by Anne Rice
"I know how it is, " she said to me. "You hate them. Because of what you've endured and what they don't know. They haven't the imagination to know what happened to you out there on the mountain. " I felt a cold delight in these words. I gave her the silent acknowledgment that she understood it perfectly.
"It was the same the first time I bore a child, " she said. "I was in agony for twelve hours, and I felt trapped in the pain, knowing the only release was the birth or my own death. When it was over, I had your brother Augustin in my arms, but I didn't want anyone else near me. And it wasn't because I blamed them. It was only that I'd suffered like that, hour after hour, that I'd gone into the circle of hell and come back out. They hadn't been in the circle of hell. And I felt quiet all over. In this common occurrence, this vulgar act of giving birth, I understood the meaning of utter loneliness. "
"Yes, that's it, " I answered. I was a little shaken. She didn't respond. I would have been surprised if she had. Having said what she'd come to say, she wasn't going to converse, actually. But she did lay her hand on my forehead-very unusual for her to do that-and when she observed that I was wearing the same bloody hunting clothes after all this time, I noticed it too, and realized the sickness of it. She was silent for a while. And as I sat there, looking past her at the fire, I wanted to tell her a lot of things, how much I loved her particularly. But I was cautious. She had a way of cutting me off when I spoke to her, and mingled with my love was a powerful resentment of her. All my life I'd watched her read her Italian books and scribble letters to people in Naples, where she had grown up, yet she had no patience even to teach me or my brothers the alphabet. And nothing had changed after I came back from the monastery. I was twenty and I couldn't read or write more than a few prayers and my name. I hated the sight of her books; I hated her absorption in them. And in some vague way, I hated the fact that only extreme pain in me could ever wring from her the slightest warmth or interest. Yet she'd been my savior. And there was no one but her. And I was as tired of being alone, perhaps, as a young person can be. She was here now, out of the confines of her library, and she was attentive to me. Finally I was convinced that she wouldn't get up and go away, and I found myself speaking to her.
"Mother, " I said in a low voice, "there is more to it. Before it happened, there were times when I felt terrible things. " There was no change in her expression. "I mean I dream sometimes that I might kill all of them, " I said. "I kill my brothers and my father in the dream. I go from room to room slaughtering them as I did the wolves. I feel in myself the desire to murder... "
"So do I, my son, " she said. "So do I " And her face was lighted with the strangest smile as she looked at me. I bent forward and looked at her more closely. I lowered my voice.
"I see myself screaming when it happens, " I went on. "I see my face twisted into grimaces and I hear bellowing coming out of me. My mouth is a perfect O, and shrieks, cries, come out of me. " She nodded with that same understanding look, as if alight were flaring behind her eyes.
"And on the mountain, Mother, when I was fighting the wolves . . . it was a little like that. "
"Only a little? " she asked. I nodded.
"I felt like someone different from myself when I killed the wolves. And now I don't know who is here with you-your son Lestat, or that other man, the killer. " She was quiet for a long time.
"No, " she said finally. "It was you who killed the wolves. You're the hunter, the warrior. You're stronger than anyone else here, that's your tragedy. " I shook my head. That was true, but it didn't matter. It couldn't account for unhappiness such as this. But what was the use of saying it? She looked away for a moment, then back to me.
"But you're many things, " she said. "Not only one thing. You're the killer and the man. And don't give in to the killer in you just because you hate them. You don't have to take upon yourself the burden of murder or madness to be free of this place. Surely there must be other ways. " Those last two sentences struck me hard. She had gone to the core. And the implications dazzled me. Always I'd felt that I couldn't be a good human being and fight them. To be good meant to be defeated by them. Unless of course I found a more interesting idea of goodness. We sat still for a few moments. And there seemed an uncommon intimacy even for us. She was looking at the fire, scratching at her thick hair which was wound into a circle on the back of her head.
"You know what I imagine, " she said, looking towards me again.
"Not so much the murdering of them as an abandon which disregards them completely. I imagine drinking wine until I'm so drunk I strip off my clothes and bathe in the mountain streams naked. " I almost laughed. But it was a sublime amusement. I looked up at her, uncertain for a moment that I was hearing her correctly. But she had said these words and she wasn't finished.
"And then I imagine going into the village, " she said, "and up into the inn and taking into my bed any men that come there-crude men, big men, old men, boys. Just lying there and taking them one after another, and feeling some magnificent triumph in it, some absolute release without a thought of what happens to your father or your brothers, whether they are alive or dead. In that moment I am purely myself. I belong to no one. " I was too shocked and amazed to say anything. But again this was terribly, terribly amusing. When I thought of my father and brothers and the pompous shopkeepers of the village and how they would respond to such a thing, I found it damn near hilarious. If I didn't laugh aloud it was probably because the image of my mother naked made me think I shouldn't. But I couldn't keep altogether quiet. I laughed a little, and she nodded, half smiling. She raised her eyebrows, as if to say, 'We understand each other'. Finally I roared laughing. I pounded my knee with my fist and hit my head on the wood of the bed behind me. And she almost laughed herself. Maybe in her own quiet way she was laughing. Curious moment. Some almost brutal sense of her as a human being quite removed from all that surrounded her. We did understand each other, and all my resentment of her didn't matter too much. She pulled the pin out of her hair and let it tumble down to her shoulders. We sat quiet for perhaps an hour after that. No more laughter or talk, just the fire blazing, and her near to me. She had turned so she could see the fire. Her profile, the delicacy of her nose and lips, were beautiful to look at. Then she looked back at me and in the same steady voice without undue emotion she said:
"I'll never leave here. I am dying now. " I was stunned. The little shock before was nothing to this.
"I'll live through this spring, " she continued, "and possibly the summer as well. But I won't survive another winter. I know. The pain in my lungs is too bad. " I made some little anguished sound. I think I leaned forward and said, "Mother! "
"Don't say any more, " she answered. I think she hated to be called mother, but I hadn't been able to help it.
"I just wanted to speak it to another soul, " she said. "To hear it out loud. I'm perfectly horrified by it. I'm afraid of it. " I wanted to take her hands, but I knew she'd never allow it. She disliked to be touched. She never put her arms around anyone. And so it was in our glances that we held each other. My eyes filled with tears looking at her. She patted my hand.
"Don't think on it much, " she said. "I don't. Just only now and then. But you must be ready to live on without me when the time comes. That may be harder for you than you realize. " I tried to say something; I couldn't make the words come. She left me just as she'd come in, silently. And though she'd never said anything about my clothes or my beard or how dreadful I looked, she sent the servants in with clean clothes for me, and the razor and warm water, and silently I let myself be taken care of by them.
3
I began to feel a little stronger. I stopped thinking about what happened with the wolves and I thought about her. I thought about the words "perfectly horrified, " and I didn't know what to make of them except they sounded exactly true. I'd feel that way if I were dying slowly. It would have been better on the mountain with the wolves. But there was more to it than that. She had always been silently unh
appy. She hated the inertia and the hopelessness of our life here as much as I did. And now, after eight children, three living, five dead, she was dying. This was the end for her. I determined to get up if it would make her feel better, but when I tried I couldn't. The thought of her dying was unbearable. I paced the floor of my room a lot, ate the food brought to me, but still I wouldn't go to her. But by the end of the month, visitors came to draw me out. My mother came in and said I must receive the merchants from the village who wanted to honor me for killing the wolves.
"Oh, hell with it, " I answered.
"No, you must come down, " she said. "They have gifts for you.
Now do your duty. " I hated all this. When I reached the hall, I found the rich shopkeepers there, all men I knew well, and all dressed for the occasion. But there was one startling young man among them I didn't recognize immediately. He was my age perhaps, and quite tall, and when our eyes met I remembered who he was. Nicolas de Lenfent, eldest son of the draper, who had been sent to school in Paris. He was a vision now. Dressed in a splendid brocade coat of rose and gold, he wore slippers with gold heels, and layers of Italian lace at his collar. Only his hair was what it used to be, dark and very curly, and boyish looking for some reason though it was tied back with a fine bit of silk ribbon. Parisian fashion, all this-the sort that passed as fast as it could through the local post house. And here I was to meet him in threadbare wool and scuffed leather boots and yellowed lace that had been seventeen times mended. We bowed to each other, as he was apparently the spokesman for the town, and then he unwrapped from its modest covering of black serge a great red velvet cloak lined in fur. Gorgeous thing. His eyes were positively shining when he looked at me. You would have thought he was looking at a sovereign.
"Monsieur, we beg you to accept this, " he said very sincerely. "The forest fur of the wolves has been used to line it and we thought it would stand you well in the winter, this fur lined cloak, when you ride out to hunt. "
"And these too, Monsieur, " said his father, producing a finely sewn pair of fur-lined boots in black suede. "For the hunt, Monsieur, " he said. I was a little overcome. They meant these gestures in the kindest way, these men who had the sort of wealth I only dreamed of, and they paid me respect as the aristocrat. I took the cloak and the boots. I thanked them as effusively as I'd ever thanked anybody for anything. And behind me, I heard my brother Augustin say:
"Now he will really be impossible! " I felt my face color. Outrageous that he should say this in the presence of these men, but when I glanced to Nicolas de Lenfent I saw the most affectionate expression on his face.
"I too am impossible, Monsieur, " he whispered as I gave him the parting kiss. "Someday, will you let me come to talk to you and tell me how you killed them all? Only the impossible can do the impossible. " None of the merchants ever spoke to me like that. We were boys again for a moment. And I laughed out loud. His father was disconcerted. My brothers stopped whispering, but Nicolas de Lenfent kept smiling with a Parisian's composure. As soon as they had left I took the red velvet cloak and the suede boots up into my mother's room. She was reading as always while very lazily she brushed her hair. In the weak sunlight from the window, I saw gray in her hair for the first time. I told her what Nicolas de Lenfent had said.
"Why is he impossible? " I asked her. "He said this with feeling, as if it meant something. " She laughed.
"It means something all right, " she said. "He's in disgrace. " She stopped looking at her book for a moment and looked at me. "You know how he's been educated all his life to be a little imitation aristocrat. Well, during his first term studying law in Paris, he fell madly in love with the violin, of all things. Seems he heard an Italian virtuoso, one of those geniuses from Padua who is so great that men say he has sold his soul to the devil. Well, Nicolas dropped everything at once to take lessons from Wolfgang Mozart. He sold his books. He did nothing but play and play until he failed his examinations. He wants to be a musician. Can you imagine? "
"And his father is beside himself. "
"Exactly. He even smashed the instrument, and you know what a piece of expensive merchandise means to the good draper. " I smiled.
"And so Nicolas has no violin now? "
"He has a violin. He promptly ran away to Clermont and sold his watch to buy another. He's impossible all right, and the worst part of it is that he plays rather well. "
"You've heard him? " She knew good music. She grew up with it in Naples. All I'd ever heard were the church choir, the players at the fairs.
"I heard him Sunday when I went to mass, " she said. "He was playing in the upstairs bedroom over the shop. Everyone could hear him, and his father was threatening to break his hands. " I gave a little gasp at the cruelty of it. I was powerfully fascinated! I think I loved him already, doing what he wanted like that.
"Of course he'll never be anything, " she went on.
"Why not? "
"He's too old. You can't take up the violin when you're twenty. But what do I know? He plays magically in his own way. And maybe he can sell his soul to the devil. " I laughed a little uneasily. It sounded magic.