"You should have stayed there."
"Oh, no!" he said, taking another quick sip of the Scotch. "Well, to continue. I developed a passion, shall we say, for this boy, CarJos, the very first week. I was absolutely swept away; all we did was drink and make love for days and nights on end in my suite in the Palace Hotel. Quite truly obscene."
"Your friends waited?"
"No, laid down the law. Come with us now, or we leave you. But it was perfectly fine with them if Carlos came along." He made a little gesture with his right hand. "Ah, these were all sophisticated gentlemen, of course."
"Of course."
"But the decision to take Carlos proved to be a dreadful mistake. His mother was a Candomble priestess, though I hadn't the slightest idea of it, She didn't want her boy going off into the Amazon jungles. She wanted him going to school. She sent the spirits after me."
He paused, looking at me, perhaps trying to gauge my reaction.
"That must have been wonderful fun," I said.
"They pummeled me in the darkness. They picked up the bed off the floor and dumped me out! They turned the taps in the shower so that I was nearly scalded. They filled my teacups with urine. After a full seven days, I thought I was going out of my mind. I'd gone from annoyance and incredulity to sheer terror. Dishes flew off the table in front of me. Bells rang in my ears. Bottles went crashing from the shelves. Wherever I went, I saw dark-faced individuals watching roe."
"You knew it was this woman?"
"Not at first. But Carlos finally broke down and confessed everything. His mother didn't intend to remove the curse until I left. Well, I left that very night.
"I came back to London, exhausted and half mad. But it didn't do any good. They came with me. Same things started to happen right here in Taibot Manor. Doors slamming, furniture moving, the bells ringing all the time in the servants' pantry belowstairs. Everyone was going mad. And my mother-my mother had been more or less of a spiritualist, always running . to various mediums all over London. She brought in the Talamasca. I told them the whole story, and they started explaining Candomble and spiritism to me."
"They exorcised the demons?"
"No. But after about a week's intense study in the library of the Motherhouse and extensive interviews with the few members who had been to Rio, I was able to get the demons under control myself. Everyone was quite surprised. Then when I decided to go back to Brazil, I astonished them. They warned me this priestess was plenty powerful enough to kill me.
" That's exactly it I said to them. 'I want that sort of power myself. I'm going to become her pupil. She's going to teach me.' They begged me not to go. I told them I'd give them a written report on my return. You can understand how I felt. I'd seen the work of these invisible entities. I'd felt them touch me. I'd seen objects hurtling through the air. I thought the great world of the invisible was opening up to me. I had to go there. Why, nothing could have discouraged me from it. Nothing at all."
"Yes, I see," I said. "It was as exciting as hunting big game."
"Precisely." He shook his head. "Those were the days. I suppose I thought if the war hadn't killed me, nothing could kill me." He drifted off suddenly, into his memories, locking me out.
"You confronted the woman?"
He nodded.
"Confronted her and impressed her, and then bribed her beyond her wildest dreams. I told her I wanted to become her apprentice. I swore on my knees to her that I wanted to learn, that I wouldn't leave until I'd penetrated the mystery, and learned all that I could." He gave a little laugh. "I'm not sure this woman had ever encountered an anthropologist, even an amateur, and I suppose that is what I might have been called. Whatever, I stayed a year in Rio. And believe you me, that was the most remarkable year of my life. I only left Rio finally, because I knew if I didn't, I never would. David Talbot the Englishman would have been no more."
"You learned how to summon the spirits?"
He nodded. Again, he was remembering, seeing images I couldn't see. He was troubled, faintly sad. "I wrote it all down," he said finally. "It's in the files at the Motherhouse. Many, many have read the story over the years."
"Never tempted to publish it?"
"Can't do it. It's part of being in the Talamasca. We never publish outside."
"You're afraid you've wasted your life, aren't you?"
"No. I'm not, really . . . Though what I said earlier is true. I haven't cracked the secrets of the universe. I've never even passed the point I reached in Brazil. Oh, there were shocking revelations afterwards. I remember the first night I read the files on the vampires, how incredulous I was, and then those strange moments when I went down into the vaults and picked through the evidence. But in the end it was like Candomble. I only penetrated so far."
"Believe me, I know. David, the world is meant to remain a mystery. If there is any explanation, we are not meant to hit upon it, of that much I'm sure."
"I think you're right," he said sadly.
"And I think you're more afraid of death than you will admit. You've taken a stubborn tack with me, a moral one, and I don't blame you. Maybe you're old enough and wise enough to really know you don't want to be one of us. But don't go talking about death as if it's going to give you answers. I suspect death is awful. You just stop and there's no more life, and no more chance to know anything at all."
"No. I can't agree with you there, Lestat," he said. "I simply can't." He was gazing at the tiger again, and then he said, "Somebody formed the fearful symmetry, Lestat. Somebody had to. The tiger and the lamb ... it couldn't have happened all by itself."
I shook my head. "More intelligence went into the creation of that old poem, David, than ever went into the creation of the world. You sound like an Episcopalian. But I know what you're saying. I've thought it from tune to time myself. Stupidly simple. There has to be something to all this. There has to be! So many missing pieces. The more you consider it, the more atheists begin to sound like religious fanatics. But I think it's a delusion. It is all process and nothing more."
"Missing pieces, Lestat. Of course! Imagine for a moment that I made a robot, a perfect replica of myself. Imagine I gave him all the encyclopedias of information that I could- you know, programmed it into his computer brain. Well, it would only be a matter of time before he'd come to me, and say, ''David, where's the rest of it? The explanation! How did it all start? Why did you leave out the explanation for why there was ever a big bang in the first place, or what precisely happened when the minerals and other inert compounds suddenly evolved into organic cells? What about the great gap in the fossil record?' "
I laughed delightedly.
"And I'd have to break it to the poor chap," he said, "that there was no explanation. That I didn't have the missing pieces."
"David, nobody has the missing pieces. Nobody ever will."
"Don't be so sure."
"That's your hope, then? That's why you're reading the Bible? You couldn't crack the occult secrets of the universe, and now you've gone back to God?"
"God is the occult secret of the universe," David said, thoughtfully, almost as if brooding upon it, face very relaxed and almost young. He was staring at the glass in his hand, maybe liking the way the light collected in the crystal. I didn't know. I had to wait for him to speak.