Ch. 11— David and His Lyre

So it came about whenever the evil spirit from God came to Saul, David would take the harp and play it with his hand; and Saul would be refreshed and be well, and the evil spirit would depart from him.

—1 Samuel 16:23

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Something had changed.

Christine didn't know what it was, she couldn't put her finger on it, but something in Mr. D'Anton's behavior had changed… as if overnight.

It had been two weeks since the 'bath time tea' as she was mentally referring to that singular episode. Two weeks and he'd hardly uttered a word to her.

She reviewed the cases notes Dr. Khan had given her, studied again the side notes both he and Nurse Tomlin had made and tried to actively involve and interest her patient in his care. Her attempts were met with scorn.

Every morning, she would wake and see to the chores around the little cottage, cook him breakfast—which he more than often ignored—and leave it on a tray by his door, clean, and see to the baking for the day.

Christine had raised the subject of her taking care of his face only once, and Mr. D'Anton had made certain she would never mention the topic again; at least, not without seriously considering the consequences.

She had mentioned in passing that she'd brought some antibiotic cream; that parts of his face looked infected and would most certainly be soothed by the cream; that she could quickly take care of the remaining stitches which needed to come out as painlessly as possible if he were to let her.

The pen stabbed into the wall and quivered only six inches from where she stood.

Mouth agape, Christine had stood there blinking at it. Six inches more to the left and the nib would have embedded itself in her eye. She would have been at the very least blinded… perhaps even dead. For the rest of the day, she'd holed up in her room, and since that day, she hadn't said a word about his face.

She lost her nerve.

In the two weeks since she'd arrived at the cottage, she noticed Mr. D'Anton did his best to steer clear of her. In fact, the man was elusive as a ghost.

While she bustled around seeing to the odds and ends, assisting Andre when he would bring crates of supplies to prepare the cottage for the long winter ahead, Mr. D'Anton would grab a pen, a bottle, a ream of blank paper, and go to his room.

And he wouldn't come out well until evening.

No meals were taken together for Christine didn't feel right sitting with him at the table, not when she was technically below his station, and then, he also never asked her to. More often than not, he ate in the living room, extracting chords from the small sideboard piano while he mostly drank his dinner.

Getting the man to actually eat a meal was proving to be a challenge, and Christine could say nothing, do nothing about the bottle he consistently kept at his side.

The smoking was almost as bad.

Mr. D'Anton didn't sleep much, and she quickly found out after her arrival to the cottage that he could be up to all hours of the night, picking out notes on the piano well until morning. They never were actual songs, never more than a measure or two in length, and yet, there he sat playing staccato notes and chords until sunrise most nights.

And he did hole up in his bedroom for hours at a time. Only once had Christine made the mistake of listening outside his door when he had been in his bedroom for nine hours straight. She'd heard pen scratching paper, but nothing else, and she wondered how he did it... how he wrote blind… and why?

He'd caught her spying that day, either through hearing her footsteps or her breathing. Even now, Christine shivered as she recalled the memory of his voice cutting her to ribbons, calling her a 'prying, voyeuristic, peeping Thomasina'.

However, when he'd heard her outside the cottage foraging for left-over wooden logs from last winter's haul, he had ordered Andre to restock the supply in the house and bring a fresh cord of wood to the porch for this winter.

When at the cottage, Mr. Andre rarely talked to her. She didn't take offense to it; he just seemed to be that kind of man—quiet in his own way—a bit like her. He came now every other day, helping to prepare the cottage for the winter and helping her with the more strenuous tasks on Mr. D'Anton's orders. He also met with Mr. D'Anton in the living room from time to time.

Christine made herself scarce when this happened, feeling her presence in the little cottage distinctly unwanted.

He had not asked her again if she wanted to leave, but then, he barely talked to her at all. And the little cottage was always so quiet. If he wasn't plucking away at the piano or if Mr. Andre wasn't around, Christine felt quite lonely.

It was with luck she happened upon the old radio, and it was a miracle that it still worked for it was ancient.

And when she was certain Mr. D'Anton was immersed in his room, Christine turned it on and listened as she ironed and mended clothes. After all, it was nice to have someone else's voice in the small cottage besides her own, even if it was only talk of the progress of war.

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Erik listened as once more she turned off the radio before the music portion of the program could start.

There was no music in this house, and it was ironic considering he had always been surrounded by music…

But he found he couldn't play as once he'd done. The inspiration for his craft was stagnant. He was stagnant.

For him, the music had always been there. In times of stress and strain, it soothed him. In times of comfort and plenty, it flowed like fine wine.

Even in times such as now in his darkest depression, it was there, its siren's song urging him to continue to write, to compose, to put his feelings down on paper.

But he had no idea if what he was writing was even legible.

Just last week, Andre had told him his conductor Reyer couldn't read the musical score he'd sent. Apparently, Erik had used some of the same sheets over and over and supplanted musical notes on top of one another when he thought he was using a fresh sheet of paper each time. And then both Fermin and Reyer had expressed curiosity in how this could be the case: how he could have made such an error. And Andre had made some asinine explanation of 'notes bleedin' through atop the page' in order to save Erik from being found out.

Both Reyer and Fermin still did not know the extent of Erik's injuries.

He had lost his desire to compose once Andre had related this news. It was yet another god-damned thing he couldn't do because of this wretched blindness. He would need to have the cottage outfitted with a phone line…

Khan had suggested he hire a secretary or stenographer, but Erik had steadfastly refused. When he was in one of his manic creative fits, needing another there with him, having to explain his process instead of just putting it all down and then sorting it out later would be torture.

It would ruin it… ruin him.

And so, instead of working on a new score, orchestrating a new symphony, or even planning the grand re-opening gala that was scheduled to be taking place in spring, Erik sat in his bed and drank.

Drank and smoked, and contemplated just dropping a cigarette butt on the covers and letting the subsequent fire consume him thereby finishing the job the mortar shell had started.

The only reason, he told himself, he didn't do it was because there was a certain young woman with a distaste for music who was still in the cottage with him—still living with and taking care of him even after the discourteous and ill-mannered way his monstrous self had treated her.

Was he hiding from her?

Perhaps.

Was he hiding from himself?

Definitely.

Did he want to face the train wreck his life had become?

Most definitely not.

And so, he didn't.

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Two weeks later…

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It was raining again, the twelfth day in a row, and a month had passed since she had made the trek from Paris to this little cottage in Le Havre, and thus far, she and Mr. D'Anton cohabitated like strangers. rarely saw him now, for he kept mostly to his room, only coming out to relieve himself or grab a fresh bottle of liquor.

The writing, Christine noticed, as well as the plucking of the keys to all hours of the morning had stopped. She missed the sound.

It was a cold, blustery depressing rain, and she looked out the kitchen window towards the sea, feeling despondent and sad.

Today was the anniversary of her mother's death.

Christine barely remembered her, and the memories she had were fleeting at best, but she did recall her laughter, and she did remember her singing to her—a beautiful Swedish lullaby.

Her mother had contracted a cold that had developed into a chronic cough that had then turned into a rampant case of pneumonia. Everything had happened so quickly; it seemed one day her mother was feeling poorly but still in good health, and then the next, she was gone.

Christine had been five.

She'd tried distracting herself throughout the day, but holed up as she was in the little cottage, with no end to the rain in sight, there was only so much she could read and only so much talk of war she could stand to listen to on the radio. Sipping the warm tea she held and looking out at the rain and infinite gray sea that echoed the color of the clouds, Christine imagining a clear blue summer sky in the flower-dappled backyard with the sea a merry, cheerful blue.

Even her imagination struggled to picture the image.

Today always made her melancholy, made her wonder what her life would have been like had her mother survived. Would her father have tried harder to include Christine into his life, his dreams, his world versus judging her unfit and shutting her out?

But she had been this route before—the ever-present Gordian knot—and Christine was sick to death of it. Her mother hadn't survived, this was a fact. Her father had spent years telling her what a disappointment she was for not taking after her mother in any way besides her voice. This too was fact.

And she couldn't change the facts just as she couldn't change the past. But she could change the present, and that change started now. She needed something… some new something to distract her, bring her out of herself, out of her own mind.

A thought struck her, and she made her way to the piano.

The papers she had picked up off the floor when she first arrived were still there untouched. Mr. D'Anton probably hadn't known they were there for she hadn't informed him, and she'd always meant to go through them, but she never found the time.

Well, what better time than the present?

Taking her tea over to the wingback chair near the woodstove, Christine delved into her little project, immediately riveted.

Music.

But not just any music…it was a musical score for an opera.

But instead of making her repulsed and dredging up old, painful memories… it drew her curiosity, made her want to keep reading: the improvisations, the quirky turns of musical phrase. The tempo even was so different from anything she'd ever encountered before.

As she delved deeper, she began to realize the composer who wrote this was a genius!

She looked up at the closed bedroom door contemplating Mr. D'Anton in a new light. Was this what he was doing when he holed up in his bedroom? With his paper and his blind scribblings?!

She flipped through the stack she held, heartbroken to find some of the pages were torn and trampled beyond repair. Others had been used multiple times—apparently he'd thought he was using a fresh sheet and had accidently written over some of it again and again.

Her hands clammy with excitement, Christine all but ran to the kitchen table and began putting the sheet music in a semblance of order.

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It was late.

Erik's internal chronometer had not abandoned him when he went blind, and he was thankful for that.

His body always knew when it was day and when it was night. And though he rarely slept, he'd been known, especially of late, to escape to realms of deepest fantasy where he would forge new ideas and refine others for the operas and symphonies he hoped to create.

He had been trying to distance himself from Ms. Daae and maintain as much of a professional association as possible. Following his gross misconduct, he had expected her to leave and never return. After all, it's what he deserved for his words and his actions towards her. He had all but ignored her these last few weeks and had expected his little nurse to give up the ghost and consider him a lost cause.

He knew what a tremendous work ethic the girl had. She always kept herself busy while at the hospital, and that pattern held true even here in the tail-end of war-torn nowhere.

But she had stayed.

Nearly a month had passed, and she stayed, the both of them in the little cottage with only the shushing pattering of rain falling around them for any accompanying sound.

She did not attempt to talk to him.

Her forays to 'nurse' him had been met with such ire, she had quickly abandoned trying to do so, and Erik was ever thankful.

And so, they got along mostly in silence. She would knock on the door when she had prepared a meal, and he would (occasionally) endeavor to eat it. She would continue to feed the wooden stove throughout the day, and Erik (most nights) would keep the fire stoked as well; he hated to think she was in her bedroom cold. She would bustle around the house seeing to her little chores, and he would walk into a cloud of her scent from where she had just been standing and stand there transfixed, blinking into his ever-surrounding darkness, losing time and losing thought.

And yet, for all of that, it was warmer in the cottage with her here. It was a comfort to know that he need only ask, and she would be there at his beck and call. Not that he would ask such of her, but still, he drew comfort from the thought nonetheless.

Erik was toying with the idea of asking her to read to him.

Since he was no longer writing music, and now very rarely bothered to play his musical sketches let alone sit at the piano and truly give life and voice to his compositions, there was a melancholy about his heart that wouldn't ease. And he hoped very much his little mouse with her beautiful voice would help to lift the tedium and dispel the ache.

Lying on his bed with his eyes closed tight, Erik's mind churned with the hundreds of pressing concerns that were weighing on him—the opera, his future, his lack of a future… when he heard it.

The softest hum.

His sightless eyes shot open and his breathing stilled as he waited for the sound again. And there it was, another note: B sharp to D flat. He sat bolt upright in bed, his mouth opening on a silent gasp, not wanting to miss a moment of the sound.

The hum moved effortlessly up the octave to F sharp, and Erik was to the door before he even thought it, his hand on the knob ready to yank it open.

The humming ceased, and he leaned heavily against the door, his heart racing.

Dear God!

His little mouse… his… and she was humming, just humming for Christ's sakes! And her voice—THAT VOICE!

His entire body quivering, Erik prayed she would continue, prayed to the God he abhorred that she would prove to him this wasn't a trick of his poor, beleaguered imagination— that he really had just heard the voice of an angel.

She began to hum again, and he closed his eyes, bowing his head upon the door, his hand leaving the knob as he braced his arms against the doorframe listening. She was singing now; his little mouse was singing softly, quietly, as if…

It was as if she did not wish to disturb him.

And that was laughable, hysterical even, when every atom in Erik's being had just been disturbed—purified, consecrated, and reformed by her quiet, angelic voice.

Now that she was singing more snatches of notes at a time, Erik recognized the piece… or rather pieces. They were his—two of his new compositions somehow spliced together and mixed up, and his little mouse—HIS NEW DIVA—was trying to sort the two… and not having very much success if he heard her correctly.

But still she was trying, and she was sublime.

His angel was sublime.

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A/N: Reviews are love!

PFP