No More Gifts
"The Palomino Fino, Again"
CHRISTINE DAAÉ'S (SECOND) JOURNAL
We were quiet as he embraced me.
Dare I recall a worse moment in my entire history with Erik? Had his woolen shoulder ever trembled so much like a child's as it did now, hunching as it did against my sodden cheek? His own tears spilling like the morning's dew upon the flaxen meadowland of my head; his hands coming up against my back, those spectacular skeletal specimens fisting and scratching and not quite tearing at the amber silk of my dress for feeble gain, fighting to wrap the satin of my silken self around the foaming, frothing, churning, wrenching disappointment which had clobbered apart his dreams' moorings with its tormentuous might. He was lost in a realm of concrete factoids, blown far adrift from the safety of his imaginary shore. I was the only beacon looking out into the awful abyss, the only light shining upon his thrashing form amidst the sea of darkness; I was the only one who was watching, the only one who could throw a loop of rope out to save him, the only person in the entire world who had ever seen him for the monster he truly was... I was the only one who had ever dared to look past the surface of his freakish visage to come face to face with the devil within…
And I whispered:
"You are welcome."
And into my hair, my sopping scalp, he croaked,
"I am damned."
In another moment – I found his hand dangling from my shoulder as he sniffled back his pitiful tears. He made the most horrendous sounds, gulping and gurgling as mucilaginous spumen clogged up the folds of his sorry excuse for a nose and seeped ever downwards to the boogerish bogs of his lungs. A literal drowning man, he fought hard to hold his head up high as braved the tide and led us back to our seats.
He stooped then and offered his hand to my good friend the Princesse Ada of Tamerlane, like any good gentleman would do, like any good husband would do, like any good and docile and deferential man would do. He walked her back to her seat, taking good pains to make sure she was settled good and proper. Even onto his good knees he went, with no small amount of ache, with only a good amount of ache, to retrieve the ancient lorgnette which had fallen yet again onto the good pat of floor between them. He said nothing to her, and she said nothing in return; and in this way it was a terribly good dialogue they shared between them. I admired him dearly for this. Thereafter he rose up and sank into his seat beside me, collapsing against the velvet with all the awkward graces of a real, rotting cadaver, and at last closed his good eyes to the world around him.
How tame he seemed now, in his utter defeat against me… and how gloriously imperial I felt, in my total domination over him.
For it was not I who had lost this futile crusade by the choice I had made. It was never my own life that I was risking. It was Erik's, always and forever: the eternal king of my couping heart, my darling husband of just one week, my never-lover of an endless night, my Don Juan Impuissant. It had, after all, always been clear how this all would end. I was always going to walk away from this night intact.
Erik would not.
But such is life! No man deserved this defeat more than Erik. And – was it even a defeat? Oh, was it even a war? It was not my fault he had put all his hopes into my walking away and delivering him from this final temptation. Should I be forced to say 'Poor Erik!' because I did not allow him to curse my name, to call me an ungrateful, hateful fatale for breaking my promise to him, to spurn me just as I spurned him? Why was any of this a choice I had to make at all?
The answer was clear, I believed. None of this was ever my burden to bear. Erik's happiness was not my responsibility whatsoever. How primeval such an idea even was! So never again, I vowed in that moment, would I fuss like a fool over his self-flagellating funerealisms. Never again would I contort to cavile and carp over his crabbish cantankerisms and his cravenous crotchetitties. Never again would I bow and bide and beg.
Never again… anything at all…!
"Did you enjoy your stroll, dear husband?" I asked, with all the civil cordiality he's never deserved. "I hope you did not exert yourself too excessively, and only moved at a pace brisk enough to rejuvenate your mood."
"Oh," he moaned. "Oh, no. Not at all."
"Well, that is your fault," I told the miserable man. "You must make an effort to enjoy the hateful things you do a little more, dear – or else why do them at all?"
"Yes, Christine."
"Have you found any great amusement in this night at all?" I continued. "Or has the pleasure been all mine?"
His bottom lip trembled, and I worried he was about to begin his pathetic waterworks again.
"Oh, come now, Erik – don't be like this. It's not becoming." I patted his hand. "We are at the opera. This is not the time to regress. Wipe your tears and quit feeling so sorry for yourself… otherwise you'll have nothing left for when you're crying all alone in that horrid coffin of yours tonight. Come, come."
He actually listened for once, and brought out a sopping wet handkerchief from his jacket to slap against the center of his ugly face. He made some more ghastly sounds, squawking and honking his foul expectorate into the drenched folds of that poor, poor square of fabric. My disgust (rather more than my compassion!) won out at last when I saw the lace literally dripping with his abuse; and so I brought out my own dry cloth for him to use, which he accepted just as he broke down in another racket of tears.
Is every marriage as exhaustingly… wet… as this one? Surely it can't be so, for I sorely doubt anyone in their right mind would ever wed if that were the case. Surely other couples kept their linens quite dry! Surely other husbands didn't blow boodles of boogers into their wives' new handkerchiefs. Surely other husbands had proper sinus cavities that did not produce so much mucus.
Surely other husbands had noses.
"You have missed so much," I carried on over his cacophonous agony. I gestured casually to the stage, where the actors were still singing, still fighting, still dying… "I fear you've missed so much that it's simply impossible to catch you up at this point. But surely that doesn't matter, dear boy? It's a dreadful opera, and you truly haven't missed much – and anyway, you already know it all. You've seen it without me countless times, haven't you? Countless times, without ever inviting me?"
"I have," he sobbed.
"So you know there's nothing you're missing," I said, hardly even spiteful, "in this theatre, or out. You've seen far more of this world than the average man would ever dream to… far more than me, at any rate. And remember, by your own account, nothing was worth seeing in the end. Not the beauty of the Caspian's sapphire blue sea against the Mazenderan shore; not the silent sanctuary of the Nijni-Novgorod winter woodlands by the crisp break of dawn; not the romantic ripples of the Seine's tide under the flooding glow of the moonlight. Nothing was ever as beautiful in real life as the picture of it you had in your head. Isn't that right, my sorry boy?"
More sniffles. "Oh, it is. It is…"
"So then, why do you cry? When every opportunity was afforded to you, but all you ever did was bask in the despair of it all?" Impatience drove my words as I went on. "My own father wept on his deathbed for all the chances he never took… he told me he had but one happiness in all his life, and that was picking up his violin case one day and leaving our small village in Sweden. But even this one tiny joy of his was overshadowed by the inescapable burden he carried with him for the rest of his life… the burden he could never be relieved of… the burden of me, his needy child, his dependent daughter, who kept him from ever being completely free… even past the end of his days…"
I cast my eyes to Erik, regarding his tearful countenance with growing resentment. Even now he was ignoring me, finding greater interest in my soiled handkerchief, which shuddered with each of his raucous breaths. Because of course he didn't care about my father… I had already told the Angel all about my insecurities and the bitternesses that went with them… and I had already received from the Angel my allotted share of consolations and pities. Certainly he was annoyed with me now for bringing it up again, as if I was expecting sympathy or, God forbid, some form of understanding from him. Certainly he was thinking I was about to bring up my mother and all the woes that went with her – and why shouldn't I? When all he did was talk about his mother, or his father, or whoever else he happened to think about… always without any prompting from me whatsoever!
"Now, Erik, my love, my dear, why are you still crying? I told you to stop. Why won't you stop crying?"
"He… cannot!" He hunched and wept into his lap, clearly attempting to stifle the noise. "He is trying, Christine! Erik is trying! Are you so blinded by your own cruelty that you cannot see that?"
"In what world are you 'trying' to do anything?" I threw back at him. "It seems I am the only one here who has been making any decisions at all."
"Why did you stay!" he wept. "Why did you stay!"
"Why did you return?" I countered with vehemence. "You didn't have to, but you did. I dare you now to take accountability for your own horrible actions!"
"Accountability! Accountability! Accountability!" His crying fit made him slide from his seat, and he collapsed in a puddle of dark wool and polished shoes upon the ground, shaking his clenched fists about his pinched face. "How can Christine think Erik has taken no accountability? Does she not see how Erik grieves her utter ruin? Does she not see how he bawls like a babe? Does she not hear his blubbers? His bellows? His boo-hoos? All this damp sludge he exudes from every orifice has always been for her!"
He clawed against the carpet, groaning, as he raked its crimson pills between his fingers – before he dragged himself before me, heaving himself like some lugubrious undead creature, and thrust himself against my lap. He buried his face within the fabric, forcing all his soggy tears and snot deep into my expensive amber creases.
"Erik is damned!" he moaned between my parted legs. "Is this not what Christine meant to do to him? Was she not trying to kill him? Oh, he might drown right here in her lap – drown here in the depths of Christine's bone-dry basin which has only ever been filled with Erik's own feculent tears! She does not even cry! She never has, for him! He cannot breathe, he cannot… for how terrible he has always been to her! And always shall be! How he has always mistreated his darling wife! How he continues to mistreat his cruel Christine!"
I gripped the armrests as he suddenly crooked his head at the most ungodly angle, brushing upon something delicate and disturbingly tender deep within me. My knees came up in my shock and made sudden contact first with the side of his temple and then with the hollow his cheek, in rapid succession, sending his horrible death's head reeling back and to the left. He reached out to gain his balance, clawing at my skirts with one hand while the other shot up to the level of his eye… an instinctive gesture, I recognized it to be, as his palm fanned out before his face…
Almost immediately, though, he moved that hand away and wiped his wrist against his face, smearing a fine line of bloody spumen against the starched white panel of his cuff. He did it so naturally I nearly thought he meant to do it in the first place. Then he released my skirt and flung himself back on his knees with a terrible quietude. In silence he seethed, staring down upon that strip of scarlet which stained his shirt. Not a word was spoken there between us, as he rasped out those terrible hissing breaths. Not a muscle did I move, not a thought did I have. I watched only his form intensely, my own body poised and ready to attack if need be…
Suddenly, then, he looked back up.
It was not the two little rivulets of sanguineous snot that ran down and disappeared into the cleft of his scowling upper lip which struck me. Nor was it the way his blood appeared almost black in this despairing theatre lighting, painting his already-ghastly face into a landscape of further rot and decay, a necropolis suitably irrigated with putrescent lakes and excretent waterfalls.
No… it was nothing but the look in his eyes, as he gazed upon me with this hideously beautiful adoration, that chilled me to my very core. Chills, I write… though the truth is that chills and thrills are very difficult to distinguish from one another, especially when it comes to the matter of Erik. Is it possible to loathe another's absolute subjugation before you, whilst at the same time finding complete satisfaction in it?
With those terrible eyes upon me, refusing to look away, refusing to blink… he asked,
"Does Christine want to be Erik's wife?"
And I replied, after very little consideration, but with great conviction nonetheless –
"I don't know."
His head came back down, and his hands shot back up to grip at the flesh about his eyes. I saw his nails pierce his skin (an easy feat, most assuredly, for the thin-skinned boy), and I feared these self-mutilations to be the harbingers of yet another hapless storm of tears… but then he only sniffled, and swallowed slightly, and did not outright cry. When he eventually turned his head back up his cheeks were completely dry.
"Erik… wants you… to want to be his wife," he said slowly, taking great pains with his abhorrently precise wording. "But Erik does not want himself… to want you… to want to be his wife. Does that make sense?"
His eyes searched mine, begging for a grain of understanding that he could latch onto. He was still so very much the drowning man from before: still thrashing about in the dark sea, still pleading for rescue. I promise I don't need the whole shore, I could hear him saying. Just a single grain of sand for me to find my footing, Christine, and then I can be saved.
After a poignant and pregnant pause, he persisted: "I… wish every day that I did not love you the way I do. It is a hellish obsession that encumbers this weak-willed heart. It pains me, it does… it pierces my chest, like a stake that's been driven down by your pink iron heel. It has brought only misery to us both. For that, I am truly remorseful… but still, Christine, I cannot say that I am sorry. Because I still want you, with all the fervor left in my decrepit body."
"Then let yourself love me," I told him, before I could stop myself. "You have already done so much else to get to this point. You have already stolen me from my life. You have murdered my soul. You have manipulated my affections and made me love you. Clearly, the worst has already been done. It does not matter that you think I am delusional; it does not matter that you call it all a dream. All of this misery that we share, that you call mere imagination, is but bitter and bizarre reality to me. These pretendings you are having us play out in this opera box are real to me, Erik. That certificate you filed in the city hall is real to me. And I feel disturbed for trusting my own mind at times instead of just trusting you; and I feel insane for doubting physical proof even when you tell me the most obvious lies. You have coiled me around your finger and pulled me so tight my spine is about to break. What stays your hand now, when one final twist is all it will take?"
"A crisis of morals," he answered in a soft, strangled voice. "That is all that protects you at this point. My conscience is strong enough to tell me that what I'm doing is wrong… so very wrong… and yet…"
"And yet?"
He gestured to my hand, as if he needed my permission to hold it. I extended it to him without comment, a look of grave disgust barely concealed upon my face, and he took it up in his clasp with all the delicateness one would take with a rose petal between the pages of an old, weathered book.
"…And yet it is not strong enough to stop me from performing these horrendous evils that I do. Their call is so carnal, so obscene… and I am so wanton, so depraved. I must keep you, Christine, and this time I will say I actually am quite sorry about that. I won't be letting you go. Not this time. Not anymore. I cannot do it. I know I promised… but Christine should really know better than that, than to trust Erik at his word." He pressed a few small kisses to my fingertips and murmured, "Console yourself with the knowledge that he despises himself for this just as deeply as you do."
There it was, then – the truth I'd been waiting for him to say. Princesse Ada had warned me, and I of course as well had come to accept that this was the only possible end for this night. The moment I chose to stay in this opera box, rather than fleeing as Princesse Ada told me to, I had damned myself to an eternity with Erik.
Now, with my fingers pushing past his cold lips, stroking the grey line of his receding gums, I had to wonder… had Erik planned this all? From our fight in my bedroom, to my finger in his mouth? Had he known from the very start that he wouldn't let me go?
He'd said at the start that Box Seven was a place for imagination… could it have been his plan all along to fool me into thinking I'd made some sort of choice? He'd asked me to act, and act I did – a little too well, even… or so I thought. Perhaps it didn't matter how well I'd acted. Perhaps he was always going to become 'suddenly' overcome with temptation, was always going to leave me alone with Princesse Ada to decide whether or not to leave him. Perhaps the Princesse eavesdropping on our conversation was not an oversight! And, despite her vociferous pleas, perhaps leaving Erik was never a real choice I could make. Perhaps he'd been standing outside Box Seven the entire time, waiting with a rag of chloroform and tears in his eyes, waiting for me to betray him just so he could have a reason to pity himself even more.
Perhaps he'd given me all the illusions in the world to make me think I had any choice in this at all. Meticulously crafted every bit of this night… and every bit of it was going exactly to plan. Yes, it had to be true… he was never going to let me go. Never. Not even if I ran.
Not even if I stayed.
"So what is the plan going forward, oh, brilliant husband of mine?" I mused, as the tip of one finger sunk in further and traced back the line to where his sharp molars parted slightly with a gasp. "Shall we return to your abode and go to sleep in our separate chambers tonight, and every night for evermore? Shall I knit for you a few more blankets, and pile them high in your coffin to ensure you never again find yourself cold enough to seek alternative slumbering arrangements at my side? Shall we do our chores together in the daytime, or whatever day is down there, like a couple of siblings and no more? Busy ourselves with, say, endless hours of chaste candle polishing for the rest of our days? What, really, is your plan here, Erik?"
My fingers had sunk in further, spelunking around the innermost cavern of his cheek. He sucked them thoughtfully as I spoke, weakly grinding their flesh against the hard ridges of his teeth. Occasionally I felt his trembling tongue wander over to lick a small stripe along the side of it, just for him to quickly pull it back and halt all his other ministrations. He appeared just as uncomfortable as I was to have my fingers in his mouth, his hands cradling mine with a fluttering touch; and yet, as neither of us knew with clear certainty who had put them there, neither of us knew whose responsibility it was to remove them.
"Torture," he mouthed slowly, his breaths shallow and damp upon my palm.
He did not elaborate past that, though, so I prodded him by pressing the edge of my nail into his thin gumline. "For both of us, you mean?"
"No," he hissed sharply. "I would never want to hurt you."
I scoffed. "We're a little past that, don't you think?"
"I would sooner hurt myself than hurt you," he tried. "I would rather die –"
"No, you would not," I said. "You've said it so many times to me that I can repeat it in my sleep: you are not a suicidal man. You are nothing if not a hideous, greedy, self-serving monster. A truly despicable villain. If ever there were a choice between yourself and me, you would pick yourself a thousand times over. This is why you will never let me go – because though it is torture for you to live with me, it is an even greater torture to live without me."
"I do not deny –"
"Why would you, wretch? You planned this all, from the first minute you heard my voice. And as for what comes next? Who knows – but you!"
"I never intended," he said with great reluctance, as I dug my nail in a second time, "for anything to happen. You must believe me. There is no plan. There never was one."
"Are you not the king of manipulation? I do not merely doubt any word you've ever said anymore – I simply do not believe them at all!" I ripped my fingers now from his mouth entirely, and shoved him back with a wet palm against his bared front teeth. "We are married and then we are not. I am your student and then suddenly I am your salvation. I am confused by absolutely everything you've ever said to me – and it's all by your design! Say it is true!"
Here I began to laugh, if I recall myself correctly… but not in a deranged way, no, not at all… more like in a pleasant, demure manner, like any other polite lady of society would do.
"What will you expect of me when we return downstairs?" I demanded, as I lunged forward just as he cowered backwards. "Shall we be married? Or can your upright conscience not excuse a trespass as that? Oh, such scandal! The sins we would be committing if we ever even thought to honor our wedding pledges! Oh! How the torches that light the path to Hell would rise up and engulf the darkness of our infernal wedding night! Ha ha ha! So, okay, Erik, I permit that marriage might not be the best course for us. Neither of us wish to be sinners. Perhaps an engagement might suffice? Betrothed, but never to wed? Would that help quell your weakened heart? After all, I didn't consent to a marriage – but there's nothing to consent to in an engagement, is there? The Church calls for chastity in these conditions, yes? And yet, Society – oh, the great capital Society! – Society states there's nothing wrong with keeping the curtains shut in the bedroom, yes? There we can do what we like – but you won't be trespassing against me, no, because you won't be marrying me? Is this how you will spin it to yourself, Erik? When eventually you become desperate enough to accept even the most ludicrous excuses for your own bodily urges? Do you see how none of this makes any sense whatsoever?"
He was nursing his face now, which must have hurt all over from both the physical and verbal blows I had assailed him with. Blood still trickled from his nose, and the slip of flesh that he called an upper lip seemed to have puffed out with my mishandling. His cheeks had turned a dusky pink, in the way my own would blush scarlet in my periods of embarrassment. He was heaving again as he listened, but he did not cry; no, the good man held himself together and sat quietly, almost thoughtfully, as I derided him.
When I was done, he took a long breath and nodded, twice, quite curtly. He seemed to draw in upon himself, as if his eyes could be turned all the way around and set upon his own self. He sat like that, for a quiet moment, before he swiveled his eyeballs back towards me and his brows came down in a solid stare.
Calmly, coldly, he pronounced the following:
"Christine Daaé, if it is only the coarse act of copulation which occupies your mind at present… I fear my baser urges may just horrify you!"
"So you do admit…?" I demanded.
"Have I ever even held your hand?" he scowled back. "You think me a rogue for the things I would never do! I have urges deep within me, this is true – but this specific one which you speak of… it is not so undeniable as you think. This, at the very least, is not the source of this excruciating torment which plagues me."
He sighed here, and gestured painfully to his face.
"I have learned to get along without certain things in this world. A face, a nose, a name. What need have I for any of those social things, when I am all alone in my kingdom beneath the ground? And on those few occasions when I am forced to come up, like a hermit crab sent scuttling from its shell, I have designed inventions that are suitable enough replacements for my needs. You have seen my mask, you have called me Erik. That nose is somewhere around here, too, isn't it? Oh, well, maybe they aren't perfect; but they work well enough, don't you think?"
I shifted my head, not agreeing, but still not quite disagreeing.
He continued. "I am a man of many wants, and because of this I have been forced to become quite the inventor. My workshop is not just for show; I must build what I cannot have." Immediately I thought of the body of wire I had seen him working on before, and the skull upon which he had replicated my face with papier-mâché. "So you see: I have learned to get along quite fine. I tell myself lies, just like you tell yourself. I content myself with my organ and I fill my hours with pointless orchestration, on some shoddy masterpiece that will never see the light of day. I stave off the loneliness as best as I am able… but in the end, there is no real replacement for what I truly need."
"A wife?" I proposed, quite dubious.
"A companion," he said briskly. "I daresay it's a human right. One of the many I've been denied, at any rate. I need a pair of eyes to see me, a mind to perceive me. I locked myself away for many years and I drove myself nearly mad. Don't laugh! And I realized I cannot live like that again. The daroga will not even visit me anymore. I think he thinks I'm dead. I wouldn't blame him. There is not a single soul on this earth that thinks about me anymore. I need you, Christine. I need you to think about me, and to see me, and to experience life in all its infinite dullness alongside me. Even if you don't love me." He sighed. "But it would be so much lovelier if you did."
Now he pressed his hands to my knees and, with copious crackings of his own knees, lifted himself up until he was standing, tall as ever, before me. He was obscuring my view of the stage, and most certainly that of the women behind us (the magnitude of their politeness cannot be understated, for they voiced not a single whisper of complaint… for this or for any of the multitudes of disruptions we had posed before them this entire night), and yet he did not seem to care for he did not move out of the way. Rathermore he turned around, and with a hand placed on his hip he began to watch the performance as if nothing had happened at all.
How disheveled this man looked, standing with his jacket slouching off one shoulder and his silver wisps of hair standing up at every angle. The lighting of the theatre against his tall form, as I viewed him from behind, drained the fresh bloodstains on his cuff into black inkstains. I noticed his left shoelace to be untied, and thought with strange humor how obscene it would be if I stooped now and tied it for him. How would he respond to that? Would he kick me in the face? Would he stomp my hand beneath his heel and crush it like a bug? Or, God forbid, would he actually let me do something nice for him for once?
There was only one way to know. I slipped from my seat and crouched upon the floor beside him. He did not look down at me; he was altogether too engrossed in his own thoughts to notice my movements. I leaned over his shoe, reached out for his laces –
And then paused. I felt a pressure in the small of my back, like metal burning against my skin. Hideous contemplations arose within me, as Erik's inattention and my own chance positioning registered, even before I reached back and touched the handle of my sewing scissors – the scissors I had stashed, unconsciously, instinctively, in the waistline of my skirts. Silence blared boldly in my brain as I slowly looked back up in horror to find Erik still distracted by the stage.
I looked back down at his ankle, the impossibly bony thing dressed within a crisp black sock. Underneath it I knew to be a stretch of pale skin, fragile enough to bleed at the slightest nick. I remembered a scar that ran medially to laterally above his tendon, never visible when he was properly dressed, and when I traced my finger in the air above its location I recalled the first time I had ever held his bare ankle in my grasp… as he had laid, barely coherent, slick with sweat, nude upon his mother's bed. It was a frightening and sudden illness that I had nursed him back from, only but a few weeks ago, and yet I couldn't help now but marvel at how much at my mercy he had been in those hours…
Only for a moment did I entertain these absurd considerations. I had a task to do and it was dangerous enough without distracting myself with some idle fantasies. Thus I released the scissors; then leaned over his left shoe once more and reached toward his laces, pinching them like two squirming black worms between my porcelain fingers.
I tied the knot quickly, looping one worm around the other, pulling them fast to make them suffocate one another. I wrapped them around twice, to make sure they were dead – but doing so was clearly my error, as Erik finally looked down just as I was pulling taut the final loop.
"What are you doing?" he asked, in an uncharacteristically undemanding manner. There was a wryness about him that sent a flush to my cheeks, and the laces went limp in my fingers. "Are you my mother?"
"Excuse me?"
"This," he brought up his foot and wagged it in my face, "is a mother's task. Do you think me so simple I cannot tie my own shoelaces?"
"Don't start this with me, Erik. They were undone," I explained, feeling quite humiliated. "Must you find fault in every nice thing I try to do for you?"
He brought his foot down and laughed. "Forgive me if I sound unappreciative, dear; I do not mean to be. But I am not a two year old tot. I can tie my shoes quite easily on my own, you hardly need to stoop to this –"
"But I want to," my voice said, sounding smaller than ever. "Can I not do things I want to do?"
"You," he said, "cannot possibly know what you want, if it brings you to such places as on your knees before me." He gave another humored chuckle, which made me blush even deeper. "Come now, Christine, and pick yourself off the floor. I sorely doubt you can see the opera from that position. Let us sit together – would that be agreeable to you? I say it should be. Come. Shall I pour you another glass? You hardly had a chance to finish your first."
He helped me into my seat, taking the same pains he took with the Princesse Ada to settle me properly. I felt very much like a doll as he maneuvered me, limb by limb, fanning out my skirts about my chair and even fixing a curl upon my head.
Until now I had not understood what a future with Erik would entail for me. I had not realized the full extent of my liberty that I was giving up by making this singular choice… the way he would handle me carefully, like a piece of priceless porcelain, and keep me lovingly on a high shelf, admiring me every day from afar, bringing me down only periodically to dust and wax me… worse than all that, however, was the dawning realization that I would let him do all of this and more to me without the slightest murmur in protest.
Erik plucked the bottle up from the table again, all grace and elegance once more. His face seemed all the more gruesome with this cordial smile drawn upon it. For all his tears, this man had really perked back up; he had won against us both and he knew it. I was his to do with as he pleased, until the end of our days, and right now what he pleased to do was to pour me a glass of amontillado.
With some sick satisfaction, and while staring directly at me, Erik picked up my glass from the table and placed just the tip of the bottle's neck against its lip. A golden bead of amontillado formed at the opening, daring to dribble down at the slightest movement of his wrist – but he held his hand steady, and the droplet did not fall. My awful trepidation he clearly relished, his smile growing only stronger as he continued to hold the bottle over my glass without pouring.
For all his rigid stillness (which I tried my best to mirror back at him), my own thoughts were in a frenzy. Why was he just standing there?! Why wasn't he pouring the bottle?! Of course Erik had a predilection for the stranger amuseuments in life, such as staring open-mouthed at me when we were reading together quietly in his parlor and he thought I wasn't looking, and also when he knew I was… but there was nothing in his expression that seemed as, well, innocent as those occasions (if such a word can even be used to describe Erik). Could it be, I wondered, that Erik had a plan in place that extended beyond this opera box? That Erik wished to do some things to me, despite all his earlier denials to me about them, and that this hesitation of his was merely an act in anticipation for the unrestricted pleasures he was about to indulge in?
Dear God, was Erik about to drug me again?
All at once the fear and anticipation become all too much, and I found myself blurting out: "Actually, dear, will you let me pour?"
Immediately he cast an extremely suspicious glare at me, no doubt thinking me of plotting something against him, and I found this to be clear evidence that I had been right in my fears. People, after all, are often suspicious of others for the very same things they're about to do.
"Nonsense, wife," he said slowly, his grip about the bottle noticeably tighter. "It is heavy. You might drop it. It would not be a good look for you to spill it all over your… nice… fine… dress."
My dress was already ruined from his tears and blood, though, and immediately he saw the error in his logic. Thus he tried again.
"Perhaps we should not drink at all," he said, moving to set the bottle down. "The opera is almost over, and I fear we'll have far too scarce of time to savour it properly. I will bring it back to my vault and we can enjoy it together another night…"
"No," I said faintly. "No, I do think I would rather like to finish the bottle."
"Finish it…?" He gaped at me in plain fear. "The whole thing, Christine?"
"Yes… I think so. A vintage like this would be a shame to waste on just a few drops, wouldn't you say so…?" And with this I suddenly reached over and grabbed the bottle myself, tilting it at a dangerous angle above the glass. "Tell me when to stop."
Immediately he exlaimed – "Stop!"
"I've barely poured you a drop," I remarked, feeling rather like in a daze. I tipped the bottle slightly more and filled it to the brim; in turn, he swiped both glass and bottle from me just as the amontillado began to spill over the side. I folded my arms with perturbation as I watched him search for a place to put them out of my reach. "What are you so worried about, dear husband? Don't you like amontillado? This vintage is one of the best, I've heard…"
"And what on earth do you know of wine?" he asked with disturbed distraction, and at last settled for placing the bottle on the ledge. He turned back to me. "What has gotten into you?"
"Absolutely nothing," I sniffed. "Am I not allowed to serve my husband, as a good wife is supposed to do?"
"Please, girl, you are not my wife –"
"For the love of all things holy – are we going to start this again?" Here I finally steeled my stare against his. "Are we not in Box Seven, Erik? Was this not all your idea? Trust me or don't – I don't care which you do anymore. But right now we are pretending, so now you need to pretend to trust me. Drink the wine, Erik. Drink it right now."
For a long minute he did nothing but stare back at me with all the cold graveness of the tomb, until he finally broke. He sniffed the glass and made a sour face. "It… reeks of laudanum, Christine. I am not an idiot."
"That just must be the aroma of it, then," I suggested in my sweetest voice, hoping my impatience would not show through, "as I have certainly not added anything of the sort to it. Here, lend your glass here – yes, you see? It smells the same as always. Do you still not agree?" I tried (and failed) to restrain myself from tacking on the following, for it was terrible and cruel and altogether brilliantly wicked to say: "Perhaps you would be better able to tell if you had the nostrils for it."
"I can smell perfectly fine!" he retorted, offended to comical proportions. "There is nothing wrong with my nose!"
"Then you agree the wine has not been diluted."
"It –" he stammered. "You –"
"I love you," I reminded him cruelly. "You and your little nothing-nose."
It is almost amusing, looking back, how quickly he melted – almost, I say, because it is in equal parts both horrifying and heartbreaking the way his resolve blew away, like grains of sand across a shore. And there was an irony to admire in it all, the way his unyielding pride forced him to give up his own convictions and submit to me.
He drank just a small sip, a flicker of doubt unable to hide behind his eyes.
I fear I never shall remove that doubt. Yet he said anyway:
"Christine, you must forgive me for my accusations. I am properly paranoid, as you know, from a long life entrenched in treachery and espoused with sin. I fear I will be forever doubtful of your intentions, innocent though they are. The wine is perfect, not a drop out of place – this I maintain, if I am to trust my own senses."
"And do you?"
"I smell nothing – or if I do, I smell it all wrong," he confessed. "The aphrodisia of the rose smells like the euthanasia of the lily; the loose ferritin of black, coagulated putrescence smells to me like the heady musk of a lady's natural perfume. Some things are harder to distinguish than others. I have erred before… but I have learned the difference by now in my life. I am sure the wine is fine."
And yet still he remained doubtful, swirling the wine in his glass as he took another distrustful sip past his withered lips.
So be it, I thought. It was not my work to convince him… nor shall it ever be again.
For the rest of the bottle, thus, we were silent. He hushed me at any attempt I made for conversation, choosing instead to stew over his glass, which he did allow me to maintain the fullness of. I, myself, drank very little; perhaps I may be so bold as to say I drank nothing at all that night.
The remainder of the opera was beautiful, despite its lackluster appearance. I might have thought it would never end, but all things must, I do suppose; though despite my earlier aggravation with the production, I found myself nearly wishing it would go on forever. The costumes were still embarrassingly tawdry and the music still meant nothing as ever; but still there was a spirit buried deep within the poor dramatics, which spoke directly to my heart and made me begin to weep like I've never wept before.
At the first notes of what I could tell to be the final aria, I saw Erik begin to shuffle a bit in his seat. My eyes as wet as they were, and the darkness as pure as it was around us, I could not see his actions very clearly beyond the general movement of his hand reaching into the dark recesses of his inner coat pocket. An annoying clattering then sounded, as of many small things within a phial, like beads or tiny marbles, being dropped upon the floor; and with irritation I hissed at him:
"Are you not the one who asked me to be quiet!"
I expected a fight, but to my surprise he conceded immediately. With that reproach alone, Erik let out a stuttered sigh, ceased his fidgeting, and dropped his hand silently into his lap.
I wiped the tears from my eyes, which had grown hot with my agitation, and resolved myself to simply bask in the tremendous, heavy beauty of the final aria. It was a culmination framed within the narrative as the swooning swan-song of a retiring soprano, full of scoops and swoons, and I traveled the song with her as closely as if I had sung it myself. The ending was coming near far too quickly, and I feared what it would mean not only for myself but for her as well. All too soon we would be packed up and escorted away from the light of the stage; all too soon we would be saying goodbye to the lives we loved so far.
All too soon I would find myself back in Erik's arms, trapped and unhappy but altogether unwilling to fight. And this was perhaps the worst torture of all; to know in this moment that these were my final minutes of freedom before I submitted back to his spell.
Could I possibly pretend to be content, the way I had pretended in this opera box tonight? The way I had pretended for the past year? For so long I had been clueless to my own suffering; Erik alone had known. But what did it matter what he knew? I hated him for my misery; and yet if I willed myself to forget, if I did not allow myself to comprehend the extent of my misery, could I possibly find it within myself to love him once again with the purest and most innocent of affections?
The applause thundered through the theatre as the cast took their bows. Performers I'd never seen before glided out on stage, processing up one at a time like a series of somber mourners. Each took their time to regard the audience with their melancholic thoughts and musings; each clasped their hands before them like an entreaty to the divine; and I found myself suddenly quite aware of how I was sitting on a plush velvet lining within a gawdy ornamental box, on my final display before my plunge back into the earth.
This was my wake, I realized, and that meant I was already dead.
But… but of course I was not dead, I have come to acknowledge in the days since that night. I never returned to that cellarous resting place and closed my eyes in that macabre coffin. I walked out from the tomb as alive as Lazarus himself and I have yet to be dragged back. Dare I say... I am more alive today than I've ever been before in my life.
Erik, however, is a different story.
I turned to him, amidst all the thunder and cacophony around us as the rest of the audience chattered and exited, and I found his head bowed in reflective silence. His eyes were closed and his lips were pursed in a taut line, looking rather less tranquil than tormented in his repose. I recall being eager to get my murder done and over with, ready to go back to the ground, and saying (obliviously, in retrospect), "Well, shall we go now, Erik?"
And to that he said nothing, as of course he wouldn't. There was a bottle on his lap, and a hundred little pills scattered on the floor around our feet.
"Are you okay, Erik?" I asked. "Shall we be going, Erik?"
I prodded his shoulder, and his head lolled to the side.
"Erik—?!"