Growing darkly somber, the foreign stranger replied, “He was jailed for over a year in a solitary cell, …and he was tortured, mademoiselle.”
Tears filled my eyes and poured rapidly down my paled cheeks. “What…what does that mean? I don’t understand.”
His nod was thick in his reluctance to elaborate, and I felt sick to my stomach as I fictionalized the story again. No, no, it couldn’t be reality. I’d seen Erik since his return, felt him. I knew he was here and all right, and torture seemed…severe and savage, ugly. Surely it was an exaggeration.
“Tell me,” I begged in desperation, leaning closer in my seat and fisting my shaking hands in my lap. “What does torture mean?”
“Beaten,” he revealed, and my heart reverberated and echoed every hard consonant in throbs as he stated, plain and blunt, “Struck, whipped, burned. Only Allah knows what else; Erik won’t tell me the extent, but every horror you can imagine. The shah is a sick sadist, and he had years to devise a fitting punishment for what he saw as his greatest enemy. He’d trusted Erik once and is not a man to betray.”
A sob passed my lips, and I pressed it into my fisted hand, my entire body lost to uncontrollable shivers. My God! And Erik would never have told me!
I wasn’t sure if my sudden burst of anger was truly anger or just the pain of knowing I had no control over any of this. It had already happened, and I’d never been included in a single detail, a part of his life he’d shielded me out of and couldn’t even share it now that it was over. Impulse was the swell in my heart that longed for Erik’s presence to assure myself that he was here and then the necessary need to wrap my arms about his body and never let another blow even graze him. But…reality was that he didn’t want that.
As I continued to cry into my fisted hands, the Persian man offered a solace that cut even deeper, “But you saved him, mademoiselle. You, fantasies of returning to you. He made you his only hope and survived what would have killed any other man. If he hadn’t had your memory as his salvation, he would have given up. …When we were finally able to get him out, he was…in bad shape. The shah had been vicious in the last beating he endured, but all Erik could speak of was coming back to Paris for you. No matter the pain and injury, you were all he wanted to make him well. He saw his confinement as penance and the transformation he needed to become a man worthy of your heart.”
Oh no…what had I done? I’d called Erik selfish, selfish for trying to step in and reclaim a heart he’d given up. …He’d never given up. I had, and I was the selfish one between us to have never considered anything but the hurt I’d suffered without him. I’d never even given a thought that perhaps he’d had a reason to go, a reason that exceeded both of our hearts, or that he hadn’t returned because he couldn’t. All that time, he’d loved me and wanted me even as he’d endured agonies I couldn’t even imagine, and at the same time, I’d spent a year and a half cursing him and lamenting my broken heart, building walls so I wouldn’t have to feel it as it beat with a split down its center. …What had I done?
“Why didn’t he tell me?” I cried in the middle of my sobs. “Why did he decide I was not allowed to know and hurt with him? That is unfair.”
The foreign stranger shook his head again, tears suspended in his dark eyes as they watched me carefully, and with a waver in his voice, he replied, “To him, it truly is a humiliation. He wants to seem so strong all the time, to never fully expose the vulnerable spirit within.” He scoffed as if the idea were ridiculous. “And he would rather have given you up to your Vicomte suitor than seem a broken man in your eyes.”
“But he isn’t a broken man,” I insisted, vehement and crying into my shaking knuckles. “He isn’t, but he wouldn’t have let me say so. He took a hatred I’d fabricated over a love I could have granted. …He told me to put it upon him…all my hatred for what he’d done to me. Oh my God, what have I done?”
Finally un-fisting my taut fingers, I buried my sobs into my shaking hands and felt them tear me apart inside.
“I’m sorry…sorry,” I gasped between sobs that seemed endless. They were the residual outpouring of a year and a half of loneliness and a love I’d been so sure had been lost to me. Every disappointment, every hopeless second, every instant I could only have memory when I wanted the man attached. It all streamed out in the wake of revelation. I was tempted to crash to pieces, but I couldn’t. Not when I needed to fix things.
“Mademoiselle?” The Persian man reached between our seats and set a gentle hand upon mine. “Life isn’t about our mistakes in the past. It is about how we mend their ill-doings in the present. I never believed a man like Erik could find anyone to love him for who and what he is. But…if love is what you carry in your heart for him and I mean a love that exceeds compassion and pity, a love that can forgive as well as grow, then chances are not lost. Have hope.”
But hope was coated in self-guilt, so much that I couldn’t bear to stay in that underground house and await Erik’s return, too terrified I’d anticipate and he’d never appear again. It was just retribution if now after every secret learned, I lost him for my foolish behavior. So on the tide of regret, I rushed home with barely a muttered goodbye to my foreign companion and a head too full to know reason.
My dreams that night were laden in depictions of the trials Erik had endured. I couldn’t seem to get out of Persia as nightmare led to nightmare, and I heard his voice in my ears proclaiming love and pleading for mine in return even as he suffered.
I awoke at dawn and burrowed my cheek into my tear-soaked pillow; it was wet with every pained ache of my heart. I could barely carry its weight, heavy and laden within the cavity of my chest, crushing my bones at every thudding pulsation.
And how was I to lighten this burgeoning beat? I wasn’t supposed to know the truths I’d been given; Erik had not told me, and it was almost a betrayal to have their pictures in the back of my mind. The Persian man had made it clear that Erik was embarrassed by his abuses. I saw no source of abashment; I saw strength and resilience, a soul too powerful to be fractured, but…I wasn’t supposed to know.
I was solemn as the Vicomte arrived and walked with me to the theatre, and when he worried and asked why, I claimed nerves for the show and insomnia. Lies, lies, more lies, and I didn’t care that I could form their falsehood so easily to the man I’d vowed my loyalty to. I was not loyal. I loved another man; I was already condemned, and lies seemed frivolous in comparison.
Rehearsal was going on, and I was mid-scene when Erik strode across the stage to speak to the director. My gaze was drawn to him as if I’d been compelled by longing, tugged from the core of my being, and though I resisted following in step and touch, eyes could travel for me and observe his nuances as if I only now saw him since his return.
My breath choked in my chest as knowledge opened my eyes and showed me what I hadn’t realized before. Oh God… He moved, and there was a new stumble in his walk, a hesitation that interrupted his typically smooth grace. He’d always been an extension of a legato melody; now I glimpsed miniscule staccatos, never anything too obtrusive. No one else would have taken a second glance, but I knew him. How had I disregarded that telltale sign? He moved like a man with pains to hide.
Of course there was no blatant evidence, but his suit hid his body like a second skin and gave a flawless precision. More clues for me alone. He wore the mask to mimic a perfect face when his own was anything but, and as the pieces fell into their designated spots, I realized that since his return, his suits had grown more distinguished and formal, the sort one chose for the highest events, not day to day wear. Why had I attributed all such changes to his new post in society’s world? His suit was as much a shield as the mask on his face; perfection when it couldn’t exist for him…
He never regarded my spying presence, not even on his exit, and I hid my disappointment when I considered the Vicomte in the audience. No one could know.
But as the day dwindled its prescribed hours, my heart’s aching suffocated my
every breath. No matter what outcome it brought, I had to fix this; only then would my heart beat free and light again. I merely had to figure out how to win everything from nothing.
Chapter Seventeen
Erik~
I was tired. That was a typical occurrence of late. Evidently, running a theatre and directing in my subtle, opinionated way in combination with sleeplessness and an unsettled heart took a toll even on the omnipotent Opera Ghost. I was starting to regret my hasty decisions made with a rash rush of impulse and love. Buy an opera house, run the show from the frontlines instead of behind the scenes, all in hopes of second chances and regaining a heart I’d never had as mine. …My love was a punishment.
I had to remind myself every occasion that I yearned for one iota of Christine’s attention that she did not want me. Initial plans to take seemed pointless and wasted efforts now, and perhaps this new sense of maturity was a product of my Persian confinement. I was angry and hurt, but I wasn’t dead or in a cage any longer. Perhaps I needed to appreciate small blessings.
The extent of my so-called maturity was limited in its scope. In my effort to give Christine what she wanted, I ignored her and avoided being in her presence. That was all I could manage. Leaving the opera completely was beyond my capabilities…yet. Little steps. Disentangle my heart before severing its necessary artery. Then I might bleed, but I wouldn’t perish. I’d continue on…alone again. Why did that seem my doomed fate?
As I walked across a crowded stage with more side notes for the director from my constant, unobserved spying, I felt Christine’s gaze upon me, branding me to the marrow of my bones, but I never once broke my stoicism. Why would I want to look back and see suspicion and hatred, candid and vividly cast? I’d asked for hatred in hope of finding love. How that had blown apart in my grasp!
I ignored Christine; I ignored a cast and crew full of vicious leers and cruelty. I did my job because I loved the music above everything else, and that had to come first. Curse every nay-saying fool in the backdrop!
Confining myself to my office and a pile of paperwork was futile when I had to breathe. Breathing made my heart continue to beat, and my beating heart hurt with a physical ache in my chest. I wanted Christine; I loved Christine. Why did love exist in the world when if it wasn’t requited, it became agony instead?
Regret and longing were a bitter combination, and work became impossible within their possession. I paced a fitful path about my office like a caged tiger, stalking its cell with a need to be free. But I was also my own jailer and couldn’t let myself wander for fear of tempting temptation.
Christine was too close, and as rehearsal continued and echoes of music poured through the cracks to tease my ears, I fisted desperate fingers and insisted this self-denial was for the best. Separation, tying off the poisoning valve within my heart so it would wilt and shrivel away. This was the route to preserving my integrity. I’d fallen weak beneath love’s spell, but I would rise again.
Through walls and doors, I had little beyond vibrato and high notes to judge, but as Christine’s Act Four aria began, I halted my stalking pace and felt a shudder rack my spine. Oh God… That was the voice I’d been after for weeks. I heard…her heart, and mesmerized, I crept out of my cage and wandered toward the theatre door, needing to see and hear more as if it were for imminent survival.
Without a single telltale sound, I lingered in the furthest shadows and ran starved eyes over her as she sang from center-stage.
He does not return…
Her heart saturated every pitch past her lips, lacing the tone and giving a new depth that stretched to her very soul. Thick and oozing pure, raw emotion so vivid that I caught the glimmer of tears in her eyes, glinting like diamonds in the stage lights. Tears… A genuine heart open for the taking, and I felt my soul reaching to her, extending from the core of my body and stretching its sinewy embers toward the only place I ached to be. She sang, and it was difficult to consider anything but that she was mine.
Her voice rose and blossomed upon a high note that tore into my body and made a violent wound on my heart. I prayed it scarred and remained with me forever. I’d hurt her… I never wanted to forget it. It would be the most beautiful scar I owned.
The aria dwindled back to a wispy pianissimo, and as blue eyes fluttered closed with her last held pitch, tears tumbled free from her lashes. They made thin streaks along her reddened cheeks that beamed blindingly and proclaimed to every one watching, especially me, that she was vulnerable and exposed at that moment, a bare soul on the stage.
My God, that had always been my greatest desire for her. She was one with the music; even if I would never have her, she had given herself over to music’s consumption and let it flow through her instead of around her. It was a meager compensation, but at least, it showed that my teaching had stained an imprint on her existence. It meant in some way, I’d mattered.
I abandoned my hiding spot before her eyes ever fluttered open. I couldn’t bear to watch them land on the enamored Vicomte sitting on the opposite side of the theatre, watching her with echoes of my adoration in his stare. No… I didn’t need to be masochistic at the moment. It could only end poorly, and my heart had already taken its beating.
Once again, I tried self-confinement, and it worked long enough for rehearsal in the theatre to end. I heard the bustle of departing bodies, the laughter and chatter as they wandered the corridor beyond my office door, and inevitably, I found myself wondering if Christine were among them, perhaps on her way to her doting Vicomte, who’d be ready to lavish her in well-deserved praise. I hated myself for fantasizing it and believing it to be fact.
Oh, how my heart hurt! It was such a burden to bear, and later as I finally emerged from confinement and strolled the darkened corridors, it weighted my steps and called all my attention and focus. I could not reason a path beyond pain, and I was so consumed in its possession that when my ear first caught the tinkering of random pitches on a piano, I thought nothing of it. Perhaps I’d lived among music too long and had songs and instruments in my inner mind’s caverns because it took a concentrated effort for me to recall that everyone had left and the theatre was supposed to be empty. …Perhaps we had ghosts…
Following the path of siren pitches like a sleepwalker, I crept back into the theatre and conjured Christine. Another fantasy, another ghost in my memory, …or so I thought until she stopped tapping keys and blue eyes rose and halted upon my observing presence. Oh God, this had to be another creation of my hungry head! Because she looked at me and I saw so much in her eyes that it scared me. I got stuck in those blue orbs and didn’t want to emerge again.
Seconds stopped moving for that riveting infiltration. We were no longer two bodies, seeing skin and bone, hair, face, tangible creation; we saw soul to soul in that paused abeyance. A look through infinity’s chasm to a place with no corners or walls. We were revealed to each other, and I was so astounded that I could not find the will to question. No, I only longed to stare and see this image forever.
She spoke first and rattled me back to reality. “Am I intruding?”
“No…no,” I stammered and forced my legs to carry me down the aisle toward her with feigned control. “Is your Vicomte lurking somewhere in the wings, ready to purge the world of the dastardly Opera Ghost at first chance?”
It was half an accusation when it seemed my secrets were shared among the three of us. I’d given her too much credit to believe she’d remain loyal to me.
But though guilt flashed, she did not let it sway her as she admitted, “I told him that I was staying in the dormitories with Meg tonight for some quality time with my prior dancing comrades.”
“Oh?” My mind spun webs of hope, and I hated how quickly it consumed me in an unqualified optimism, ensnaring my gullible soul in its sticky threads and strangling every suspicion that should have existed.
She shrugged with idle innocence, but her gaze remained unguarded and light. Dear God, it reminded me of my little ballerina! The an
ticipation for my presence, the playfulness I’d never shared with anyone, the meeting of hearts on an empty stage…
“I couldn’t tell him the truth,” she added.
“Which is?” I pushed, impatient for knowledge she possessed.
“That I have been mediocre in rehearsals and need help to reach my true potential,” she reported without the defensiveness she’d previously held on the subject. “I was hoping…you could fix that.”
“Indeed…” I didn’t tell her that I’d witnessed glorious perfection earlier, terrified praise would lead to changed minds. “I suppose I could teach you again. Maybe a lesson or two, …help you find your inspiration.”
We eyed each other, ever tentative and uncertain as we carefully built one bridge at a time for fear it would all collapse and drop us. Cautious in my steps, I joined her onstage and shivered beneath her gaze as it followed my every motion. A strange malaise of emotion churned in those blue depths, and I could not reason the source or why she frowned when I sat at the piano bench, closer to her than I’d been in long, unendurable days. She’d asked for this shared moment, hadn’t she? And yet she seemed…hesitant and somber and gave no explanation as she moved into the piano’s bow and took her place, but I had no intention of asking and ruining the most pleasant exchange we’d indulged since I’d returned. Better not to know…
Our lesson was bliss, a window backwards into our past where everything faded to the outer divides but the music. We shared passion and love beneath music’s blanket and forgot the pain hands and words could inflict when melody did not sugarcoat life. We belonged to each other, and souls met and merged, wrapped inextricably about one another’s. If I’d earlier perceived to disentangle from her possession, this proved such an extraction was impossible. I was hers, maybe more than she’d ever be mine, but even bits were better than nothing at all.
Scripted in Love's Scars Page 19