“You know I can’t. I have to practice. We have our first musical rehearsal for Faust tomorrow, and I can leave no space for judgment in error.”
“You know that role forward and back.”
“I’d rather be over-prepared than make a silly mistake. Perhaps between shows, we could attempt a supper with your parents, but now…I’m under contract,” I reminded again. “And there are always those ready to take my place the second I falter.”
He huffed his discontent but cupped my cheek with understanding. He was always understanding. Maybe because he could never fully gauge the pressure I was constantly under, and he was pacifying me the best way he knew how.
“I could tell you that you are the best by far,” he said with a new smile, “but you will call me biased.”
“Yes, I will.”
“So I will go to supper alone with my parents, but I’m going to hint that I have someone special in my life. Maybe it will dull the shock a bit when we reveal you as my mystery lady.”
I was skeptical of that. This entire relationship was a huge impropriety and a faux pas by society’s standards. No softening of the ultimate blow would matter once my name was presented into their aristocratic bubble. I didn’t belong, and every person on the cusp of society’s top hierarchy would make certain I knew it.
“Practice well,” Raoul bid, and clasping my face between his palms, he gave a teasing expression, playful and silly.
“What are you doing?” I demanded and lost to a smile.
“Ah, it worked! I rid you of that pensive brow!” He accepted his triumph by imitating the expression I’d previously worn, all knitted forehead and solemn air before cracking to a chuckle. “No more serious face! You are already in your focused musician’s mode, and this is a role you already know. Go easier on yourself. Have fun with it for a change.”
Even his most well-intentioned encouragement made no impression on me. Raoul thought performing was easy. Get onstage and sing. He could never seem to grasp the mechanics of singing, no matter how often we’d had the conversation. He claimed I was making it more complicated than it should be.
Still making faces in hopes for more smiles, he leaned close mid-game and pressed his lips sweetly to mine. A quick, chaste kiss, but he knew me well enough to conclude my mind had moved forward to the task ahead of me and was unable to savor tender tokens of affection in its current state.
“I love you,” he bid with one more kiss to my furrowed brow.
“I love you, too.”
And with that oath and a playfully grinned wink, he was gone, escaping the cage of musical hypnosis I would now fall victim to. Music called, and I never ignored its possession. I needed it on my side to take up my battles alone. It was quite a challenge when aside from a Vicomte with no knowledge of the arts beyond what he enjoyed hearing, I had no ally or guide. My reign as prima donna was still too new to leave up to chance and talent; I didn’t have enough of a reputation yet. Hard work was still the only means to success.
I scampered to lock my dressing room door after Raoul. I knew others would see him leave and could not endure an interrogation by an overly-exuberant Meg eager to analyze every word spoken and every action indulged. She did not know that we were engaged, and I had no intention of telling her. The second she had that information, the entire corps de ballet would be abuzz and onward through the tiers until everyone at the opera was aware of my personal situations. I was careful to keep walls and doors with privacy intact for exactly that reason.
Oh, they all knew Raoul was my avid admirer, maybe assumed we were courting, but that was all they could assert with any sort of conviction. It was imperative because Raoul had more to lose than I did, and he was not averse to burying his love in flowers and closed doors around the opera’s corridors. Maybe others dubbed us lovers, but they’d never guess Raoul’s intentions were far more honorable than that. I had a proposal, and most girls in my place would never be so lucky.
Casting one more look about my quiet, flower-infested dressing room, I deemed it safe to embrace my biggest secret of all. My knees used to shake when I approached my full-length mirror; they used to quiver as I unhinged the latch to a hidden doorway and sway my balance as I wandered the dark alone away from my world of light and into a place I should have been shut out of forever. Nerves used to coil in my belly with a fear of being found out for this indiscretion by managers or ballerinas, worse yet by the one person who could validly call it an intrusion to his home and property, but…no one ever had any idea that I spent as much time in dark catacombs as my world above.
Finding the mirror’s secret had been a challenge, but as the first days without Erik had dragged endless minutes and my worry had grown, I had become desperate to figure it out. There was a trick latch on my side, well-concealed by the ornate, gold frame; it was more difficult to locate on the opposite side, a detail I had learned only once I’d managed to trap myself in the threshold and couldn’t get back. Acute terror had built to hysteria to be looking through a mirror like a window and know no one could save me but my own self. Three hours I had endured stuck between worlds, and I was determined such a trauma would never happen again. Learning every detail in the mirror’s construction and how to master its magic had been a necessity, difficult but not impossible.
That had been the first in a string of challenges, but I triumphed over every one presented. Finding the particular path through the dark passages without folly or death when Erik’s devices were horrors unto themselves, deciphering the door of the underground house in a wall of pure stone, bypassing a rigged entrance to get inside. I’d taken every test, and adamancy helped me win, …adamancy and a wounded heart.
These trips into the depths below all began because of an internal bruise and a need to heal its scathing pain. I’d been so certain that Erik was just avoiding me, hurt after a confrontation that had shaken our stability with strikes from both our respective corners. He had opened his soul, given me secrets I truly didn’t want to know, put his deformity on display, …stolen a kiss I’d never consented to give. He’d leapt every boundary between us in one night, and choosing distance at first was not inconsiderable. I could imagine that he bore regret, guilt, pain, and I had allowed what I dubbed penance for a few days. Then loneliness had consumed, my heart aching merely to beat beneath a purple and blue wound inside, and I’d grown urgent with a fear he’d never return to me. …Maybe that fear wasn’t entirely unfounded.
As I expertly wandered the dark catacombs and arrived at the hidden entrance to his house, I knew the familiar hope my heart always inflicted at this point in the trip. It had appeared on my very first journey below and was resurrected on every sojourn, a prayer and held breath to find my Erik inside, awaiting my presence, perhaps missing me, loving me. I called myself a fool for entertaining its possession as if a chance could still exist. He was gone. It was past time to accept that. I’d hurt him that night, and he couldn’t forgive me and had abandoned me for it.
Stepping out of the damp catacombs, I made myself at home, lighting a fire in the hearth and treating this as my secret place. My first nights spent within these walls, I’d felt awkward, like an intruder, but as time passed and Erik did not return, I had begun to explore the small rooms and found a contentment here that I did not have in the world above. Perhaps it was because Erik’s aura lingered, and I felt him still when I was in his chambers, …like I was still a part of his life and he a part of mine. …Perhaps it was because he’d left his things behind: furniture and accessories, clothes in the armoire. All hints he could come back…
With a desolate sigh, I forced the idea away and crept to his piano. I was the one to play it now. Not like him, of course. I did not possess such a virtuosic talent, but I used its pitches and keys to practice within these walls, far away from eavesdroppers. I knew I was safe here and could work with a spark of Erik as inspiration.
No one dared wander the lower cellars. Their Opera Ghost might have taken a hiatus, but wit
h his traps still active, the threat was alive. Perhaps some came close enough to catch echoes of my voice when I sang within the stone walls and maybe they scripted a tale of love for their dormant Opera Ghost, as if he’d locked himself below to savor music with his lady love. …If only such a dream were true!
For hours, I worked and filled the silence of the underground with my voice and music to chase any other idling ghosts away. I almost didn’t want to leave the house when I’d finally given up singing for the night.
A few times under the spell of urging, I’d conceded to creep into Erik’s bedchamber and lay my head down upon his pillow, curling up in his bed. How pleasant it would have been to sleep there, molded to the imprint his body had left in the mattress, but… I couldn’t risk doing any more damage to my heart. It grieved beneath so many layers of fake facades. It had been ripped apart with Erik’s absence, a wound that clotted and began to heal only to be torn open again and again every time I came down here with my hope on my sleeve. I didn’t want it to hope anymore or to feel. So I’d let it go numb and bundled it in blankets full of fake smiles and a delight in my life that I did not actually possess. I hurt, and I tried to make it unimportant.
One last look over the empty house, and I returned the way I’d come through damp passages to a world I didn’t feel I belonged in. Of course my dressing room said differently, over-laden in the perfumed petals of another man’s love. Raoul did not know my secret hideaway or that I’d given my heart to an angel ghost only to have it as damaged as a corpse’s face. Raoul was a good man who did not deserve a woman who only spoke love but never let it touch a shrouded heart, but…his presence made me feel wanted and ordinary, …loved.
Raoul was a part of a past I’d almost forgotten. We’d played together as gawky children, the sort of friend one made because he was the only person in the vicinity. For one summer at the beach, we were inseparable, and that was it. I’d barely recalled him in the patterned scheme of my life, but he had been present that fated Gala night to see my performance and he remembered. For months, he’d pursued my attention, recanting tales of our juvenile games as he’d chased me about the corridors backstage, but I’d kept trying to shrug him off. I hadn’t wanted his focus or his affections. I was mourning and hoping so hard that nothing else had mattered. But eventually, I had to make myself grow up. Erik wasn’t coming back; it took time to be able to state it aloud and believe it. I still carried that damn, undying flicker of hope’s fire, but I’d made myself move on even without a heart attached.
The diva… I was the diva now, and if I couldn’t have love, I’d at least have the music as my heart’s companion. Music filled a particular void inside, and even though I held back a piece of myself, the piece that had been solely Erik’s, I sang and it meant something.
I was dead inside to leave for my apartment that night, dead during a hollow, dreamless sleep, dead to return to the opera the next morning. The only time life flowed anew in my veins was when I stepped on the stage and sang Marguerite’s role in our musical rehearsal. Then I became her; I was no longer Christine with an un-beating, frozen heart, and I could breathe, however briefly.
For one instant in a day of endless rehearsal, I felt the music creep inside and tap a vulnerable spot in my protected heart. As I sang Marguerite’s spinning wheel aria, I felt a reverberation of my own loss. ‘Il ne revient pas’, no, he does not return. He is gone.
That resonant echo pounded my body, and before I could rebuild my armor, it threatened with tears and a lump I had to frantically swallow against. Iron had to be reconstructed and impenetrable as I told myself I was Marguerite, not Christine. My lost love would return in the next act, and even a tragic ending meant an ending. Marguerite would not be left in this suspension of an un-healing wound within. No, she had finality, and I had to live on with that persistent swell of hope that still felt Erik. Erik was gone. Stop dwelling…
My mind debated an internal war during the remainder of rehearsal, but my will was stronger now and won out every time. It mended my veneer to perfection so that when the Vicomte arrived to gush over rehearsal and take me to lunch, he never saw a single fracture in its shield. I smiled at him and caressed his cheek, held his hand tight in mine, and though I never felt a single touch, my gaze showed a fabricated affection, and he believed I did.
Chapter Thirteen
Erik~
“Christine, you were exquisite! My God, the way you sang! Every glorious pitch! You are amazing!”
“Oh, Raoul, you spoil me with such compliments, dear boy!” Christine’s smile lit every feature of her face in its glow as she caressed the boy’s flawless cheek with delicate fingers in gratitude.
“And I’ll spoil you further over lunch. Come on, darling. You must be famished.” He held out a hand, and she took it with nary a hesitation to be found, weaving fingers, inseparable and tight as she giggled and let him pull her toward the door.
It felt like a play being acted out in front of me, each line delivered with the correct emotion of characters onstage, each motion like pre-planned blocking. His lines, her lines and a touch to the cheek, his lines of exit, join hands, end scene. I watched life, and I would have dubbed it fictional if not for the backlash of pain that struck in a brutal wave as soon as they were gone. The lovely little couple, hand in hand like conspiring children…
My body shook and shuddered with the violent attack upon my vulnerable heart, and I shrank back against the curtains in Box 5 and gasped a necessary inhalation to recover before asphyxia set in.
Pain and then anger. It started as a spark, stone striking stone in the perfect spot to catch and ignite fire, and the flame traveled from its origin through my veins and out to every extremity. So while I’d been rotting and festering in the shah’s prison, beaten and tortured nearly to my death with her name as the hope upon my lips, she’d found herself the perfect prince charming to take my place and turn a nightmare into a dream. Boil onward, and the fire bubbled in my belly and seared my insides.
I knew that boy. As a fixture in the opera, I’d made it a point to learn every patron and every person who contributed financially to our resources. A Vicomte whose parents made a sizable donation twice a year and required their son’s attendance only once for the season’s opening.
…Ah, the Gala night. The pieces fell in place. So the young milksop Vicomte had been in his annual attendance, had seen my Christine sing, and had been enamored with her.
I grew sick on the spinning of my thoughts. Had this relationship been going on that long? How many days…seconds had passed before she had chosen a replacement for her angel? She’d obviously struck a fortune to not only capture a handsome face, but a Vicomte’s title besides! Oh… My heart leapt and throbbed a bleeding, blinding agony within my ribcage. No. This was not how things were meant to happen.
With a ferocious growl, I raced into my passageways out of the world, away from life, stalking a fitful pace into the darkness and actually praying some of my rage evaporated into steam around me. It was potent and poisonous, and I feared what I’d do in its grip.
My mind fluctuated rationality and processed the details I’d gained since my return. Someone had been in my home. That had been an immediate realization, someone who knew the path well enough to avoid injury. I hadn’t wanted to assume it could be Christine, but she’d left music scattered on the piano. Her music. Christine in my home. I took all such facets as good signs. My God, I’d had such hope that only blossomed to learn Christine was the leading prima donna. It was my dream for her, and it had come to pass in my absence. I considered myself a key reason for her promotion, all the molding I’d done with her talent as my sculpting clay.
Christine, a prima donna, and yet… I’d watched the entire rehearsal from Box 5, so eager to see her sing, to hear that voice as I’d carried it in my inner ears in echoes for almost a year and a half. But…I was disappointed.
Of course her voice was beautiful; there was no denying that, but…it was devoid of
its true essence. She sang vocal acrobatics, high notes, legato lines, all empty, passion-less. She sang like a wind-up doll, cranked, released and let go, with nothing behind porcelain eyes. And it infuriated me because I knew she was better than that.
Christine… I felt just as haunted as ever, once again watching from outside of her life and terrified to get too close. But no, I would not fall to pathetic, heartsick admirer. I’d endured hell in a quest for redemption. I was through being patient to gain her affections and backing off in fear of pushing too hard. No more. She’d been my saving grace, my only thought of peace during every trial I’d endured. I would not lose her to a flawless Vicomte when I was supposed to stand in that place beside her, caressed by her fingers, holding her hand, smiled upon. That was my designated role, and to hell with being a gentleman! To have it back, I would do what I must and take this time without regret.
As I paced my home, refusing to acknowledge the lingering aches of my tortured body, I searched for an answer. Through suffering and recovery, returning to Christine had been my sole thought. I hadn’t considered what would come after that. Now to have her, I had to think on a larger scale, outside the little bubble we had once spent our precious moments confined to alone. Now there was a Vicomte to add into the equation, and if the affection I’d witnessed said anything, it was that I needed a greater power than love to win. …I knew the exact angle to play.
Buried in a secret compartment in my armoire was a small chest filled to its brim with jewels in every color of the rainbow. Obviously, the shah had had many reasons for the revenge he’d inflicted, and one was the sum stolen from his private treasury during my first stint in his court, back when I’d had his favor. It was about to be worth the blood spilled to gain it. Wealth put me on the same level as a Vicomte even without the formality of a title, but then again I already had wealth. The Opera Ghost got a pension of sorts; this jewel-filled treasure would notch me above pathetic Vicomtes and buy me the means to Christine’s soul.
Scripted in Love's Scars Page 14