The next few days found Christine confused and slightly sickened by what she had done in the bedroom. She hoped she would go to her grave without having to admit what she had done to anyone. The picture was still underneath her pillow, but she felt too afraid to even touch it. She wished Erik hadn't agreed to let her keep it and had instead confiscated all three of the photos.
She was upset about the effect that the picture had had on her. Mr. Khan had been right all along: Erik was not a good man. He had taken everything from her, and still he demanded more, more, more. More of her music, more of herself. Christine wondered if soon there would be nothing left to her at all. Nothing kept of herself, for herself. It would all belong to him.
And now this new part of herself was also wrapped up in him in some way. Of course there had been strange experiences between them, intimate moments that bordered on both pleasure and pain. She knew he wanted to touch her—he had even tried during that terrible night in the bedroom.
She told herself that she simply missed physical touch, intimate connection. Those few hours with Raoul had exposed her to new sensations and experiences, and it was natural for her to want more. It was part of growing up.
One night, she lay in bed and squeezed her eyes shut, bringing her hand back between her legs, stubbornly thinking only of Raoul and his hands, his lips, his strong chest and blue eyes. However, the longer she touched herself without anything happening, the more frustrated she became, and soon tears sprang to her eyes. With an angry little cry, she at last gave up, burying her face into the pillow, seething and desperate.
The next morning, she sat at the breakfast table, bundled up in a sweater and thick socks. It was chilly in the underground house, and walking around without socks now meant cold pinpricks shooting into her feet from the stone floors. Winter had finally crept all the way down into the earth. She had not slept well at all, and she yawned, rubbing at her eyes. Her porridge steamed in the bowl in front of her, and she stirred a swirl of bright red jam into it.
Before she had taken her first bite, Erik appeared, thrusting a letter at her. Her stomach dropped momentarily. Now what? But when he spoke, his voice was gleeful.
"It has begun," he said. "I'm positive that this is the first of many."
Christine took the sheet of paper, looking at it in confusion. It was addressed to her, and she scanned the official-looking letter.
"What is it?" she said.
"An offer," he said. "To join the Canadian Opera Company for their next season. They are trying to poach you."
"Oh," she said, a little bewildered. "And that's good?"
"It's wonderful," he said, sounding a bit impatient. "Your talent and potential are becoming well-known. Companies will be fighting over you. You will have more influence, power to choose your roles, say over your schedule and salary. This is what we have wanted."
She frowned, looking up at him. "So I'm going to Canada?"
He rolled his eyes, plucking the letter from her fingers. "Of course not. But now you have leverage for the upcoming seasons here. And I'm sure more offers will begin to arrive. It's only a matter of time. I told you that you will sing all the great roles of opera. This is another step towards that."
She nodded, stirring her porridge, wanting to eat it before it got cold. Then she looked back up at him. "That means I'm going to sing at this Opera House forever?"
Christine expected a snappish, irritable, Yes, you stupid girl, or maybe a little sigh and a, There is no better place for us. So she was surprised when he seemed to consider the question.
"You would be limited by staying with one company for your entire career," he said. "It would be good for you to experience different stages as you gain experience. You would learn quickly. I suppose we'll have to consider offers as they come in, won't we?" He tapped a long finger on the table, apparently in thought, and Christine tried not to stare at it. Instead she quickly shoveled a few bites of lukewarm porridge into her mouth.
"Finish your breakfast," he then said, leaving the room. "I want to go over a few new breathing exercises with you before you leave."
Later that afternoon, Christine entered the Opera House for her performance in Albert Herring, shaking wet, heavy snow out of her hair. She remembered the snowstorm from last December, a frigid Christmas Eve in which she had huddled under a tree, sobbing pathetically about Raoul's mother being cruel to her, and Erik had found her. You're that singing girl.
It was hard to believe how much her life had changed in the span of one year.
She sat in a free chair in front of the large mirror, pulling out her makeup kit, trying to put the night before out of her mind. Someone stood next to her and asked if the chair beside her was free, and Christine nodded absentmindedly, too busy focusing on not smudging her eyeliner application. When she was finished, she looked to see it was the woman who had spoken to Christine earlier, the one who had asked if there was "trouble at home."
"Oh," Christine said, smiling a little. "Hi."
The woman smiled in response, tying up her mousy brown hair. "Ready to be done with this show?"
"Very ready," Christine said. They chatted for a few more minutes about the performance that night, Norma, and the upcoming operas. Christine couldn't help but recall the woman's words from earlier. Oh, you know. Guys are all the same. Her stomach churned at the thought. Then she shook her head, turning her attention to her hair, but she still felt distracted.
For a few moments, Christine was tempted to bring it up and ask the woman for further advice. She quickly stopped herself, however. While the woman was friendly, they were not friends, and Christine wasn't sure how to explain her odd situation without sounding crazy. Instead she finished her hair and said goodbye, heading for the stage.
As she stood in the wings, waiting for her cue, she absentmindedly smoothed the front of her costume, brushing over her hips and pelvis. Her mind drifted to the picture still underneath her pillow and what she had done with it. She wondered what it would feel like if the fingers that had been between her legs hadn't been her own, if the long fingers touching her weren't separated from her skin by any clothing. Her cheeks grew hot.
"Christine!" someone suddenly hissed at her, and she jumped, realizing she was missing her cue. She stumbled onstage, feeling unprepared and distracted, and could only hope that that added to the character instead of showing the whole audience that her mind was the furthest thing from being a girl at a picnic.
After the show, as she was removing her makeup, she stared at herself in the mirror. The person who stared back at her was someone unfamiliar. She didn't see a girl, but she did not yet see a woman. The limbo felt strange.
What exactly was the catalyst to turn a girl into a woman? Was there a definitive moment? Christine gathered her things and left the dressing room, winding her way through the now familiar hallways. Maybe the piercing, frightening act of losing her virginity would be the thing that finally transformed her. The thought made her shiver, and she wrapped her arms around herself as she stepped out into the quiet, snow-filled alleyway.
"Your face is red," Erik pointed out, a little rudely, as soon as she stepped into the small room.
Christine shrugged, trying desperately to act casual. "I just overheard some—some of the women in the dressing room gossiping."
"What about?" he said. "It is my Ghostly duty to know everything that happens in my Opera House."
"Oh." She swallowed. "Just Mr. Poligny's…uh, you know. Meetings. Nothing new."
"Ah." That seemed to satisfy him, and he turned to head down. She followed, quickly taking his hand so she wouldn't have to stumble through the tunnels. "He has not been very discreet lately. He's a walking lawsuit. Perhaps he needs a little friendly advice from the Ghost."
She nodded, not thinking about what he was saying, instead distracted by the fingers that held her own.
Tired from the performance, she went to bed early that night, but she was unable to sleep, tossing and turning, the photo crinkling softly underneath the pillow every time she moved. Her eyes were shut resolutely, as if doing would make her forget what was taunting her. However, the more she tried to ignore it, the more her traitorous brain thought about it, and she squirmed uncomfortably underneath the blankets, somehow very hot and very cold at the same time.
With an unhappy little sigh, she flipped on the lamp in the corner and slid her hand underneath the pillow, the stiff edges of the picture brushing up against her fingertips.
Don't look at it, she told herself, pulling it out. Just put it somewhere else.
Unable to help herself, Christine stared, the blue of the sky a stark contrast to the sharp and dramatic rise of the mosque, Erik's long hair dark against the sandy stone of the building, his white mask and loose clothing, bare hands. She looked at the hands again and remembered the way they had held hers earlier, his fingers cool, nimble.
Her breath was coming a bit faster now, and she glanced over towards the closed door before shifting to her side, heat pooling between her thighs. A small part of her brain told her to stop, to rip up the picture. But her hand was between her legs again, and when she felt the pressure building, the part of herself that was fighting this went completely silent, and the only thing left was telling her to keep going, don't stop, don't stop—
When she wondered briefly if Erik was doing the same thing in the other room, she had to press a hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying out as she came, the picture brushing against her cheek. She could feel herself trembling, her breath coming in short, panting gasps, warmth and pleasure washing through her in waves.
After her heart rate had calmed somewhat, she rolled to her back, her eyes still shut, the picture clutched tightly between her fingers. Embarrassment returned, confusion and shame, and her eyes filled with sudden tears.
Something was wrong with her. This was not how it was supposed to be. This was not how she should be reacting to him, to the man who had trapped her, who had broken her apart so thoroughly. The picture should repulse her, disgust her. He was horrifying to look at, and the fact that she was touching herself to a photograph of him…
She buried her face in the pillow and cried.
It was New Year's Eve, and Christine felt miserable. She was still ashamed by what she had done with the picture, and despite her best efforts, she had been unable to replicate the experience by thinking of Raoul. There weren't any performances or rehearsals scheduled for tomorrow, meaning she wouldn't be leaving the underground house for two days, and she was cold, shivering underground with no one for company but a masked murderer who had forced her to marry him. There would be no party or festivities of any kind. In fact, she wondered if Erik even realized the date.
Last New Year's Eve had also been horrible, but it had been wonderful at the same time. Her father had been found and admitted to a hospital, and she could remember leaving that awful party Raoul had taken her to, knowing deep in her soul that her father was there, waiting for her. Her father. She missed him with a deep, painful ache. She wanted to see him desperately. Erik had not taken her to the cemetery since the disaster with Raoul, and she hadn't asked, too afraid that he would hold firm on his decision to keep her here and say no.
Her dinner was a sad little sandwich, dry and cold, and afterwards, when Erik asked if she would like to play backgammon, she shrugged. "Fine."
Her gameplay was worse than usual, which was saying something, and as she moved her pieces listlessly, carelessly, she heard Erik give an exasperated sigh.
"You do not have to play, you know," he said. "I'm not forcing you."
Unable to help herself, she rolled her eyes and gave a disbelieving scoff.
His fingers paused over the dice, and his eyes narrowed. "Excuse me?"
"You're not forcing me?" she said, her chin in her hands, staring moodily at the board. "Sure. Okay."
He dropped his hand to his lap, and she could see the way it tightened into a fist, a sign that he was getting upset. Good. She could use the company.
"I asked, and you said yes," he said through gritted teeth. "There is no gun to your head. You may leave at any time."
Could he even hear himself? She hated that he could so blatantly ignore reality, push away what he didn't like and refuse to believe the outcomes of his own actions.
"Right," she said. "And go where?"
"This is your home," he snapped. "You can go wherever you like."
She pulled her sweater sleeves down, ensuring they were covering her wrists, and scoffed again. "Except not really. Only where you say I can go." Then she pointed to the dice. "It's your roll."
"What have I done now?" he said angrily. "What new offense has Erik caused?"
"Hmm, I wonder what it could be?" she said sarcastically, bringing a hand to her chin in fake confusion.
"You're being insufferable," he said. "You believe yourself to be the victim here, but I am not the one who ran into another's bed."
Her cheeks flushed, and indignation rose in her. "If you really don't understand why I saw Raoul again, then I can't help you. No one can." She picked up the dice and held them out to him. "It's your turn."
Without warning, he picked up the board and threw it. The pieces clattered loudly as they bounced against the wall and dropped to the floor, the board splitting in two, the hinges broken from the force of the impact. She flinched, her heart hammering in her chest at the violence in his reaction, but she refused to leave her seat. Let him mistreat her again. Let him rage. It made hating him easy, and hating him made more sense than the other things she felt.
"What have I done?" he snarled. "What have I done?"
Christine let the dice fall from her hand, where they skipped around on the floor before landing on double sixes. A good roll, had they still been playing.
"What have you done?" she repeated. "You choked me. The very first time we met."
His mouth opened in apparent surprise, his eyes widening momentarily before he said coolly, "You were following me. I could not have you—"
"You blackmailed me into taking lessons from you," she interrupted. "You knew I wouldn't say no. You used my dad against me."
"It wasn't blackmail," he snapped. "I wasn't going to give you hundreds of hours worth of lessons out of some charitable—"
"You hurt me when I took off your mask. You kept me trapped down here. You're still keeping me trapped down here."
"I told you not to touch my mask," he said, his eyes flashing. "You didn't listen. And what was the very first thing you did when I trusted you to leave on your own? You betrayed me and every promise you made at our wedding!"
"I didn't say anything at our wedding!" she said, her throat clogging up at the memory. "You forced me to put on the dress! You dragged me to the church!" To her horror and anger, tears sprang to her eyes. If she started to become hysterical, he would win. He always did. But the hurt and the regret that had been so long held in her body was spilling out of her, sliding down her cheeks in wet streams, and she twisted the sleeves of her sweater into her fingers, bunching them up to hold onto something.
"Why are you so mean to me?" she sobbed. "Why do you tell me you love me and then hurt me over and over? I wish—I wish…" She trailed off, burying her face in her hands, the wish dying on her lips, because it didn't matter. I wish I had never met you. What good were wishes and dreams now?
He didn't reply, and his silence made her angrier. He could force answers out of her, but he was allowed to be silent whenever he wanted? It wasn't fair, none of it, and she pushed herself up from the table and went to the bedroom, slamming the door shut behind her and crawling into the bed, crying noisily into the pillow. She heard the crinkling of the photograph, and she reached for it, pulling it out and ripping it right down the middle without a second thought.
She couldn't do this anymore. She couldn't exist in this limbo, in this twisted state of reality. It was going to kill her. He was going to kill her. Maybe not directly (or perhaps one day he would), but he would starve her of warmth and affection until she withered away.
For the first time in months, she seriously considered running, leaving him. It would be easy. She could walk away from the Opera House and to the nearest police station. She could call the police from the Opera House, she could tell the friendly woman in the ensemble what was happening to her, she could go to Mr. Reyer and ask for his help…
He couldn't threaten her with Mr. Khan anymore, but he could threaten her with Raoul. However, if Erik hadn't killed Raoul when he had found out about their clandestine meetups, would he kill him over her leaving? She wouldn't go to Raoul for help, she knew that instinctively. If she warned the police, they could get to Raoul in time, protect him somehow.
As she lay there, plotting and hiccoughing weakly, there was a quiet knock at the door. She ignored it, wiping her wet face with her sleeve.
The door opened, and light spilled into the room. Instinctively, she curled into herself, away from him.
"Christine." His voice was soft, infuriatingly-gentle.
"Go away," she whispered hoarsely, sniffling.
A few silent moments passed, and she heard him approach the bed. She shut her eyes, wrapping her arm around her head, as if to protect herself from some attack.
There was a soft pressure on her shoulder. He was touching her. She pulled away from him.
"Go away," she said again.
After another minute of silence, she felt him reach over her. She tensed, expecting him to touch her again, but he simply said, "Aha. Perhaps you really would like to burn it? It might be more satisfying."
Unable to help herself, she opened her eyes and saw that he was holding the ripped photograph. She felt a twinge of guilt at his discovery and then immediately pushed the feeling down. He didn't deserve it.
"You never would have married me of your own free will," he then said, without any sort of preamble. "You would have said no had I bent down on one knee and asked."
"You don't know that," she said, still refusing to look at him.
"I do," he said. "Why would you say yes? I am a monster." He paused, perhaps waiting for her to contradict him, insist that he wasn't a monster, but she said nothing. She wasn't going to comfort him right then.
"I have done many things I shouldn't have," he then said quietly. "I…made mistakes. But I never wanted to hurt you. I only want your happiness. And therein lies the dilemma, you see? I want you to be happy, but Erik makes you so terribly unhappy. All he ever does is drive you to tears. Is my love truly so horrible?"
"If you love me, then why are you so mean to me?" she asked again, her voice trembling. "I said I was sorry about seeing Raoul behind your back. I am sorry. But he was nice to me. He actually cared about me."
"I care about you!" Erik said, his voice sharp.
She sat up then, turning to glare at him. He was standing next to the bed, the light from the room behind him casting deep shadows on his masked face.
"Raoul never forced me to marry him!" she argued. "He wanted to, but he never forced me. He's never killed anyone, he's never shot a friend in front of me! He never kept me a prisoner in his apartment or drugged me or—"
"Have you been listening to a single damn thing I've said?" Erik hissed. "I told you that I have done things I shouldn't have! I have made mistakes. What more do you want from me? Shall I cut out my heart for you? Bleed out all over the bed so you finally understand what I'm saying?"
"Just be nice to me!" she said shrilly, feeling tears return to her eyes. "Stop making me do things I don't want to do! Let me go out alone, let me have friends!"
"You would run—"
"I'll never love you if you keep me here like this," she said.
He hesitated and then narrowed his eyes to glare at her. "You will never love me regardless of what I do."
Christine wiped at her nose with her sleeve, uncaring of how she looked, and said, "You don't know that. You don't know what I feel."
"I do," he said coldly. "I know that if I take off this mask, you will scream. I know if I try to touch you, you will turn into stone. And I know that you cannot love a monster."
"So you won't even try," she said. "You'd rather I'm trapped here and miserable than let me have one friend and be happy."
"You know perfectly well that it is not that simple," he said, still glaring at her.
"Then just kill me," she said, tears running down her cheeks again. "Kill me, rape me, throw me back out onto the streets, I don't care. I can't—I can't live like this anymore, Erik." She lay back down on the bed, staring up into the ceiling, feeling tears drip into her dark curls.
"You would rather die than stay with me."
"I'd rather die than live the rest of my life as a prisoner," she whispered. "Wouldn't you?"
There was a very long silence between them, something that seemed to settle over the entire house, a heaviness that pressed on her chest. She half-expected him to wrap his hands around her throat and strangle her, fulfill her wish, but mostly she just expected him to storm from the room and slam the door behind him.
So it was a shock when he pulled up his jacket and shirtsleeve, revealing a thin, pale forearm that he held out to her. Several inches above his right wrist was a thick, ugly scar, and he ran his left thumb over it a few times.
"My mother really was a prostitute, you know," he said. "I wasn't lying when…when I told you that. But how could she earn money as a whore when she had a living child? She locked me in a closet, and I was rarely allowed to leave it. I lived in that filthy, tiny space for years, and perhaps I would have stayed even longer, had she not been killed. I cut myself here, very badly, crawling out of the window and into an alleyway. But I was finally free."
During the course of the story, he had slowly lowered himself to sit on the edge of the mattress, and he continued to trace the scar with his thumb, not looking at her as he spoke.
"If I let you go, you would run," he whispered, as if to himself. "And I would die without you."
Christine swallowed her tears, rolling to her side towards him, sniffling and wiping at her wet face. She held out her hand, and he hesitated, looking from her face to her outstretched fingers. When she didn't pull away, he slowly lowered his right forearm into her hand, and she wrapped her fingers around his thin wrist and leaned over to press a wet, tearful kiss to the scar. She could hear him inhale sharply in surprise, his arm twitching in her grasp. It was the first time she had ever kissed him.
"I'm sorry about your mom," she murmured. "What was her name?"
He was quiet for a few moments. "Madeleine."
She traced the scar with her own thumb. It was bumpy underneath her skin, jagged, hinting at a history that probably held more violence than she would ever know about.
"Please just try," she begged softly. "I know you love me, Erik. But we can't live like this."
There was silence, and she could hear the faint ticking of her watch. She glanced at it. It was nearing midnight.
He pulled his wrist from her grasp and then gathered up her left hand in his, holding it tightly, looking at the ring on her finger, stroking it with his thumb. She lay there, watching him, examining the angles of his mask, the way his dark hair was falling to one side with the tilt of his head.
"Could you ever be happy?" he said quietly, still not looking at her. "With Erik? With me."
"I want to be," she said. "I don't want to be sad anymore."
He was silent for several long moments, gazing intently at her hand. "Neither do I," he said.