(Actually forgot all about this one. Shortly after reading the novel I felt compelled to write something related to it, but from Christine's point of view. Should I continue this or leave as is? I DON'T KNOW! )
“Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping... waiting... and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir... open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us... guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love... the clarity of hatred... the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we'd be truly dead.”
The Wizard King – french folktale
She will never know just how he chose her, out of all of them.
There were twenty other girls in the ballet corp. All malnourished, pale with observant, hungry eyes. Nobody with a clear path, other than learning to stand on pointe, drawing up your body by strings which were never cut, never free.
Maybe he heard her singing at mass, at the tiny altar in the rooms below the belly of the opera. Maybe he had grown tired enough of the silence, and wanted a friend. The two things his soul was driven by, and yet he could never seem to grasp it seemed, even after so many years. And he could never reconcile these pieces of him, never find a compromise between both.
But that was how it started.
How she began hearing the knocks through the walls of this place, way past her bedtime in the dormatories. Singing in the night, hymns she’d learned from the church – only his voice was remarkable, transcendent. She’d lay awake, unable to sleep until he stopped. His voice calling out to her at night.
Then she would hear the voice during the day, when she was alone, separate from the others.
It was just like the start of so many stories her father used to tell her, of tricksters lurking between the cracks in the walls, ghosts in the attic who refuse to keep silent.
He would ask her about her day, and she would tell him, without thinking that it was anything strange. Little Lotte was fond of fairytale creatures, and maybe this voice belonged to such a thing. He’d tell her strange stories too. Of places she’d never been, of hot deserts and the people who lived underneath its sun. He would tell her all of this, and she would listen.
The voice never came with a certain regularity – but she never heard it in the chapel.
As if he was forbidden from it, and knows it all too well.
*’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’***************************************’
The winter months came with diseases– small pox, tuberculosis. Even though they slept more than one girl per bed, there was no warmth to be had. By morning, the water in the wash basins next to the bedroom door had turned to ice, that had to be cracked and re-heated by delicate hands.
Several of them cough, then some of them stop during the night. By next morning, a bed would suddenly be vacant, cleaned out and sheets boiled.
Christine watched her friends disappear, crumple and wither like the leaves in autumn sun, like the dried bouquets hanging on the wall in the Primadonnas dressing room, which she’d seen once when helping Meg's mother carry clothes for the singer to wear the next day. She was told not to do it again, since her hands were too filthy for touching such finery as silk and fur coats.
This happens often with the younger girls – when the early dancing lessons and training is finished for the day, they are put to work around the opera house with various chores. Mostly cleaning, running errands. This is how Christine finds herself in charge of cleaning the music room.
It is only one of many others in the building, just big enough for a grand piano, a few chairs and wall-to-wall mirrors. It is a disconcerting room, but only because she is unaccostumed to see her own face looking back at her, the only light coming from her lantern as she dusts the piano and washes the floor. Despite the shadows, despite how small and insignificant she is – he finds her.
His voice, unmistakably male always, always comes to her like a sudden intake of breath, a person who has been there all along, but only just now decided to speak. She is under the piano on her knees, her elbows raw and her hands red from the warm, soapy water.
”I thought I heard someone earlier today, was it you?”
”Maybe. I was on cleaning duty in the attic – I sang to chase the rats away from their hiding places.”
”Please. Show me what you sang. ”
Go on. His gentle encouragements, that voice that sounded so much like her father. She was sometimes convinced that it was him. No harm in singing for him, she thought. Perhaps, if I sing well enough, I will bring him back. That was her hope, even though she wasn’t really aware of it, and he knew it.
He knew, even then, what she wanted.
The lessons began soon after that.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Madame Giry, she believes at first, is a kind woman.
Someone who looks after them all, the girls who have no last names but on the stage, they are part of something with a bigger name. Always cool in the face of difficulties, illnesses and sobbing girls too tired to go on, their feet cracked and bleeding. Not that it happens often anymore, they are past that point now.
They float now like the gemini sisters in the sky, have learned how to reach beyond everything else but the steps, the flow of movement.
But the Madame, always looking out for her in the back of the room – is also looking at her with something other than maternal sentiment. It is a considering look, detached.
It is her thirteenth birthday when, after a day of dancing, the Madame stops Christine on her way out from the training room, a rose in her outstretched fingers. It is a present, she explains.
”He thinks you are doing so well.” she tells the young girl, and while her voice is warm, her face is gaunt. Long shadows under her eyes, a resigned expression on her face. Some part of Christine understands, but she is happy.