Through Phantom Eyes: Volume Five - Christine

by Theodora Bruns

“I’m sorry, Christine. I just know your nature and how you always see the very best in people to the point that you see no wrong. You’ve worked so hard to get where you are right now, and you deserve only the best. I don’t want to see you reduced once more to a common chorus girl in the arms of a common mortal, a mortal who doesn’t care enough about you to know what you’re about, who doesn’t know what you want most in life.

  “While you’re gone from here, try to remember that you deserve someone who truly cares about what you want—your music. That’s the only way you’ll be truly happy, and that’s what I want, for you to be happy. Please don’t forget that.”

  While running the medicated water over my wounds, she said softly, “I’ll remember.”

  I was watching her face as I made an even bigger mistake. “Keep your guard up, Christine. Don’t let that handsome, young fellow make you his Marguerite. He may only be after one thing.”

  She turned on me in a fury. “How dare you, Erik! Raoul is not like that, and he would never treat me that way. He’s a gentleman and a nobleman and he would never treat me with such low regard. He wouldn’t treat any woman that way.”

  She was furious by the time she’d finished her childhood sweetheart’s defense, and she was not that gentle as she dried my shoulder.

  Then she glared at me and hissed, “If anyone would play the role of Faust, my good monsieur, it would be you—not Raoul.”

  As soon as she finished rebuking me, she sank back on the divan. I don’t know if it was actually hearing her words out loud or seeing the expression in my eyes, but she sank back. I turned my face away from her, but I couldn’t be mad at her; she was right. If either of us had a reason to make a pact with the devil in order to win a beautiful woman, it would be me.

  She sat back up and placed the clean bandage over my shoulder, while I tried to soothe my hurt feelings. I told myself that it was my fault, and I never should have pitted myself against him. It was a stupid and careless move. I obviously still had a great deal to learn about proper decorum in a relationship, especially one that was three sided, and especially when I felt the way I did about my competition.

  She helped me put my shirt back on, and then, once again, was on her knees and buttoning my shirt.

  “I’m truly sorry, Christine. I never should have said that. Please forgive me.”

  She looked up at me and nodded. “I’m also sorry, Erik. What I said was uncalled for.”

  I watched her face as she finished the last button and then straightened my collar. Our eyes met and we stayed there for a few special moments before she again ran her palm against my unshaven cheek. Then she smiled. That silent and precious moment was repeated many times in the days ahead, and nearly every time I was thankful for the blanket that was folded over my lap.

  It was nearly three weeks before she felt I was well enough for her to leave. I was no longer coughing and the fever was gone. Even though it still hurt to do so, I could button my own shirt, bathe, and shave myself. With her tender and vigilant care, I was actually feeling good physically. I’d been to the doctor and he removed the stitches, telling me again that the care I was receiving was good for me and to keep my special lady friend around. Oh, how I wished I could, was my unspoken reply.

  The day came when it was decided the two weeks needed to start and the morning passed by us with our silent tongues and talkative eyes. She went into her room and picked up her cloak and satchel from her chair, and I groaned inside with anxious anticipation for what the days ahead might bring. With her cloak over her arm, she walked back into the drawing room and then looked toward my music room.

  “May I hear one more piece of your music before you take me back?”

  “Certainly, Christine. What would you like to hear?”

  “Anything, I don’t care,” she said softly.

  I followed her into my music room where she sat in the stuffed chair she liked the most. I sat at my piano and began playing the first thing that came to my mind, “One Beat,” but my heart wasn’t in it. I feared it would be the last piece I’d ever play for her, and my fingers lacked their inspiration.

  She listened for a few moments and then walked over to me, and, with an ever so faint frown on her perfect brow, she placed her hand on mine, releasing them from an impossible task. I looked up at her, and, as her eyes began to moisten, she looked into mine.

  “I’m sorry, Christine, my heart isn’t in it.”

  “I can tell, and I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you what you want to hear now, but I can’t, not and be honest to us both. I’m really trying to do what you ask of me. I know you want me to be 100 percent sure of my feelings. And, as yet, I’m not.”

  I closed my eyes, nodded, got to my feet, and took her cloak from her hands. Then, placing it around her shoulders, I paused with my hands on her shoulders for as long as I dared before releasing her. I had the door to the lake opened and waiting for her by the time she came out of the music room and joined me.

  It was extremely quiet on the ride to the dock, with only the sound of the pole in the water as we went. When we reached the spot on the stairs leading to the main floor where I usually left her, I paused and waited for any further word from her. As the clock ticked away, she only looked at me with eyes that were speaking volumes, but they weren’t speaking that one word I was waiting to hear.

  “The two weeks will end on the eighth of July,” I reminded her. “I’ll be in the audience, watching and listening. Then I’ll be in my home, waiting for your heart or my ring.” Again there was silence, and when I was at the end of my composure, I placed my fingers under her chin and whispered, “I’ll miss you, Christine.” I laid a kiss on top of her head and whispered again in her hair, “I love you.”

  I stood there with my lips in her hair, feeling her softness, smelling her fragrance, sensing her essence, listening to her breaths. She didn’t pull away; in fact, she put her arms around my back and laid her cheek against my chest. Then we stood there together in the silence. I knew that could be the last time I would hold her, and, from the way she was holding me, I sensed she felt the same. The precious moments ticked by, and, when I felt my eyes begin to fill with tears, I pulled away.

  Then, after kissing her fingers, I turned to leave, and she said, “Please take good care of yourself, Erik.”

  I looked back up at her, nodded, and answered, “I’ll do that for you, My Angel.”

  I then headed toward the dock and stayed there for a while. I looked out over the water and then back at the stairs, wondering what would return to me, her heart or my ring? I was sad and yet calm. If she gave me back my ring, it would break my heart in such a way that I knew it would never heal. My flesh had always healed from its wounds, but I knew my heart could never heal from her loss.

  On the positive side, I also knew I was prepared for whatever happened, and I felt I could go on without her if that was what she wanted. I loved her that much, and that love gave me the strength I knew I would need. She’d been honest with me from the beginning, and I drew strength from that knowledge. She could have tried to play me, but she never had. Her deep compassion was her strongest attribute, and I was counting on that quality to continue through to the end.

  Eventually, I entered my boat and started for home. I fought my tears and tried to fill the void she’d left me in with anger, but I was without it or anything else that was going to help. I stepped out of my boat and stood for a moment gazing out over the dark lake. Taking a deep breath, I thought, this is it, either the beginning of a wonderful dream with Christine as my wife or a closing curtain. Which will it be?

  If the curtain closed on me that time, then it would take from me all I’d come to love and cherish—My Angel—my Christine. As I watched the ripples in the water calm and the lake become still, I hoped I could survive with dignity the wave her presence in my life had started.

  I went inside and headed for my fireplace where I placed one outstretched hand on the mantle. I lowered my head and clo
sed my eyes, listening to the silence inside my home and inside my heart.

  Silence. The biggest part of my life I’d spent in silence, with only sounds of nature around me or my own voice or music. I’d learned to accept that and live a life that could be content with only those sounds, but Christine had entered my life and it would never be the same again.

  Right then, the sound of nothing around me was like a heavy weight that pressed down on my chest. I imagined it having a will of its own and that it was testing my endurance. I knew if I thought about the silence and what it represented, Christine’s absence, I could do something foolish. So I forced myself to think that I still had a chance to win her heart.

  I also knew I needed to keep myself busy; therefore, I concentrated on what the two weeks were for, to help Christine and me understand what was in her heart. My conscience had pricked me every time I read her diary in her dressing room, but, right then, that was the only way I could hear her thoughts.

  Over the years, I’d found that any private thoughts that flowed from the heart and off the end of a pen were truthful, whereas, public words that flowed from the heart and off the tongue were somehow distorted and twisted to please the ears. So reading her diary was a necessary tool to help me understand her private thoughts.

  I hadn’t read her diary since I’d brought her down to my home; in fact, I wasn’t sure she’d been writing in the one I bought her. Relief was the emotion I felt when I opened it and saw her immaculate writing. I took it to my chair in the drawing room, and, with a glass of brandy in my hand and uncertainty in my heart, I began reading.

  She’d started writing the first day she came down to me, and, with only a few exceptions, she wrote every day. She started by describing her fear after seeing my face and witnessing my insane anger. She actually thought she was going to die right then, and I felt horrible. I had to lay the diary down and gaze at the tapestry on the wall for a moment; then I also relived those harrowing moments. That fear surfaced off and on throughout the rest of her writings. She feared my temper more than anything else.

  She said her feelings for me were growing, but she couldn’t describe what those feelings were. She knew she loved Raoul, but how she felt for me was much different, so she didn’t think that feeling was love. What she felt for me was powerful, and she never wanted to leave my side. She described how she felt for her father and how similar her feelings for me were, that safe feeling.

  As the time passed, her feelings for me changed. She still had that safe feeling while in my company, and yet she had another fear that was growing. At times, she felt helpless in my company and only wanted to do my bidding. At other times, she was embarrassed about how she felt, such as when I gave her the onyx combs. She wanted me to make love to her, and she felt guilty because of those feelings.

  My jaw dropped, and I had to read that passage again to make sure I’d read it correctly. I even read it a third time. I couldn’t believe it. She was feeling exactly the same as I was feeling. I laid her diary on my lap and stared into the fire, frowning. She wasn’t teasing me, she wanted me, and my heart began racing.

  “If I’d only known,” I whispered.

  Then I relived those moments and realized it was best that I hadn’t known. It was hard enough to resist her without knowing she was feeling the same way. No telling what would have happened if we had shared our thoughts at that time. However, I couldn’t help but wonder, if I’d kissed her, where would we be? Maybe that would have solved everything.

  Knowing it was too late to do anything about it, I went back to reading. Then, what I read next brought out in me what Christine feared the most, my temper. It appeared that after I made her leave that day and left her on the stairs, she realized who she wanted to spend the rest of her life with—me. She said for the first time that she was 100 percent sure. She was on her way back down to tell me her decision when she met, who she called, the Persian on the stairs.

  I frowned and began grinding my teeth when she described how he warned her about me and my powers of seduction and persuasion—even hypnotism. He asked her enough probing questions to make her start to question her own feelings for me again. Therefore, she didn’t come back to me.

  At that time, I didn’t lay her diary down, I threw it across the room and charged to my feet. I stormed around my parlor, cursing Oded and his meddling. I threw my brandy glass, with the small amount of liquor left in it, into the fire, creating a minor explosion. How could he do that to me? If he were standing in front of me right then, I swear I would have strangled him. That meddling fool!

  I even started up the stairs, with his flat as my destination, but, thankfully, I came to my senses before I got very far. The damage had been done, and giving him a thrashing wouldn’t change anything. It would only make both of us unhappy. Eventually, I was back in my chair with Christine’s diary in my hands.

  The remaining part of her diary covered the time when I was shot and the days of my recuperation. Her fear for my life was great, as well as her fear of what she was feeling for me. But with the way I was talking about death and Raoul, her fear of something happening to him grew, along with her fear of my temper.

  She believed what I said about someone dying and she was tormented severely. She wrote about leaving Paris and disappearing so that there wouldn’t be any further confrontations between the two men in her life. But then she realized that if she disappeared, each of us would blame the other one, and there would still be the possibility of someone being killed.

  She felt trapped, with no way out and nowhere to turn. She couldn’t talk to either of us about it, since we both got angry quickly. It made me feel terrible to know she felt that way. I’d always wanted to be there for her to talk to, and yet, during such a traumatic time in her life, I wasn’t there for her. I wanted to go to her and comfort her, but, again, it was too late.

  There were a few times when she was trying to explain how she felt about me, but she couldn’t, so she scribbled out the writing and only wrote that it was a wonderful and powerful feeling.

  Once I was finished reading, I put her private thoughts back in her drawer and sat in my chair, digesting its contents. The strongest recurring theme through her writing was that of fear for all three players in that strange and unexpected tale of our encounter.

  It was easy for me to see then that she was telling both of us a version of the truth, but neither of us the entire truth about the way she really felt. Or perhaps she was just trying too hard to keep both of us happy, while being completely untrue to herself. I then wished I’d read her diary sooner and maybe I could have helped her through her thoughts.

  I felt sorry for her during that time of personal struggle, for hadn’t I done the same thing in my past when I tried to hide what I was feeling in order to protect my father from the truth? It’s hard enough to tell yourself the truth when it’s a subject you don’t want to think about, much less be truthful with another person when their heart is lying open and unprotected in your hands.

  I didn’t sleep at all that night. I only stared at the ceiling wondering what Christine was thinking about. It was almost morning when I realized that, during the time she’d been there with me, I nearly always slept well, and my nightmares were few and relatively mild. Doctor Leglise was right. She was good for me in so many ways.

  Forty-Three

  I began my day early, knowing I’d be returning to my old ways of watching Christine’s every move, or, should I say, listening to her every thought. I was up the street from Madame Valerius’ home in a brougham, watching the sunrise. I felt both gladness and sadness when I saw another brougham pull up and Christine come out of the house and enter it. She went straight to the opera house and then straight to her room. I was behind the mirror and watching as she entered and leaned back against the door, looking at the mirror.

  “Are you here, Erik?” she asked softly.

  It was difficult, but I didn’t respond. Then she lowered her eyes, lowered her head, an
d covered her face with her hands. She remained there for a few moments, and when she raised her head again, there were tears streaking down her cheeks.

  I pressed my teeth together to prevent my heart from speaking to her and telling her not to cry. I wanted to tell her I was always there for her, but I had to see this through. She had to understand what she was feeling, and, as painful as it was going to be for both of us, it was necessary.

  She wiped the tears from her cheeks as she walked to her dressing table and sat down. Then she took out her diary. She wrote a few pages, and, after replacing her diary in the drawer, got up and started unbuttoning the bodice of her dress. I was about to turn and leave, giving her privacy, when she suddenly stopped, turned, and looked at the mirror. She squinted in thought, and then picked up her rehearsal clothing and went behind the curtain.

  I smiled. Even though I hadn’t answered her, and I’d told her I would stay down in my home for that two weeks, she wasn’t certain I wasn’t there. For some strange reason, that made me feel good, causing me to shake my head and smile even broader. She would never again undress in front of a mirror.

  She went to rehearsals, came back and changed, and then sat at her dressing table, straightening her drawers for some time. Once she had them the way she wanted them, she started rearranging the top of the table.

  She picked up the vase containing the dead roses and started across the room to throw them in a basket, but then she stopped and went back to her table. She took a handkerchief out of her drawer and spread it out on top of the table. She then cut the long stems off and laid the roses on the handkerchief.

  She ran her fingers over them for a few moments before she folded the edges of the handkerchief over them, and then she placed them in the back of her diary. She closed it and held it to her chest, gazing at the mirror, I believe thinking about their history. Once more, I saw tears appear in her eyes, and my vision also started to blur.

  That poetically sad yet beautiful moment ended when someone bounded into the room—Raoul. She smiled at him and then gently put her diary back into her drawer. By then Raoul was on one knee in front of her.