by Rice, Anne
I walked uptown in human fashion, breathing the river air, and glad to be back with my black-barked oaks, and the sprawling, dimly lighted houses of New Orleans, the intrusions everywhere of grass and vine and flower; home.
Too soon, I reached the old brick convent building on Napoleon Avenue where Dora was lodged. Napoleon Avenue itself is a rather beautiful street even for New Orleans; it has an extraordinarily wide median where once streetcars used to run. Now there are generous shade trees planted on it, just as there were all around the convent that faced it.
It was the leafy depth of Victorian uptown.
I drew close to the building slowly, eager to imprint its details on my mind. How I’d changed since last I’d spied on Dora.
Second Empire was the style of the convent, due to a mansard roof which covered the central portion of the building and its long wings. Old slates had, here and there, fallen away from the sloping mansard, which was concave on the central part and quite unusual on account of that fact. The brickwork itself, the rounded arched windows, the four corner towers of the building, the two-storey plantation-house porch on the front of the central building—with its white columns and black iron railings—all of this was vaguely New Orleans Italianate, and gracefully proportioned. Old copper gutters clung to the base of the roofs. There were no shutters, but surely there had once been.
The windows were numerous, high, rounded at the tops on the second and third storeys, trimmed in faded white.
A great sparse garden covered the front of the building as it looked out over the avenue, and of course I knew of the immense courtyard inside. The entire city block was dominated by this little universe in which nuns and orphans, young girls of all ages, had once dwelt. Great oaks sprawled over the sidewalks. A row of truly ancient crape myrtles lined the side street to the south.
Walking round the building, I surveyed the high stained-glass windows of the two-storey chapel, noted the flickering of a light inside, as though the Blessed Sacrament were present—a fact that I doubted—and then coming to the rear I went over the wall.
The building did have some locked doors, but not very many. It was wrapped in silence, and in the mild but nevertheless real winter of New Orleans, it was chillier within than without.
I entered the lower corridor cautiously, and at once found myself loving the proportions of the place, the loftiness and the breadth of the corridors, the intense smell of the recently bared brick walls, and the good wood scent of the bare yellow pine floors. It was rough, all this, the kind of rough which is fashionable among artists in big cities who live in old warehouses, or call their immense apartments lofts.
But this was no warehouse. This had been a habitation and something of a hallowed one. I could feel it at once. I walked slowly down the long corridor towards the northeast stairs. Above to my right lived Dora in the northeast tower, so to speak, of the building, and her living quarters did not begin until the third floor.
I sensed no one in the building. No scent nor sound of Dora. I heard the rats, the insects, something a little larger than a rat, possibly a raccoon feeding away somewhere up in an attic, and then I felt for the elementals, as David called them—those things which I prefer to call spirits, or poltergeists.
I stood still, eyes closed. I listened. It seemed the silence gave back dim emanations of personalities, but they were far too weak and too mingled to touch my heart or spark a thought in me. Yes, ghosts here, and here … but I sensed no spiritual turbulence, no unresolved tragedy or hanging injustice. On the contrary, there seemed a spiritual stillness and firmness.
The building was whole and itself.
I think the building liked having been stripped to its nineteenth-century essentials; even the naked beamed ceilings, though never built for exposure, were nevertheless beautiful without plaster, their wood dark and heavy and level because all the carpentry of those years had been done with such care.
The stairway was original. I had walked up a thousand such built in New Orleans. This building had at least five. I knew the gentle curve to each tread, worn down by the feet of children, the silky feel of the banister which had been waxed countless times for a century. I knew the landing which cut directly against an exterior window, ignoring the shape or existence of the window, and simply bisecting the light which came from the street outside.
When I reached the second floor, I realized I was at the doorway of the chapel. It had not seemed such a large space from outside.
It was in fact as large as many a church I’d seen in my years. Some twenty or so pews were in neat rows on either side of its main aisle. The plastered ceiling was coved and crowned with fancy molding. Old medallions still held firmly in the plaster from which, no doubt, gasoliers had once hung. The stained-glass windows, though without human figures, were nevertheless very well executed, as the streetlamp showed to good advantage. And the names of the patrons were beautifully lettered on the lower panes of each window. There was no sanctuary light, only a bank of candles before a plaster Regina Maria, that is, a Virgin wearing an ornate crown.
The place must have been much as the Sisters had left it when the building was sold. Even the holy water fount was there, though it had no giant angel to hold it. It was only a simple marble basin on a stand.
I passed beneath a choir loft as I entered, somewhat amazed at the purity and symmetry of the entire design. What was it like, living in a building with your own chapel? Two hundred years ago I had knelt more than once in my father’s chapel. But that had been no more than a tiny stone room in our castle, and this vast place, with its old oscillating electric fans for breeze in summer, seemed no less authentic than my father’s little chapel had been.
This was more the chapel of royalty, and the entire convent seemed suddenly a palazzo—rather than an institutional building. I imagined myself living here, not as Dora would have approved, but in splendour, with miles of polished floors before me as I made my way each night into this great sanctuary to say my prayers.
I liked this place. It flamed into my mind. Buy a convent, make it your palace, live within its safety and grandeur in some forgotten spot of a modern city! I felt covetous, or rather, my respect for Dora deepened.
Countless Europeans still lived in such buildings, multi-storeyed, wings facing each other over expensive private courts. Paris had its share of such mansions, surely. But in America, it presented a lovely picture, the idea of living here in such luxury.
But that had not been Dora’s dream. Dora wanted to train her women here, her female preachers who would declare the Word of God with the fire of St. Francis or Bonaventure.
Well, if her faith were suddenly swept away by Roger’s death, she could live here in splendour.
And what power had I to affect Dora’s dream? Whose wishes would be fulfilled if I somehow positioned her so that she accepted her enormous wealth and made herself a princess in this palace? One happy human being saved from the misery which religion can so effortlessly generate?
It wasn’t an altogether worthless idea. Just typical of me. To think in terms of Heaven on Earth, freshly painted in pastel hues, floored in fine stone, and centrally heated.
Awful, Lestat.
Who was I to think such things? Why, we could live here like Beauty and the Beast, Dora and I. I laughed out loud. A shiver ran down my back, but I didn’t hear the footsteps.
I was suddenly quite alone. I listened. I bristled.
“Don’t you dare come near me now,” I whispered to the Stalker who was not there, for all I knew. “I’m in a chapel. I am safe! Safe as if I were in the cathedral.”
I wondered if the Stalker was laughing at me. Lestat, you imagined it all.
Never mind. Walk up the marble aisle towards the Communion Rail. Yes, there was still a Communion Rail. Look at what is before you, and don’t think just now.
Roger’s urgent voice was at the ear of my memory. But I loved Dora already, didn’t I? I was here. I would do something. I was merely taking
my time!
My footsteps echoed throughout the chapel. I let it happen. The Stations of the Cross, small, in deep relief in plaster, were still fixed between the stained-glass windows, making the usual circuit of the church, and the altar was gone from its deep arched niche—and there stood instead a giant Crucified Christ.
Crucifixes always fascinate me. There are numerous ways in which various details can be rendered, and the art of the Crucified Christ alone fills much of the world’s museums, and those cathedrals and basilicas that have become museums. But this, even for me, was a rather impressive one. It was huge, old, very realistic in the style of the late nineteenth century, Christ’s scant loincloth coiling in the wind, his face hollow-cheeked and profoundly sorrowful.
Surely it was one of Roger’s finds. It was too big for the altar niche, for one thing, and of impressive workmanship, whereas the scattered plaster saints who remained on their pedestals—the predictable and pretty St. Therese of Lisieux in her Carmelite robes, with her cross and her bouquet of roses; St. Joseph with his lily; and even the Maria Regina with her crown at her shrine beside the altar—were all more or less routine. They were life-size; they were carefully painted; they were not fine works of art.
The Crucified Christ pushed one to some sort of resolution. Either “I loathe Christianity in all its bloodiness,” or some more painful feeling, perhaps for a time in youth when one had imagined one’s hands systematically pierced with those particular nails. Lent. Meditations. The Church. The Priest’s voice entoning the words. Our Lord.
I felt both the loathing and the pain. Hovering near in the shadows, watching outside lights flicker and flare in the stained glass, I felt boyhood memories near me, or maybe I tolerated them. Then I thought of Roger’s love for his daughter, and the memories were nothing, and the love was everything. I went up the steps that had once led to the altar and tabernacle. I reached up and touched the foot of the crucified figure. Old wood. Shimmer of hymns, faint and secretive. I looked up into the face and saw not a countenance twisted in agony, but wise and still, perhaps in the final seconds before death.
A loud echoing noise sounded somewhere in the building. I stepped back almost too fast, and lost my footing stupidly and found myself facing the church. Someone moved in the building, someone walking at a moderate pace on the lower floor and towards the same stairway up which I’d come to the chapel door.
I moved swiftly to the entrance of the vestibule. I could hear no voice and detect no scent! No scent. My heart sank. “I won’t take any more of this!” I whispered. I was already shaking. But some mortal scents don’t come that easily; there is the breeze to consider, or rather the draughts, which in this place were considerable.
The figure was mounting the stairs.
I leant back behind the chapel door so I might see it turn at the landing. And if it was Dora I meant to hide at once.
But it wasn’t Dora, and it came walking so fast right up the stairs, lightly and briskly towards me, that I realized who it was as he came to a stop in front of me.
The Ordinary Man.
I stood stock-still, staring at him. Not quite my height; not quite my build; regular in every respect as I remembered. Scentless? No, but the scent was not right. It was mingled with blood and sweat and salt and I could hear a faint heartbeat.…
“Don’t torment yourself,” he said, in a very civil and diplomatic voice. “I’m debating. Should I make my offer now, or before you get mixed up with Dora? I’m not sure what’s best.”
He was four feet away at the moment.
I slouched arrogantly against the doorframe of the vestibule and folded my arms. The whole flickering chapel was behind me. Did I look frightened? Was I frightened? Was I about to perish of fright?
“Are you going to tell me who you are,” I asked, “and what you want, or am I supposed to ask questions and draw this out of you?”
“You know who I am,” he said in the same reticent, simple manner.
Something struck me suddenly. What was outstanding were the proportions of his figure and his face. The regularity itself. He was rather a generic man.
He smiled. “Exactly. It’s the form I prefer in every age and place, because it doesn’t attract very much attention.” Again the voice was good-natured. “Going about with black wings and goat’s feet, you know—it overwhelms mortals instantly.”
“I want you to get the hell out of here before Dora comes!” I said. I was suddenly sputtering crazy.
He turned, slapped his thigh, and laughed.
“You are a brat, Lestat,” he said in his simple, unimposing voice. “Your cohorts named you properly. You can’t give me orders.”
“I don’t know why not. What if I throw you out?”
“Would you like to try? Shall I take my other form? Shall I let my wings.…” I heard the chatter of voices, and my vision was clouding.
“No!” I shouted.
“All right.”
The transformation came to a halt. The dust settled. I felt my heart knock against my chest like it wanted to get out.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” he said. “I’ll let you handle things with Dora, since you seem obsessed with it. And I won’t be able to distract you from it. And then when you’ve finished with all this, this girl and her dreams and such, we can talk together, you and I.”
“About what?”
“Your soul, what else?”
“I’m ready to go to Hell,” I said, lying through my teeth. “But I don’t believe you’re what you claim to be. You’re something, something like me for which there aren’t scientific explanations, but behind it all, there’s a cheap little core of facts that will eventually lay bare everything, even the texture of each black feather of your wings.”
He frowned slightly, but he wasn’t angry.
“We won’t continue at this pace,” he said. “I assure you. But for now, I’ll let you think about Dora. Dora’s on her way home. Her car has just pulled into the courtyard. I’m going, with regular footsteps, the way I came. And I give you one piece of advice, for both of us.”
“Which is what?” I demanded.
He turned his back on me and started down the stairway, as quick and spry as he had come up. He didn’t turn around till he reached the landing. I had already caught Dora’s scent.
“What advice?” I demanded.
“That you leave Dora alone completely. Turn her affairs over to worldly lawyers. Get away from this place. We have more important things to discuss. This is all so distracting.”
Then he was gone with a clatter down the lower stairs, and presumably out a side door. I heard it open and close.
And almost immediately following, I heard Dora come through the main rear entrance into the center of the building, the way I had entered, and the way he had entered, and she began her progress down the hall.
She sang to herself as she came, or hummed, I should say. The sweet aroma of womb blood came from her. Her menses. Maddeningly, it amplified the succulent scent of the whole child moving towards me.
I slipped back into the shadows of the vestibule. She wouldn’t see me or have any knowledge of me as she went by and on up the next stairway to her third-floor room.
She was skipping steps when she reached the second floor. She had a backpack slung over her shoulders and wore a pretty, loose old-fashioned dress of flowered cotton with long, white lace-trimmed sleeves.
She swung round to go up when she suddenly stopped. She turned in my direction. I froze. She could not possibly see me in this light.
Then she came towards me. She reached out. I saw her white fingers touch something on the wall; it was a light switch. A simple plastic light switch, and suddenly a flood came from the bulb above.
Picture this: the blond male intruder, eyes hidden by the violet sunglasses, now nice and clean, with no more of her father’s blood, black wool coat and pants.
I threw up my hands as if to say “I won’t hurt you!” I was speechless.
I disappeared.
That is, I moved past her so swiftly she couldn’t see it; I brushed her about like the air would brush her. That’s all. I made the two flights to an attic, and went through an open door in the dark spaces above the chapel, where only a few windows in the mansard let in a tiny light from the street. One of the windows was broken out. A quick way to make an exit. But I stopped. I sat down very still in the corner. I shrank up into the corner. I drew up my knees, pushed my glasses up on my nose, and looked across the width of the attic towards the door through which I’d come.
I heard no screams. I heard nothing. She had not gone into hysterics; she was not running madly through the building. She had sounded no alarms. Fearless, quiet, having seen a male intruder. I mean, next to a vampire, what in the world is as dangerous to a lone woman as a young human male?
I realized my teeth were chattering. I put my right hand into a fist and pushed it into my left palm. Devil, man, who the hell are you, waiting for me, telling me not to talk to her, what tricks, don’t talk to her, I was never going to talk to her, Roger, what the hell am I to do now? I never meant for her to see me like this!
I should never, never have come without David. I needed the anchor of a witness. And the Ordinary Man, would he have dared to come up if David had been here? I loathed him! I was in a whirlpool. I wasn’t going to survive.
Which meant what? What was going to kill me?
Suddenly I realized that she was coming up the stairs. This time she walked slowly, and very quietly. A mortal couldn’t have heard her. She had her electric torch with her. I hadn’t noticed it before. But now she had it, and the beam came through the open attic door and ran along the sloping dark boards of the inner roof.
She stepped into the attic and switched off the torch. She looked around very cautiously, her eyes filling with the white light coming through the round windows. It was possible to see things fairly distinctly here because of those round windows, and because the streetlamps were so close.