Interview with the Vampire tvc-1 Page 27

  “ ‘You come to Paris in search of us, and then you sit alone on the stairs…’ he said, in a conciliatory tone. ‘Why don’t you come up with us? Why don’t you speak to us and talk to us of this person whose name you spoke; I know who it was, I know the name.’

  “ ‘You don’t know, you couldn’t know. It was a mortal,’ I said now, more from instinct than conviction. The thought of Lestat disturbed me, the thought that this creature should know of Lestat’s death.

  “ ‘You came here to ponder mortals, justice done to mortals?’ he asked; but there was no reproach or mockery in his tone.

  “ ‘I came to be alone, let me not offend you. It’s a fact,’ I murmured.

  “ ‘But alone in this frame of mind, when you don’t even hear my steps… I like you. I want you to come upstairs’ And as he said this, he slowly pulled me to my feet beside him.

  “At that moment the door of Armand’s cell threw a long light into the passage. I heard him coming, and Santiago let me go. I was standing there baffled. Armand appeared at the foot of the steps, with Claudia in his arms. She had that same dull expression on her face which she’d had all during my talk with Armand. It was as if she were deep in her own considerations and saw nothing around her; and I remember noting this, though not knowing what to think of it, that it persisted even now. I took her quickly from Armand, and felt her soft limbs against me as if we were both in the coffin, yielding to that paralytic sleep.

  “And then, with a powerful thrust of his arm, Armand pushed Santiago away. It seemed he fell backwards, but was up again only to have Armand pull him towards the head of the steps, all of this happening so swiftly I could only see the blur of their garments and hear the scratching of their boots. Then Armand stood alone at the head of the steps, and I went upward towards him.

  “ ‘You cannot safely leave the theater tonight,’ he whispered to me. ‘He is suspicious of you. And my having brought you here, he feels that it is his right to know you better. Our security depends on it.’ He guided me slowly into the ballroom. But then he turned to me and pressed his lips almost to my ear: ‘I must warn you. Answer no questions. Ask and you open one bud of truth for yourself after another. But give nothing, nothing, especially concerning your origin.’

  “He moved away from us now, but beckoning for us to follow into the gloom where the others were gathered, clustered like remote marble statues, their faces and hands all too like our own. I had the strong sense then of how we were all made from the same material, a thought which had only occurred to me occasionally in all the long years in New Orleans; and it disturbed me, particularly when I saw one or more of the others reflected in the long mirrors that broke the density of those awful murals.

  “Claudia seemed to awaken as I found one of the carved oak chairs and settled into it. She leaned towards me and said something strangely incoherent, which seemed to mean that I must do as Armand said: say nothing of our origin. I wanted to talk with her now, but I could see that tall vampire, Santiago, watching us, his eyes moving slowly from us to Armand. Several women vampires had gathered around Armand, and I felt a tumult of feeling as I saw them put their arms around his waist. And what appalled me as I watched was not their exquisite form, their delicate features and graceful hands made hard as glass by vampire nature, or their bewitching eyes which fixed on me now in a sudden silence; what appalled me was my own fierce jealousy. I was afraid when I saw them so close to him, afraid when he turned and kissed them each. And, as he brought them near to me now, I was unsure and confused.

  “Estelle and Celeste are the names I remember, porcelain beauties, who fondled Claudia with the license of the blind, running their hands over her radiant hair, touching even her lips, while she, her eyes still misty and distant, tolerated it all, knowing what I also knew and what they seemed unable to grasp: that a woman’s mind as sharp and distinct as their own lived within that small body. It made me wonder as I watched her turning about for them, holding out her lavender skirts and smiling coldly at their adoration, how many times I must have forgotten, spoken to her as if she were the child, fondled her too freely, brought her into my arms with an adult’s abandon. My mind went in three directions: that last night in the Hotel Saint-Gabriel, which seemed a year ago, when she talked of love with rancor; my reverberating shock at Armand’s revelations or lack of them; and a quiet absorption of the vampires around me, who whispered in the dark beneath the grotesque murals. For I could learn much from the vampires without ever asking a question, and vampire life in Paris was all that I’d feared it to be, all that the little stage in the theater above had indicated it was.

  “ ‘The dim lights of the house were mandatory, and the paintings appreciated in full, added to almost nightly when some vampire brought a new engraving or picture by a contemporary artist into the house. Celeste, with her cold hand on my arm, spoke with contempt of men as the originators of these pictures, and Estelle, who now held Claudia on her lap, emphasized to me, the naive colonial, that vampires had not made such horrors themselves but merely collected them, confirming over and over that men were capable of far greater evil than vampires.

  “ ‘There is evil in making such paintings?’ Claudia asked softly in her toneless voice.

  “Celeste threw back her black curls and laughed.

  “ ‘What can be imagined can be done,’ she answered quickly, but her eyes reflected a certain contained hostility. ‘Of course, we strive to rival men in kills of all kinds, do we not!’ She leaned forward and touched Claudia’s knee. But Claudia merely looked at her, watching her laugh nervously and continue. Santiago drew near, to bring up the subject of our rooms in the Hotel Saint-Gabriel; frightfully unsafe, he said, with an exaggerated stage gesture of the hands. And he showed a knowledge of those rooms which was amazing. He knew the chest in which we slept; it struck him as vulgar. ‘Come here!’ he said to me, with that near childlike simplicity he had evinced on the steps. ‘Live with us and such disguise is unnecessary. We have our guards. And tell me, where do you come from!’ he said, dropping to his knees, his hand on the arm of my chair. ‘Your voice, I know that accent; speak again.’

  “I was vaguely horrified at the thought of having an accent to my French, but this wasn’t my immediate concern. He was strong-willed and blatantly possessive, throwing back at me an image of that possessiveness which was flowering in me more fully every moment. And meanwhile, the vampires around us talked on, Estelle explaining that black was the color for a vampire’s clothes, that Claudia’s lovely pastel dress was beautiful but tasteless. ‘We blend with the night,’ she said. ‘We have a funereal gleam.’ And now, bending her cheek next to Claudia’s cheek, she laughed to soften her criticism; and Celeste laughed, and Santiago laughed, and the whole room seemed alive with unearthly tinkling laughter, preternatural voices echoing against the painted walls, rippling the feeble candle flames. ‘Ah, but to cover up such curls,’ said Celeste, now playing with Claudia’s golden hair. And I realized what must have been obvious: that all of them had dyed their hair black, but for Armand; and it was that, along with the black clothes, that added to the disturbing impression that we were statues from the same chisel and paint brush. I cannot emphasize too much how disturbed I was by that impression. It seemed to stir something in me deep inside, something I couldn’t fully grasp.

  “I found myself wandering away from them to one of the narrow mirrors and watching them all over my shoulder. Claudia gleamed like a jewel in their midst; so would that mortal boy who slept below. The realization was coming to me that I found them dull in some awful way: dull, dull everywhere that I looked, their sparkling vampire eyes repetitious, their wit like a dull, brass bell.

  “Only the knowledge I needed distracted me from these thoughts. ‘The vampires of eastern Europe…’

  Claudia was saying. ‘Monstrous creatures, what have they to do with us?’

  “ ‘Revenants,’ Armand answered softly over the distance that separated them, playing on faultless preternatural
ears to hear what was more muted than a whisper. The room fell silent. ‘Their blood is different, vile. They increase as we do but without skill or care. In the old days-’ Abruptly he stopped. I could see his face in the mirror. It was strangely rigid.

  “ ‘Oh, but tell us about the old days,’ said Celeste, her voice shrill, at human pitch. There was something vicious in her tone.

  “And now Santiago took up the same baiting manner. ‘Yes, tell us of the covens, and the herbs that would render us invisible.’ He smiled. ‘And the burnings at the stake!’

  “Armand fixed his eyes on Claudia. ‘Beware those monsters,’ he said, and calculatedly his eyes passed over Santiago and then Celeste. ‘Those revenants. They will attack you as if you were human.’

  “Celeste shuddered, uttering something in contempt, an aristocrat speaking of vulgar cousins who bear the same name. But I was watching Claudia because it seemed her eyes were misted again as before. She looked away from Armand suddenly.

  “The voices of the others rose again, affected party voices, as they conferred with one another on the night’s kills, describing this or that encounter without a smattering of emotion, challenges to cruelty erupting from time to time like flashes of white lightning: a tall, thin vampire being accosted in one corner for a needless romanticizing of mortal life, a lack of spirit, a refusal to do the most entertaining thing at the moment it was available to him. He was simple, shrugging, slow at words, and would fall for long periods into a stupefied silence, as if, near-choked with blood, he would as soon have gone to his coffin as remained here. And yet he remained, held by the pressure of this unnatural group who had made of immortality a conformist’s club. How would Lestat have found it? Had he been here? What had caused him to leave? No one had dictated to Lestat he was master of his small circle; but how they would have praised his inventiveness, his catlike toying with his victims. And waste… that word, that value which had been all-important to me as a fledgling vampire; was spoken of often. You ‘wasted’ the opportunity to kill this child. You ‘wasted’ the opportunity to frighten this poor woman or drive that man to madness, which only a little prestidigitation would have accomplished.

  “My head was spinning. A common mortal headache. I longed to get away from these vampires, and only the distant figure of Armand held me, despite his warnings. He seemed remote from the others now, though he nodded often enough and uttered a few words here and there so that he seemed a part of them, his hand only occasionally rising from the lion’s paw of his chair. And my heart expanded when I saw him this way, saw that no one amongst the small throng caught his glance as I caught his glance, and no one held it from time to time as I held it. Yet he remained aloof from me, his eyes alone returning to me. His warning echoed in my ears, yet I disregarded it. I longed to get away from the theater altogether and stood listlessly, garnering information at last that was useless and infinitely dull.

  “ ‘But is there no crime amongst you, no cardinal crime?’ Claudia asked. Her violet eyes seemed fixed on me, even in the mirror, as I stood with my back to her.

  “ ‘Crime! Boredom!’ cried out Estelle, and she pointed a white finger at Armand. He laughed softly with her from his distant position at the end of the room. ‘Boredom is death!’ she cried and bared her vampire fangs, so that Armand put a languid hand to his forehead in a stage gesture of fear and falling.

  “But Santiago, who was watching with his hands behind his back, intervened. ‘Crime!’ he said. ‘Yes, there is a crime. A crime for which we would hunt another vampire down until we destroyed him. Can you guess what that is?’ He glanced from Claudia to me and back again to her masklike face. ‘You should know, who are so secretive about the vampire that made you.’

  “ ‘And why is that?’ she asked, her eyes widening ever so slightly, her hands resting still in her lap.

  “A hush fell over the room, gradually then completely, all those white faces turned to face Santiago as he stood there, one foot forward, his hands clasped behind his back, towering over Claudia. His eyes gleamed as he saw he had the floor. And then he broke away and crept up behind me, putting his hand on my shoulder. ‘Can you guess what that crime is? Didn’t your vampire master tell you?’

  “And drawing me slowly around with those invading familiar hands, he tapped my heart lightly in time with its quickening pace.

  “ ‘It is the crime that means death to any vampire anywhere who commits it. It is to kill your own kind!’

  “ ‘Aaaaah!’ Claudia cried out, and lapsed into peals of laughter. She was walking across the floor now with swirling lavender silk and crisp resounding steps. Taking my hand, she said, ‘I was so afraid it was to be born like Venus out of the foam, as we were! Master vampire! Come, Louis, let’s go!’ she beckoned, as she pulled me away.

  “Armand was laughing. Santiago was still. And it was Armand who rose when we reached the door. ‘You’re welcome tomorrow night,’ he said. ‘And the night after.’

  “I don’t think I caught my breath until I’d reached the street. The rain was still falling, and all of the street seemed sodden and desolate in the rain, but beautiful. A few scattered bits of paper blowing in the wind, a gleaming carriage passing slowly with the thick, rhythmic clop of the horse. The sky was pale violet. I sped fast, with Claudia beside me leading the way, then finally frustrated with the length of my stride, riding in my arms.

  “ ‘I don’t like them,’ she said to me with a steel fury as we neared the Hotel Saint-Gabriel. Even its immense, brightly lit lobby was still in the pre-dawn hour. I spirited past the sleepy clerks, the long faces at the desk. ‘I’ve searched for them the world over, and I despise them!’ She threw off her cape and walked into the center of the room. A volley of rain hit the French windows. I found myself turning up the lights one by one and lifting the candelabrum to the gas flames as if I were Lestat or Claudia. And then, seeking the puce velvet chair I’d envisioned in that cellar, I slipped down into it, exhausted. It seemed for the moment as if the room blazed about me; as my eyes fixed on a gilt-framed painting of pastel trees and serene waters, the vampire spell was broken. They couldn’t touch us here, and yet I knew this to be a lie, a foolish lie.

  “ ‘I am in danger, danger,’ Claudia said with that smoldering wrath.

  “ ‘But how can they know what we did to him? Besides, we are in danger! Do you think for a moment I don’t acknowledge my own guilt! And if you were the only one…’ I reached out for her now as she drew near, but her fierce eyes settled on me and I let my hands drop back limp. ‘Do you think I would leave you in danger?’

  “She was smiling. For a moment I didn’t believe my eyes. ‘No, you would not, Louis. You would not. Danger holds you to me…’

  “ ‘Love holds me to you,’ I said softly.

  “ ‘Love?’ she mused. ‘What do you mean by love?’ And then, as if she could see the pain in my face, she came close and put her hands on my cheek. She was cold, unsatisfied, as I was cold and unsatisfied, teased by that mortal boy but unsatisfied.

  “ ‘That you take my love for granted always,’ I said to her. ‘That we are wed…’ But even as I said these words I felt my old conviction waver; I felt that torment I’d felt last night when she had taunted me about mortal passion. I turned away from her.

  “ ‘You would leave me for Armand if he beckoned to you…’

  “ ‘Never…’ I said to her.

  “ ‘You would leave me, and he wants you as you want him. He’s been waiting for you…’

  “ ‘Never…’ I rose now and made my way to that chest. The doors were locked, but they would not keep those vampires out. Only we could keep them out by rising as early as the light would let us. I turned to her and told her to come. And she was at my side. I wanted to bury my face in her hair, I wanted to beg her forgiveness. Because, in truth, she was right; and yet I loved her, loved her as always. And now, as I drew her in close to me, she said ‘Do you know what it was that he told me over and over without ever speaking a word; do
you know what was the kernel of the trance he put me in so my eyes could only look at him, so that he pulled me as if my heart were on a string?’

  “ ‘So you felt it…’ I whispered. ‘So it was the same.’

  “ ‘He rendered me powerless!’ she said. I saw the image of her against those books above his desk, her limp neck, her dead hands.

  “ ‘But what are you saying? That he spoke to you, that he…’

  “ ‘Without words!’ she repeated. I could see the gaslights going dim, the candle flames too solid in their stillness. The rain beat on the panes. ‘Do you know what he said… that I should die!’ she whispered. ‘That I should let you go.’

  “I shook my head, and yet in my monstrous heart I felt a surge of excitement. She spoke the truth as she believed it. There was a film in her eyes, glassy and silver. ‘He draws life out of me into himself,’ she said, her lovely lips trembling so, I couldn’t bear it. I held her tight, but the tears stood in her eyes. ‘Life out of the boy who is his slave, life out of me whom he would make his slave. He loves you. He loves you. He would have you, and he would not have me stand in the way.’

  “ ‘You don’t understand him!’ I fought it, kissing her; I wanted to shower her with kisses, her cheek, her lips.

  “ ‘No, I understand him only too well,’ she whispered to my lips, even as they kissed her. ‘It is you who don’t understand him. Love’s blinded you, your fascination with his knowledge, his power. If you knew how he drinks death you’d hate him more than you ever hated Lestat. Louis, you must never return to him. I tell you, I’m in danger!’

  “Early the next night, I left her, convinced that Armand alone among the vampires of the theater could be trusted. She let me go reluctantly, and I was troubled, deeply, by the expression in her eyes. Weakness was unknown to her, and yet I saw fear and something beaten even now as she let me go. And I hurried on my mission, waiting outside the theater until the last of the patrons had gone and the doormen were tending to the locks.