beside her. The carriage then began to move, jostling them forward, and the dawn light started coming up behind the stone buildings around them.

"Did you enjoy our stroll, Christine?" Erik asked.

"I did." She leaned her head upon his shoulder, and smiled when he didn't flinch.

"Are you happy with Erik for bringing you out here?" he asked hopefully.

"I am," she answered truthfully. "I wish you would actually let us live up here, though, and that this wasn't all just make-believe."

"Erik wishes that, too." Then, after some reflection, he added, "Maybe one day."