“ ‘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.
“But his face only brightened with an irresistible smile. He seemed on the verge of laughing at me, and then his shoulders began to move with this laughter. ‘But Louis,’ he said softly. ‘This is the very spirit of your age. Don’t you see that? Everyone else feels as you feel. Your fall from grace and faith has been the fall of a century.’
“I was so stunned by this, that for a long time I sat there staring into the fire. It had all but consumed the wood and was a wasteland of smoldering ash, a gray and red landscape that would have collapsed at the touch of the poker. Yet it was very warm, and still gave off powerful light. I saw my life in complete perspective.
“ ‘And the vampires of the Theatre…’ I asked softly.
“ ‘They reflect the age in cynicism which cannot comprehend the death of possibilities, fatuous sophisticated indulgence in the parody of the miraculous, decadence whose last refuge is self-ridicule, a mannered helplessness. You saw them; you’ve known them all your life. You reflect your age differently. You reflect its broken heart.’
“ ‘This is unhappiness. Unhappiness you don’t begin to understand.’
“ ‘I don’t doubt it. Tell me what you feel now, what makes you unhappy. Tell me why for a period of seven days you haven’t come to me, though you were burning to come. Tell me what holds you still to Claudia and the other woman.’
“I shook my head. ‘You don’t know what you ask. You see, it was immensely difficult for me to perform the act of making Madeleine into a vampire. I broke a promise to myself that I would never do this, that my own loneliness would never drive me to do it. I don’t see our life as powers and gifts. I see it as a curse. I haven’t the courage to die. But to make another vampire! To bring this suffering on another, and to condemn to death all those men and women whom that vampire must subsequently kill! I broke a grave promise. And in so doing…’
“ ‘But if it’s any consolation to you… surely you realize I had a hand in it.’
“ ‘That I did it to be free of Claudia, to be free to come to you… yes, I realize that. But the ultimate responsibility lies with me!’ I said.
“ ‘No. I mean, directly. I made you do it! I was near you the night you did it. I exerted my strongest power to persuade you to do it. Didn’t you know this?’
“ ‘No.’ I bowed my head.
“ ‘I would have made this woman a vampire,’ he said softly. ‘But I thought it best you have a hand in it. Otherwise you would not give Claudia up. You must know you wanted it…’