Unmasked (5 page)

"Please, Erik. Let's at least go above. I
would have you sing for me again on the stage, like you did last
week."

His gaze never left the keys as he muttered
sardonically. "Is it spring already? Does Persephone long to escape
the underworld and return to the living?"

A frown creased my brow. "What do you
mean?"

His voice took on a razor-sharp edge. "I
mean, that if you want to leave, you are free to do so. Go back to
where you came from. I shan't stop you." He played on, oblivious to
my presence.

What brought on this attack? "Have I done
something wrong?" No answer. "Did I displease you?"

He was silent, but the tune he played became
a bit more sinister.

"Erik!" I placed my hand on a muscled
shoulder, its fabric taut with the width of him. His hand came up
and roughly shoved mine away. "What's wrong with you?” I
demanded.

His fists came down hard on the keyboard,
choking a strangled wail from the pipes. "I am not content to
worship you anymore. I want something more from you, something you
have not tried to give me. I told you once that unrequited love is
no love at all. I will not subject myself to that agony again. Not
for anyone. Not even for you."

He must have noticed my look of bewilderment,
for he went on. "Can't you see? I am suffocating with the need of
you. Every day that passes my love for you grows stronger. My
passion for you consumes me, until there is nothing left but
this…this ache inside me. It is like a thirst that only you can
quench. But you clearly do not feel as much for me.”

I was afraid of this. I knew this moment
would come, but I did not expect it so soon. Erik was mistaken. I
did love him, more than he could imagine. But he was asking the
impossible. I liked who I was around him, and how he made me feel.
I kept no secrets from him. But now he was asking something of me I
had no intention of sharing.

"Of course I feel it, Erik. I love you just
as much as you love me. But...” He stiffened at my hesitation.
"There are many different ways people demonstrate their love for
one another.”

"Then you do not love me as I love you. I
want to be one with you. I want there to be nothing between us. I
want to get deep inside you, so that we truly become two halves of
the same person. I want to please you and be pleased by you –"

"Yes, Erik," I interrupted. "I feel those
things, too."

"Then why do you cringe when I touch you? Why
do you seek to escape my embrace? Do you expect me to believe that
you love me?"

"I do love you,” I said, backing away towards
the door.

He advanced upon me like an animal about to
devour its prey. "You do not know the meaning of the word. Love
does not cower from the warmth of a hand. It does not run from the
passion in a kiss."

Yes, it does
, I thought.
Sometimes,
it does
.

"It seeks out these things. It dies if it is
not nourished by tenderness and affection. It feeds on itself."

“You don’t understand,” I stammered, nearly
stumbling as I retreated from his steely gaze.

“Make me understand.”

“Why must you be so discontented? Aren’t my
kisses enough?”

He snorted derisively. “You see a plant
drooping for lack of water and you think a few drops will sustain
it?”

How many times did I dream about this as a
child? How many fantasies did I have – as I sat in the dark,
one-room cottage where I sewed until my fingers nearly bled – where
a man would take me in his arms and demand my affection? But those
images didn't portray me as I really am. In those fantasies, I
didn't look they way I really did.

I was almost at the door. "I do love you.
Please believe me."

"Then prove it." He was upon me in a trice.
Seizing both my arms, he clasped me in a fierce embrace. His lips
came down hard upon mine, crushing them painfully against my teeth.
He had kissed me many times before, but never like this. His hands
lost their tenderness as they traveled over my clothes. I fought to
stay them.

There was untold ferocity in his affections
now, and a sharp pang of fear constricted my chest. He looked at
me. There was a hunger in his eyes, a bloodthirst that roused
dormant demons within him. The very eyes that I had admired for
their depths of feeling now showed me the extremes of his
carnality.

Erik was gone. The man before me was the
Phantom of the Opera.

On that impulse, I bolted. He bellowed after
me, but all I could hear was the voice inside my head.
Coward
,
coward
,
coward
. He was right.
Everything he said was true. How could I make him understand?

I turned the corner and crashed into his
imperious, black-clad figure. This blasted maze was his playground,
and he knew its passageways better than I did.

“Do you think you can fool me?”

I backed away from him, my heart hammering
wildly. I did not know what form his revenge would take.

He approached me with catlike stealth. “Do
you think me so dull-witted that I cannot see what you are
doing?”

“Erik, please…” I begged, not certain what it
was I was asking.

“I have endured pain far beyond your
imagination. There is not a thought in your head or an ache in your
heart that I haven’t had a thousand times over.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he said with an air of superiority,
“that I can read your sentiments as clearly as if you had
articulated them to me, which you obviously can’t. You run from
me,” he said, with strained patience, “because you have convinced
yourself that you are damned to suffer a loveless existence.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, hiding a
twinge of vulnerability.

“It is not my disfigurement that alarms you,
but your own.”

“You can’t understand,” I insisted, even as I
cursed his perspicacity. “I just feel that the time isn’t
right.”

“Liar,” he said in a tone that reminded that
this was not something I wanted to be found guilty of in his
eyes.

“It’s different with you. You cannot know
what it is like to be me.”

He laughed mirthlessly, folding his arms
across his chest. “By all means, my downy young chick, pray explain
to me what it is like to live with a physical deformity. I’m all
attention.”

His sarcasm angered me. “This body is my
prison. I can do nothing to escape it.”

“Your argument is compelling. Do carry
on.”

Now he was mocking me, and it made me
furious. “At least I did not build a prison. I did not dig myself a
hole and bury myself in it.”

The barb deflected off him. “This,” he said,
waving his arms around him, “is a world of my own choosing. It is
not a prison others set for me. Can you not see the difference? You
submit yourself to their idea of beauty, then condemn yourself for
failing to achieve that false perfection.”

“What do you expect? If a woman is berated
for an ugly bonnet, or for sporting an unflattering color, that is
easily remedied. But if she is ridiculed for being heavy, what can
she do? It is like…being punished for the color of the sky.”

“My point exactly.”

“What else is there to do?”

His voice rose. “Rage against it. Refuse to
accept the limitations of
civilized
society. You can do that
here. The moment you fell into the lagoon, you were baptized into
my world. Here there is no prejudice, no judgment. Where light
defines, darkness liberates.”

He was right. Here, in this place, to live
among the soiled and smelly vermin is preferable to confronting the
scorn of people. Out there, life was more a burden than a prize.
Liberation. Yes, I desired that. Liberation from my own
solitude.

“The contempt you feel for yourself is a
palpable thing, and it is between us always. Let it go.”

Let it go? I was the monster in this
scenario, the one with the deformity which loathed to be touched. I
saw myself as the opera director saw me, as Monsieur Frenet saw me,
as Madame Bouchard saw me.

Hideous.

I turned away from him. “How can you ask me
to share my body with you when it’s so…so…” I couldn’t finish.

His strong, warm hands on my shoulders
offered reassurance. “Release your shame, and it shall release you.
It is the only thing standing in the way of your happiness. And
mine.”

But in this Erik was wrong. It wasn’t my
shame that kept us apart. It was fear. Although I was apprehensive
about the actual act of sex, it was as nothing to my fear of his
repugnance. What if my body disgusted him? What if I aroused his
charity, but not his ardor? What if his heart really yearned for
Christine? I was drowning in a tumultuous sea of what-ifs.

“Why are you trembling, chérie? Are you
afraid I will hurt you?”

“No.”

“What are you afraid of?”

I steeled my face, staving off the tears I
knew would come. “Of losing you.”

He turned me around to face him. “Oh, chérie.
How can you lose me? Do you not trust my love for you?”

I couldn’t help it; I felt heavier than I
ever had before. Why hadn’t I listened to my Grand-mère? Why hadn’t
I taken care not to eat so much? The millions of taunts I had heard
throughout my life assaulted me all at once, and I buckled under
the weight of them.

“Yes, but I am gross and misshapen. I cannot
expect such sacrifice from you.”

I heard him laugh. “Sacrifice? There is no
such thing between us. Your figure, my face – we are both Nature’s
fools. Join with me, chérie, and our love shall avenge us against
the evil that made us outcasts.”

I let his words wash over me. I so wanted to
believe him. But what we had built thus far together was too
precious to jeopardize. Even if there was a chance of greater
happiness with Erik, I would not take it. I would rather live in a
purgatory of what we had right now than risk a hell without
him.

“Marry me,” he said.

Though it did nothing to solve my dilemma,
marrying Erik was the natural response to my heart’s affection. I
said yes.

In characteristic fashion, Erik made all the
arrangements that very hour. Later that night, we took a carriage
ride to a house in a fashionable district, where we were married by
a magistrate at three o’clock in the morning. I finally got to see
Paris by night, but only briefly; we were back at the opera long
before the sun came up.

Some may find scandalous the haste and
simplicity of our wedding, but I do not. The truth be told, I did
not often indulge in fantasies about my wedding as most girls do. I
did not expect I should ever be married, so I had no expectations
to disappoint.

Now that it was done, however, I was
thrilled. Not merely to be a bride, as most women want; thrilled to
be
his
bride. But looming over my happiness was the
ever-present fear of the wedding night. The fact that Erik was now
my husband only increased what I stood to lose.

He led me to his bedroom. He was being very
gentle, seducing me with words and soft kisses. But I was
preoccupied with remembering each kiss, each whisper, each touch of
his hand, as though it would be the last. It was maddening to
prolong the inevitable, but I was desperate to enjoy what little
happiness remained.

When his fingers tried to unhook my bodice, a
cold dread smothered me. “Wait,” I breathed, frantic for a way out.
“Before we go on, grant me one concession, I pray you.”

I looked about the room. There was an
antimacassar draped across the back of the chair in his bedroom,
and I took the fabric and rolled it up. I went to Erik, and raised
the blindfold to his eyes.

As I formed the knot behind his head, he
stopped me.

“This will not do,” he said, unfastening the
blindfold and discarding it on the floor.

“It is the only price I ask,” I
protested.

“Yes,” he said ruefully, “but it is not the
only debt owed.”

Amazed, I watched as he reached up behind his
head, and tugged on the cord that held his mask in place. The ties
fell on either side of the mask, but he held it firmly against his
face with both hands.

He stood there, his breathing growing more
erratic, unable to release it. He did not look at me, but I could
see that his courage was failing him. I reached out and gently put
my fingertips on both of his trembling hands.

Slowly, the mask fell away.

My heart nearly broke with pity.

Where there should have been skin, a gnarled,
warped membrane stretched over his face, like the decayed flesh on
a person long dead. Its unnatural colors of gray, yellow and pink
bled together, like a watercolor painting left out in the rain.
Instead of eyebrows, he had bony protrusions like the hoods over a
snake’s eyes. And no nose. He had no nose.

Poor, poor Erik. I could only imagine the
kinds of taunts he endured when he was nothing but a helpless
child. No one should be subjected to live with that abortion of
flesh for a face. What accident of nature or man could have
inflicted such suffering? Whatever it was, it spewed its fiery rage
at Erik’s face, leaving him with only his beautiful eyes and
perfect mouth to show that he was ever human.

Now I understood. No one who saw him could
help being horrified.

Except me.

I knew him too well to fear him, loved him
too much to cringe in disgust. Instinctively, I reached out my hand
to one distorted cheek, unconsciously wanting to smooth away the
disfigurement. His head jerked back, as terrified of the touch as
an ill-treated dog.

“It’s all right,” I cooed, speaking to the
frightened cur in him. Reluctantly, he stood his ground. My hand
neared, and he began to shake, his breaths coming in long, labored
draws, as though he was bracing for impending torture. His eyes
closed against me.