"Allow me," said the vampire. And, taking the book, he quickly put a lighted
match to the boy's cigarette. The boy inhaled, his eyes on the vampire's fingers.
Now the vampire withdrew across the table with a soft rustling of garments.
"There's an ashtray on the basin," he said, and the boy moved nervously to get it.
He stared at the few butts in it for a moment, and then, seeing the small waste
basket beneath, he emptied the ashtray and quickly set it on the table. His fingers
left damp marks on the cigarette when he put it down. "Is this your room?" he
asked.
"No," answered the vampire. "Just a room."
"What happened then?" the boy asked. The vampire appeared to be watching
the smoke gather beneath the overhead bulb.
"Ah… we went back to New Orleans posthaste," he said. "Lestat had his coffin in
a miserable room near the ramparts."
"And you did get into the coffin?"
"I had no choice. I begged Lestat to let me stay in the closet, but he laughed,
astonished. 'Don't you know what you are?' he asked. 'But is it magical? Must it
have this shape?' I pleaded. Only to hear him laugh again. I couldn't bear the idea;
but as we argued, I realized I had no real fear. It was a strange realization. All my
life I'd feared closed places. Born and bred in French houses with lofty ceilings and
floor-length windows, I had a dread of being enclosed. I felt uncomfortable even in
the confessional in church. It was a normal enough fear. And now I realized as I
protested to Lestat, I did not actually feel this anymore. I was simply remembering
it. Hanging on to it from habit, from a deficiency of ability to recognize my present
and exhilarating freedom. 'You're carrying on badly,' Lestat said finally. 'And it's
almost dawn. I should let you die. You will die, you know. The sun will destroy the
blood I've given you, in every tissue, every vein. But you shouldn't be feeling this
fear at all. I think you're like a man who loses an arm or a leg and keeps insisting
that he can feel pain where the arm or leg used to be.' Well, that was positively the
most intelligent and useful thing Lestat ever said in my presence, and it brought
me around at once. 'Now, I'm getting into the coffin,' he finally said to me in his
most disdainful tone, 'and you will get in on top of me if you know what's good for
you.' And I did. I lay face-down on him, utterly confused by my absence of dread
and filled with a distaste for being so close to him, handsome and intriguing
though he was. And he shut the lid. Then I asked him if I was completely dead. My
body was tingling and itching all over. 'No, you're not then,' he said. 'When you
are, you'll only hear and see it changing and feel nothing. You should be dead by
tonight. Go to sleep.'"
"Was he right? Were you… dead when you woke up?"
"Yes, changed, I should say. As obviously I am alive. My body was dead. It was
some time before it became absolutely cleansed of the fluids and matter it no
longer needed, but it was dead. And with the realization of it came another stage
in my divorce from human emotions. The first thing which became apparent to
me, even while Lestat and I were loading the coffin into a hearse and stealing
another coffin from a mortuary, was that I did not like Lestat at all. I was far from
being his equal yet, but I was infinitely closer to him than I had been before the
death of my body. I can't really make this clear to you for the obvious reason that
you are now as I was before my body died. You cannot understand. But before I
died, Lestat was absolutely the most overwhelming experience I'd ever had. Your
cigarette has become one long cylindrical ash."
"Oh!" The boy quickly ground the filter into the glass. "You mean that when the
gap was closed between you, he lost his… spell?" he asked, his eyes quickly fixed
on the vampire, his hands now producing a cigarette and match much more easily
than before.
"Yes, that's correct," said the vampire with obvious pleasure. "The trip back to
Pointe du Lac was thrilling. And the constant chatter of Lestat was positively the
most boring and disheartening thing I experienced. Of course as I said, I was far
from being his equal. I had my dead limbs to contend with… to use his
comparison. And I learned that on that very night, when I had to make my first
kill."
The vampire reached across the table now and gently brushed an ash from the
boy's lapel, and the boy stared at his withdrawing hand in alarm. "Excuse me,"
said the vampire. "I didn't mean to frighten you."
"Excuse me," said the boy. "I just got the impression suddenly that your arm
was… abnormally long. You reached so far without moving!"
"No," said the vampire, resting his hands again on his crossed knees. "I moved
forward much too fast for you to see. It was an illusion."
"You moved forward? But you didn't. You were sitting just as you are now, with
your back against the chair."
"No," repeated the vampire firmly. "I moved forward as I told you. Here, I'll do it
again." And he did it again, and the boy stared with the same mixture of confusion
and fear. "You still didn't see it," said the vampire. "But, you see, if you look at my
outstretched arm now, it's really not remarkably long at all." And he raised his
arm, first finger pointing heavenward as if he were an angel about to give the Word
of the Lord. "You have experienced a fundamental difference between the way you
see and I see. My gesture appeared slow and somewhat languid to me. And the
sound of my finger brushing your coat was quite audible. Well, I didn't mean to
frighten you, I confess. But perhaps you can see from this that my return to Pointe
du Lac was a feast of new experiences, the mere swaying of a tree branch in the
wind a delight."
"Yes," said the boy; but he was still visibly shaken. The vampire eyed him for a
moment, and then he said, "I was telling you…"
"About your first kill," said the boy.
"Yes. I should say first, however, that the plantation was in a state of
pandemonium. The overseer's body had been found and so had the blind old man
in the master bedroom, and no one could explain the blind old man's presence and no one had been able to find me in New Orleans. My sister had contacted the
police, and several of them were at Pointe du Lac when I arrived. It was already
quite dark, naturally, and Lestat quickly explained to me that I must not let the
police see me in even minimal light, especially not with my body in its present
remarkable state; so I talked to them in the avenue of oaks before the plantation
house, ignoring their requests that we go inside. I explained I'd been to Pointe du
Lac the night before and the blind old man was my guest. As for the overseer, he
had not been here, but had gone to New Orleans on business.
"After that was settled, during which my new detachment served me admirably,
I had the problem of the plantation itself. My slaves were in a state of complete
confusion, and no work had been done all day. We had a large plant then for the
making of the indigo dye, and the overseer's management had been most
important. But I had several extremely intelligent slaves who might have done his
job just as well a long time before, if I had recognized their intelligence and not
feared their African appearance and manner. I studied them clearly now and gave
the management of things over to them. To the best, I gave the overseer's house on
a promise. Two of the young women were brought back into the house from the
fields to care for Lestat's father, and I told them I wanted as much privacy as
possible and they would all of them be rewarded not only for service but for
leaving me and Lestat absolutely alone. I did not realize at the time that these
slaves would be the first, and possibly the only ones, to ever suspect that Lestat
and I were not ordinary creatures. I failed to realize that their experience with the
supernatural was far greater than that of white men. In my own inexperience I still
thought of them as childlike savages barely domesticated by slavery. I made a bad
mistake. But let me keep to my story. I was going to tell you about my first kill.
Lestat bungled it with his characteristic lack of common sense."
"Bungled it?" asked the boy.
"I should never have started with human beings. But this was something I had
to learn by myself. Lestat had us plunge headlong into the swamps right after the
police and the slaves were settled. It was very late, and the slave cabins were
completely dark. We soon lost sight of the lights of Pointe du Lac altogether, and I
became very agitated. It was the same thing again: remembered fears, confusion.
Lestat, had he any native intelligence, might have explained things to me patiently
and gently—that I had no need to fear the swamps, that to snakes and insects I
was utterly invulnerable, and that I must concentrate on my new ability to see in
total darkness. Instead, he harassed me with condemnations. He was concerned
only with our victims, with finishing my initiation and getting on with it.
"And when we finally came upon our victims, he rushed me into action. They
were a small camp of runaway slaves. Lestat had visited them before and picked
off perhaps a fourth of their number by watching from the dark for one of them to
leave the fire, or by taking them in their sleep. They knew absolutely nothing of
Lestat's presence. We had to watch for well over an hour before one of the men—
they were all men—finally left the clearing and came just a few paces into the
trees. He unhooked his pants now and attended to an ordinary physical necessity;
and as he turned to go, Lestat shook me and said, 'Take him.' " The vampire
smiled at the boy's wide eyes. "I think I was about as horrorstruck as you would
be," he said. "But I didn't know then that I might kill animals instead of humans. I said quickly I could not possibly take him. And the slave heard me speak. He
turned, his back to the distant fire, and peered into the dark. Then quickly and
silently, he drew a long knife out of his belt. He was naked except for the pants
and the belt, a tall, strong-armed, sleek young man. He said something in the
French patois, and then he stepped forward. I realized that, though I saw him
clearly in the dark, he could not see us. Lestat stepped in back of him with a
swiftness that baffled me and got a hold around his neck while he pinned his left
arm. The slave cried out and tried to throw Lestat off. He sank his teeth now, and
the slave froze as if from snakebite. He sank to his knees, and Lestat fed fast as
the other slaves came running. 'You sicken me,' he said when he got back to me. It
was as if we were black insects utterly camouflaged in the night, watching the
slaves move, oblivious to us, discover the wounded man, drag him back, fan out in
the foliage searching for the attacker. 'Come on, we have to get another one before
they all return to camp,' he said. And quickly we set off after one man who was
separated from the others. I was still terribly agitated, convinced I couldn't bring
myself to attack and feeling no urge to do so. There were many things, as I
mention, which Lestat might have said and done. He might have made the
experience rich in so many ways. But he did not."
"What could he have done?" the boy asked. "What do you mean?"
"Killing is no ordinary act," said the vampire. "One doesn't simply glut oneself
on blood." He shook his head. "It is the experience of another's life for certain, and
often the experience of the loss of that life through the blood, slowly. It is again
and again the experience of that loss of my own life, which I experienced when I
sucked the blood from Lestat's wrist and felt his heart pound with my heart. It is
again and again a celebration of that experience; because for vampires that is the
ultimate experience." He said this most seriously, as if he were arguing with
someone who held a different view. "I don't think Lestat ever appreciated that,
though how he could not, I don't know. Let me say he appreciated something, but
very little, I think, of what there is to know. In any event, he took no pains to
remind me now of what I'd felt when I clamped onto his wrist for life itself and
wouldn't let it go; or to pick and choose a place for me where I might experience
my first kill with some measure of quiet and dignity. He rushed headlong through
the encounter as if it were something to put behind us as quickly as possible, like
so many yards of the road. Once he had caught the slave, he gagged him and held
him, baring his neck. 'Do it,' he said. 'You can't turn back now.' Overcome with
revulsion and weak with frustration, I obeyed. I knelt beside the bent, struggling
man and, clamping both my hands on his shoulders, I went into his neck. My
teeth had only just begun to change, and I had to tear his flesh, not puncture it;
but once the wound was made, the blood flowed. And once that happened, once I
was locked to it, drinking… all else vanished.
"Lestat and the swamp and the noise of the distant camp meant nothing. Lestat
might have been an insect, buzzing, lighting, then vanishing in significance. The
sucking mesmerized me; the warm struggling of the man was soothing to the
tension of my hands; and there came the beating of the drum again, which was
the drumbeat of his heart—only this time it beat in perfect rhythm with the
drumbeat of my own heart, the two resounding in every fiber of my being, until the
beat began to grow slower and slower, so that each was a soft rumble that threatened to go on without end. I was drowsing, falling into weightlessness; and
then Lestat pulled me back. 'He's dead, you idiot!' he said with his characteristic
charm and tact. 'You don't drink after they're dead! Understand that!' I was in a
frenzy for a moment, not myself, insisting to him that the man's heart still beat,
and I was in an agony to clamp onto him again. I ran my hands over his chest,
then grabbed at his wrists. I would have cut into his wrist if Lestat hadn't pulled
me to my feet and slapped my face. This slap was astonishing. It was not painful
in the ordinary way. It was a sensational shock of another sort, a rapping of the
senses, so that I spun in confusion and found myself helpless and staring, my
back against a cypress, the night pulsing with insects in my ears. 'You'll die if you
do that,' Lestat was saying. 'He'll suck you right down into death with him if you
cling to him in death. And now you've drunk too much, besides; you'll be ill.' His
voice grated on me. I had the urge to throw myself on him suddenly, but I was
feeling just what he'd said. There was a grinding pain in my stomach, as if some
whirlpool there were sucking my insides into itself. It was the blood passing too
rapidly into my own blood, but I didn't know it. Lestat moved through the night
now like a cat and I followed him, my head throbbing, this pain in my stomach no
better when we reached the house of Pointe du Lac.
"As we sat at the table in the parlor, Lestat dealing a game of solitaire on the
polished wood, I sat there staring at him with contempt. He was mumbling
nonsense. I would get used to killing, he said; it would be nothing. I must not
allow myself to be shaken. I was reacting too much as if the 'mortal coil' had not
been shaken off. I would become accustomed to things all too quickly. 'Do you
think so?' I asked him finally. I really had no interest in his answer. I understood
now the difference between us. For me the experience of killing had been
cataclysmic. So had that of sucking Lestat's wrist. These experiences so
overwhelmed and so changed my view of everything around me, from the picture
of my brother on the parlor wall to the sight of a single star in the topmost pane of
the French window, that I could not imagine another vampire taking them for
granted. I was altered, permanently; I knew it. And what I felt, most profoundly,
for everything, even the sound of the playing cards being laid down one by one
upon the shining rows of the solitaire, was respect. Lestat felt the opposite. Or he
felt nothing. He was the sow's ear out of which nothing fine could be made. As
boring as a mortal, as trivial and unhappy as a mortal, he chattered over the
game, belittling my experience, utterly locked against the possibility of any
experience of his own. By morning, I realized that I was his complete superior and
I had been sadly cheated in having him for a teacher. He must guide me through
the necessary lessons, if there were any more real lessons, and I must tolerate in
him a frame of mind which was blasphemous to life itself. I felt cold towards him. I
had no contempt in superiority. Only a hunger for new experience, for that which
was beautiful and as devastating as my kill. And I saw that if I were to maximize
every experience available to me, I must exert my own powers over my learning.
Lestat was of no use.