Unmasqued

Christine fled. As she pushed her way down the hall, she heard the continued outrage from La Carlotta as she waxed angrily to the composer, and anyone who would listen, about "little rats who do not know their place" and other annoyances, at the top of her very capable lungs.

As she scuttled down the passageway, trying to hold back tears, Christine heard giggles and whispered comments and some outright laughter. Instead of going back to her dormitory room, she turned blindly down the corridor that led to the small grotto used as a chapel. The place she prayed for her father's soul, and the place where her ange had first spoken to her.

There, the tears of frustration and humiliation came, soaking the sleeve of her ratty practice costume, and dripping down onto the flimsy, floppy skirt in her lap.

She had not been there long when she heard his welcome voice. "Christine…"

"Angel," she replied tearfully. Wiping her face and swallowing her tears, she looked up and round in the small cavelike chapel, lit only by seven candles in small alcoves in the wall.

"Do not trouble yourself with her, Christine," he told her. "She is an undeserving woman, and she will get her own recompense."

"I did nothing wrong," Christine replied, sniffling. "She is a horrid cat."

He chuckled, the tones of his laugh vibrant and warm. She felt better already. "A cat? You are not fond of felines, then, to put them in the same category as La Carlotta."

"No, I do not like cats. They are sly and arrogant and barely deign to acknowledge one's existence. And when they do, it is as if they are showing you great favor."

She could still hear the humor in his voice when he replied, "Did you have a cat when you were younger, then, Christine? One that did not allow you to pet her?"

"How did you know that?" Her tears had dried.

"It was merely a guess… For you to have such strong feelings about such an innocuous beast, I suspected as much. For what happens in our youth most often molds our maturity." A trace of sadness hung in his voice now.

"Yes, when I was eight, Papa and I lived in Prague for nearly a year. The mistress of our boardinghouse had a cat and she would not ever come to sit in my lap. I chased her and crawled under the furniture after her, dragging her out. She would scratch me when I held her. Then when I cried, she would run away again. She had such dark, soft fur. I wanted to hold her so badly."

"Poor Christine," the angel replied. "You needed to have something to hold, to comfort you."

"Yes… I was very lonely."

There was a silence, a hesitant pause before he spoke again. "And now… you are lonely still?"

"Not so much," she replied honestly. "I have… you."

"Is that why you came here when you were upset?"

"I hoped you would come to me here, ange, for this is the place you have come to me most often. And you make me feel… less lonely."

"I am glad, Christine. I am glad."

That day seemed to have been a turning point in their relationship. After that, her angel would remark about something that Carlotta, or one of the other dancers, had done that day, and they would laugh or talk about it. He even teased her about her dislike of cats, beasts that he admitted to finding quite intriguing.

He still remained a disembodied voice, and he still made her practice hard, and did not accept excuses. His presence always sent little snaking shivers down her neck and spine, and his voice still raged or soothed… but she felt as though he'd begun to reveal more of himself to her. He seemed to know everything about her; she was grateful for any drop of knowledge revealed about him.

Christine realized now, as she lazed in the massive bed positioned in Erik's bedchamber, that those months of sharing their music and conversation had been the stepping-stones to what she felt now. Not just a physical relationship, but a deep, abiding connection that transcended what his hands and lips did to her, that made her feel more than a passion… that made her feel as if she knew him, understood him. As if he was the most important thing in her life.

She realized that she'd found what the beautiful woman she'd admired must have had: love and happiness, and no loneliness. But she wasn't wearing a beautiful gown. And she wasn't standing onstage in front of a roaring audience, bathed in the limelight.

She was underground, in the darkness, with her ange. And she loved him.

Over the next week, Christine and Erik lived together in his small house by the underground lake, like any other man and woman in love. Erik worked on Don Juan Triumphant, the opera he had been composing in stretches for years, and Christine sang when he asked her to.

She loved to look at his writing, the pages of melodic composition: scrawled black notes, in oblong shapes as if they'd been dashed on the paper with little thought. Barely legible lyrics, scratched on the large foolscap, lined up under the notes. He wrote in pulses: frenzied jotting and scratching, and then slow, arrogant, and easy printing.