by Anne Rice
It was this surrender that she needed, it was what she required of herself. Once again, I fell to kissing her. She was moist and ready for me. I could keep it back no longer, and when I rode her now, it was hard. The little passage was snug and maddeningly heated as its juices flowed. I saw the blood come up into her face as the rhythm quickened; I bent my lips to lick at her nipples, to claim her mouth again. When the final moan came out of her, it was like the moan of pain. And there it was again, the mystery-that something could be so perfectly finished, and complete, and have lasted such a little while. Such a precious little while.
Had it been union? Were we one with each other in this clamorous silence?
I don't think that it was union. On the contrary, it seemed the most violent of separations: two contrary beings flung at each other in heat and clumsiness, in trust and in menace, the feelings of each unknowable and unfathomable to the other-its sweetness terrible as its brevity; its loneliness hurtful as its 'undeniable fire.
And never had she looked so frail to me as she did now, her eyes closed, her head turned into the pillow, her breasts no longer heaving but very still. It seemed an image to provoke violence-to beckon to the most wanton cruelty in a male heart.
Why was this so?
I didn't want any other mortal to touch her!
I didn't want her own guilt to touch her. I didn't want regret to hurt her, or for any of the evils of the human mind to come near her.
And only now did I think of the Dark Gift again, and not of Claudia, but of the sweet throbbing splendour in the making of Gabrielle. Gabrielle had never looked back from that long-ago moment. Clad in strength and certainty, she had begun her wandering, never suffering an hour's moral torment as the endless complexities of the great world drew her on.
But who could say what the Dark Blood would give to any one human soul? And this, a virtuous woman, a believer in old and merciless deities, drunk on the blood of martyrs and the heady suffering of a thousand saints. Surely she would never ask for the Dark Gift or accept it, any more than David would.
But what did such questions matter until she knew the words I spoke were true? And what if I could never prove their truth to her? What if I never had the Dark Blood again inside me to give anyone and I remained forever trapped in this mortal flesh? I lay quiet,
watching the sunlight fill the room. I watched it strike the tiny body of the crucified Christ above her bookshelf; I watched it fall upon the Virgin with her bowed head.
Snuggled against each other, we slept again.
SIXTEEN
NOON. I was dressed in the clean new clothes which I had bought on that last fateful day of my wandering-soft white pullover shirt with long sleeves, fashionably faded denim pants. We had made a picnic of sorts before the warm crackling little fire-a white blanket spread out on the carpet, on which we sat having our late breakfast together, as Mojo dined sloppily and greedily in his own fashion on the kitchen floor. It was French bread and butter again, and orange juice, and boiled eggs, and the fruit in big slices. I was eating hungrily, ignoring her warnings that I was not entirely well. I was plenty well enough. Even her little digital thermometer said so.
I ought to be off to New Orleans. If the airport was open, I could have been there by nightfall, perhaps. But I didn't want to leave her just now. I asked for some wine. I wanted to talk. I wanted to understand her, and I was also afraid to leave her, afraid of being alone without her. The plane journey struck a cowardly fear in my soul. And besides, I liked being with her...
She'd been talking easily about her life in the missions, of how she'd loved it from the very beginning. The first years she'd spent in Peru, then she'd gone on to the Yucatan.
Her most recent assignment had been in the jungles of French Guiana- a place of primitive Indian tribes. The mission was St. Margaret Mary-six hours' journey up the Maroni River by motorized canoe from the town of St. Laurent. She and the other sisters had refurbished the concrete chapel, the little whitewashed schoolhouse, and the hospital. But often they had to leave the mission itself and go directly to the people in their villages. She loved this work, she said.
She laid out for me a great sweep of photographs-small rectangular colored pictures of the crude little mission buildings, and of her and her sisters, and of the priest who came through to say Mass. None of these sisters wore veils or habits out there; they were dressed hi khaki or white cotton, and their hair was free-real working sisters, she explained. And there she was in these pictures-radiantly happy, none of the brooding melancholy evident in her. In one snapshot she stood surrounded by dark-faced Indians, before a curious little building with ornate carvings on its walls. In another she was giving an injection to a wraith of an old man who sat in a brightly painted straight-back chair.
Life in these jungle villages had been the same for centuries, she said. These people had existed long before the French or Spanish ever set foot on the soil of South America. It was difficult to get them to trust the sisters and the doctors and the priests. She herself did not care whether or not they learnt their prayers. She cared about inoculations, and the proper cleaning of infected wounds. She cared about setting broken limbs so that these people would not be crippled forever.
Of course they wanted her to come back. They'd been very patient with her little leave of absence. They needed her. The work was waiting for her. She showed me the telegram, which I had already seen, tacked to the wall above the bathroom mirror.
"You miss it, obviously you do," I said.
I was studying her, watching for signs of guilt over what we had done together. But I didn't see this in her. She did not seem racked with guilt over the telegram either.
"I'm going back, of course," she said simply. "This may sound absurd, but it was a difficult thing to leave in the first place. But this question of chastity; it had become a destructive obsession."
Of course I understood. She looked at me with large quiet eyes.
"And now you know," I said, "that it's not really so very important at all whether or not you sleep with a man. Isn't that what you found out?"
"Perhaps," she said, with a faint simple smile. How strong she seemed, sitting there on the blanket, her legs demurely folded to one side, her hair loose still, and more like a nun's veil here in this room than hi any photograph of her.
"How did it begin for you?" I asked.
"Do you think that's important?" she asked. "I don't think you'll approve of my story if I tell you."
"I want to know," I answered.
She'd grown up, the daughter of a Catholic schoolteacher and an accountant in the Bridgeport section of Chicago, and very early on exhibited a great talent for playing the piano. The whole family had sacrificed for her lessons with a famous teacher.
"Self-sacrifice,- you see," she said, smiling faintly again, "even from the beginning. Only it was music then, not medicine."
But even then, she had been deeply religious, reading the lives of the saints, and dreaming of being a saint-of working in the foreign missions when she grew up. Saint Rose de Lima, the mystic, held a special fascination for her. And so did Saint Martin de Porres, who had worked more in the world. And Saint Rita. She had wanted to work with lepers someday, to find a life of all-consuming and heroic work. She'd built a little oratory behind her house when she was a girl, and there she would kneel for hours before the crucifix, hoping that the wounds of Christ would open in her hands and feet-the stigmata.
"I took these stories very seriously," she said. "Saints are real to me. The possibility of heroism is real to me."
"Heroism," I said. My word. But how very different was my definition of it. I did not interrupt her.
"It seemed that the piano playing was at war with my spiritual soul. I wanted to give up everything for others, and that meant giving up the piano, above all, the piano."
This saddened me. I had the feeling she had not told this story often, and her voice was very subdued when she spoke.
"But wha
t about the happiness you gave to people when you played?" I asked. "Wasn't that something of real value?"
"Now, I can say that it was," she said, her voice dropping even lower, and her words coming with painful slowness. "But then? I wasn't sure of it. I wasn't a likely person for such a talent. I didn't mind being heard; but I didn't like being seen." She flushed slightly as she looked at me. "Perhaps if I could have played in a choir loft, or behind a screen it would have been different."
"I see," I said. "There are many humans who feel this way, of course."
"But you don't, do you?"
I shook my head.
She explained how excruciating it was for her to be dressed in white lace, and made to play before an audience. She did it to please her parents and her teachers. Entering the various competitions was an agony. But almost invariably she won. Her career had become a family enterprise by the tune she was sixteen.
"But what about the music itself. Did you enjoy it?"
She thought for a moment. Then: "It was absolute ecstasy," she answered. "When I played alone .. . with no one there to watch me, I lost my self hi it completely. It was almost like being under the influence of a drug. It was ... it was almost erotic. Sometimes melodies would obsess me. They'd run through my head continuously. I lost track of time when I played. I still cannot really listen to music without being swept up and carried away. You don't see any radio here or tape player. I can't have those things near me even now."
"But why deny yourself this?" I looked around. There was no piano in this room either.
She shook her head dismissively. "The effect is too engulfing, don't you see? I can forget everything else too easily. And nothing is accomplished when this happens. Life is on hold, so to speak."
"But, Gretchen, is that true?" I asked. "For some of us such intense feelings are life! We seek ecstasy. In those moments, we ... we transcend all the pain and the pettiness and the struggle. That's how it was for me when I was alive. That's how it is for me now."
She considered this, her face very smooth and relaxed. When she spoke, it was with quiet conviction.
"I want more than that," she said. "I want something more palpably constructive. But to put it another way, I cannot enjoy such a pleasure when others are hungry or suffering or sick."
"But the world will always include such misery. And people need music, Gretchen, they need it as much as they need comfort or food."
"I'm not sure I agree with you. In fact, I'm fairly sure that I don't. .1 have to spend my life trying to alleviate misery. Believe me, I have been through all these arguments many times before."
"Ah, but to choose nursing over music," I said. "It's unfathomable to me. Of course nursing is good." I was too saddened and confused to continue. "How did you make the actual choice?" I asked. "Didn't the family try to stop you?"
She went on to explain. When she was sixteen, her mother took ill, and for months no one could determine the cause of her illness. Her mother was anemic; she ran a constant fever; finally it was obvious she was wasting away. Tests were made, but the doctors could find no explanation. Everyone felt certain that her mother was going to die. The atmosphere of the house had been poisoned with grief and even bitterness.
"I asked God for a miracle," she said. "I promised I would never touch the piano keys again as long as I lived, if God would only save my mother. I promised I would enter the convent as soon as I was allowed-that I would devote my life to nursing the sick and the dying."
"And your mother was cured."
"Yes. Within a month she was completely recovered. She's alive now. She's retired, she tutors children after school-in a storefront in a black section of Chicago. She has never been sick since, in any way."
"And you kept the promise?"
She nodded. "I went into the Missionary Sisters when I was seventeen and they sent me to college."
"And you kept this promise never to touch the piano again?"
She nodded. There was not a trace of regret in her, nor was there a great longing or need for my understanding or approval. In fact, I knew my sadness was obvious to her, and that, if anything, she felt a little concerned for me.
"Were you happy in the convent?"
"Oh, yes," she said with a little shrug. "Don't you see? An ordinary life is impossible for someone like me. I have to be doing something hard. I have to be taking risks. I entered this religious order because their missions were in the most remote and treacherous areas of South America. I can't tell you how I love those jungles!" Her voice became low and almost urgent. "They can't be hot enough or dangerous enough for me. There are moments when we're all overworked and tired, when the hospital's overcrowded and the sick children are bedded down outside under lean-tos and in hammocks and I feel so alive! I can't tell you. I stop maybe long enough to wipe the sweat off my face, to wash my hands, to perhaps drink a glass of water. And I think: I'm alive; I'm here. I'm doing what matters."
Again she smiled. "It's another kind of intensity," I said, "something wholly unlike the making of music. I see the crucial difference."
I thought of David's words to me about his early life-how he had sought the thrill in danger. She was seeking the thrill in utter self-sacrifice. He had sought the danger of the occult in Brazil. She sought the hard challenge of bringing health to thousands of the nameless, and the eternally poor. This troubled me deeply.
"There's a vanity in it too, of course," she said. "Vanity is always the enemy. That's what troubled me the most about my... my chastity," she explained, "the pride I felt in it. But you see, even coming, back like this to the States was a risk. I was terrified when I got off the plane, when I realized I was here in Georgetown and nothing could stop me from being with a man if I wanted it. I think I went to work at the hospital out of fear. God knows, freedom isn't simple."
"This part I understand," I said. "But your family, how did they respond to this promise you made, to your giving up the music?"
"They didn't know at the time. I didn't tell them. I announced my vocation. I stuck to my guns. There was a lot of recrimination. After all, my sisters and brothers had worn secondhand clothes so I could have piano lessons. But this is often the case. Even in a good Catholic family, the news that a daughter wants to be a nun is not always greeted with cheers and accolades."
"They grieved for your talent," I said quietly.
"Yes, they did," she said with a slight lift of her eyebrows. How honest and tranquil she seemed. None of this was said with coldness or hardness. "But I had a vision of something vastly more important than a young woman on a concert stage, rising from the piano bench to collect a bouquet of roses. It was a long time before I told them about the promise."
"Years later?"
She nodded. "They understood. They saw the miracle. How could they help it? I told them I'd been more fortunate than anyone I knew who had ever gone into the convent. I'd had a clear sign from God. He had resolved all conflicts for all of us."
"You believe this."
"Yes. I do," she said. "But in a way, it doesn't matter whether it's true or not. And if anyone should understand, you should."
"Why is that?"
"Because you speak of religious truths and religious ideas and you know that they matter even if they are only metaphors. This is what I heard hi you even when you were delirious."
I sighed. "Don't you ever want to play the piano again? Don't you ever want to find an empty auditorium, perhaps, with a piano on the stage, and just sit down and . . ."
"Of course I do. But I can't do it, and I won't do it." Her smile now was truly beautiful.
"Gretchen, in a way this is a terrible story," I said. "Why, as a good Catholic girl couldn't you have seen your musical talent as a gift from God, a gift not to be wasted?"
"It was from God, I knew it was. But don't you see? There was a fork in the road; the sacrifice of the piano was the opportunity that God gave me to serve Him in a special way. Lestat, what could the music have meant compared to the
act of helping people, hundreds of people?"
I shook my head. "I think the music can be seen as equally important."
She thought for a long while before she answered. "I couldn't continue with it," she said. "Perhaps I used the crisis of my mother's illness, I don't know. I had to become a nurse. There was no other way for me. The simple truth is-I cannot live when I am faced with the misery in the world. I cannot justify comfort or pleasure when other people are suffering. I don't know how anyone can."
"Surely you don't think you can change it all, Gretchen."
"No, but I can spend my life affecting many, many individual lives. That's what counts."
This story so upset me that I couldn't remain seated there. I stood up, stretching my stiff legs, and I went to the window and looked out at the field of snow.
It would have been easy to dismiss it had she been a sorrowful or mentally crippled person, or a person of dire conflict and instability. But nothing seemed farther from the truth. I found her almost unfathomable.
She was as alien to me as my mortal friend Nicolas had been so many, many decades ago, not because she was like him. But because his cynicism and sneering and eternal rebellion had contained an abnegation of self which I couldn't really understand. My Nicki-so full of seeming eccentricity and excess, yet deriving satisfaction from what he did only because it pricked others.
Abnegation of self-that was the heart of it.
I turned around. She was merely watching me. I had the distinct feeling again that it didn't matter much to her what I said. She didn't require my understanding. In a way, she was one of the strongest people I'd encountered in all my long life.
It was no wonder she took me out of the hospital; another nurse might not have assumed such a burden at all.
"Gretchen," I asked, "you're never afraid that your life has been wasted-that sickness and suffering will simply go on long after you've left the earth, and what you've done will mean nothing in the larger scheme?"
"Lestat," she said, "it is the larger scheme which means nothing." Her eyes were wide and clear. "It is the small act which means all. Of course sickness and suffering will continue after I'm gone. But what's important is that I have done all I can. That's my triumph, and my vanity. That's my vocation and my sin of pride. That is my brand of heroism."