PART II 11 page

vampire than you do.'

"This stunned me. But I didn't have to urge him to go on. 'Do you get my meaning?' he said to

her.

" 'Is it supposed to frighten me?' she asked.

" 'You're spoiled because you're an only child,' he said. 'You need a brother. Or rather, I need a brother. I get weary of you both. Greedy, brooding vampires that haunt our own lives. I dislike

it.'

" 'I suppose we could people the world with vampires, the three of us,' she said.

" 'You think so!' he said, smiling, his voice with a note of triumph. Do you think you could do it?

I suppose Louis has told you how it was done or how he thinks it was done. You don't have the

power. Either of you,' he said.

"This seemed to disturb her. Something she had not accounted for. She was studying him. I

could see she did not entirely believe him.

" 'And what gave you the power?' she asked softly, but with a touch of sarcasm.

" 'That, my dear, is one of those things which you may never know. For even the Erebus in

which we live must have its aristocracy.'

" 'You're a liar,' she said with a short laugh. And just as he touched his fingers to the keys again, she said, 'But you upset my plans.'

" 'Your plans?' he asked.

" 'I came to make peace with you, even if you are the father of lies. You're my father,' she said. 'I want to make peace with you. I want things to be as they were.'

"Now he was the one who did not believe. He threw a glance at me, then looked at her. 'That can

be. Just stop asking me questions. Stop following me. Stop searching in every alleyway for other

vampires. There are no other vampires! And this is where you live and this is where you stay!'

He looked confused for the moment, as if raising his own voice had confused him. 'I take care of

you. You don't need anything.'

" 'And you don't know anything, and that is why you detest my questions. All that's clear. So

now let's have peace, because there's nothing else to be had. I have a present for you.'

" 'And I hope it's a beautiful woman with endowments you'll never possess;' he said, looking her up and down. Her face changed when he did this. It was as if she almost lost some control I'd

never seen her lose. But then she just shook her head and reached out one small, rounded arm

and tugged at his sleeve.

" 'I meant what I said. I'm weary of arguing with you. Hell is hatred, people living together in eternal hatred. We're not in hell. You can take the present or not, I don't care. It doesn't matter.

Only let's have an end to all this. Before Louis, in disgust, leaves us both.' She was urging him

now to leave the piano, bringing down the wooden cover again over the keys, turning him on the

piano stool until his eyes followed her to the door.

" 'You're serious. Present, what do you mean, present?'

" 'You haven't fed enough, I can tell by your color, by your eyes. You've never fed enough at this hour. Let's say that I can give you a precious moment. Suffer the little children to come unto me;'

she whispered, and was gone. He looked at me. I said nothing. I might as well have been

drugged. I could see the curiosity in his face, the suspicion. He followed her down the hall. And

then I heard him let out a long, conscious moan, a perfect mingling of hunger and lust.

"When I reached the door, and I took my time, he was bending over the settee. Two small boys

lay there, nestled among the soft velvet pillows, totally abandoned to sleep as children can be,

their pink mouths open, their small round faces utterly smooth. Their skin was moist, radiant, the

curls of the darker of the two damp and pressed to the forehead. I saw at once by their pitiful and

identical clothes that they were orphans. And they had ravaged a meal set before them on our

best china. The tablecloth was stained with wine, and a small bottle stood half full among the

greasy plates and forks. But there was an aroma in the room I did not like. I moved closer, better

to see the sleeping ones, and I could see their throats were bare but untouched. Lestat had sunk

down beside the darker one; he was by far the more beautiful. He might have been lifted to the

painted dome of a cathedral. No more than seven years old, he had that perfect beauty that is of

neither sex, but angelic. Lestat brought his hand down gently on the pale throat, and then he

touched the silken lips. He let out a sigh which had again that longing, that sweet, painful

anticipation. 'Oh... Claudia...' he sighed. 'You've outdone yourself. Where did you find them?'

"She said nothing. She had receded to a dark armchair and sat back against two large pillows, her legs out straight on the rounded cushion, her ankles drooping so that you did not see the bottom

of her white slippers but the curved insteps and the tight, delicate little straps. She was staring at Lestat. 'Drunk on brandy wine,' she said. 'A thimbleful!' and gestured to the table. 'I thought of

you when I saw them... I thought if I share this with him, even he will forgive.'

"He was warmed by her flattery. He looked at her now and reached out and clutched her white

lace ankle. 'Ducky!' he whispered to her and laughed, but then he hushed, as if he didn't wish to

wake the doomed children. He gestured to her, intimately, seductively, 'Come sit beside him.

You take him, and I'll take this one. Come.' He embraced her as she passed and nestled beside

the other boy. He stroked the boy's moist hair, he ran his fingers over t he rounded lids and along

the fringe of lashes. And then he put his whole softened hand across the boy's face and felt at the

temples, cheeks, and jaw, massaging the unblemished flesh. He had forgotten I was there or she

was there, but he withdrew his hand and sat still for a moment, as though his desire was making

him dizzy. He glanced at the ceiling and then down at the perfect feast. He turned the boy's head

slowly against the back of the couch, and the boy's eyebrows tensed for an instant and a moan

escaped his lips.

"Claudia's eyes were steady on Lestat, though now she raised her left hand and slowly undid the

buttons of the child who lay beside her and reached inside the shabby little shirt and felt the bare

flesh. Lestat did the same, but suddenly it was as if his hand had life itself and drew his arm into

the shirt and around the boy's small chest in a tight embrace; and Lestat slid down off the

cushions of the couch to his knees on the floor. his arm locked to the boy's body. Pulling it up

close to him so that his face was buried in the boy's neck. His lips moved over the neck and over

the chest and over the tiny nipple of the chest and then, putting his other arm into the open shirt,

so that the boy lay hopelessly wound in both arms, he drew the boy up tight and sank his teeth

into his throat. The boy's head fell back, the curls loose as he was lifted, and again he let out a

small moan and his eyelids fluttered---but never opened. And Lestat knelt, the boy pressed

against him, sucking hard, his own back arched and rigid, his body rocking back and forth

carrying the boy, his long moans rising and falling in time with the slow rocking, until suddenly

his whole body tensed, and his hands seemed to grope for some way to push the boy away, as if

the boy himself in his helpless slumber were clinging to Lestat; and finally he embraced the boy

again and moved slowly forward over him, letting him down among the pillows, the sucking

softer, now almost inaudible.

"He withdrew. His hands pressed the boy down. He knelt there, his head thrown back, so the

wavy blond hair hung loose and disheveled. And then he slowly sank to the floor, turning, his

back against the leg of the couch. 'Ah... God...' he whispered, his head back, his lids half-mast. I

could see the color rushing to his cheeks, rushing into his hands. One hand lay on his bent knee,

fluttering, and then it lay still.

"Claudia had not moved. She lay like a Botticelli angel beside the unharmed boy. The other's

body already withered, the neck like a fractured stem, the heavy head falling now at an odd

angle, the angle of death, into the pillow.

"But something was wrong. Lestat was staring at the ceiling. I could see his tongue between his

teeth. He lay too still, the tongue, as it were, trying to get out of the mouth, trying to move past

the barrier of the teeth and touch the lip. He appeared to shiver, his shoulders convulsing... then

relaxing heavily; yet he did not move. A veil had fallen over his clear gray eyes. He was peering

at the ceiling. Then a sound came out of him. I stepped forward from the shadows of the hallway,

but Claudia said in a sharp hiss, 'Go back!'

" 'Louis...' he was saying. I could hear it now. 'Louis... Louis...'

" 'Don't you like it, Lestat?' she asked him.

" 'Something's wrong with it,' he gasped, and his eyes widened as if the mere speaking were a

colossal effort. He could not move. I saw it. He could not move at all. 'Claudia!' He gasped

again, and his eyes rolled towards her.

" 'Don't you like the taste of children's blood...?' she asked softly.

" 'Louis...' he whispered, finally lifting his head just for an instant. It fell back on the couch.

'Louis, it's... it's absinthe! Too much absinthe!' he gasped. 'She's poisoned them with it. She's

poisoned me. Louis...' He tried to raise his hand. I drew nearer, the table between us.

" 'Stay back!' she said again. And now she slid off the couch and approached him, peering down

into his face as he had peered at the child. 'Absinthe, Father,' she said, 'and laudanum!'

" 'Demon!' he said to her. 'Louis... put me in my coffin.' He struggled to rise. 'Put me in my

coffin!' His voice was hoarse, barely audible. The hand fluttered, lifted, and fell back.

" 'I'll put you in your coffin, Father,' she said, as though she were soothing him. 'I'll put you in it forever.' And then, from beneath the pillows of the couch, she drew a kitchen knife.

" 'Claudia! Don't do this thing!' I said to her. But she flashed at me a virulency I'd never seen in her face, and as I stood there paralyzed, she gashed his throat, and he let out a sharp, choking

cry. 'God!' he shouted out. 'God!'

"The blood poured out of him, down his shirt front, down his coat. It poured as it might never

pour from a human being, all the blood with which he had filled himself before the child and

from the child; and he kept turning his head, twisting, making the bubbling gash gape. She sank

the knife into his chest now and he pitched forward, his mouth wide, his fangs exposed, both

hands convulsively flying towards the knife, fluttering around its handle, slipping off its handle.

He looked up at me, the hair falling down into his eyes. 'Louis! Louis!' He let out one more gasp

and fell sideways on the carpet. She stood looking down at him. The blood flowed everywhere

like water. He was groaning, trying to raise himself, one arm pinned beneath his chest, the other

shoving at the floor. And now, suddenly, she flew at him and clamping both arms about his neck,

bit deep into him as he struggled. 'Louis, Louis!' he gasped over and over, struggling, trying

desperately to throw her off; but she rode him, her body lifted by his shoulder, hoisted and

dropped, hoisted and dropped, until she pulled away; and, finding the floor quickly, she backed

away from him, her hands to her lips, her eyes for the moment clouded, then clear. I turned away

from her, my body convulsed by what I'd seen, unable to look any longer. 'Louis!' she said; but I

only shook my head. For a moment, the whole house seemed to sway. But she said, 'Look what's

happening to him!'

"He had ceased to move. He lay now on his back. And his entire body was shriveling, drying up,

the skin thick and wrinkled, and so white that all the tiny veins showed through it. I gasped, but I

could not take my eyes off it, even as the shape of the bones began to show through, his lips

drawing back from his teeth, the flesh of his nose drying to two gaping holes. But his eyes, they

remained the same, staring wildly at the ceiling, the irises dancing from side to side, even as the

flesh cleaved to the bones, became nothing but a parchment wrapping for the bones, the clothes

hollow and limp over the skeleton that remained. Finally the irises rolled to the top of his head,

and the whites of his eyes went dim. The thing lay still. A great mass of wavy blond hair, a coat,

a pair of gleaming boots; and this horror that had been Lestat, and I staring helplessly at it."

"For a long time, Claudia merely stood there. Blood had soaked the carpet, darkening the woven

wreaths of flowers. It gleamed sticky and black on the floorboards. It stained her dress, her white

shoes, her cheek. She wiped at it with a crumpled napkin, took a swipe at the impossible stains of

the dress, and then she said, 'Louis, you must help me get him out of here!'

"I said, 'No!' I'd turned my back on her, on the corpse at her feet.

" 'Are you mad, Louis? It can't remain here!' she said to me. 'And the boys. You must help me!

The other one's dead from the absinthe! Louis!'

"I knew that this was true, necessary; and yet it seemed impossible.

"She had to prod me then, almost lead me every step of the way. We found the kitchen stove still heaped with the bones of the mother and daughter she'd killed---a dangerous blunder, a stupidity.

So she scraped them out now into a sack and dragged the sack across the courtyard stones to the

carriage. I hitched the horse myself, shushing the groggy coachman, and drove the hearse out of

the city, fast in the direction of the Bayou St. Jean, towards the dark swamp that stretched to

Lake Pontchartrain. She sat beside me, silent, as we rode on and on until we'd passed the gas-lit

gates of the few country houses, and the shell road narrowed and became rutted, the swamp

rising on either side of us, a great wall of seemingly impenetrable cypress and vine. I could smell

the stench of the muck, hear the rustling of the animals.

"Claudia had wrapped Lestat's body in a sheet before I would even touch it, and then, to my

horror, she had sprinkled it over with the long-stemmed chrysanthemums. So it had a sweet,

funereal smell as I lifted it last o f all from the carriage. It was almost weightless, as limp as

something made of knots and cords, as I put it over my shoulder and moved down into the dark

water, the water rising and filling my boots, my feet seeking some path in the ooze beneath,

away from where I'd laid the two boys. I went deeper and deeper in with Lestat's remains, though

why, I did not know. And finally, when I could barely see the pale space of the road and the sky

which was coming dangerously close to dawn, I let his body slip down out of my arms into the

water. I stood there shaken, looking at the amorphous form of the white sheet beneath the slimy

surface. The numbness which had protected me since the carriage left the Rue Royale threatened

to lift and leave me flayed suddenly, staring, thinking: This is Lestat. This is all of transformation and mystery, dead, gone into eternal darkness. I felt a pull suddenly, as if some force were urging

me to go down with him, to descend into the dark water and never come back. It was so distinct

and so strong that it made the articulation of voices seem only a murmur by comparison. It spoke

without language, saying, 'You know what you must do. Come down into the darkness. Let it all

go away.'

"But at that moment I heard Claudia's voice. She was calling my name. I turned, and, through the tangled vines, I saw her distant and tiny, like a white flame on the faint luminescent shell road.

"That morning, she wound her arms around me, pressed her head against my chest in the

closeness of the coffin, whispering she loved me, that we were free now of Lestat forever. 'I love

you, Louis,' she said over and over as the darkness finally came down with the lid and mercifully

blotted out all consciousness.

"When I awoke, she was going through his things. It was a tirade, silent, controlled, but filled with a fierce anger. She pulled the contents from cabinets, emptied drawers onto the carpets,

pulled one jacket after another from his armoires, turning the pockets inside out, throwing the

coins and theater tickets and bits and pieces of paper away. I stood in the door of his room,

astonished, watching her. His coffin lay there, heaped with scarves and pieces of tapestry. I had

the compulsion to open it. I had the wish to see him there. 'Nothing!' she finally said in disgust.

She wadded the clothes into the grate. 'Not a hint of where he came from, who made him!' she

said. 'Not a scrap' She looked to me as if for sympathy. I turned away from her. I was unable to

look at her. I moved back into that bedroom which I kept for myself, that room filled with my

own books and what things I'd saved from my mother and sister, and I sat on the bed. I could

hear her at the door, but I would not look at her. 'He deserved to die!' she said to me.

" 'Then we deserve to die. The same way. Every night of our lives,' I said back to her. 'Go away from me.' It was as if my words were my thoughts, my mind alone only formless confusion. 'I'll

care for you because you can't care for yourself. But I don't want you near me. Sleep in that box

you bought for yourself. Don't come near me.'

" 'I told you I was going to do it. I told you...' she said. Never had her voice sounded so fragile, so like a little silvery bell. I looked up at her, startled but unshaken. Her face seemed not her

face. Never had anyone shaped such agitation into the features of a doll. 'Louis, I told you!' she

said, her lips quivering. 'I did it for us. So we could be free.' I couldn't stand the sight of her. Her beauty, her seeming innocence, and this terrible agitation. I went past her, perhaps knocking her

backwards, I don't know. And I was almost to the railing of the steps when I heard a strange

sound.

"Never in all the years of our life together had I heard this sound. Never since the night long ago when I had first found her, a mortal child, clinging to her mother. She was crying!

"It drew me back now against my will. Yet it sounded so unconscious, so hopeless, as though she

meant no one to hear it, or didn't care if it were heard by the whole world. I found her lying on

my bed in the place where I often sat to read, her knees drawn up, her whole frame shaking with

her sobs. The sound of it was terrible. It was more heartfelt, more awful than her mortal crying

had ever been. I sat down slowly, gently, beside her and put my hand on her shoulder. She lifted

her head, startled, her eyes wide, her mouth trembling. Her face was stained with tears, tears that

were tinted with blood. Her eyes brimmed with them, and the faint touch of red stained her tiny

hand. She didn't seem to be conscious of this, to see it. She pushed her hair back from her

forehead. Her body quivered then with a long, low, pleading sob.

" 'Louis... if I lose you, I have nothing,' she whispered. 'I would undo it to have you back. I can't undo what I've done.' She put her arms around me, climbing up against me, sobbing against my

heart. My hands were reluctant to touch her; and then they moved as if I couldn't stop them, to

enfold her and hold her and stroke her hair. 'I can't live without you...' she whispered. 'I would

die rather than live without you. I would die the same way he died. I can't bear you to look at me

the way you did. I cannot bear it if you do not love me!' Her sobs grew worse, more bitter, until

finally I bent and kissed her soft neck and cheeks. Winter plums. Plums from an enchanted wood

where the fruit never falls from the boughs. Where the flowers never wither and die. 'All right,

my dear...'

"I said to her. 'All right, my love...' And I rocked her slowly, gently in my arms, until she dozed, murmuring something about our being eternally happy, free of Lestat forever, beginning the

great adventure of our lives.

"The great adventure of our lives. What does it mean to die when you can live until the end of

the world? And what is 'the end of the world' except a phrase, because who knows even what is

the world itself? I had now lived in two centuries, seen the illusions of one utterly shattered by

the other, been eternally young and eternally ancient, possessing no illusions, living moment to

moment in a way that made me picture a silver clock ticking in a void: the painted face, the

delicately carved hands looked upon by no one, looking out at no one, illuminated by a light

which was not a light, like the light by which God made the world before He had made light.

Ticking, ticking, ticking, the precision of the clock, in a room as vast as the universe.

"I was walking the streets again, Claudia gone her way to kill, the perfume of her hair and dress lingering on my fingertips, on my coat, my eyes moving far ahead of me like the pale beam of a

lantern. I found myself at the cathedral: What does it mean to die when you can live until the end

of the world? I was thinking of my brother's death, of the incense and the rosary. I had the desire

suddenly to be in that funeral room, listening to the sound of the women's voices rising and

falling with the Aves, the clicking of the beads, the smell of the wax. I could remember the

crying. It was palpable, as if it were just yesterday, just behind a door. I saw myself walking fast

down a corridor and gently giving the door a shove.

"The great facade of the cathedral rose in a dark mass opposite the square, but the doors were

open and I could see a soft, flickering light within. It was Saturday evening early, and the people

were going to confession for Sunday Mass and Communion. Candles burned dim in the

chandeliers. At the far end of the nave the altar loomed out of the shadows, laden with white

flowers. It was to the old church on this spot that they had brought my brother for the final

service before the cemetery. And I realized suddenly that I hadn't been in this place since, never

once come up the stone steps, crossed the porch, and passed through the open doors.

"I had no fear. If anything, perhaps, I longed for something to happen, for the stones to tremble as I entered the shadowy foyer and saw the distant tabernacle on the altar. I remembered now

that I had passed here once when the windows were ablaze and the sound of singing poured out

into Jackson Square. I had hesitated then, wondering if there were some secret Lestat had never

told me, something which might destroy me were I to enter. I'd felt compelled to enter, but I had

pushed this out of my mind, breaking loose from the fascination of the open doors, the throng of

people making one voice. I had something for Claudia, a doll I was taking to her, a bridal doll I'd

lifted from a darkened toy shop window and placed in a great box with ribbons and tissue paper.

A doll for Claudia. I remembered pressing on with it, hearing the heavy vibrations of the organ

behind me, my eyes narrow from the great blaze of the candles.

"Now I thought of that moment; that fear in me at the very sight of the altar, the sound of the

Pange Lingua. And I thought again, persistently, of my brother. I could see the coffin rolling

along up the center aisle, the procession of mourners behind it. I felt no fear now. As I said, I

think if anything I felt a longing for some fear, for some reason for fear as I moved slowly along

the dark, stone walls. The air was chill and damp in spite of summer. The thought of Claudia's

doll came back to me. Where was that doll? For years Claudia had played with that doll.

Suddenly I saw myself searching for the doll, in the relentless and meaningless manner one

searches for something in a nightmare, coming on doors that won't open or drawers that won't

shut, struggling over and over against the same meaningless thing, not knowing why the effort

seems so desperate, why the sudden sight of a chair with a shawl thrown over it inspires the mind

with horror.

"I was in the cathedral. A woman stepped out of the confessional and passed the long line of

those who waited. A man who should have stepped up next did not move; and my eye, sensitive

even in my vulnerable condition, noted this, and I turned to see him. He was staring at me.

Quickly I turned my back on him. I heard him enter the confessional and shut the door. I walked

up the aisle of the church and then, more from exhaustion than from any conviction, went into an

empty pew and sat down. I had almost genuflected from old habit. My mind seemed as muddled

and tortured as that of any human. I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to banish all

thoughts. Hear and see, I said to myself. And with this act of will, my senses emerged from the

torment. All around me in the gloom I heard the whisper of prayers, the tiny click of the rosary

beads; soft the sighing of the woman who knelt now at the Twelfth Station. Rising from the sea

of wooden pews came the scent of rats. A rat moving somewhere near the altar, a rat in the great

woodcarved side altar of the Virgin Mary. The gold candlesticks shimmered on the altar; a rich

white chrysanthemum bent suddenly on its stem, droplets glistening on the crowded petals, a

sour fragrance rising from a score of vases, from altars and side altars, from statues of Virgins

and Christs and saints. I stared at the statues; I became obsessed suddenly and completely with

the lifeless profiles, the staring eyes, the empty hands, the frozen folds. Then my body convulsed

with such violence that I found myself pitched forward, my hand on the pew before me. It was a

cemetery of dead forms, of funereal effigy and stone angels. I looked up and saw myself in a

most palpable vision ascending the altar steps, opening the tiny sacrosanct tabernacle, reaching

with monstrous hands for the consecrated ciborium, and taking the Body of Christ and strewing

its white wafers all over the carpet; and walking then on the sacred wafers, walking up and down

before the altar, giving Holy Communion to the dust. I rose up now in the pew and stood there

staring at this vision. I knew full well the meaning of it.

"God did not live in this church; these statues gave an image to nothingness. 1 was the only

supernatural in this cathedral. I was the only supermortal thing that stood conscious under this

roof! Loneliness. Loneliness to the point of madness. The cathedral crumbled in my vision; the

saints listed and fell. Rats ate the Holy Eucharist and nested on the sills. A solitary rat with an

enormous tail stood tugging and gnawing at the rotted altar cloth until the candlesticks fell and

rolled on the slime-covered stones. And I remained standing. Untouched. Undead---reaching out

suddenly for the plaster hand of the Virgin and seeing it break in my hand, so that I held the hand

crumbling in my palm, the pressure of my thumb turning it to powder.

"And then suddenly through the ruins, up through the open door through which I could see a

wasteland in all directions, even the great river frozen over and stuck with the encrusted ruins of

ships, up through these ruins now came a funeral procession, a band of pale, white men and

women, monsters with gleaming eyes and flowing black clothes, the coffin rumbling on the

wooden wheels, the rats scurrying across the broken and buckling marble, the procession

advancing, so that I could see then Claudia in the procession, her eyes staring from behind a thin

black veil, one gloved hand locked upon a black prayer book, the other on the coffin as it moved

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 575