Chapter 11. April, 1887. The wedding night, and what followed.

Christine sat dumbfounded on the bed. She felt as though he'd hit her, with no warning whatsoever. Then she had a muddled thought that it might have hurt less if he had. Her whole heart felt cut through to the quick, and she wondered, "How can his accusations hurt so much when they are completely untrue?" She felt as though she'd somehow done something wrong, though she couldn't fathom what; it was as if he'd opened up her brain and found something in it that she'd never dreamed was there, something disgusting and vile. But how could he have done so, when she'd never done anything even remotely like what he'd accused her of, nor even wanted to? How could she be – be what he'd called her?

She felt a sudden, desperate urge to go after him and insist that he was wrong, make him see that he'd been utterly unfair and that he must apologize. Not stopping to think, she jumped out of bed and threw on her own dressing gown, and ran out of the Louis-Philippe room, only to find his room's door locked. Incensed, she rattled the doorknob, pounded on it, finally screamed his name over and over, all to no avail. The music continued unmercifully, and she eventually slid into a heap on the floor. Could he even hear her over the noise of the organ? Or was it that he just wouldn't answer her?

Christine wept for a while, hoping he might come out of the room and see her crying, and realise how much he'd hurt her. But he didn't, and after a while she couldn't cry any more. She lay on the floor for some time, but finally had to rise. She turned automatically toward the bedroom, but then paused. Another tear slid down her cheek, and she wiped it away, thinking that she really couldn't bear going back into that room just now. Going into the parlour instead, she collapsed onto a couch, her head throbbing as she drifted off to an uneasy sleep. She would simply wait Erik out. He'd have to come out of his room sometime.

He didn't. Or rather, he didn't while she was awake. He seemed to have an uncanny sense of when she was asleep, and to creep out of his bedroom only then. She knew he was doing this, because the next day she found a used wineglass left on the kitchen table, which had not been there before; but no matter how much she hammered on his door and shouted at him, he wouldn't come out to her. Christine braved the bridal bedroom long enough to bathe, change, and sweep up the broken glass, wishing all the while that she had managed to hit Erik with the book. But she had no further opportunities to try it, for his door stayed stubbornly closed. For some time she could hear no sounds at all from inside it, and she wondered if he had one of his secret doors in that room, and might have left the house completely. It was, in a way, a relief when the music eventually started up again.

On Sunday she went to Mass, hoping that he would have emerged once she got back, but he hadn't, and she wondered if he had merely used his remaining alarm bell to tell when she was returning, and hide from her again. Another silent and solitary evening ensued, and she went angrily through his books, tossing some on the floor in frustration as she tried to find something that would take her mind off the situation. Balzac, Dumas, Hugo, Baudelaire, Flaubert…no, she definitely didn't want to read the depressing story of Madame Bovary. She came across a copy of Don Quixote, and was able to puzzle out some of the Spanish by way of its similarity to French, but not enough to be able to properly follow the story. What else? There were any number of books in assorted foreign languages and alphabets, but she only knew a little Italian and German, from reading the librettos of operas. Erik had gotten her a few books in Swedish, but she had read them all.

As she dug through the bookshelves again, she came across a set of the volumes of Casanova's Story of My Life. Christine stopped, shocked. She knew the name of Casanova only as an unrepentant womanizer; why on earth would Erik be interested in the exploits of such a man? The two could not be more different, surely?

Temptation warred with modesty. She didn't want to read the memoirs of such a man…did she? Finally she grabbed the first volume of the memoirs and a biography of Casanova that was next to them, and sat down on the couch. Opening the biography to a random page, she read, "Prince Charles de Ligne, a friend and uncle of his future employer, described Casanova thusly in 1784: 'He would be a good-looking man if he were not ugly; for he is tall, eyes full of life and fire, but touchy, wary, rancorous – and this gives him a ferocious air. It is easier to put him in a rage than to make him gay. He laughs little, but makes others laugh; he has a manner of saying things which reminds me of Harlequin or Figaro, and which makes them sound witty.' "

Well. Perhaps Casanova and Erik did have a few things in common. Did Erik know these things about himself, though? In some matters he displayed an astonishing lack of self awareness. Had he ever read this biography? Fascinated, she flipped back to the beginning of the book, and read of Casanova's neglect and ill-treatment by his parents, his extensive travels, his repeated banishments from this or that city, his interest in science and in alchemy, his work as a spy, his skill at the violin, and his daring escape from a Venetian prison. The man seemed to have a liking for any and all intellectual pursuits, as well as amorous ones; why, he had even worked with Lorenzo da Ponte on the libretto for Mozart's Don Giovanni, and attended the opera's premiere. Such a man must have written an intriguing memoir indeed, and Christine opened the first volume of it eagerly, modesty forgotten. She read until her head began to ache again, gasping quietly from time to time at the often explicit descriptions of the man's many romantic conquests, wide-eyed at how much such activities seemed to matter to men. It was…thought-provoking.

But she was still alone. On Monday morning, her head hurt so much that she went to see her doctor. She did not, of course, tell him that her pain was self-inflicted, merely that she had had an unfortunate fall. But the physician told her some disturbing things about how serious her injury might actually be. She was to let her brain rest, he instructed her, and not to do anything which might cause any strain or fatigue. Make no important decisions, lie quietly, do not allow oneself to be upset in any way, he said; let others read to you if you are bored, even. Well, that sort of charmed existence was just about as far as possible from what she was currently experiencing, she thought angrily as she paid the man his fee, and went to sit in a quiet corner of a café to give her situation the consideration it had to have. This made her head hurt even more, and it was difficult to think in the manner she needed to. Over first one and then two glasses of wine, she kept coming inexorably back to the fact that their marriage had been consummated. Painfully – for her at least – and disastrously, but consummated all the same. That meant that it was a true marriage in the eyes of God, she reflected. To get an annulment would, therefore, be a sin. Erik was her husband now, for good or for ill, and she must find a way to make relations between them work.

But the current state of affairs was intolerable. Christine began to think in ever more unhinged ways of how to make her new husband stop his dreadful behaviour. After a long period of deliberation, with occasional tears dabbed furtively away with her handkerchief, and dwelling on several things Madame Giry had said, she decided on her course of action.

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