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PART II 5 page

aloud. But I did not reach for him, I would not. Then I remember seeing Lestat's figure emerge in

the mirror over the sideboard. 'Why did you do this!' he demanded. I turned to face him,

determined he would not see me in this weakened state. The old man was delirious, he went on,

he could not understand what the old man was saying. 'The slaves, they know... you must go to

the cabins and keep watch,' I managed to say to him. 'I'll care for the old man.'

" 'Kill him,' Lestat said.

" 'Are you mad!' I answered. 'He's your father!'

" 'I know he's my father!' said Lestat. 'That's why you have to kill him. I can't kill him! If I could, I would have done it a long time ago, damn him!' He wrung his hands. 'We've got to get out of

here. And look what you've done killing this one. There's no time to lose. His wife will be

wailing up here in minutes... or she'll send someone worse!"'

The vampire sighed. "This was all true. Lestat was right. I could hear the slaves gathering around Daniel's cottage, waiting for him. Daniel had been brave enough to come into the haunted house

alone. When he didn't return, the slaves would panic, become a mob. I told Lestat to calm them,

to use all his power as a white master over them and not to alarm them with horror, and then I

went into the bedroom and shut the door. I had then another shock in a night of shocks. Because

I'd never seen Lestat's father as he was then.

"He was sitting up now, leaning forward, talking to Lestat, begging Lestat to answer him, telling him he understood his bitterness better than Lestat did himself. And he was a living corpse.

Nothing animated his sunken body but a fierce will: hence, his eyes for their gleam were all the

more sunken in his skull, and his lips in their trembling made his old yellowed mouth more

horrible. I sat at the foot of the bed, and, suffering to see him so, I gave him my hand. I cannot

tell you how much his appearance had shaken me. For when I bring death, it is swift and

consciousless, leaving the victim as if in enchanted sleep. But this was the slow decay, the body

refusing to surrender to the vampire of time which had sucked upon it for years on end. 'Lestat,'

he said. 'Just for once, don't be hard with me. Just for once, be for me the boy you were. My son.'

He said this over and over, the words, 'My son, my son'; and then he said something I could not

hear about innocence and innocence destroyed. But I could see that he was not out of his mind,

as Lestat thought, but in some terrible state of lucidity. The burden of the past was on him with

full force; and the present, which was only death, which he fought with all his will, could do

nothing to soften that burden. But I knew I might deceive him if I used all my skill, and, bending

close to him now, I whispered the word, 'Father.' It was not Lestat's voice, it was mine, a soft

whisper. But he calmed at once and I thought then he might die. But he held my hand as if he



were being pulled under by dark ocean waves and I alone could save him. He talked now of

some country teacher, a name garbled, who. found in Lestat a brilliant pupil and begged to take

him to a monastery for an education. He cursed himself for bringing Lestat home, for burning his

books. 'You must forgive me, Lestat,' he cried.

"I pressed his hand tightly, hoping this might do for some answer, but he repeated this again.

'You have it all to live for, but you are as cold and brutal as I was then with the work always

there and the cold and hunger! Lestat, you must remember. You were the gentlest of them all!

God will forgive me if you forgive me.'

"Well, at that moment, the real Esau came through the door. I gestured for quiet, but he wouldn't see that. So I had to get up quickly so the father wouldn't hear his voice from a distance. The

slaves had run from him. 'But they're out there, they're gathered in the dark. I hear them,' said

Lestat. And then he glared at the old man. 'Kill him, Louis!' he said to me, his voice touched with

the first pleading I'd ever heard in it. Then he bit down in rage. 'Do it!'

" 'Lean over that pillow and tell him you forgive him all, forgive him for taking you out of school when you were a boy! Tell him that now.'

" 'For what!' Lestat grimaced, so that his face looked like a skull. 'Taking me out of school!' He threw up his hands and let out a terrible roar of desperation. 'Damn him! Kill him!' he said.

" 'No!' I said. 'You forgive him. Or you kill him yourself. Go on. Kill your own father.'

"The old man begged to be told what we were saying. He called out, 'Son, son,' and Lestat

danced like the maddened Rumpelstiltskin about to put his foot through the floor. I went to the

lace curtains. I could see and hear the slaves surrounding the house of Pointe du Lac, forms

woven in the shadows, drawing near. 'You were Joseph among your brothers,' the old man said.

'The best of them, but how was I to know? It was when you were gone I knew, when all those

years passed and they could offer me no comfort, no solace. And then you came back to me and

took me from the farm, but it wasn't you. It wasn't the same boy.'

"I turned on Lestat now and veritably dragged him towards the bed. Never had I seen him so

weak, and at the same time enraged. He shook me off and then knelt down near the pillow,

glowering at me. I stood resolute, and whispered, 'Forgive!'

"It's all right, Father. You must rest easy. I hold nothing against you," he said, his voice thin and strained over his anger.

"The old man turned on the pillow, murmuring something soft with relief, but Lestat was already

gone. He stopped short in the doorway, his hands over his ears. 'They're coming!' he whispered;

and then, turning just so he could see me, he said, 'Take him. For God's sake.'

"The old man never even knew what happened. He never awoke from his stupor. I bled him just

enough, opening the gash so he would then die without feeding my dark passion. That thought I

couldn't bear. I knew now it wouldn't matter if the body was found in this manner, because I had

had enough of Pointe du Lac and Lestat and all this identity of Pointe du Lac's prosperous

master. I would torch the house, and turn to the wealth I'd held under many names, safe for just

such a moment.

"Meantime, Lestat was after the slaves. He would leave such-ruin and death behind him no one

could make a story of that night at Pointe du Lac, and I went with him. As before, his ferocity

was mysterious, but now I bared my fangs on the humans who fled from me, my steady advance

overcoming their clumsy, pathetic speed as the veil of death descended, or the veil of madness.

The power and the proof of the vampire was incontestable, so that the slaves scattered in all

directions. And it was I who ran back up the steps to put the torch to Pointe du Lac.

"Lestat came bounding after me. 'What are you doing!' he shouted. 'Are you mad!' But there was

no way to putout the flames. 'They're gone and you're destroying it, all of it.' He turned round

and round in the magnificent parlor, amid his fragile splendor. 'Get your coffin out. You have

three hours till dawn!' I said. The house was a funeral pyre."

"Could the fire have hurt you?" asked the boy.

"Most definitely!" said the vampire.

"Did you go back to the oratory? Was it safe?"

"No. Not at all. Some fifty-five slaves were scattered around the grounds. Many of them would

not have desired the life of a runaway and would most certainly go right to Freniere or south to

the Bel Jardin plantation down river. I had no intention of staying there that night. But there was

little time to go anywhere else."

"The woman, Babette!" said the boy.

The vampire smiled. "Yes, I went to Babette. She lived now at Freniere with her young husband.

I had enough time to load my coffin into the carriage and go to her."

"But what about Lestat?"

The vampire sighed. "Lestat went with me. It was his intention to go on to New Orleans, and he

was trying to persuade me to do just that. But when he saw I meant to hide at Freniere, he opted

for that also. We might not have ever made it to New Orleans. It was growing light. Not so that

mortal eyes would have seen it, but Lestat and I could see it.

"Now, as for Babette, I had visited her once again. As I told you, she had scandalized the coast by remaining alone on the plantation without a man in the house, without even an older woman.

Babette's greatest problem was that she might succeed financially only to suffer the isolation of

social ostracism. She had such a sensibility that wealth itself mean nothing to her; family, a

line... this meant something to Babette. Though she was able to hold the plantation together, the

scandal was wearing on her. She was giving up inside. I came to her one night in the garden. Not

permitting her to look on me, I told her in a most gentle voice that I was the same person she'd

seen before. That I knew of her life and her suffering. 'Don't expect people to understand it,' I

told her. 'They are fools. They want you to retire because of your brother's death. They would

use your life as if it were merely oil for a proper lamp. You must defy them, but you must defy

them with purity and confidence.' She was listening all the while in silence. I told her she was to

give a ball for a cause. And the cause to be religious. She might pick a convent in New Orleans,

any one, and plan for a philanthropic ball. She would invite her deceased mother's dearest friends

to be chaperones and she would do all of this with perfect confidence. Above all, perfect

confidence. It was confidence and purity which were all-important.

"Well, Babette thought this to be a stroke of genius. 'I don't know what you are, and you will not tell me,' she said. (This was true, I would not.) 'But I can only think that you are an angel.' And

she begged to see my face. That is, she begged in the manner of such people as Babette, who are

not given to truly begging anyone for anything. Not that Babette was proud. She was simply

strong and honest, which in most cases makes begging... I see you want to ask me a question."

The vampire stopped.

"Oh, no," said the boy, who had meant to hide it.

"But you mustn't be afraid to ask me anything. If I held something too close..." And when the vampire said this his face darkened for an instant. He frowned, and as his brows drew together a

small well appeared in the flesh of his forehead over his left brow, as though someone had

pressed it with a finger. It gave him a peculiar look of deep distress. "If I held something too close for you to ask about it, I would not bring it up in the first place," he said.

The boy found himself staring at the vampire's eyes, at the eyelashes which were fine black wires

in the tender flesh of the lids.

"Ask me," he said to the boy.

"Babette, the way you speak of her," said the boy. "As if your feeling was special."

"Did I give you the impression I could not feel?" asked the vampire.

"No, not at all. Obviously you felt for the old man. You stayed to comfort him when you were in

danger. And what you felt for young Freniere when Lestat wanted to kill him... all this you

explained. But I was wondering... did you have a special feeling for Babette? Was it feeling for

Babette all along that caused you to protect Freniere?"

"You mean love," said the vampire. "Why do you hesitate to say it?"

"Because you spoke of detachment," said the boy.

" Do you think that angels are detached?" asked the vampire.

The boy thought for a moment. "Yes," he said.

"But aren't angels capable of love?" asked the vampire. "Don't angels gaze upon the face of God with complete love?"

The boy thought for a moment. "Love or adoration," he said.

"What is the difference?" asked the vampire thoughtfully. "What is the difference?" It was clearly not a riddle for the boy. He was asking himself. "Angels feel love, and pride... the pride of The Fall... and hatred. The strong overpowering emotions of detached persons in whom

emotion and will are one," he said finally. He stared at the table now, as though he were thinking this over, was not entirely satisfied with it. "I had for Babette... a strong feeling. It is not the strongest I've ever known for a human being." He looked up at the boy. "But it was very strong.

Babette was to me in her own way an ideal human being."

He shifted in his chair, the cape moving softly about him, and turned his face to the windows.

The boy bent forward and checked the tape. Then he took another cassette from his brief case

and, begging the vampire's pardon, fitted it into place, "I'm afraid I did ask something too

personal. I didn't mean..." he said anxiously to the vampire.

"You asked nothing of the sort," said the vampire, looking at him suddenly. "It is a question right to the point. I feel love, and I felt some measure of love for Babette, though not the greatest love

I've ever felt. It was foreshadowed in Babette.

"To return to my story, Babette's charity ball was a success and her re-entry in social life assured by it. Her money generously underwrote any doubts in the minds of her suitors' families, and she

married. On summer nights, I used to visit her, never letting her see me or know that I was there.

I came to see that she was happy, and seeing her happy I felt a happiness as the result.

"And to Babette I came now with Lestat. He would have killed the Frenieres long ago if I hadn't

stopped him, and he thought now that was what I meant to do. 'And what peace would that

bring?' I asked. 'You call me the idiot, and you've been the idiot all along. Do you think I don't

know why you made me a vampire? You couldn't live by yourself, you couldn't manage even the

simplest things. For years now, I've managed everything while you sat about making a pretense

of superiority. There's nothing left for you to tell me about life. I have no need of you and no use

for you. It's you who need me, and if you touch but one of the Freniere slaves, I'll get rid of you.

It will be a battle between us, and I needn't point out to you I have more wit to fare better in my

little finger than you in your entire frame. Do as I say.'

"Well, this startled him, though it shouldn't have; and he protested he had much to tell me, of

things and types of people I might kill who would cause sudden death and places in the world I

must never go and so forth and so on, nonsense that I could hardly endure. But I had no time for

him. The overseer's lights were lit at Freniere; he was trying to quell the excitement of the

runaway slaves and his own. And the fire of Pointe du Lac could be seen still against the sky.

Babette was dressed and attending to business, having sent carriages to Pointe du Lac and slaves

to help fight the blaze. The frightened runaways were kept away from the others, and at that

point no one regarded their stories as any more than slave foolishness. Babette knew something

dreadful had happened and suspected murder, never the supernatural. She was in the study

making a note of the fire in the plantation diary when I found her. It was almost morning. I had

only a few minutes to convince her she must help. I spoke to her at first, refusing to let her turn

around, and calmly she listened. I told her I must have a room for the night, to rest. 'I've never

brought you harm. I ask you now for a key, and your promise that no one will try to enter that

room until tonight. Then I'll tell you all.' I was nearly desperate now. The sky was paling. Lestat

was yards off in the orchard with the coffins. 'But why have you come to me tonight?' she asked.

'And why not to you?' I replied. 'Did I not help you at the very moment when you most needed

guidance, when you alone stood strong among those who are dependent and weak? Did I not

twice offer you good counsel? And haven't I watched over your happiness ever since?' I could

see the figure of Lestat at the window. He was in a panic. 'Give me the key to a room. Let no one

come near it till nightfall. I swear to you I would never bring you harm.' 'And if I don't... if I

believe you come from the devil!' s he said now, and meant to turn her head. I reached for the

candle and put it out. She saw me standing with my back to the graying windows. 'If you don't,

and if you believe me to be the devil, I shall die.' I said. 'Give me the key. I could kill you now if I chose, do you see?' And now I moved close to her and showed myself to her more completely,

so that she gasped and drew back, holding to the arm of her chair. 'But I would not. I would die

rather than kill you. I will die if you don't give me such a key as I ask.'

"It was accomplished. What she thought, I don't know. But she gave me one of the ground-floor

storage rooms where wine was aged, and I am sure she saw Lestat and me bringing the coffins. I

not only locked the door but barricaded it.

"Lestat was up the next evening when I awoke."

"Then she kept her word."

"Yes. Only she had gone a step further. She had not only respected our locked door; she had

locked it again from without."

"And the stories of the slaves... she'd heard them."

"Yes, she had. Lestat was the first to discover we were locked in, however. He became furious.

He had planned to get to New Orleans as fast as possible. He was now completely suspicious of

me. 'I only needed you as long as my father lived,' he said, desperately trying to find some

opening somewhere. The place was a dungeon.

" 'Now I won't put up with anything from you, I warn you.' He didn't even wish to turn his back

on me. I sat there straining to hear voices in the rooms above, wishing that he would shut up, not

wishing to confide for a moment my feeling for Babette or my hopes.

"I was also thinking something else. You ask me about feeling and detachment. One of its

aspects, detachment with feeling, I should say, is that you can think of two things at the same

time. You can think that you are not safe and may die, and you can think of something very

abstract and remote. And this was definitely so with me. I was thinking at that moment,

wordlessly and rather deeply, how sublime friendship between Lestat and me might have been;

how few impediments to it there would have been, and how much to be shared. Perhaps it was

the closeness of Babette which caused me to feel it, for how could I truly ever come to know

Babette, except, of course, through the one final way; to take her life, to become one with her in

an embrace of death when my soul would become one with my heart and nourished with it. But

my soul wanted to know Babette without my need to kill, without robbing her of every breath of

life, every drop of blood. But Lestat, how we might have known each other, had he been a man

of character, a man of even a little thought. The old man's words came back to me; Lestat a

brilliant pupil, a lover of books that had been burned. I knew only the Lestat who sneered at my

library, called it a pile of dust, ridiculed relentlessly my reading, my meditations.

"I became aware now that the house over our heads was quieting. Now and then feet moved and

the boards creaked and the light in the cracks of the boards gave a faint, uneven illumination. I

could see Lestat feeling along the brick walls, his hard enduring vampire face a twisted mask of

human frustration. I was confident we must part ways at once, that I must if necessary put an

ocean between us. And I realized that I'd tolerated him this long because of self-doubt. I'd fooled

myself into believing I stayed for the old man, and for my sister and her husband. But I stayed

with Lestat because I was afraid he did know essential secrets as a vampire which I could not

discover alone and, more important, because he was the only one of my kind whom I knew. He

had never told me how he had become a vampire or where I might find a single other member of

our kind. This troubled me greatly then, as much as it had for four years. I hated him and wanted

to leave him; yet could I leave him?

"Meantime, as all this passed through my thoughts, Lestat continued his diatribe: he didn't need me; he wasn't going to put up with anything, especially not any threat from the Frenieres. We

had to be ready when that door opened. 'Remember!' he said to the finally. 'Speed and strength;

they cannot match us in that. And fear. Remember always, to strike fear. Don't be sentimental

now! You'll cost us everything.'

" 'You wish to be on your own after this?' I asked him. I wanted him to say it. I did not have the courage. Or, rather, I did not know my own feelings.

" 'I want to get to New Orleans!' he said. 'I was simply warning you I don't need you. But to get out of here we need each other. You don't begin to know how to use your powers! You have no

innate sense of what you are! Use your persuasive powers with this woman if she comes. But if

she comes with others, then be prepared to act like what you are.'

" 'Which is what?' I asked him, because it had never seemed such a mystery to me as it did at that time. 'What am I?' He was openly disgusted. He threw up his hands.

" 'Be prepared...' he said, now baring his magnificent teeth, 'to kill!' He looked suddenly at the boards overhead. 'They're going to bed up there, do you hear them?' After a long silent time

during which Lestat paced and I sat there musing, plumbing my mind for what I might do or say

to Babette or, deeper still, for the answer to a harder question---what did I feel for Babette? After a long time, a light flared beneath the door. Lestat was poised to jump whoever should open it. It

was Babette alone and she entered with a lamp, not seeing Lestat, who stood behind her, but

looking directly at me.

"I had never seen her as she looked then; her hair was down for bed, a mass of dark waves

behind her white dressing gown; and her face was tight with worry and fear. This gave it a

feverish radiance and made her large brown eyes all the more huge. As I have told you, I loved

her strength and honesty, the greatness of her soul. And I did not feel passion for her as you

would feel it. But I found her more alluring than any woman I'd known in mortal life. Even in the

severe dressing gown, her arms and breasts were round and soft; and she seemed to me an

intriguing soul clothed in rich, mysterious flesh. I who am hard and spare and dedicated to a

purpose, felt drawn to her irresistibly; and, knowing it could only culminate in death, I turned

away from her at once, wondering if when she gazed into my eyes she found them dead and

soulless.

" 'You are the one who came to me before,' she said now, as if she hadn't been sure. 'And you are the owner of Pointe du Lac. You are!' I knew as she spoke that she must have heard the wildest

stories of last night, and there would be no convincing her of any lie. I had used my unnatural

appearance twice to reach her, to speak to her; I could not hide it or minimize it now.

" 'I mean you no harm.,' I said to her. 'I need only a carriage and horses... the horses I left last night in the pasture.' She didn't seem to hear my words; she drew closer, determined to catch me

in the circle of her light.

"And then I saw Lestat behind her, his shadow merging with her shadow on the brick wall; he

was anxious and dangerous. 'You will give me the carriage?' I insisted. She was looking at me

now, the lamp raised; and just when I meant to look away, I saw her face change. It went still,

blank, as if her soul were losing its consciousness. She closed her eyes and shook her head. It

occurred to me that I had somehow caused her to go into a trance without any effort on my part.

'What are you!' she whispered. 'You're from the devil. You were from the devil when you came

to me!'

" 'The devil!' I answered her. This distressed me more than I thought I could be distressed. If she believed this, then she would think my counsel bad; she would question herself. Her life was rich

and good, and I knew she mustn't do this. Like all strong people, she suffered always a measure

of loneliness; she was a marginal outsider, a secret infidel of a certain sort. And the balance by

which she lived might be upset if she were to question her own goodness. She stared at me with

undisguised horror. It was as if in horror she forgot her own vulnerable position. And now

Lestat, who was drawn to weakness like a parched man to water, grabbed her wrist, and she

screamed and dropped the lamp. The flames leaped in the splattered oil, and Lestat pulled her

backwards towards the open door. 'You get the carriage!' he said to her. 'Get it now, and the

horses. You are in mortal danger; don't talk of devils!'

"I stomped on the flames and went for Lestat, shouting at him to leave her. He had her by both

wrists, and she was furious. 'You'll rouse the house if you don't shut up!' he said to me. 'And I'll

kill her! Get the carriage... lead us. Talk to the stable boy!' he said to her, pushing her into the

open air..

"We moved slowly across the dark court, my distress almost unbearable, Lestat ahead of me; and

before us both Babette, who moved backwards, her eyes peering at us in the dark. Suddenly she

stopped. One dim light burned in the house above. 'I'll get you nothing!' she said. I reached for

Lestat's arm and told him I must handle this. 'She'll reveal us to everyone unless you let me talk

to her,' I whispered to him.

" 'Then get yourself in check,' he said disgustedly. 'Be strong. Don't quibble with her.'

" 'You go as I talk... go to the stables and get the carriage and the horses. But don't kill!' Whether he'd obey me or not I didn't know, but he darted away just as I stepped up to Babette. Her face

was a mixture of fury and resolution. She said, 'Get thee behind me, Satan.' And I stood there

before her then, speechless, just holding her in my glance as surely as she held me. If she could

hear Lestat in the night she gave no indication. Her hatred for me burned me like fire.

" 'Why do you say this to me?' I asked. 'Was the counsel I gave you. bad? Did I do you harm? I

came to help you, to give you strength. I thought only of you, when I had no need to think of you

at all.'

"She shook her head. 'But why, why do you talk to me like this?' she asked. 'I know what you've

done at Pointe du Lac; you've lived there like a devil! The slaves are wild with stories! All day

men have been on the river road on the wa y to Pointe du Lac; my husband was there! He saw the

house in ruins, the bodies of slaves throughout the orchards, the fields. What are you! Why do

you speak to me gently! What do you want of me?' She clung now to the pillars of the porch and

was backing slowly to the staircase. Something moved above in the lighted window.

" 'I cannot give you such answers now,' I said to her. 'Believe me when I tell you I came to you only to do you good. And would not have brought worry and care to you last night for anything,

had I the choice!' "

The vampire stopped.

The boy sat forward, his eyes wide. The vampire was frozen, staring off, lost in his thoughts, his

memory. And the boy looked down suddenly, as if this were the respectful thing to do. He

glanced again at the vampire and then away, his own face as distressed as the vampire's; and then


Date: 2015-02-03; view: 668


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