by Rice, Anne
I escorted Louis into the parlor, and there sat Merrick clothed in a shirtwaist dress of white silk, quite relaxed, in one of Great Nananne’s old mahogany chairs.
The dim light of a stand-up lamp fell wonderfully upon her. At once we locked eyes, and I felt a rush of love for her. I wanted her to know somehow that I’d revisited all our memories, that I’d chosen the prerogative of confiding them in one whom I trusted completely, and that I loved her as much as I did.
I also wanted her to know that I disliked intensely the visions she’d so recently sent after me, and if she had had any doings with the pesty black cat, that I was not amused!
I think she knew it. I saw her smile faintly at me as we moved further into the room.
I was about to take up the subject of her evil magic. But something stopped me.
It was, very simply, the expression on her face when her eyes fell upon Louis as he stepped into the light.
Though she was as poised and clever as always, there came about a complete change in her face.
She rose to her feet to meet him, which surprised me, and her countenance was smooth and open with utter shock.
It was then that I realized how skillfully Louis had attired himself in a finely tailored suit of thin black wool. He wore a shirt of a cream-colored silk with a small gold pin beneath his rose-colored tie. Even his shoes were deliberately perfect, buffed to a high luster, and his rich black curly hair was combed neatly and entirely. But the glory of his appearance was, of course, his keen features and his lustrous eyes.
I need not repeat that they are a dark-green color, because it was not the color of his eyes which mattered so much. Rather, it was the expression with which he gazed at Merrick, the seeming awe that settled over him, and the way that his well-shaped mouth slowly relaxed.
He had seen her before, yes, but he was not prepared to find her so very interesting and comely at the same time.
And she, with her long hair brushed straight back to the leather barrette, looked utterly inviting in her sharp-shouldered white silk dress, with its small fabric belt and its loose shimmering skirt.
Around her neck, over the fabric of the dress, she wore pearls, in fact, the triple strand of pearls that I myself had long ago given her, and in her ears were pearls, and on the ring finger of her right hand she wore a stunning pearl as well.
I recite these details because I sought to find some sanity in them, but what I was experiencing, what humbled me and made me livid was that the two of them were so impressed with each other, that, for the moment, I was not there.
It was undeniable, the fascination with which she stared at Louis. And there was not the slightest question about the overwhelming awe in which he held her.
“Merrick, my darling,” I said softly, “let me present Louis.” But I might as well have been babbling. She never heard a single syllable I uttered. She was silently transported, and I could see in her face a provocative expression which up until this time I had never beheld in her except when she was looking at me.
Quickly, obviously struggling to disguise her immense response, she reached out for his hand.
With a vampire’s reluctance, he met her gesture, and then, to my complete consternation, he bent down and kissed her—not on the hand which he gripped so tenaciously—but on both her lovely cheeks.
Why in the world hadn’t I foreseen this? Why had I thought that she would not see him except as an unapproachable wonder? Why hadn’t I realized that I was bringing into her presence one of the most alluring beings I’ve ever known?
I felt the fool for having not foreseen it, and I also felt the fool for caring so very much.
As he settled in the chair closest to hers, as she sat down and turned her attention to him, I found a place on the sofa across the room. Her eyes never left him, not for a second, and then I heard his voice come low and rich, with his French accent as well as the feeling with which he always spoke.
“You know why I’ve come to you, Merrick,” he said as tenderly as if he was telling her that he loved her. “I live in torment thinking of one creature, one creature I once betrayed and then nurtured, and then lost. I come because I believe you can bring that creature’s spirit to speak with me. I come to you because I believe I can determine through you whether that spirit is at rest.”
Immediately she answered.
“But what is unrest for spirits, Louis,” she said familiarly. “Do you believe in a purgatory, or is it merely a darkness in which spirits languish, unable to seek a light that would lead them on?”
“I’m not convinced of anything,” Louis said in answer. His face was full of vehement eloquence. “If ever a creature was earthbound, it’s the vampire. We’re wed, soul and body, hopelessly. Only the most painful death by fire can rip that bond. Claudia was my child. Claudia was my love. Claudia died by fire, the fire of the sun. But Claudia has appeared to others. Claudia may come if you call her. That’s what I want. That’s my extravagant dream.”
Merrick was lost to him, utterly lost to him. I knew it. Her mind, insofar as I could read it, was ravaged. She was deeply affected by his seeming pain. Nothing of her sympathies was reserved.
“Spirits exist, Louis,” she said, her voice slightly tremulous, “they exist, but they tell lies. One spirit can come in the guise of another. Spirits are sometimes greedy and depraved.”
It was quite exquisite, the way that he frowned and put the back of his finger to his lip before he answered. As for her, well, I was furious with her, and saw not the slightest physical or mental fault in her. She was the woman to whom I’d surrendered passion, pride, and honor a long time before.
“I’ll know her, Merrick,” said Louis. “I can’t be deceived. If you can call her, and if she comes, I’ll know her. I have no doubt.”
“But what if I doubt, Louis?” she responded. “What if I tell you that we’ve failed? Will you at least try to believe what I say?”
“It’s all settled, isn’t it?” I blurted out. “We mean to do it, then, don’t we?”
“Yes, oh, yes,” Louis answered, looking across the room at me considerately enough, though his large inquisitive eyes shot right back to Merrick. “Let me beg your forgiveness, Merrick, that we’ve troubled you for your power. I tell myself in my most awful moments that you’ll take away from us some valuable knowledge and experience, that perhaps we’ll confirm your faith—in God. I tell myself these things because I can’t believe we’ve merely ruptured your life with our very presence. I hope it’s so. I beg you to understand.”
He was using the very words that had come to my mind in my many feverish ruminations. I was furious with him as well as her, suddenly. Detestable that he should say these things, and the hell he couldn’t read minds. I had to get myself in hand.
She smiled, suddenly, one of the most magnificent smiles I’d ever seen. Her creamy cheeks, her dramatic green eyes, her long hair—all her charms conspired to make her irresistible, and I could see the effect of her smile upon Louis, as if she’d rushed into his arms.
“I have no doubts or regrets, Louis,” she told me. “Mine is a great and unusual power. You’ve given me a reason to use it. You speak of a soul that may be in torment; indeed, you speak of long, long suffering, and you suggest that we might somehow bring that soul’s torment to a close.”
At this point, his cheeks colored deeply and he leant over and clasped her hand again tightly.
“Merrick, what can I give you in exchange for what you mean to do?”
This alarmed me. He should not have said it! It led too directly to the most powerful and unique gift that we had to give. No, he shouldn’t have said it, but I remained silent, watching these two creatures become ever more enthralled with each other, watching them quite definitely fall in love.
“Wait until it’s done, and let us talk then of such things,” she said, “if we ever talk of them at all. I need nothing in return, really. As I’ve said, you are giving me a way to use my power and that in itself is q
uite enough. But again, you must assure me, you will listen to my estimation of what happens. If I think we have raised something which is not from God I will say so, and you must at least try to believe what I say.”
She rose and went directly past me, with only a faint smile for me as she did so, into the open dining room behind me to fetch something, it seemed, from the sideboard along the distant wall.
Of course, Louis, the consummate gentleman, was on his feet. Again I noticed the splendid clothing, and how lean and feline were his simplest gestures, and how stunningly beautiful his immaculate hands.
She reentered the light before me as if reentering a stage.
“Here, this is what I have from your darling,” she said. She held a small bundle, wrapped in velvet. “Sit down, Louis, please,” she resumed. “And let me put these items into your hands.” She took her chair again, beneath the lamp facing him, the precious goods in her lap.
He obeyed her with the open radiance of a schoolboy before a miraculous and brilliant teacher. He sat back as though he would yield to her slightest command.
I watched her in profile and nothing filled my mind so much as pure, utter, base jealousy! But loving her as I did, I was wise enough to acknowledge some genuine concern as well.
As for him, there was little doubt that he was completely as interested in her as he was in the things which had belonged to Claudia.
“This rosary, why did she have it?” asked Merrick, extracting the sparkling beads from her little bundle. “Surely she didn’t pray.”
“No, she liked it for the look of it,” he said, his eyes full of a dignified plea that Merrick should understand. “I think I bought it for her. I don’t think I ever even told her what it was. Learning with her was strange, you see. We thought of her as a child, when we should have realized, and then the outward form of a person has such a mysterious connection with the disposition.”
“How so?” Merrick asked.
“Oh, you understand,” he said shyly, almost modestly. “The beautiful know they have power, and she had, in her diminutive charm, a certain power of which she was always casually aware.” He hesitated. It seemed he was painfully shy. “We fussed over her; we gloried in her. She looked no more than six or seven at most.” The light in his face went out for a moment, as if an interior switch had shut it off.
Merrick reached forward again and took his hand. He let her have it. He bowed his head just a little, and he lifted the hand she held, as if saying, Give me a moment. Then he resumed.
“She liked the rosary,” he said. “Maybe I did tell her the prayers. I don’t remember. She liked sometimes to go with me to the Cathedral. She liked to hear the music of the evening ceremonies. She liked all things that were sensual and which involved beauty. She was girlish in her enthusiasms for a long time.”
Merrick let his hand go but very reluctantly.
“And this?” she asked. She lifted the small white leather-bound diary. “A long time ago, this was found in the flat in the Rue Royale, in a hiding place. You never knew that she kept it.”
“No,” he said. “I gave it to her as a gift, that I well recall. But I never saw her write in it. That she kept it came as something of a surprise. She was quite the reader of books, that I can tell you. She knew so much poetry. She was always quoting this or that verse in an off-handed manner. I try to remember the things she quoted, the poets she loved.”
He gazed at the diary now as if he were reticent to open it, or even to touch it. As if it still belonged to her.
Merrick withdrew it, and lifted the doll.
“No,” Louis said adamantly, “she never liked them. They were always a mistake. No, that doesn’t matter, that doll. Although if recollection serves me right, it was found with the diary and the rosary. I don’t know why she saved it. I don’t know why she put it away. Maybe she wanted someone in the far distant future to find it and mourn for her, to know that she herself had been locked in a doll’s body; wanted some one lone individual to shed tears for her. Yes, I think that’s how it must have been.”
“Rosary, doll, diary,” said Merrick delicately. “And the diary entries, do you know what they say?”
“Only one, the one Jesse Reeves read and related to me. Lestat had given her the doll on her birthday and she’d hated it. She’d tried to wound him; she’d mocked him; and he’d answered her with those lines from an old play which I can’t forget.”
He bowed his head, but he wouldn’t give in to his sadness, not entirely. His eyes were dry for all the pain in them as he recited the words:
Cover her face;
mine eyes dazzle;
she died young.
I winced at the recollection. Lestat had been condemning himself when he’d spoken those words to her, he’d been offering himself up to her rage. She’d known it. That’s why she’d recorded the entire incident—his unwelcome gift, her weariness of playthings, her anger at her limitations, and then his carefully chosen verse.
Merrick allowed for a small interval, and then, letting the doll rest in her lap, she offered Louis the diary once more.
“There are several entries,” she said. “Two are of no importance, and for one of these I’ll ask you to work my magic. But there is another telling one, and that you must read before we go on.”
Still Louis did not reach for the diary. He looked at her respectfully, as before, but he didn’t reach for the little white book.
“Why must I read it?” he asked Merrick.
“Louis, think of what you’ve asked me to do. And yet you can’t read the words she herself wrote here?”
“That was long ago, Merrick,” he said. “It was years before she died that she concealed that diary. Isn’t what we do of much greater importance? Yes, take a page if you need it. Take any page of the diary, it doesn’t matter, use it as you will, only don’t ask that I read a word.”
“No, you must read it,” Merrick said with exquisite gentleness. “Read it to me and to David. I know what is written there, and you must know, and David is here to help both of us. Please, the last entry: read it aloud.”
He stared hard at her, and now there came the faint film of red tears to his eyes, but he gave a tiny, near imperceptible, shake of his head, and then he took the diary from her outstretched hand.
He opened it, gazing down at it, having no need as a mortal might to move the page into the light.
“Yes,” said Merrick coaxingly. “See, that one is unimportant. She says only that you went to the theater together. She says that she saw Macbeth, which was Lestat’s favorite play.”
He nodded, turning the small pages.
“And that one, that one is not significant,” she went on, as though leading him through the fire with her words. “She says that she loves white chrysanthemums, she says she purchased some from an old woman, she says they are the flowers for the dead.”
Again he seemed on the very brink of losing his composure utterly, but he kept his tears to himself. Again he turned the pages.
“There, that one. You must read it,” said Merrick, and she laid her hand on his knee. I could see her fingers stretched out and embracing him in that age-old gesture. “Please, Louis, read it to me.”
He looked at her for a long moment, and then down at the page. His voice came tenderly in a whisper, but I knew that she could hear it as well as I.
“September 21, 1859
It has been so many decades since Louis presented me with this little book in which I might record my private thoughts. I have not been successful, having made only a few entries, and whether these have been written for my benefit I am unsure.
Tonight, I confide with pen and paper because I know which direction my hatred will take me. And I fear for those who have aroused my wrath.
By those I mean, of course, my evil parents, my splendid fathers, those who have led me from a long forgotten mortality into this questionable state of timeless ‘bliss.’
To do away with Louis would be foolish, a
s he is without question the more malleable of the pair.”
Louis paused as though he couldn’t continue.
I saw Merrick’s fingers tighten on his knee.
“Read it, please, I beg you,” she said gently. “You must go on.”
Louis began again, his voice soft as before, and quite deliberately smooth.
“Louis will do as I wish, even unto the very destruction of Lestat, which I plan in every detail. Whereas Lestat would never cooperate with my designs upon Louis. So there my loyalty lies, under the guise of love even in my own heart.
“What mysteries we are, human, vampire, monster, mortal, that we can love and hate simultaneously, and that emotions of all sorts might not parade for what they are not. I look at Louis and I despise him totally for the making of me, and yet I do love him. But then I love Lestat every bit as well.
“Perhaps in the court of my heart, I hold Louis far more accountable for my present state than ever I could blame my impulsive and simple Lestat. The fact is, one must die for this or the pain in me will never be sealed off, and immortality is but a monstrous measurement of what I shall suffer till the world revolves to its ultimate end. One must die so that the other will become ever more dependent upon me, ever more completely my slave. I would travel the world afterwards; I would have my way; I cannot endure either one of them unless that one becomes my servant in thought, word, and deed.
“Such a fate is simply unthinkable with Lestat’s ungovernable and irascible character. Such a fate seems made for my melancholy Louis, though the destroying of Lestat will open new passages for Louis into the labyrinthian Hell in which I already wander with every new thought that comes in my mind.
“When I shall strike and how, I know not, only that it gives me supreme delight to watch Lestat in his unguarded gaiety, knowing that I shall humiliate him utterly in destroying him, and in so doing bring down the lofty useless conscience of my Louis, so that his soul, if not his body, is the same size at last as my own.”
It was finished.