PART II 10 page

condition of life itself. I could hear a vague mingling of sounds now, which meant he had entered

the carriage way, that he would soon be on the back stairs. And I thought of what I always felt

when I heard him coming, a vague anxiety, a vague need. And then the thought of being free of

him forever rushed over me like water I'd forgotten, waves and waves of cool water. I was

standing now, whispering to her that he was coming.

" 'I know,' she smiled. 'I heard him when he turned the far corner.'

" 'But he'll never let us leave,' I whispered, though I'd caught the implication of her words; her vampire sense was keen. She stood en garde magnificently. 'But you don't know him if you think

he'll let us leave,' I said to her, alarmed at her self-confidence. 'He will not let us go.'

"And she, still smiling, said, 'Oh... really?' "

"It was agreed then to make plans. At once. The following night my agent came with his usual

complaints about doing business by the light of one wretched candle and took my explicit orders

for an ocean crossing. Claudia and I would go to Europe, on the first available ship, regardless of

what port we had to settle for. And paramount was that an important chest be shipped with us, a

chest which might have to be fetched carefully from our house during the day and put on board,

not in the freight but in our cabin. And then there were arrangements for Lestat. I had planned to

leave him the rents for several shops and town houses and a small construction company

operating in the Faubourg Marigny. I put my signature to these things readily. I wanted to buy

our freedom: to convince Lestat we wanted only to take a trip together and that he could remain

in the style to which he was accustomed; he would have his own money and need come to me for

nothing. For all these years, I'd kept him dependent on me. Of course, he demanded his funds

from me as if I were merely his banker, and thanked me with the most acrimonious words at his

command; but he loathed his dependence. I hoped to deflect his suspicion by playing to his

greed. And, convinced that he could read any emotion in my face, I was more than fearful. I did

not believe it would be possible to escape him. Do you understand what that means? I acted as

though I believed it, but I did not.

"Claudia, meantime, was flirting with disaster, her equanimity overwhelming to me as she read

her vampire books and asked Lestat questions. She remained undisturbed by his caustic

outbursts, sometimes asking the same question over and over again in different ways and

carefully considering what little information he might let escape in spite of himself. 'What

vampire made you what you are?' she asked, without looking up from her book and keeping her

lids lowered under his onslaught. 'Why do you never talk about him?' she went on, as if his fierce

objections were thin air. She seemed immune to his irritation.

" 'You're greedy, both of you!' he said the next night as he paced back and forth in the dark of the center of the room, turning a vengeful eye on Claudia, who was fitted into her corner, in the

circle of her candle flame, her books in stacks about her. 'Immortality is not enough for you! No,

you would look the Gift Horse of God in the mouth! I could offer it to any man out there in the

street and he would jump for it...'

" 'Did you jump for it?' she asked softly, her lips barely moving.... 'but you, you would know the reason for it. Do you want to end it? I can give you death more easily than I gave you life!' He

turned to me, her fragile flame throwing his shadow across me. It made a halo around his blond

hair and left his face, except for the gleaming cheekbone, dark. 'Do you want death?'

" 'Consciousness is not death,' she whispered.

" 'Answer me! Do you want death!'

" 'And you give all these things. They proceed from you. Life and death,' she whispered,

mocking him.

" 'I have,' he said. 'I do.'

" 'You know nothing,' she said to him gravely, her voice so low that the slightest noise from the street interrupted it, might carry her words away, so that I found myself straining to hear her

against myself as I lay with my head back against the chair. 'And suppose the vampire who made

you knew nothing, and the vampire who made that vampire knew nothing, and the vampire

before him knew nothing, and so it goes back and back, nothing proceeding from nothing, until

there is nothing! And we must live with the knowledge that there is no knowledge.'

" 'Yes!' he cried out suddenly, his hands out, his voice tinged with something other than anger.

"He was silent. She was silent. He turned, slowly, as if I'd made some movement which alerted

him, as if I were rising behind him. It reminded me of the way humans turn when they feel my

breath against them and know suddenly that where they thought themselves to be utterly alone...

that moment of awful suspicion before they see my face and gasp. He was looking at me now,

and I could barely see his lips moving. And then I sensed it. He was afraid. Lestat afraid.

"And she was staring at him with the same level gaze, evincing no emotion, no thought.

" 'You infected her with this...' he whispered.

"He struck a match now with a sharp crackle and lit the mantel candles, lifted the smoky shades

of the lamps, went around the room making light, until Claudia's small flame took on a solidity

and he stood with his back to the marble mantel looking from light to light as if they restored

some peace. 'I'm going out,' he said.

"She rose the instant he had reached the street, and suddenly she stopped in the center of the

room and stretched, her tiny back arched, her arms straight up into small fists, her eyes squeezed

shut for a moment and then wide open as if she were waking to the room from a dream. There

was something obscene about her gesture; the room seemed to shimmer with Lestat's fear, echo

with his last response. It demanded her attention. I must have made some involuntary movement

to turn away from her, because she was standing at the arm of my chair now and pressing her

hand flat upon my book, a book I hadn't been reading for hours. 'Come out with me.'

" 'You were right. He knows nothing. There is nothing he can tell us,' I said to her.

"'Did you ever really think that he did?' she asked me in the same small voice. 'We'll find others of our kind,' she said. 'We'll find them in central Europe. That is where they live in such numbers

that the stories, both fiction and fact, fill volumes. I'm convinced it was from there that all

vampires came, if they came from any place at all. We've tarried too long with him. Come out.

Let the flesh instruct the mind'

"I think I felt a tremor of delight when she said these words, Let the flesh instruct the mind. 'Put books aside and kill,' she was whispering to me. I followed her down the stairs, across the

courtyard and down a narrow alley to another street. Then she turned with outstretched arms for

me to pick her up and carry her, though, of course, she was not tired; she wanted only to be near

my ear, to clutch my neck. 'I haven't told him my plan, about the voyage, the money,' I was

saying to her, conscious of something about her that was beyond me as she rode my measured

steps, weightless in my arms.

" 'He killed the other vampire,' she said.

" 'No, why do you say this?' I asked her. But it wasn't the saying of it that disturbed me, stirred my soul as if it were a pool of water longing to be still. I felt as if she were moving me slowly

towards something, as if she were the pilot of our slow walk through the dark street. 'Because I

know it now,' she said with authority. 'The vampire made a slave of him, and he would no more

be a slave than I would be a slave, and so he killed him. Killed him before he knew what he

might know, and then in panic made a slave of you. And you've been his slave.'

" 'Never really...' I whispered to her. I felt the press of her cheek against my temple. She was cold and needed the kill. 'Not a slave. Just some sort of mindless accomplice,' I confessed to her,

confessed to myself. I could feel the fever for the kill rising in me, a knot of hunger in my

insides, a throbbing in the temples, as if the veins were contracting and my body might become a

map of tortured vessels.

" 'No, slave,' she persisted in her grave monotone, as though thinking aloud, the words

revelations, pieces of a puzzle. 'And I shall free us both.'

"I stopped. Her hand pressed me, urged me on. We were walking down the long wide alley

beside the cathedral, towards the lights of Jackson Square, the water rushing fast in the gutter

down the center of the alley, silver in the moonlight. She said, 'I will kill him.'

"I stood still at the end of the alley. I felt her shift in my arm, move down as if she could

accomplish being free of me without the awkward aid of my hands. I set her on the stone

sidewalk. I said no to her, I shook my head. I had that feeling then which I described before, that

the building around me---the Cabildo, the cathedral, the apartments along the square---all this

was silk and illusion and would ripple suddenly in a horrific wind, and a chasm would open in

the earth that was the reality. 'Claudia,' I gasped, turning away from her.

" 'And why not kill him!' she said now, her voice rising, silvery and finally shrill. 'I have no use for him! I can get nothing from him! And he causes me pain, which I will not abide!'

" 'And if he had so little use for us!' I said to her. But the vehemence was false. Hopeless. She was at a distance from me now, small shoulders straight and determined, her pace rapid, like a

little girl w ho, walking out on Sundays with her parents, wants to walk ahead and pretend she is

all alone. 'Claudia!' I called after her, catching up with her in a stride. I reached for the small

waist and felt her stiffen as if she had become iron. 'Claudia, you cannot kill him!' I whispered.

She moved backwards, skipping, clicking on the stones, and moved out into the open street. A

cabriolet rolled past us with a sudden surge of laughter and the clatter of horses and wooden

wheels. The street was suddenly silent. I reached out for her and moved forward over an

immense space and found her standing at the gate of Jackson Square, hands gripping the

wrought-iron bars. I drew down close to her. 'I don't care what you feel, what you say, you

cannot mean to kill him,' I said to her.

" 'And why not? Do you think him so strong!' she said, her eyes on the statue in the square, two immense pools of light.

" 'He is stronger than you know! Stronger than you dream! How do you mean to kill him? You

can't measure his skill. You don't know!' I pleaded with her but could see her utterly unmoved,

like a child staring in fascination through the window of a toy shop. Her tongue moved suddenly

between her teeth and touched her lower lip in a strange flicker that sent a mild shock through

my body. I tasted blood. I felt something palpable and helpless in my hands. I wanted to kill. I

could smell and hear humans on the paths of the square, moving about the market, along the

levee. I was about to take her, making her look at me, shake her if I had to, to make her listen,

when she turned to me with her great liquid eyes. 'I love you, Louis,' she said.

" 'Then listen to me, Claudia, I beg you,' I whispered, holding her, pricked suddenly by a nearby collection of whispers, the slow, rising articulation of human speech over the mingled sounds of

the night. 'He'll destroy you if you try to kill him. There is no way you can do such a thing for

sure. You don't know how. And pitting yourself against him you'll lose everything. Claudia, I

can't bear this.'

"There was a barely perceptible smile on her lips. 'No, Louis,' she whispered. 'I can kill him. And I want to tell you something else now, a secret between you and me.'

"I shook my head but she pressed even closer to me, lowering her lids so that her rich lashes

almost brushed the roundness of her cheeks. 'The secret is, Louis, that I want to kill him. I will

enjoy it!'

"I knelt beside her, speechless, her eyes studying me as they'd done so often in the past; and then she said, 'I kill humans every night. I seduce them, draw them close to me, with an insatiable

hunger, a constant never-ending search for something... something, I don't know what it is...' She

brought her fingers to her lips now and pressed her lips, her mouth partly open so I could see the

gleam of her teeth. 'And I care nothing about them---where they came from, where they would

go---if I did not meet them on the way. But I dislike him! I want him dead and will have him

dead. I shall enjoy it.'

" 'But Claudia, he is not mortal. He's immorta l. No illness can touch him. Age has no power over him. You threaten a life which might endure to the end of the world!'

" 'Ah, yes, that's it, precisely!' she said with reverential awe. 'A lifetime that might have endured for centuries. Such blood, such power. Do you think I'll possess his power and my own power

when I take him?'

"I was enraged now. I rose suddenly and turned away from her. I could hear the whispering of

humans near me. They were whispering of the father and the daughter, of some frequent sight of

loving devotion. I realized they were talking of us.

" 'It's not necessary,' I said to her. 'It goes beyond all need, all common sense, all...'

" 'What? Humanity? He's a killer!' she hissed. 'Lone predator!' She repeated his own term,

mocking it. 'Don't interfere with me or seek to know the time I choose to do it, nor try to come

between us.'

"She raised her hand now to hush me and caught mine in an iron grasp, her tiny fingers biting

into my tight, tortured flesh. 'If you do, you will bring me destruction by your interference. I

can't be discouraged.'

"She was gone then in a flurry of bonnet ribbons and clicking slippers. I turned, paying no

attention to where I went, wishing the city would swallow me, conscious now of the hunger

rising to overtake reason. I was almost loath to put an end to it. I needed to let the lust, the

excitement blot out all consciousness, and I thought of the kill over and over and over, walking

slowly up this street and down the next, moving inexorably towards it, saying, It's a string which

is pulling me through the labyrinth. I am not pulling the string. The string is pulling me.... And

then I stood in the Rue Conti listening to a dull thundering, a familiar sound. It was the fencers

above in the salon, advancing on the hollow wooden floor, forward, back again, scuttling, and

the silver zinging of the foils. I stood back against the wall, where I could see them through the

high naked windows, the young men dueling late into the night, left arm poised like the arm of a

dancer, grace advancing towards death, grace thrusting for the heart, images of the young

Freniere now driving the silver blade forward, now being pulled by it towards hell. Someone had

come down the narrow wooden steps to the street---a young boy, a boy so young he had the

smooth, plump cheeks of a child; his face was pink and flushed from the fencing, and beneath his

smart gray coat and ruffled shirt there was the sweet smell of cologne and salt. I could feel his

heat as he emerged from the dim light of the stairwell. He was laughing to himself, talking

almost inaudibly to himself, his brown hair falling down over his eyes as he went along, shaking

his head, the whispers rising, then falling off. And then he stopped short, his eyes on me. He

stared, and his eyelids quivered and he laughed quickly, nervously. 'Excuse me!' he said now in

French. 'You gave me a start!' And then, just as he moved to make a ceremonial bow and perhaps

go around me, he stood still, and the shock spread over his flushed face. I could see the heart

beating in the pink flesh of his cheeks, smell the sudden sweat of his young, taut body.

" 'You saw me in the lamplight,' I said to him. 'And my face looked to you like the mask of

death.'

"His lips parted and his teeth touched and involuntarily he nodded, his eyes dazed.

" 'Pass by!' I said to him. 'Fast! "

The vampire paused, then moved as if he meant to go on. But he stretched his long legs under the

table and, leaning back, pressed his hands to his head as if exerting a great pressure on his

temples.

The boy, who had drawn himself up into a crouched position, his hands hugging his arms,

unwound slowly. He glanced at the tapes and then back at the vampire. "But you killed someone

that night," he said.

"Every night," said the vampire.

"Why did you let him go then?" asked the boy.

"I don't know," said the vampire, but it did not have the tone of truly I don't know, but rather, let it be. "You look tired," said the vampire. "You look cold."

"It doesn't matter," said the boy quickly. "The room's a little cold; I don't care about that. You're not cold, are you?"

"No." The vampire smiled and then his shoulders moved with silent laughter.

A moment passed in which the vampire seemed to be thinking and the boy to be studying the

vampire's face. The vampire's eyes moved to the boy's watch.

"She didn't succeed, did she?" the boy asked softly.

"What do you honestly think?" asked the vampire. He had settled back in his chair. He looked at the boy intently.

"That she was... as you said, destroyed," said the boy; and he seemed to feel the words, so that he swallowed after he'd said the word destroyed. "Was she?" he asked.

"Don't you think that she could do it?" asked the vampire.

"But he was so powerful. You said yourself you never knew what powers he had, what secrets he

knew. How could she even be sure how to kill him? How did she try?"

The vampire looked at the boy for a long time, his expression unreadable to the boy, who found

himself looking away, as though the vampire's eyes were burning lights. "Why don't you drink

from that bottle in your pocket?" asked the vampire. "It will make you warm."

"Oh, that..." said the boy. "I was going to. I just..."

The vampire laughed. "You didn't think it was polite!" he said, and he suddenly slapped his thigh.

"That's t rue," the boy shrugged, smiling now; and he took the small flask out of his jacket pocket, unscrewed the gold cap, and took a sip. He held the bottle, now looking at the vampire.

"No," the vampire smiled and raised his hand to wave away the offer.

Then his face became serious again and, sitting back, he went on.

"Lestat had a musician friend in the Rue Dumaine. We had seen him at a recital in the home of a

Madame LeClair, who lived there also, which was at that time an extremely fashionable street;

and this Madame LeClair, with whom Lestat was also occasionally amusing himself, had found

the musician a room in another mansion nearby, where Lestat visited him often. I told you he

played with his victims, made friends with them, seduced them into trusting and liking him, even

loving him, before he killed. So he apparently played with this young boy, though it had gone on

longer than any other such friendship I had ever observed. The young boy wrote good music, and

often Lestat brought fresh sheets of it home and played the songs on the square grand in our

parlor. The boy had a great talent, but you could tell that this music would not sell, because it

was too disturbing. Lestat gave him money and spent evening after evening with him, often

taking him to restaurants the boy could have never afforded, and he bought him all the paper and

pens which he needed for the writing of his music.

"As I said, it had gone on far longer than any such friendship Lestat had ever had. And I could

not tell whether he had actually become fond of a mortal in spite of himself or was simply

moving towards a particularly grand betrayal and cruelty. Several times he'd indicated to Claudia

and me that he was headed out to kill the boy directly, but he had not. And, of course, I never

asked him what he felt because it wasn't worth the great uproar my question would have

produced. Lestat entranced with a mortal! He probably would have destroyed the parlor furniture

in a rage.

"The next night---after that which I just described to you---he jarred me miserably by asking me to go with him to the boy's flat. He was positively friendly, in one of those moods when he

wanted my companionship. Enjoyment could bring that out of him. Wanting to see a good play,

the regular opera, the ballet. He always wanted me along. I think I must have seen Macbeth with

him fifteen times. We went to every performance, even those by amateurs, and Lestat would

stride home afterwards, repeating the lines to me and even shouting out to passers-by with an

outstretched finger, 'Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow!' until they skirted him as if he were

drunk. But this effervescence was frenetic and likely to vanish in an instant; just a word or two of

amiable feeling on my part, some suggestion that I found his companionship pleasant, could

banish all such affairs for months. Even years. But now he came to me in such a mood and asked

me to go to the boy's room. He was not above pressing my arm as he urged me. And I, dull,

catatonic, gave him some miserable excuse, thinking only of Claudia, of the agent, of imminent

disaster. I could feel it and wondered that he did not feel it. And finally he picked up a book from

the floor and threw it at me, shouting, 'Read your damn poems, then! Rot!' And he bounded out.

"This disturbed me. I cannot tell you how it disturbed me. I wished him cold, impassive, gone. I resolved to plead with Claudia to drop this. I felt powerless, and hopelessly fatigued. But her

door had been locked until she left, and I had glimpsed her only for a second while Lestat was

chattering, a vision of lace and loveliness as she slipped on her coat; puffed sleeves again and a

violet ribbon on her breast, her white lace stockings showing beneath the hem of the little gown,

and her white slippers immaculate. She cast a cold look at me as she went out.

"When I returned later, satiated and for a while too sluggish for my own thoughts to bother me, I gradually began to sense that this was the night. She would try tonight.

"I cannot tell you how I knew this. Things about the flat disturbed me, alerted me. Claudia

moved in the back parlor behind closed doors. And I fancied I heard another voice there, a

whisper. Claudia never brought anyone to our flat; no one did except Lestat, who brought his

women of the streets. But I knew there was someone there, yet I got no strong scent, no proper

sounds. And then there were aromas in the air of food and drink. And chrysanthemums stood in

the silver vase on the square grand---flowers which, to Claudia, meant death.

"Then Lestat came, singing something soft under his breath, his walking stick making a rat-tat-

tat on the rails of the spiral stairs. He came down the long hall, his face flushed from the kill, his lips pink; and he set his music on the piano. 'Did I kill him or did I not kill him!' He flashed the

question at me now with a pointing finger. 'What's your guess?'

" 'You did not,' I said numbly. 'Because you invited me to go with you, and would never have

invited me to share that kill.'

" 'Ah, but! Did I kill him in a rage because you would not go with me!' he said and threw back

the cover from the keys. I could see that he would be able to go on like this until dawn. He was

exhilarated.

I watched him flip through the music, thinking, Can he die? Can he actually die? And does she

mean to do this? At one point, I wanted to go to her and tell her we must abandon everything,

even the proposed trip, and live as we had before. But I had the feeling now that there was no

retreat. Since the day she'd begun to question him, this---whatever it was to be---was inevitable.

And I felt a weight on me, holding me in the chair.

"He pressed two chords with his hands. He had an immense reach and even in life could have

been a fine pianist. But he played without feeling; he was always outside the music, drawing it

out of the piano as if by magic, by the virtuosity of his vampire senses and control; the music did

not come through him, was not drawn through him by himself. 'Well, did I kill him?' he asked

me again.

" 'No, you did not,' I said again, though I could just as easily have said the opposite. I was

concentrating on keeping my face a mask.

" 'You're right. I did not,' he said. 'It excites me to be close to him, to think over and over, I can kill him and I will kill him but not now. And then to leave him and find someone who looks as

nearly like him as possible. If he had brothers... why, I'd kill them one by one. The family would

succumb to a mysterious fever which dried up the very blood in their bodies!' he said, now

mocking a barker's tone. 'Claudia has a taste for families. Speaking of families, I suppose you

heard. The Freniere place is supposed to be haunted; they can't keep an overseer and the slaves

run away.'

"This was something I did not wish to hear in particular. Babette had died young, insane,

restrained finally from wandering towards the ruins of Pointe du Lac, insisting she had seen the

devil there and must find him; I'd heard of it in wisps of gossip. And then came the funeral

notices: I'd thought occasionally of going to her, of trying some way to rectify what I had done;

and other times I thought it would all heal itself; and in my new life of nightly killing, I had

grown far from the attachment I'd felt for her or for my sister or any mortal. And I watched the

tragedy finally as one might from a theater balcony, moved from time to time, but never

sufficiently to jump the railing and join the players on the stage.

" 'Don't talk of her,' I said.

" 'Very well. I was talking of the plantation. Not her. Her! Your lady love, your fancy.' He smiled at me. 'You know, I had it all my way finally in the end, didn't I? But I was telling you about my

young friend and how...'

" 'I wish you would play the music,' I said softly, unobtrusively, but as p ersuasively as possible.

Sometimes this worked with Lestat. If I said something just right he found himself doing what

I'd said. And now he did just that: with a little snarl, as if to say, 'You fool,' he began playing the music. I heard the doors of the back parlor open and Claudia's steps move down the hall. Don't

come, Claudia, I was thinking, feeling; go away from it before we're all destroyed. But she came

on steadily until she reached the hall mirror. I could hear her opening the small table drawer, and

then the zinging of her hairbrush. She was wearing a floral perfume. I turned slowly to face her

as she appeared in the door, still all in white, and moved across the carpet silently toward the

piano. She stood at the end of the keyboard, her hands folded on the wood, her chin resting on

her hands, her eyes fixed on Lestat.

"I could see his profile and her small face beyond, looking up at him. 'What is it now!' he said, turning the page and letting his hand drop to his thigh. 'You irritate me. Your very presence

irritates me!' His eyes moved over the page.

" 'Does it?' she said in her sweetest voice.

" 'Yes, it does. And I'll tell you something else. I've met someone who would make a better

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 557