"When a being reveals his pain in such a torrent, you are bound to respect the whole of the tragedy. You have to try to comprehend. And such helplessness, such despair is almost incomprehensible to me. That's why I think of Marius. Marius I understand. You I don't understand. " Why? Silence. Didn't he deserve the truth?
"I've been a rebel always, " I said. "You've been the slave of everything that ever claimed you. "
"I was the leader of my coven! "
"No. You were the slave of Marius and then of the Children of Darkness. You fell under the spell of one and then the other. What you suffer now is the absence of a spell. I think I shudder that you caused me so to understand it for a little while, to know it as if I were a different being than I am. "
"Doesn't matter, " he said, eyes still on the fire. "You think too much in terms of decision and action. This tale is no explanation. And I am not a being who requires a respectful acknowledgment in your thoughts or in words. And we all know the answer you have given is too immense to be voiced and we all three of us know that it is final. What I don't know is why. So I am a creature very different from you, and so you cannot understand me. Why can't I go with you? I will do whatever you wish if you take me with you. I will be under your spell.
" I thought of Marius with his brush and the pots of egg tempera.
"How could you have ever believed anything that they told you after they burned those paintings? " I asked. "How could you have given yourself over to them? " Agitation, rising anger. Caution in Gabrielle's face, but not fear.
"And you, when you stood on the stage and you saw the audience screaming to get out of the theater-how my followers described this to me, the vampire terrifying the crowd and the crowd streaming into the boulevard du Temple-what did you believe? That you did not belong among mortals, that's what you believed. You knew you did not. And there was no band of fiends in hooded robes to tell you. You knew.
So Marius did not belong among mortals. So I did not. "
"Ah, but it's different. "
"No, it is not. That's why you scorn the Theater of the Vampires which is now at this very moment working out its little dramas to bring in the gold from the boulevard crowds. You do not wish to deceive as Marius deceived. It divides you ever more from mankind. You want to pretend to be mortal, but to deceive makes you angry and it makes you kill. "
"In that moment on the stage, " I said, "I revealed myself. I did the very opposite of deceiving. I wanted somehow in making manifest the monstrosity of myself to be joined with my fellow humans again. Better they should run from me than not see me. Better they should know I was something monstrous than for me to glide through the world unrecognized by those upon whom I preyed. "
"But it was not better. "
"No. What Marius did was better. He did not deceive. "
"Of course he did. He fooled everyone! "
"No. He found a way to imitate mortal life. To be one with mortals. He slew only the evildoer, and he painted as mortals paint. Angels and blue skies, clouds, those are the things you made me see when you were telling. He created good things. And I see wisdom in him and a lack of vanity. He did not need to reveal himself. He had lived a thousand years and he believed more in the vistas of heaven that he painted than in himself. " Confusion. Doesn't matter now, devils who paint angels.
"Those are only metaphors, " I said. "And it does matter! If you are to rebuild, if you are to find the Devil's Road again, it does matter! There are ways for us to exist. If I could only imitate life, just find a way. . .
"You say things that mean nothing to me. We are the abandoned of God. " Gabrielle glanced at him suddenly. "Do you believe in God? " she asked.
"Yes, always in God, " he answered. "It is Satan-our master-who is the fiction and that is the fiction which has betrayed me. "
"Oh, then you are truly damned, " I said. "And you know full well that your retreat into the fraternity of the Children of Darkness was a retreat from a sin that was not a sin. " Anger.
"Your heart breaks for something you'll never have, " he countered, his voice rising suddenly.
"You brought Gabrielle and Nicolas over the barrier to you, but you could not go back. "
"Why is it you don't hearken to your own story? " I asked. "Is it that you have never forgiven Marius for not warning you about them, letting you fall into their hands? You will never take anything, not example or inspiration, from Marius again? I am not Marius, but I tell you since I set my feet on the Devil's Road, I have heard of only one elder who could teach me anything, and that is Marius, your Venetian master. He is talking to me now. He is saying something to me of a way to be immortal. "
"Mockery. "
"No. It wasn't mockery! And you are the one whose heart breaks for what he will never have: another body of belief, another spell. " No answer.
"We cannot be Marius for you, " I said, "or the dark lord, Santino.
We are not artists with a great vision that will carry you forward. And we are not evil coven masters with the conviction to condemn a legion to perdition. And this domination-this glorious mandate-is what you must have. " I had risen to my feet without meaning to. I had come close to the fireplace and I was looking down at him. And I saw, out of the comer of my eye, Gabrielle's subtle nod of approval, and the way that she closed her eyes for a moment as if she were allowing herself a sigh of relief. He was perfectly still.
"You have to suffer through this emptiness, " I said, "and find what impels you to continue. If you come with us we will fail you and you will destroy us. "
"How suffer through it? " He looked up at me and his eyebrows came together in the most poignant frown. "How do I begin? You move like the right hand of God! But for me the world, the real world in which Marius lived, is beyond reach. I never lived in it. I push against the glass. But how do I get in? "
"I can't tell you that, " I said.
"You have to study this age, " Gabrielle interrupted. Her voice was calm but commanding. He looked towards her as she spoke.
"You have to understand the age, " she continued, "through its literature and its music and its art. You have come up out of the earth, as you yourself put it. Now live in the world. " No answer from him. Flash of Nicki's ravaged flat with all its books on the floor. Western civilization in heaps.
"And what better place is there than the center of things, the boulevard and the theater? " Gabrielle asked. He frowned, his head turning dismissively, but she pressed on.
"Your gift is for leading the coven, and your coven is still there. " He made a soft despairing sound.
"Nicolas is a fledgling, " she said. "He can teach them much about the world outside, but he cannot really lead them. The woman, Eleni, is amazingly clever, but she will make way for you. "
"What is it to me, their games? " he whispered.
"It is a way to exist, " she said. "And that is all that matters to you now. "
"The Theater of the Vampires! I should rather the fire. "
"Think of it, " she said. "There's a perfection in it you can't deny.
We are illusions of what is mortal, and the stage is an illusion of what is real. "
"It's an abomination, " he said. "What did Lestat call it? Petty? " "That was to Nicolas because Nicolas would build fantastical philosophies upon it, " she said.
"You must live now without fantastical philosophies, the way you did when you were Marius's apprentice. Live to learn the age. And Lestat does not believe in the value of evil. But you do believe in it. I know that you do. "
"I am evil, " he said half smiling. He almost laughed. "It's not a matter of belief, is it? But do you think I could go from the spiritual path I followed for three centuries to voluptuousness and debauchery such as that? We were the saints of evil, " he protested. "I will not be common evil. I will not. "