by Rice, Anne
In terror, I cried out. I was thrust back. Yet even as I saw His familiar Figure and the ancient frame of His Face with its Thorny Crown, the Face grew ever larger and larger and utterly indistinct and seemed again to bear down on me, and then suddenly to suffocate all my face with its immense and total weight.
I screamed. I was helpless, weighdess, unable to draw breath.
I screamed as I’ve never in all my miserable years screamed, the scream so loud that it shut out the roar that filled my ears, but the vision pressed on, a great driving inescapable mass that had been His Face.
“Oh, Lord!” I screamed with all the power of my burning lungs. The very wind rushed in my ears.
Something struck the back of my head so hard that it cracked my skull. I heard the crack. I felt the wet splash of blood.
I opened my eyes. I was staring forward. I was far across the chapel, sprawled against the plaster wall, my legs out in front of me, my arms dangling, my head on fire with the pain of the great concussion where I had struck the wall.
Lestat had never moved. I knew he hadn’t.
No one had to tell me. It was not he who threw me back.
I tumbled over onto my face, pulling my arm up under my head. I knew there were feet gathered all around me, that Louis was near, and that even Gabrielle had come, and I knew too that Marius was taking Sybelle and Benjamin away.
I could hear in the ringing silence only Benjamin’s small sharp mortal voice. “But what happened to him. What happened? The blond one didn’t hit him. I saw it. It didn’t happen. He didn’t—.”
My face hidden, my face soaked with tears, I covered my head with my trembling hands, my bitter smile unseen, though my sobs were heard.
I cried and cried for a long time, and then gradually, as I knew it would, my scalp began to heal. The evil blood mounted to the surface of my skin and, tingling there, did its evil ministrations, sewing up the flesh like a little laser beam from Hell.
Someone gave me a napkin. It had the faint scent of Louis on it, but I couldn’t be sure. It was a long long time, perhaps even so long as an hour before I finally clasped it and wiped all the blood off my face.
It was another hour, an hour of quiet and of people respectfully slipping away, before I turned over and rose and sat back against the wall. My head no longer hurt, the wound was gone, the blood that had dried there would soon flake away.
I stared at him for a long and quiet time.
I was cold and solitary and raw. Nothing anyone murmured penetrated my hearing. I did not note the gestures or the movements around me.
In the sanctum of my mind I went over, mostly slowly, exactly, what I had seen, what I had heard—all that I’ve told you here.
I rose finally. I went back to him and I looked down at him.
Gabrielle said something to me. It was harsh and mean. I didn’t actually hear it. I heard only the sound of it, the cadence, that is, as if her old French, so familiar to me, was a language I didn’t know.
I knelt down and I kissed his hair.
He didn’t move. He didn’t change. I wasn’t the slightest bit afraid that he would, or hopeful that he would either. I kissed him one more time on the side of his face, and then I got up, and I wiped my hands on the napkin which I still had, and I went out.
I think I stood in a torpor for a long while, and then something came back to me, something Dora had said a long long time ago, about a child having died in the attic, about a little ghost and about old clothes.
Grasping that, clutching it tight, I managed to propel myself towards the stairs.
It was there that I met you a short time afterwards. Now you know, for better or worse, what I did or didn’t see.
And so my symphony is finished. Let me write my name to it. When you’re finished with your copying, I will give my transcript to Sybelle. And Benji too perhaps. And you may do with the rest what you will.
25
This is no epilogue. It is the last chapter to a tale I thought was finished. I write it in my own hand. It will be brief, for I have no drama left me and must manipulate with the utmost care the bare bones of the tale.
Perhaps in some later time the proper words will come to me to deepen my depiction of what happened, but for now to record is all that I can do.
I did not leave the convent after I inscribed my name to the copy which David had so faithfully written out. It was too late.
The night had spent itself in language, and I had to retire to one of the secret brick chambers of the place which David showed me, a place where Lestat had once been imprisoned, and there sprawled on the floor in perfect darkness, overexcited by all that I’d told David, and, more completely exhausted than I’d ever been, I went into immediate sleep with the rise of the sun.
At twilight, I rose, straightened out my clothes and returned to the chapel. I knelt down and gave Lestat a kiss of unreserved affection, just as I had the night before. I took no notice of anyone and did not even know who was there.
Taking Marius at his word, I walked away from the convent, in a wash of early evening violet light, my eyes drifting trustingly over the flowers, and I listened for the chords of Sybelle’s Sonata to lead me to the proper house.
Within seconds I heard the music, the distant but rapid phrases of the Allegro assai, or the First Movement, of Sybelle’s familiar song.
It was played with an unusual ringing preciseness, indeed, a new languid cadence which gave it a powerful and ruby-red authority which I immediately loved.
So I hadn’t scared my little girl out of her mind. She was well and prospering and perhaps falling in love with the drowsy humid loveliness of New Orleans as so many of us have.
I sped at once to the location, and found myself standing, only a little mussed by the wind, in front of a huge three-story redbrick house in Metairie, a countrified suburb of New Orleans which is actually very close to the city, with a feel that can be miraculously remote.
The giant oaks which Marius described were all around this new American mansion, and, as he had promised, all his French doors of shining clean panes were open to the early breeze.
The grass was long and soft beneath my shoes, and a splendid light, so very precious to Marius, poured forth from every window as did the music of the Appassionata now, which was just moving with exceptional grace into the Second Movement, Andante con moto, which promises to be a tame segment of the work but quickly works itself into the same madness as all the rest.
I stopped in my tracks to listen to it. I had never heard the notes quite as limpid and translucent, quite as flashing and exquisitely distinct. I tried for sheer pleasure to divine the differences between this performance and so many I’d heard in the past. They were all different, magical and profoundly affecting, but this was passing spectacular, helped in slight measure by the immense body of what I knew to be a concert grand.
For a moment, a misery swept over me, a terrible, gripping memory of what I’d seen when I drank Lestat’s blood the night before. I let myself relive it, as we say so innocently, and then with a positive blush of pleasant shock, I realized that I didn’t have to tell anyone about it, that it was all dictated to David and that when he gave me my copies, I could entrust them to whomever I loved, who would ever want to know what I’d seen.
As for myself, I wouldn’t try to figure it out. I couldn’t. The feeling was too strong that whom I had seen on the road to Calvary, whether He was real or a figment of my own guilty heart, had not wanted me to see Him and had monstrously turned me away. Indeed the feeling of rejection was so total that I could scarce believe that I had managed to describe it to David.
I had to get the thoughts out of my mind. I banished all reverberations of this experience and let myself fall into Sybelle’s music again, merely standing under the oaks, with the eternal river breeze, which can reach you anywhere in this place, cooling me and soothing me and making me feel that the Earth itself was filled with irrepressible beauty, even for someone such as I.
It was only then, as the final bars were played out, that I realized something which should have been obvious to me from the start.
It wasn’t Sybelle playing this music. It couldn’t be. I knew every nuance of Sybelle’s interpretations. I knew her modes of expression; I knew the tonal qualities that her particular touch invariably produced. Though her interpretations were infinitely spontaneous, nevertheless I knew her music, as one knows the writing of another or the style of a painter’s work. This wasn’t Sybelle.
And then the real truth dawned on me. It was Sybelle, but Sybelle was no longer Sybelle.
For a second I couldn’t believe it. My heart stopped in my chest.
Then I walked into the house, a steady furious walk that would have stopped for nothing but to find the truth of what I believed.
In an instant I saw it with my own eyes. In a splendid room, they were gathered together, the beautifid lithe figure of Pandora in a gown of brown silk, girdled at the waist in the old Grecian style, Marius in a light velvet smoking jacket over silk trousers, and my children, my beautiful children, radiant Benji in his white gown, dancing barefoot and wildly around the room with his fingers flung out as if to grasp the air in them, and Sybelle, my gorgeous Sybelle, with her arms bare too in a dress of deep rose silk, at the piano, her long hair swept back over her shoulders, just striding into the First Movement again.
All of them vampires, every one.
I clenched my teeth hard, and covered my mouth lest my roars wake the world. I roared and roared into my collapsed hands.
I cried out the single defiant syllable No, No, No, over and over again. I could say nothing else, scream nothing else, do nothing else.
I cried and cried.
I bit down so hard with my teeth that my jaw ached, and my hands shuddered like wings of a bird that wouldn’t let me shut up my mouth tight enough, and once again the tears streamed out of my eyes as thickly as they had when I kissed Lestat.
No, No, No, No!
Then suddenly I flung out my hands, coiling them into fists, and the roar would have got loose, it would have burst from me like a raging stream, but Marius took hold of me with great force and flung me against his chest and buried my face against himself.
I struggled to get free. I kicked at him with all of my strength, and I beat at him with my fists.
“How could you do it!” I roared.
His hands enclosed my head in a hopeless trap, and his lips kept covering me with kisses I hated and detested and fought off with desperate flinging gestures.
“How could you? How dare you? How could you?”
At last I gained enough leverage to smash his face with blow after blow.
But what good did it do me? How weak and meaningless were my fists against his strength. How helpless and foolish and small were my gestures, and he stood there, bearing it all, his face unspeakably sad, and his own eyes dry yet full of caring.
“How could you do it, how could you do it!” I demanded. I would not cease.
But suddenly Sybelle rose from the piano, and with her arms out ran to me. And Benji, who had been watching all the while, rushed to me also, and they imprisoned me gently in their tender arms.
“Oh, Armand, don’t be angry, don’t be, don’t be sad,” Sybelle cried softly against my ear. “Oh, my magnificent Armand, don’t be sad, don’t be. Don’t be cross. We’re with you forever.”
“Armand, we are with you! He did the magic,” cried Benji. “We didn’t have to be born from black eggs, you Dybbuk, to tell us such a tale! Armand, we will never die now, we will never be sick, and never hurt and never afraid again.” He jumped up and down with glee and spun in another mirthful circle, astonished and laughing at his new vigor, that he could leap so high and with such grace. “Armand, we are so happy.”
“Oh, yes, please,” cried Sybelle softly in her deeper gentler voice. “I love you so much, Armand, I love you so very very much. We had to do it. We had to. We had to do it, to always and forever be with you.”
My fingers hovered about her, wanting to comfort her, and then, as she ground her forehead desperately into my neck, hugging me tight around the chest, I couldn’t not touch her, couldn’t not embrace her, couldn’t not assure her.
“Armand, I love you, I adore you, Armand, I live only for you, and now with you always,” she said.
I nodded, I tried to speak. She kissed my tears. She began to kiss them rapidly and desperately. “Stop it, stop crying, don’t cry,” she kept saying in her urgent low whisper. “Armand, we love you.”
“Armand, we are so happy!” cried Benji. “Look, Armand, look! We can dance together now to her music. We can do everything together. Armand, we have hunted already.” He dashed up to me and bent his knees, poised to spring with excitement as if to emphasize his point. Then he sighed and flung out his arms to me again, “Ah, poor Armand, you are all wrong, all filled with wrong dreams. Armand, don’t you see?”
“I love you,” I whispered in a tiny voice into Sybelle’s ear. I whispered it again, and then my resistance broke completely, and I crushed her gently to me and with rampant fingers felt her silky white skin and the zinging fineness of her shining hair.
Still holding her to me, I whispered, “Don’t tremble, I love you, I love you.”
I clasped Benji to me with my left hand. “And you, scamp, you can tell me all of it in time. Just let me hold you now. Let me hold you.”
I was shivering. I was the one shivering. They enclosed me again with all their tenderness, seeking to keep me warm.
Finally, patting them both, taking my leave of them with kisses, I shrank away and fell down exhausted into a large old velvet chair.
My head throbbed and I felt my tears coming again, but with all my force I swallowed my tears for their sake. I had no choice.
Sybelle had gone back to the piano, and striking the keys she began the Sonata again. This time she sang out the notes in a beautiful low monosyllabic soprano, and Benji began dancing again, whirling, and prancing, and stomping with his bare feet, in lovely keeping with Sybelle’s time.
I sat forward with my head in my hands. I wanted my hair to come down and hide me from all eyes, but for all its thickness it was only a head of hair.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and I stiffened, but I could not say a word, lest I’d start crying again and cursing with all my might. I was silent.
“I don’t expect you to understand,” he said under his breath.
I sat up. He was beside me, seated on the arm of the chair. He looked down at me.
I made my face pleasant, all smiles even, and my voice so velvet and placid that no one could have thought I was talking to him of anything but love.
“How could you do it? Why did you do it? Do you hate me so much? Don’t lie to me. Don’t tell me stupid things that you know I will never, never believe. Don’t lie to me for Pandora’s sake or their sake. I’ll care for them and love them forever. But don’t lie. You did it for vengeance, didn’t you, Master, you did it for hate?”
“How could I?” he asked in the same voice, expressive of pure love, and it seemed the very genuine voice of love talking to me from his sincere and pleading face. “If ever I did anything for love, I have done this for it. I did it for love and for you. I did it for all the wrongs done you, and the loneliness you’ve suffered, and the horrors that the world put upon you when you were too young and too untried to know how to fight them and then too vanquished to wage a battle with a full heart. I did it for you.”
“Oh, you lie, you lie in your heart,” I said, “if not with your tongue. You did it for spite, and you have just revealed it all too plainly to me. You did it for spite because I wasn’t the fledgling you wanted to make of me. I wasn’t the clever rebel who could stand up to Santino and his band of monsters, and I was the one, after all those centuries, that disappointed you yet again and horribly bec
ause I went into the sun after I saw the Veil. That’s why you did it. You did it for vengeance and you did it for bitterness and you did it for disappointment, and the crowning horror is you don’t know it yourself. You couldn’t bear it that my heart swelled to burst when I saw His Face on the Veil. You couldn’t bear it that this child you plucked from the Venetian brothel, and nursed with your own blood, this child you taught from your own books and with your hands, cried out to Him when he saw His Face on the Veil.”
“No, that is so very very far from the truth it breaks my heart.” He shook his head. And tearless and white as he was, his face was a perfect picture of sorrow as though it was a painting he had done with his own hands. “I did it because they love you as no one has ever loved you, and they are free and have within their generous hearts a deep cunning which doesn’t shrink from you and all that you are. I did it because they were forged in the same furnace as myself, the two of them, keen to reason and strong to endure. I did it because madness had not defeated her, and poverty and ignorance had not defeated him. I did it because they were your chosen ones, utterly perfect, and I knew that you would not do it, and they would come to hate you for this, hate you, as you once hated me for withholding it, and you would lose them to alienation and death before you would give in.
“They are yours now. Nothing separates you. And it’s my blood, ancient and powerful, that’s filled them to the brim with power so that they can be your worthy companions and not the pale shadow of your soul which Louis always was.
“There is no barrier of Master and Fledgling between you, and you can learn the secrets of their hearts as they learn the secrets of yours.”
I wanted to believe it.
I wanted to believe it so badly that I got up and left him, and making the gentlest smile at my Benjamin and kissing her silkily in passing, I withdrew to the garden and stood alone beneath and between a pair of massive oaks.