Interview with the Vampire tvc-1

by Anne Rice

  “ ‘Fire purifies…’ Claudia said. And I said, ‘No, fire merely destroys…’

  “Madeleine had gone past us and was roaming at the top of the street, a phantom in the rain, her white hands whipping the air, beckoning to us, white arcs, of white fireflies. And I remember Claudia leaving me for her. The sight of wilted, writhing yellow hair as she told me to follow. A ribbon fallen underfoot, flapping and floating in a swirl of black water. It seemed they were gone. And I bent to retrieve that ribbon. But another hand reached out for it. It was Armand who gave it to me now.

  “I was shocked to see him there, so near, the figure of Gentleman Death in a doorway, marvelously real in his black cape and silk tie, yet ethereal as the shadows in his stillness. There was the faintest glimmer of the fire in his eyes, red warming the blackness there to the richer brown.

  “And I woke suddenly as if I’d been dreaming, woke to the sense of him, to his hand enclosing mine, to his head inclined as if to let me know he wanted me to follow — awoke to my own excited experience of his presence, which consumed me as surely as it had consumed me in his cell. We were walking together now, fast, nearing the Seine, moving so swiftly and artfully through a gathering of men that they scarce saw us, that we scarce saw them. That I could keep up with him easily amazed me. He was forcing me into some acknowledgment of my powers, that the paths I’d normally chosen were human paths I no longer need follow.

  “I wanted desperately to talk to him, to stop him with both my hands on his shoulders, merely to look into his eyes again as I’d done that last night, to fix him in some time and place, so that I could deal with the excitement inside me. There was so much I wanted to tell him, so much I wanted to explain. And yet I didn’t know what to say or why I would say it, only that the fullness of the feeling continued to relieve me almost to tears. This was what I’d feared lost.

  “I didn’t knew where we were now, only that in my wanderings I’d passed here before: a street of ancient mansions, of garden walls and carriage doors and towers overhead and windows of leaded glass beneath stone arches. Houses of other centuries, gnarled trees, that sudden thick and silent tranquility which means that the masses are shut out; a handful of mortals inhabit this vast region of high-ceilinged rooms; stone absorbs the sound of breathing, the space of whole lives.

  “Armand was atop a wall now, his arm against the overhanging bough of a tree, his hand reaching for me; and in an instant I stood beside him, the wet foliage brushing any face. Above, I could see story after story rising to a lone tower that barely emerged from the dark, teeming rain. ‘Listen to me; we are going to climb to the tower,’ Armand was saying.

  “ ‘I cannot… it’s impassible…’

  “ ‘You don’t begin to know your own powers. You can climb easily. Remember, if you fall you will not be injured. Do as I do. But note this. The inhabitants of this house have known me far a hundred years and think me a spirit; so if by chance they see you, or you see them through those windows, remember what they believe you to be and show no consciousness of them lest you disappoint them or confuse them. Do you hear? You are perfectly safe.’

  “I wasn’t sure what frightened me more, the climb itself or the notion of being seen as a ghost; but I had no time for comforting witticisms, even to myself. Armand had begun, his boots finding the crack between the stones, his hands sure as claws in the crevices; and I was moving after him, tight to the wall, not daring to look down, clinging for a moment’s rest to the thick, carved arch over a window, glimpsing inside, over a licking fire, a dark shoulder, a hand stroking with a poker, some figure that moved completely without knowledge that it was watched. Gone. Higher and higher we climbed, until we had reached the window of the tower itself, which Armand quickly wrenched open, his long legs disappearing over the sill; and I rose up after him, feeling his arm out around my shoulders.

  “I sighed despite myself, as I stood in the room, rubbing the backs of my arms, looking around this wet, strange place. The rooftops were silver below, turrets rising here and there through the huge, rustling treetops; and far off glimmered the broken chain of a lighted boulevard. The room seemed as damp as the night outside. Armand was making a fire.

  “From a molding pile of furniture he was picking chairs, breaking them into wood easily despite the thickness of their rungs. There was something grotesque about him, sharpened by his grace and the imperturbable calm of his white face. He did what any vampire could do, cracking these thick pieces of wood into splinters, yet he did what only a vampire could do. And there seemed nothing human about him; even his handsome features and dark hair became the attributes of a terrible angel who shared with the rest of us only a superficial resemblance. The tailored coat was a mirage. And though I felt drawn to him, more strongly perhaps than I’d ever been drawn to any living creature save Claudia, he excited me in other ways which resembled fear. I was not surprised that, when he finished, he set a heavy oak chair down for me, but retired himself to the marble mantelpiece and sat there warming his hands over the fire, the flames throwing red shadows into his face.

  “ ‘I can hear the inhabitants of the house,’ I said to him. The warmth was good. I could feel the leather of my boots drying, feel the warmth in my fingers.

  “ ‘Then you know that I can hear them,’ he said softly; and though this didn’t contain a hint of reproach, I realized the implications of my own words.

  “ ‘And if they come?’ I insisted, studying him.

  “ ‘Can’t you tell by my manner that they won’t come?’ he asked. ‘We could sit here all night, and never speak of them. I want you to know that if we speak of them it is because you want to do so.’ And when I said nothing, and perhaps I looked a little defeated, he said gently that they had long ago sealed off this tower and left it undisturbed; and if in fact they saw the smoke from the chimney or the light in the window, none of them would venture up until tomorrow.

  “I could see now there were several shelves of books at one side of the fireplace, and a writing table. The pages on top were wilted, but there was an inkstand and several pens. I could imagine the room a very comfortable place when it was not storming, as it was now, or after the fire had dried out the air.

  “ ‘You see,’ Armand said, ‘you really have no need of the rooms you have at the hotel. You really have need of very little. But each of us must decide how much he wants. These people in this house have a name for me; encounters with me cause talk for twenty years. They are only isolated instants in my time which mean nothing. They cannot hurt me, and I use their house to be alone. No one of the Theatre des Vampires knows of my coming here. This is my secret.’

  “I had watched him intently as he was speaking, and thoughts which had occurred to me in the cell at the theater occurred to me again. Vampires do not age, and I wondered how his youthful face and manner might differ now from what he had been a century before or a century before that; for his face, though not deepened by the lessons of maturity, was certainly no mask. It seemed powerfully expressive as was his unobtrusive voice, and I was at a loss finally to fully anatomize why. I knew only I was as powerfully drawn to him as before; and to some extent the words I spoke now were a subterfuge. ‘But what holds you to the Theatre des Vampires?’ I asked.

  “ ‘A need, naturally. But I’ve found what I need,’ he said. ‘Why do you shun me?’

  “ ‘I never shunned you,’ I said, trying to hide the excitement these words produced in me. ‘You understand I have to protect Claudia, that she has no one but me. Or at least she had no one until…’

  “ ‘Until Madeleine came to live with you…’

  “ ‘Yes…’ I said.

  “ But now Claudia has released you, yet still you stay with her, and stay bound to her as your paramour,’ he said.

  “ ‘No, she’s no paramour of mine; you don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Rather, she’s my child, and I don’t know that she can release me…’ These were thoughts I’d gone over and over in my mind. ‘I don’t know if
the child possesses the power to release the parent. I don’t know that I won’t be bound to her for as long as she…’

  “I stopped. I was going to say, ‘for as long as she lives.’ But I realized it was a hollow mortal cliché. She would live forever, as I would live forever. But wasn’t it so for mortal fathers? Their daughters live forever because these fathers die first. I was at a loss suddenly; but conscious all the while of how Armand listened: that he listened in the way that we dream of others listening, his face seeming to reflect on everything said. He did not start forward to seize on my slightest pause, to assert an understanding of something before the thought was finished, or to argue with a swift, irresistible impulse — the things which often make dialogue impossible.

  “And after a long interval he said, ‘I want you. I want you more than anything in the world.’

  “For a moment I doubted what I’d heard. It struck me as unbelievable. And I was hopelessly disarmed by it, and the wordless vision of our living together expanded and obliterated every other consideration in my mind.

  “ ‘I said that I want you. I want you more than anything in the world,’ he repeated, with only a subtle change of expression. And then he sat waiting, watching. His face was as tranquil as always, his smooth, white forehead beneath the shock of his auburn hair without a trace of care, his large eyes reflecting on me, his lips still.

  “ ‘You want this of me, yet you don’t come to me,’ he said: ‘There are things you want to know, and you don’t ask. You see Claudia slipping away from you, yet you seem powerless to prevent it, and then you would hasten it, and yet you do nothing!

  “ ‘I don’t understand my own feelings. Perhaps they are clearer to you than they are to me…’

  “ ‘You don’t begin to know what a mystery you are!’ he said.

  “ ‘But at least you know yourself thoroughly. I can’t claim that,’ I said. ‘I love her, yet I am not close to her. I mean that when I am with you as I am now, I know that I know nothing of her, nothing of anyone.’

  “ ‘She’s an era for you, an era of your life. If and when you break with her, you break with the only one alive who has shared that time with you. You fear that, the isolation of it, the burden, the scope of eternal life.’

  “ ‘Yes, that’s true, but that’s only a small part of it. The era, it doesn’t mean much to me. She made it mean something. Other vampires must experience this and survive it, the passing of a hundred eras.’

  “ ‘But they don’t survive it,’ he said. ‘The world would be choked with vampires if they survived it. How do you think I come to be the eldest here or anywhere?’ he asked.

  “I thought about this. And then I ventured, ‘They die by violence?’

  “ ‘No, almost never. It isn’t necessary. How many vampires do you think have the stamina for immortality? They have the most dismal notions of immortality to begin with. For in becoming immortal they want all the forms of their life to be fixed as they are and incorruptible: carriages made in the same dependable fashion, clothing of the cut which suited their prime, men attired and speaking in the manner they have always understood and valued. When, in fact, all things change except the vampire himself; everything except the vampire is subject to constant corruption and distortion. Soon, with an inflexible mind, and often even with the most flexible mind, this immortality becomes a penitential sentence in a madhouse of figures and forms that are hopelessly unintelligible and without value. One evening a vampire rises and realizes what he has feared perhaps for decades, that he simply wants no more of life at any cost. That whatever style or fashion or shape of existence made immortality attractive to him has been swept off the face of the earth. And nothing remains to offer freedom from despair except the act of killing. And that vampire goes out to die. No one will find his remains. No one will know where he has gone. And often no one around him — should he still seek the company of other vampires — no one will know that he is in despair. He will have ceased long ago to speak of himself or of anything. He will vanish.’

  “I sat back impressed by the obvious truth of it, and yet at the same time, everything in me revolted against that prospect. I became aware of the depth of my hope and my terror; how very different those feelings were from the alienation that he described, how very different from that awful wasting despair. There was something outrageous and repulsive in that despair suddenly. I couldn’t accept it.

  “ ‘But you wouldn’t allow such a state of mind in yourself. Look at you,’ I found myself answering. ‘If there weren’t one single work of art left in this world… and there are thousands… if there weren’t a single natural beauty… if the world were reduced to one empty cell and one fragile candle, I can’t help but see you studying that candle, absorbed in the flicker of its light, the change of its colors… how long could that sustain you… what possibilities would it create? Am I wrong? Am I such a crazed idealist?’

  “ ‘No,’ he said. There was a brief smile on his lips, an evanescent flush of pleasure. But then he went on simply. ‘But you feel an obligation to a world you love because that world for you is still intact. It is conceivable your own sensitivity might become the instrument of madness. You speak of works of art and natural beauty. I wish I had the artist’s power to bring alive for you the Venice of the fifteenth century, my master’s palace there, the love I felt for him when I was a mortal boy, and the love he felt for me when he made me a vampire. Oh, if I could make those times come alive for either you or me… for only an instant! What would that be worth? And what a sadness it is to me that time doesn’t dim the memory of that period, that it becomes all the richer and more magical in light of the world I see today.’

  “ ‘Love?’ I asked. ‘There was love between you and the vampire who made you?’ I leaned forward.

  “ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A love so strong he couldn’t allow me to grow old and die. A love that waited patiently until I was strong enough to be born to darkness. Do you mean to tell me there was no bond of love between you and the vampire who made you?’

  “ ‘None,’ I said quickly. I couldn’t repress a bitter smile.

  “He studied me. ‘Why then did he give you these powers?’ he asked.

  “I sat back. ‘You see these powers as a gift!’ I said. ‘Of course you do. Forgive me, but it amazes me, how in your complexity you are so profoundly simple.’ I laughed.

  “ ‘Should I be insulted?” he smiled. And his whole manner only confirmed me in what I’d just said. He seemed so innocent. I was only beginning to understand him.

  “ ‘No, not by me,’ I said, my pulse quickening as I looked at him. ‘You’re everything I dreamed of when I became a vampire. You see these powers as a gift!’ I repeated it. ‘But tell me… do you now feel love for this vampire who gave you eternal life? Do you feel this now?’

  “He appeared to be thinking, and then he said slowly, ‘Why does this matter?’ But went on: ‘I don’t think I’ve been fortunate in feeling love for many people or many things. But yes, I love him. Perhaps I do not love him as you mean. It seems you confuse me, rather effortlessly. You are a mystery. I do not need him, this vampire, anymore.’

  “ ‘I was gifted with eternal life, with heightened perception, and with the need to kill,’ I quickly explained, ‘because the vampire who made me wanted the house I owned and my money. Do you understand such a thing?’ I asked. ‘Ah, but there is so much else behind what I say. It makes itself known to me so slowly, so incompletely! You see, it’s as if you’ve cracked a door for me, and light is streaming from that door and I’m yearning to get to it, to push it back, to enter the region you say exists beyond it! When, in fact, I don’t believe it! The vampire who made me was everything that I truly believed evil to be: he was as dismal, as literal, as barren, as inevitably eternally disappointing as I believed evil had to be! I know that now. But you, you are something totally beyond that conception! Open the door for me, push it back all the way. Tell me about this palace in Venice, this love affair wi
th damnation. I want to understand it’

  “ ‘You trick yourself. The palace means nothing to you,’ he said. ‘The doorway you see leads to me, now. To your coming to live with me as I am. I am evil with infinite gradations and without guilt.’

  “ ‘Yes, exactly,’ I murmured.

  “ ‘And this makes you unhappy,’ he said. ‘You, who came to me in my cell and said there was only one sin left, the willful taking of an innocent human life.’

  “ ‘Yes…’ I said. ‘How you must have been laughing at me…’

  “ ‘I never laughed at you,’ he said. ‘I cannot afford to laugh at you. It is through you that I can save myself from the despair which I’ve described to you as our death. It is through you that I must make my link with this nineteenth century and come to understand it in a way that will revitalize me, which I so desperately need. It is for you that I’ve been waiting at the Theatre des Vampires. If I knew a mortal of that sensitivity, that pain, that focus, I would make him a vampire in an instant. But such can rarely be done. No, I’ve had to wait and watch for you. And now I’ll fight for you. Do you see how ruthless I am in love? Is this what you meant by love?’

  “ ‘Oh, but you’d be making a terrible mistake,’ I said, looking him in the eyes. His words were only slowly sinking in. Never had I felt my all-consuming frustration to be so clear. I could not conceivably satisfy him. I could not satisfy Claudia. I’d never been able to satisfy Lestat. And my own mortal brother, Paul: how dismally, mortally I had disappointed him!

  “ ‘No. I must make contact with the age,’ he said to me calmly. ‘And I can do this through you… not to learn things from you which I can see in a moment in an art gallery or read in an hour in the thickest books… you are the spirit, you are the heart,’ he persisted.

  “ ‘No, no.’ I threw up my hands. I was on the point of a bitter, hysterical laughter. ‘Don’t you see? I’m not the spirit of any age. I’m at odds with everything and always have been! I have never belonged anywhere with anyone at any time!’ It was too painful, too perfectly true.