by Rice, Anne
“His immortality,” I whispered.
“Exactly, his progeny! His books! And Damien had them buried with Wynken’s body in the castle garden by the fountain that appears in all the little pictures in the books! Blanche could look out on it every day from her window, the place in the ground where Wynken had been laid to rest. No trial, no heresy, no execution, nothing like that. He just murdered his brother, it was as simple as that. He probably paid the monastery huge amounts of money. Who knows if it was even necessary? Did the monastery love Wynken? The monastery is a ruin now where tourists come to snap pictures. As for the castle, it was obliterated in the bombing of the First World War.”
“Ah. But what happened after that, how did the books get out of the coffin? Do you have copies? Are you speaking of.…”
“No, I have the originals of every one. I have come across copies, crude copies, made at the behest of Eleanor, Blanche’s cousin and confidante, but as far as I know they stopped this practice of copies. There were only twelve books. And I don’t know how they surfaced. I can only guess.”
“And what is your guess?”
“I think Blanche went out in the night with the other women, dug up the body, and took the books out of the coffin, or whatever poor Wynken’s remains had been placed in, and put everything back right the way it was.”
“You think they’d do that?”
“Yes, I think they did it. I can see them doing it, by candlelight in the garden, see them digging, the five women together. Can’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I think they did it because they felt the way I do! They loved the beauty and the perfection of those books. Lestat, they knew they were treasures, and such is the power of obsession and such is the power of love. And who knows, maybe they wanted the bones of Wynken. It’s conceivable. Maybe one woman took a thigh bone and another the bones of his fingers and, ah, I don’t know.”
It seemed a ghastly picture suddenly, and it put me in mind, without a second’s hesitation, of Roger’s hands, which I had chopped off sloppily with a kitchen knife and dumped, wrapped in a plastic sack. I stared at the image of these hands before me, busy, fretting with the edge of the glass, tapping the bar in anxiety.
“How far back can you trace the journey of the books?” I asked.
“Not very far at all. But that’s often the case in my profession, I mean antiquities. The books have turned up one, maybe two at a time. Some from private collections, two from museums bombed during the wars. Once or twice I’ve paid almost nothing for them. I knew what they were the minute I laid eyes on them, but other people didn’t. And understand, everywhere I went I put out the search for this sort of medieval codex. I am an expert in this field. I know the language of the medieval artist! You have to save my treasures, Lestat. You can’t let Wynken get lost again. I’m leaving you with my legacy.”
“So it seems. But what can I do with these, and all the other relics, if Dora will have no part of it?”
“Dora’s young. Dora will change. See, I still have this vision—that maybe somewhere in my collection—forget about Wynken—that maybe somewhere among all the statues and relics is a central artifact that can help Dora with her new church. Can you gauge the value of what you saw in that flat? You have to make Dora touch those things again, examine them, catch the scent of them! You have to make her realize the potency of the statues and paintings, that they are expressions of the human quest for truth, the very quest that obsesses her. She just doesn’t know yet.”
“But you said Dora never cared for the paint and the plaster.”
“Make her care.”
“Me? How! I can conserve all this, yes, but how am I to make Dora love a work of art? Why would you even suggest such a thing, I mean—my having contact with your precious daughter?”
“You’ll love my daughter,” he said in a low murmur.
“Come again?”
“Find something miraculous in my collection for her.”
“The Shroud of Turin?”
“Oh, I like you. I really do. Yes, find her something that’s significant, something that will transform her, something that I, her father, bought and cherished, that will help her.”
“You’re as insane dead as you were alive, you know it? Are you still racketeering, trying to buy your way into salvation with a hunk of marble or a pile of parchment? Or do you really believe in the sanctity of all you’ve collected?”
“Of course I believe in the sanctity of it. It’s all I believe in! That’s my point, don’t you see? It’s all you believe in too … what glitters and what is gold.”
“Ah, but you do take my breath away.”
“That’s why you murdered me there, among the treasures. Look, we have to hurry. We don’t know how much time we have. Back to the mechanics. Now, with my daughter, your trump card is her ambition.
“She wanted the convent for her own female missionaries, her own Order, which was to teach love, of course, with the same unique fire as other missionaries have taught it; she would send her women into the poor neighborhoods and into the ghettoes and into the working districts, and they would hold forth on the importance of starting a movement of love from the core of the people that would reach eventually to all governments in power, so that injustice would end.”
“What would distinguish these women from other such orders or missionaries, from Franciscans or any sort of preachers …?”
“Well, one that they would be women, and preaching women! Nuns have been nurses, teachers for little children, servants, or locked in the cloister to bray at God like so many boring sheep. Her women would be doctors of the church, you see! Preachers. They would work up the crowds with personal fervor; they would turn to the women, the impoverished and the depotentiated women, and help them to reform the world.”
“A feminist vision, but coupled with religion.”
“It had a chance. It had as much of a chance as any such movement. Who knows why one monk in the 1300s became a crazy? And another one a saint? Dora has ways to show people how to think. I don’t know! You have to figure this all out, you have to!”
“And meanwhile save the church decorations,” I said.
“Yes, until she will accept them or until she can turn them to some good. That’s how you get her. Talk about good.”
“That’s how you get anybody,” I said sadly. “That’s how you’re getting me.”
“Well, you’ll do it, won’t you? Dora thinks I was misguided. She said, ‘Don’t think you can save your soul after all you’ve done by passing on these church objects to me.’ ”
“She loves you,” I affirmed. “I saw that every time I saw her with you.”
“I know. I need no such assurances. There’s no time now to go into all the arguments. But Dora’s vision is immense, remember that. She’s small-time now, but wants to change the entire world. I mean, she isn’t satisfied to have a cult the way I wanted it, you know, to be a guru with a retreat full of pliant followers. She really wants to change the world. She thinks somebody has to change the world.”
“Doesn’t every religious person believe that?”
“No. They don’t dream of being Mohammed or Zoroaster.”
“And Dora does.”
“Dora knows that that is what’s required.”
He shook his head, took another little bit of the drink, and looked off over the half-empty room. Then he made a little frown as if pondering it still.
“She said, ‘Dad, religion doesn’t come from relics and texts. They are the expression of it.’ She went on and on. After all her studying of Scripture, she said it was the inner miracle that counted. She put me to sleep. Don’t make any cruel jokes!”
“Not for the world.”
“What’s going to happen to my daughter!” he whispered desperately. He wasn’t looking at me. “Look at her heritage. See it in her father. I’m fervent and extremist and gothic and mad. I can’t tell you how many churches I’ve taken Dora to, how many priceless
crucifixes I’ve shown to her, before turning them around for a profit. The hours Dora and I have spent looking at the ceilings of Baroque churches in Germany alone! I have given Dora magnificent relics of the true cross embedded in silver and rubies. I have bought many veils of Veronica, magnificent works that would take your breath away. My God.”
“Was there ever—with Dora, I mean—a concept of atonement in all of this, a guilt?”
“You mean, for letting Terry disappear without explanation, for never asking, until years later? I thought of that. If it was there in the beginning, Dora’s passed it a long time ago. Dora thinks the world needs a new revelation. A new prophet. But you just don’t become a prophet! She says her transformation must come with seeing and feeling; but it’s no Revival Tent experience.”
“Mystics never think it’s a Revival Tent experience.”
“Of course not.”
“Is Dora a mystic? Would you say that?”
“Don’t you know? You followed her, you watched her. No, Dora hasn’t seen the face of God or heard His voice and would never lie about it, if that’s what you mean. But Dora’s looking for it. She’s looking for the moment, for the miracle, for the revelation!”
“For the angel to come.”
“Yes, exactly.”
We were both quiet suddenly. He was probably thinking of his initial proposition; so was I, that I fake a miracle, I, the evil angel that had once driven a Catholic nun to madness, to bleeding from her hands and feet in the Stigmata.
Suddenly he made the decision to continue, and I was relieved.
“I made my life rich enough,” he said, “that I stopped caring about changing the world if ever I really thought of it; I made a life, you see, you know, a world unto itself. But she really has opened her soul in a sophisticated way to … to something. My soul’s dead.”
“Apparently not,” I said. The thought that he would vanish, had to, sooner or later, was becoming intolerable to me, and far more frightening than his initial presence had ever been.
“Let’s get back to the basics. I’m getting anxious.…” he said.
“Why?”
“Don’t freak on me, just listen. There is money put aside for Dora that has no connection to me. The government can’t touch it, besides, they never got an indictment against me let alone a conviction, you saw to that. The information’s in the flat. Black leather folders. File cabinet. Mixed right in with sales slips for all sorts of paintings and statues. And you have to save all that somewhere for Dora. My life’s work, my inheritance. It’s in your hands for her. You can do it, can’t you? Look, there’s no hurry, you’ve done away with me in a rather clever way.”
“I know. And you’re asking me now to function as a guardian angel, to see that Dora receives this inheritance untainted.…”
“Yes, my friend, that’s precisely what I’m begging you to do. And you can do it! And don’t forget about my Wynken! If she won’t take those books, you keep those books!”
He touched my chest with his hand. I felt it, the little knock upon the door of the heart.
He continued. “When my name drops out of the papers, assuming it ever makes it from the FBI files to the wire service, you get the money to Dora. Money can still create Dora’s church. Dora is magnetic. Dora can do it all by herself, if she has the money! You follow me? She can do it the way Francis did it or Paul or Jesus. If it wasn’t for her theology, she would have become the charismatic celebrity long ago. She has all the assets. She thinks too much. Her theology is what sets her apart.”
He took a breath. He was talking very rapidly, and I was beginning to shiver. I could hear his fear like a low emanation from him. Fear of what?
“Here,” he said. “Let me quote something to you. She told me this last night. We’ve been reading a book by Bryan Appleyard, a columnist for the papers in England, you’ve heard of him? He wrote some tome called Understanding the Present. I have the copy she gave me. And in it he said things that Dora believed … such as that we are ‘spiritually impoverished.’ ”
“Agreed.”
“But it was something else, something about our dilemma, that you can invent theologies, but for them to work they have to come from some deeper place inside a person … I know what she called it … Appleyard’s words … ‘a totality of human experience.’ ” He stopped. He was distracted.
I was desperate to reassure him that I understood this. “Yes, she’s looking for this, courting it, she’s opening herself for it.”
I suddenly realized that I was holding on to him as tightly as he was holding on to me.
He was staring off.
I was filled with a sadness so awful that I couldn’t speak. I’d killed this man! Why had I done it? I mean, I knew he’d been interesting and evil, but Christ, how could I have … but then what if he stayed with me the way he was! What if he could become my friend exactly the way he was.
Oh, this was too childish and selfish and avaricious! We were talking about Dora, about theology. Of course I understood Appleyard’s point. Understanding the Present. I pictured the book. I’d go back for it. I filed it in my preternatural memory. Read at once.
He hadn’t moved or spoken.
“Look, what are you scared of?” I asked. “Don’t fade on me!” I clung to him, very raw, and small, and almost crying, thinking that I had killed him, taken his life, and now all I wanted to do was hold on to his spirit.
He gave no response. He looked afraid.
I wasn’t the ossified monster I thought I was. I wasn’t in danger of being inured to human suffering. I was a damned jibbering empath!
“Roger? Look at me. Go on talking.”
He only murmured something about maybe Dora would find what he had never found.
“What?” I demanded.
“Theophany,” he whispered.
Oh, that lovely word. David’s word. I’d only heard it myself a few hours ago. And now it slipped from his lips.
“Look, I think they’re coming for me,” he said suddenly. His eyes grew wide. He didn’t look afraid now so much as puzzled. He was listening to something. I could hear it too. “Remember my death,” he said suddenly, as if he’d just thought of it most distinctly. “Tell her how I died. Convince her my death has cleansed the money! You understand. That’s the angle! I paid with my death. The money is no longer unclean. The books of Wynken, all of it, it’s no longer unclean. Pretty it up. I ransomed it all with my blood. You know, Lestat, use your clever tongue. Tell her!”
Those footsteps.
The distinct rhythm of Something walking, slowly walking.… and the low murmur of the voices, the singing, the talking, I was getting dizzy. I was going to fall. I held on to him and on to the bar.
“Roger!” I shouted aloud. Surely everybody in the bar heard it. He was looking at me in the most pacific manner, I don’t even know if his face was animate anymore. He seemed puzzled, even amazed.…
I saw the wings rise up over me, over him. I saw the immense obliterating darkness shoot up as if from a volcanic rip in the very earth and the light rise behind it. Blinding, beautiful light.
I know I cried out. “Roger!”
The noise was deafening, the voices, the singing, the figure growing larger and larger.
“Don’t take him. It’s my fault.” I rose up against It in fury; I would tear It to pieces if I had to, to make It let him go! But I couldn’t see him clearly. I didn’t know where I was. And It came rolling, like smoke again, thick and powerful and absolutely unstoppable, and in the midst of all this, looming above him as he faded, and towards me, the face, the face of the granite statue for one second, the only thing visible, his eyes—
“Let him go!”
There was no bar, no Village, no city, no world. Only all of them!
And perhaps the singing was no more than the sound of a breaking glass.
Then blackness. Stillness.
Silence.
Or so it seemed, that I had been unconscious in a quiet
place for some time.
I woke up outside on the street.
The bartender was standing there, shivering, asking me in the most annoyed and nasal tone of voice, “Are you all right, man?” There was snow on his shoulders, on the black shoulders of his vest, and on his white sleeves.
I nodded, and stood up, just so he’d go away. My tie was still in place. My coat was buttoned. My hands were clean. There was snow on my coat.
The snow was falling very lightly all around me. The most beautiful snow.
I went back through the revolving door into the tiled hallway and stood in the door of the bar. I could see the place where we had talked, see his glass still there. Otherwise the atmosphere was unchanged. The bartender was talking in a bored way to someone. He hadn’t seen anything, except me bolt, probably, and stumble out into the street.
Every fiber in me said, Run. But where will you run? Take to the air? Not a chance, it will get you in an instant. Keep your feet on the cold earth.
You took Roger! Is that what you followed me for? Who are you!
The bartender looked up over the empty, dusty distance. I must have said something, done something. No, I was just blubbering. A man crying in a doorway, stupidly. And when it is this man, so to speak, that means blood tears. Make your exit quick.
I turned and walked out into the snow again. It was going to be morning soon, wasn’t it? I didn’t have to walk in the miserable punishing cold until the sky brightened, did I? Why not find a grave now, and go to sleep?
“Roger!” I was crying, wiping my tears on my sleeve. “What are you, damn it!” I stood and shouted, voice rolling off the buildings. “Damn it!” It came back to me suddenly in a flash. I heard all those mingled voices, and I fought it. The face. It has a face! A sleepless mind in its heart and an insatiable personality. Don’t get dizzy, don’t try to remember. Somebody in one of the buildings opened a window and shouted at me to move on. “Stop screaming out there.” Don’t try to reconstruct. You’ll lose consciousness if you do.