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

He kissed her the first chance he got.

No, not Erik – of course not Erik! – but the other man. The one with the pretty face and the head full of golden curls. The nice physician who'd taken her in. Doctor Gradus.

It'd been three days since she arrived. Three days since the opera. Three days since Erik…

Why did it feel like cheating? When the maid served her tea and toast in the morning, and all Gradus did was join her at the table for a smoke on his pipe? When she wrote in her journal by the window, and all he did was ask in that peculiar accent of his if it might be a story she was penning? When they bumped into each other in the hall, and his steadying hand lingered on her arm for just a moment too long?

The maid was always there, until she was not – and almost precisely the minute she was out the door, Gradus walked across the room to stand beside Christine's chair.

"You're that opera singer," he told her, as if it was a profound fact she didn't already know. "La Daaé, are you not?"

Christine set her journal down in her lap and regarded him warily. "What gave it away?"

"There aren't many pretty Swedish girls in Paris."

"And how do you know I'm Swedish?"

"Well, you write in Swedish," he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Most learned young girls practicing another language would choose something more romantic, like English or Italian. But your entire journal is written in Swedish." Gradus tapped his finger to his temple twice and smiled. "So it stands to reason that you must be Swedish."

"I am," Christine conceded. "But why have you been reading my journal?"

He batted his eyes dumbly. "I didn't read it, though. It's in Swedish, after all."

She watched him carefully as he pulled a chair from the dining table to sit across from her, sideways on the chair, propping his head in his hand against the back as he gazed at her. "You're a mystery, Christine Daaé."

"I'm writing, Doctor Gradus. Don't you have a patient to see?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Am I bothering you?"

"A little bit, actually."

"See!" he said, leaning forward with enthusiasm. "That's what it is. You know exactly how to wound a man, and you're not shy about it, either!"

"I've been told that before."

"Oh, poor dear!" he said. "But I don't mean it as an insult, Christine, I promise I don't. I like a woman who's forthright with her feelings. It makes things less… complicated."

"Are you not married, Doctor?"

"Widowed," he said happily. At her flush of surprise, he flicked his hand easily. "Oh, don't give me that! There wasn't the smallest shred of love between her and me. She was my cousin, you see, and I had to marry her because her parents died – that sort of thing. She went their way last spring. Are your parents still alive, Christine?"

Christine cringed, knowing she would probably regret answering. "Not to my knowledge."

He grew somber immediately, taking on something like a charismatic air.

"I am very wealthy," he said, and let it hang in the air of his one-bedroom apartment for some time.

"…I see."

"I really am," he affirmed, seeing her unconvinced. He pressed his hand to his chest. "I know how this looks - these rooms are not my primary residence. I'm from America – Boston, have you heard?"

"That's quite far from here," she said.

"It is," he agreed. "But I promise my apartment is quite a bit bigger over there than this little flat. It's American, after all – everything is bigger in America. The houses, the land, the men… have you ever been to America, Christine?"

She shook her head.

"I assure you it's the definitive place to see before you die." His eyes dipped shamelessly over her figure. "Oh! - in this light you look just like my cousin."

Christine's breath caught. Why was that the thing that made her heart race?

"Are you lonely, Christine?" Gradus tilted his head. "I know this is very sudden – and, well, forward. But, as I've said, I think you are quite beautiful."

"You flatter me," she said politely, shifting her knees away. "Please, though, I really was in the middle of my journaling."

He leaned in. "I do like a literate woman."

"I'm not available, Doctor Gradus."

"My name is Tristan," he breathed, and then he kissed her.

CHRISTINE DAAÉ'S (SECOND) JOURNAL

I have only just pulled myself away from the doctor's company.

He could have talked my ear off for hours. I insisted on a walk outside, as I had no interest in spending an extended amount of time with him inside, so I had him take me to the Bois, and there we walked along that same winding path I took with Erik the other night. I distracted the doctor with dull commentary on the world around us, remembering never to get too excited, and pointed out all the little things Erik had shown me as we strolled by. We passed much time like that, and by the time the sun was setting he seemed a little more weary than before and had a bit of rose upon his cheeks.

The doctor wished to keep up the conversation once we returned to the flat, but I told him I had a head-ache and excused myself to the bedroom. I expected hasslement from him on that, but thankfully he did not seem offended. In fact, he has just left the flat – I heard the front door close – and I believe he might be going out for rounds on his other patients.

I am now curled up at the head of my cot and am attempting to write using the one pathetic candle on my nightstand. My eyes are sore from the strain against the darkness, but I dare not light much more than this as the patient on the cot beside me greatly needs to sleep. The doctor tells me he is gravely ill.

I miss very much having my own room, but the doctor's apartment is small and so the only place he could fit me in was right beside the sick bed he uses for his live-in patients. Now it is as if those many nights that I laid side-by-side with Erik in his mother's bed never ended, for again I am sleeping with a man who might very well excuse himself to a coffin by tomorrow's light. At least with a bed partner as sedate and unresponsive as this, I don't need to be concerned for matters of propriety – unlike back then when Erik and I weren't even married!

As it is, the doctor has been put out and now sleeps in the closet with his feet in the hall. I tripped over them on my way to the washroom in the middle of last night. He was quick, though, and caught me in his arms before I fell all the way down; I regret to admit he had a rather good-smelling cologne about him – or perhaps it's just that I appreciated being held by a man who didn't smell like death and mildew for once…

Oh, don't fret, Erik! I shall not be that quick to move on.

Anyway, now that I have a set of hours free at my disposal, I shall put them to good use and finish putting down the rest of the story from the other day.

By my heart, I recall it all, still so vividly…

"It seems the third act is coming to a close," Erik murmured, his ear pressed to my dressing-room door, which he held slightly ajar. "Intermission shall be commencing imminently."

"Shall we wait here until it is over, then?" I asked.

"No, not at all. Don't you know that an opera's intermission is just as important as its most crucial aria? You must socialize with the Paris you have missed, Christine, for it is eager to socialize with you." Then he sat himself down upon the tufted velvet cushion of my dressing-room stool, and flicked his long bony fingers at me. "Go on, and mingle with your fancy theatre-goers. I will meet you in the rotunda in a fifteen minutes' time, at which point we'll find our seats."

I made to follow his directions but stopped at his last words. "You will not be escorting me this evening?"

He cocked his head and gestured frankly to his naked, rank face. "I am not quite presentable at the moment, I'm afraid."

"Oh," I said only.

He smiled slightly. "Perhaps you have forgotten Erik's face is not an appreciable sight for the general public?"

I knew better than to answer that, but yes, for a minute I did forget. Of course I could never forget the fact of his hideousness for as long as I lived, but I could and did forget the extraordinarity of it. It was repulsive, certainly, but also in a strange way normal to me after staring at it for so many months – and so while I still could objectively observe its ugliness, I no longer found a desire to recoil from the mere sight of it.

"Ah, Christine is no fun tonight," Erik sighed. "Maybe the crowds will rouse your spirits. Best get to it, then – everyone's waiting."

Without further protest I left him in the dressing-room by himself. As I shut the door I caught a glimpse of him through the crack; he leaned more heavily on his arm against the desk, with an air of sadness and grief.

Did he wish I would stay and fight him on the matter? Did he want me to tell him I didn't mind his face so much, that I wouldn't mind being caught in the crowd with him? I doubted very much that he would have believed me even if I did try to plead with him. But did he want me to try anyway? It was too hard to say – and I feared the consequences of success, remote of chance it might be.

Distraught and eternally conflicted, as usual, I shut the door completely and went off on my way.

It had been over a year since I last walked amongst the crowds of the Opera Garnier.

Anxiety coursed through my veins. I should not be here, my mind screamed at me, it is not safe to be here. There was nothing to fear and yet every step I took upon that marble floor was filled with dread. In retrospect, I am not so sure what I was so scared of. Was it that I was walking alone, free of my shackles, for the first time in over a year? Or was it that my freedom was still nothing but a fanciful illusion, knowing that Erik was just a few corridors away and would be able to find me wherever in this building I went? Furthermore – would I ever be truly free? Erik had found me before… not even just in Paris, but on a train to Chagny… he could just as easily find me again, wherever I chose to go. He knew me too well for me to ever hope to escape him.

Those were the thoughts darkening my mind as I shuffled into the rotunda. I could feel the warmth of the densely milling crowd even just standing at the brink of the excitement. Here was the beating heart of Parisian society, circulating before me in a rainbow of ruffled skirts and glittering tuxedos, a thousand white gloves clasping each outstretched hand, twisting one another about to the tune of mirth and good-natured glee. I had forgotten the scene! I had sung operas all this time but never stayed longer than necessary, eager as Erik was to have me return to him. I never dawdled in my dressing-room, and I certainly never came out to greet the patrons in the rotunda.

But standing there, on the precipice of all the action, I found my shoes to be filled with lead. I could not step forward and enter the thronged masses! I just could not rejoin them. How could I ever be able to? I did not have anyone to speak with… I had no interesting stories to share as small talk… I lacked the self-confidence to initiate a conversation with anyone who would not immediately forgive me for speaking out of turn. I was never so lonely than in that colossal room bursting to the brim with strangers. Faces spun past me, occasionally seeing me but never looking at me; I was the scenery once again, just like all those years on the street as a child, crooning so desperately for nothing but a pittance…

Was I destined always just to be the attraction? Something on the side to view and observe? Raoul was the first person to treat me as something other than that, all those years ago, in Perros, when he rescued my scarf… I recall him crawling back to shore, drenched to the bone from the seawater, carrying my scarf with him as the spoils from his victory against the wind.

He did not just hand back the scarf, as I thought he might do; he took the time to draw himself up like a gentleman – though he was but a boy! – and with a delicate wrench of both hands he twisted the water out of the silken rag. Then he asked, with a blush upon his face, if he might help me put it back on – and I accepted with a matching bashfulness.

After all, it was nice to be asked. My father had been the one to tie it to my head that morning without a single utterance. If it had been up to me, I wouldn't have worn the thing at all…

Later we grew up and Raoul left my life, and for years I wandered the world in solitude, never truly being seen… not by Professor Valerius, not by Mamma Valerius, and certainly not by my father… until Erik approached and consumed my entire being whole.

I do not know if Erik sees me as a person. He professes his love for me on bended knee, and earnestly does me favors; he makes me feel the heights of happiness and the peaks of pleasure; and yet I do not know if he understands the point of what he is doing at all. Does he only care for me in the hopes that I will show him affection in return? Am I just an object to be appeased, so that I will give him the gratification he desires? Does he understand that the selfishness that drives him to seek companionship is the very same thing that forces him to push me away?

Nothing seems equal when it comes to Erik. We share so much of the same sort of soul, and yet we are like mirror reflections of each other – halves that seem to match, until aligned side by side, at which point all our glaring oppositions come to light. Erik and I are attached by a brokenness that has shattered our lives, but we are not the same sort of broken. The way we view each other is not the same, and the things we crave from each other are not the same. We do not leave matching marks upon each others' hearts, and we do not cry the same burning tears.

But we were drawn together just the same. Perhaps it is because love acts not as a puzzle, where two stoic pieces click easily together; but rather love acts as a garden, where two separate flowers growing side by side, sometimes intertwining their vines, may slowly learn to share the sunlight and the rain.

Erik's flower wilts before me now, dying in the sun. He thinks he is doing me a favor by returning to the dust from whence he came – but the truth is the world is so full and vast, that I could blossom just the same with or without him. He did not need to trim us apart this way – yet he did. Yet he does.

And so… just as it was not my choice that brought him into my life, it will not be my choice for him to leave it either. That is perhaps my fiercest regret of this whole tragic tale.

Such melancholic musings murkied my mind, as I stood as an outsider looking in at the sea of patrons bustling about the rotunda. I crept along the wall some more, trying to seem more like I belonged. A waiter swept by me with a silver platter full of champagne and I narrowly missed crashing into him and causing disaster by sending the fizz everywhere. I smiled at some people I thought I recognized who chanced to look in my direction, but their eyes always looked straight past me, never quite seeing, always never quite seeing…

At last I stopped beside a golden sculpture of a naked woman, with a perky bosom topped with nipples so erect they could rival the ones in Erik's sketchbooks. She seemed to push her chest out in a brassy display of sauciness, baring the broad of her neck like an invitation to the passing voyeur. And yet – as I traversed around to her other side, I saw her face to be pitched in the worst, most haunting shade of horrified shame.

I found her utterly disturbing to regard, and so I turned away and moved on.

My dissociative perusal of the crowds might have continued perpetually if not for a thick brush of coarse fur that smacked against my face as I passed by an archway with a blind corner and bumped headlong into an elderly woman by mistake, causing her to spill her overfilled glass.

"My Palomino Fino!" she wailed, as the amber spirit splattered across over the marble floor. Without missing a beat she turned her ire on me, whipping her gigantic fur coat about her like a dramatic cape. "Imbecilic girl, have you no eyes to watch where you're going?"

"M-my apologies, Madame," I stammered, every nerve twitching as she yelled. Oh, what was wrong with me? I was frightened of everything – I swear I even saw Erik in her eyes!

"Sorry will not make that sherry pour itself back into my glass!" she fumed. "I ought to string you up by your neck for what you've done!"

"Now, now, Jeannette," an elderly man by her side said sedately, patting her gloved arm. "The girl made a mistake. Let it go."

"Let it go? Let it go! Bah!" the woman seethed. "I'm sure that would make you happy, wouldn't it?" And then she stormed away.

"Forgive her," the man apologized to me in her stead, his words a little loud as if he had trouble with his hearing. Tremendous grey whiskers fluffed out beneath his nose as he gave a little chuckle. "She is a little short on temper tonight, I am afraid. You are that prodigious La Daaé, are you not?" He bowed and kissed my hand, the thick strands of his beard poking through my glove as his lips pressed down. "Please accept the sincerest of apologies from the Baron of Tremaine."

I grew red at my cheeks as he released my hand back to me. "I should be the one apologizing, truly… I was not looking –"

"Nonsense, young woman," he said. "We were the ones at fault. I am happy to take the blame. Now then, let me find my poor Jeannette a fresh glass of amontillado. Waiter!"

The old Baron hobbled off after one of the attendants, leaving me alone once more. I returned to my dangerous habit of person-staring, wishing only to pass the time as I waited for intermission to end and for Erik to come fetch me.

After some time I caught sight of the Baron again, just as he was reuniting with the old woman – the Baroness, I presumed her title to be – where she stood against the opposite wall. She had her ungainly fur coat clutched around her rail-thin figure and a long-stemmed glass of amontillado clutched unwomanly in her fist. Her gaunt face twisted and rankled as she mumbled out some words to her husband, which I could not hear from across the room, but could assume from her unpleasant demeanor to be of an intensely bitter and severe variety.

What made a woman so sour? Especially when her husband was so stunningly not? The depth of the Baroness's acerbity left no doubt in my mind that this was not an isolated incident for her. Perhaps our collision had set her off; but what a temper she must have, to react like that! How could a relationship like that last?

Her temper reminded me of Erik's – and therein I found a shred of hope. If the Baron and Baroness could make things work between them, perhaps then Erik and I could, as well?

(Alas, I had forgotten for that brief moment that Erik had already decided we were to end our relations!)

I watched them for a little too long. The Baroness, as if aware that there were eyes on her, began looking around the room suspiciously, before locking her gaze in my direction. But she did not look at me! No! – for her furious, spiteful eyes tracked a little upwards, above my head, as to look at someone standing behind me – and so to follow her sight, I turned my body round to see what she saw –

And there, standing behind me – towering above me – looking down at me – was a face I thought never to see again -

The face of the man I loved -

Raoul.