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The day Meg brought her the mask proved to be Christine’s undoing.
Three days since she had fled the lower levels of the Opera with Raoul. Three days since the mob first and police afterwards had invaded the privacy of his sanctum. Three days since a body was found underneath the theatre.
Police requested her to identify the dead man, because the face was so badly ruined that Raoul could not do it in her stead. Her fiancé insisted she did not have to do it. Where had she heard him say those words before?
Oh, yes.
Raoul’s plan to save them from the Phantom, asking her to serve as bait during the first and only performance of Don Juan Triumphant.
She did not have to do it. In fact, she did not want to do it. She had not wanted to follow the plan. All she had wanted to do was run and leave it all behind. Leave him behind.
In the end, they had involved her against her wishes, the opera house filled with policemen and a wild mob on a hunt and she became the cause of the Phantom’s downfall.
And now, all she had of him was his mask.
Christine refused to look at it. When Meg brought it to her, offering it to her, she recoiled. Meg probably thought it was because of the horrific experience she had lived through and because she wanted to forget him. Christine did not want to explain that a wave of despair had hit her so hard, she felt lost at sea, surrounded by memories of her…
Her what? Teacher? Confidante? Friend? Tormentor? Jailer?
For he had been at turns every one of those things and now he was nothing at all.
Her heart was full of love for the man she had chosen to share her life with, in sickness and in health. She was looking forward to spending the rest of her days together with Raoul. She desperately needed a semblance of normal life.
Then how could there be a gaping hole right in the middle of her chest, where all the feelings for the man known as the Phantom of the Opera lay? There was a black shroud covering every thought and every memory just as one was covering the mask that rested in the chest at the end of her bed. She did not want to look there. She did not want to pry into those unrelenting, nagging feelings.
She remembered mumbling some sort of excuse to Meg, telling her she would keep the mask as a memento, to remind herself never to make bad choices again. Young Giry had looked skeptical, raising her right eyebrow the same way her mother did, but in the end, she acquiesced.
Late that same evening Christine hailed a chaise on the street and requested to be taken to Place de l’Opera. The sun was hanging dangerously low on the horizon, almost on the verge of extinction, painting the sky with fire. She was chilled to the bone when she stepped out onto the cobblestones of the square. Its façade already illuminated by lights, the magnificence of the Palais Garnier assaulted her, and she bit her lip to stop the tears from falling.
That building had been her home, her temple, her house of worship. It had been his home as well. Now it was lost to them both.
The nightwatchman was surprised to see her but greeted her with sympathy. She justified her presence with her desire to retrieve some last personal effects from her dressing room. No need to accompany her, she knew the way, thank you very much. What she truly planned required there be no supervision, no witnesses.
Her father would be appalled by her behaviour. He had raised a good girl – a respectful, honest, God-fearing girl. She had betrayed everything he had taught her: she had stayed, unchaperoned, with men who were not her husband, she had basked in her glory and success, she had lied to authorities.
Yes. Lied.
For the mangled body she had seen at the morgue and identified as the Phantom, while surrounded by authorities and her fiancé, did not belong to her teacher.
His hands, oh, she would recognize those hands anywhere and they were not his. The ring on his finger was not the one she had worn after her kidnapping. It was not the one she gave back to him. She would never forget that ring for as long as she lived. And what an exhilarating and overwhelming feeling of relief had washed over her when she saw these things!
He was still alive.
Christine knew she ought to be afraid for her life going back down to the cellars – anyone in their right mind would be – but she was not. She had looked into his eyes when she had returned the ring. There had been no lies then, no hidden purposes, no illusions. She had seen grief, bottomless desperation, and love. Unending, unwavering love.
These thoughts had been tormenting her for three days. She was in love with Raoul, she wanted to marry him and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him. And yet she could not forget the Phantom. He had reached parts of her soul no one had ever touched, parts she was not even aware existed.
Sometimes in her weakest moments, he was still the Angel of Music to her and that man, her kind teacher, was the reason for this impromptu trip to the underground of the Opera. She hoped to meet her Angel one last time to say a proper good-bye and move on with her life. There was no certainty he would be there – as a matter of fact, she was quite sure she would not find anyone. Still, it was the only place she could be certain would ensure his absolute safety now that he had been declared dead.
The shattered pieces of the mirror had been cleaned away from her dressing room. Someone had put a drape on the frame to hide the entrance to the pathway leading to the cellars, but the passage itself was clear. Hugging the mask wrapped in the black shawl close to herself and holding a lantern she had “borrowed” from the prop room in her other hand, Christine began her descent.
It was a sobering experience, retracing her steps with a clear eye and mind, not dazzled by the awe of her first journey there, nor frightened by the rough haste of the last. Just an ever-present awareness that she was alone. Without him by her side.
The trip across the lake in the boat, tipping and uncertain, was an adventure. Mastering the pole was not an easy task. Christine started to breathe again the moment she set foot on the far side near where the Phantom’s lair was. Or rather had been.
All around her she could see only destruction.
Clutching the mask harder to her bosom, as if to give herself courage, Christine entered the house proper. The place was unrecognizable – the mob had been merciless – and the silence added to the eerie atmosphere. But the quiet did not last long. The silvery sound of a pipe falling to the floor to her right scared her out of her wits. The scream that almost burst out of her lungs died in her throat when she saw what had caused the disturbance.
He was there, with pieces of his organ’s broken pipes held in one hand, watching her, and gawking as if he had seen a ghost. His other hand, emptied now of the pipe that had fallen, started to shake. With quick, quiet steps he walked backwards and away from her, putting a safe distance between them, trying to become one with the surrounding shadows.
“Wait, please!” Christine reached a hand toward him, to prevent him from turning away. When he stopped, she stopped too, softening her hand, turning her palm upward in a peaceful, beseeching gesture.
“You shouldn’t be here.” A disembodied voice reached her from the darkness. Only two pinpoints of light in the deepest shadow – his eyes, shining like stars in the night – told her where he had stopped.
Christine trembled at the sound of his voice. It was the same caring tone she had come to adore in the first months of their acquaintance, but it was now tinted with deep sadness, the same sadness that had coated the last pleading “I love you” he uttered when she had returned his ring. She felt his eyes on her, more than ever, evaluating her, trying to understand her intentions.
She stood unmoving, patient, as she would with a skittish colt who was still uncertain, shying away from strangers. “I was looking for you. I hoped I could still find you here.”
At last, he took a few steps towards her, halting at a point where his face was still hidden in shadow. She observed what she could see of him. He was still wearing the same waistcoat and shirt from their final encounter. Both had seen better days; there were streaks of dirt on the vest and the shirt had lost its original pristine white condition. His sleeves had been rolled up in haste and without care. And were those scars on his arms?
Christine blushed all of a sudden, thinking that it was the most undressed and dishevelled version of the Phantom that she had ever met.
Then, she remembered the mask. She pulled back her hand, reaching into the wrapped bundle to bring it forth, seeing him take a sudden step away again. A rush of panic made her fingers fumble. What if he ran? She unwound the shawl with fingers that did not want to cooperate, and raised her hand again, holding the mask out to him. “Here... here, I brought this.”
He hesitated but then took a step forward and then another and his unmasked face came into the light. He was impassive and wary, observing her, looking for tells or reactions, waiting for her to recoil in horror. Christine did not flinch; the erstwhile terror was a distant memory of the past. She found herself wanting to retrace the strange lines of his face, to commit them to memory the same way artists did at the Musée du Louvre when reproducing the great art of the past.
“Thank you.” He took the mask and her fingers brushed against his for a brief, electrifying moment. “They’ve destroyed all the others.”
He put it on, and Christine wondered how such a small object – a simple thing, really – could wield such power. He was standing taller now, more confident, less afraid. She, on the other hand, mourned the loss of the human side of him, the one that she could read so much more easily when he was not covered by the white shell resting on his face.
Christine looked around at the wreckage and ruins, aware of the awkward silence that had fallen between them. The piano tilted drunkenly, one leg missing, the cover axed in the middle, splinters everywhere. She would miss its sound; she would miss her teacher playing it even more. She could not see the violins and the viola. She hoped that they had not met the same sad fate. Better stolen than obliterated.
“What are you going to do now?”
She cringed as soon as the words left her mouth. It was not a stupid question, per se. It was probably the first thing that any ordinary person would have asked a victim of theft and destruction in their own home. But normality was not something that applied to her Maestro. He defied any definition, any standard of “normal”.
“I don’t know. I have nowhere to go and there is nothing to keep me here any longer. I don’t know.”
This time not even the mask could hide the terrible, lost sadness that radiated from his whole body; though nothing compared to the pain that clenched Christine’s heart upon hearing those words. Some part of her wanted to shout, “Am I not enough for you to stay?”, but then she remembered that she had made her bed. She had already chosen.
And she had not chosen him.
The Greek legend about women and men being two halves of the same person had it wrong. Never in her life had Christine wished so much that she could have it all. That she did not have to choose.
He interrupted her train of thought, calling her name and Christine had the sudden urge to cry at the reverence held in those few syllables. “Thank you for the mask.” His hands were contracting as they always did when he was suppressing his desire to do something. He was reining himself in, that much was evident. “You should go back home.”
“What? No… wait!” He had not moved, but Christine had the distinct impression that he would if she did not say anything to hold him there. “I – I wanted to spend some time with you.” Words were tumbling out of her mouth, anything to make him stay, and she did not care how she sounded or how much of a simpleton she may seem.
“I don’t think there is much to say at this point and people will be worried about you.” His body was immobile, his gaze lost in the distance.
He was right, it stood to reason that she might be missed. Raoul would be worried. But Christine could not find it in herself to care. She was not ready to go yet – or to let go. “I wanted to make sure you were alright. You have to know – I didn’t want anything to happen to you. I didn’t – I didn’t want it to end this way.”
“It is nothing that I didn’t bring down on myself, through my own actions.” His contrite voice was little more than a whisper, as if he were talking to himself, rather than her. Then with more conviction: “Everything that happened, happened because of me. None of it was your fault.”
She had no answer to that. None that would help the situation in any way. The Phantom had blackmailed the managers of the Opera. The Phantom had killed. The Phantom had kidnapped. It was everything that the world would ever know about this man. Not the music, not the genius, not the name.
It never occurred to her to ask. Not even to her, the only person who had ever been close to him.
“You never told me your name.”
“Name?” Struck by the question, he turned his head and looked away. The brilliant half-moon of his mask hid any visible reaction. Christine could have been watching a statue if it were not for the gulping motion of his Adam’s apple. “Ah, Christine.” He sighed. “You give a name to something you want to know or cherish. You give a name to people and things you want to remember.” The mask was not designed for smiles: the bitter one he gave her dislodged it slightly on his face. “No one knows me, no one will ever remember me. What would I need a name for?”
“But surely, your mother – “
“I must have had one, yes? Someone hid my face under a cloth when I was an infant, whether it was my mother or a maid or someone else I will never know.” He scoffed. “It matters little. I learned a long time ago that you cannot feel the loss of something you never had.”
“Erik.”
It tumbled out of her lips before she could even think about it. He looked at her wide-eyed and understood immediately what she was saying, what she was trying to do. His fury was instantaneous. “No!” He was close enough to point a menacing finger at her, almost under her nose. “You will not do this to me! I’ve been no one for all my life, you will not put a name on me now!”
It was too late. Erik the Red, Erik Bloodaxe… There were so many Eriks in the tales that Pappa told her when she was a child. In her vivid young imagination, she had envisioned that one day she would marry someone named Erik.
Christine heard the rest of the unuttered sentence loud and clear in her head. You will not put a name on me now and then leave me again. A tingle of fear shot through her when she heard his booming voice ricochet in the emptiness of the underground lair, but it was soon followed by a quick, eerie feeling of certainty that settled over her.
Erik would never hurt her.
As she approached him, Christine glimpsed a new path in front of her. One she had never considered, one that was shaking her to the core.
Erik’s problem was that he did not have any limits. Unparalleled genius. Unlimited madness. Unfathomable hate. Eternal love.
She loved Raoul. She did. She had loved him since she was a child, and he had loved her. And perhaps… that was the root of it. He loved her for the child she had been. Did he love her for the woman she was now, the woman she had become after the loss of her father, the woman who had been brought back to life and music by her mysterious Angel? Could the person she knew herself to be now be the wife that Raoul would expect, would need her to be? And… could Raoul ever know her, ever love her like Erik did?
It was also with an inescapable and absolute certainty that she knew Erik would never stop loving her and that the intensity of that love would never wane. It was the most frightening thought she had ever entertained. Christine could not even begin to imagine what it must be like to always feel that much, all the time. The pressure it would put on one’s heart, to be a constant victim of one’s own feelings in such a devastating way.
But, oh, to be on the receiving end of it! To be submerged and enveloped in an endless love like that, in complete understanding and acceptance. She felt a rush of excitement running down her spine.
“Erik.” The name felt so easy on her lips now. Her mind was filled with it.
He fell to his knees covering his ears with his hands and cried. “I beg you! Stop putting that name in my head!”
She was hurting him again, but as before, that was not her intention. She understood for the first time that only the truth would save them both. She had to lift the black veil from her heart and look straight into what was hidden there. The place where she held him hostage. The place that was his and his alone.
It was folly. But she had to. She had to know, she had to put a name not just to him but to the feelings she was harboring inside. It was time to be courageous.
She knelt in front of him and took his hands in hers. They were cold, so unlike the fire that raged inside him. Christine had seen the worst of that energy turned against her and Raoul, but she had walked through the flames and survived. Now she wanted to see the best part of him again, compelling, creative, passionate. She wanted her Angel of Music back.
She embraced him. Erik’s breath was ragged and short in reaction to the unexpected gesture. Christine held him closer, nuzzling his neck, until his hands lay on her waist then snaked up her torso and his arms held her firmly against him. She felt him relax against her and a sense of peace fell over her as they swayed together like a boat on a placid lake.
It was like falling into a suspended moment in time where nothing mattered, except the other person they each clung to. The destruction around them forgotten, the house and lair fallen away, even the opera house above but a distant memory. Christine raised her head from his shoulder and looked at him from such a close distance she could see the myriad of different colours that streaked his eyes. They were mesmerizing and she remembered being drawn in by their controlling power, but none of that was present now. He was not imposing, he was not cajoling, he was not trying to lure her to do his bidding. She was in complete control of her own faculties and free to do as she pleased.
She kissed him and it felt like coming home.
Erik stiffened in her arms, twisting and trying to break free from her. Christine pleaded softly against his mouth, then, trusting, let him go for a brief moment to shadow her fingertips over his lips and his bare cheek. She knew in her heart that he would never truly deny her. She leaned against him, forehead to forehead, tightening her hold around him once more and felt his resistance melt away as he relented, almost sagging against her, giving in to a second kiss that flared brighter than the sun.
She told him, “I want this for both of us. I want us to have this if nothing else. But only if you want to.”
Christine was glad to be kneeling on the floor because she was sure the intensity of his look would have made her weak in the knees if she were standing. It was incendiary. He could have burned all of Paris with it.
He shivered in her arms with the electric poise of a man on the verge of a precipice.
A man confronting a decision to shed the scarred skin of the monster and transform into a new being. The true enemy was within his soul and the struggle would leave no survivors. Christine wondered how life could have been so cruel to a single person – how one man could be rendered so frail and so strong at the same time by his own existence. She could only imagine what had shaped him before, given the few bits of information he had shared with her.
Cold assailed her the moment he loosened his embrace. He rose to his feet with the same grace she had come to associate with all his movements. Her mouth opened in surprise when she saw his extended hand. She took it and he helped her up. Three words cut the silence, three words that carried the weight of life-altering choices and they made her heart leap.
“I want to.”
Her bedroom had seen as much destruction as the rest of the house. One of the doors of the armoire had been ripped away and thrown on the floor, the other clung to life hanging from a single hinge. The vanity had been ransacked, drawers pulled out and overturned, their contents strewn all around, and its mirror shattered, reflecting her image in dozens of shards.
The heavy four-poster bed was the only survivor amidst the reigning chaos. Its massive size ensured that not even the mob could do much with it, except remove the mattress that lay discarded to one side. Erik placed it again on the bed and found untouched linens and a duvet in a clever drawer hidden in the bedframe. What an incongruous image to see him perform such domestic duties, but he had done that before for her, had he not? The room was spotless the first time she came here.
Christine spared a last thought for Raoul. He was waiting for her, he expected to get married. He was in love.
She was in love too. But she had returned once again to Erik. And it was plain as day to her that she would finish what she had started here with him. She loved Raoul, but Erik… everything seemed so much... more when she was with him, deeper feelings, a wider range of sensations, limitless boundaries. There were no pretenses, no expectations and she was completely free to be herself.
Just like Aminta, there were no second thoughts. I’ve decided… Decided.
Christine shrugged away any guilt as she shrugged off her clothes, and she freely ventured into the unknown, let herself be carried by emotion, the same way she let herself be carried through a mirror and to this very same place centuries ago, it seemed. She was fearless. She was in charge of her feelings and free as never before. She grasped her own destiny in her hands, and she would not let it go. All else became irrelevant. Only Erik mattered.
He waited then, at the bedside. Waited for her to take the final step, the one that would change their lives forever.
“I left a part of me with you, here.” She looked around meaning the Opera and his home, then she put her hand on his heart. “And in here.”
Erik stood, trembling again under her touch, his mismatched eyes gone wide and dark. His lips parted as if he searched for words but could not find the right ones. He caressed her cheek with the back of his hand and his fingers left a burning trail on her skin. It was the first time that he had dared to initiate anything with her in all their long history.
She took his hand, kissed his knuckles then pulled him towards the bed. There would be no doubt tonight about what she really wanted.
The awkwardness of being each other’s first, the fumbling, the shyness, all tentativeness faded hour after hour and the only thing that mattered was the discovery of each other, the exaltation of the soul and the conquering of pleasure.
The tale of his life came as a surprise, unexpected, a secret one is told after demonstrating one’s utmost trust, in a moment where all barriers between bodies and souls had crumbled. A lingering stroke on one of his scars prompted him to tell her about his past experiences. It was quick and dry, recounted factually, like an article in a newspaper, devoid of emotions. It was a tragedy of immense proportions reduced to an after-thought by the same person who had survived it and needed distance from it all.
Christine took it as a beginning, a sign of good faith even if she felt there was much more behind it; that Erik was reluctant to share more not to ruin the moment. In her heightened awareness of him, she sensed a new feeling blossoming in her, like a sprout carving its way through the earth after shattering the seed and yearning to reach the light.
She was falling in love.
It was such a strange feeling, different from the one she had felt for Raoul, difficult to explain, complex. Yet it penetrated so deep in her muscles, fused with her bones, infiltrated her soul, there was no denying it. She came here to make amends and find peace and she found herself falling in love with a man convinced that no one ever would feel something like that for him. The last thought she had before falling asleep was that she would spend the rest of her life trying to prove to him otherwise.
The cold woke her up and she found herself alone in the bed. She called Erik’s name once, twice and dread began to overshadow the happiness of the night before. She rushed to put on some clothes and searched the house, the passages she knew. He was nowhere to be found.
She clung to a tiny spark of hope that he might have slipped out to get food or that in a moment of uncertainty he might have needed time for himself, to think about what they were going to do, what their future would be like.
She ended up waiting on the pier for hours on end, in a dark cave on the edge of a cold lake, crying, calling his name – the one she had given him to make him hers forever – damning his name, cursing his name, pleading with him to come back. The silence that answered bore witness to a tragedy far larger than any she had survived before.
She loved him and he was gone.
In the end Christine left alone. She buried her memories of him in the deepest part of her soul, wishing she could wipe them away altogether and she buried her soul in a shattered dark house under the Opera in Paris, where no one would ever find it again.
She had cried all of her tears. Erik left her with nothing but a shrouded empty heart.