"I see, " said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the
room towards the window. For a long time he stood there against the dim light
from Divisadero Street and the passing beams of traffic. The boy could see the
furnishings of the room more clearly now, the round oak table, the chairs. A wash
basin hung on one wall with a mirror. He set his briefcase on the table and waited.
"But how much tape do you have with you?" asked the vampire, turning now so
the boy could see his profile. "Enough for the story of a life?"
"Sure, if it's a good life. Sometimes I interview as many as three or four people a
night if I'm lucky. But it has to be a good story. That's only fair, isn't it?"
"Admirably fair," the vampire answered. "I would like to tell you the story of my
life, then. I would like to do that very much."
"Great," said the boy. And quickly he removed the small tape recorder from his
briefcase, making a check of the cassette and the batteries. "I'm really anxious to
hear why you believe this, why you…"
"No," said the vampire abruptly. "We can't begin that way. Is your equipment
ready?"
"Yes," said the boy.
"Then sit down. I'm going to turn on the overhead light."
"But I thought vampires didn't like light," said the boy. "If you think the dark
adds to the atmosphere…" But then he stopped. The vampire was watching him
with his back to the window. The boy could make out nothing of his face now, and
something about the still figure there distracted him. He started to say something
again but he said nothing. And then he sighed with relief when the vampire moved
towards the table and reached for the overhead cord.
At once the room was flooded with a harsh yellow light. And the boy, staring up
at the vampire, could not repress a gasp. His fingers danced backwards on the
table to grasp the edge. "Dear God!" he whispered, and then he gazed, speechless,
at the vampire.
The vampire was utterly white and smooth, as if he were sculpted from bleached
bone, and his face was as seemingly inanimate as a statue, except for two brilliant
green eyes that looked down at the boy intently like flames in a skull. But then the
vampire smiled almost wistfully, and the smooth white substance of his face
moved with the infinitely flexible but minimal lines of a cartoon. "Do you see?" he
asked softly.
The boy shuddered, lifting his hand as if to shield himself from a powerful light.
His eyes moved slowly over the finely tailored black coat he'd only glimpsed in the
bar, the long folds of the cape, the black silk tie knotted at the throat, and the
gleam of the white collar that was as white as the vampire's flesh. He stared at the
vampire's full black hair, the waves that were combed back over the tips of the
ears, the curls that barely touched the edge of the white collar.
"Now, do you still want the interview?" the vampire asked.
The boy's mouth was open before the sound came out. He was nodding. Then he
said, "Yes."
The vampire sat down slowly opposite him and, leaning forward, said gently,
confidentially, "Don't be afraid. Just start the tape."
And then he reached out over the length of the table. The boy recoiled, sweat
running down the sides of his face. The vampire clamped a hand on the boy's
shoulder and said, "Believe me, I won't hurt you. I want this opportunity. It's more
important to me than you can realize now. I want you to begin." And he withdrew
his hand and sat collected, waiting.
It took a moment for the boy to wipe his forehead and his lips with a
handkerchief, to stammer that the microphone was in the machine, to press the
button, to say that the machine was on.
"You weren't always a vampire, were you?" he began.
"No," answered the vampire. "I was a twenty-five-year-old man when I became a
vampire, and the year was seventeen ninety-one."
The boy was startled by the preciseness of the date and he repeated it before he
asked, "How did it come about?"
"There's a simple answer to that. I don't believe I want to give simple answers,"
said the vampire. "I think I want to tell the real story…"
"Yes," the boy said quickly. He was folding his handkerchief over and over and
wiping his lips now with it again.
"There was a tragedy…" the vampire started. "It was my younger brother… He
died." And then he stopped, so that the boy cleared his throat and wiped at his
face again before stuffing the handkerchief almost impatiently into his pocket.
"It's not painful, is it?" he asked timidly.
"Does it seem so?" asked the vampire. "No." He shook his head. "It's simply that
I've only told this story to one other person. And that was so long ago. No, it's not
painful….
"We were living in Louisiana then. We'd received a land grant and settled two
indigo plantations on the Mississippi very near New Orleans…"
"Ah, that's the accent…" the boy said softly.
For a moment the vampire stared blankly. "I have an accent?" He began to
laugh.
And the boy, flustered, answered quickly. "I noticed it in the bar when I asked
you what you did for a living. It's just a slight sharpness to the consonants, that's
all. I never guessed it was French."
"It's all right," the vampire assured him. "I'm not as shocked as I pretend to be.
It's only that I forget it from time to time. But let me go on…""Please…" said the boy.
"I was talking about the plantations. They had a great deal to do with it, really,
my becoming a vampire. But I'll come to that. Our life there was both luxurious
and primitive. And we ourselves found it extremely attractive. You see, we lived far
better there than we could have ever lived in France. Perhaps the sheer wilderness
of Louisiana only made it seem so, but seeming so, it was. I remember the
imported furniture that cluttered the house." The vampire smiled. "And the
harpsichord; that was lovely. My sister used to play it. On summer evenings, she
would sit at the keys with her back to the open French windows. And I can still
remember that thin, rapid music and the vision of the swamp rising beyond her,
the moss-hung cypresses floating against the sky. And there were the sounds of
the swamp, a chorus of creatures, the cry of the birds. I think we loved it. It made
the rosewood furniture all the more precious, the music more delicate and
desirable. Even when the wisteria tore the shutters off the attic windows and
worked its tendrils right into the whitewashed brick in less than a year… Yes, we
loved it. All except my brother. I don't think I ever heard him complain of anything,
but I knew how he felt. My father was dead then, and I was head of the family and
I had to defend him constantly from my mother and sister. They wanted to take
him visiting, and to New Orleans for parties, but he hated these things. I think he
stopped going altogether before he was twelve. Prayer was what mattered to him,
prayer and his leatherbound lives of the saints.
"Finally I built him an oratory removed from the house, and he began to spend
most of every day there and often the early evening. It was ironic, really. He was so
different from us, so different from everyone, and I was so regular! There was
nothing extraordinary about me whatsoever." The vampire smiled.
"Sometimes in the evening I would go out to him and find him in the garden
near the oratory, sitting absolutely composed on a stone bench there, and I'd tell
him my troubles, the difficulties I had with the slaves, how I distrusted the
overseer or the weather or my brokers… all the problems that made up the length
and breadth of my existence. And he would listen, making only a few comments,
always sympathetic, so that when I left him I had the distinct impression he had
solved everything for me. I didn't think I could deny him anything, and I vowed
that no matter how it would break my heart to lose him, he could enter the
priesthood when the time came. Of course, I was wrong." The vampire stopped.
For a moment the boy only gazed at him and then he started as if awakened
from deep thought, and he floundered, as if he could not find the right words.
"Ah… he didn't want to be a priest?" the boy asked. The vampire studied him as if
trying to discern the meaning of his expression. Then he said:
"I meant that I was wrong about myself, about my not denying him anything."
His eyes moved over the far wall and fixed on the panes of the window. "He began
to see visions."
"Real visions?" the boy asked, but again there was hesitation, as if he were
thinking of something else.
"I didn't think so," the vampire answered. "It happened when he was fifteen. He
was very handsome then. He had the smoothest skin and the largest blue eyes. He
was robust, not thin as I am now and was then… but his eyes… it was as if when I
looked into his eyes I was standing alone on the edge of the world… on a windswept ocean beach. There was nothing but the soft roar of the waves. Well,"
he said, his eyes still fixed on the window panes, "he began to see visions. He only
hinted at this at first, and he stopped taking his meals altogether. He lived in the
oratory. At any hour of day or night, I could find him on the bare flagstones
kneeling before the altar. And the oratory itself was neglected. He stopped tending
the candles or changing the altar cloths or even sweeping out the leaves. One
night I became really alarmed when I stood in the rose arbor watching him for one
solid hour, during which he never moved from his knees and never once lowered
his arms, which he held outstretched in the form of a cross. The slaves all thought
he was mad." The vampire raised his eyebrows in wonder. "I was convinced that
he was only… overzealous. That in his love for God, he had perhaps gone too far.
Then he told me about the visions. Both St. Dominic and the Blessed Virgin Mary
had come to him in the oratory. They had told him he was to sell all our property
in Louisiana, everything we owned, and use the money to do God's work in
France. My brother was to be a great religious leader, to return the country to its
former fervor, to turn the tide against atheism and the Revolution. Of course, he
had no money of his own. I was to sell the plantations and our town houses in
New Orleans and give the money to him."
Again the vampire stopped. And the boy sat motionless regarding him,
astonished. "Ah… excuse me," he whispered. "What did you say? Did you sell the
plantations?"
"No," said the vampire, his face calm as it had been from the start. "I laughed at
him. And he… he became incensed. He insisted his command came from the
Virgin herself. Who was I to disregard it? Who indeed?" he asked softly, as if he
were thinking of this again. "Who indeed? And the more he tried to convince me,
the more I laughed. It was nonsense, I told him, the product of an immature and
even morbid mind. The oratory was a mistake, I said to him; I would have it torn
down at once. He would go to school in New Orleans and get such inane notions
out of his head. I don't remember all that I said. But I remember the feeling.
Behind all this contemptuous dismissal on my part was a smoldering anger and a
disappointment. I was bitterly disappointed. I didn't believe him at all."
"But that's understandable," said the boy quickly when the vampire paused, his
expression of astonishment softening. "I mean, would anyone have believed him?"
"Is it so understandable?" The vampire looked at the boy. "I think perhaps it
was vicious egotism. Let me explain. I loved my brother, as I told you, and at times
I believed him to be a living saint. I encouraged him in his prayer and meditations,
as I said, and I was willing to give him up to the priesthood. And if someone had
told me of a saint in Arles or Lourdes who saw visions, I would have believed it. I
was a Catholic; I believed in saints. I lit tapers before their marble statues in
churches; I knew their pictures, their symbols, their names. But I didn't, couldn't
believe my brother. Not only did I not believe he saw visions, I couldn't entertain
the notion for a moment. Now, why? Because he was my brother. Holy he might
be, peculiar most definitely; but Francis of Assisi, no. Not my brother. No brother
of mine could be such. That is egotism. Do you see?"
The boy thought about it before he answered and then he nodded and said that
yes, he thought that he did.
"Perhaps he saw the visions," said the vampire."Then you… you don't claim to know… now… whether he did or not?"
"No, but I do know that he never wavered in his conviction for a second. That I
know now and knew then the night he left my room crazed and grieved. He never
wavered for an instant. And within minutes, he was dead."
"How?" the boy asked.
"He simply walked out of the French doors onto the gallery and stood for a
moment at the head of the brick stairs. And then he fell. He was dead when I
reached the bottom, his neck broken." The vampire shook his head in
consternation, but his face was still serene.
"Did you see him fall?" asked the boy. "Did he lose his footing?"
"No, but two of the servants saw it happen. They said that he had looked up as
if he had just seen something in the air. Then his entire body moved forward as if
being swept by a wind. One of them said he was about to say something when he
fell. I thought that he was about to say something too, but it was at that moment I
turned away from the window. My back was turned when I heard the noise." He
glanced at the tape recorder. "I could not forgive myself. I felt responsible for his
death," he said. "And everyone else seemed to think I was responsible also."
"But how could they? You said they saw him fall."
"It wasn't a direct accusation. They simply knew that something had passed
between us that was unpleasant. That we had argued minutes before the fall. The
servants had heard us, my mother had heard us. My mother would not stop
asking me what had happened and why my brother, who was so quiet, had been
shouting. Then my sister joined in, and of course I refused to say. I was so bitterly
shocked and miserable that I had no patience with anyone, only the vague
determination they would not know about his visions. They would not know that
he had become, finally, not a saint, but only a… fanatic. My sister went to bed
rather than face the funeral, and my mother told everyone in the parish that
something horrible had happened in my room which I would not reveal; and even
the police questioned me, on the word of my own mother. Finally the priest came
to see me and demanded to know what had gone on. I told no one. It was only a
discussion, I said. I was not on the gallery when he fell, I protested, and they all
stared at me as if I'd killed him. And I felt that I'd killed him. I sat in the parlor
beside his coffin for two days thinking, I have killed him. I stared at his face until
spots appeared before my eyes and I nearly fainted. The back of his skull had been
shattered on the pavement, and his head had the wrong shape on the pillow. I
forced myself to stare at it, to study it simply because I could hardly endure the
pain and the smell of decay, and I was tempted over and over to try to open his
eyes. All these were mad thoughts, mad impulses. The main thought was this: I
had laughed at him; I had not believed him; I had not been kind to him. He had
fallen because of me."
"This really happened, didn't it?" the boy whispered. "You're telling me
something… that's true."
"Yes," said the vampire, looking at him without surprise. "I want to go on telling
you." But as his eyes passed over the boy and returned to the window, he showed
only faint interest in the boy, who seemed engaged in some silent inner struggle.
"But you said you didn't know about the visions, that you, a vampire… didn't
know for certain whether…""I want to take things in order," said the vampire, "I want to go on telling you
things as they happened. No, I don't know about the visions. To this day." And
again he waited until the boy said:
"Yes, please, please go on."
"Well, I wanted to sell the plantations. I never wanted to see the house or the
oratory again. I leased them finally to an agency which would work them for me
and manage things so I need never go there, and I moved my mother and sister to
one of the town houses in New Orleans. Of course, I did not escape my brother for
a moment. I could think of nothing but his body rotting in the ground. He was
buried in the St. Louis cemetery in New Orleans, and I did everything to avoid
passing those gates; but still I thought of him constantly. Drunk or sober, I saw
his body rotting in the coffin, and I couldn't bear it. Over and over I dreamed that
he was at the head of the steps and I was holding his arm, talking kindly to him,
urging him back into the bedroom, telling him gently that I did believe him, that
he must pray for me to have faith. Meantime, the slaves on Pointe du Lac (that
was my plantation) had begun to talk of seeing his ghost on the gallery, and the
overseer couldn't keep order. People in society asked my sister offensive questions
about the whole incident, and she became an hysteric. She wasn't really an
hysteric. She simply thought she ought to react that way, so she did. I drank all
the time and was at home as little as possible. I lived like a man who wanted to die
but who had no courage to do it himself. I walked black streets and alleys alone; I
passed out in cabarets. I backed out of two duels more from apathy than
cowardice and truly wished to be murdered. And then I was attacked. It might
have been anyone—and my invitation was open to sailors, thieves, maniacs,
anyone. But it was a vampire. He caught me just a few steps from my door one
night and left me for dead, or so I thought."
"You mean… he sucked your blood?" the boy asked.
"Yes," the vampire laughed. "He sucked my blood. That is the way it's done."
"But you lived," said the young man. "You said he left you for dead."
"Well, he drained me almost to the point of death, which was for him sufficient.
I was put to bed as soon as I was found, confused and really unaware of what had
happened to me. I suppose I thought that drink had finally caused a stroke. I
expected to die now and had no interest in eating or drinking or talking to the
doctor. My mother sent for the priest. I was feverish by then and I told the priest
everything, all about my brother's visions and what I had done. I remember I clung
to his arm, making him swear over and over he would tell no one. 'I know I didn't
kill him,' I said to the priest finally. 'It's that I cannot live now that he's dead. Not
after the way I treated him.'
"'That's ridiculous,' he answered me. 'Of course you can live. There's nothing
wrong with you but self-indulgence. Your mother needs you, not to mention your
sister. And as for this brother of yours, he was possessed of the devil.' I was so
stunned when he said this I couldn't protest. The devil made the visions, he went
on to explain. The devil was rampant. The entire country of France was under the
influence of the devil, and the Revolution had been his greatest triumph. Nothing
would have saved my brother but exorcism, prayer, and fasting, men to hold him
down while the devil raged in his body and tried to throw him about. 'The devil
threw him down the steps; it's perfectly obvious,' he declared. 'You weren't talking to your brother in that room, you were talking to the devil.' Well, this enraged me.
I believed before that I had been pushed to my limits, but I had not. He went on
talking about the devil, about voodoo amongst the slaves and cases of possession
in other parts of the world. And I went wild. I wrecked the room in the process of
nearly killing him."
"But your strength… the vampire…?" asked the boy.
"I was out of my mind," the vampire explained. "I did things I could not have
done in perfect health. The scene is confused, pale, fantastical now. But I do
remember that I drove him out of the back doors of the house, across the
courtyard, and against the brick wall of the kitchen, where I pounded his head
until I nearly killed him. When I was subdued finally, and exhausted then almost
to the point of death, they bled me. The fools. But I was going to say something
else. It was then that I conceived of my own egotism. Perhaps I'd seen it reflected
in the priest. His contemptuous attitude towards my brother reflected my own; his
immediate and shallow carping about the devil; his refusal to even entertain the
idea that sanctity had passed so close."
"But he did believe in possession by the devil."
"That is a much more mundane idea," said the vampire immediately. "People
who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don't
know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is
eternally difficult. But you must understand, possession is really another way of
saying someone is mad. I felt it was, for the priest. I'm sure he'd seen madness.
Perhaps he had stood right over raving madness and pronounced it possession.
You don't have to see Satan when he is exorcised. But to stand in the presence of
a saint…To believe that the saint has seen a vision. No, it's egotism, our refusal to
believe it could occur in our midst."
"I never thought of it in that way," said the boy. "But what happened to you?
You said they bled you to cure you, and that must have nearly killed you."
The vampire laughed. "Yes. It certainly did. But the vampire came back that
night. You see, he wanted Pointe du Lac, my plantation.
"It was very late, after my sister had fallen asleep. I can remember it as if it were
yesterday. He came in from the courtyard, opening the French doors without a
sound, a tall fair-skinned man with a mass of blond hair and a graceful, almost
feline quality to his movements. And gently, he draped a shawl over my sister's
eyes and lowered the wick of the lamp. She dozed there beside the basin and the
cloth with which she'd bathed my forehead, and she never once stirred under that
shawl until morning. But by that time I was greatly changed."
"What was this change?" asked the boy.
The vampire sighed. He leaned back against the chair and looked at the walls.
"At first I thought he was another doctor, or someone summoned by the family to
try to reason with me. But this suspicion was removed at once. He stepped close
to my bed and leaned down so that his face was in the lamplight, and I saw that
he was no ordinary man at all. His gray eyes burned with an incandescence, and
the long white hands which hung by his sides were not those of a human being. I
think I knew everything in that instant, and all that he told me was only
aftermath. What I mean is, the moment I saw him, saw his extraordinary aura and
knew him to be no creature I'd ever known, I was reduced to nothing. That ego which could not accept the presence of an extraordinary human being in its midst
was crushed. All my conceptions, even my guilt and wish to die, seemed utterly
unimportant. I completely forgot myself!" he said, now silently touching his breast
with his fist. "I forgot myself totally. And in the same instant knew totally the
meaning of possibility. From then on I experienced only increasing wonder. As he
talked to me and told me of what I might become, of what his life had been and
stood to be, my past shrank to embers. I saw my life as if I stood apart from it, the
vanity, the self-serving, the constant fleeing from one petty annoyance after
another, the lip service to God and the Virgin and a host of saints whose names
filled my prayer books, none of whom made the slightest difference in a narrow,
materialistic, and selfish existence. I saw my real gods… the gods of most men.
Food, drink, and security in conformity. Cinders."
The boy's face was tense with a mixture of confusion and amazement. "And so
you decided to become a vampire?" he asked. The vampire was silent for a
moment.
"Decided. It doesn't seem the right word. Yet I cannot say it was inevitable from
the moment that he stepped into that room. No, indeed, it was not inevitable. Yet I
can't say I decided. Let me say that when he'd finished speaking, no other decision
was possible for me, and I pursued my course without a backward glance. Except
for one."
"Except for one? What?"
"My last sunrise," said the vampire. "That morning, I was not yet a vampire. And
I saw my last sunrise.
"I remember it completely; yet I do not think I remember any other sunrise
before it. I remember the light came first to the tops of the French windows, a
paling behind the lace curtains, and then a gleam growing brighter and brighter in
patches among the leaves of the trees. Finally the sun came through the windows
themselves and the lace lay in shadows on the stone floor, and all over the form of
my sister, who was still sleeping, shadows of lace on the shawl over her shoulders
and head. As soon as she was warm, she pushed the shawl away without
awakening, and then the sun shone full on her eyes and she tightened her eyelids.
Then it was gleaming on the table where she rested her head on her arms, and
gleaming, blazing, in the water in the pitcher. And I could feel it on my hands on
the counterpane and then on my face. I lay in the bed thinking about all the
things the vampire had told me, and then it was that I said good-bye to the
sunrise and went out to become a vampire. It was… the last sunrise."