The Tale of the Body Thief tvc-4

by Anne Rice

  "But, cherie, it works that way only if someone is keeping score-if some Supreme Being will ratify your decision, or you'll be rewarded for what you've done, or at least upheld."

  "No," she said, choosing her words thoughtfully as she proceeded. "Nothing could be farther from the truth. Think of what I've said. I'm telling you something that is obviously new to you. Maybe it's a religious secret."

  "How so?"

  "There are many nights when I lie awake, fully aware that there may be no personal God, and that the suffering of the children I see every day in our hospitals will never be balanced or redeemed. I think of those old arguments-you know, how can God justify the suffering of a child? Dostoevsky asked that question. So did the French writer Albert Camus. We ourselves are always asking it. But it doesn't ultimately matter.

  "God may or may not exist. But misery is real. It is absolutely real, and utterly undeniable. And in that reality lies my commitment-the core of my faith. I have to do something about it!"

  "And at the hour of your death, if there is no God . . ."

  "So be it. I will know that I did what I could. The hour of my death could be now." She gave a little shrug. "I wouldn't feel any different."

  "This is why you feel no guilt for our being there in the bed together."

  She considered. "Guilt? I feel happiness when I think of it. Don't you know what you've done for me?" She waited, and slowly her eyes filled with tears. "I came here to meet you, to be with you," she said, her voice thickening. "And I can go back to the mission now."

  She bowed her head, and slowly, silently regained her calm, her eyes clearing. Then she looked up and spoke again.

  "When you spoke of making this child, Claudia... when you spoke of bringing your mother, Gabrielle, into your world ... you spoke of reaching for something. Would you call it a transcendence? When I work until I drop hi the mission hospital, I transcend. I transcend doubt and something . . . something perhaps hopeless and black inside myself.

  I don't know."

  "Hopeless and black, yes, that's the key, isn't it? The music didn't make this go away." "Yes, it did, but it was false."

  "Why false? Why was doing that good-playing the piano- false?"

  "Because it didn't do enough for others, that's why."

  "Oh, but it did. It gave them pleasure, it had to."

  "Pleasure?"

  "Forgive me, I'm choosing the wrong tack. You've lost yourself hi your vocation. When you played the piano, you were yourself-don't you see? You were the unique Gretchen! It was the very meaning of the word 'virtuoso.' And you wanted to lose yourself."

  "I think you're right. The music simply wasn't my way."

  "Oh, Gretchen, you frighten me!"

  "But I shouldn't frighten you. I'm not saving the other way was wrong. If you did good with your music-your rock singing, this brief career you described-it was the good you could do. I do good my way, that's all."

  "No, there's some fierce self-denial hi you. You're hungry for love the way I starve night after night for blood. You punish yourself hi your nursing, denying your carnal desires, and your love of music, and all the things of the world which are like music. You are a virtuoso, a virtuoso of your own pain."

  "You're wrong, Lestat," she said with another little smile, and a shake of her head. "You know that's not true. It's what you want to believe about someone like me. Lestat, listen to me. If all you've told me is true, isn't it obvious in light of that truth that you were meant to meet me?"

  "How so?"

  "Come here, sit with me and talk to me."

  I don't know why I hesitated, why I was afraid. Finally I came back to the blanket and sat down opposite, crossing my legs. I leaned back against the side of the bookcase.

  "Don't you see?" she asked. "I represent a contrary way, a " way you haven't ever considered, and one which might bring you the very consolation you seek."

  "Gretchen, you don't believe for a moment that I've told the truth about myself. You can't. I don't expect you to."

  "I do believe you! Every word you've said. And the literal truth is unimportant. You seek something that the saints sought when they renounced their normal lives, when they blundered into the service of Christ. And never mind that you don't believe in Christ. It's unimportant. What is important is that you have been miserable in the existence you've lived until now, miserable to the point of madness, and that my way would offer you an alternative."

  "You're speaking of this for me?" I asked.

  "Of course I am. Don't you see the pattern? You come down into this body; you fall into my hands; you give me the moment of love I require. But what have I given you? What is my meaning for you?"

  She raised her hand for quiet.

  "No, don't speak of larger schemes again. Don't ask if there is a literal God. Think on all I've said. I've said it for myself, but also for you. How many lives have you taken in this otherworldly existence of yours? How many lives have I saved- literally saved-in the missions?"

  I was ready to deny the entire possibility, when suddenly it occurred to me to wait, to be silent, and merely to consider.

  The chilling thought came to me again that I might never recover my preternatural body, that I might be trapped in this flesh all my life. If I couldn't catch the Body Thief, if I couldn't get the others to help me, the death I said I wanted would indeed be mine in time. I had fallen back into time.

  And what if there was a scheme to it? What if there was a destiny? And I spent that mortal life working as Gretchen worked, devoting my entire physical and spiritual being to others? What if I simply went with her back to her jungle outpost? Oh, not as her lover, of course. Such things as that were not meant for her, obviously. But what if I went as her assistant, her helper? What if I sank my mortal life into that very frame of self­sacrifice?

  Again, I forced myself to remain quiet, to see it.

  Of course there was an added capability of which she knew nothing-the wealth I could bestow upon her mission, upon missions like it. And though this wealth was so vast some men could not have calculated it, I could calculate it. I could see in a large incandescent vision its limits, its effects. Whole village populations fed and clothed, hospitals stocked with medicines, schools furnished with books and blackboards and radios and pianos. Yes, pianos. Oh, this was an old, old tale. This was an old, old dream.

  I remained quiet as I considered it. I saw the moments of each day of my mortal life-my possible mortal life-spent along with every bit of my fortune upon this dream. I saw this as if it were sand sliding through the narrow center of an hourglass.

  Why, at this very minute, as we sat here in this clean little room, people starved in the great slums of the Eastern world. They starved in Africa. Worldwide, they perished from disease and from disaster. Floods washed away their dwellings; drought shriveled their food and their hopes. The misery of even one country was more than the mind could endure, were it described in even vague detail.

  But even if everything I possessed I gave to this endeavor, what would I have accomplished in the final analysis?

  How could I even know that modern medicine in a jungle village was better than the old way? How could I know that the education given a jungle child spelt happiness for it? How could I know that any of this was worth the loss of myself? How could I make myself care whether it was or not! That was the horror.

  I didn't care. I could weep for any individual soul who suffered, yes, but about sacrificing my life to the nameless millions of the world, I couldn't care! In fact, it filled me with dread, terrible dark dread. It was sad beyond sad. It seemed no life at all. It seemed the very opposite of transcendence.

  I shook my head. In a low stammering voice I explained to her why this vision frightened me so much.

  "Centuries ago, when I first stood on the little boulevard stage in Paris-when I saw the happy faces, when I heard applause-I felt as if my body and soul had found their destiny;

  I felt as if every promise in my birt
h and childhood had begun its fulfillment at last.

  "Oh, there were other actors, worse and better; other singers; other clowns; there have been a million since and a million will come after this moment. But each of us shines with his own inimitable power; each of us comes alive in his own unique and dazzling moment; each of us has his chance to vanquish the others forever in the mind of the beholder, and that is the only kind of accomplishment I can really understand: the kind of accomplishment in which the self-this self, if you will-is utterly whole and triumphant.

  "Yes, I could have been a saint, you are right, but I would have had to found a religious order or lead an army into battle; I would have had to work miracles of such scope that the whole world would have been brought to its knees. I am one who must dare even if I'm wrong-completely wrong. Gretchen, God gave me an individual soul and I cannot bury it."

  I was amazed to see that she was still smiling at me, softly and unquestioningly, and that her face was full of calm wonder.

  "Better to reign in hell," she asked carefully, "than to serve in heaven?"

  "Oh, no. I would make heaven on earth if I could. But I must raise my voice; I must shine; and I must reach for the very ecstasy that you've denied-the very intensity from which you fled! That to me is transcendence! When I made Claudia, blundering error that it was-yes, it was transcendence. When I made Gabrielle, wicked as it seemed, yes, it was transcendence. It was a single, powerful, and horrifying act, which wrung from me all my unique power and daring. They shall not die, I said, yes, perhaps the very words you use to the village children.

  "But it was to bring them into my unnatural world that I uttered these words. The goal was not merely to save, but to make of them what I was-a unique and terrible being. It was to confer upon them the very individuality I cherished. We shall live, even in this state called living death, we shall love, we shall feel, we shall defy those who would judge us and destroy us. That was my transcendence. And self-sacrifice and redemption had no part in it."

  Oh, how frustrating it was that I could not communicate it to her, I could not make her believe it in literal terms. "Don't you see, I survived all that has happened to me because I am who I am. My strength, my will, my refusal to give up-those are the only components of my heart and soul which I can truly identify. This ego, if you wish to call it that, is my strength. I am the Vampire Lestat, and nothing . .. not even this mortal body ... is going to defeat me."

  I was amazed to see her nod, to see her totally accepting expression.

  "And if you came with me," she said gently, "the Vampire Lestat would perish-wouldn't he?-in his own redemption."

  "Yes, he would. He would die slowly and horribly among the small and thankless tasks, caring for the never-ending hordes of the nameless, the faceless, the eternally needy."

  I felt so sad suddenly that I couldn't continue. I was tired in an awful mortal way, the mind having worked its chemistry upon this body. I thought of my dream and of my speech to Claudia, and now I had told it again to Gretchen, and I knew myself as never before.

  I drew up my knees and rested my arms on them, and I put my forehead on my arms. "I can't do it," I said under my breath. "I can't bury myself alive in such a life as you have. And I don't want to, that's the awful part. I don't want to do it! I don't believe it would save my soul. I don't believe it would matter."

  I felt her hands on my arms. She was stroking my hair again, drawing it back from my forehead.

  "I understand you," she said, "even though you're wrong."

  I gave a little laugh as I looked up at her. I took a napkin from our little picnic and I wiped my nose and my eyes.

  "But I haven't shaken your faith, have I?"

  "No," she said. And this time her smile was different, more warm and more truly radiant. "You've confirmed it," she said in a whisper. "How very strange you are, and how miraculous that you came to me. I can almost believe your way is right for you. Who else could be you? No one."

  I sat back, and drank a little sip of wine. It was now warm from the fire, but still it tasted good, sending a ripple of pleasure through my sluggish limbs. I drank some more of it. I set down the glass and looked at her.

  "I want to ask you a question," I said. "Answer me from your heart. If I win my battle-if I regain my body-do you want me to come to you? Do you want me to show you that I've been telling the truth? Think carefully before you answer.

  "I want to do it. I really do. But I'm not sure that it's the best thing for you. Yours is almost a perfect life. Our little carnal episode couldn't possibly turn you away from it. I was right- wasn't I?-hi what I said before. You know now that erotic pleasure really isn't important to you, and you're going to return to your work hi the jungle very soon, if not immediately."

  "That's true," she said. "But there's something else you should know, also. There was a moment this morning when I thought I could throw away everything-just to be with you."

  "No, not you, Gretchen."

  "Yes, me. I could feel it sweeping me away, the way the music once did. And if you were to say 'Come with me,' even now, I might go. If this world of yours really existed . . ."

  She broke off with another little shrug, tossing her hair a little and then smoothing it back behind her shoulder. "The meaning of chastity is not to fall in love," she said, her focus sharpening as she looked at me. "I could fall in love with you. I know I could."

  She broke off, and then said in a low, troubled voice, "You could become my god. I know that's true."

  This frightened me, yet I felt at once a shameless pleasure and satisfaction, a sad pride. I tried not to yield to the feeling of slow physical excitement. After all, she didn't know what she was saying. She couldn't know. But there was something powerfully convincing in her voice and in her manner.

  "I'm going back," she said in the same voice, full of certitude and humility. "I'll probably leave within a matter of days. But yes, if you win this battle, if you recover your old form-for the love of God, come to me. I want to ... I want to know!"

  I didn't reply. I was too confused. Then I spoke the confusion.

  "You know, in a horrible way, when I do come to you and reveal my true self, you may be disappointed."

  "How could that be?"

  "You think me a sublime human being for the spiritual content of all I've said to you. You see me as some sort of blessed lunatic spilling truth with error the way a mystic might. But I'm not human. And when you know it, maybe you'll hate it."

  "No, I could never hate you. And to know that all you've said is true? That would be ... a miracle."

  "Perhaps, Gretchen. Perhaps. But remember what I said. We are a vision without revelation. We are a miracle without meaning. Do you really want that cross along with so many others?"

  She didn't answer. She was weighing my words. I could not imagine what they meant to her. I reached for her hand, and she let me take it, folding her fingers gently around mine, her eyes still constant as she looked at me.

  "There is no God, is there, Gretchen?"

  "No, there isn't," she whispered.

  I wanted to laugh and to weep. I sat back, laughing softly to myself and looking at her, at the calm, statuesque manner in winch she sat there, the light of the fire caught in her hazel eyes.

  "You don't know what you've done for me," she said. "You don't know how much it has meant. I am ready-ready to go back now."

  I nodded.

  "Then it won't matter, will it, my beautiful one, if we get into that bed together again. For surely we should do it."

  "Yes, we should do that, I think," she answered.

  It was almost dark when I left her quietly to take the phone by f its long cord into the little bath and call my New York agent. "| Once again, the number rang and rang. I was just about to give - up, and turn again to my man in Paris, when a voice came on f* the line, and slowly let me know in halting awkward terms that % my New York representative was indeed no longer alive. He had died by violence several nights ago
hi his office high above Madison Avenue. Robbery had now been affirmed as the motive for the attack; his computer and all his files had been stolen. I was so stunned that I could make no answer to the helpful voice on the phone. At last I managed to collect myself sufficiently to put a few questions.

  On Wednesday night, about eight o'clock, the crime had occurred. No, no one knew the extent of damage done by the theft of the files. Yes, unfortunately the poor man had suffered.

  "Awful, awful situation," said the voice. "If you were in New York, you couldn't avoid knowing about it Every paper in town had the story. They were calling it a vampire killing. The man's body was entirely drained of blood."

  I hung up the phone, and for a long moment sat there in rigid if silence. Then I rang Paris. My man there answered after only J|: a small delay.

  Thank God I had called, said my man. But please, I must identify myself. No, the code words weren't enough. What about conversations which had taken place between us in the past? Ah, yes, yes, that was it. Talk, talk, he said. I at once poured out a litany of secrets known only to me and this man, and I could hear his great relief as he at last unburdened him-

  The strangest things had been happening, he said. He'd been contacted twice by someone claiming to be me, who obviously wasn't. This individual even knew two of our code words used hi the past, and gave an elaborate story as to why he did not know the latest ones. Meantime, several electronic orders had come in for shifts of funds, but in every case, the codes were wrong. But not entirely wrong. Indeed, there was every indication that this person was in the process of cracking our system.

  "But, Monsieur, let me tell you the simplest part. This man does not speak the same French that you do! I don't mean to insult you, Monsieur, but your French is rather... how shall I say, unusual? You speak old-fashioned words. And you put words in unusual order. I know when it is you."