Quot;What was this change?" asked the boy. 22 page

"Somewhere along the Avenue Napoleon, I heard the step behind me which I knew to be Armand's. He was signaling, letting me know that he was near. Yet I did nothing other than slow my pace and let him fall into step with me, and for a long time we walked, saying nothing. I dared not look at him. Of course, I'd been thinking of him all the while, and how if we were men and Claudia had been my love I might have fallen helpless in his arms finally, the need to share some common grief so strong, so consuming. The dam threatened to break now; and yet it did not break. I was numbed and I walked as one numbed.

" 'You know what I've done,' I said finally. We had turned off the avenue and I could see ahead of me the long row of double columns on the facade of the Royal Museum. 'You removed your coffin as I warned you.'

" 'Yes,' he answered. There was a sudden, unmistakable comfort in the sound of his voice. It weakened me. But I was simply too remote from pain, too tired.

" 'And yet you are here with me now. Do you mean to avenge them?'

" 'No,' he said.

" 'They were your fellows, you were their leader,' I said. 'Yet you didn't warn them I was out for them, as I warned you?'

" 'No,' he said.

" 'But surely you despise me for it. Surely you respect some rule, some allegiance to your own kind.'

" 'No,' he said softly.

"It was amazing to me how logical his response was, even though I couldn't explain it or understand it.

"And something came clear to me out of the remote regions of my own relentless considerations. 'There were guards; there were those ushers who slept in the theater. Why weren't they there when I entered? Why weren't they there to protect the sleeping vampires?'

" 'Because they were in my employ and I discharged them. I sent them away,' Armand said.

"I stopped. He showed no concern at my facing him, and as soon as our eyes met I wished the world were not one black empty ruin of ashes and death. I wished it were fresh and beautiful, and that we were both living and had love to give each other. 'You did this, knowing what I planned to do?

" 'Yes,' he said.

" 'But you were their leader! They trusted you. They believed in you. They lived with you!' I said. 'I don't understand you... why...?'

" 'Think of any answer you like,' he said calmly and sensitively, as if he didn't wish to bruise me with any accusation or disdain, but wanted me merely to consider this literally. 'I can think of many. Think of the one you need and believe it. It's as likely as any other. I shall give you the real reason for what I did, which is the least true: I was leaving Paris. The theater belonged to me. So I discharged them.'

" 'But with what you knew...'

" 'I told you, it was the actual reason and it was the least true,' he said patiently.

" 'Would you destroy me as easily as you let them be destroyed?' I demanded.

" 'Why should I?' he asked.

" 'My God,' I whispered.

" 'You're much changed,' he said. 'But in a way, you are much the same.'

"I walked on for a while and then, before the entrance to the Louvre, I stopped. At first it seemed to me that its many windows were dark and silver with the moonlight and the thin rain. But then I thought I saw a faint light moving within, as though a guard walked among the treasures. I envied him completely. And I fixed my thoughts on him obdurately, that guard, calculating how a vampire might get to him, how take his life and his lantern and his keys. The plan was confusion. I was incapable of plans. I had made only one real plan in my life, and it was finished.

"And then finally I surrendered. I turned to Armand again and let my eyes penetrate his eyes, and let him draw close to me as if he meant to make me his victim, and I bowed my head and felt his firm arm around my shoulder. And, remembering suddenly and keenly Claudia's words, what were very nearly her last words---that admission that she knew that I could love Armand because I had been able to love even her---those words struck me as rich and ironical, more filled with meaning than she could have guessed.

" 'Yes,' I said softly to him, 'that is the crowning evil, that we can even go so far as to love each other, you and I. And who else would show us a particle of love, a particle of compassion or mercy? Who else, knowing us as we know each other, could do anything but destroy us? Yet we can love each other.'

"And for a long moment, he stood there looking at me, drawing nearer, his head gradually inclining to one side, his lips parted as if he meant to speak. But then he only smiled and shook his head gently to confess he didn't understand.

"But I wasn't thinking of him anymore. I had one of those rare moments when it seemed I thought of nothing. My mind had no shape. I saw that the rain had stopped. I saw that the air was clear and cold. That the street was luminous. And I wanted to enter the Louvre. I formed words to tell Armand this, to ask him if he might help me do what was necessary to have the Louvre till dawn.

"He thought it a very simple request. He said only he wondered why I had waited so long."

"We left Paris very soon after that. I told Armand that I wanted to return to the Mediterranean---not to Greece, as I had so long dreamed. I wanted to go to Egypt. I wanted to see the desert there and, more importantly, I wanted to see the pyramids and the graves of the kings. I wanted to make contact with those grave-thieves who know more of the graves than do scholars, and I wanted to go down into the graves yet unopened and see the kings as they were buried, see those furnishings and works of art stored with them, and the paintings on their walls. Armand was more than willing. And we took leave of Paris early one evening by carriage without the slightest hint of ceremony.

"I had done one thing which I should note. I had gone back to my rooms in the Hotel Saint-Gabriel. It was my purpose to take up some things of Claudia and Madeleine and put them into coffins and have graves prepared for them in the cemetery of Montmartre. I did not do this. I stayed a short while in the rooms, where all was neat and put right by the staff, so that it seemed Madeleine and Claudia might return at any time. Madeleine's embroidery ring lay with her bundles of thread on a chair-side table. I looked at that and at everything else, and my task seemed meaningless. So I left.

"But something had occurred to me there; or, rather, something I had already been aware of merely became clearer. I had gone to the Louvre that night to lay down my soul, to find some transcendent pleasure that would obliterate pain and make me utterly forget even myself. I'd been upheld in this. As I stood on the sidewalk before the doors of the hotel waiting for the carriage that would take me to meet Armand, I saw the people who walked there---the restless boulevard crowd of well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, the hawkers of papers, the carriers of luggage, the drivers of carriages---all these in a new light. Before, all art had held for me the promise of a deeper understanding of the human heart. Now the human heart meant nothing. I did not denigrate it. I simply forgot it. The magnificent paintings of the Louvre were not for me intimately connected with the hands that had painted them. They were cut loose and dead like children turned to stone. Like Claudia, severed from her mother, preserved for decades in pearl and hammered gold. Like Madeleine's dolls. And of course, like Claudia and Madeleine and myself, they could all be reduced to ashes."

PART IV

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 876