PART III 2 page

admitted us finally into the press of conversation and damp wool and ladies' gloved fingers

fumbling with felt -brimmed hats and wet curls. I pressed for the shadows in a feverish

excitement. We had fed earlier only so that in the bustling street of this theater our skin would

not be too white, our eyes too unclouded. And that taste of blood which I had not enjoyed had

left me all the more uneasy; but I had no time for it. This was no night for killing. This was to be

a night of revelations, no matter how it ended. I was certain.

"Yet here we stood with this all too human crowd, the doors opening now on the auditorium, and

a young boy pushing towards us, beckoning, pointing above the shoulders of the crowd to the

stairs. Ours was a box, one of the best in the house, and if the blood had not dimmed my skin

completely nor made Claudia into a human child as she rode in my arms, this usher did not seem

at all to notice it nor to care. In fact, he smiled all too readily as he drew back the curtain for us on two chairs before the brass rail.

" 'Would you put it past them to have human slaves?' Claudia whispered.

" 'But Lestat never trusted human slaves,' I answered. I watched the seats fill, watched the

marvelously flowered hats navigating below me through the rows of silk chairs. White shoulders

gleamed in the deep curve of the balcony spreading out from us; diamonds glittered in the gas

light. 'Remember, be sly for once,' came Claudia's whisper from beneath her bowed blond head.

'You're too much of a gentleman.'

"The lights were going out, first in the balcony, and then along the walls of the main floor. A

knot of musicians had gathered in the pit below the stage, and at the foot of the long, green

velvet curtain the gas flickered, then brightened, and the audience receded as if enveloped by a

gray cloud through which only the diamonds sparkled, on wrists, on throats, on fingers. And a

hush descended like that gray cloud until all the sound was collected in one echoing persistent

cough. Then silence. And the slow, rhythmical beating of a tambourine. Added to that was the

thin melody of a wooden flute, which seemed to pick up the sharp metallic tink of the bells of the

tambourine, winding them into a haunting melody that was medieval in sound. Then the

strumming of strings that emphasized the tambourine. And the flute rose, in that melody singing

of something melancholy, sad. It had a charm to it, this music, and the whole audience seemed

stilled and united by it, as if the music of that flute were a luminous ribbon unfurling slowly in

the dark. Not even the rising curtain broke the silence with the slightest sound. The lights

brightened, and it seemed the stage was not the stage but a thickly wooded place, the light

glittering on the roughened tree trunks and the thick clusters of leaves beneath the arch of

darkness above; and through the trees could be seen what appeared the low, stone bank of a river

and above that, beyond that, the glittering waters of the river itself, this whole three-dimensional

world produced in painting upon a fine silk scrim that shivered only slightly in a faint draft.

"A sprinkling of applause greeted the illusion, gathering adherents from all parts of the

auditorium until it reached its short crescendo and died away. A dark, draped figure was moving

on the stage from tree trunk to tree trunk, so fast that as he stepped into the lights he seemed to

appear magically in the center, one arm flashing out from his cloak to show a silver scythe and

the other to hold a mask on a slender stick before the invisible face, a mask which showed the

gleaming countenance of Death, a painted skull.

"There were gasps from the crowd. It was Death standing before the audience, the scythe poised,

Death at the edge of a dark wood. And something in me was responding now as the audience

responded, not in fear, but in some human way, to the magic of that fragile painted set, the

mystery of the lighted world there, the world in which this figure moved in his billowing black

cloak, back and forth before the audience with the grace of a great panther, drawing forth, as it

were, those gasps, those sighs, those reverent murmurs.

"And now, behind this figure, whose very gestures seemed to have a captivating power like the

rhythm of the music to which it moved, came other figures from the wings. First an old woman,

very stooped and bent, her gray hair like moss, her arm hanging down with the weight of a great

basket of flowers. Her shuttling steps scraped on the stage, and her head bobbed with the rhythm

of the music and the darting steps of the Grim Reaper. And then she started back as she laid eyes

on him and, slowly setting down her basket, made her hands into the attitude of prayer. She was

tired; her head leaned now on her hands as if in sleep, and she reached out for him, supplicating.

But as he came towards her, he bent to look directly into her face, which was all shadows to us

beneath her hair, and started back then, waving his hand as if to freshen the air. Laughter erupted

uncertainly from the audience. But as the old woman rose and took after Death, the laughter took

over.

"The music broke into a jig with their running, as round and round the stage the old woman

pursued Death, until he finally flattened himself into the dark of a tree trunk, bowing his masked

face under his wing like a bird. And the old woman, lost, defeated, gathered up her basket as the

music softened and slowed to her pace, and made her way off the stage. I did not like it. I did not

like the laughter. I could see the other figures moving in now, the music orchestrating their

gestures, cripples on crutches and beggars with rags the color of ash, all reaching out for Death,

who whirled, escaping this one with a sudden arching of the back, fleeing from that one with an

effeminate gesture of disgust, waving them all away finally in a foppish display of weariness and

boredom.

"It was then I realized that the languid, white hand that made these comic arcs was not painted

white. It was a vampire hand which wrung laughter from the crowd. A vampire hand lifted now

to the grinning skull, as the stage was finally clear, as if stifling a yawn. And then this vampire,

still holding the mask before his face, adopted marvelously the att itude of resting his weight

against a painted silken tree, as if he were falling gently to sleep. The music twittered like birds, rippled like the flowing of the water; and the spotlight, which encircled him in a yellow pool,

grew dim, all but fading away as he slept.

"And another spot pierced the scrim, seeming to melt it altogether, to reveal a young woman

standing alone far upstage. She was majestically tall and all but enshrined by a voluminous mane

of golden blond hair. I could feel the awe of the audi ence as she seemed to flounder in the

spotlight, the dark forest rising on the perimeter, so that she seemed to be lost in the trees. And

she was lost; and not a vampire. The soil on her mean blouse and skirt was not stage paint, and

nothing had touched her perfect face, which gazed into the light now, as beautiful and finely

chiseled as the face of a marble Virgin, that hair her haloed veil. She could not see in the light,

though all could see her. And the moan which escaped her lips as she floundered seemed to echo

over the thin, romantic singing of the flute, which was a tribute to that beauty. The figure of

Death woke with a start in his pale spotlight and turned to see her as the audience had seen her,

and to throw up his free hand in tribute, in awe.

"The twitter of laughter died before it became real. She was too beautiful, her gray eyes too

distressed. The performance too perfect. And then the skull mask was thrown suddenly into the

wings and Death showed a beaming white face to the audience, his hurried hands stroking his

handsome black hair, straightening a waistcoat, brushing imaginary dust from his lapels. Death

in love. And clapping rose for the luminous countenance, the gleaming cheekbones, the winking

black eye, as if it were all masterful illusion when in fact it was merely and certainly the face of a vampire, the vampire who had accosted me in the Latin Quarter, that leering, grinning vampire,

harshly illuminated by the yellow spot.

"My hand reached for Claudia's in the dark and pressed it tightly. But she sat still, as if enrapt.

The forest of the stage, through which that helpless mortal girl stared blindly towards the

laughter, divided in two phantom halves, moving away from the center, freeing the vampire to

close in on her.

"And she who had been advancing towards the foot lights, saw him suddenly and came to a halt,

making a moan like a child. Indeed, she was very like a child, though clearly a full-grown

woman. Only a slight wrinkling of the tender flesh around her eyes betrayed her age. Her breasts

though small were beautifully shaped beneath her blouse, and her hips though narrow gave her

long, dusty skirt a sharp, sensual angularity. As she moved back from the vampire, I saw the

tears standing in her eyes like glass in the flicker of the lights, and I felt my spirit contract in fear for her, and in longing. Her beauty was heartbreaking.

"Behind her, a number of painted skulls suddenly moved against the blackness, the figures that

carried the masks invisible in their black clothes, except for free white hands that clasped the

edge of a cape, the folds of a skirt. Vampire women were there, moving in with the men towards

the victim, and now they all, one by one, thrust the masks away so they fell in an artful pile, the

sticks like bones, the skulls grinning into the darkness above. And there they stood, seven

vampires, the women vampires three in number, their molded white breasts shining over the tight

black bodices of their gowns, their hard luminescent faces staring with dark eyes beneath curls of

black hair. Starkly beautiful, as they seemed to float close around that florid human figure, yet

pale and cold compared to that sparkling golden hair, that petal-pink skin. I could hear the breath

of the audience, the halting, the soft sighs. It was a spectacle, that circle of white faces pressing closer and closer, and that leading figure, that Gentleman Death, turning to the audience now

with his hands crossed over his heart, his head bent in longing to elicit their sympathy: was she

not irresistible! A murmur of accenting laughter, of sighs.

"But it was she who broke the magic silence.

" 'I don't want to die...' she whispered. Her voice was like a bell.

" 'We are death,' he answered her; and from around her came the whisper, 'Death.' She turned,

tossing her hair so it became a veritable shower of gold, a rich and living thing over the dust off

her poor clothing. 'Help me?' she cried out softly, as if afraid even to raise her voice. 'Someone...'

she said to the crowd she knew must be there. A soft laughter came from Claudia. The girl on

stage only vaguely understood where she was, what was happening, but knew infinitely more

than this house of people that gaped at her.

" 'I don't want to die! I don't want to!' Her delicate voice broke, her eyes fixed on the tall,

malevolent leader vampire, that demon trickster who now stepped out of the circle of the others

towards her.

" 'We all die,' he answered her. 'The one thing you share with every mortal is death.' His hand

took in the orchestra, the distant faces of the balcony, the boxes.

" 'No,' she protested in disbelief. 'I have so many years, so many...' Her voice was light, lilting in her pain. It made her irresistible, just as did the movement of her naked throat and the hand that

fluttered there.

" 'Years!' said the master vampire. 'How do you know you have so many years? Death is no

respecter of age! There could be a sickness in your body now, already devouring you from

within. Or, outside, a man might be waiting to kill you simply for your yellow hair!' And his

fingers reached for it, the sound of his deep, preternatural voice sonorous. 'Need I tell what fate

may have in store for you?'

" 'I don't care... I'm not afraid,' she protested, her clarion voice so fragile after him. 'I would take my chance...'

" 'And if you do take that chance and live, live for years, what would be your heritage? The

humpbacked, toothless visage of old age?' And now he lifted her hair behind her back, exposing

her pale throat. And slowly he drew the string from the loose gathers of her blouse. The cheap

fabric opened, the sleeves slipping off her narrow, pink shoulders; and she clasped it, only to

have him take her wrists and thrust them sharply away. The audience seemed to sigh in a body,

the women behind their opera glasses, the men leaning forward in their chairs. I could see the

cloth falling, see the pale, flawless skin pulsing with her heart and the tiny nipples letting the

cloth slip precariously, the vampire holding her right wrist tightly at her side, the tears coarsing

down her blushing cheeks, her teeth biting into the flesh of her lip. 'Just as sure as this flesh is

pink, it will turn gray, wrinkled with age,' he said.

" 'Let me live, please,' she begged, her face turning away from him. 'I don't care... I don't care.'

" 'But then, why should you care if you die now? If these things don't frighten you... these

horrors?'

"She shook her head, baffled, outsmarted, helpless. I felt the anger in my veins, as sure as the passion. With a bowed head she bore the whole responsibility for defending life, and it was

unfair, monstrously unfair that she should have to pit logic against his for what was obvious and

sacred and so beautifully embodied in her. But he made her speechless, made her overwhelming

instinct seem petty, confused. I could feel her dying inside, weakening, and I hated him.

"The blouse slipped to her waist. A murmur moved through the titillated crowd as her small,

round breasts stood exposed. She struggled to free her wrist, but he held it fast.

" 'And suppose we were to let you go... suppose the Grim Reaper had a heart that could resist

your beauty... to whom would he turn his passion? Someone must die in your place. Would you

pick the person for us? The person to stand here and suffer as you suffer now?' He gestured to

the audience. Her confusion was terrible. 'Have you a sister... a mother... a child?'

" 'No,' she gasped. 'No...' shaking the mane of hair.

" 'Surely someone could take your place, a friend? Choose!'

" 'I can't. I wouldn't...' She writhed in his tight grasp. The vampires around her looked on, still, their faces evincing no emotion, as if the preternatural flesh were masks. 'Can't you do it?' he

taunted her. And I knew, if she said she could, how he would only condemn her, say she was as

evil as he for marking someone for death, say that she deserved her fate.

" 'Death waits for you everywhere,' he sighed now as if he were suddenly frustrated. The

audience could not perceive it, I could. I could see the muscles of his smooth face tightening. He

was trying to keep her gray eyes on his eyes, but she looked desperately, hopefully away from

him. On the warm, rising air I could smell the dust and perfume of her skin, hear the soft beating

of her heart. 'Unconscious death... the fate of all mortals.' He bent closer to her, musing,

infatuated with her, but struggling. 'Hmmm.... but we are conscious death! That would make you

a bride. Do you know what it means to be loved by Death?' He all but kissed her face, the

brilliant stain of her tears. 'Do you know what it means to have Death know your name?'

"She looked at him, overcome with fear. And then her eyes seemed to mist over, her lips to go

slack. She was staring past him at the figure of another vampire who had emerged slowly from

the shadows. For a long time he had stood on the periphery of the gathering, his hands clasped,

his large, dark eyes very still. His attitude was not the attitude of hunger. He did not appear rapt.

But she was looking into his eyes now, and her pain bathed her in a beauteous light, a light

which made her irresistibly alluring. It was this that held the jaded audience, this terrible pain. I could feel her skin, feel the small, pointed breasts, feel my arms caressing her. I shut my eyes

against it and saw her starkly against that private darkness. It was what they felt all around her,

this community of vampires. She had no chance.

"And, looking up again, I saw her shimmering in the smoky light of the footlamps, saw her tears

like gold as soft from that other vampire who stood at a distance came the words... 'No pain.'

"I could see the trickster stiffen, but no one else would see it. They would see only the girl's smooth, childlike face, those parted lips, slack with innocent wonder as she gazed at that distant

vampire, hear her soft voice repeat after him, 'No pain?'

" 'Your beauty is a gift to us.' His rich voice effortlessly filled the house, seemed to fix and subdue the mounting wave of excitement. And slightly, almost imperceptibly, his hand moved.

The trickster was receding, becoming one of those patient, white faces, whose hunger and

equanimity were strangely one. And slowly, gracefully, the other moved towards her. She was

languid, her nakedness forgotten, those lids fluttering, a sigh escaping her moist lips. 'No pain,'

she accented. I could hardly bear it, the sight of her yearning towards him, seeing her dying now,

under this vampire's power. I wanted to cry out to her, to break her swoon. And I wanted her.

Wanted her, as he was moving in on her, his hand out now for the drawstring of her skirt as she

inclined towards him, her head back, the black cloth slipping over her hips, over the golden

gleam of the hair between her legs---a child's down, that delicate curl---the skirt dropping to her

feet. And this vampire opened his arms, his back to the flickering footlights, his auburn hair

seeming to tremble as the gold of her hair fell around his black coat. 'No pain... no pain...' he was whispering to her, and she was giving herself over.

"And now, turning her slowly to the side so th at they could all see her serene face, he was lifting her, her back arching as her naked breasts touched his buttons, her pale arms enfolded his neck.

She stiffened, cried out as he sank his teeth, and her face was still as the dark theater

reverberated with shared passion. His white hand shone on her florid buttocks, her hair dusting

it, stroking it. He lifted her off the boards as he drank, her throat gleaming against his white

cheek. I felt weak, dazed, hunger rising in me, knotting my heart, my veins. I felt my hand

gripping the brass bar of the box, tighter, until I could feel the metal creaking in its joints. And

that soft, wrenching sound which none of those mortals might hear seemed somehow to hook me

to the solid place where I was.

"I bowed my head; I wanted to shut my eyes. The air seemed fragrant with her salted skin, and

close and hot and sweet. Around her the other vampires drew in, the white hand that held her

tight quivered, and the auburn-haired vampire let her go, turning her, displaying her, her head

fallen back as he gave her over, one of those starkly beautiful vampire women rising behind her,

cradling her, stroking her as she bent to drink. They were all about her now, as she was passed

from one to another and to another, before the enthra lled crowd, her head thrown forward over

the shoulder of a vampire man, the nape of her neck as enticing as the small buttocks or the

flawless skin of her long thighs, the tender creases behind her limply bent knees.

"I was sitting back in the chair, my mouth full of the taste of her, my veins in torment. And in the corner of my eyes was that auburn-haired vampire who had conquered her, standing apart as he

had been before, his dark eyes seeming to pick me from the darkness, seeming to fix on me over

the currents of warm air.

"One by one the vampires were withdrawing. The painted forest came back, sliding soundlessly

into place. Until the mortal girl, frail and very white, lay naked in that mysterious wood, nestled

in the silk of a black bier as if on the floor of the forest itself; and the music had begun again,

eerie and alarming, growing louder as the lights grew dimmer. All the vampires were gone,

except the trickster, who had gathered his scythe from the shadows and also his hand-held mask.

And he crouched near the sleeping girl as the lights slowly faded, and the music alone had power

and force in the enclosing dark. And then that died also.

"For a moment, the entire crowd was utterly still.

"Then applause began here and there and suddenly united everyone around us. The lights rose in

the sconces on the walls and heads turned to one another, conversation erupting all round. A

woman rising in the middle of a row to pull her fox fur sharply from the chair, though no one had

yet made way for her; someone else pushing out quickly to the carpeted aisle; and the whole

body was on its feet as if driven to the exits.

"But then the hum became the comfortable, jaded hum of the sophisticated and perfumed crowd

that had filled the lobby and the vault of the theater before. The spell was broken. The doors

were flung open on the fragrant rain, the clop of horses' hooves, and voices calling for taxis.

Down in the sea of slightly askew chairs, a white glove gleamed on a green sill cushion.

"I sat watching, listening, one hand shielding my lowered face from anyone and no one, my

elbow resting on the rail, the passion in me subsiding, the taste of the girl on my lips. It was as

though on the smell of the rain came her perfume still, and in the empty theater I could hear the

throb of her beating heart. I sucked in my breath, tasted the rain, and glimpsed Claudia sitting

infinitely still, her gloved hands in her lap.

"There was a bitter taste in my mouth, and confusion. And then I saw a lone usher moving on the

aisle below, righting the chairs, reaching for the scattered programs that littered the carpet. I was aware that this ache in me, this confusion, this blinding passion which only let me go with a

stubborn slowness would be obliterated if I were to drop down to one of those curtained

archways beside him and draw him up fast in the darkness and take him as that girl was taken. I

wanted to do it, and I wanted nothing. Claudia said near my bowed ear, 'Patience, Louis.

Patience'

"I opened my eyes. Someone was near, on the periphery of my vision; someone who had

outsmarted my hearing, my keen anticipation, which penetrated like a sharp antenna even this

distraction, or so I thought. But there he was, soundless, beyond the curtained entrance of the

box, that vampire with the auburn hair, that detached one; standing on the carpeted stairway

looking at us. I knew him now to be, as I'd suspected, the vampire who had given me the card

admitting us to the theater. Armand.

"He would have startled me, except for his stillness, the remote dreamy quality of his expression.

It seemed he'd been standing against that wall for the longest time, and betrayed no sign of

change as we looked at him, then came towards him. Had he not so completely absorbed me, I

would have been relieved he was not the tall, black-haired one; but I didn't think of this. Now his

eyes moved languidly over Claudia with no tribute whatsoever to the human habit of disguising

the stare. I placed my hand on Claudia's shoulder. 'We've been searching for you a very long

time,' I said to him, my heart growing calmer, as if his calm were drawing off my trepidation, my

care, like the sea drawing something into itself from the land. I cannot exaggerate this quality in

him. Yet I can't describe it and couldn't then; and the fact that my mind sought to describe it even

to myself unsettled me. He gave me the very feeling that he knew what I was doing, and his still

posture and his deep, brown eyes seemed to say there was no use in what I was thinking, or

particularly the words I was struggling to form now. Claudia said nothing.

"He moved away from the wall and began to walk down the stairs, while at the same time he

made a gesture that welcomed us and bade us follow; but all this was fluid and fast. My gestures

were the caricature of human gestures compared to his. He opened a door in the lower wall and

admitted us to the rooms below the theater, his feet only brushing the stone stairway as we

descended, his back to us with complete trust.

"And now we entered what appeared to be a vast subterranean ballroom, carved, as it were, out

of a cellar more ancient than the building overhead. Above us, the door that he had opened fell

shut, and the light died away before I could get a fair impression of the room. I heard the rustle

of his garments in the dark and then the sharp explosion of a match. His face appeared like a

great flame over the match. And then a figure moved into the light beside him, a young boy, who

brought him a candle. The sight of the boy brought back to me in a shock the teasing pleasure of

the naked woman on the stage, her prone body, the pulsing blood. And he turned and gazed at

me now, much in the manner of the auburn-haired vampire, who had lit the candle and

whispered to him, 'Go.' The light expanded to the distant walls, and the vampire held the light up

and moved along the wall, beckoning us both to follow.

"I could see a world of frescoes and murals surrounded us, their colors deep and vibrant above

the dancing flame, and gradually the theme and content beside us came clear. It was the terrible

'Triumph of Death' by Breughel, painted on such a massive scale that all the multitude of ghastly

figures towered over us in the gloom, those ruthless skeletons ferrying the helpless dead in a

fetid moat or pulling a cart of human skulls, beheading an outstretched corpse or hanging

humans from the gallows. A bell tolled over the endless hell of scorched and smoking land,

towards which great armies of men came with the hideous, mindless march of soldiers to a

massacre. I turned away, but the auburn-haired one touched my hand and led me further along

the wall to see 'The Fall of the Angels' slowly materializing with the damned being driven from

the celestial heights into a lurid chaos of feasting monsters. So vivid, so perfect was it, I

shuddered. The hand that had touched me did the same again, and I stood still despite it,

deliberately looking above to the very height of the mural, where I could make out of the

shadows two beautiful angels with trumpets to their lips. And for a second the spell was broken.

I had the strong sense of the first evening I had entered Notre-Dame, but then that was gone, like

something gossamer and precious snatched away from me.

"The candle rose. And horrors rose all around me: the dumbly passive and, degraded damned of

Bosch, the bloated coned corpses of Traini, the monstrous horsemen of Durer, and blown out of

all endurable scale a promenade of medieval woodcut, emblem, and engraving. The very ceiling

writhed with skeletons and moldering dead, with demons and the instruments of pain, as if this

were the cathedral of death itself.

"Where we stood finally in the center of the room, the candle seemed to pull the images to life

everywhere around us. Delirium threatened, that awful shifting of the room began, that sense of

falling. I reached out for Claudia's hand. She stood musing, her face passive, her eyes distant

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 614