Music of the Night

by Suzy McKee Charnas

  As we joined the crowd of spectators (which was dismayingly large for such a happening, and on such a cold dawn), someone hissed, “Look, Death-mask is here!” and they all drew aside before us. Erik strode the path thus made for him with princely hauteur, and I saw people reach furtively to touch his cloak as he passed. We ended much nearer to the guillotine than I wished to be.

  Of what followed, the less said the better. The curious can still see such things for themselves.

  My companion offered no comfort. Erik’s scorn for the doomed criminal, the presiding officials, and the watching crowd was boundless, his approval of the execution itself unclouded by any hint of empathy or horror. He clearly did not imagine himself pinned beneath the roaring blade, for all that he was guilty of extortion, two killings at least, and, I was sure, much else.

  On the way home, profoundly distressed by what we had witnessed, I said accusingly that the people had seemed to know him there as if by his repeated presence.

  “Yes, the habitués see me often,” he replied, his mask gleaming pale as bone in the dimness of the carriage. “But they do not know me. No one knows me but you, Christine.”

  “Yet I do not know,” I said, “why you join the mob you profess to despise in this depraved and disgusting diversion!”

  “To see done such justice as is to be had in this world,” he said, “and to remind myself what death is. Also, I like to think that my presence lends some distinction to the proceedings. They miss me when I am absent, and sometimes call upon the executioners to wait a little in case I am only delayed.”

  I never discovered whether he was joking about this. He was fully capable of it.

  After that I always went with him to La Roquette. I never grew used to it; yet I went. The satisfaction he took in these gruesome displays forced me to acknowledge that subjection of his crueler impulses to my ban was not the same thing as change in his own character. It is very tempting to overestimate one’s own influence upon another when it is passion that binds you to one another.

  It must also be said that disdaining everyone equally, Erik did not share the common prejudices of the time. He did not hate the English or the Germans more than citizens of other nations, and he taught me to recognize the ingrained anti-Semitism of the French (which I had taken for granted) for the spiteful, willful ignorance that it was and is.

  But he was no champion of the downtrodden; his sympathies were reserved entirely for himself. He frequently worked up a keen resentment over the availability to others of advantages that he had never enjoyed. There was nothing to do but wait out these moods of bitter self-pity.

  Nor could I persuade him away from the vengefulness his life had taught him. Given the nature of that life, it was perhaps arrogant of me to have tried.

  As for the secret project conducted behind locked doors, it proved to be his gift to me that Christmas. I gave him a dressing gown sewn of velvet patches I had cut from discarded costumes. He gave me a replica in miniature of the Taj Mahal that he had carved and painted in wood. He had once visited that monument to lasting love and had examined and memorized every detail, an adventure in itself that he recounted zestfully to me over our holiday meal.

  Indeed, a whole lifetime of hitherto unshared incident was lavished upon me during my years with him, like fine wine eagerly poured only for my delectation and delight.

  Had I been older and more experienced, I might have tried to reply in kind. This would have been an error. He did not need a past from me, having a rather over-rich one of his own. It was my present that he desired, all the immediate hours and days that I had promised him. And these I gave with open hands.

  No doubt some would rather hear that we fought incessantly, that I tired of him or he of me, that we failed each other and parted in mutual hatred and disillusion. Had we lived in some suburb or narrow street of Paris, or worse yet on some grand boulevard, we might have come to that. Many marriages are stoven and sunk on the rocks of Parisian life.

  Now and again he reminded me that he had intended for us to vacate the Opéra cellars and lead a “normal” life like everybody else. I was always quick to point out that he was not in the least like everybody else, and for that matter, on the evidence at hand, neither was I; and eventually these objections ceased.

  * * *

  As the end of our time together drew near, he became markedly morose and irritable. I saw that he was already grieving.

  For my part, I walked through the streets and squares in the chilly rain and fitful sun of that last winter chafing unbearably for my freedom, now that it loomed so close. More than once I nearly flung the key to the Rue Scribe gate into the Seine. I longed to be borne quietly away on some gliding river-barge, empty-handed and friendless perhaps, but bound by no pledge or passion.

  At the same time I struggled to find some way to extend my life with Erik, for I could not imagine a life without him. Restless and distraught, I thought of every possibility a hundred times over and rejected them all as many times.

  It seemed to me that any meddling with the deadline I had set would undercut and cheapen all that we had achieved together, making a liar of me and a fool of him. With our mutual respect thus diminished, sooner or later our hard-won mastery of ourselves must decline into a wretched and debasing struggle for mastery of each other.

  Moreover, I had first pledged myself to him in ignorance; now I knew the enormity of the task, and the thoughtless self-confidence of youth was spent. How much longer could I trust myself to be bold enough, quick enough, steady enough, my instincts true enough, for both of us?

  Whole lifetimes spun out in my mind as I searched for a different conclusion. But I could find nothing acceptable other than to keep to the terms of our bargain. It is when Faust tries to fix the transient moment beyond its natural term, saying, “Stay, thou art fair!” that he is lost.

  I wandered miserably through Erik’s rooms, touching papers and furniture and books when what I ached to do was to touch him, to press him close with feverish possessiveness. I often felt his gaze upon me now, scalding with similar, unspoken anguish.

  He now began to suffer odd spells of lassitude, sitting for long periods with the newspaper in his hands yet scarcely turning a page, his face as white as marble and his forehead moistly gleaming. My questions about the nature of this unwonted fatigue were met with withering rebuffs. But when I came upon him mixing up a dose of laudanum for himself, I demanded an explanation. He admitted that for some time he had been experiencing severe pains in his teeth.

  The condition must have begun years before. Still, I blamed myself. If I had not got in the habit of bringing down the dainties left me by the dancers and chorus girls, he might not have indulged so immoderately his taste for sweets.

  Now abscesses had developed, this much I could determine; and I was very worried. But Erik flatly refused to go to a dentist, who must of necessity see his face. So these sieges of toothache came and went, borne by him with his customary fortitude.

  We continued our studies although I was in poor voice, being easily brought to tears by emotional music (and there is no other kind in opera). The last piece which he sang through for me was “Why do you wake me?” from Werther (we had been discussing the French insistence upon verbal articulation at the expense of beauty of tone when singing in that language).

  At the end, he rose abruptly from the piano and clapped shut its lid. The spell of Werther’s plaint was cut off as if Erik had cracked the neck of a living thing between his hands.

  “When you know that I am dead,” he said, “—and I will make certain that you learn of it, Christine—I beg you to come back here to bury me. I hope you will continue to wear my ring until that time, when I ask that you be good enough to return it to me with your prayers before you cover me over.”

  He meant his mother’s ring, a wreath of tiny flowers in pale gold which I had worn since the night of Lohengrin. I turned the ring on my finger, trying to take comfort from the fact that he spoke as
though he meant to go on living in my absence. But living in what manner? I could no longer avoid that question, which had been burning in my thoughts.

  “When I have gone, will you keep to your promise to be good?”

  “Why should I?” he growled, shooting me an evil look. Then he quoted the monster of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (a book he had read many times over by the look of its pages), “ ‘Misery made me a fiend. Make me happy and I shall again be virtuous.’ ”

  My heart pounded. Suddenly we stood at the edge of a precipice. “Erik, you gave your word!”

  “I am not some titled nobleman,” he sneered. “I have no honor to preserve.”

  I said, “You wrong yourself to say so. You have held to our agreement as only an honorable man would.”

  He turned away without replying, dabbing at his mouth with his handkerchief, and fell to moodily rearranging the porcelain flowers on their shelf. I heard every tiny tick and brush of sound of these small actions, for I was listening harder than I ever had in my life. In my mind a cowardly voice said, Fool, have you forgotten that he is a monster? Look at him! He will never let you go! You should have fled when you had the chance!

  “So you think I have behaved honorably?” he said at length, his back still turned to me. “Well, if I have I am sorry for it.”

  Stung out of my fearful reverie I answered heatedly, “You have no right to be! You have been happier these past years than most men are in a lifetime. Deny it if you can!”

  “I do not deny it!” He swung sharply ’round to face me, eyes inflamed and hands clenched at his sides. “For pity’s sake, Christine, must I beg? Don’t leave. I love you. I need you. Stay with me!”

  I had been braced for sarcasm and threats; this naked entreaty pierced me through. I shook my head, unable to speak.

  “Set new terms, make any rules you like,” he urged. “I will keep to them, you know I can!”

  “No,” I said, “no, Erik. It is time for you to see how you get along without your Angel of Conscience. I want my freedom, which I have won fairly.”

  He stared at me with those burning eyes. The walls of his house pressed in upon me like dungeon walls and I felt a fierce passion for my liberty, sparked by the dread of losing it again before ever regaining it. In my fear, I hated him.

  He said, “What if I say you must return to live here with me for six months of every year? It is a nice, classical solution.”

  “It is no solution at all!” I cried, my mouth as dry as ashes.

  “I don’t care.” His voice rose toward the loss of control that I—and perhaps he, too—dreaded. “I want more!”

  “Erik,” I said, with all the steadiness I could command, “you are above all a musician, and musicians know better than anyone that at some point there is no ‘more’—no more beats to the measure, no more notes to the phrase, no more loudness or softness or purity or vibrato—or else music becomes mere noise, incoherent, worthless, and ugly.”

  I saw him flinch, as I did, inwardly, but he said nothing.

  “You know this to be true,” I finished desperately.

  Of course he knew it. On this principle was based all his instruction and all our achievement together, and I saw him trapped and struggling in his own inescapable awareness of it. I wished to Heaven that he had been wearing his mask, for it was torture to watch his face.

  At length he said bitterly, “You have had too good a teacher.” He shielded his eyes with his hand, as he did when he wished to listen closely to my singing without visual distraction. “Have you been happy here, Christine?”

  “I have been happy,” I answered. “I am not happy at this moment, but I have been happy.”

  “Well, that is a good thing,” he said in that same bleak and distant tone, still keeping his eyes hidden from me; and I went away to weep my tears of victory alone.

  We spent those last nights stroking and kissing one another between fitful sleeps, pressed so tight together that we bruised each other. He stayed till the mornings in my bed instead of withdrawing to his own room. I would have held him back had he tried to go, but once he slept I quickly put the candle out. I dared not look long at his face, open and unguarded in sleep (his utmost, cleverest plea and offering), for fear that my resolve would crumble to nothing.

  He was a wise child too, but I was wiser. I had learned how to defend us from each other and protect us from ourselves.

  A week before I was to leave I came in from a long, troubled walk and saw him slumped at his writing desk. When I spoke to him, he answered faintly in a language that I did not know. Alarmed, I hurried to him and caught hold of his arm to bring him to himself again.

  Involuntarily, my hand flew back: his whole body quaked with massive, deep-seated shudders. At my touch he collapsed, seized by such violent chills that I thought he was having convulsions.

  I held him close to keep him from injuring himself and to warm him as best I could; and because I had to do something and could think of nothing else. When the shaking subsided, I helped him to his bed. I saw that the infection in his jaws had attacked again with terrifying virulence: his face was swollen, his skin was searingly hot, and it was evident that he did not know me.

  In his first lucid moment I implored him to let me fetch a doctor. He was adamant against it, made me swear to bring no one, and would not be persuaded otherwise by anything I said.

  He had committed no crimes since my taking up residence with him, of that I am certain; but he still had old deaths to answer for, and he was absolutely unwilling to risk exposure to the claims of the law. Perhaps now he could imagine his own goblin-head under the blade at La Roquette, before the greedy eyes of the crowd.

  I imagined it; and I could not bear the thought.

  So I nursed him as best I could, with drugs, folk remedies, and treatments which I found described in the medical texts on his shelves. It was not enough.

  He had no pain, the nerves in his teeth being destroyed by then, but fever devoured him before my eyes. He ate nothing and kept down little of the medicines I prepared for him. At last he sank into a heavy sleep from which he rarely roused.

  Late one afternoon he said, “I am so thirsty, Christine; the Devil is coming for me, and his fires are very hot!”

  “No,” I said, “God is coming to apologize to you for your afflictions. It is His burning remorse that you feel.”

  “What angel shall I send to comfort and befriend you when I am gone?” he asked. “The Angel of Death?”

  “Don’t talk, it only tires you.” I poured him some water, spilling more than went into the cup.

  “Never mind,” he muttered when he had taken a few dribbling sips, “that angry angel has not done my bidding for some time now. But I should curse you somehow before I die.”

  “Curse me?” I cried. “Oh, Erik, why?”

  His febrile gaze fastened hungrily upon my face. “Because you will be alive and abroad in the world, and I will be dead, down here. Your hair will glow like polished chestnuts in the sunlight when at last you throw off your hat and veil. If I had had such hair, I would have ventured onto the stage despite everything. With careful makeup, would it have been so bad?”

  “I hate my hair!” I said. “I’ll cut it off.”

  “It will grow back,” he answered dreamily. “As many times as you cut it, it will grow back more beautiful than ever, for the delight of other men.”

  I answered, “Well, go on and curse me, then!” But other words echoed in my thoughts: I will not let thee go, unless thou bless me. Fresh, amazing tears flooded my eyes; I had thought myself drained dry as the Gobi by then.

  “Oh, don’t cry,” Erik said with feeble exasperation. “What have you to cry about? You have won all, for now I cannot fail my promise. Look, I will make you another: should this ‘honor’ you have required of me earn me a few hours’ respite from Hell, I will spend them singing for you. Stop and listen sometimes and you may hear me.” Then he exclaimed, “My opera! Where is my Don Juan?”r />
  He struggled to sit up, gazing around the candle-lit room with that huge-pupiled stare which I remembered from my father’s deathbed. It is an unmistakable look, and seeing it again all but drove the heart right out of me.

  “Your work is safe,” I rushed to assure him. “I will get it published—”

  “No, no,” he broke in, with some force. “Leave it. I have told you, that music is not for this epoch. You will not let them come picking and clucking over my miserable carcass, will you? Be as kind toward my music. Bury it with me; bury it all.”

  He caught my hand and pressed it to his malformed cheek, and only when I agreed to do as he asked did he release me. Then he sank back, white-faced and panting, on his pillows. I saw that his time was near, and that he knew it.

  “Let me at least fetch you a priest,” I said, for I knew that he had been born into a Catholic household.

  He said, “What for? I would only frighten him to death, adding to my burden of sins. You be my priest, Christine.”

  So I lay down beside him in his bed, and he breathed new, horrific details of his past into my ear. I told him that I had no power to absolve him, but that if he truly repented of the evil he had done he must surely be forgiven.

  He said, “Just listen, Christine.” So I did; though I dozed through much of this grim catalog, being very tired by then.

  The chiming fugue of his clocks all striking woke me (it was eight at night). I opened my eyes to find him quietly watching me, his face—that freakish face which was now better known to me than my own—mere inches from mine. His lips were crusted from the fever and his poisoned breath fouled the air between us.

  “Good, you are awake in time to see a wonder,” he whispered. “This hideous monster, the Phantom of the Opéra, will make himself vanish before your very eyes; and before the eyes of everyone else there will appear, as if out of nowhere, a beautiful young woman of passion, talent, and valiant character.”