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

CHRISTINE DAAÉ'S (SECOND) JOURNAL

I admit I was fooled for all of five seconds.

He did not need to speak to ruin the illusion. No – rather, he just had to stand before me for a moment longer, as I regarded the way his coat hung off his shoulders as if from one of the many metal hangers he's always threatening me with, and then the small horizontal creases suddenly became apparently clear along the smalls of his cheeks, which were pink above and yellow below…

"How do I look?"

Raoul's voice issued forth from those thin, translucent lips. It was an impressive trick, the way he actually sounded like the man whose face he wore… but not so impressive that I didn't recognize it to be a trick. He had demonstrated his talent for voice modulation for me several times in the past; it did not shock me that he could imitate this voice as well.

"Is this the 'extremely realistic' mask you told me about?" I asked, some irritation bleeding through at his attempt to deceive me yet again. "The one that 'makes you look like everyone else'?"

"It is," Erik said, touching his deft fingertips to the cleft of his cheeks, which did not move as he spoke. It was an unusual appearance, but not altogether unnatural; Professor Valerius's face had acted similarly after his first stroke. He seemed pleased with himself regardless. "Not one soul shall look over their shoulder as I pass by!"

I winced. He truly seemed so happy with himself. It was enough to melt my dismay. But the mask was not so realistic as he said! It was well made, obviously, but it definitely could not pass closer inspection. His bony, angular jaw stuck out underneath and revealed a squared-off scraping of his true visage. His eyes were sunken in so deeply that the mask edges lifted up slightly around their sockets in the absence of something to cling to. In an attempt to hide this he had painted the rims of his eyes with an ashen ink, which only served to deepen the already eternal darkness of his eyes so that only those two specks of amber peeked out. To make things worse, he had donned a blonde wig which was combed so stylishly that it looked disastrously out of place on his withered scalp. Certainly, he did not look as ugly as before – but how could that be a point in his favor, when his polished cheeks shined with such artificial vigor?

"Dear…" I began hesitantly. "I do not know the best way to put this… but…"

"But what? Does Erik finally look too handsome for you?" He giggled devilishly, shaking with delight as he all but twirled before me. "That boy of yours was always so unfairly pretty! Ah! And now Erik is a pretty little boy too! Do you find fault with Erik for being such a dashing lad?"

"I am glad you like how you look," I said, wary of his overinflated enthusiasm and the disaster it could easily bring about, "but I just thought you should know – it is not very… believable…"

He stopped cold.

"It is," he insisted. "It is perfect."

"It is… uncanny," I said, mindful of every word, "how much like Raoul you look. But it is not you, Erik, and anyone with two eyes can see…"

The cheeks could not fall from their good-natured form, and the little dimples could not unstamp themselves from beneath their apples; but beneath the guise, on the exposed part of his face, his ruined smile fell. "Can see what? I am not ugly. What can possibly be the matter now?"

"It doesn't…" I said. "Erik, your mask isn't a real face, and it's very obvious to tell."

Childlike confusion spiked his words as he spun to look at himself in the polished marble wall beside us. "No – no, I worked hard on this mask. It is the best mask I ever made. How can it be obvious when – when –" He patted his fake sideburns, which had lifted a little bit from his cheeks, and still with disbelief he examined the mask upon his face. "– I see nothing wrong! It is a normal face, is it not? Perhaps you are too close. You know what lies beneath. Is that it? Erik cannot fool Christine but surely he can fool everyone else? He must be able to – it's the only way, so he must – he must…"

My heart broke for him.

"It's just not believable," I made myself tell him. "Everyone will know."

He stared helplessly at himself in the wall's reflection, daring only to turn briefly to watch as a server passed by and gave him a very clear second-glance. Two rivulets of ash trailed down Raoul's happy cheeks in response.

"Does your cruelty have no end?" Erik heaved in anguish. "Do you relish in Erik's pain? Do you enjoy shredding his single mite of confidence to bits? He was ready to walk out there! Ready! God, Christine! He has never felt so normal in his life! And yet you had to say something – now he grows faint… he might die of embarrassment!" Here he flung himself dramatically sidelong against the wall and hid his head in his arms.

"Oh – no, no, Erik!" I whispered in a hushed tone to him, seeing him now sobbing openly in public. Several people around us gave strange looks, so I huddled myself around him as much as I could to hide him from their disturbed stares. "I was not trying to be cruel! Please understand! If I was being cruel I would have let you walk out like that without saying anything… I want you to be confident, I promise I do! But, all the same, I want you to know people will still stare! I just didn't want you to be surprised by it, that's all! I wanted you to know it, but to hold your head high anyway. So, my love… please, please, please don't cry!"

He turned back to me, Raoul's smiling face barely obscuring the tilt of his gaping frown as he wailed, "I had the confidence, Christine! Just once in my life, I had the confidence – and you took it from me!"

"You would have lost it the moment you walked out there," I pleaded. "Even a normal person would feel insecure in that crowd –"

"Am I not normal?" Another choked sob. "All I ever wanted was to be normal!"

"You are, of course you are!" I tried to explain as he continued to spout his unending deluge of tears. "But your face is not and we both know it! Please, don't make us argue about this…"

"Oh! Oh, it is always Erik's fault that we argue, isn't it!" he wailed still, throwing himself back to the wall. "Fine, Christine, you win! Erik is a hideous, ugly little boy! A monstrosity to behold! He deserves to be told how revolting his God-given features are – Heaven forbid he thinks to even walk in public looking the way he does! Oh, he does not deserve to see the light of day! Just send a stake through my broken heart and lock me in my sepulcher, already! A rotting carcass deserves nothing less!"

"That is not what I said!" I flailed. "Erik, I swear – at this point you must be deliberately misunderstanding the things I say to you!"

"Erik misunderstands nothing!"

I opened my mouth to reply with more nonsensical apologies, more explanations of things that should be obvious to any other human being. I prepared a speech in the flurry of a second, of the amount I loved him and a thousand further defenses to my innocence of cruelty. And yet, though I tried, I found I could not speak them.

I could not, because right at that moment I decided I'd had enough of this.

All of this.

So I stepped back from him and straightened up, crossing my arms against my breasts and setting my jaw in the sternest scowl I could raise. He must have felt my form leave his side, for he jerked in response to my sudden bruskness – and seeing my hardset features, he cried out miserably, "Ah! What horrible deed has Erik done to earn Christine's scorn now? Has Erik not shed enough tears to earn her appeasement?!"

"You need to stop crying," I told him in the steadiest voice I could manage. "I won't argue with you if you're going to act like this."

"So Erik should cry more, then!" he said, and inky tears burst forth again with renewed vengeance. "If he cries enough, he and Christine will never argue again!"

"Now that's simply idiotic," I hissed, gripping my arms against myself tightly – so as to prevent myself from grabbing him and wringing his stubborn neck. "Erik, I know you can be a reasonable man when you want to be."

"But Erik doesn't want to be reasonable! He wants to be happy! That's all he's ever wanted, Christine. Can you blame him for leaping at any chance he can get? Leaping, hopping, it's all the same. It doesn't matter if it kills him anymore. He just wants to be happy, can't you see? Happy like a grasshopper! So if you say that you and he won't argue if he keeps crying, then by God, Christine, he'll wail until this entire godforsaken Opera house is underwater!"

"Then you are a damn fool!" I cried with a petulant stomp of my foot, losing my temper at last. "You cannot ignore every argument between us! Do you know what arguments bring about? Resolution, Erik – resolution! This is exactly why nothing can ever be settled between us. It's because you're always blowing out your mind with that infernal organ of yours, playing the victim and ignoring all of your problems! You never listen to me. Never. Never. And I've been – been – Erik, do you realize how patient I've been with you? Through all the lies and the tantrums and the life-altering crises that have completed changed you has a person. I've been with you through everything and it's never been enough. No amount of patience will resolve this. You're unmatchable. I can't wait you out. Our problems won't just go away. They are here and they are big and they are not going away. So I'm sorry – yes, Erik, I'm the one who's sorry – if you were hoping I would go along with this delusion you've made for yourself, but I refuse to assist you with it and I refuse to be polite about it anymore when goodness knows you are never polite to me! So now let me be clear once and for all: this mask is quite frankly the worst thing you've ever made. It's a sick, freakish mockery of reality and only a blind idiot would be tricked into believing in it. It's as if you clawed off the face of a porcelain doll and hammered it over your own. It doesn't move, Erik! Not a millimeter! Even now, as you cry like a whimpering wet dog, your face is smiling down at me as if there isn't a problem in the world! Have you any idea how strange it is to watch a happy man blubber and moan? And – and – why on earth did you think it would be a good idea to model it on Raoul's face, of all people? Because – of course that's who it is, isn't it? Oh, don't give me that look – I have two eyeballs, I can clearly tell it's supposed to be him! Erik, don't you ever think? What if someone recognized his face? What if he was here? And beyond that – he's so much younger than you! Did you think about that? Did you think people wouldn't notice how odd it is that an old wrinkled man's body has a young man's face? Did you think for a second about what the rest of you looks like? How vile your skin feels, how sickly your hands appear? Or did you really just think your face was all people would look at? Are you that vain, Erik? Are you? Tell me, dear genius man – I insist!"

People were looking at us now – staring at us, both of us, not knowing which one of us ridiculous saddle-geese to ogle worse. And geese we were! For here we were, having it out in the middle of the Palais Garnier! Had we no shame? With Erik in front of me, flapping his stained white handkerchief around, bringing it up and down to his face as he repeatedly forgot and remembered that he was wearing a mask and could not freely wipe away his snot; and I, squawking now in his face, ruddy-cheeked and acting nothing like the proper lady society expected me to be… oh, we certainly were a sight to be seen that night.

"Say something!" I demanded, ignoring the dozens of eyes upon us. "You're always talking every other minute of the day – say something now!"

For in that moment I truly had no shame. What did I care if society judged me for speaking out of line, if I could just get Erik to understand this one time? If using language beyond the pale of civil code was the only way to pierce his stubborn mind? Oh! In that moment I would've gladly had myself committed to an asylum if Erik could have just grasped the simplest of concepts I was trying to convey. If he could just understand my aim was never to hurt him, but that sometimes some hurt is simply unavoidable – that some hurt is better to inflict than other hurts – if he could just understand the reasons I hurt him… oh, what standings in society I wouldn't sacrifice for that!

But shameless though I was, I suppose Erik could not claim the same sort of freedom. His embarrassment, after all, stemmed from a deeper, more permanent shame that stained his own soul – one from birth, an original sort of shame, that could never be washed away – and so as he wiped his still-watery eyes and peered over his shoulder, I watched him jump a little with fright at the sight of so many spectators to our very public fight… and, in a flash, he removed himself from the wall and took off like a shot down the length of darkened corridor.

"Erik!" I called as I immediately ran after him, my slippers clicking loudly against the marble floor with each regretful step I made into that dark crepusculan passage. If only I'd been a hair of a second quicker with my reflexes – I could have caught him, I could have kept him, I could have made him stay!

How I regretted each hard word in that immediate afterward! I should have been nicer, I knew; I should have been endlessly patient with him and never raised my voice above a whisper. What sort of woman shouts at her husband? And yet –

No, no, it was all wrong! This I realized as I stood at the intersection of two lonely corridors. The Opera house was truly as much of a labyrinth above the ground as it was below when all the lights were out. I strained my eyes to see down the rightmost, but only shadows greeted me on that end. I peered to the left to see if traces of Erik might be discovered over there instead; that corridor retained its secrets just the same as the other. And thus I stood in between those two hallowed, chilly halls, breathing my breaths and crying my tears – when had that begun? – when suddenly I remembered the horrible truth of it all: that I, and not Erik, was the true victim of this whole sorry mess.

I slumped in my shoes as I stood in the middle of that intersection and faced the substantial opponent awaiting me in the form of a giant marble wall. Flushed pink marble, bloody marble, full of brown and yellow veins – sort of like Erik, sort of like me – stretching upwards and onwards, to Heaven and above, carrying nothing but marble, that empty, horrible, flushed pink marble – hiding such terrible secrets behind that bloody marble – and I found myself gripping my shoulders as the weight of it all overcame me at last.

Erik was my captor! How dare he run away? How dare he ever unchain himself from me? And most of all – how dare I pursue him?! Could I never leave well enough alone? He had left me before; in fact, he had promised to leave me tonight! Why did I have to look for him now? Why, why, why! Why, in truth, when he was the one at fault?

He was going to leave me in just a few short hours… he was going to throw me onto the street with nothing but a small valise of odds and ends that he had already made quite certain I knew did not actually belong to me. Oh, he was a wicked man, a cruel and unhappy man of the wildest sort, giving me gifts and slapping my face and telling me We Are Not Lovers – and all the rest he had done, the crimes he said he confessed but I knew he didn't because Père Myriel wouldn't forgive such ghastly sins as blackmail and kidnapping and murder and rape and – and torture – and – and –

It is always when I start thinking about Erik's past that my anger at him quiets down and I begin to regain my sanity. It is not that I forgive him for any of it; it is just that there is so much to contemplate in his history that I cannot hope to ever unpack it all. I cannot even begin to conceive of a judgement for Erik – how can I, when I cannot conceive of one for myself?

I am not guiltless. That, at least, I know for certain. Sure, my sins are not as numerous as Erik's, which are as vast and varied as the stars in the sky... but that is only because I am young and have not had the chance to commit so many yet. What will I do tomorrow? Who will I hurt today? For I know my heart is not as pure and clean as Erik thinks. This is the sad consequence of growing old, I fear – I am destined to destroy the world a little more with every further breath I take. I have already rubbed out my father and Raoul, and snapped them both over the edge of this mortal coil; when will I be fated to inevitably do the same to Erik?

At this point I felt the rest of the steam seep from my body, so I went to the opposing wall and sat myself down upon a lonely bench some forethinking designer had thought to put there. On this bench, in-between the two shadowy corridors I could see of nothing past, I sat and stared down the tunnel of darkness from whence I came.

The past is nothing, I realized as I sat there, but a thing only we ourselves have experienced.

And so I could not be angry at Erik for the evils he had enacted. I could not be miserable for him, either, for the tragedies he had attracted. His life was not my own to bother with understanding. I could only be weary from the ill-timed chase; weary and a little sore in my feet, as he must be too… and so, when he found me again, as I knew he would, I would make him sit and take off his shoes and let the blood flow back out of them, just as he had done for me before, just as I was doing now, in the most discrete of ways possible…

Thank heavens for long skirts, I recall myself thinking, as the over-abundance of velvet did wonders in hiding my stockinged feet as I kicked them out in front of me. My toes splayed out as I stretched them, free from the bond of my tight slippers which Erik had purchased a size too small but which I wore anyway for no other reason than because he told me to. The slippers themselves were also hidden beneath the velvet skirts, and all of it encased me and suffocated me so sweetly because this dress was also Erik's idea. This dress, which had no label just like all the other dresses he gave me, but did not fit me and was not made for my complexion. A thinner woman, maybe one of skin and bones like that embittered Baroness – a different woman, that is – would have made more sense in this gown. It was as if Erik hadn't even made the dress for me. But then why…?

As if on cue, Erik approached from the shadowy hall on my left. He had redressed himself in a black satin mask, discarded the horrid wig, and swept his cloak around him so that I could not make out the pillar of his form until he was close enough for me to see the bright amber specks of his eyes.

He stood at the edge of the bench, just out of reach, and peered down at me with such intensity that I didn't dare move a muscle. Not to stand, not to smile, not to even slip my shoes back on. With the black mask on, I could not make out any emotion upon his face; it was worse than the Raoul-mask had been in that regard. Was he still crying? Was he angry with me? I could never quite tell his moods when he wore this mask.

Finally, after staring down at me for some time, he broke the silence.

"Why are you sitting in the dark?" his gentle voice asked me softly, like a shepherd coaxing a lost sheep away from a thicket. "Don't you know the rest of the world is somewhere else?"

"I was looking for you," I said, before realizing how useless that was as an answer. I corrected myself: "I wanted to find you."

His reply came as a beautiful but resigned sigh: "Why?"

"Oh, Erik," I said. "Must we go through this every time?"

"And what would 'this' be, exactly?" Still his voice was soft, but he shifted uncomfortably on his definitely sore feet and touched his gloved fingers together nervously. "I am not a mind-reader, my love; you will have to explain it to me."

"I wanted to find you," I repeated as before. "I knew you were upset and I did not want you to be off… brooding… alone... or whatever it is you do when you're in a mood like that."

Another shift of his feet. "You know I would have found you soon enough. You did not need to leave on my account."

"I am only here on your account," I mumbled. "I didn't even want to see an opera tonight… you didn't even tell me what we were seeing..."

"Erik assumed Christine would be happy to do anything, as long as it was above the ground." He tilted his head, and let out yet another one of his famous pitiful sighs. "Though, now… I fear I have ruined things for you tonight, as I always manage to do. Am I right?"

"No," I folded my hands pointlessly over my knees. "No, it's not that…"

Suddenly he was on his bony knees before me, peering back at me through those sad little eyeholes in his mask. My stockinged feet skidded back on the marble floor beneath my skirts as I made way for him, and I kicked around uselessly for my shoes beneath the mess of fabric. His cool, waxy fingers gripped my hands up into a shared prayer and instantly stilled my motions. "Tell me, my love. What can I do? How can I make things better for you?"

"Allow me to stay," I stated immediately.

He narrowed his eyes, though his gaze remained soft and sweet. "You know I cannot do that."

"Then tell me it meant nothing," I requested of him. "Tell me you never had an honest thought for me. Tell me it was your mother's fault. Tell me you only think of your pretty sultana when you look at me. Tell me my voice is the only part of me that matters. Just – just tell me you never loved me, and it will all be okay."

"You are a difficult girl to please," he said painfully, and sunk his hands back down to clutch my skirts. "I obviously cannot do that either."

"Little much you can do, it seems," I said, feeling just as hopelessly broken. "May you remove your mask for me, then?"

He did so without a word of complaint, removing the dour thing and placing it carefully in my lap. He did not break eye contact as he did so – only moved his hands and touched at mine when the task was done.

"I am hideous," he once stated many moons ago, when I first had him start going about the house without the mask. "I cannot bear to even look at myself in a mirror."

"It is not so bad," I weakly replied at the time.

"It is," he insisted. "It is."

But I was still afraid of him, obviously not for his past because he hadn't told me a thing about it by then, but afraid of him very superficially for his face, which I found just as disquieting and horrific as he said. So of course I told him, "You're beautiful to me."

I did not understand at the time why that was the wrong answer. I did not understand that first time when he locked himself in his room and cried for two days straight. I did not understand his innocent lust or his gluttonous envy or his incomprehensible reason or his inconsolable earnestness. I did not understand it then – but I did now.

The deserted hall seemed to grow colder, and the ambient gas-light around us dimmer, so I intertwined my fingers with his and held them up between us. I did not pull one way or the other, but simply held them halfway between either of our trembling lips and allowed our breaths to warm our flesh.

"You are very ugly," I said.

He nearly laughed, despite himself. "There's not much to be done about this wretched face of mine, I fear."

"No, not just your face," I clarified. "All of you. To your core. It's all hideous. You," I squeezed his hand, "are hideous."

To my surprise, he did not cry. Not then, anyway. "I cannot change that."

"I'm not asking you to."

"I'm still trying, anyway," he said. "I want to be the sort of man you deserve. A nice, good man with a nice, good face and a nice, good heart. It's not enough to take you out for strolls in the Bois. It never will be. I – I thought, maybe, it could be, and I could settle for just that. I had a very pleasant evening with you, Christine, but I wanted more. Worse, though, was that you wanted more, too."

"Is it so wrong that we want the same things from each other?"

"No," he said, after some contemplation. "No, it is not."

"Then if you agree with me, what is the problem?"

"The problem is that I am losing all sight of my conscience at last," he sighed. "For I now see things from your perspective and am thinking such dangerous thoughts as that we are married, and you love me."

Not this again… "We are married, though."

"Which is the most frightening part of it all, I suppose," he said quietly. "Because if I think I'm your husband and you think you're my wife, how will I remember not to kiss you? I don't want to hurt you, Christine. I have never wanted that. But I can't promise I won't forget…"

"You have already hurt me," I reminded him gently. "As I have already hurt you. Nothing is by accident, and nothing is without consequence. Did it make you love me any less when I gave you the photographs and made you cry?"

He paused briefly, and I feared he was going to act like he didn't know what I was talking about. But instead, he admitted, in a low voice, "It made me quite upset, honestly."

"But did it make you love me any less?"

"No," he answered faithfully.

"Did it make you love me any less when I broke open your sixty-nine year old bottle of sherry?"

A reverent shake of the head.

"How about when I accidentally helped you into your cups by serving it to you in bed?" Again he shook his head. "Or when I knitted that atrocious blanket?" Another shake, a little more strained. "Or when I proposed to you –"

"Christine, please," his voice croaked. "I could never stop loving you… but these things, you must understand, are hard for me to remember. They're like little cuts upon my skin, if you've ever felt one before… and though I have known all the suffering in this world, even a small scrape can still hurt if salted and fingered thoroughly enough."

"You kidnapped me," I told him bluntly, willing him to just understand. "You have hurt me many times. You have kept me below ground with you against my will and prevented me from leaving. And I want to leave, I assure you… but I also want to stay, because I want to stay with you. The problem is, I don't think I can have it both ways. I don't think you will allow it. You will either keep me locked down there without a means for escape, or you will kick me to the street and forbid me from returning. Either way, the door is closed to me. I can only be locked in, or locked out."

He looked away wearily, as if he was just as exhausted with the topic as I was. "Tombs are typically sealed shut, Christine. A corpse can't just swing open the lid of his casket as he so pleases…"

"Your house is not a tomb, dear man," I told him. "You are a real, living man and you do not live in a tomb. Tombs do not have hot-water heaters and electricity."

His eyes, those glowing amber orbs, turned up at me in desperation. "Then what, Christine? What am I supposed to do?"

"Unlock your door for me," I answered. "Let me leave. Do not chase me around Paris. Do not follow me or stalk me or threaten me. Allow me to live without you for a time… and then let me back in. Let me be your wife. Let me hold your hand and give you gifts and tell you things you don't want to hear. Let us live like normal people."

He was silent. Afraid.

I knew this, because I was too.

"I don't know how," he breathed at last. "I must be the most wicked man who ever lived because I am nearly tempted to try."

"It is not wicked to want to be happy, Erik. And anyway, you are already doing one of those things," I implored softly, squeezing his hand gently to make my point. "Please, my love. Take the leap. Let me in."

And that was finally the right thing to say, I thought, because he gave me a small smile and squeezed my hand back. "I think I might die a fool, my girl. Do you realize how ugly I am?"

"You are the most hideous man I've ever met."

"Yet you do not turn away?"

"I do not."

And with that he bawled into my lap, clutching the velvet tight to his sunken cheeks and wiping a fistful of amber against his snot-laden nasal cavity. I did not reproach him this time, because for once I thought we both understood that not all hurt is bad hurt, that not all pain is bad pain, and that sometimes we cry because we're not sad at all, and that these tears streaming down his face were finally not ones of misery but instead were tears of glory.

It is with contrition that I must confess I did not cry with him. This was not my battle to overcome, I thought. I had won nothing here. Erik was the only one victorious and the long-perished spoils were only his to claim.

Thankfully, I still held him. I can console myself with that. I coaxed him from my lap to my breast, to clutch me a little more comfortably in his desperate embrace, and I took care not to ruin all his work by telling him something foolish like I loved him. Then we touched but did not kiss, though I could tell he wished to, and when all his spurting, spouting waterworks were over he peeled himself away like a limp sponge and fixed himself discreetly in the corner before turning back to help me find my stockings.

He seemed distracted thereafter. In his regretful preoccupation, he told me he loved me perhaps a hundred times during the walk from that dark intersection back to the bright, lively rotunda, but none of his words of affection seemed to be actually heartfelt. His lips graced my ear and nearly kissed the inside of it as he whispered an apology for his crude actions, the only sentiment that I think he truly meant that night, but then he pulled away and went on with the obligatory fawning and doting. I held onto his arm and only dared to smile back silently in reply.

Because, I thought, Erik had only won the one battle here; and as we all know, winning the battle is not the same as winning the war. He would win one day, I was sure, and I would save all my ardent replies to his overdone affection for that day.

Of course, as I later found out, none of this was true. Erik had won nothing, and those dejected tears were just the same as they always were. He had learned absolutely nothing, and I had learned even less.