She bowed her head, and slowly, silently regained her calm, her eyes clearing. Then she looked up and spoke again.
"When you spoke of making this child, Claudia... when you spoke of bringing your mother, Gabrielle, into your world ... you spoke of reaching for something. Would you call it a transcendence? When I work until I drop hi the mission hospital, I transcend. I transcend doubt and something . . . something perhaps hopeless and black inside myself.
I don't know."
"Hopeless and black, yes, that's the key, isn't it? The music didn't make this go away." "Yes, it did, but it was false."
"Why false? Why was doing that good-playing the piano- false?"
"Because it didn't do enough for others, that's why."
"Oh, but it did. It gave them pleasure, it had to."
"Pleasure?"
"Forgive me, I'm choosing the wrong tack. You've lost yourself hi your vocation. When you played the piano, you were yourself-don't you see? You were the unique Gretchen! It was the very meaning of the word 'virtuoso.' And you wanted to lose yourself."
"I think you're right. The music simply wasn't my way."
"Oh, Gretchen, you frighten me!"
"But I shouldn't frighten you. I'm not saving the other way was wrong. If you did good with your music-your rock singing, this brief career you described-it was the good you could do. I do good my way, that's all."
"No, there's some fierce self-denial hi you. You're hungry for love the way I starve night after night for blood. You punish yourself hi your nursing, denying your carnal desires, and your love of music, and all the things of the world which are like music. You are a virtuoso, a virtuoso of your own pain."
"You're wrong, Lestat," she said with another little smile, and a shake of her head. "You know that's not true. It's what you want to believe about someone like me. Lestat, listen to me. If all you've told me is true, isn't it obvious in light of that truth that you were meant to meet me?"
"How so?"
"Come here, sit with me and talk to me."
I don't know why I hesitated, why I was afraid. Finally I came back to the blanket and sat down opposite, crossing my legs. I leaned back against the side of the bookcase.
"Don't you see?" she asked. "I represent a contrary way, a " way you haven't ever considered, and one which might bring you the very consolation you seek."
"Gretchen, you don't believe for a moment that I've told the truth about myself. You can't. I don't expect you to."
"I do believe you! Every word you've said. And the literal truth is unimportant. You seek something that the saints sought when they renounced their normal lives, when they blundered into the service of Christ. And never mind that you don't believe in Christ. It's unimportant. What is important is that you have been miserable in the existence you've lived until now, miserable to the point of madness, and that my way would offer you an alternative."
"You're speaking of this for me?" I asked.
"Of course I am. Don't you see the pattern? You come down into this body; you fall into my hands; you give me the moment of love I require. But what have I given you? What is my meaning for you?"
She raised her hand for quiet.
"No, don't speak of larger schemes again. Don't ask if there is a literal God. Think on all I've said. I've said it for myself, but also for you. How many lives have you taken in this otherworldly existence of yours? How many lives have I saved- literally saved-in the missions?"
I was ready to deny the entire possibility, when suddenly it occurred to me to wait, to be silent, and merely to consider.
The chilling thought came to me again that I might never recover my preternatural body, that I might be trapped in this flesh all my life. If I couldn't catch the Body Thief, if I couldn't get the others to help me, the death I said I wanted would indeed be mine in time. I had fallen back into time.
And what if there was a scheme to it? What if there was a destiny? And I spent that mortal life working as Gretchen worked, devoting my entire physical and spiritual being to others? What if I simply went with her back to her jungle outpost? Oh, not as her lover, of course. Such things as that were not meant for her, obviously. But what if I went as her assistant, her helper? What if I sank my mortal life into that very frame of selfsacrifice?
Again, I forced myself to remain quiet, to see it.
Of course there was an added capability of which she knew nothing-the wealth I could bestow upon her mission, upon missions like it. And though this wealth was so vast some men could not have calculated it, I could calculate it. I could see in a large incandescent vision its limits, its effects. Whole village populations fed and clothed, hospitals stocked with medicines, schools furnished with books and blackboards and radios and pianos. Yes, pianos. Oh, this was an old, old tale. This was an old, old dream.
I remained quiet as I considered it. I saw the moments of each day of my mortal life-my possible mortal life-spent along with every bit of my fortune upon this dream. I saw this as if it were sand sliding through the narrow center of an hourglass.
Why, at this very minute, as we sat here in this clean little room, people starved in the great slums of the Eastern world. They starved in Africa. Worldwide, they perished from disease and from disaster. Floods washed away their dwellings; drought shriveled their food and their hopes. The misery of even one country was more than the mind could endure, were it described in even vague detail.
But even if everything I possessed I gave to this endeavor, what would I have accomplished in the final analysis?
How could I even know that modern medicine in a jungle village was better than the old way? How could I know that the education given a jungle child spelt happiness for it? How could I know that any of this was worth the loss of myself? How could I make myself care whether it was or not! That was the horror.
I didn't care. I could weep for any individual soul who suffered, yes, but about sacrificing my life to the nameless millions of the world, I couldn't care! In fact, it filled me with dread, terrible dark dread. It was sad beyond sad. It seemed no life at all. It seemed the very opposite of transcendence.
I shook my head. In a low stammering voice I explained to her why this vision frightened me so much.
"Centuries ago, when I first stood on the little boulevard stage in Paris-when I saw the happy faces, when I heard applause-I felt as if my body and soul had found their destiny;
I felt as if every promise in my birth and childhood had begun its fulfillment at last.
"Oh, there were other actors, worse and better; other singers; other clowns; there have been a million since and a million will come after this moment. But each of us shines with his own inimitable power; each of us comes alive in his own unique and dazzling moment; each of us has his chance to vanquish the others forever in the mind of the beholder, and that is the only kind of accomplishment I can really understand: the kind of accomplishment in which the self-this self, if you will-is utterly whole and triumphant.
"Yes, I could have been a saint, you are right, but I would have had to found a religious order or lead an army into battle; I would have had to work miracles of such scope that the whole world would have been brought to its knees. I am one who must dare even if I'm wrong-completely wrong. Gretchen, God gave me an individual soul and I cannot bury it."
I was amazed to see that she was still smiling at me, softly and unquestioningly, and that her face was full of calm wonder.
"Better to reign in hell," she asked carefully, "than to serve in heaven?"
"Oh, no. I would make heaven on earth if I could. But I must raise my voice; I must shine; and I must reach for the very ecstasy that you've denied-the very intensity from which you fled! That to me is transcendence! When I made Claudia, blundering error that it was-yes, it was transcendence. When I made Gabrielle, wicked as it seemed, yes, it was transcendence. It was a single, powerful, and horrifying act, which wrung from me all my unique power and daring. They shall not die, I said, yes, perhaps the very words you use to the village children.