Pandora Page 23

  The sun must have risen.

  For a silence fell on me which was as if the universe with all its volcanoes and raging tides—and all its Emperors, Kings, judges, Senators, philosophers and Priests—had been erased from existence.

  11

  ELL, David, there you have it.

  I could continue the Plautus-Terence style comedy for pages. I could vie with Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. But that is the basic story. That is what lies behind the flippant capsule version in The Vampire Lestat, fashioned into its final trivial form by Marius or Lestat, who knows.

  Let me lead you through those points which are sacred and burn still in my heart, no matter how easily they have been dismissed by another.

  And the tale of our parting is not mere dissonance but may contain some lesson.

  Marius taught me to hunt, to catch the evildoer only, and to kill without pain, enwrapping the soul of my victim in sweet visions or allowing the soul to illuminate its own death with a cascade of fantasies which I must not judge, but merely devour, like the blood. All that does not require detailed documentation.

  We were matched in strength. When some burnt and ruthlessly ambitious blood drinker did find his way to Antioch, which happened only a few times and then not at all, we executed the supplicant together. These were monstrous mentalities, forged in ages we could hardly understand, and they sought the Queen like jackals seek the bodies of the human dead.

  There was no argument between us over any of them.

  We often read aloud to each other, and we laughed together at Petronius’s Satyricon, and we shared both tears and laughter later as we read the bitter satires of Juvenal. There was no end of new satire and history coming from Rome and from Alexandria.

  But something forever divided Marius from me.

  Love grew but so did constant argument, and argument became more and more the dangerous cement of the bond.

  Over the years, Marius guarded his delicate rationality as a Vestal Virgin guards a sacred flame. If ever any ecstatic emotion took hold of me, he was there to grab me by the shoulders and tell me in no uncertain terms that it was irrational. Irrational, irrational, irrational!

  When the terrible earthquake of the second century struck Antioch, and we were unharmed, I dared speak of it as a Divine Blessing. This set Marius into a rage, and he was quick to point that the same Divine Intervention had also protected the Roman Emperor Trajan, who was in the city at the time. What was I to make of that?

  For the record, Antioch quickly rebuilt itself, the markets flourished, more slaves poured in, nothing stopped the caravans headed for the ships, and the ships headed for the caravans.

  But long before that earthquake we had all but come to blows night after night.

  If I lingered for hours in the room of the Mother and the Father, Marius invariably came to collect me and bring me back to my senses. He could not read in peace with me in such a state, he declared. He could not think because he knew I was downstairs deliberately inviting madness.

  Why, I demanded, must his domination extend to every corner of our entire house and garden? And how was it that I was his match in strength when an old burnt blood drinker found his way to Antioch and we picked up the word of his killing and had to do away with him?

  “We are not matched in minds?” I demanded.

  “Only you could ask that question!” came his reply.

  Of course the Mother and Father never moved or spoke again. No blood dreams, no divine directive ever reached me. Only now and then did Marius remind me of this. And after a long while, he allowed me to tend the Shrine with him, to see full well the extent of their silent and seemingly mindless compliance. They appeared utterly beyond reach; their cooperation was sluggish and frightening to witness.

  When Flavius fell ill in his fortieth year, Marius and I had the first of our truly terrible battles. This came early on, well before the earthquake.

  It was, by the way, a wondrous time because the wicked old Tiberius was filling Antioch with new and wonderful buildings. She was the rival of Rome. But Flavius was ill.

  Marius could scarce bear it. He had become more than fond of Flavius—they talked about Aristotle all the time, and Flavius proved one of those men who can do anything for you, from managing a household to copying the most esoteric and crumbling text with complete accuracy.

  Flavius had never put a single question to us as to what we were. In his mind, I found, devotion and acceptance far superseded curiosity or fear.

  We hoped Flavius had only a minor illness. But finally, as Flavius’s fever grew worse, Flavius turned his head away from Marius whenever Marius came to him. But he held on to my hand always when I offered it. Frequently I lay beside him for hours, as he had once lain beside me.

  Then one night Marius took me to the gate and said, “He’ll be dead by the time I come back. Can you bear this alone?”

  “Do you run from it?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “But he doesn’t want me to see him die; he doesn’t want me to see him groan in pain.”

  I nodded.

  Marius left.

  Marius had long ago laid down the rule that no other blood drinker was ever to be made. I didn’t bother to question him on this.

  As soon as he was gone, I made Flavius into a vampire. I did it just the way the burnt one, Marius and Akasha had done it to me, for Marius and I had long discussed the methods—withdraw as much blood as you can, then give it back until you are near to fainting.

  I did faint and wake to see this splendid Greek standing over me, smiling faintly, all disease gone from him. He reached down to take my hand and help me to my feet.

  Marius walked in, stared at the reborn Flavius in amazement and said, “Get out, out of this house, out of this city, out of this province, out of this Empire.”

  Flavius’s last words to me were:

  “Thank you for this Dark Gift.” That is the first I ever heard that particular phrase, which appears so often in Lestat’s writings. How well this learned Athenian understood it.

  For hours I avoided Marius. I would never be forgiven! Then I went out into the garden. I discovered Marius was grieving, and when he looked up, I realized that he had been utterly convinced that I meant to go off with Flavius. When I saw this, I took him in my arms. He was full of quiet relief and love; he forgave me at once for my “absolute rashness.”

  “Don’t you see,” I said, taking him in hand, “that I adore you? But you cannot rule over me! Can you not consider in your reasonable fashion that the greatest part of our gift eludes you—it’s the freedom from the confines of male, female!”

  “You can’t convince me,” he said, “for one moment that you don’t feel, reason and act in the manner of a woman. We both loved Flavius. But why another blood drinker?”

  “I don’t know except that Flavius wanted it, Flavius knew all about our secrets, there was a . . . an understanding between me and Flavius! He had been loyal in the darkest hours of my mortal life. Oh, I can’t explain it.”

  “A woman’s sentiments, exactly. And you have launched this creature into eternity.”

  “He joins our search,” I replied.

  About the middle of the century, when the city was very rich and the Empire was about as peaceful as it was ever going to be for the next two hundred years, the Christian Paul came to Antioch.

  I went to hear him speak one night and came home, saying casually that the man could convert the very stones to this faith, such was his personal power.

  “How can you spend your time on such things!” Marius demanded. “Christians. They aren’t even a cult! Some worship John, some worship Jesus. They fight amongst one another! Don’t you see what this man Paul has done?”

  “No, what?” I said. “I didn’t say I was going to join the sect. I only said I stopped to hear him. Who is hurt by that?”

  “You, your mind, your equilibrium, your common sense. It’s compromised by the foolish things in which you t
ake an interest, and frankly the principle of truth is hurt!” He had only just begun.

  “Let me tell you about this man Paul,” Marius said. “He never knew either the Baptizer John or the Galilean Jesus. The Hebrews have thrown him out of the group. Jesus and John were both Hebrews! And so Paul has now turned to everyone. Jew and Christian alike, and Roman and Greek, and said, ‘You needn’t follow the Hebrew observance. Forget the Feasts in Jerusalem. Forget Circumcision. Become a Christian.’ ”

  “Yes, that is true,” I said with a sigh.

  “It’s a very easy religion to take up,” he said. “It’s nothing. You have to believe that this man rose from the Dead. And by the way, I’ve combed the available texts which are floating all over the marketplaces. Have you?”

  “No. I’m surprised you’ve found this search worthy of your time.”

  “I don’t see anywhere in the writings of those who knew John and Jesus where these two are quoted as saying either one of them will rise from the Dead, or that all who believe in them will have life after death. Paul added all that. What an enticing promise! And you should hear your friend, Paul, on the subject of Hell! What a cruel vision—that flawed mortals could sin in this life so grievously that they would burn for all eternity.”

  “He’s not my friend. You make so much of my passing remarks. Why do you feel so strongly?”

  “I told you, I care about what is true, what is reasonable!”

  “Well, there’s something you’re missing about this group of Christians, some way in which when they come together they share a euphoric love and and they believe in great generosity—”

  “Oh, not again! And are you to tell me this is good?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He was returning to his work when I spoke.

  “You fear me,” I said to him. “You fear that I’ll be swept off my feet by somebody of belief and abandon you. No. No, that’s not right. You fear that you will be swept up. That the world will somehow entice you back into it, so that you won’t live here with me, the superior Roman observer recluse, anymore, but go back, seeking mortal comforts of companionship and proximity to others, friendship with mortals, their recognition of you as one of them when you are not one of them!”

  “Pandora, you talk gibberish.”

  “Keep your proud secrets,” I said. “But I do fear for you, that I will admit.”

  “Fear for me? And why?” he demanded.

  “Because you don’t realize everything perishes, everything is artifice! That even logic and mathematics and justice have no ultimate meaning!”

  “That’s not true,” he said.

  “Oh, yes it is. Some night will come when you will see what I saw, when I first came to Antioch, before you’d found me, before this transformation which should have swept away everything in its path.

  “You will see a darkness,” I went on, “a darkness so total that Nature never knows it anywhere on Earth at any time, in any place! Only the human soul can know it. And it goes on forever. And I pray that when you finally can no longer escape from it, when you realize it is all around you, that your logic and your reason give you some strength against it.”

  He gave me the most respectful look. But he didn’t speak. I continued:

  “Resignation will do you no good,” I said, “when such a time comes. Resignation requires will, and will requires decision, and decision requires belief, and belief requires that there is something to believe in! And all action or acceptance requires a concept of a witness! Well, there is nothing, and there are no witnesses! You don’t know that yet, but I do. I hope, when you find it out, someone can comfort you as you dress and groom those monstrous relics below the stairs! As you bring their flowers!” I was so angry. I went on:

  “Look back on me when this moment comes—if not for forgiveness, look back on me as a model. For I have seen this, and I have survived. And it matters not that I stopped to listen to Paul preach of Christ, or that I weave flowers into crowns for the Queen, or that I dance like a fool under the moon in the garden before dawn, or that I . . . that I love you. It matters not. Because there is nothing. And no one to see. No one!” I sighed. It was time to finish.

  “Go back to your history, this stack of lies that tries to link event to event with cause and effect, this preposterous faith that postulates that one thing follows from another. I tell you, it’s not so. But it is very Roman of you to think so.”

  He sat silent looking up at me. I couldn’t tell what his thoughts were or what his heart felt. Then he asked:

  “What would you have me do?” He had never looked more innocent.

  Bitterly, I laughed. Did we not speak the same language? He heard not one word I had uttered. Yet he presented me not with a reply, but only with this simple question.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll tell you what I want. Love me, Marius, love me, but leave me alone!” I cried out. I had not even thought. The words just came. “Leave me alone, so that I may seek my own comforts, my own means to remain alive, no matter how foolish or pointless these comforts appear to you. Leave me alone!”

  He was wounded, so uncomprehending, looking so innocent still.

  We had many similar arguments as the decades passed.

  Sometimes he would come to me after; he would fall into long thoughtful talks about what he felt was happening with the Empire, how the Emperors were going mad and the Senate had no power, how the very progress of man was unique in Nature and something to be watched. How he would crave life, he thought, until there was no more life.

  “Even if there is nothing left but desert waste,” he said, “I should want to be there, to see dune folding upon dune,” he went on. “If there was but one lamp left in all the world, I’d want to watch its flame. And so would you.”

  But the terms of the battle, and its heat, never really changed.

  At heart he thought I hated him for having been so unkind on the night I was given the Dark Blood. I told him this was childish. I could not convince him that my soul and my intelligence were infinitely too large for such a simple grudge, and that I owed him no explanation for my thoughts, words and deeds.

  For two hundred years, we lived and loved together. He became ever more beautiful to me.

  As more and more barbarians from the North and from the East poured into the city, he felt no necessity to dress like a Roman anymore, and frequently wore the jeweled clothes of the Easterners. His hair seemed to be growing finer, lighter. He seldom cut it, which of course he would have had to do every night had he wanted it short. It was a splendor on his shoulders.

  As his face grew ever more smooth, away went the few lines that could so easily design anger in his expression. As I’ve told you before, he greatly resembles Lestat. Only he is more compact of build, and jaw and chin had hardened just a little more with age before the Dark Gift. But the unwanted folds were receding from his eyes.

  Sometimes for nights on end, in fear of a fight, we didn’t speak. There was between us always a continuous physical affection—embraces, kisses, sometimes the mere silent lock of our hands.

  But we knew we had now lived far beyond a normal human life span.

  You need from me no detailed history of that remarkable time. It is too well known. Only let me place here a few reminders. Only let me describe for you my perspective on the changes happening all over the Empire.

  Antioch as a thriving city proved indestructible. The Emperors began to favor it and visit it. More Temples went up to the Eastern cults. And then Christians of all kinds poured into Antioch.

  Indeed, the Christians of Antioch comprised at last an immense and fascinating bunch of people arguing with each other.

  Rome went to war on the Jews, crushing Jerusalem completely and destroying the sacred Hebrew Temple. Many brilliant Jewish thinkers came to Antioch as well as Alexandria.

  Twice or perhaps even three times, Roman legions pushed past us, North of us, into Parthia; once we even had a little rebellion of our
own, but Rome always resecured the city of Antioch. So the market closed for a day! On went the trade, the great lust of the caravans for the ships, and of the ships for the caravans, and Antioch was the bed in which they must wed each other.

  There was little new poetry. Satire. Satire seemed the only safe or honest expression of the Roman mind now, and so we had the riotously funny story The Golden Ass, by Apuleius, which seemed to make fun of every religion. But there was a bitterness to the poet Martial. And those letters of Pliny which reached me were full of dire judgments on the moral chaos of Rome.

  I began as a vampire to feed exclusively on soldiers. I liked them, their look, their strength. I fed so much so on them, that in my carelessness, I became a legend amongst them, “The Greek Lady Death,” this on account of my clothes which to them appeared archaic. I struck at random in the dark streets. There wasn’t a chance of their ever surrounding me or stopping me, so great was my skill, my strength and my thirst.

  But I saw things in their rebellious deaths, the blaze of a pitched battle in a march, a hand-to-hand struggle on a steep mountain. I took them down gently into the finish, filling myself to the brim with their blood, and sometimes, through a veil it seemed, I saw the souls of those whom they themselves had slain.

  When I told Marius this, he said it was just the kind of mystical nonsense he would expect of me.

  I didn’t press the point.

  He watched with keen interest the developments of Rome. To me they seemed merely surprising.

  He pored over the histories of Dio Cassius and Plutarch and Tacitus, and pounded his fist when he heard of the endless skirmishes on the Rhine River, and the push Northward into Britannia and the building of Hadrian’s wall to forever keep away the Scots, who like the Germans would yield to no one.

  “They are not patrolling, preserving, containing an Empire any longer,” he said. “Conserving a way of life! It’s just war, and trade!”

  I couldn’t disagree.