No More Gifts
"The Opera"
(Part VIII)

CHRISTINE DAAÉ'S (SECOND) JOURNAL

"…And he is, of course, a murderer at heart; and a murderer of any form is one who cannot ever hope to be repaired. Think not of the tankards of spilt blood, nor of the legions of weeping children left by his victims, nor of the scuttling, dripping rope lying limp from his waist. Think only of this man you know now and his demeanor unto you. Has he been kind? Maybe not always, but mostly, might you say? Perhaps you think him overly sensitive, if not a touch cold at times? Perhaps you think that's all it is? That it's nothing but a matter of divergent personalities? A matter that might be solved by some shifting of attitudes? Is that what you think, Christine Daaé?"

These were some of the ideas Princesse Ada posed to me during this final therapy we had, sitting stiff as figurines together in this impromptu confessional of an opera box. We assumed our positions with little awareness, little consciousness for having done so. Within this scene I became the deferential sinner, head bowed and hands clasped tightly, as I listened to the upright Monseigneur Ada as she decreed my penance and homilized her plan for my salvation. She spoke at a clip, apparently just as wary as I was of the minutes ticking away until Erik returned. There seemed an overabundance of advice she wished to bestow upon me, and an underabundance of time with which to bestow it. I could not wedge more than a few words in, here and there, how eager she was to speak her piece; and despite her good-hearted earnesty for my redemption, I found myself growing ever more apathetic to her plight as she droned on.

"Your husband is not just cold; no, that is not the problem with him at all. He is dead, plain and simple. Dead and very much committed to the bit. There has been a murder in his soul to equal every murder he has committed on this earth. Mind now that a murder is not only the literal action of life-taking. It is the theft of a penny, the squandering of an hour, the lie of a mercy. It is not innately evil to murder; and yet murderers are irrevocably marked by the murders they commit. Sometimes a murder is not a misdeed, but just a deed – a deed that had to be done, and is done now, but was truly awful for having had to be done at all. Those stains must exist in this world, by the laws of nature; and so they add up as blights on the soul, accumulating one by one, moldering all morals with their insidious rot, corroding the conscience with their infernal corruption until nothing is left but absolute wasteland, barren of even the most rancid fruits that once polluted its soil…"

I hid a yawn, perhaps the eleventh or so I'd made since we'd sat down. Oh, how much longer could one woman speak? With any mercy, Erik would be back soon to relieve me of this torture…

"…A man who takes the life of one may find himself horrified at his actions; and yet he finds within himself the capacity to do it again, and then again, every time with far lesser qualms, for he knows he once had the capacity to do it before. And isn't he horrible to have done it at all? Horrible enough to do it again? That is how he thinks. It isn't necessarily true… but it is how he thinks. And so murders become easier as they're done in succession, and they are done in succession because they've become easier." (You don't say, Madame la Princesse! What an interesting series of thoughts you've shared with me. How absolutely big your brain is. Anyhow, don't you think we'd rather – oh, you're still speaking? Ah…) "– then a pauper, down on his luck, may steal a coin from the church basket to pay for a loaf of bread. The next week he may return, perhaps with better luck, but may deign to steal two coins anyway. Or perhaps he might even try his luck with the bishop's quarters. Later he may be reformed, with a small house and a meager salary and a tidy wife, and he might say, 'Oh, what great fortune I have found in the highly trafficked brothel on the corner of my street, how grateful I am to God that He advised me to invest in it! And to devest in it as well, hurr hurr!' and yet he will turn to his pauperous brethren, the ones who've taken his place below the bread line, and he'll tell them all about the coins in the church box and the mass times that are best to visit at. It's the only way to get by, he'll tell them, because he believes it to be true. And so that's the murder of the murderer – which is exactly why it's so vital you understand and agree with what I'm explaining to you. Do you understand me, Christine Daaé?"

"Okay," I said, exhausted.

In truth, I had no idea what she was saying. These words were just pummels of sound she was slinging at me at this point, how little I heeded them. The gist of her speech, I must suppose, was that Erik was evil, and foul, and wretched, and that I would be better off running out of this opera box and fleeing Paris forever. Didn't I see it was suicide to stay? Didn't I see Erik would never appreciate a single lone action of grace for its proper, true worth – no more, no less? He would misconstrue any and all of my intentions for upholding this promise, just as he's always done; and in return for my selfless deed he would see to it that we were both swiftly punished without benefit of trial. Thus I should not feel beholden to this promise – or any promise made to Erik for that matter – especially when Erik, the pull-out prince himself, never even once has attempted to hold his promises to me. Oh, he might say he tries… but has he, really? Ever? For Erik is a deceitful, selfish, hateful man, and I would be a fool keep my promise to him. I would be a fool to stay until the end of the opera, to let him manipulate this one final kindness out of me. I would be a fool to think he was worth it, when he so very clearly was not.

All things, of course, I already knew, AND STILL KNOW, but for some reason needed to be TOLD to me like I was some INFANTILE CHILD.

"May we speak of something else?" I thus proposed, interrupting Ada in the midst of another parable about God knows what.

"Something… else?" she stuttered, rather agogged by my request. "Christine Daaé, do you not grasp the gravity of this situation?"

I peered down in my lap and examined the way my fingers rolled in and out of a fist. "I seem not to. I am entirely empty-handed; Erik had me leave my trunk in my dressing room."

"You dare to… cling to puns in your eleventh hour?"

"Oh, is that the time? I have not seen a real clock in many months so I must take your word for it."

"Christine Daaé!" she reproached me. "How can you sit there idle and waste your time like this, on word-play and quips? Do you not realize that your very life is at stake here?"

I cast my eyes to the stage, where the bawdy idiots were crooning and swooning about still. What good fun their revelry seemed! To not have a care in the world as they recited the world's tritest soliloquies to the open air – to never feel embarrassed, for the songs they sang were not written of words from their own hearts! How lovely it could be to simply see its action play out below me, night after night, never actually watching it or analyzing it or processing it in any professional sense ever again. How absolutely sedating it could all be…

Petulantly, I murmured, "Why must I be the one to consider these things?"

"Because you are in danger, Christine Daaé," Princesse Ada insisted. "You must leave this place immediately."

"Erik would be upset if I did that," was my faint, very logical response.

"Your Erik gets upset about a lot of things," she said. "He'll live."

"But what if it upsets me when he is upset?"

"You'll live," she echoed. "Longer, too."

"But unhappier?"

A pause. "Do you really feel he makes you happy?"

"Oh, yes," I said softly. "What else could I feel? He cares so much about me. No one else has ever cared about me as much as he. Anyone who ever came close is dead."

"That's appalling."

"Maybe so. But have you ever had someone care about you, Madame?"

A breath. "Yes."

"Then you understand, Madame, the sunshine I feel in my heart when I think of him? The scene of spring, of two friends on a row-boat on sunny day, of a family of goslings passing by on the still surface of a quiet lake – of a tourist and her guide in a gondola by night in Venice, their path marked by candlelight like the paintings always show... do you feel the warmth of the fireplace in the small parlor where two friends are reclining after a long day of nothingitude shared between them? It is sweet bliss to be loved, and it is Paradise to be cared for."

"Are you sure you are not mistaking Paradise for the 'mauvaises terres,' as they call them? The picture you are painting is not at all what occurred in this box just some minutes ago. You heard him speak to you, Christine Daaé. You heard him lie. You watched him throw his little tantrum when he didn't get his way. That is not the way a good husband acts."

"Every marriage has its faults," I deflected easily. "Every marriage needs work."

"Not every marriage deserves the energy. Your husband is a very selfish man, Christine Daaé. Selfish, wicked, dastardly, and obscene. Would you sacrifice your life for a man of such contemptible character?"

"I am hardly sacrificing my life, Madame. It is just the remainder of the night that I am giving him – just until the opera is finished, and then I will go."

"You know that isn't true," Princesse Ada warned me. "Your will is too weak for that. If you do not leave now, you will never find the strength to break his heart again."

"Erik wants me to go. He said it himself."

But the Princesse saw through my words, and took up against me. "You don't think he means it, do you?"

"I know he doesn't," I admitted, a bit of that old anxiety brewing within my gut. "I know him better than he knows himself. He only wants me to go because he thinks it's the right thing to do. It's not what he actually wants."

"So do you think, maybe, that it might turn out that he'd be quite happy if you stayed? Happy enough to forget a thing he's never bothered with before, like moral obligation? Happy enough to go back on his word about letting you leave at all?"

"It's possible," I conceded. "Actually, it's almost certain."

"So you don't think it's possible your husband has any morals that he wishes to abide by?"

"I think it's possible to wish for two diverging things at the same time, and to be fatally disappointed when they can't both come true."

"What do you wish for, Christine Daaé?"

"I wish to make a choice," I said, feeling more confident about this answer than any other I had given her this evening. "Just one singular choice, freely made, for once in my entire life. I am tired of being led around like a lamb on a leash. If I am to be sheared I want to hold the scissors; if I am to be slaughtered I want to pick the axe."

"You aren't thinking clearly."

"Perhaps not, but I am thinking about all this the best that I am able at the present moment." A strange tear sprung up at the corner of my eye, and I wiped it away with a trembling finger. When had I become so upset? "What, do you think I am not competent to make my own decisions?"

"You seem to be lacking in perspective," she said, taking on a softer tone now. She did not move an inch from that rigid posture of hers, but it felt like she had moved to embrace me all the same. "It is okay to be confused, Christine Daaé. You have been manipulated by this man for over a year. He has taken advantage of your trust time and again, and has misrepresented himself from the very start. Deception can be a very muddied thing to see through."

"I'm quite aware he deceived me."

"But still you care for him?" She seemed unconvinced. "You don't have to do this man any favors. He has thoroughly ruined your life, you understand?"

"I'm sure he didn't mean to."

"Oh, you can't possibly believe that, can you? Truly, dear girl? This monster, this man you have lived with, has he hurt you so much that you still so adamantly refuse to see the truth? Can you not realize that it was he who killed all those other people who dared to care for you as much as he did? Can you not see what further tragedies will befall you if you stay? You say he is your husband, and that marriages need work. But do you really want a marriage as foul, as rotten, as diseased as this one?"

I don't, I wanted to say, I don't want to stay here. I want Erik to be happy, but I don't want to stay here. I want to walk out that door, Princesse Ada, can't you see that? I am not a suicidal woman, and I do not want to be tortured by Erik's mind games anymore.

And yet –

I was still in Box Seven.

"I do," I forced myself to say. "Erik's love makes it all worth it."

Ada sighed, and it felt like the entire earth was crying for me.

"He doesn't love you, Christine Daaé. He never has. He can't love you. That is not what love is."

She was disgusted with my decision, clearly. She went on her long-winded way, spouting more soliloquies about the permanent ruination that evil makes in our souls. All the while I sat in that velvet chair, feeling so much farther away from anything than I'd ever felt before. Her rambling fell away and became nothing more than silence in the air to me, the whisper of my blood the only pounding sound my ears dared convey to me.

It didn't matter what she said, anyway. I would never leave.

I knew it all already. Every insult she threw against Erik, every time she called me a fool, everything was true. It didn't help to hear her say it to me. How could it? I was quite resolute in my decision – my decidedly bad decision, as she had repeatedly reminded me throughout those fifteen minutes – and there was to be no turning back for me. She was wasting her breath explaining to me how Erik was the most heinous villain alive, when her time could have been better spent discussing any number of other things. We could have talked about the opera, for heaven's sake.

Why didn't we just talk about the opera, Erik?

"Thank you for all your advice," I said at long last, cutting her off from her latest onslaught of good-intentioned condescension. "I'm going to stay, though, and I'm not going to change my mind."

"But Christine –"

"I understand your concern," I told her. I turned in my seat and looked her in the eye for the first time in this whole sorry ordeal. The surface of her eyes were glassy, as if with unspilled tears; I fancied her mechanical little heart was breaking for what she clearly thought of as my stupidity. "I understand it very well. But I made a promise to Erik and I'm going to abide by it. He deserves that one kindness at the very least, even if he shows none to me."

And Princesse Ada's crimson lips puckered, or at least I imagined them as doing so. How beautiful she was, even in this state of defeat – almost more beautiful, I thought, for having lost, and even more for having lost to me. It was a very beautiful thing, in my mind, to conquer over another. How sweet this otherwise bitter victory tasted for it!

"One last time, Christine. I'm begging you, please leave. If you love yourself at all, please leave –"

Box Seven, I reminded myself with a grim smile.

"I am firm on my choice."

The silence turned heavy as the remaining seconds passed. I could not be certain of the amount of time left, but something dangerously cold in my bones told me the time was nearly out. The air grew thicker and thicker as thirty seconds, perhaps, passed in total. There could be no turning back now. No change of heart. This was finally it.

And it was.

The door opened, slowly, sadly, certainly... and at last my repulsive husband – some man who called himself Erik – stepped back into the opera box.

I did not expect him to be happy I stayed.

He was not.

Still, he said, "Thank you, Christine. I love you."