No More Gifts
"The Good-bye"
(Part I)

CHRISTINE DAAÉ'S (SECOND) JOURNAL

"The moaning and groaning,
The sighing and sobbing,
Are quieted now,
With that horrible throbbing
At heart: – ah, that horrible,
Horrible throbbing!
The sickness – the nausea –
The pitiless pain –
Have ceased, with the fever
That maddened my brain –
With the fever called 'Living'
That burned in my brain."

Erik's books bring me great amusement in these boring morning hours. I am sitting by the window of this fourth-floor flat, cherishing the breeze, heeding not the cold bite of it as I sip some lukewarm tea brewed by the doctor's maid. I am thinking of no-one but Erik in these soft hours of sunrise. I suppose he shall be on my mind for the remainder of this too-brief duration of eternity; whether that is a blessing or a curse, I care not to know.

Death hangs over us all, drenching us perpetually in its mephitic fumes, though I find it not so very fearsome to behold anymore. The world of darkness is past, and the blood-soaked nightmare has given way to the gentle light of morn. Dawn is coming, slowly bursting on the horizon, and as the golden day breaks I find myself drawing ever closer to contentment.

Shall I dream of happiness at this point? Shall I dare? I feel relief for being free, but that isn't quite the same thing, is it? I am glad to be out of that musty cellar, and I am glad for the good-bye. Even still, I am heartily sorry for the way it all ended, and I know not where to go from here if not with Erik by my side.

For the opera has been played, the music has ended, and now nothing but silence reigns over all. The Baroness has received her weeping man's finest pearl necklace; the Princess has been stripped, quartered, and beheaded, before finding her peace at the bottom of an unmanned chute; and Erik, in his most wretched hour, has made a most bosom friend of the reaper. Without fanfare the conqueror worm has devoured us all - see, Erik? I have read this one, too – leaving the sun to spill out its scarlet shafts over our shucked and skinless carcasses.

Are we to cry because it is all over? Or shall we clap for a time, watching the smiling jesters and phantoms take their bows, and then stand from our seats and go home? I suppose we have no other choice. We can never stay anywhere forever.

Thus: my time with Erik has come to a close… and yet it is hard to be sad for any of it. Who said all good-byes must be laced with tragic tears? I regret nothing, except maybe a few small things… or perhaps a little more than just them… but surely it's nothing to cry about in the end.

My eyes grow damp... oh, Erik, will you truly never hold me again?

With the greatest regard for the man I am leaving behind, then, I shall now suffer the silent pangs that must be felt in recording these last fleeting moments shared between us; this I shall do, so that one day when I am far away from here, seizing the entire world in my single fist once more, I can read these pages and recall happier times.

For that which once seemed such a nightmare is all faded away at present, and all his love is truly lost to me now. I wish to live only in the past for the rest of my days — for the future, without him, holds nothing for me but waste.

And so I shall tell it all from the start, as the sad affair of our good-bye began just after our conversation in the parlor.

Everything Erik and I partook in thereafter became The Last Time. It was the last time he served my morning's board, the last time he watched me sip my tangy wine, the last time he turned down a spoonful of fruitless syrup scraped from the glaze of my porcelain plate. And yet somehow at the same time things became new again, for this was also The First Time we were saying good-bye: a true good-bye, anyway, that both of us meant and that both of us knew about. It was the first time he urged me to eat quicker because we had somewhere to be, the first time he decided to stand behind my chair and do my hair as I ate, the first time he touched my neck and I did not shiver. It was the first time I started crying only after his fingers left my skin, and it was the first time he did not immediately fix my hair when a strand fell prematurely from its home of a careful curl.

He did not reach for a comb or ask for a pin; instead he let out a fiercely dramatic shout, as from a great injury, before stumbling backwards and beginning to rasp for breath without abandon.

"Does loving me hurt so very much?" I asked him after I had turned on my cushion to find him doubled-over, heaving and pitching his tear-soaked face in pain. "I can always leave another day…"

He clutched his heart with one hand, grasping at the back of my chair with a white-knuckled grip - even as, against all his miserable failings, he gasped out, "Nonsense, sweet Christine. You must go, and you must go tonight. I am afraid if we delay even a moment you will be doomed to die with me down here."

"Are you so convinced you will change your mind?"

He rubbed his chest with his palm, achingly, and gritted out, "It is not my mind that frightens me now..."

Then he turned away, and with great effort hobbled himself to the edge of the room, to the very precipice of the dining chamber, and without looking at me, directed, "Leave the dishes at the table; I will wash them when I return. You must be getting ready now or I fear we will be sorrily late. Unfortunately I have something of no real importance to take care of at present; but I will meet you in your room in twenty minutes' time to help you with your ties. Hop to it!"

And then he disappeared down the hall, and I heard his door open and close in quick succession.

I did as he told me. I left the dishes where they were, a hearty serving of victuals remaining in my bowls which I had not the appetite to finish any longer. Then I followed his lead, and went down the hall, intending to turn into my room, but not before entering the wash room.

There was a pressure in my head that had slowly filled my consciousness since waking. I was no stranger to the sensation, common as it was for me in the many days and nights I had shared with Erik down here. I once told him of my affliction; he assured me it was the moist and musty atmosphere that we shared beside this subterranean lake. He said he was prone to such head-aches as well, and that he never needed anything more than the gentle touch of music to quell his pain.

"Constrainment quivers your bloated mind against the violent thrumming of your blood," he explained to me then, "until your selfish skull starts to wish inhumanely for the destructive solace of release."

"Is there no cure?" I asked, horrified at the ghastly picture he painted.

"There are but two," he said obligingly. "The first is to lull the mind to sleep, with methods of trickery like music and drink. Ignore the cravings of a swollen, angry head; turn away from the temptation of a moment; and use whatever resources you have to drain the stiff thing of its injurious fluids and desires."

"And the second?" I prompted.

"Is to bash your skull against the ground until your brain matter bleeds through the bone. A temporary easement, I suppose it would be… until the deed is done." He shrugged. "Does your head still ache, dear? Come, and Erik will show you how to run your fingers along his organ. Its delightful explosion will soothe us both. No…? You wish not to learn today? Oh, very well. Lie down and rest, then, and perhaps another day…"

No rest was to be had for me that afternoon, though, for after he had tucked me securely into my bed he had gone off to his own room and begun plundering his organ in quest of that promised 'delightful explosion', as he so called it. My head-ache grew only worse as his screeching cacophony built and built, and I threw a pillow over my head to staunch the assault upon my ears. It was no use; for all that he was enjoying himself, I was suffering in the same magnitude.

To be clear, it was not repulsion for his work that nauseated me; nor was it abhorrence of a certain sort of chord or trill that dashed my vision into sightlessness. I registered no distaste nor disgust as he pounded away at his tortured organ — only agony.

A few paragraphs ago I spoke of first times; this, then, was the first time while living in Erik's house that I had born a real desire to kill myself. The sounds coming from his room were not music, at least not to me. Music did not make me dig my nails into my scalp and try to wrench apart the two halves of my skull.

Suddenly the vibratious thundering stopped… but the pounding in my head increased tenfold! It was as if the sound still lived on but only in my skull, rattling the bone like an endlessly reverberating tuning-fork. The devil had left the chord unresolved! I heard his door open and his ghostly footsteps calmly approach my locked door.

"How is your head-ache now, Christine?" he asked innocently, petting the door with his diabolical fingers. "Has your nap relieved it yet?"

"Not quite!" I called back testily, holding the pillow over my head still. "How might be your own, I wonder!"

"Worse than before," he cackled, and I swear he must have been positively gleeful upon hearing the pain in my voice. "Anyway, sweet darling, do not let Erik keep you up on his account. Recall that you forewent Erik's music lessons in favor of counting sheep – why are you not fast asleep right now?"

At that, I sprung up from my bed and ran to my door to upbraid him. I have never had qualms with how he chose to pass his time in his room, but this purposeful incitement was just intolerable. Of course he was not foolish enough to remain after that; the washroom door at the end of the hall flew closed just as I threw open my bedroom door. I slammed on the washroom door a thousand times but he did not answer, and though I waited a thousand hours for him to exit, he never did. For all the time I stood out in that hall, ready to harass him for his behavior, the only thing I heard from within were inaudible mutters and a clattering of pills upon the tile floor. There was silence for a very long time afterwards. At some point I fell asleep, leaning against the door; but when I awoke I found myself again within my own room, huddled beneath my satin sheets. My head-ache was washed away with the drain of sleep, and only a slight soreness in a different but obvious spot remained.

That dispute was very early in our relationship, after the scorpion but before the photograph, and ended the way such arguments between us always did: quietly, and without true resolution.

Anyway, in the present I found myself in that very same washroom that Erik had locked himself in back then. I shuffled through the cabinet above the sink – touching but not tampering with any of Erik's strange pills and concoctions – until I found an obtrusively large bottle of laudanum at the back. The level was quite a bit lower than when I'd seen it last. I measured out my usual small dose, enough that I knew would quell the ache in my head, and drank it down with quiet ease. Then I replaced the bottle, displacing a few of his as I did, and went on my way to my room.

The air seemed stuffier than usual when I entered my bedroom. No doubt it was just the odious décor getting to me. Cages always seem smallest just before release, surely? I had always hated the tacky furnishings, no matter how much I loved Erik, and my one consolation in my forced departure was that I would get to leave them all behind.

There was a gown laid out on my bed, made of somber amber velvet with black beading upon the breast. It was obviously a beautiful dress, as I would expect nothing less from Erik; but curiously it was not one for my coloring, and it bore none of the marks Erik usually left upon the gowns he tailored. I knew his taste well, and so knew he had a penchant for seeing floral accents and stark white lace on me. This, in turn, had nothing of the sort. I knew no gown of his making, either, that was colored as darkly as this one. As funereal as Erik dressed himself, he had never permitted 'his living wife' to do the same – even when she had good cause for mourning, and felt every bit as gloomy as he.

But it was of no matter. If Erik wanted me to wear this unseasonable dress, then so be it. I was in no position to argue with him, especially not when I was this close to regaining my freedom. Erik would get what Erik wanted.

As it was, Erik's dresses were much more difficult to put on than this simple thing turned out to be - (simple, I write with a laugh, for the thing must have cost more than my yearly salary at the Opera! But simple it was, in comparison to all the dresses Erik had made) – and so I made short work of the underskirts and stockings he had laid out on the bed beside, and was about to put on the corset when a queer and sudden faintness overtook me.

I collapsed to the floor without fight, knocking my head against the corner of my dresser as I went. I must have fallen asleep for some time, for when I came to I found Erik worrying over my reclining form upon the bed.

"My sweet child!" he fretted. "Was the dose too strong?"

Since I knew he did not know I had taken the laudanum, I was stricken by his question – stricken, but only for a dull moment, until I realized lamely that he must have laced my food with a similar tincture. I confess no surprise at this presumption. Should I have been upset with him for that? Maybe… but there was no desire in me to argue anymore. I was too exhausted.

Blearily, I thus replied, "Rather, I dare think."

He nursed my head, which was rapidly growing more swollen, and as he cooed over me he pressed his fingers against my temple where an eggish lump had begun to form. Their coolness quelled the throbbing and earned me some relief.

"Will Erik never fail to hurt you?" he lamented, pulling my skin in circles against my skull with his thumbs. "He should wish it was his own head that had been clubbed in by that damned dresser. Perhaps he will follow suit at the end of the opera…"

"I would not recommend it," I replied tiredly. "It is not a pleasant thing to endure."

"Much of life is not," he agreed with contrition, "and yet, here we are both still." Then he cast a searching glance at the empty wall, which I thought was curious, until he looked at the waste basket and sighed. "We will be late."

"Help me get dressed, then," I said, and slowly pushed myself off the bed, against his protestations. He shrank back as I pushed the sheet aside, revealing myself in my undergarments, and I watched him flounder as he tried in vain to find a place to look that he didn't deem indecent. The poor man spun in a full circle as he went from my figure, to the cracked vanity mirror in the corner, to the polished wood of the dresser door, before settling firmly above us on the white-washed moulding upon the ceiling. I rolled my eyes and bid him closer, saying with great tiredness, "Oh, it is nothing you haven't seen before, you ridiculous man. I am practically dressed already."

His stare did not budge from the moulding array, but he did let out a quiet, strangled groan. "Would you go before the Vicomte de Chagny dressed like that?"

"I would and I have," I retorted wearily. "He used to visit me in my dressing room quite often, as you might recall – after all, you were there, too."

He winced. "I never looked –"

"Of course you didn't," I agreed, to placate him. "Anyway, as you said, dear: we are certain to be late if we continue like this. Do you want us to spend all of our remaining time together in dispute?"

He sighed, and with resignation returned to my side. "I am forever your servant. What will you have me do for you?"

I led him through the sequence of my dressing. It was quite humorous, as he required prompting for each and every step, although I knew from his story about his mother (if any of it were to be trusted) that he had great experience with dressing and undressing a lady. As credit to him, he followed my directions as a consummate professional, keeping his eyes firmly on the task at hand. He never allowed his fingers the privilege of straying; but 'straying', perhaps, is a misleading word in this instance. It would be better, and more accurate, to say: I gave him many instructions, and he followed them all without question - even the ones we both knew were not necessary.

"Hold still," was his only breathy command, as he worked the top clasps at the level of my bosom and then, with a touch to my bare shoulder, turned me around to begin up my back.

"My fingers betray me," he mumbled, after I had felt him fumbling around for some time. "I'm making rotten work of these damn laces."

"I can wear a different dress," I proposed.

"No!" He said quickly. "It has to be this one."

"Or I can wear a shawl," I suggested. "And I can move my arms very carefully."

"But not too carefully?"

I turned to look at the old letch over my shoulder, surprised by what I surmised to be good humor, and so stuck my tongue out at him in return. "You cad! I have already given you a more than generous display of my breasts this evening. Have you no shame?"

"Erik was merely helping Christine with her gown!" he sputtered, growing so pink he nearly looked alive. "He only put his hands where she told him!"

"I am teasing, Erik! Simply teasing! But surely you are aware a woman's breasts do not need to be so severely fondled in the dressing of them?" A laugh escaped me, though I realized my folly instantly; the poor thing was embarrassed! "It is okay to laugh at such things, dear – you appreciate a good joke, don't you? And after all, didn't we both have some fun?"

And with that I laughed again, for I saw how red his ears had become and the way his mess of a bottom lip began to tremble. My body jerked in response to my laughing fit, but his grip about the corset laces remained like solid stone and so kept me locked in place. Tickled by his stiflement, for some reason, I laughed more and more, until I had little tear-like crystals threatening to fall from my eyes.

It was funny for a time — until he glared at me with those hard-smitten eyes and figured out how to make his bottom lip stop its quivering long enough for him to say, with frigid words like ice, "Such jests hurt, Christine."

"Oh, Erik -" I started, my entire situation remembered in the fragment of an instant. "I did not mean -"

"You never mean anything," he sulked accusingly. He pulled the laces tighter, forcing me to whirl back around and face away from him. "And that is what has always hurt the most."

He finished his work with an unparalleled speediness after that. I did not trust myself to open my mouth, and perhaps neither did he, for he uttered nothing to me for the remainder of my dressing.

It was only when I was sitting upon my beaded footstool, pulling on my silk slippers, that he finally found a word in his vast vocabulary to use towards me.

"Apologize."

One hand still around the base of my shoe, I looked up at him in confusion. "Excuse me?"

"Apologize," he repeated calmly, tapping his fingers against his folded arms. "Tell me you're sorry."

"For the joke?" I asked, and blinked my eyes dumbly a few times. My heel slotted into the slipper, and I stood to address him. "Erik, of course I'm sorry. I hurt your feelings and I didn't intend to –"

I reached for him as I spoke, in hopes of smoothing over this impending disaster with a small touch of comfort, but just as my fingertips met his tense shoulder he shook himself away. Bitterly, he seethed, "It wasn't the joke, Christine. I could live with a joke."

Then he whirled around and thrust his sharp, spindly finger into the center of my chest, and I recoiled by sheer instinct.

"Ah! She hops after all!" he declared dreadfully, stepping forward in his indignance. "What is it about Erik's touch that makes you jump, darling? Did Erik not just have his creeping, crawling fingers all over you? Did you not like it? Did you not request it? Ah, he sees how it is now!"

He flung his arachnic hands at me again, and just like before I jumped away like a skittish cat. All at once he began to chase me around the room, running us in circles about the footstool, pulling down curtains, and toppling over spent candles and their sperm as we went.

"See how Christine jumps!" he spat after me, reaching for my loose hair. "See how Christine runs!"

Round and round we went, spinning within the tight confines of that little bedroom he'd made – that little bedroom with his mother's furniture that he'd so obviously hoped to share with me one day – that we really had shared before – until finally my unfortunate foot caught itself upon the flipped edge of the rug, sending me over the pedestalic stool and consequently crashing me down to the floor for the second time that morning.

"See how Christine falls!" Erik cried triumphantly over my body. He leered down at me as I struggled in vain to right myself. "For God's sake, are you seriously that afraid of me?"

"I am!" I professed. "Please, Erik – be reasonable!"

"Reasonable! Reasonable!" He laughed maniacally. "I am the only reasonable person down here!"

"You do not seem like it!" I said. "Please, just tell me what I did!"

"Damn you!" He was still laughing, but now his shoulders were shaking with an uncontrollable hateful rage as tears flowed freely down his sallow cheeks. "Erik knows he asks a lot from you, Christine, and he does not ever hope to retrieve so very much… but there is a good amount that he does still expect! Human respect, for starters! Does he not deserve that? Is he just an animal, to be kicked around and starved before being shot in the mud? I have lived that life before – lived it so many times I can still smell the shit from my sty! I have been purchased off auction blocks and shown in cages next to prized hogs – I have done tricks for treats and had my teeth filed for misconduct – I have curled up at that stupid sultana's feet and feasted upon the meager dinner scraps she threw down to me before climbing up to her lap for dessert! But I am not an animal, Christine! I do not want to be an animal anymore!"

He was shouting at the top of his lungs now, spittle flying out of his ravaged mouth and landing harshly upon my cheeks. He did not touch me, but stood over me disdainfully, with a strong leg planted on either side, so that all I could do was lie there and accept his gruesome, furious death's head as he whined out his rage and fury above me.

"I do not think you are an animal!" I begged. "Let us speak as two people – I have always seen you as a person –"

"Lie to me again and you'll regret it!" he promised. "I am a man, Christine – not a dog, not a monster, not an angel, not a devil! Treat me like a man! Call me as a man!"

"You are a man," I agreed quickly. "You are a smart man, a witty man, a clever man, a good man –" he growled and I hastened to correct myself, "A great man, actually! Of many talents and skills I could never dream of possessing myself! So sit down, Erik, let us speak as two people about whatever it is that has upset you so, and –"

"How awfully convenient it is for you that I am in possession of such a tremendous amount of genius," Erik sneered at me. "Would I be any less deserving of human respect if I had not the brains to realize I missed it? Is that what you do, Christine – see how far you can pull the wool over my eyes before I realize you're making an ass out of me?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," I professed in earnest. "You are the one who always makes things so confusing! One moment we're engaging in a moment of affection - and the next you have me pinned to the floor like this! I never understand what sets you off! Speak freely, I beg of you, just this once!"

"Willful ignorance is a powerful thing!" he hissed. "If we were engaging in anything, it was because you fooled me into it. I have told you, expressly, a million times, I do not wish to partake in such behaviors with you. And still, you treacherous trollop, you thought it right to cajole me into it! I trusted you! You said that was the only way to dress you, that to make you decent I had to put my hands here, press them a little there – and then when it was done you said it was all a funny little game, that Erik should have known better than to take Christine at her word! Can you never be honest? I have only ever wanted to do right by you. We are not lovers, Christine, and we never shall be. What more do I have to do to make you understand that?"

"I…"

My mouth moved wordlessly. What should I have said? He wanted an apology, an admittance of wrong-doing, a promise to never tempt him again. All things I would have happily given him, just to make him calm down – and all things I did give him, as soon as my throat found my voice again. I recall nothing that I said, just that I blabbered out apologies as I clambered to my knees before him, clutching my hands together in a fervent prayer for forgiveness as he threw his sneering head away from me.

And yet –

Did he even deserve such a confession as that from me? Why did I apologize? I thought – he enjoyed it! He did! It was his own guilty conscience that burned him now – guilt for accepting my advances, after he had kept me down below with him for so many months – that made him lash out and hurt me. But how was any of that my fault? I was his prisoner, after all, and I could not be held accountable for my own decisions.

That is the way Erik sees it, anyway.

"Get up," he spat, backing away from my groveling form. I fell prostrated upon the floor as I stretched for purchase on his departing figure, grabbing at the laces and aglets of his shoes with my shaking hands, which he immediately kicked away. "You sicken me. I'm glad you're leaving. Get up!"

I drew back on my knees again, but had no strength to stand. Instead I leaned against the overturned footstool, sobbing uncontrollably into the crook of my arm and still mumbling out meaningless apologies.

"Collect your things," I heard Erik instruct coldly as he went to the door. "I won't have you making excuses to come back here after the performance. You have two minutes."

My head snapped up at that, and I gaped up at him. "You - you've barely given me any notice, how am I supposed to... I have an entire room to pack. And besides, it's – it's an opera, Erik. Are you expecting me to carry an entire trunk of dresses and shoes with me all night? What am I supposed to do?"

He snorted. "Oh, so those are all yours, now?"

With that he slammed the door, leaving me to console myself with only my tears in that horrible room full of his mother's broken furniture.

Despite his instructions, I packed nothing. I hadn't the time; I simply cried and cried until he returned in the promised two minutes.

He did not scold me for disobeying him. Erik, as I've written before, has a talent for pretending terrible things never occurred. This same skill he employed here, forgetting his anger with me and forgetting his impatience to leave. For once I was thankful for this annoying habit of his, as he sat with me on the floor for a good many minutes, rubbing his hand on my back until I had cried myself out, and then in a gentle manner he helped me pack a small valise of little odds and ends.

He dug to the back of my vanity to find the box holding the trinket I'd once thought to give to him in a moment of cruelty; he questioned me on it with delicate trepidation, as if afraid I would start crying again, and I answered honestly that it was a gift for him, but that he shouldn't open it because he wouldn't like it. He accepted my answer silently, placing it carefully into my valise before moving on to the other contents of my desk.

Only after he fixed my hair did we leave the house. He carried my bag for me, holding it in one hand as he held me with the other. We spoke quietly as we climbed the stairs back to the surface, and by the time we stepped through my dressing-room mirror, we found all of the morning's argument forgotten and ourselves in much better spirits.

Times with Erik, I now reflect, were always like that. Darkness could become light again just as quickly as morning could become night. Fortissimo could become pianissimo, and largo could become agitato. I was his muse, but he was the composer; and though he made all the choices that filled the orchestrations, I was the one who inspired each note in the end.

It would be foolish for me to sit here now and pen some drivel about never wanting our time in the Opera cellar to end, especially now that I have written so many words about how destructive our relationship was down there. Erik said many times that he was not a suicidal man; so, too, am I not a suicidal woman. But I must confess, despite all of Erik's hatefulness... I adored his sweetness very much, for there were many moments of it, and I can't help but wish our circumstances had been different.

Alas, we were never lovers, and it was never meant to be.