Tombs and gravestones jutted out of the earth in crowded rows, cut up by tidy cobblestone walking paths and enormous monuments. The Père-Lachaise cemetery was enormous, stretching out for acres on either side of them. Christine tried to remember all the celebrities she knew were buried there. She had remembered that Raoul had sent her a photo of Jim Morrison's grave to share with her father—he was a child of the 60's and had garnered a love for the Doors.
They were several hours difference from where she lived, it was jarring to go from early morning to nearly evening in just a few steps. The very late afternoon sun had dropped and sat low and heavy in the clear sky. There was a stillness to the cemetery that was only intensified by the close summer air. Some insects chittered in the distance, a chorus for the souls that rested in their eternal beds.
They quietly walked through the peaceful park of the dead and she took in names and dates on the legible stones. Erik muttered something about how much bigger it was since the days he lived in Paris, but he recognized a few names on the larger of the tombs—politicians,philosophers, musicians, a handful of others that held no real social importance, but for whom he still recalled the names. There was a tension coming from him as they progressed past the rows of tombs and made a few turns down different paths.
Eventually they reached a large building, the crematorium, Erik explained. He seemed to find a great distaste in the burning of bodies.
"The whole city breathes them in," he grumbled. A couple minutes more he murmured, "We're close. The old Muslim section is down this pathway. ."
She followed behind him as he began to walk slower and slower, each of his steps appearing to be held back by some amount of anticipation. They reached a section of the cemetery that was divided by a waist high hedge serving as a natural border.
"Stay here," he said sternly, "I'll only be a moment."
The look in his eyes was so haunted that she wouldn't dare question his order. She stood beside the boxy shaped hedge wall and watched as he took slow, steady steps several feet to a slab of heavy stone. From where she stood, it looked like an unassuming grave, humble even, but she watched on as Erik dropped to his knees and placed a long, reverential hand upon that same slab and bowed his head. He began to speak to the dead before him. It carried on this way for several minutes and she felt guilty for doing it, but the curiosity was eating her alive. She took four small steps forward to catch the last of his words.
"I thought you would grow to hate me if I stayed, and I couldn't bear it. I couldn't bear to watch your love turn sour. But I should have stayed. I should have remained until either our love or our bodies turned to dust. I would have died with you," he quietly said. The words were delivered like an apology. He placed the other hand on the stone and whispered a few more sad and tender words that she could not hear, until he lifted his head and glanced her way.
"You are most terrible at taking instruction," he grumbled, he turned back to the stone one last time and said something in a language she did not understand, but the meaning in the words was abundantly clear in the tender tone of them.
He stood and dusted off his already dusty suit.
"Is this Nadir?" she responded.
"Yes," he solemnly replied. "He, too, was bad at taking instruction. He saved my life once, at the disobedience of his own superiors. He was the most infuriating man," this last was said with some endearment. Taking one final, long, meaningful look of longing to the grave, he motioned for her to follow him back down the path they walked. "Come, walk with me. I would like to collect my thoughts."
They took a leisurely pace down the path in silence. He allowed her time with the tombs they passed. Each name on the stone was a person who had come and gone, a lifetime of memories lost to the world. There were infinite experiences laid to rest here–tales of glory, romance, heartache and even more of the small seemingly insignificant moments that stacked up into something greater. She stopped before one stone and read the dates etched into its surface. Her fingers traced the weather-worn year on the granite tombstone.
"She was only three when she died," she said aloud, her voice full of its characteristic sympathy, reserved for insects and humans in equal measure.
He hummed dismissively, "Yes, yes," he replied with brusk callousness, "It is quite sad. You see that often in old cemeteries."
Her fingers froze their reverent attentions and her face took on a stunned expression.
"You don't think it's tragic that someone died without knowing a full life?" The disappointment in her voice was so potent she could see the faint lines of guilt forming on his unpleasant features.
"I envy the dead, Christine," was his thorny reply, "They are the lucky ones, you know. They're most likely lost to the sweet numbness of oblivion never to have a thought in their heads again."
Her brows squeezed together as her disappointment bloomed to frustration.
"What about an afterlife?" She asked, "Don't you think there is a Heaven?"
"Good lord, I hope not," he dryly retorted with a derisive snort.
"Why not?" She demanded, her face scrunching with anger.
"Because I wouldn't know what to do with myself in a place like that," He turned to walk through the row of graves, marking the end of the conversation, but paused to say, "And don't furrow your brows, my dear. It sours your darling face."
She didn't follow him, instead standing firm in the place where she stood and crossed her arms over her chest. He stopped and whirled around, his eyebrow arching with an unspoken question.
"I'm not going to continue on if you are going to be mean to me," she said firmly despite her unease. "I haven't done anything to you and you go between showering me with compliments and treating me like I'm an annoying child."
He looked away to some imaginary distance for a spell before he sofly said, "I apologize. I find that I care for you a great deal and I am floundering with my feelings for you." He gave a great heave of a sigh. His eyes met hers in such beseechment that it nearly ripped the breath from her. "I find I've fallen in love with you," he confessed breathlessly, the words drenched in fear. "The moment I first touched your fingers and saw your soul, that's when I knew. I didn't mean to," he admitted hurriedly, "Nor did I want to, but it happened all the same. I find that I want to hold you and push you away at the same time. I've never felt this way with anyone else but Nadir—though I confess, what you heard at his grave was the first and only time I have said such words to him. My feelings have created a great turbulence in me,"
"You love me," she repeated, stunned, and she thought of all the times she had wanted to hear those very words from Raoul, but here they came from this magical yet terrifying man before her. She recalled every night she lay in her bed in her blooming womanhood and imagined Raoul, handsome, noble, Raoul outside her bedroom window making heartfelt, poetic declarations of his love. As the years moved on, those dreams were tarnished with reality.
"I don't expect you to love me back," Erik clarified, "I can't imagine why you would,but please, give me the indulgence of loving you. It is the only thing that has eased the despair of my extended existence."
"I don't know what to say," she confessed with no shortness of dismay, "I don't know you at all, only a few things that you have said–some of it scares me."
"Allow me your friendship," he said in a tone that was only a stone's throw from begging. "I assure you, that's all I require."
"Okay," she softly consented, but her eyes were wide with a mix of wonder and concern. It was flattering, she wouldn't lie about that fact. This man had lived for—she wasn't sure how long he had been alive for, but if he built the Garnier, it must have been nearly two hundred years—and she was possibly the second person to have taken some small place in his heart. Everything about him should make her run, but the way he looked at her now, full of ocean-deep vulnerability and raw passion, she found her spirit was unwilling to be that cold. He had shown her the fractures of his own being, and they didn't match hers but she found herself understanding him. "Why did you never tell Nadir the truth?"
"Did your little espionage not give you those answers?"
"I heard a little," she admitted, "But I don't understand why, if you really loved him, why didn't you at least tell him?"
He sighed and unconsciously fiddled with the button of his suit in a nervous gesture.
"I had suspected for some time that Nadir's affections for me had traversed beyond the borders of friendship and into the complicated realm of something else—as did my own, but I was unwilling to be softened by them. I feared weakness and I had built quite the formidable fortress in my heart–wounded too many times, you see. Nadir and I danced around it for years, always hovering just above it but never landing, but it was there—in a touch or a glance. Nothing more ever came to fruition. I was a bit of a pill to the Persian court. My days as an opera ghost were quite banal compared to what I didn't with the corrupt factions of the court. I played powerful men against one another as one would play chess, simply because I found it quite entertaining—and it caught up with me. A very important member of the court uncovered my meddling and he used his influence to convince the shah himself for my head. Nadir heard that an order was sent out for an officer to fetch me for imprisonment, on the way to the jails it was arranged that I was to be assassinated–they knew I would escape any prison they stuck me in." A self-satisfied smile crept on his lips at what she assumed was his pride for his own cleverness.. "Nadir, tenderheart that he was, came to me under the cover of darkness, informed me of the plot, and snuck me out. Together we rode until we reached the Caspian sea. Some words were exchanged–he made some ridiculous statement about giving me a second chance, but I knew somewhere in those words he was asking me for more. I didn't even say goodbye, Christine. I kicked the sides of the horse and fled."
He covered his eyes with the expanse of one hand, ripped off his mask, and turned in a fit of shame. The story stood in the air before her still, invisibly playing out like some heartbreaking drama in the space before her. It seemed like the sort of tale you would read in a fiction, larger than life–but then, wasn't the man before her also that? A genius, a criminal, a reaper, a lover–he inhabited so many fantastical titles.
"I know what that's like," she replied, "To love someone but feel too scared to tell them.
"I feel as though I'm playing the part of the fool, confessing my love to you then lamenting my heartbreak for Nadir in the same turn," he confessed thickly with his back turned to her. "I feel as though I've come unraveled these days."
"Maybe you're changing," she suggested, "I was seeing a therapist in training once who told me that things have to get messier before they can get better. Maybe this is your messy period."
He laughed wetly and turned towards her. The deep crags of his face were lined with tears that glistened like glass in the warm sunlight. Golden hour was upon them and the dreamy amber light had illuminated his features, softening them like a flattering oil painting. He carried such heartache and tenderness in his expression just then that she knew there was so much to him than the tortured, angry man who had first come to her. The walls that surrounded him were growing more and more brittle with each confession he made.
"I have been going through my 'messy period' for one hundred and sixty eight years, Christine." He offered a sad little snort, as he sniffled at some wet liquid that came running from the cavity serving as a nose. With a clearing of his throat he turned from her and unsuccessfully dabbed at the offending snot with the sleeve of his jacket without her notice. He sighed heavily, "I continue to get messier still," he muttered between sniffs as he looked at his sticky jacket sleeve.
She gave a sympathetic smile, before pulling her backpack from her shoulder, rummaging through a front pocket until she produced a crumpled plastic package of tissues. With a very brief struggle, she had gotten one out of the packaging and handed it to Erik, who accepted it with a shy nod.
"How chivalrous of you," he muttered, but there was no sarcasm in his voice, only the dense weight of shame.
"Who is Lucius?" she asked suddenly to break the tension of the moment. "You said he came for you when you died and told you that you would be a reaper?"
He finished with the task of blotting at his sleeve with a corner of the tissue.
"He was my predecessor," he explained, "There are different kinds of reapers, Christine. Some who handle violent homicides, like Iris. There are those who take care of the children or the natural deaths. I'm what they affectionately refer to as an Eater. I took the place of Lucius but he remained for what I can only describe as an irritating length of time–the man never left my side."
"Why do they call you an Eater?" Her curiosity had fully pulled her in and she found herself sitting down on the grass as if readying herself for a tale.
He looked at her with thoughtful eyes for a long time, the wheels in his head were obviously turning and she wondered what pros and cons he was lining against each other. The light cast upon him had grown deeper in amber hue, an indicator that the sun was soon upon the horizon. Nightfall was approaching.
"I eat souls, Christine," he gravely replied, "I am called once or twice a year to dispatch a living human whose soul has been deemed irredeemable. I experienced their life and the pain they inflicted at that time and their souls are destroyed in the process while I suffer. I must carry their nightmares with 'taste of wickedness', as Lucius often put it. He laughed at me the first time I was called to eat one. "
"He doesn't sound like a very nice guy," she replied in sympathy.
"Lucius was much worse when he was alive. Eaters contain most of the memories of all their predecessors, but they only really come in dreams."
"It must be really crowded in your head," she said.
He chuckled warmly. Humor lit up his eyes like fire. Christine thought it was moments like now, when he had a large, easy grin on his face and joyful eyes that burned like embers, that Erik was actually quite an attractive man. She wondered how different his life would have been had he given himself the chance to truly thrive.
"It is quite crowded, Christine, but it always was," he replied, the warm chuckle was still there. "Lucius was a Roman soldier, quite an important one as he commanded a few armies, but he was quite cruel. He tortured enemies and even some of his own men. He was annoyingly attractive and he knew it. I don't lie when I tell you that I would have happily surrendered both my legs for his nose."
"You should try being kinder to yourself," she said, "You shouldn't be so hard on yourself. I don't think you're ugly…you're, an acquired taste."
"You are very sweet, my dear," he replied, the smile was still there.
"I mean it. You have to stop saying such terrible things to yourself," she insisted. She didn't realize until those words came out that she was truly upset.
The smile faded, but the gentleness remained. That curious tilt of his head appeared once more.
"The pot calls the kettle black," he replied and the words were etched in a playful seriousness. "I've heard the things you say to yourself, Chrisitne. I've heard the thoughts that you never let others see. 'Unlovable', 'disposal', 'not enough', 'weird'. I know you don't think you compare to some silly little ballerina. I've seen all the things you blame yourself for. You did not hold your father back and your mothers death was not your–"
"Please stop," she cried abruptly and turned on her heel to walk back the other way.
"You're none of those things, Chrisitne–quite the opposite. It's not just pretty words to gather your affections, I can see the parts of you that you are blind to."
She had only made it a few graves away, but she stopped and took a deep breath.
"It's different with me. I'm broken," she whispered as she squeezed her eyes shut from the assault. "I always have been."
"Oh, Christine. We have so much more in common than you realize. I, too, believed this, but someone once told me that people aren't born broken, they're shaped from environment and choice," His next words were spoken with solid conviction "Iris may be tedious, but she does contain some wisdom. The point, Christine, is that hope is at hand. A person can change that shape with time and effort. Now, come, it will be dark soon and I fear the ghosts that will rise from these graves once night comes. I'm certain I've wronged a number of these inhabitants."
She shook her head and turned around.
"Ghosts are real?" she asked as she returned to where he stood.
He laughed. "There are souls that get lost–a rare occurrence, I was told, but it does occur. I'm told there is a reaper who does collect them, but they are very elusive."
"I knew it," she whispered. With a huff she returned to where he stood. "Do you really think I'm not broken?" she asked.
He opened his hand to create their exit from Paris, it rippled and shifted before them.
"You're not broken, Christine, but your thinking is." Before they walked through he added, "As is mine."
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