PART III 1 page

"I think the very name of Paris brought a rush of pleasure to me that was extraordinary, a relief so near to well-being that I was amazed, not only that I could feel it, but that I'd so nearly

forgotten it.

"I wonder if you can understand what it meant. My expression can't convey it now, for what

Paris means to me is very different from what it meant then, in those days, at that hour; but still,

even now, to think of it, I feel something akin to that happiness. And I've more reason now than

ever to say that happiness is not what I will ever know, or will ever deserve to know. I am not so

much in love with happiness. Yet the name Paris makes me feel it.

"Mortal beauty often makes me ache, and mortal grandeur can fill me with that longing I felt so

hopelessly in the Mediterranean Sea. But Paris, Paris drew me close to her heart, so I forgot

myself entirely. Forgot the damned and questing preternatural thing that doted on mortal skin

and mortal clothing. Paris overwhelmed, and lightened and rewarded more richly than any

promise.

"It was the mother of New Orleans, understand that first; it had given New Orleans its life, its first populace; and it was what New Orleans had for so long tried to be. But New Orleans,

though beautiful and desperately alive, was desperately fragile. There was something forever

savage and primitive there, something that threatened the exotic and sophisticated life both from

within and without. Not an inch of those wooden streets nor a brick of the crowded Spanish

houses had not been bought from the fierce wilderness that forever surrounded the city, ready to

engulf it. Hurricanes, floods, fevers, the plague, and the damp of the Louisiana climate itself

worked tirelessly on every hewn plank or stone facade, so that New Orleans seemed at all ti mes

like a dream in the imagination of her striving populace, a dream held intact at every second by a

tenacious, though unconscious, collective will.

"But Paris, Paris was a universe, whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by

history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive

cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets---as vast and

indestructible as nature itself. All was embraced by her, by her volatile and enchanted populace

thronging the galleries, the theaters, the cafes, giving birth over and over to genius and sanctity,

philosophy and war, frivolity and the finest art; so it seemed that if all the world outside her were to sink into darkness, what was fine, what was beautiful, what was essential might there still

come to its finest flower. Even the majestic trees that graced and sheltered her streets were

attuned to her---and the waters of the Seine, contained and beautiful as they wound through her

heart; so that the earth on that spot, so shaped by blood and consciousness, had ceased to be the

earth and had become Paris.

"We were alive again. We were in love, and so euphoric was I after those hopeless nights of

wandering in eastern Europe that I yielded completely when Claudia moved us into the Hote1

Saint-Gabriel on the Boulevard des Capucines. It was rumored to be one of the largest hotels in

Europe, its immense rooms dwarfing the memory of our old town house, while at the same time

recalling it with a comfortable splendor. We were to have one of the finest suites. Our windows

looked out over the gas-lit boulevard itself where, in the early evening, the asphalt sidewalks

teemed with strollers and an endless stream of carriages flowed past, taking lavishly dressed

ladies and their gentlemen to the Opera or the Opera Comique, the ballet, the theaters, the balls

and receptions without end at the Tuileries.

"Claudia put her reasons for expense to me gently and logically, but I could see that she became impatient ordering everything through me; it was wearing for her. The hotel, she said, quietly

afforded us complete freedom, our nocturnal habits going unnoticed in the continual press of

European tourists, our rooms immaculately maintained by an anonymous staff, while the

immense price we paid guaranteed our privacy and our security. But there was more to it than

that. There was a feverish purpose to her buying.

" 'This is my world,' she explained to me as she sat in a small velvet chair before the open

balcony, watching the long row of broughams stopping one by one before the hotel doors. 'I must

have it as I like,' she said, as if speaking to herself. And so it was as she liked, stunning

wallpaper of rose and gold, an abundance of damask and velvet furniture, embroidered pillows

and silk trappings for the fourposter bed. Dozens of roses appeared daily for the marble mantels

and the inlaid tables, crowding the curtained alcove of her dressing room, reflected endlessly in

tilted mirrors. And finally she crowded the high French windows with a veritable garden of

camellia and fern. 'I miss the flowers; more than anything else I miss the flowers,' she mused.

And sought after them even in the paintings which we brought from the shops and the galleries,

magnificent canvases such as I'd never seen in New Orleans---from the classically executed

lifelike bouquets, tempting you to reach for the petals that fell on a three-dimensional tablecloth,

to a new and disturbing style in which the colors seemed to blaze with such intensity they

destroyed the old lines, the old solidity, to make a vision like to those states when I'm nearest my

delirium and flowers grow before my eyes and crackle like the flames of lamps. Paris flowed

into these rooms.

"I found myself at home there, again forsaking dreams of ethereal simplicity for what another's

gentle insistence had given me, because the air was sweet like the air of our courtyard in the Rue

Royale, and all was alive with a shocking profusion of gas light that rendered even the ornate

lofty ceilings devoid of shadows. The light raced on the gilt curlicues, flickered in the baubles of

the chandeliers. Darkness did not exist. Vampires did not exist.

"And even bent as I was on my quest, it was sweet to think that, for an hour, father and daughter climbed into the cabriolet from such civilized luxury only to ride along the banks of the Seine,

over the bridge into the Latin Quarter to roam those darker, narrower streets in search of history,

not victims. And then to return to the ticking clock and the brass andirons and the playing cards

laid out upon the table. Books of poets, the program from a play, and all around the soft

humming of the vast hotel, distant violins, a woman talking in a rapid, animated voice above the

zinging of a hairbrush, and a man high above on the top floor repeating over and over to the

night air, 'I understand, I am just beginning, I am just beginning to understand...'

" 'Is it as you would have it?' Claudia asked, perhaps just to let me know she hadn't forgotten me, for she was quiet now for hours; no talk of vampires. But something was wrong. It was not the

old serenity, the pensiveness that was recollection. There was a brooding there, a smoldering

dissatisfaction. And though it would vanish from her eyes when I would call to her or answer

her, anger seemed to settle very near the surface.

" 'Oh, you know how I would have it,' I answered, persisting in the myth of my own will. 'Some

garret near the Sorbonne, near enough to the noise of the Rue St. Michel, far enough away. But I

would mainly have it as you would have it' And I could see her warmed, but looking past me, as

if to say, 'You have no remedy; don't draw too near; don't ask of me what I ask of you: are you

content?'

"My memory is too clear; too sharp; things should wear at t he edges, and what is unresolved

should soften. So, scenes are near my heart like pictures in lockets, yet monstrous pictures no

artist or camera would ever catch; and over and over I would see Claudia at the piano's edge that

last night when Lestat was playing, preparing to die, her face when he was taunting her, that

contortion that at once became a mask; attention might have saved his life, if, in fact, he were

dead at all.

"Something was collecting in Claudia, revealing itself slowly to the most unwilling witness in

the world. She had a new passion for rings and bracelets children did not wear. Her jaunty,

straight-backed walk was not a child's, and often she entered small boutiques ahead of me and

pointed a commanding finger at the perfume or the gloves she would then pay for herself. I was

never far away, and always uncomfortable---not because I feared anything in this vast city, but

because I feared her. She'd always been the 'lost child' to her victims, the 'orphan,' and now it

seemed she would be something else, something wicked and shocking to the passers-by who

succumbed to her. But this was often private; I was left for an hour haunting the carved edifices

of Notre-Dame, or sitting at the edge of a park in the carriage.

"And then one night, when I awoke on the lavish bed in the suite of the hotel, my book crunched

uncomfortably under me, I found her gone altogether. I didn't dare ask the attendants if they'd

seen her. It was our practice to spirit past them; we had no name. I searched the corridors for her,

the side streets, even the ballroom, where some almost inexplicable dread came over me at the

thought of her there alone. But then I finally saw her coming through the side doors of the lobby,

her hair beneath her bonnet brim sparkling from the light rain, the child rushing as if on a

mischievous escapade, lighting the faces of doting men and women as she mounted the grand

staircase and passed me, as if she hadn't seen me at all. An impossibility, a strange graceful

slight.

"I shut the door behind me just as she was taking off her cape, and, in a flurry of golden

raindrops, she shook it, shook her hair. The ribbons crushed from the bonnet fell loose and I felt

a palpable relief to see the childish dress, those ribbons, and something wonderfully comforting

in her arms, a small china doll. Still she said nothing to me; she was fussing with the doll.

Jointed somehow with hooks or wire beneath its flouncing dress, its tiny feet tinkled like a bell.

'it's a lady, doll,' she said, looking up at me. 'See? A lady doll.' She put it on the dresser.

" 'So it is,' I whispered.

" 'A woman made it,' she said. 'She makes baby dolls, all the same, baby dolls, a shop of baby

dolls, until I said to her, "I want a lady doll."'

"It was taunting, mysterious. She sat there now with the wet strands of hair streaking her high

forehead, intent on that doll. 'Do you know why she made it for me?' she asked. I was wishing

now the room had shadows, that I could retreat from the warm circle of the superfluous fire into

some darkness, that I wasn't sitting on the bed as if on a lighted stage, seeing her before me and

in her mirrors, puffed sleeves and puffed sleeves.

" 'Because you are a beautiful child and she wanted to make you happy,' I said, my voice small

and foreign to myself.

"She was laughing soundlessly. 'A beautiful child,' she said glancing up at me. 'Is that what you still think I am?' And her face went dark as again she played with the doll, her fingers pushing

the tiny crocheted neckline down toward the china breasts. 'Yes, I resemble her baby dolls, I am

her baby dolls. You should see her working in that shop; bent on her dolls, each with the same

face, lips.' Her finger touched her own lip. Something seemed to shift suddenly, something

within the very walls of the room itself, and the mirrors trembled with her image as if the earth

had sighed beneath the foundations. Carriages rumbled in the streets; but they were too far away.

And then I saw what her still childish figure was doing: in one hand she held the doll, the other

to her lips; and the hand that held the doll was crushing it, crushing it and popping it so it bobbed and broke in a heap of glass that fell now from her open, bloody hand onto the carpet. She wrung

the tiny dress to make a shower of littering particles as I averted my eyes, only to see her in the

tilted mirror over the fire, see her eyes scanning me from my feet to the top of my head. She

moved through that mirror towards me and drew close on the bed.

" 'Why do you look away, why don't you look at me?' she asked, her voice very smooth, very

like a silver bell. But then she laughed softly, a woman's laugh, and said, 'Did you think I'd be

your daughter forever? Are you the father of fools, the fool of fathers?'

" 'Your tone is unkind with me,' I answered.

" 'Hmmm... unkind.' I think she nodded. She was a blaze in the corner of my eye, blue flames,

golden flames.

" 'And what do they think of you,' I asked as gently as I could, 'out there?' I gestured to the open window.

" 'Many things.' She smiled. 'Many things. Men are marvelous at explanations: Have you see the

"little people" in the parks, the circuses, the freaks that men pay money to laugh at?'

" 'I was a sorcerer's apprentice only!' I burst out suddenly, despite myself. 'Apprentice!' I said. I wanted to touch her, to stroke her hair, but I sat there afraid of her, her anger like a match about

to kindle.

"Again she smiled, and then she drew my hand into her lap and covered it as best she could with

her own. 'Apprentice, yes,' she laughed. 'But tell me one thing, one thing from that lofty height.

What was it like... making love?'

"I was walking away from her before I meant to, I was searching like a dim-wilted mortal man

for cape and gloves. 'You don't remember?' she asked with perfect calm, as I put my hand on the

brass door handle.

"I stopped, feeling her eyes on my back, ashamed, and then I turned around and made as if to

think, Where am I going, what shall I do, why do I stand here?

" 'It was something hurried,' I said, trying now to meet her eyes. How perfectly, coldly blue they were. How earnest. 'And... it was seldom savored... something acute that was quickly lost. I think

that it was the pale shadow of killing.'

" 'Ahhh...' she said. 'Like hurting you as I do now... that is also the pale shadow of killing.'

" 'Yes, madam,' I said to her. 'I am inclined to believe that is correct.' And bowing swiftly, I bade her good-night.

"It was a long time after I'd left her that I slowed my pace. I'd crossed the Seine. I wanted

darkness. To hide from her and the feelings that welled up in me, and the great consuming fear

that I was utterly inadequate to make her happy, or to make myself happy by pleasing her.

"I would have given the world to please her; the world we now possessed, which seemed at once

empty and eternal. Yet I was injured by her words and by her eyes, and no amount of

explanations to her which passed through and through my mind now, even forming on my lips in

desperate whispers as I left the Rue St. Michel and went deeper and deeper into the older, darker

streets of the Latin Quarter---no amount of explanations seemed to soothe what I imagined to be

her grave dissatisfaction, or my own pain.

"Finally I left off words except for a strange chant.

"I was in the black silence of a medieval street, and blindly I followed its sharp turns, comforted by the height of its narrow tenements, which seemed at any moment capable of falling together,

closing this alleyway under the indifferent stars like a seam. 'I cannot make her happy, I do not

make her happy; and her unhappiness increases every day.' This was my chant, which I repeated

like a rosary, a charm to change the facts, her inevitable disillusionment with our quest, which

left us in this limbo where I felt her drawing away from me, dwarfing me with her enormous

need. I even conceived a savage jealousy of the dollmaker to whom she'd confided her request

for that tinkling diminutive lady, because that dollmaker had for a moment given her something

which she held close to herself in my presence as if I were not there at all.

"What did it amount to, where could it lead?

"Never since I'd come to Paris months before did I so completely feel the city's immense size,

how I might pass from this twisting, blind street of my choice into a world of delights, and never

had I so keenly felt its uselessness. Uselessness to her if she could not abide this anger, if she

could not somehow grasp the limits of which she seemed so angrily, bitterly aware. I was

helpless. She was helpless. But she was stronger than I. And I knew, had known even at the

moment when I turned away from her in the hotel, that behind her eyes there was for me her

continuing love.

"And dizzy and weary and now comfortably lost, I became aware with a vampire's

inextinguishable senses that I was being followed.

"My first thought was irrational. She'd come out after me. And, cleverer than I, had tracked me at a great distance. But as surely as this came to mind, another thought presented itself, a rather

cruel thought in light of all that had passed between us. The steps were too heavy for hers. It was

just some mortal walking in this same alley, walking unwarily towards death.

"So I continued on, almost ready to fall into my pain again because I deserved it, when my mind

said, You are a fool; listen. And it dawned on me that these steps, echoing as they were at a great

distance behind me, were in perfect time with my own. An accident. Because if mortal they

were, they were too far off for mortal hearing. But as I stopped now to consider that, they

stopped. And as I turned saying, Louis, you deceive yourself, and started up, they started up.

Footfall with my footfall, gaining-speed now as I gained speed. And then something remarkable,

undeniable occurred. En garde as I was for the steps that were behind me, I tripped on a fallen

roof tile and was pitched against the wall. And behind me, those steps echoed to perfection the

sharp shuffling rhythm of my fall.

"I was astonished. And in a state of alarm well beyond fear. To the right and left of me the street was dark. Not even a tarnished light shone in a garret window. And the only safety afforded me,

the great distance between myself and these steps, was as I said the guarantee that they were not

human. I was at a complete loss as to what I might do. I had the near irresistible desire to call out to this being and welcome it, to let it know as quickly and as completely as possible that I

awaited it, had been searching for it, would confront it. Yet I was afraid. What seemed sensible

was to resume walking, waiting for it to gain on me; and as I did so I was again mocked by my

own pace, and the distance between us remained the same. The tension mounted in me, the dark

around me becoming more and more menacing; and I said over and over, measuring these steps,

Why do you track me, why do you let me know you are there?

"Then I rounded a sharp turn in the street, and a gleam of light showed ahead of me at the next

corner. The street sloped up towards it, and I moved on very slowly, my heart deafening in my

ears, reluctant to eventually reveal myself in that light.

"And as I hesitated---stopped, in fact right before the turn; something rumbled and clattered

above, as if the roof of the house beside me had all but collapsed. I jumped back just in time,

before a load of tiles crashed into the street, one of them brushing my shoulder. All was quiet

now. I stared at the tiles, listening, waiting. And then slowly I edged around the turn into the

light, only to see there looming over me at the top of the street beneath the gas lamp the

unmistakable figure of another vampire.

" He was enormous in height though gaunt as myself, his long, white face very bright under the

lamp, his large, black eyes staring at me in what seemed undisguised wonder. His right leg was

slightly bent as though he'd just come to a halt in mid-step. And then suddenly I realized that not

only was his black hair long and full and combed precisely like my own, and not only was he

dressed in identical coat and cape to my own, but he stood imitating my stance and facial

expression to perfection. I swallowed and let my eyes pass over him slowly, while I struggled to

hide from him the rapid pace of my pulse as his eyes in like manner passed over me. And when I

saw him blink I realized I had just blinked, and as I drew my arms up and folded them across my

chest he slowly did the same. It was maddening. Worse than maddening. Because, as I barely

moved my lips, he barely moved his lips, and I found the words dead and I couldn't make other

words to confront this, to stop it. And all the while, there was that height and those sharp black

eyes and that powerful attention which was, of course, perfect mockery, but nevertheless riveted

to myself. He was the vampire; I seemed the mirror.

" 'Clever,' I said to him shortly and desperately, and, of course, he echoed that word as fast as I said it. And maddened as I was more by that than anything else, I found myself yielding to a

slow smile, defying the sweat which had broken from every pore and the violent tremor in my

legs. He also smiled, but his eyes had a ferocity that was animal, unlike my own, and the smile

was sinister in its sheer mechanical quality.

"Now I took a step forward and so did he; and when I stopped short, staring, so did he. But then he slowly, very slowly, lifted his right arm, though mine remained poised and gathering his

fingers into a fist, he now struck at his chest in quickening time to mock my heartbeat. Laughter

erupted from him. He threw back his head, showing his canine teeth, and the laughter seemed to

fill the alleyway. I loathed him. Completely.

" 'You mean me harm?' I asked, only to hear the words mockingly obliterated.

" 'Trickster!' I said sharply. 'Buffoon!'

"That word stopped him. Died on his lips even as he was saying it, and his face went hard.

"What I did then was impulse. I turned my back on him and started away, perhaps to make him

come after me and demand to know who I was. But in a movement so swift I couldn't possibly

have seen it, he stood before me again, as if he had materialized there. Again I turned my back

on him---only to face him under the lamp again, the settling of his dark, wavy hair the only

indication that he had in fact moved.

" 'I've been looking for you! I've come to Paris looking for you!' I forced myself to say the

words, seeing that he didn't echo them or move, only stood staring at me.

"Now he moved forward slowly, gracefully, and I saw his own body and his own manner had

regained possession of him and, extending his hand as if he meant to ask for mine, he very

suddenly pushed me backwards, off-balance. I could feel my shirt drenched and sticking to my

flesh as I righted myself, my hand grimed from the damp wall.

"And as I tu rned to confront him, he threw me completely down.

"I wish I could describe to you his power. You would know, if I were to attack you, to deal you a sharp blow with an arm you never saw move towards you.

"But something in me said, Show him your own power; and I rose up fast, going right for him

with both arms out. And I hit the night, the empty night swirling beneath that lamppost, and

stood there looking about me, alone and a complete fool. This was a test of some sort, I knew it

then, though consciously I fixed my attention of the dark street, the recesses of the doorways,

anyplace he might have hidden. I wanted no part of this test, but saw no way out of it. And I was

contemplating some way to disdainfully make that clear when suddenly he appeared again,

jerking me around and flinging me down the sloping cobblestones where I'd fallen before. I felt

his boot against my ribs. And, enraged, I grabbed hold of his leg, scarcely believing it when I felt

the cloth and the bone. He'd fallen against the stone wall opposite and let out a snarl of

unrepressed anger.

"What happened then was pure confusion. I held tight to that leg, though the boot strained to get at me. And at some point, after he'd toppled over me and pulled loose from me, I was lifted into

the air by strong hands. What might have happened I can well imagine. He could have flung me

several yards from himself, he was easily that strong. And battered, severely injured, I might

have lost consciousness. It was violently disturbing to me even in that melee that I didn't know

whether I could lose consciousness. But it was never put to a test. For, confused as I was, I was

certain someone else had come between us, someone who was battling him decisively, forcing

him to relinquish his hold.

"When I looked up, I was in the street, and I saw two figures only for an instant, like the flicker of an image after the eye is shut. Then there was only a swirling of black garments, a boot

striking the stones, and the night was empty. I sat, panting, the sweat pouring down my face,

staring around me and then up at the narrow ribbon of faint sky. Slowly, only because my eye

was totally concentrated upon it now, a figure emerged from the darkness of the wall above me.

Crouched on the jutting stones of the lintel, it turned so that I saw the barest gleam of light on the hair and then the stark, white face. A strange face, broader and not so gaunt as the other, a large

dark eye that was holding me steadily. A whisper came from the lips, though they never

appeared to move. 'You are all right.'

"I was more than all right. I was on my feet, ready to attack. But the figure remained crouched, as if it were part of the wall. I could see a white hand working in what appeared to be a waistcoat

pocket. A card appeared, white as the fingers that extended it to me. I didn't move to take it.

'Come to us, tomorrow night,' said that same whisper from the smooth, expressionless face,

which still showed only one eye to the light. 'I won't harm you,' he said, 'And neither will that

other. I won't allow it.' And his hand did that thing which vampires can make happen; that is, it

seemed to leave his body in the dark to deposit the card in my hand, the purple script

immediately shining in the light. And the figure, moving upwards like a cat on the wall, vanished

fast between the garret gables overhead.

"I knew I was alone now, could feel it. And the pounding of my heart seemed to fill the empty

little street as I stood under the lamp reading that card. The address I knew well enough, because

I had been to theaters along that street more than once. But the name was astonishing: 'Theatre

des Vampires,' and the time noted, nine p.m.

"I turned it over and discovered written there the note, 'Bring the petite beauty with you. You are most welcome. Armand!'

"There was no doubt that the figure who'd given it to me had written this message. And I had

only a very short time to get to the hotel and to tell Claudia of these things before dawn. I was

running fast, so that even the people I passed on the boulevards did not actually see the shadow

that brushed them."

The Theatre des Vampires was by invitation only, and the next night the doorman inspected my

card for a moment while the rain fell softly all around us: on the man and the woman stopped at

the shut-up box office; on the crinkling posters of penny-dreadful vampires with their

outstretched arms and cloaks resembling bat wings ready to close on the naked shoulders of a

mortal victim; on the couple that pressed past us into the packed lobby, where I could easily

perceive that the crowd was all human, no vampires among them, not even this boy who

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 594