Interview with the Vampire by willow_wisp

I SEE…" said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the

room towards the window. For a long time he stood there against the dim light

from Divisadero Street and the passing beams of traffic. The boy could see the

furnishings of the room more clearly now, the round oak table, the chairs. A wash

basin hung on one wall with a mirror. He set his briefcase on the table and waited.

"But how much tape do you have with you?" asked the vampire, turning now so

the boy could see his profile. "Enough for the story of a life?"

"Sure, if it's a good life. Sometimes I interview as many as three or four people a

night if I'm lucky. But it has to be a good story. That's only fair, isn't it?"

"Admirably fair," the vampire answered. "I would like to tell you the story of my

life, then. I would like to do that very much."

"Great," said the boy. And quickly he removed the small tape recorder from his

briefcase, making a check of the cassette and the batteries. "I'm really anxious to

hear why you believe this, why you…"

"No," said the vampire abruptly. "We can't begin that way. Is your equipment

ready?"

"Yes," said the boy.

"Then sit down. I'm going to turn on the overhead light."

"But I thought vampires didn't like light," said the boy. "If you think the dark

adds to the atmosphere…" But then he stopped. The vampire was watching him

with his back to the window. The boy could make out nothing of his face now, and

something about the still figure there distracted him. He started to say something

again but he said nothing. And then he sighed with relief when the vampire moved

towards the table and reached for the overhead cord.

At once the room was flooded with a harsh yellow light. And the boy, staring up

at the vampire, could not repress a gasp. His fingers danced backwards on the

table to grasp the edge. "Dear God!" he whispered, and then he gazed, speechless,

at the vampire.

The vampire was utterly white and smooth, as if he were sculpted from bleached

bone, and his face was as seemingly inanimate as a statue, except for two brilliant

green eyes that looked down at the boy intently like flames in a skull. But then the

vampire smiled almost wistfully, and the smooth white substance of his face

moved with the infinitely flexible but minimal lines of a cartoon. "Do you see?" he

asked softly.

The boy shuddered, lifting his hand as if to shield himself from a powerful light.

His eyes moved slowly over the finely tailored black coat he'd only glimpsed in the

bar, the long folds of the cape, the black silk tie knotted at the throat, and the

gleam of the white collar that was as white as the vampire's flesh. He stared at the

vampire's full black hair, the waves that were combed back over the tips of the

ears, the curls that barely touched the edge of the white collar.

"Now, do you still want the interview?" the vampire asked.

The boy's mouth was open before the sound came out. He was nodding. Then he

said, "Yes."

The vampire sat down slowly opposite him and, leaning forward, said gently,

confidentially, "Don't be afraid. Just start the tape."

And then he reached out over the length of the table. The boy recoiled, sweat

running down the sides of his face. The vampire clamped a hand on the boy's

shoulder and said, "Believe me, I won't hurt you. I want this opportunity. It's more

important to me than you can realize now. I want you to begin." And he withdrew

his hand and sat collected, waiting.

It took a moment for the boy to wipe his forehead and his lips with a

handkerchief, to stammer that the microphone was in the machine, to press the

button, to say that the machine was on.

"You weren't always a vampire, were you?" he began.

"No," answered the vampire. "I was a twenty-five-year-old man when I became a

vampire, and the year was seventeen ninety-one."

The boy was startled by the preciseness of the date and he repeated it before he

asked, "How did it come about?"

"There's a simple answer to that. I don't believe I want to give simple answers,"

said the vampire. "I think I want to tell the real story…"

"Yes," the boy said quickly. He was folding his handkerchief over and over and

wiping his lips now with it again.

"There was a tragedy…" the vampire started. "It was my younger brother… He

died." And then he stopped, so that the boy cleared his throat and wiped at his

face again before stuffing the handkerchief almost impatiently into his pocket.

"It's not painful, is it?" he asked timidly.

"Does it seem so?" asked the vampire. "No." He shook his head. "It's simply that

I've only told this story to one other person. And that was so long ago. No, it's not

painful….

"We were living in Louisiana then. We'd received a land grant and settled two

indigo plantations on the Mississippi very near New Orleans…"

"Ah, that's the accent…" the boy said softly.

For a moment the vampire stared blankly. "I have an accent?" He began to

laugh.

And the boy, flustered, answered quickly. "I noticed it in the bar when I asked

you what you did for a living. It's just a slight sharpness to the consonants, that's

all. I never guessed it was French."

"It's all right," the vampire assured him. "I'm not as shocked as I pretend to be.

It's only that I forget it from time to time. But let me go on…""Please…" said the boy.

"I was talking about the plantations. They had a great deal to do with it, really,

my becoming a vampire. But I'll come to that. Our life there was both luxurious

and primitive. And we ourselves found it extremely attractive. You see, we lived far

better there than we could have ever lived in France. Perhaps the sheer wilderness

of Louisiana only made it seem so, but seeming so, it was. I remember the

imported furniture that cluttered the house." The vampire smiled. "And the

harpsichord; that was lovely. My sister used to play it. On summer evenings, she

would sit at the keys with her back to the open French windows. And I can still

remember that thin, rapid music and the vision of the swamp rising beyond her,

the moss-hung cypresses floating against the sky. And there were the sounds of

the swamp, a chorus of creatures, the cry of the birds. I think we loved it. It made

the rosewood furniture all the more precious, the music more delicate and

desirable. Even when the wisteria tore the shutters off the attic windows and

worked its tendrils right into the whitewashed brick in less than a year… Yes, we

loved it. All except my brother. I don't think I ever heard him complain of anything,

but I knew how he felt. My father was dead then, and I was head of the family and

I had to defend him constantly from my mother and sister. They wanted to take

him visiting, and to New Orleans for parties, but he hated these things. I think he

stopped going altogether before he was twelve. Prayer was what mattered to him,

prayer and his leatherbound lives of the saints.

"Finally I built him an oratory removed from the house, and he began to spend

most of every day there and often the early evening. It was ironic, really. He was so

different from us, so different from everyone, and I was so regular! There was

nothing extraordinary about me whatsoever." The vampire smiled.

"Sometimes in the evening I would go out to him and find him in the garden

near the oratory, sitting absolutely composed on a stone bench there, and I'd tell

him my troubles, the difficulties I had with the slaves, how I distrusted the

overseer or the weather or my brokers… all the problems that made up the length

and breadth of my existence. And he would listen, making only a few comments,

always sympathetic, so that when I left him I had the distinct impression he had

solved everything for me. I didn't think I could deny him anything, and I vowed

that no matter how it would break my heart to lose him, he could enter the

priesthood when the time came. Of course, I was wrong." The vampire stopped.

For a moment the boy only gazed at him and then he started as if awakened

from deep thought, and he floundered, as if he could not find the right words.

"Ah… he didn't want to be a priest?" the boy asked. The vampire studied him as if

trying to discern the meaning of his expression. Then he said:

"I meant that I was wrong about myself, about my not denying him anything."

His eyes moved over the far wall and fixed on the panes of the window. "He began

to see visions."

"Real visions?" the boy asked, but again there was hesitation, as if he were

thinking of something else.

"I didn't think so," the vampire answered. "It happened when he was fifteen. He

was very handsome then. He had the smoothest skin and the largest blue eyes. He

was robust, not thin as I am now and was then… but his eyes… it was as if when I

looked into his eyes I was standing alone on the edge of the world… on a windswept ocean beach. There was nothing but the soft roar of the waves. Well,"

he said, his eyes still fixed on the window panes, "he began to see visions. He only

hinted at this at first, and he stopped taking his meals altogether. He lived in the

oratory. At any hour of day or night, I could find him on the bare flagstones

kneeling before the altar. And the oratory itself was neglected. He stopped tending

the candles or changing the altar cloths or even sweeping out the leaves. One

night I became really alarmed when I stood in the rose arbor watching him for one

solid hour, during which he never moved from his knees and never once lowered

his arms, which he held outstretched in the form of a cross. The slaves all thought

he was mad." The vampire raised his eyebrows in wonder. "I was convinced that

he was only… overzealous. That in his love for God, he had perhaps gone too far.

Then he told me about the visions. Both St. Dominic and the Blessed Virgin Mary

had come to him in the oratory. They had told him he was to sell all our property

in Louisiana, everything we owned, and use the money to do God's work in

France. My brother was to be a great religious leader, to return the country to its

former fervor, to turn the tide against atheism and the Revolution. Of course, he

had no money of his own. I was to sell the plantations and our town houses in

New Orleans and give the money to him."

Again the vampire stopped. And the boy sat motionless regarding him,

astonished. "Ah… excuse me," he whispered. "What did you say? Did you sell the

plantations?"

"No," said the vampire, his face calm as it had been from the start. "I laughed at

him. And he… he became incensed. He insisted his command came from the

Virgin herself. Who was I to disregard it? Who indeed?" he asked softly, as if he

were thinking of this again. "Who indeed? And the more he tried to convince me,

the more I laughed. It was nonsense, I told him, the product of an immature and

even morbid mind. The oratory was a mistake, I said to him; I would have it torn

down at once. He would go to school in New Orleans and get such inane notions

out of his head. I don't remember all that I said. But I remember the feeling.

Behind all this contemptuous dismissal on my part was a smoldering anger and a

disappointment. I was bitterly disappointed. I didn't believe him at all."

"But that's understandable," said the boy quickly when the vampire paused, his

expression of astonishment softening. "I mean, would anyone have believed him?"

"Is it so understandable?" The vampire looked at the boy. "I think perhaps it

was vicious egotism. Let me explain. I loved my brother, as I told you, and at times

I believed him to be a living saint. I encouraged him in his prayer and meditations,

as I said, and I was willing to give him up to the priesthood. And if someone had

told me of a saint in Arles or Lourdes who saw visions, I would have believed it. I

was a Catholic; I believed in saints. I lit tapers before their marble statues in

churches; I knew their pictures, their symbols, their names. But I didn't, couldn't

believe my brother. Not only did I not believe he saw visions, I couldn't entertain

the notion for a moment. Now, why? Because he was my brother. Holy he might

be, peculiar most definitely; but Francis of Assisi, no. Not my brother. No brother

of mine could be such. That is egotism. Do you see?"

The boy thought about it before he answered and then he nodded and said that

yes, he thought that he did.

"Perhaps he saw the visions," said the vampire."Then you… you don't claim to know… now… whether he did or not?"

"No, but I do know that he never wavered in his conviction for a second. That I

know now and knew then the night he left my room crazed and grieved. He never

wavered for an instant. And within minutes, he was dead."

"How?" the boy asked.

"He simply walked out of the French doors onto the gallery and stood for a

moment at the head of the brick stairs. And then he fell. He was dead when I

reached the bottom, his neck broken." The vampire shook his head in

consternation, but his face was still serene.

"Did you see him fall?" asked the boy. "Did he lose his footing?"

"No, but two of the servants saw it happen. They said that he had looked up as

if he had just seen something in the air. Then his entire body moved forward as if

being swept by a wind. One of them said he was about to say something when he

fell. I thought that he was about to say something too, but it was at that moment I

turned away from the window. My back was turned when I heard the noise." He

glanced at the tape recorder. "I could not forgive myself. I felt responsible for his

death," he said. "And everyone else seemed to think I was responsible also."

"But how could they? You said they saw him fall."

"It wasn't a direct accusation. They simply knew that something had passed

between us that was unpleasant. That we had argued minutes before the fall. The

servants had heard us, my mother had heard us. My mother would not stop

asking me what had happened and why my brother, who was so quiet, had been

shouting. Then my sister joined in, and of course I refused to say. I was so bitterly

shocked and miserable that I had no patience with anyone, only the vague

determination they would not know about his visions. They would not know that

he had become, finally, not a saint, but only a… fanatic. My sister went to bed

rather than face the funeral, and my mother told everyone in the parish that

something horrible had happened in my room which I would not reveal; and even

the police questioned me, on the word of my own mother. Finally the priest came

to see me and demanded to know what had gone on. I told no one. It was only a

discussion, I said. I was not on the gallery when he fell, I protested, and they all

stared at me as if I'd killed him. And I felt that I'd killed him. I sat in the parlor

beside his coffin for two days thinking, I have killed him. I stared at his face until

spots appeared before my eyes and I nearly fainted. The back of his skull had been

shattered on the pavement, and his head had the wrong shape on the pillow. I

forced myself to stare at it, to study it simply because I could hardly endure the

pain and the smell of decay, and I was tempted over and over to try to open his

eyes. All these were mad thoughts, mad impulses. The main thought was this: I

had laughed at him; I had not believed him; I had not been kind to him. He had

fallen because of me."

"This really happened, didn't it?" the boy whispered. "You're telling me

something… that's true."

"Yes," said the vampire, looking at him without surprise. "I want to go on telling

you." But as his eyes passed over the boy and returned to the window, he showed

only faint interest in the boy, who seemed engaged in some silent inner struggle.

"But you said you didn't know about the visions, that you, a vampire… didn't

know for certain whether…""I want to take things in order," said the vampire, "I want to go on telling you

things as they happened. No, I don't know about the visions. To this day." And

again he waited until the boy said:

"Yes, please, please go on."

"Well, I wanted to sell the plantations. I never wanted to see the house or the

oratory again. I leased them finally to an agency which would work them for me

and manage things so I need never go there, and I moved my mother and sister to

one of the town houses in New Orleans. Of course, I did not escape my brother for

a moment. I could think of nothing but his body rotting in the ground. He was

buried in the St. Louis cemetery in New Orleans, and I did everything to avoid

passing those gates; but still I thought of him constantly. Drunk or sober, I saw

his body rotting in the coffin, and I couldn't bear it. Over and over I dreamed that

he was at the head of the steps and I was holding his arm, talking kindly to him,

urging him back into the bedroom, telling him gently that I did believe him, that

he must pray for me to have faith. Meantime, the slaves on Pointe du Lac (that

was my plantation) had begun to talk of seeing his ghost on the gallery, and the

overseer couldn't keep order. People in society asked my sister offensive questions

about the whole incident, and she became an hysteric. She wasn't really an

hysteric. She simply thought she ought to react that way, so she did. I drank all

the time and was at home as little as possible. I lived like a man who wanted to die

but who had no courage to do it himself. I walked black streets and alleys alone; I

passed out in cabarets. I backed out of two duels more from apathy than

cowardice and truly wished to be murdered. And then I was attacked. It might

have been anyone—and my invitation was open to sailors, thieves, maniacs,

anyone. But it was a vampire. He caught me just a few steps from my door one

night and left me for dead, or so I thought."

"You mean… he sucked your blood?" the boy asked.

"Yes," the vampire laughed. "He sucked my blood. That is the way it's done."

"But you lived," said the young man. "You said he left you for dead."

"Well, he drained me almost to the point of death, which was for him sufficient.

I was put to bed as soon as I was found, confused and really unaware of what had

happened to me. I suppose I thought that drink had finally caused a stroke. I

expected to die now and had no interest in eating or drinking or talking to the

doctor. My mother sent for the priest. I was feverish by then and I told the priest

everything, all about my brother's visions and what I had done. I remember I clung

to his arm, making him swear over and over he would tell no one. 'I know I didn't

kill him,' I said to the priest finally. 'It's that I cannot live now that he's dead. Not

after the way I treated him.'

"'That's ridiculous,' he answered me. 'Of course you can live. There's nothing

wrong with you but self-indulgence. Your mother needs you, not to mention your

sister. And as for this brother of yours, he was possessed of the devil.' I was so

stunned when he said this I couldn't protest. The devil made the visions, he went

on to explain. The devil was rampant. The entire country of France was under the

influence of the devil, and the Revolution had been his greatest triumph. Nothing

would have saved my brother but exorcism, prayer, and fasting, men to hold him

down while the devil raged in his body and tried to throw him about. 'The devil

threw him down the steps; it's perfectly obvious,' he declared. 'You weren't talking to your brother in that room, you were talking to the devil.' Well, this enraged me.

I believed before that I had been pushed to my limits, but I had not. He went on

talking about the devil, about voodoo amongst the slaves and cases of possession

in other parts of the world. And I went wild. I wrecked the room in the process of

nearly killing him."

"But your strength… the vampire…?" asked the boy.

"I was out of my mind," the vampire explained. "I did things I could not have

done in perfect health. The scene is confused, pale, fantastical now. But I do

remember that I drove him out of the back doors of the house, across the

courtyard, and against the brick wall of the kitchen, where I pounded his head

until I nearly killed him. When I was subdued finally, and exhausted then almost

to the point of death, they bled me. The fools. But I was going to say something

else. It was then that I conceived of my own egotism. Perhaps I'd seen it reflected

in the priest. His contemptuous attitude towards my brother reflected my own; his

immediate and shallow carping about the devil; his refusal to even entertain the

idea that sanctity had passed so close."

"But he did believe in possession by the devil."

"That is a much more mundane idea," said the vampire immediately. "People

who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don't

know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is

eternally difficult. But you must understand, possession is really another way of

saying someone is mad. I felt it was, for the priest. I'm sure he'd seen madness.

Perhaps he had stood right over raving madness and pronounced it possession.

You don't have to see Satan when he is exorcised. But to stand in the presence of

a saint…To believe that the saint has seen a vision. No, it's egotism, our refusal to

believe it could occur in our midst."

"I never thought of it in that way," said the boy. "But what happened to you?

You said they bled you to cure you, and that must have nearly killed you."

The vampire laughed. "Yes. It certainly did. But the vampire came back that

night. You see, he wanted Pointe du Lac, my plantation.

"It was very late, after my sister had fallen asleep. I can remember it as if it were

yesterday. He came in from the courtyard, opening the French doors without a

sound, a tall fair-skinned man with a mass of blond hair and a graceful, almost

feline quality to his movements. And gently, he draped a shawl over my sister's

eyes and lowered the wick of the lamp. She dozed there beside the basin and the

cloth with which she'd bathed my forehead, and she never once stirred under that

shawl until morning. But by that time I was greatly changed."

"What was this change?" asked the boy.

The vampire sighed. He leaned back against the chair and looked at the walls.

"At first I thought he was another doctor, or someone summoned by the family to

try to reason with me. But this suspicion was removed at once. He stepped close

to my bed and leaned down so that his face was in the lamplight, and I saw that

he was no ordinary man at all. His gray eyes burned with an incandescence, and

the long white hands which hung by his sides were not those of a human being. I

think I knew everything in that instant, and all that he told me was only

aftermath. What I mean is, the moment I saw him, saw his extraordinary aura and

knew him to be no creature I'd ever known, I was reduced to nothing. That ego which could not accept the presence of an extraordinary human being in its midst

was crushed. All my conceptions, even my guilt and wish to die, seemed utterly

unimportant. I completely forgot myself!" he said, now silently touching his breast

with his fist. "I forgot myself totally. And in the same instant knew totally the

meaning of possibility. From then on I experienced only increasing wonder. As he

talked to me and told me of what I might become, of what his life had been and

stood to be, my past shrank to embers. I saw my life as if I stood apart from it, the

vanity, the self-serving, the constant fleeing from one petty annoyance after

another, the lip service to God and the Virgin and a host of saints whose names

filled my prayer books, none of whom made the slightest difference in a narrow,

materialistic, and selfish existence. I saw my real gods… the gods of most men.

Food, drink, and security in conformity. Cinders."

The boy's face was tense with a mixture of confusion and amazement. "And so

you decided to become a vampire?" he asked. The vampire was silent for a

moment.

"Decided. It doesn't seem the right word. Yet I cannot say it was inevitable from

the moment that he stepped into that room. No, indeed, it was not inevitable. Yet I

can't say I decided. Let me say that when he'd finished speaking, no other decision

was possible for me, and I pursued my course without a backward glance. Except

for one."

"Except for one? What?"

"My last sunrise," said the vampire. "That morning, I was not yet a vampire. And

I saw my last sunrise.

"I remember it completely; yet I do not think I remember any other sunrise

before it. I remember the light came first to the tops of the French windows, a

paling behind the lace curtains, and then a gleam growing brighter and brighter in

patches among the leaves of the trees. Finally the sun came through the windows

themselves and the lace lay in shadows on the stone floor, and all over the form of

my sister, who was still sleeping, shadows of lace on the shawl over her shoulders

and head. As soon as she was warm, she pushed the shawl away without

awakening, and then the sun shone full on her eyes and she tightened her eyelids.

Then it was gleaming on the table where she rested her head on her arms, and

gleaming, blazing, in the water in the pitcher. And I could feel it on my hands on

the counterpane and then on my face. I lay in the bed thinking about all the

things the vampire had told me, and then it was that I said good-bye to the

sunrise and went out to become a vampire. It was… the last sunrise."

The vampire was looking out the window again. And when he stopped, the

silence was so sudden the boy seemed to hear it. Then he could hear the noises

from the street. The sound of a truck was deafening. The light cord stirred with the

vibration. Then the truck was gone.

"Do you miss it?" he asked then in a small voice.

"Not really," said the vampire. "There are so many other things. But where were

we? You want to know how it happened, how I became a vampire."

"Yes," said the boy. "How did you change, exactly?"

"I can't tell you exactly," said the vampire. "I can tell you about it, enclose it

with words that will make the value of it to me evident to you. But I can't tell you exactly, any more than I could tell you exactly what is the experience of sex if you

have never had it."

The young man seemed struck suddenly with still another question, but before

he could speak the vampire went on. "As I told you, this vampire Lestat wanted

the plantation. A mundane reason, surely, for granting me a life which will last

until the end of the world; but he was not a very discriminating person. He didn't

consider the world's small population of vampires as being a select club, I should

say. He had human problems, a blind father who did not know his son was a

vampire and must not find out. Living in New Orleans had become too difficult for

him, considering his needs and the necessity to care for his father, and he wanted

Pointe du Lac.

"We went at once to the plantation the next evening, ensconced the blind father

in the master bedroom, and I proceeded to make the change. I cannot say that it

consisted in any one step really—though one, of course, was the step beyond

which I could make no return. But there were several acts involved, and the first

was the death of the overseer. Lestat took him in his sleep. I was to watch and to

approve; that is, to witness the taking of a human life as proof of my commitment

and part of my change. This proved without doubt the most difficult part for me.

I've told you I had no fear regarding my own death, only a squeamishness about

taking my life myself. But I had a most high regard for the life of others, and a

horror of death most recently developed because of my brother. I had to watch the

overseer awake with a start, try to throw off Lestat with both hands, fail, then lie

there struggling under Lestat's grasp, and finally go limp, drained of blood. And

die. He did not die at once. We stood in his narrow bedroom for the better part of

an hour watching him die. Part of my change, as I said. Lestat would never have

stayed otherwise. Then it was necessary to get rid of the overseer's body. I was

almost sick from this. Weak and feverish already, I had little reserve; and handling

the dead body with such a purpose caused me nausea. Lestat was laughing,

telling me callously that I would feel so different once I was a vampire that I would

laugh, too. He was wrong about that. I never laugh at death, no matter how often

and regularly I am the cause of it.

"But let me take things in order. We had to drive up the river road until we

came to open fields and leave the overseer there. We tore his coat, stole his money,

and saw to it his lips were stained with liquor. I knew his wife, who lived in New

Orleans, and knew the state of desperation she would suffer when the body was

discovered. But more than sorrow for her, I felt pain that she would never know

what had happened, that her husband had not been found drunk on the road by

robbers. As we beat the body, bruising the face and the shoulders, I became more

and more aroused. Of course, you must realize that all this time the vampire

Lestat was extraordinary. He was no more human to me than a biblical angel. But

under this pressure, my enchantment with him was strained. I had seen my

becoming a vampire in two lights: The first light was simply enchantment; Lestat

had overwhelmed me on my deathbed. But the other light was my wish for self destruction. My desire to be thoroughly damned. This was the open door through

which Lestat had come on both the first and second occasion. Now I was not

destroying myself but someone else. The overseer, his wife, his family. I recoiled

and might have fled from Lestat, my sanity thoroughly shattered, had not he sensed with an infallible instinct what was happening. Infallible instinct…" The

vampire mused. "Let me say the powerful instinct of a vampire to whom even the

slightest change in a human's facial expression is as apparent as a gesture. Lestat

had preternatural timing. He rushed me into the carriage and whipped the horses

home. 'I want to die,' I began to murmur. 'This is unbearable. I want to die. You

have it in your power to kill me. Let me die.' I refused to look at him, to be

spellbound by the sheer beauty of his appearance. He spoke my name to me softly,

laughing. As I said, he was determined to have the plantation."

"But would he have let you go?" asked the boy. "Under any circumstances?"

"I don't know. Knowing Lestat as I do now, I would say he would have killed me

rather than let me go. But this was what I wanted, you see. It didn't matter. No,

this was what I thought I wanted. As soon as we reached the house, I jumped

down out of the carriage and walked, a zombie, to the brick stairs where my

brother had fallen. The house had been unoccupied for months now, the overseer

having his own cottage, and the Louisiana heat and damp were already picking

apart the steps. Every crevice was sprouting grass and even small wildflowers. I

remember feeling the moisture which in the night was cool as I sat down on the

lower steps and even rested my head against the brick and felt the little waxstemmed wildflowers with my hands. I pulled a clump of them out of the easy dirt

in one hand. 'I want to die; kill me. Kill me,' I said to the vampire. 'Now I am guilty

of murder. I can't live.' He sneered with the impatience of people listening to the

obvious lies of others. And then in a flash he fastened on me just as he had on my

man. I thrashed against him wildly. I dug my boot into his chest and kicked him

as fiercely as I could, his teeth stinging my throat, the fever pounding in my

temples. And with a movement of his entire body, much too fast for me to see, he

was suddenly standing disdainfully at the foot of the steps. 'I thought you wanted

to die, Louis,' he said."

The boy made a soft, abrupt sound when the vampire said his name, which the

vampire acknowledged with the quick statement, "Yes, that is my name," and went

on.

"Well, I lay there helpless in the face of my own cowardice and fatuousness

again," he said. "Perhaps so directly confronted with it, I might in time have gained

the courage to truly take my life, not to whine and beg for others to take it. I saw

myself turning on a knife then, languishing in a day-to-day suffering which I

found as necessary as penance from the confessional, truly hoping death would

find me unawares and render me fit for eternal pardon. And also I saw myself as if

in a vision standing at the head of the stairs, just where my brother had stood,

and then hurtling my body down on the bricks.

"But there was no time for courage. Or shall I say, there was no time in Lestat's

plan for anything but his plan. 'Now listen to me, Louis,' he said, and he lay down

beside me now on the steps, his movement so graceful and so personal that at

once it made me think of a lover. I recoiled. But he put his right arm around me

and pulled me close to his chest. Never had I been this close to him before, and in

the dim light I could see the magnificent radiance of his eye and the unnatural

mask of his skin. As I tried to move, he pressed his right fingers against my lips

and said, 'Be still. I am going to drain you now to the very threshold of death, and

I want you to be quiet, so quiet that you can almost hear the flow of blood through your veins, so quiet that you can hear the flow of that same blood through mine. It

is your consciousness, your will, which must keep you alive.' I wanted to struggle,

but he pressed so hard with his fingers that he held my entire prone body in

check; and as soon as I stopped my abortive attempt at rebellion, he sank his

teeth into my neck."

The boy's eyes grew huge. He had drawn farther and farther back in his chair as

the vampire spoke, and now his face was tense, his eyes narrow, as if he were

preparing to weather a blow.

"Have you ever lost a great amount of blood?" asked the vampire. "Do you know

the feeling?"

The boy's lips shaped the word no, but no sound came out. He cleared his

throat. "No," he said.

"Candles burned in the upstairs parlor, where we had planned the death of the

overseer. An oil lantern swayed in the breeze on the gallery. All of this light

coalesced and began to shimmer, as though a golden presence hovered above me,

suspended in the stairwell, softly entangled with the railings, curling and

contracting like smoke. 'Listen, keep your eyes wide,' Lestat whispered to me, his

lips moving against my neck. I remember that the movement of his lips raised the

hair all over my body, sent a shock of sensation through my body that was not

unlike the pleasure of passion…"

He mused, his right fingers slightly curled beneath his chin, the first finger

appearing to lightly stroke it. "The result was that within minutes I was weak to

paralysis. Panic-stricken, I discovered I could not even will myself to speak. Lestat

still held me, of course, and his arm was like the weight of an iron bar. I felt his

teeth withdraw with such a keenness that the two puncture wounds seemed

enormous, lined with pain. And now he bent over my helpless head and, taking his

right hand off me, bit his own wrist. The blood flowed down upon my shirt and

coat, and he watched it with a narrow, gleaming eye. It seemed an eternity that he

watched it, and that shimmer of light now hung behind his head like the backdrop

of an apparition. I think that I knew what he meant to do even before he did it,

and I was waiting in my helplessness as if I'd been waiting for years. He pressed

his bleeding wrist to my mouth, said firmly, a little impatiently, 'Louis, drink.' And

I did. 'Steady, Louis,' and 'Hurry,' he whispered to me a number of times. I drank,

sucking the blood out of the holes, experiencing for the first time since infancy the

special pleasure of sucking nourishment, the body focused with the mind upon

one vital source. Then something happened." The vampire sat back, a slight frown

on his face.

"How pathetic it is to describe these things which can't truly be described," he

said, his voice low almost to a whisper. The boy sat as if frozen.

"I saw nothing but that light then as I drew blood. And then this next thing, this

next thing was… sound. A dull roar at first and then a pounding like the pounding

of a drum, growing louder and louder, as if some enormous creature were coming

up on one slowly through a dark and alien forest, pounding as he came, a huge

drum. And then there came the pounding of another drum, as if another giant

were coming yards behind him, and each giant, intent on his own drum, gave no

notice to the rhythm of the other. The sound grew louder and louder until it

seemed to fill not just my hearing but all my senses, to be throbbing in my lips and fingers, in the flesh of my temples, in my veins. Above all, in my veins, drum

and then the other drum; and then Lestat pulled his wrist free suddenly, and I

opened my eyes and checked myself in a moment of reaching for his wrist,

grabbing it, forcing it back to my mouth at all costs; I checked myself because I

realized that the drum was my heart, and the second drum had been his." The

vampire sighed. "Do you understand?"

The boy began to speak, and then he shook his head. "No… I mean, I do," he

said. "I mean, I…"

"Of course," said the vampire, looking away.

"Wait, wait!" said the boy in a welter of excitement. "The tape is almost gone. I

have to turn it over." The vampire watched patiently as he changed it.

"What happened then?" the boy asked. His face was moist, and he wiped it

hurriedly with his handkerchief.

"I saw as a vampire," said the vampire, his voice now slightly detached. It

seemed almost distracted. Then he drew himself up. "Lestat was standing again at

the foot of the stairs, and I saw him as I could not possibly have seen him before.

He had seemed white to me before, starkly white, so that in the night he was

almost luminous; and now I saw him filled with his own life and own blood: he

was radiant, not luminous. And then I saw that not only Lestat had changed, but

all things had changed.

"It was as if I had only just been able to see colors and shapes for the first time.

I was so enthralled with the buttons on Lestat's black coat that I looked at nothing

else for a long time. Then Lestat began to laugh, and I heard his laughter as I had

never heard anything before. His heart I still heard like the beating of a drum, and

now came this metallic laughter. It was confusing, each sound running into the

next sound, like the mingling reverberations of bells, until I learned to separate

the sounds, and then they overlapped, each soft but distinct, increasing but

discrete, peals of laughter." The vampire smiled with delight. "Peals of bells.

"'Stop looking at my buttons,' Lestat said. 'Go out there into the trees. Rid

yourself of all the human waste in your body, and don't fall so madly in love with

the night that you lose your way!'

"That, of course, was a wise command. When I saw the moon on the flagstones,

I became so enamored with it that I must have spent an hour there. I passed my

brother's oratory without so much as a thought of him, and standing among the

cottonwood and oaks, I heard the night as if it were a chorus of whispering

women, all beckoning me to their breasts. As for my body, it was not yet totally

converted, and as soon as I became the least accustomed to the sounds and

sights, it began to ache. All my human fluids were being forced out of me. I was

dying as a human, yet completely alive as a vampire; and with my awakened

senses, I had to preside over the death of my body with a certain discomfort and

then, finally, fear. I ran back up the steps to the parlor, where Lestat was already

at work on the plantation papers, going over the expenses and profits for the last

year. 'You're a rich man,' he said to me when I came in. 'Something's happening to

me,' I shouted.

"'You're dying, that's all; don't be a fool. Don't you have any oil lamps? All this

money and you can't afford whale oil except for that lantern. Bring me that

lantern.'

"'Dying!' I shouted. 'Dying!'

"'It happens to everyone,' he persisted, refusing to help me. As I look back on

this, I still despise him for it. Not because I was afraid, but because he might have

drawn my attention to these changes with reverence. He might have calmed me

and told me I might watch my death with the same fascination with which I had

watched and felt the night. But he didn't. Lestat was never the vampire I am. Not

at all." The vampire did not say this boastfully. He said it as if he would truly have

had it otherwise.

"Alors," he sighed. "I was dying fast, which meant that my capacity for fear was

diminishing as rapidly. I simply regret I was not more attentive to the process.

Lestat was being a perfect idiot. 'Oh, for the love of hell!' he began shouting. 'Do

you realize I've made no provision for you? What a fool I am.' I was tempted to say,

'Yes, you are,' but I didn't. 'You'll have to bed down with me this morning. I haven't

prepared you a coffin.'"

The vampire laughed. "The coffin struck such a chord of terror in me I think it

absorbed all the capacity for terror I had left. Then came only my mild alarm at

having to share a coffin with Lestat. He was in his father's bedroom meantime,

telling the old man good-bye, that he would return in the morning. 'But where do

you go, why must you live by such a schedule!' the old man demanded, and Lestat

became impatient. Before this, he'd been gracious to the old man, almost to the

point of sickening one, but now he became a bully. 'I take care of you, don't I? I've

put a better roof over your head than you ever put over mine! If I want to sleep all

day and drink all night, I'll do it, damn you!' The old man started to whine. Only

my peculiar state of emotions and most unusual feeling of exhaustion kept me

from disapproving. I was watching the scene through the open door, enthralled

with the colors of the counterpane and the positive riot of color in the old man's

face. His blue veins pulsed beneath his pink and grayish flesh. I found even the

yellow of his teeth appealing to me, and I became almost hypnotized by the

quivering of his lip. 'Such a son, such a son,' he said, never suspecting, of course,

the true nature of his son. 'All right, then, go. I know you keep a woman

somewhere; you go to see her as soon as her husband leaves in the morning. Give

me my rosary. What's happened to my rosary?' Lestat said something

blasphemous and gave him the rosary…"

"But…" the boy started.

"Yes?" said the vampire. "I'm afraid I don't allow you to ask enough questions."

"I was going to ask, rosaries have crosses on them, don't they?"

"Oh, the rumor about crosses!" the vampire laughed. "You refer to our being

afraid of crosses?"

"Unable to look on them, I thought," said the boy.

"Nonsense, my friend, sheer nonsense. I can look on anything I like. And I

rather like looking on crucifixes in particular."

"And what about the rumor about keyholes? That you can… become steam and

go through them."

"I wish I could," laughed the vampire. "How positively delightful. I should like to

pass through all manner of different keyholes and feel the tickle of their peculiar

shapes. No." He shook his head. "That is, how would you say today… bullshit?"

The boy laughed despite himself. Then his face grew serious. "You mustn't be so shy with me," the vampire said. "What is it?"

"The story about stakes through the heart," said the boy, his cheeks coloring

slightly.

"The same," said the vampire. "Bull-shit," he said, carefully articulating both

syllables, so that the boy smiled. "No magical power whatsoever. Why don't you

smoke one of your cigarettes? I see you have them in your shirt pocket."

"Oh, thank you," the boy said, as if it were a marvellous suggestion. But once he

had the cigarette to his lips, his hands were trembling so badly that he mangled

the first fragile book match.

"Allow me," said the vampire. And, taking the book, he quickly put a lighted

match to the boy's cigarette. The boy inhaled, his eyes on the vampire's fingers.

Now the vampire withdrew across the table with a soft rustling of garments.

"There's an ashtray on the basin," he said, and the boy moved nervously to get it.

He stared at the few butts in it for a moment, and then, seeing the small waste

basket beneath, he emptied the ashtray and quickly set it on the table. His fingers

left damp marks on the cigarette when he put it down. "Is this your room?" he

asked.

"No," answered the vampire. "Just a room."

"What happened then?" the boy asked. The vampire appeared to be watching

the smoke gather beneath the overhead bulb.

"Ah… we went back to New Orleans posthaste," he said. "Lestat had his coffin in

a miserable room near the ramparts."

"And you did get into the coffin?"

"I had no choice. I begged Lestat to let me stay in the closet, but he laughed,

astonished. 'Don't you know what you are?' he asked. 'But is it magical? Must it

have this shape?' I pleaded. Only to hear him laugh again. I couldn't bear the idea;

but as we argued, I realized I had no real fear. It was a strange realization. All my

life I'd feared closed places. Born and bred in French houses with lofty ceilings and

floor-length windows, I had a dread of being enclosed. I felt uncomfortable even in

the confessional in church. It was a normal enough fear. And now I realized as I

protested to Lestat, I did not actually feel this anymore. I was simply remembering

it. Hanging on to it from habit, from a deficiency of ability to recognize my present

and exhilarating freedom. 'You're carrying on badly,' Lestat said finally. 'And it's

almost dawn. I should let you die. You will die, you know. The sun will destroy the

blood I've given you, in every tissue, every vein. But you shouldn't be feeling this

fear at all. I think you're like a man who loses an arm or a leg and keeps insisting

that he can feel pain where the arm or leg used to be.' Well, that was positively the

most intelligent and useful thing Lestat ever said in my presence, and it brought

me around at once. 'Now, I'm getting into the coffin,' he finally said to me in his

most disdainful tone, 'and you will get in on top of me if you know what's good for

you.' And I did. I lay face-down on him, utterly confused by my absence of dread

and filled with a distaste for being so close to him, handsome and intriguing

though he was. And he shut the lid. Then I asked him if I was completely dead. My

body was tingling and itching all over. 'No, you're not then,' he said. 'When you

are, you'll only hear and see it changing and feel nothing. You should be dead by

tonight. Go to sleep.'"

"Was he right? Were you… dead when you woke?""You mustn't be so shy with me," the vampire said. "What is it?"