The Vampire Lestat tvc-2

by Anne Rice

  "You know the creatures of the night are ripe for a great leader, " she said. "Not some superstitious mumbler of old rites, but a great dark monarch who will galvanize us according to new principles. "

  "What principles? " I asked. Ignoring the question, she went on.

  "Imagine, " she said, "not merely this stealthy and loathsome feeding on mortals, but something grand as the Tower of Babel was grand before it was brought down by the wrath off God. I mean a leader set up in a Satanic palace who sends out his followers to turn brother against brother, to cause mothers to kill their children, to put all the fine accomplishments of mankind to the torch, to scorch the land itself so that all would die of hunger, innocent and guilty! Make suffering and chaos wherever you turn, and strike down the forces of good so that men despair. Now that is something worthy of being called evil. That is what the work of a devil really is. We are nothing, you and I, except exotica in the Savage Garden, as you told me. And the world of men is no more or less now than what I saw in my books in the Auvergne years ago. " I hated this conversation. And yet I was glad she was in the room with me, that I was speaking to somebody other than a poor deceived mortal. That I wasn't alone with my letters from home.

  "But what about your aesthetic questions? " I asked. "What you explained to Armand before, that you wanted to know why beauty existed and why it continues to affect us? " She shrugged.

  "When the world of man collapses in ruin, beauty will take over. The trees shall grow again where there were streets; the flowers will again cover the meadow that is now a dank field of hovels. That shall be the purpose of the Satanic master, to see the wild grass and the dense forest cover up all trace of the once great cities until nothing remains.

  "And why call all this Satanic? " I asked. "Why not call it chaos?

  That is all it would be. "

  "Because, " she said, "that is what men would call it. They invented Satan, didn't they? Satanic is merely the name they give to the behavior of those who would disrupt the orderly way in which men want to live. "

  "I don't see it. "

  "Well, use your preternatural brain, my blue-eyed one, " she answered, "my golden-haired son, my handsome wolfkiller. It is very possible that God made the world as Armand said. "

  "This is what you discovered in the forest? You were told this by the leaves? " She laughed at me.

  "Of course, God is not necessarily anthropomorphic, " she said. "Or what we would call, in our colossal egotism and sentimentality, 'a decent person.' But there is probably God. Satan, however, was man's invention, a name for the force that seeks to overthrow the civilized order of things. The first man who made laws-be he Moses or some ancient Egyptian king Osiris- that lawmaker created the devil. The devil meant the one who tempts you to break the laws. And we are truly Satanic in that we follow no law for man's protection. So why not truly disrupt? Why not make a blaze of evil to consume all the civilizations of the earth? " I was too appalled to answer.

  "Don't worry. " She laughed. "I won't do it. But I wonder what will happen in the decades to come. Will not somebody do it? "

  "I hope not! " I said. "Or let me put it this way. If one of us tries, then there shall be war. "

  "Why? Everyone will follow him. "

  "I will not. I will make the war. "

  "Oh, you are too amusing, Lestat, " she said.

  "It's petty, " I said.

  "Petty! " She had looked away, out into the courtyard, but she looked back and the color rose in her face. "To topple all the cities of the earth? I understood when you called the Theater of the Vampires petty, but now you are contradicting yourself. "

  "It is petty to destroy anything merely for the sake of the destroying, don't you think? "

  "You're impossible, " she said. "Sometime in the far future there may be such a leader. He will reduce man to the nakedness and fear from which he came. And we shall feed upon him effortlessly as we have always done, and the Savage Garden, as you call it, will cover the world. "

  "I almost hope someone does attempt it, " I said. "Because I would rise up against him and do everything to defeat him. And possibly I could be saved, I could be good again in my own eyes, as I set out to save man from this. " I was very angry. I'd left my chair and walked out into the courtyard. She came right behind me.

  "You have just given the oldest argument in Christendom for the existence of evil, " she said.

  "It exists so that we may fight it and do good. "

  "How dreary and stupid, " I said.

  "What I don't understand about you is this, " she said. "You hold to your old belief in goodness with a tenacity that is virtually unshakable. Yet you are so good at being what you are! You hunt your victims like a dark angel. You kill ruthlessly. You feast all the night long on victims when you choose. "

  "So? " I looked at her coldly. "I don't know how to be bad at being bad. " She laughed.

  "I was a good marksman when I was a young man, " I said, "a good actor on the stage. And now I am a good vampire. So much for our understanding of the word 'good. "' After she had gone, I lay on my back on the flagstones in the courtyard and looked up at the stars, thinking of all the paintings and the sculptures that I had seen merely in the single city of Florence. I knew that I hated places where there are only towering trees, and the softest and sweetest music to me was the sound of human voices. But what did it matter really what I thought or felt? But she didn't always bludgeon me with strange philosophy. Now and then when she appeared, she spoke of the practical things she'd learned. She was actually braver and more adventurous than I was. She taught me things. We could sleep in the earth, she had ascertained that before we ever left France. Coffins and graves did not matter. And she would find herself rising naturally out of the earth at sunset even before she was awake. And those mortals who did find us during the daylight hours, unless they exposed us to the sun at once, were doomed. For example, outside Palermo she had slept in a cellar far below an abandoned house, and when she had awakened, her eyes and face were burning as if they had been scalded, and she had in her right hand a mortal, quite dead, who had apparently attempted to disturb her rest.

  "He was strangled, " she said, "and my hand was still locked on his throat. And my face had been burned by the little light that leaked down from the opened door. "

  "What if there had been several mortals? " I asked, vaguely enchanted with her. She shook her head and shrugged. She always slept in the earth now, not in cellars or coffins. No one would ever disturb her rest again. It did not matter to her. I did not say so, but I believed there was a grace in sleeping in the crypt. There was a romance to rising from the grave. I was in fact going to the very opposite extreme in that I had coffins made for myself in places where we lingered, and I slept not in the graveyard or the church, as was our most common custom, but in hiding places within the house. I can't say that she didn't sometimes patiently listen to me when I told her these things. She listened when I described to her the great works of art I had seen in the Vatican museum, or the chorus I had heard in the cathedral, or the dreams I had in the last hour before rising, dreams that seemed to be sparked by the thoughts of mortals passing my lair. But maybe she was watching my lips move. Who could possibly tell? And then she was gone again without explanation, and I walked the streets alone, whispering aloud to Marius and writing to him the long, long messages that took the whole night sometimes to complete.

  What did I want of her, that she be more human, that she be like me? Armand's predictions obsessed me. And how could she not think of them? She must have known what was happening, that we were growing ever farther apart, that my heart was breaking and I had too much pride to say it to her.

  "Please, Gabrielle, I cannot endure the loneliness! Stay with me. " By the time we left Italy I was playing dangerous little games with mortals. I'd see a man, or a woman-a human being who looked perfect to me spiritually- and I would follow the human about. Maybe for a week I'd do this, then a month, sometimes even longer than
that. I'd fall in love with the being. I'd imagine friendship, conversation, intimacy that we could never have. In some magical and imaginary moment I would say: "But you see what I am, " and this human being, in supreme spiritual understanding, would say: "Yes, I see. I understand.

  " Nonsense, really. Very like the fairy tale where the princess gives her selfless love to the prince who is enchanted and he is himself again and the monster no more. Only in this dark fairy tale I would pass right into my mortal lover. We would become one being, and I would beflesh and blood again. Lovely idea, that. Only I began to think more and more of Armand's warnings, that I'd work the Dark Trick again for the same reasons I'd done it before. And I stopped playing the game altogether. I merely went hunting with all the old vengeance and cruelty, and it wasn't merely the evildoer I brought down. In the city of Athens I wrote the following message to Marius:

  "I do not know why I go on. I do not search for truth. I do not believe in it. I hope for no ancient secrets from you, whatever they may be. But I believe in something. Maybe simply in the beauty of the world through which I wander or in the will to live itself. This gift was given to me too early. It was given for no good reason. And already at the age of thirty mortal years, I have some understanding as to why so many of our kind have wasted it, given it up. Yet I continue. And I search for you. " How long I could have wandered through Europe and Asia in this fashion I do not know. For all my complaints about loneliness, I was used to it all. And there were new cities as there were new victims, new languages, and new music to hear. No matter what my pain, I fixed my mind on a new destination. I wanted to know all the cities of the earth, finally, even the far-off capitals of India and China, where the simplest objects would seem alien and the minds I pierced as strange as those of creatures from another world. . But as we went south from Istanbul into Asia Minor, Gabrielle felt the allure of the new and strange land even more strongly, so that she was scarcely ever at my side. And things were reaching a horrid climax in France, not merely with the mortal world I still grieved for, but with the vampires of the theater as well.

  3

  Before I ever left Greece, I'd been hearing disturbing news from English and French travelers of the troubles at home. And when I reached the European hostelry in Ankara there was a large packet of letters waiting for me. Roget had moved all of my money out of France, and into foreign banks. "You must not consider returning to Paris, " he wrote. "I have advised your father and your brothers to keep out of all controversy. It is not the climate for monarchists here.

  " Eleni's letters spoke in their own way of the same things: Audiences want to see the aristocracy made fools of. Our little play featuring a clumsy queen puppet, who is trampled mercilessly by the mindless troop of puppet soldiers whom she seeks to command, draws loud laughter and screams. The clergy is also ripe for derision: In another little drama we have a bumptious priest come to chastise a group of dancing-girl marionettes for their indecent conduct. But alas, their dancing master, who is in fact a redhorned devil, turns the unfortunate cleric into a werewolf who ends his days kept by the laughing girls in a golden cage. All this is the genius of Our Divine Violinist, but we must now be with him every waking moment. To force him to write we tie him to the chair. We put ink and paper in front of him. And if this fails, we make him dictate as we write down the plays. In the streets he would accost the passers-by and tell them passionately there are horrors in this world of which they do not dream. And I assure you, if Paris were not so busy reading pamphlets that denounce Queen Marie Antoinette, he might have undone us all by now. Our Oldest Friend becomes more angry with every passing night. Of course I wrote to her at once, begging her to be patient with Nicki, to try to help him through these first years. "Surely he can be influenced, " I said. And for the first time I asked: "Would I have the power to alter things if I were to return? " I stared at the words for a long time before signing my name. My hands were trembling. Then I sealed the letter and posted it at once. How could I go back? Lonely as I was, I couldn't bear the thought of returning to Paris, of seeing that little theater again. And what would I do for Nicolas when I got there? Armand's long-ago admonition was a din in my ears. In fact, it seemed no matter where I was that Armand and Nicki were both with me, Armand full of grim warnings and predictions, and Nicolas taunting me with the little miracle of love turned into hate. I had never needed Gabrielle as I did now. But she had gone ahead on our journey long ago. Now and then I remembered the way it had been before we ever left Paris. But I didn't expect anything from her anymore. At Damascus, Eleni's answer was waiting for me. He despises you as much as ever. When we suggest that perhaps he should go to you, he laughs and laughs. I tell you these things not to haunt you but to let you know that we do our utmost to protect this child who should never have been Born to Darkness. He is overwhelmed by his powers, dazzled and maddened by his vision. We have seen it all and its sorry finish before. Yet he has written his greatest play this last month. The marionette dancers, sans strings for this one, are, in the flower of their youth, struck down by a pestilence and laid beneath tombstones and flower wreaths to rest. The priest weeps over them before he goes away. But a young violinist magician comes to the cemetery. And by means of his music makes them rise. As vampires dressed all in black silk ruffles and black satin ribbons, they come out of the graves, dancing merrily as they follow the violinist towards Paris, a beautifully rendered painting on the scrim. The crowd positively roars. I tell you we could feast on mortal victims on the stage and the Parisians, thinking it all the most novel illusion, would only cheer. There was also a frightening letter from Roget: Paris was in the grip of revolutionary madness. King Louis had been forced to recognize the National Assembly. The people of all classes were uniting against him as never before. Roget had sent a messenger south to see my family and try to determine the revolutionary mood in the countryside for himself. I answered both letters with all the predictable concern and all the predictable feeling of helplessness. But as I sent my belongings on to Cairo, I had the dread that all those things upon which I depended were in danger. Outwardly, I was unchanged as I continued my masquerade as the traveling gentleman; inwardly the demon hunter of the crooked back streets was silently and secretly lost. Of course I told myself that it was important to go south to Egypt, that Egypt was a land of ancient grandeur and timeless marvels, that Egypt would enchant me and make me forget the things happening in Paris which I was powerless to change. But there was a connection in my mind. Egypt, more than any other land the world over, was a place in love with death. Finally Gabrielle came like a spirit out of the Arabian desert, and together we set sail. It was almost a month before we reached Cairo, and when I found my belongings waiting for me in the European hostelry there was a strange package there. I recognized Eleni's writing immediately, but I could not think why she would send me a package and I stared at the thing for a full quarter of an hour, my mind as blank as it had ever been. There was not a word from Roget. Why hasn't Roget written to me, I thought. What is this package?

  Why is it here? At last I realized that for an hour I had been sitting in a room with a lot of trunks and packing cases and staring at a package and that Gabrielle, who had not seen fit to vanish yet, was merely watching me.

  "Would you go out? " I whispered.

  "If you wish, " she said. It was important to open this, yes, to open it and find out what it was. Yet it seemed just as important for me to look around the barren little room and imagine that it was a room in a village inn in the Auvergne.

  "I had a dream about you, " I said aloud, glancing at the package. "I dreamed that we were moving through the world together, you and I, and we were both serene and strong. I dreamed we fed on the evildoer as Marius had done, and as we looked about ourselves we felt awe and sorrow at the mysteries we beheld. But we were strong. We would go on forever. And we talked. 'Our conversation' went on and on. " I tore back the wrapping and saw the case of the Stradivarius violin. I went to say something again,
just to myself, but my throat closed. And my mind couldn't carry out the words on its own. I reached for the letter which had slipped to one side over the polished wood.