"And you think I might be the answer."
"Possibly," she said, turning and looking at me again. "That is not to say that all of this is happening because of Dora and what Dora wants. It is, after all, happening to you. But I have asked for a vision, and I've been given a series of miraculous incidents, and yes, I believe you, as surely as I believe in the existence of and the goodness of God."
She came towards me, stepping carefully through the scattered folders.
"You know, none of us can say why God allows evil."
"Yes."
"Or whence it came into the world. But the world over, there are millions of us—People of the Book—Moslem, Jew, Catholic, Protestant—descendants of Abraham—and over and over we keep being drawn into tales and schemes in which evil is present, in which there is a Devil, in which there is some element that God allows, some adversary, to use your friend's word."
"Yes. Adversary. That's exactly what he said."
"I trust in God," she said.
"And you're saying I should do that too?"
"res.
''You do the same. If you go with this creature, and you need me, call to me. Let me say it this way: If you cannot pull away of your own volition and you need my intercession, then send out your call! I'll hear you. And I'll cry out to the heavens for you. Not for justice but for mercy. Will you make me that promise?"
"Of course."
"What will you do now?" she asked.
"Spend the remaining hours with you, taking care of your affairs. Making sure, through my numerous mortal alliances, that nothing can hurt you in terms of all these possessions."
"My father's done it," she said. "Believe me. He's covered it very cleverly."
"Are you sure?"
"He did it with his usual brilliance. He left more money to fall into the hands of his enemies than the fortune he left to me. They have no need to go looking for anyone. Once they realize he is dead, they will begin to snatch his available assets right and left."
"You are certain of all this."
"Without question. Put your affairs in order tonight. You don't need to worry about mine. Take care of yourself, that you are ready to embark on this."
I watched her for a long time. I was still seated at the table. She stood with her back to the glass. It struck me that she had been drawn against it in black ink except for her white face.
"Is there a God, Dora?" I whispered. I had spoken these same words so many times! I had asked this question of Gretchen when I was flesh and blood in her arms.
"Yes, there is a God, Lestat," Dora answered. "Be assured of it.
Maybe you've been praying to Him so loud and so long that finally He has paid attention. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't the disposition of God, not to hear us when we cry, to deliberately shut His ears!"
"Shall I leave you here or take you home?"
"Leave me. I don't ever want to make a journey like that again. I will spend a good part of the rest of my life trying to remember it precisely and failing to do so. I want to stay here in New York with my father's things. With regard to the money? Your mission has been accomplished."
"And you accept the relics, the fortune."
"Yes, of course, I accept them. I'll keep Roger's precious books until such time as they can be properly offered for others to see—his beloved heretical Wynken de Wilde."
"Do you require anything further of me?" I asked.
"Do you think ... do you think you love God?"
"Absolutely not."
"Why do you say that?"
"How could I?" I asked. "How could anyone love Him? What did you just tell me yourself about the world? Don't you see, everybody hates God now. It's not that God is dead in the twentieth century. It's that everybody hates Him! At least I think so. Maybe that's what Memnoch is trying to say."
She was amazed. She frowned with disappointment and yearning.
She wanted to say something. She gestured, as though trying to take invisible flowers from the air to show me their beauty, who knows?
"No, I hate Him," I said.
She made the Sign of the Cross and put her hands together.
"Are you praying for me?"
"Yes," she said. "If I never lay eyes on you again after tonight, if I never come across a single shred of evidence that you really exist or were here with me, or that any of these things were said, I'll still be transformed by you as I am now. You are my miracle of sorts. You're greater proof than millions of mortals have ever been given. You're proof not only of the supernatural and the mysterious and the wondrous, you're proof of exactly what I believed!"
"I see." I smiled. It was all so logical and symmetrical. And true. I smiled, truly smiled, and shook my head. "I hate to leave you," I said.
"Go," she said, and then she clenched her fists. "Ask God what He wants of us!" she said furiously. "You're right. We hate Him!"
The anger blazed in her eyes, and then subsided, and she stared at me, her eyes looking larger and brighter because they were wet now with salt and tears.
"Good-bye, my darling," I said. This was so extraordinary and painful.
I went out into the heavy, drifting snow.
The doors of the great cathedral of St. Patrick's were closed and bolted, and I stood at the foot of the stone steps looking up at the high Olympic Tower, wondering if Dora could see me as I stood here, freezing in the cold, and letting the snow strike my face, softly, persistently, harmfully, and with beauty.
"All right, Memnoch," I said aloud. "No need to wait any longer. Come now, please, if you will."
Immediately I heard the footsteps!
It was as though they were echoing in the monstrous hollow of Fifth Avenue, among the hideous Towers of Babel, and I had cast my lot with the whirlwind.
I turned round and round. There was not a mortal in sight!
"Memnoch the Devil!" I shouted. "I'm ready!"
I was perishing with fear.
"Prove your point to me, Memnoch. You have to do that!" I called*.
The steps were getting louder. Oh, he was up to his finest tricks.
"Remember, you have to make me see it from your point of view! That's what you promised!"
A wind was collecting, but from where I couldn't tell. All of the great metropolis seemed empty, frozen, my tomb. The snow swirled and thickened before the cathedral. The towers faded.
I heard his voice right beside me, bodiless and intimate. "All right, my beloved one," he said. "We'll begin now."
10
WE WERE in the whirlwind and the whirlwind was a tunnel, but between us there fell a silence in which I could hear my own breath. Memnoch was so close to me, his arm locked around me, that I could see his dark face in profile, and feel the mane of his hair against the side of my own face.
He was not the Ordinary Man now, but indeed the granite angel, the wings rising out of my focus, and folded around us, against the force of the wind.
As we rose, steadily, without the slightest reference to any sort of gravity, two things became apparent to me at once. The first was that we were surrounded by thousands upon thousands of individual souls. I say souls! What did I see? I saw shapes in the whirlwind, some completely anthropomorphic, others merely faces, but surrounding me, everywhere, were distinct spiritual entities or individuals, and very faintly I heard their voices—whispers, cries, and howls—mingling with the wind.
The sound couldn't hurt me now, as it had in the prior apparitions, nevertheless I heard this throng as we shot upwards, turning as if on an axis, the tunnel narrowing suddenly so that the souls seemed to touch us, and then widening, only to narrow again.
The second thing which I instantly realized was that the darkness was fading or being drained utterly from Memnoch's form. His profile was bright and even translucent; so were his shapeless unimportant garments. And the goat legs of the dark Devil were now the legs of a large man. In sum, the entire turbid and smokelike presence had been replaced by something crystalline and reflective, but which felt pliant and warm and alive.