Tristan and Isolde

"La Sorelli," he had said, only a voice sheltered deep within the black obscurity of the wing, "you are a beautiful dancer."

Nothing startled la Sorelli. In the whispering silence backstage, the Prima Ballerina adjusted the silk ribbons of her ballet-slippers about her narrow ankles, bent low at the waist with an aching foot outstretched before her. To her side, the heavy black velvet of the traveling curtain shivered about, illuminating Sorelli in a sort of glancing half-light that glittered in her black hair like a moonlit ocean and outlined the wet flesh of her too-wide lips. As she worked her strong muscles shown in proud relief upon the white regularity of her stockinged thighs, slender, dynamic, rising from beneath the many skirts of her dancing costume. Within that tulle cloud––like a bolt of silver lightning––was hidden Sorelli's little knife, the secret blade that never left her side.

Though she had heard the quiet words of the man behind her, Sorelli offered no indication and instead fixed her attention upon her other foot, to slowly point the toes forward and cross the ribbons in unhurried fingers. So too Sorelli ignored the murmurings of the living shadows in the flies above––those lithe-footed creatures in their webs high atop the proscenium saw all and revealed nothing––despite them, and the hundred skulking demons of the numberless trap-doors below, Sorelli and the stranger were quite alone.

Beyond the wings Carlotta Giudicelli thrust her arms wide in her usual rhapsodic pose––excessive as the maid Brangäne––and sang her supplication to her lady Isolde, with the boys of the ballet in a solemn chorus around her. Washed in the yellow incandescence of the stage-lights at the very center of that dramatic tableau, stood little Christine Daaé––the newfound cause célèbre of all Paris––as ethereal as any marble effigy in the Louvre. The former diva cast a distasteful eye upon her as she prepared to sing Isolde's final aria––the misunderstood masterpiece, the little death, the Liebestod.

Sorelli understood why la Carlotta regarded the girl as she did. Even now Christine Daaé bore the mien of an Angel cast to Earth in some divine confusion, as the electric spotlights conjured such a miraculous halo of her cascade of blond curls that its nidus appeared some extraordinary force within the little diva herself.

Sorelli liked the new Prima Donna well enough. As a chorus girl––when Sorelli still outranked her––Christine Daaé had always behaved shyly, dreamily, sweetly. She was timid and submissive, Sorelli knew, in truth. None who had known her in l'Academie could have anticipated her rise. She had been hardly suitable for more than the props department until only some months ago, when, remarkably, she had gone on in la Carlotta's stead as Marguerite in Faust. The performance was an impossible triumph, despite the night's rather unfortunate tragedy of a shattered chandelier.

With fame so little about the girl had changed. She was rarely seen save for rehearsals––vanishing for weeks at a time, it seemed––and when Sorelli did encounter her in the opera house, she could be made to say little, all the while blushing and lowering her blonde eyelashes, as if the effort of making even the mildest pleasantries was far more than she could bear. It was true she often had to be carried from the stage amid the audience's cheers, swooning as she did.

The girl was not designed for this kind of fame, Sorelli knew. It would demand too much of her. Take too much, as it had taken from her. Sorelli had been shy once, too.

But Christine Daaé did not engage with the world as others did. Even as the usher boys, in their black caps and blacker scowls, wrestled the passive diva a path to her dressing-room amid throngs of waiting admirers, or when the mob of screaming press from Le Monde, L'Epoque, La Gaulois––papers that hardly raised a pen in Sorelli's direction anymore, save for a scandal––hounded her upon the marble stair by the patron's gate, the girl fixed upon them all the same faraway look, her blue eyes distant, sad––as if she had eyes for something the rest could not hope to see. Her Isolde wore the same expression now upon the stage, as she folded atop the body of her dead lover and waited in venerable stillness for the start of her coming aria.

Even silent, Christine Daaé captured the breathless deference of her audience. Did she know, Sorelli wondered, that every eye in Paris was directed only at her?

Time had not been so kind to the Prima Ballerina. Sorelli would not be needed on stage for twenty-two minutes, and even then only to take her final bow. Still, no other dancer was permitted one. The rest of her little rats waited now in her dressing room, tittering and sighing, and sipping glasses of port until their cheeks glowed pink with the excitement of it. Only children, the Liebestod was lost on them. Sorelli preferred to listen alone.

Like so many other faceless shadows in the wings, the third act had drawn her here before. She knew its temptations well. As if the deepest parts of her were laid bare upon the stage, this music understood her secrets––it translated her truth in rapturous sounds, summoning her to it, demanding her willing submission in return for the honor of its regard. Music was not always kind, but this music forgave her. How Sorelli longed to dance to it now––with her black hair wild and honest about her shoulders, and her feet bare to feel the vibration of the stage––

It would seem the Liebestod had drawn this gentleman too.

Sorelli took a long moment to finish her task and righted herself slowly, allowing the complementary stranger an unhurried view of her curves as she worked at her feet.

"Good evening, Monsieur," she said softly, when at last she had stood.

He regarded her from the shadows, ankles crossed easily as he leaned aside the rolling platform of a merchant ship from act one. As he tipped a tall hat, his pale kid-leather gloves refracted the yellow luminance of the stage-lights such that they stood out from the whole of him like living things––and though she could not see his face, she found his dark silhouette well–appointed enough, in a black velvet opera cloak and evening-clothes au courant. Sorelli had an eye for a man with means. She thought the gentleman worthy of her regard, at least until she learned his title.

And likely in this darkness, with the penumbric glow of the stage behind her, the gentleman could see little of Sorelli either.

"Good evening, Mademoiselle," he echoed, and the sound coaxed an enticing frisson from deep within her skull. She shivered. In just the few syllables he had so-far uttered she could hear it, the tremulous, aching potential of that throat––this gentleman spoke with no common voice.

Sorelli might have been only a dancer, but she understood music. She felt it as few others could. It pulsed in an insatiable symphony within her, in clangorous passions and serene sweetness, conforming her heartbeat to its own such that her very soul thrummed in time with it, and nothing existed but the irresistible hold of music. It manipulated her every muscle, her every breath with its sensuousness, moiling and seething beneath her flesh, until Sorelli was but a marionette to its supernatural direction, her legs and arms and spine dancing at the ends of its strings. But in domination the music offered freedom––for none would ever love Sorelli as ardently as it.

The music was her secret master, but it could not pay her bills. In the waking world, she must live as any danseuse would.

Sorelli offered her admirer a a closed-lip smile and a demure dip of her chin. With a gracious flourish of her many tulle skirts, she curtseyed just low enough to grant him the favor of an extra inch of her thigh, in thanks for his consideration.

"Might you come forward for a better view, Monsieur?" she asked, with a meaningful gesture that could have indicated the stage beyond the whispering curtain, or Sorelli herself.

Sorelli behaved boldly, with men. She had learnt early that she must, to keep the independence that she did. She had won the favor of the Comte de Chagny, two Chevaliers, and countless others in this way. Rich men, powerful men, men with secrets. If she desired it, Sorelli could win them all.

They came to see her dance, to watch in enthrall as she spun her spider's legs in a delirious web about the stage, her black hair shimmering like too-deep water beneath the hundred electric lights––for la Sorelli danced like no other. They thought her a woman unbound, unrestrained, untouchable––la Sorelli, the unholy servant of the music. La Sorelli, the pagan dancer. La Sorelli, a devil, a witch. She knew they were only afraid. For when they watched Sorelli dance, she let the music own them too.

They liked to think of her at night, as they slept beside their taintless wives in their warm feather beds. With flowers, gifts, and sugared words, they would solicit her dressing-room after the ballet, in the dark shadows of the wings, in the secluded garret behind her flat––all in the hope that they might find her alone. Sometimes, they did.

No matter how sweet their whispers, Sorelli knew, they wanted only to see her long fingers wrung about their milk-pink cocks.

As a girl they had taken what they wanted of her. They promised fame and love, and delivered never. Once she had allowed them to make her the creature that she was; they taught her how to submit to them, to satisfy them––and so they taught her how to control them. With their lies they sought to cast her beneath them––but Sorelli knew she was higher, higher than their insults and their cruelty, higher than their groping fingers and their biting cocks––higher still than the triumphant arches of their private boxes, higher, higher, higher still than the even the marble walls of their lavish prisons––

She was born in a windowless flat off the Rue Saint-Denis; now she kept a house on the right bank, with a carriage, a doorman and a cook. She paid the bill with a thousand pretty necklaces, all silver and diamond and pearl that sat lifeless upon her olive flesh and wasted the fire in her raven's eyes. She replaced each one with another of sunlit gold, blood red and moonlit blue, and wore them proudly, knowing what had been the cost.

She took lovers like a man took lovers, and when she had tired of them they would revile her, scorn her. So quickly, their sweet words would sour. Let them claim that the witch had enchanted them––Sorelli cared little for their empty compliments, and even less for their shame. She needed nothing from them she could not find in the next man to knock upon her dressing-room door, the next man to capture her hand in a dark corner of these marble halls.

No man could know her like the music knew her. Long ago, Sorelli had ceased to look for him.

She had the music of the Palais Garnier––and she would dance upon its stage, beneath its burning lights, until they cast her from it––for when la Sorelli danced, she wore no chains.

Now, in the honest shadows beneath the flies, as the gentleman disregarded her invitation, Sorelli could not shake the feeling that he was somehow different than the others. She could not place a finger upon it. Absently, she pressed a palm atop her skirts to feel the biting security of the little knife there, as again, in his disarmingly tuneful voice, the gentleman spoke.

"You are truly a gift to this theatre, Mademoiselle," he said seriously.

Sorelli never blushed. Compliments were easy to come by, when there was something to be gained by those who gave them. She gave a nod. "Thank you, Monsieur."

Beyond the wings la Carlotta reached the wailing climax of Brangäne's pleading confession, as the orchestra swelled in resounding competition. Dryly, said the gentleman, with a restive drumming of his pale fingertips, "there are far too many here who are undeserving of its stage."

When Sorelli gave no reply, the gentleman cleared his throat.

"In truth I have not come to see it until late," he continued, "I will admit that I once found you stilted, and much too unusual in appearance to head the ballet. Purely for aesthetics, you understand. You are all bones and teeth. Your mouth is overlarge, and you are far too thin––well, I'm sure you know. It is jarring, is it not, when one of a choir stands out from the rest?"

"Of course," Sorelli answered flatly, anticipating further insult. She crossed her arms before her and blew a soft snort through her nostrils, as the gentleman carried on, unbothered.

"––and certainly in Coppélia your dancing was deplorable––simply nothing redeeming about that one at all––ah, a comedy indeed! But I'm sure you would agree––"

"I do not know you, Monsieur," she interrupted silkily, "but if you have come only to insult me, I'm afraid you'll have no satisfaction, as your opinion matters little to me. I have never sought your regard, nor do I intend to."

The gentleman gave a short cough at her asperity. "Oh," he stammered, "oh––I meant no insult, truly it was not my intention––"

"I cannot see how you could have intended anything otherwise," she said, and turned about to glance once again through the curtains toward the stage.

"Mademoiselle, please…"

When she would not turn he continued.

"In Coppélia the fault was with the choreography, not with you. It was a shame to see your talents so wasted in what was little more than a cheap vaudeville. You are better than that, surely you must know it. I am doing my part to have you better featured in future––in the roles you deserve––La Sylphide, perhaps, yes––Giselle––"

Sorelli turned again to glare in his shadowed direction, crossing her arms about her breast.

"La Sorelli, I know you feel it. You dance like nothing I have ever seen before. You understand the music like no one else, and these fools cannot grasp what they have in you––"

Now Sorelli caught the winking of ivory leather as his long-fingered hand trailed lazily atop a brass set-piece beside him.

"They call you a witch, did you know? But I know you are not––or if you are, you are a sorceress, my dear––I have seen you dance in secret, la Sorelli. It is beautiful to behold. As if the music moved through you only, as if you were the music itself––"

"Monsieur," Sorelli breathed, for a lack of something else. Her arms dropped limply to her sides.

"La Sorelli, la Sorelli," he hummed like a melody. "You are magnificent in your strangeness."

Even blind, Sorelli could feel his gaze upon her. An unfamiliar tickling of heat warmed her ears.

"I do not know you as you apparently know me, Monsieur," she said softly, after a moment, "but if you would come out from the shadows there, I would thank you properly for your gracious kindness."

"Any compliment you receive, you deserve, la Sorelli," the gentleman returned seriously, apparently deaf to her protective sarcasm, and without acceding her request. "I hope you will trust that I never say such things lightly."

"Then I will think it an honor, Monsieur," she breathed, and a secret part of her wanted to believe it.

The gentleman sighed.

In a corner of her vision Sorelli caught the silent closing of a shadowed trap-door; ignoring it, she peered into the blind dark before her. "Tell me, then, if you will not show yourself––who are you, who thinks his opinion of such import?"

The white gloves spread before the shadowed figure in an existential gesture. "Just a patron of the Opera, I'm afraid."

She might have stepped forward; she might have captured his arm, and pulled him to her––to call it a jest, and laugh as he kissed her behind the curtain. If this gentleman were like the rest, she might have. Instead, she crossed her arms before her.

"Well, tell me you love me and be done with it, then," she said lightly, and tapped a slippered foot in feigned impatience.

"I do not love you, Mademoiselle," he said gravely, with some alarm. "If you have misunderstood me––"

"I know, Monsieur," she interrupted, speaking shortly to mask her embarrassment. "It was a joke."

"A joke," he echoed. "Strange, to make light of love."

"Ah, but I am strange, am I not? You have said it yourself," Sorelli breathed, to the gentleman's continued silence, "well? Do you seek me out only to offer your unusual compliments, and your distaste?"

"Not distaste, la Sorelli. But there is another, you see––"

She did not need to know. Already the music called to her––she had little time for gainless distractions. Interrupting, Sorelli asked, "then what is your purpose, Monsieur?"

"Ah, yes, yes…" he stammered, "of course. Indeed there is something––"

Sorelli took a halting step toward the sound of the voice, which had, until that moment, spoken with such measured intention. The corners of her too-wide mouth curled upwards in a knowing expression. Like music, this she understood.

"And, Monsieur?"

"I have seen––well, I know––you are an independent woman and I respect you for it––"

He straightened his hat with a stilted gesture. Sorelli gave a low hum of encouragement; she tipped her jaw to the side and traced a long arch upon the floor between them with a pointed foot. As she neared him, the gentleman took a shuffling step backwards; then, in consideration of his apparent urge to flee, she paused where she stood with her linen fingertips coiling about each other upon the base of her spine.

Now the gentleman ceased his retreat, cleared his throat and removed his hat entirely to vanish upon the center of him, his pale fingers spread and clutching upon all sides of it as he caressed absently at its silken brim.

"Ah," he tried.

For all the graceless words in that lyric throat, Sorelli rather liked this nervous stranger. Nervous was rarely threatening. Not never, but rare. And what was life without the risk?

"Monsieur, you have my attention…but do tell me before the Liebestod begins, or tell me after if you must," she teased, "I am rather fond of the piece."

"Yes, and I as well, I'm afraid," he muttered, with a spin of his hat in the region of what must have been his lower abdomen. "No, no––it must be now or not at all––" Then as if his own actions had unnerved him he gave a stunted sound and placed the hat carefully upon the prow of the prop-ship aside him.

His pale gloves dissolved completely into darkness. For a moment he fell silent, and Sorelli could almost feel the intensity with which he listened to the unseen action upon the stage.

In the expectant stillness beyond the curtain, Carolus Fonta's Marke mourned his last upon the body of his dear Tristan, as the quiet universe backstage echoed with the culmination of his remorse––

My dearest friend, must you even today betray my love?

"Ah," repeated the gentleman, his attention once again focused upon Sorelli, "well. So it is nearly time." She heard a sound like the shuffling of feet. "See, I'd like to propose a––a transaction of sorts, my dear, if you would be amenable––"

Today, when I avow you my deepest faith?

"I could give something to you, Mademoiselle, that I believe you will desire greatly," he said softly, "if in return you might give something, of yours… to me." The gentleman snorted a sharp inhale, spread the fingers of one hand wide atop the prop-ship to stroke the wooden curve of its prow. "Might you be interested?"

In my madness I bring myself only more distress––

Sorelli raised a dark eyebrow. "And what is it that you desire, Monsieur?"

In misfortune's impetuous haste, I increase the harvest of Death!

He cleared his throat with a canorous exhale. Two white fists flanked his dark thighs just behind the fluttering shadow of his wide opera cloak. For an instant more, only a beat––as if his very breaths were timed to the lamented wailings of the strings, the metallic thunderings of the hundred horns as they resounded in the pit beneath them––the gentleman considered her. Then, as his pale fingers curled into knots upon the shadowed fabric of his trouser legs, he breathed, slowly:

"Turn around, if you please, la Sorelli––and I will make myself plain."

She liked the hypnotic timbre of his voice as he spoke her name. She liked his earnest words. For tonight, it was enough.

Sorelli turned.

"Right––yes. Good, good, my dear," said the gentleman, on a heavy inhale. Then, gravely, "you must not turn round, do you understand?"

"Yes, Monsieur," Sorelli breathed, into the dark.

For a long moment she waited in restive silence, her heartbeat thrumming in alertness as she peered at the stage through the narrow opening in the curtain. Marke had retreated to a corner to gaze rapturously upon Isolde. Prostrate at center-stage little Christine Daaé groveled and clutched and caressed at her dead Tristan, her radiant head bowed atop his chest as she sobbed her false tears. Around them the orchestra crashed and roared in sensual waves––and Sorelli knew, the whole of her audience wept alongside her.

Perhaps the strange gentleman wept too. For again Sorelli sensed his fixation like a current, not on her before him, but for the sound that wove and spun about the wings in sightless symphony, as he listened in enthrall until the rest in the score––and then the enchantment was broken, and Sorelli took the breath she had not realized she had swallowed, as the gentleman turned his intention again to her.

A precipitous rustling of fabric, and he was upon her. He captured her hips in his impatient grasp. In his eagerness he impelled her forward such that her body nearly split the curtain wide––Sorelli gasped, stumbled, and caught herself just before she toppled through the rippling velvet and onto the stage.

"Monsieur!" she protested, half-heartedly, with a tremulous laugh; as soon as she had, he gripped her thighs with two flat palms to draw her roughly back against him.

Sorelli was no fool. She could feel him––the desirous, ready heat of him––firm upon the soft flesh of her rear. He dragged a heavy palm along the side of her hip to stroke a meaningful caress atop her many layers of tulle skirts, warping and crushing the stiff fabric. Senselessly Sorelli bent forward into the demand of his touch as he folded upon her, his searching fingers sliding past her low belly in its corseted restraints and down, deep into the warm crux of her groin.

"Do you understand me, Mademoiselle?" he breathed into her ear, as the seductive heat of his lip brushed her skin.

She exhaled softly, rocking her hips provocatively atop his. She twisted her head to guide his mouth to her neck. "Perhaps, Monsieur," she teased, as he drew his hot tongue over her throat to trace the path of the quivering muscle beneath, "but what have I to gain for your pleasure? Though sweet, your compliments alone are not enough to buy me."

"I am a wealthy man, la Sorelli," said the gentleman. "I hold a great deal of influence." His palm wormed deep into the hot valley of her closed thighs, crushing her skirts between her legs as he sought the soft places. Despite the layers of gossamer fabric his long middle finger dug between the plush lips of her sex; she writhed into his hold and exhaled an eager groan as he found the humming nub of her clit.

"You might benefit from my favor," he continued, as he rubbed slow circles upon the sensitive flesh. Sorelli writhed into the heated promise of his impatient shaft and gave a wordless groan in reply.

Still working between her legs, he drew an arm about her to extend his hand before her vision. In his open palm, silhouetted against the white leather of his glove, lay coiled the most opulent necklace Sorelli had ever seen up close––an enormous sapphire crowned in golden filigree and set with thousands of sparkling rubies, in a graduated celestia of blue and red-pink and gold along the chain. Another house, two, in itself. No man would value her so high. Did he not know he could have her for much less than this?

Sorelli stared at the thing, transfixed. Behind her the gentleman gave a little hum, as if to acknowledge her own unspoken approval.

"Yes?" he breathed, tilting his hand such that the many stones glittered about the back of the traveling curtain and danced upon Sorelli's twilit flesh, and were consumed within the black shadows of the wings.

"Yes, Monsieur." Her heartbeat thrummed a barline in her chest.

"But you will not turn around," he added seriously, as his fingers curled in a loose fist around the necklace.

"If you wish, Monsieur."

Someone important, mused Sorelli, as his eager lips brushed her throat. Or someone very ugly. In truth it mattered little, not with gifts like these. She had seen enough grunting, sweating, red faces––above her, beneath her, behind, with screwed-up eyes and open, panting mouths––to know that if she closed her eyes, they would all feel the same inside.

The gentleman drew the flat of his hand in a long caress from her ear to shoulder, as the dangling necklace still crushed in his palm licked meaningfully against her bare flesh. Impatient, he ground his hips into hers as his other hand worked between her thighs.

"Later, then––eleven o'clock––Monsieur," Sorelli managed between breathless gasps, timed to his skilled caresses, "I shall expect you––tonight, in my dressing-room?"

Behind her the gentleman stilled; his fingers ceased in their intoxicating assault. "No, my dear," he growled wetly in her ear, then with a last feral thrusting of his hips, such that Sorelli felt the hard flesh of his cock like another dagger upon her rear, "now."

"Now?"

"Right now."

Sorelli glanced into the penumbra of the parted curtain, toward the glowing universe out upon the stage. In only a moment Isolde would begin her final aria. In the pit beneath them the orchestra swelled with its first long, lamenting notes. Christine Daaé relinquished the corpse of her Tristan to stand in ready silence. Now her captive audience held its breath, awaiting without understanding the coming rush of irresistible music, the euphonious climax they all would share––

"But surely not right here?" Sorelli protested, even as her eyelids fluttered in pleasure and she groaned into the sting of his teeth grazing her jaw, "I take my bow in only a few moments––Monsieur––later, please––"

Still clutching the dangling necklace against her shoulder, the gentleman raised his hand to draw it again up above her head, to glitter pendulously just beyond her reach.

"You only have to bear it until the end of the Liebestod, my dear. But it will have to be right here," he said, hastily, and she heard the whispered gruffness that had crept into his voice, "right now."

Whatever he might offer her, she would not miss her bow. She gave no reply.

"La Sorelli, please..." he added at her hesitation, "please." He let the necklace lie limply in his palm before her, as if to invite her taking it from him.

He was so very unlike the others. Why would this gentleman beg Sorelli, when he could afford to buy any woman in France? She might have been convinced to do it for free.

But he had offered payment and she could not refuse it. She would not live in a slum again. "Yes, yes––all right––quickly," Sorelli sighed, and caught the glittering bauble as it dropped heavily into her palm. She tucked the thing securely into her bodice between her small breasts, with an extra tap atop the fabric––just to be sure––as the gentleman followed her movements, dragging a leather finger along the mounding flesh.

Now he captured her about the hips to wordlessly urge her sideways; she followed his wooden instruction with a stumbling step. He shuffled her square between the curtain's narrow opening such that she could see the whole of the stage unobstructed. Sorelli knew, the gentleman could see it too.

But she found the idea of capture exciting, besides. Exhaling headily, Sorelli bent low before him.

She recognized the familiar rustling of hands upon fabric as he flustered with his trouser buttons behind her. Taking advantage of his momentary distraction––and doing her best to hasten the process–– Sorelli reached around to inelegantly gather her own skirts in two fists and toss the tulle mass up over the shelf of her rear. On the stage just in front of her eyes Christine Daaé raised her arms in exaltation to begin, triumphant, the Liebestod––

Look!

As all of Paris held its breath––

How softly and gently he smiles, how knowingly, his eyes open!

"Do not turn around," repeated the gentleman, to the sighing accompaniment of his own dropping trousers. Folded before him with her arms crossed easily upon her lowered chest, Sorelli shrugged her indifference and fixed her gaze upon the stage, as her body prepared to listen.

Can you see it?

Sorelli could just make out the shape of a man between the whispering curtains of the opposite wing, as motionless, he too watched the stage. The Vicomte de Chagny––dear Philippe's kid brother, Sorelli mused, as the gentleman behind her palmed the exposed flesh of her rear––regarded Christine Daaé with the zealous absorption of one completely, hopelessly, desperately in love. The young Vicomte held a bare palm to his parted lips, his manicured fingers absently stroking at the short hairs of his boy's moustache, as he stared, punch-drunkenly, at the illuminated Prima Donna as if he could see nothing else.

How he glows ever brighter, raising himself high amidst the stars?

As Christine Daaé sang, rapturously unaware, the stunned Vicomte stepped mindlessly through the curtain to stand in flustered attention upon the far side of the stage. Ardent tears spilled from the boy's red-rimmed eyes and were forgotten as they stained the fine wool of his evening-jacket. No attempt was made to stop the Vicomte––lost in their own delirious rapture, none in the audience would think to note the moonstruck aristocrat, passionately misplaced within the mise-en-scène.

How his heart swells with courage, gushing full and majestic in his breast?

With an urgency that sent Sorelli tottering pendulously upon her feet, the gentleman started upon the gusseted crotch of her short dancing-bloomers, prodding clumsily between her thighs to worry the small buttons, as the occasional frustrated grunt flavored his heavy breathing. Sorelli shifted about on her feet––turning her hips this way and that, parting her legs to assist his agitated fingers––and wondering lightly if the man so inexpertly unfastening her drawers (she might have helped him to it if he weren't so restive) was of any political import, or simply another manufacturer like the one of the droves of coach-builders who were so queerly attached to her. An aristocrat might give her a certain personal satisfaction––but with gemstones like that, Sorelli mused, this gentleman was likely yet another of the nouveau riche, though she could hardly complain. She might do well with a few extra thumbs. Perhaps she could even hire a valet, as a man of means would do.

Sorelli watched Christine Daaé upon the stage as the gentleman grunted in his work behind her. The hot tip of his nodding cock rubbed wetly upon the back of her thigh, just above the special garter that held her little silver knife.

Do I alone hear his melody, lamenting delights, revealing all things?

As soon as he had her drawers unfastened, Sorelli cried out and clapped a palm atop her mouth, for the gentleman immediately thrust several fingers deep within her cunt.

So wondrously and gently sounding from within him, piercing and penetrating me!

"Are you wet for me already, la Sorelli?" he growled approvingly behind her, "I know it never takes you long." He slid his sodden fingers over the eager length of her sex; she shuddered into his touch with a strangled whine and bit at her hand upon her lips.

"Like sugar," he added, and Sorelli heard the unmistakeable sucking sound of his fingers in his mouth.

Then, with little preamble, the gentleman gripped her hips and with a long, low groan, guided the hot length of his cock inside Sorelli. She buckled forward with her jaw clenched taut over a stoic grunt, and clasped both her thighs in white-fingered fists to keep from toppling through the shivering curtain and onto the stage.

How it swells, how it billows all around me! Shall I choose to hear him, shall I listen?

With a laudatory hum the gentleman dragged a heavy palm up her spine––Sorelli imagined the ivory leather atop the nearly-bare flesh of her back and trembled––to hold her to him by the soft flesh at the base of her throat, as the pads of his strong fingers pushed hard into the skin just beneath her collarbone. With his other hand pinned to the front of her hip below her belly, he drove her upon him urgently, roughly, his hot shaft sloughing in and in and in to beat upon the pulsing core inside of her, as Sorelli, groaning, breathless, closed her eyes to yield pliantly to his control, to this stranger's fucking of her, again, again, again, again––

Shall I sip and plunge beneath?

Alight at center stage, as even la Carlotta froze in discomposed enchantment, Christine Daaé thrust her arms out wide to cast her light upon her slavish audience. Sorelli felt their collective inhale in worship of their white goddess––now the sobbing Vicomte buckled and fell senseless to his knees––as behind Sorelli, the gentleman growled throatily and dug his leather fingers deeper into her sweating flesh––

Shall I breathe my last among his sweetness?

Sorelli opened her eyes to see Christine Daaé, surrounded by the dead and kneeling, turn about on the stage to make her tortured return to the lifeless Tristan, the prostrate Vicomte invisible to her gaze––all the while pouring from her golden throat those sirenic notes that felt too, too much like Sorelli's own pounding heartbeat, Sorelli's own humming blood, Sorelli's own throbbing sex––

And the gentleman caromed his sticking cock inside her, grunting, thrusting, driving her upon him over and over again to the immodest crescendo of the Liebestod––to the carnal rhythm of Isolde's aria he fucked her, faster, faster, harder, harder, as if he sought its crazed climax alongside it, alongside her––as senselessly, Sorelli groped now between her thighs to maul her own screaming clit with two sweating fingers, desperate for release from that all-consuming music, until it was only the music behind her, only the music that fucked her––

In the heaving surge, in the resonating sound!

But now little Christine Daaé was staring through the narrow slice in the velvet curtain, staring knowingly at Sorelli, above Sorelli, behind Sorelli––staring even as she sang, staring––not blinking!––even as she moaned the final ecstasies of Isolde's little death for the entire audience to witness––

Lost in the enchanting universe of the spirit underground

Trying not to cry out, Sorelli met the girl's discomfiting gaze even as shameless heat exploded in wet ecstasy between her thighs; her fingers slackened upon her sex as she groaned her shivering gratification into a palm crushed to her lips. Panting, spent, Sorelli slumped against the hard plane of the gentleman's shaking chest as he grunted his every breath behind her, insensible to her sliding feet or the soft licking of velvet at her shoulders, or the slick slap slap slapping as he rutted her nearly out onto the stage––

Let me drown now in it, be engulfed, unconscious, void of all thought

And behind her Sorelli heard him, ragged, groaning out the little diva's name––

The highest bliss!

Christine Daaé collapsed to the floor, Isolde sated and dead upon the body of her Tristan, as the gentleman gripped her naked hips in his white gloves and shuddered his own rasping climax inside Sorelli.

The curtain fell to thunderous applause, as in the electric blaze beneath the proscenium arch Christine Daaé panted half-crazed atop her lover. Tears streamed down the girls face, staining her pink cheeks with ruddy trails as still she stared into the wings, and the Vicomte de Chagny in his corner lay crumpled dementedly upon the stage with his blonde head in his arms.

Sensing now that the gentleman was spent, Sorelli shifted against him to raise her head, but his palm met her spine between the shoulders to firmly press her down again.

"Stay. Just another moment, my dear," he said gently, without relenting his hold.

Bent forward, Sorelli clasped her hands upon her trembling thighs and watched the little Prima Donna stare, stare, stare––as if nothing else existed on the stage but what Christine Daaé saw in that shivering red slit in the curtain only just above Sorelli's bowed head.

And then the curtain re-opened as the audience stood and cheered. They cried with ecstatic abandon and littered the stage with a thousand flowers. Now Christine Daaé turned to face them, throwing her arms out high and resplendent, as the gentleman gave a shuddering sob behind Sorelli––and then the spell was broken, for the dead and kneeling actors lifted their entranced faces and rose unsteadily to their feet, and the prostrate Vicomte was ushered away in delirium, blinking serenely, by the scene-changers who came to clear the way.

Backstage the shadows bustled to life with the hum of a thousand sedulous murmurings––the wheeling of carts and lighting of lamps, indifferent in their work to the familiar scenes of so many half-undressed danseuses panting upon the cocks of disordered patrons in the blind obscurity behind the stage.

"Monsieur," breathed Sorelli, from beneath the gentleman's hand, "the curtain, please––"

"Yes, yes, my dear––of course––" he said, raggedly, then with a backward step released her. Just another anonymous shade behind the curtain, Sorelli stood quickly, turned about, and reached between her thighs to fasten the row of silvery buttons upon her dancing-bloomers; she adjusted the silver knife in its girdle upon her thigh, smoothed her stockings about her knees and straightened to neaten her layers of skirts as they fell about her legs. She pressed a hand atop her bodice between her breasts and smiled to feel the hard edges of the treasure there.

"Thank you, Mademoiselle," said the gentleman, standing before her.

"It's nothing, Monsieur," she breathed, distracted, as she slid her palms atop her hair to smooth the black tendrils that curled about her face.

"No––it is not," he said, as his gloved fingers caught round her wrist, "thank you, la Sorelli."

At the earnestness of his tone, Sorelli paused in her reordering to raise her gaze to his. She froze, frowned––ah––ugly, then, she understood––for the gentleman bore the head of corpse on his shoulders, or appeared as if he did, so deadly was his countenance. Pallid, sunken, grey––his translucent skin stretched taut atop the bone like oil-tanned leather on a drum, as every vein pulsed black and purple underneath. In the queer shininess of its construction, Sorelli recognized a false nose, and wondered how the gentleman might have come to lose it.

Sorelli sighed, and raised a mindless palm to stroke the distorted flesh––

His yellow eyes, somehow ablaze in so much shadow, widened, narrowed, then closed.

It might have been an attractive face, angular and masculine, if not for the deformity like a dark mask atop the flesh. It might have been a beautiful face.

As soon as her fingertips brushed the skin, the gentleman had already released her to retreat, again half-hidden, to the shadows of the wings.

On an exhale Sorelli turned to clutch the curtain's edge and peer between the partition at the stage, carpeted in flowers and gifts for Christine Daaé; she glanced back at the silent gentleman, whom for the pale dancing of his white gloves appeared to be hastily fastening his trouser buttons.

"Will I see you again, Monsieur?" she asked, between hurried glances at the stage.

The hands paused in a discomposed gesture before dropping to his sides. "You are not frightened?" the gentleman answered softly, after a moment, and in the sensuous voice Sorelli could hear a weariness she had not heard before.

"Why should I be?" she said dismissively, adding, "shall I expect you soon?"

"If it would be agreeable to you, Mademoiselle," he said, and Sorelli thought he sounded surprised to say it.

Again, she glanced through the curtain toward the brilliant thunder just beyond its shivering fabric, and turned again to the private darkness within. With both hands upon the curtain, she rose to her pointed toes, floating like an enchanted thing between the worlds of the stage and the wing––

"Yes, Monsieur," breathed Sorelli, and throwing the bewildered shadow her most exhilarating smile, added, "I will wait for you on Saturday next, when Christine Daaé sings Marguerite."

And with a laugh like so many bells, la Sorelli danced out upon the stage, to take her bow amid the blazing fire beneath the proscenium arch, atop the many piles of flowers and gifts, to the singing gratification of all Paris at her feet.

A/N: Tristan and Isolde is a dramatic opera by Wagner, a tragedy of two star-crossed lovers (Erik and Christine? or perhaps, Erik and Sorelli?)

While at first thought obscene and overwrought, the score is now considered responsible for the popular shift from technical to sensual operatics. The Liebestod, the final aria by Isolde, is a metaphoric yet obvious orgasm with her lover, the climactic moment of which is marked by her death. It was publicly received as the sort of music that would, indeed, "make one lose all their pretty coloring," and unfortunately, was not performed in Paris for some time after Wagner's death.

The erotic masterpiece was often credited as indecent, spawning groups that sought to ban it, and alongside them, faithful "Wagnerians", who, so moved by its emotional and sensual depths, attended its performances in masturbatory hordes. After first hearing it, there were many reports of people crying, fainting, and losing sleep in the thrall of it.* Performers were shamed for singing it, as were the venues that held them. Those who reviled it often believed it to be the work of the Devil, so seductive and enthralling was its score (perhaps they liked it a little too much?)

From the diary of Clara Shuman, wife of the composer Robert Shuman:

"It was the most repulsive thing I have ever seen or heard in my life. To be forced to see and listen to such sexual frenzy the whole evening, in which every feeling of decency is violated and by which not just the public but even musicians seem to be enchanted––"

From the letters of the conductor, Walter Bruno:

"So there I sat in the uppermost gallery of the Berlin Opera House and from the first entry of the cello my heart contracted in spasms... Never before had my soul been deluged with such floods of sound and passion, never before had my heart been consumed by such suffering and yearning, by such holy bliss, never before had such heavenly transfiguration transported me away from reality... [A]fterwards I wandered aimlessly in the streets—when I got home, I recounted nothing and asked not to be questioned. My ecstasy sang further within me through half the night, and when I awoke the next morning I knew that my life had changed."

From :

"Though it is erotic, it is decidedly not a hearts and flowers sort of piece, but instead concentrates on the hell of unquenched desire, which can only be resolved—to tormented Wagner—in death... The music drama ends spectacularly with a full-on, real-time musical representation of orgasm, from the first stirrings of arousal to climax and post-coital recovery. It still blows my mind that he got away with it. It works as high art or, I can testify, like porn."

Well, if that doesn't sound like something Erik would be into...

I have replicated the actual score of the Liebestod here, from three translations of the original German. Those familiar with it may note some alterations––I admit, I have made my own edits to suit the needs of the story, but only a few.

The "pagan ballerina" theme refers to Fanny Elssler, with her contrast to the "Christian ballerina" at the time, Marie Taglioni. Elssler is remembered as a dancer of sensual and impassioned style, whilst dancers of the age were often judged by technical ability, rather than emotionality. Her personal life and romances made her a household name. La Sylphide is considered one of her triumphs.

The cover image is of Anna Pavlova, who died for her art.

Yes, I have used the Liebestod in two stories in a row, but as "Erik" was written as I wrote this one, and I am a big nerd, I hope you'll forgive me.

*Thanks to Wagner Tripping, for fueling what was already a love of mine, and also, for this line.

As always, reviews are greatly appreciated!