by Anne Rice
“ ‘If you’d just go out,’ said the other angrily, heaving the chunk of wood into the blaze. ‘If you’d just hunt something other than these miserable animals…’ And he looked about himself in disgust. I saw then, in the shadows, the small furry bodies of several cats, lying helter-skelter in the dust. A most remarkable thing, because a vampire can no more endure to be near his dead victims than any mammal can remain near any place where he has left his waste. ‘Do you know that it’s summer?’ demanded the young one. Lestat merely rubbed his hands. The baby’s howling cued off, yet the young vampire added, ‘Get on with it, take it so you’ll be warm.’
“ ‘You might have brought me something else!’ said Lestat bitterly. And, as he looked at the baby, I saw his eyes squinting against the dull light of the smoky lamp. I felt a shock of recognition at those eyes, even at the expression beneath the shadow of the deep wave of his yellow hair. And yet to hear that whining voice, to see that bent and quivering back! Almost without thinking I rapped hard on the glass. The young vampire was up at once affecting a hard, vicious expression; but I merely motioned for him to turn the latch. And Lestat, clutching his bathrobe to his throat, rose from the chair.
“ ‘It’s Louis! Louis!’ he said. ‘Let him in’ And he gestured frantically, like an invalid, for the young ‘nurse’ to obey.
“As soon as the window opened I breathed the stench of the room and its sweltering heat. The swarming of the insects on the rotted animals scratched at my senses so that I recoiled despite myself, despite Lestat’s desperate pleas for me to come to him. There, in the far corner, was the coffin where he slept, the lacquer peeling from the wood, half covered with piles of yellow newspapers. And bones lay in the corners, picked clean except for bits and tufts of fur. But Lestat had his dry hands on mine now, drawing me towards him and towards the warmth, and I could see the tears welling in his eyes; and only when his mouth was stretched in a strange smile of desperate happiness that was near to pain did I see the faint traces of the old scars. How baffling and awful it was, this smoothfaced, shimmering immortal man bent and rattled and whining like a crone.
“ ‘Yes, Lestat,’ I said softly. ‘I’ve come to see you.’ I pushed his hand gently, slowly away and moved towards the baby, who was crying desperately now from fear as well as hunger. As soon as I lifted it up and loosened the covers, it quieted a little, and then I patted it and rocked it. Lestat was whispering to me now in quick, half-articulated words I couldn’t understand, the tears streaming down his cheeks, the young vampire at the open window with a look of disgust on his face and one hand on the window latch, as if he meant at any minute to bolt.
“ ‘So you’re Louis,’ said the young vampire. This seemed to increase Lestat’s inexpressible. excitement, and he wiped frantically at his tears with the hem of his robe.
“A fly lit on the baby’s forehead, and involuntarily I gasped as I pressed it between two fingers and dropped it dead to the floor. The child was no longer crying. It was looking up at me with extraordinary blue eyes, dark-blue eyes, its round face glistening from the heat, and a smile played on its lips, a smile that grew brighter like a flame. I had never brought death to anything so young, so innocent, and I was aware of this now as I held the child with an odd feeling of sorrow, stronger even than that feeling which had come over me in the Rue Royale. And, rocking the child gently, I pulled the young vampire’s chair to the fire and sat down.
“ ‘Don’t try to speak… it’s all right,’ I said to Lestat, who dropped down gratefully into his chair and reached out to stroke the lapels of my coat with both hands.
“ ‘But I’m so glad to see you,’ he stammered through his tears. ‘I’ve dreamed of your coming… coming…’ he said. And then he grimaced, as if he were feeling a pain he couldn’t identify, and again the fine map of scars appeared for an instant. He was looking off, his hand up to his ear, as if he meant to cover it to defend himself from some terrible sound. ‘I didn’t…’ he started; and then he shook his head, his eyes clouding as he opened them wide, strained to focus them. ‘I didn’t mean to let them do it, Louis… I mean that Santiago… that one, you know, he didn’t tell me what they planned to do.’
“ ‘That’s all past, Lestat,’ I said.
“ ‘Yes, yes,’ he nodded vigorously. ‘Past. She should never… why, Louis, you know…’ And he was shaking his head, his voice seeming to gain in strength, to gain a little in resonance with his effort. ‘She should have never been one of us, Louis.’ And he rapped his sunken chest with his fist as he said ‘Us’ again softly.
“She. It seemed then that she had never existed That she had been some illogical, fantastical dream that, was too precious and too personal for me ever to confide in anyone. And too long gone. I looked at him. I stared at him. And tried to think, Yes, the three of us together.
“ ‘Don’t fear me, Lestat,’ I said, as though talking to myself. ‘I bring you no harm.’
“ ‘You’ve come back to me, Louis,’ he whispered in that thin, high-pitched voice. ‘You’ve come home again to me, Louis, haven’t you?’ And again he bit his lip and looked at me desperately.
“ ‘No, Lestat.’ I shook my head. He was frantic for a moment, and again he commenced one gesture and then another and finally sat there with his hands over his face in a paroxysm of distress. The other vampire, who was studying me coldly, asked:
“ ‘Are you… have you come back to him?’
“ ‘No, of course not,’ I answered. And he smirked, as if this was as he expected, that everything fell to him again, and he walked out onto the porch. I could hear him there very near, waiting.
“ ‘I only wanted to see you, Lestat,’ I said. But Lestat didn’t seem to hear me. Something else had distracted him. And he was gazing off, his eyes wide, his hands hovering near his ears. Then I heard it also. It was a siren. And as it grew louder, his eyes shut tight against it and his fingers covered his ears. And it grew louder and louder, coming up the street from downtown. ‘Lestat!’ I said to him, over the baby’s cries, which rose now in the same terrible fear of the siren. But his agony obliterated me. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a terrible grimace of pain. ‘Lestat, it’s only a siren!’ I said to him stupidly. And then he came forward out of the chair and took hold of me and held tight to me, and, despite myself, I took his hand. He bent down, pressing his head against my chest and holding my hand so tight that he caused me pain. The room was filled with the flashing red light of the siren, and then it was going away.
“ ‘Louis, I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it,’ he growled through his tears. ‘Help me, Louis, stay with me.’
“ ‘But why are you afraid?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you know what these things are?’ And as I looked down at him, as I saw his yellow hair pressed against my coat, I had a vision of him from long ago, that tall, stately gentleman in the swirling black cape, with his head thrown back, his rich, flawless voice singing the lilting air of the opera from which we’d only just come, his walking stick tapping the cobblestones in time with the music, his large, sparkling eye catching the young woman who stood by, enrapt, so that a smile spread over his face as the song died on his lips; and for one moment, that one moment when his eye met hers, all evil seemed obliterated in that flush of pleasure, that passion for merely being alive.
“Was this the price of that involvement? A sensibility shocked by change, shriveling from fear? I thought quietly of all the things I might say to him, how I might remind him that he was immortal, that nothing condemned him to this retreat save himself, and that he was surrounded with the unmistakable signs of inevitable death. But I did not say these things, and I knew that I would not.
“It seemed the silence of the room rushed back around us, like a dark sea that the siren had driven away. The flies swarmed on the festering body of a rat, and the child looked quietly up at me as though my eyes were bright baubles, and its dimpled hand closed on the finger that I poised above its tiny petal mouth.
“Lest
at had risen, straightened, but only to bend over and slink into the chair. ‘You won’t stay with me,’ he sighed. But then he looked away and seemed suddenly absorbed.
“ ‘I wanted to talk to you so much,’ he said. ‘That night I came home in the Rue Royale I only wanted to talk to you!’ He shuddered violently, eyes closed, his throat seeming to contract. It was as if the blows I’d struck him then were falling now. He stared blindly ahead, his tongue moistening his lip, his voice low, almost natural. ‘I went to Paris after you…’
“ ‘What was it you wanted to tell me?’ I asked. ‘What was it you wanted to talk about?’
“I could well remember his mad insistence in the Theatre des Vampires. I hadn’t thought of it in years. No, I had never thought of it. And I was aware that I spoke of it now with great reluctance.
“But he only smiled at me, and insipid, near apologetic smile. And shook his head. I watched his eyes fill with a soft, bleary despair.
“I felt a profound, undeniable relief.
“ ‘But you will stay!’ he insisted.
“ ‘No,’ I answered.
“ ‘And neither will I!’ said that young vampire from the darkness outside. And he stood for a second in the open window looking at us. Lestat looked up at him and then sheepishly away, and his lower lip seemed to thicken and tremble. ‘Close it, close it,’ he said, waving his finger at the window. Then a sob burst from him and, covering his mouth with his hand, he put his head down and cried.
“The young vampire was gone. I heard his steps moving fast on the walk, heard the heavy chink of the iron gate. And I was alone with Lestat, and he was crying. It seemed a long time before he stopped, and during all that time I merely watched him. I was thinking of all the things that had passed between us. I was remembering things which I supposed I had completely forgotten. And I was conscious then of that same overwhelming sadness which I’d felt when I saw the place in the Rue Royale where we had lived. Only, it didn’t seem to me to be a sadness for Lestat, for that smart, gay vampire who used to live there then. It seemed a sadness for something else, something beyond Lestat that only included him and was part of the great awful sadness of all the things I’d ever lost or loved or known. It seemed then I was in a different place, a different time. And this different place and time was very real, and it was a room where the insects had hummed as they were humming here and the air had been close and thick with death and with the spring perfume. And I was on the verge of knowing that place and knowing with it a terrible pain, a pain so terrible that my mind veered away from it, said, No, don’t take me back to that place — and suddenly it was receding, and I was with Lestat here now. Astonished, I saw my own tear fall onto the face of the child. I saw it glisten on the child’s cheek, and I saw the cheek become very plump with the child’s smile. It must have been seeing the light in the tears.
I put my hand to my face and wiped at the tears that were in fact there and looked at them in amazement.
“ ‘But Louis…’ Lestat was saying softly. ‘How can you be as you are, how can you stand it?’ He was looking up at me, his mouth in that same grimace, his face wet with tears. ‘Tell me, Louis, help me to understand! How can you understand it all, how can you endure?’ And I could see by the desperation in his eyes and the deeper tone which his voice had taken that he, too; was pushing himself towards something that for him was very painful, towards a place where he hadn’t ventured in a long time. But then, even as I looked at him, his eyes appeared to become misty, confused. And he pulled the robe up tight, and shaking his head, he looked at the fire. A shudder passed through him and he moaned.
“ ‘I have to go now, Lestat,’ I said to him. I felt weary, weary of him and weary of this sadness. And I longed again for the stillness outside, that perfect quiet to which I’d become so completely accustomed. But I realized, as I rose to my feet, that I was taking the little baby with me.
“Lestat looked up at me now with his large, agonized eyes and his smooth, ageless face. ‘But you’ll come back… you’ll come to visit me… Louis?’ he said.
“I turned away from him, hearing him calling after me, and quietly left the house. When I reached the street, I looked back and I could see him hovering at the window as if he were afraid to go out. I realized he had not gone out for a long, long time, and it occurred to me then that perhaps he would never go out again.
“I returned to the small house from which the vampire had taken the child, and left it there in its crib.”
“Not very long after that I told Armand I’d seen Lestat. Perhaps it was a month, I’m not certain. Time meant little to me then, as it means little to me now. But it meant a great deal to Armand. He was amazed that I hadn’t mentioned this before.
“We were walking that night uptown where the city gives way to the Audubon Park and the levee is a deserted, grassy slope that descends to a muddy beach heaped here and there with driftwood, going out to the lapping waves of the river. On the far bank were the very dim lights of industries and river-front companies, pinpoints of green or red that flickered in the distance like stars. And the moon showed the broad, strong current moving fast between the two shores; and even the summer heat was gone here, with the cool breeze coming off the water and gently lifting the moss that hung from the twisted oak where we sat. I was picking at the grass, and tasting it, though the taste was bitter and unnatural. The gesture seemed natural. I was feeling almost that I might never leave New Orleans. But then, what are such thoughts when you can live forever? Never leave New Orleans again?’ Again seemed a human word.
“ ‘But didn’t you feel any desire for revenge?’ Armand asked. He lay on the grass beside me, his weight on his elbow, his eyes fixed on me.
“ ‘Why?’ I asked calmly. I was wishing, as I often wished, that he was not there, that I was alone. Alone with this powerful and cool river under the dim moon. ‘He’s met with his own perfect revenge. He’s dying, dying of rigidity, of fear. His mind cannot accept this time. Nothing as serene and graceful as that vampire death you once described to me in Paris. I think he is dying as clumsily and grotesquely as humans often die in this century… of old age.’
“ ‘But you… what did you feel?’ he insisted softly. And I was struck by the personal quality of that question, and how long it had been since either of us had spoken to the other in that way. I had a strong sense of him then, the separate being that he was, the calm and collected creature with the straight auburn hair and the large, sometimes melancholy eyes, eyes that seemed often to be seeing nothing but their own thoughts. Tonight they were lit with a dull fire that was unusual.
“ ‘Nothing,’ I answered.
“ ‘Nothing one way or the other?’
“I answered no. I remembered palpably that sorrow. It was as if the sorrow hadn’t left me suddenly, but had been near me all this time, hovering, saying, ‘Come.’ But I wouldn’t tell this to Armand, wouldn’t reveal this. And I had the strangest sensation of feeling his need for me to tell him this… this, or something… a need strangely akin to the need for living blood.
“ ‘But did he tell you anything, anything that made you feel the old hatred…’ he murmured. And it was at this point that I became keenly aware of how distressed he was.
“ ‘What is it, Armand? Why do you ask this?’ I said.
“But he lay back on the steep levee then, and for a long time he appeared to be looking at the stars. The stars brought back to me something far too specific, the ship that had carried Claudia and me to Europe, and those nights at sea when it seemed the stars came down to touch the waves.
“ ‘I thought perhaps he would tell you something about Paris…’ Armand said.
“ ‘What should he say about Paris? That he didn’t want Claudia to die?’ I asked. Claudia again; the name sounded strange. Claudia spreading out that game of solitaire on the table that shifted with the shifting of the sea, the lantern creaking on its hook, the black porthole full of the stars. She had her head bent, her fingers p
oised above her ear as if about to loosen strands of her hair. And I had the most disconcerting sensation: that in my memory she would look up from that game of solitaire, and the sockets of her eyes would be empty.
“ ‘You could have told me anything you wanted about Paris, Armand,’ I said. ‘Long before now. It wouldn’t have mattered.’
“ ‘Even that it was I who…?’
“I turned to him as he lay there looking at the sky. And I saw the extraordinary pain in his face, in his eyes. It seemed his eyes were huge, too huge, and the white face that framed them too gaunt.
’That it was you who killed her? Who forced her out into that yard and locked her there?’ I asked. I smiled. ‘Don’t tell me you have been feeling pain for it all these years, not you.’
“And then he closed his eyes and turned his face away, his hand resting on his chest as if I’d struck him an awful, sudden blow.
“ ‘You can’t convince me you care about this,’ I said to him coldly. And I looked out towards the water, and again that feeling came over me… that I wished to be alone. In a little while I knew I would get up and go off by myself. That is, if he didn’t leave me first. Because I would have liked to remain there actually. It was a quiet, secluded place.
“ ‘You care about nothing…’ he was saying. And then he sat up slowly and turned to me so again I could see that dark fire in his eyes. ‘I thought you would at least care about that. I thought you would feel the old passion, the old anger if you were to see him again. I thought something would quicken and come alive in you if you saw him… if you returned to this place.’
“ ‘That I would come back to life?’ I said softly. And I felt the cold metallic hardness of my words as I spoke, the modulation, the control. It was as if I were cold all over, made of metal, and he were fragile suddenly; fragile, as he had been, actually, for a long time.