The Tale of the Body Thief (17 page)

“Not really,” I said. “I lay in the light for a full day. The second morning, somehow or other I must have dug down into the sand.”

He stared at me for a long moment, as if he would explode with disapproval, and then he retreated to his desk, sat down a bit noisily for such a graceful being, composed his hands over the closed book, and looked wickedly and furiously at me.

“Why did you do it?”

“Louis, I have something more important to tell you,” I said. “Forget about all this.” I made a gesture to include my face. “Something very remarkable has happened, and I have to tell you the whole tale.” I stood up, because I couldn’t contain myself. I began to pace, careful not to trip over all the heaps of disgusting trash lying about, and maddened slightly by the dim candlelight, not because I couldn’t see in it, but because it was so weak and partial and I like light.

I told him everything—how I’d seen this creature, Raglan James, in Venice and in Hong Kong, and then in Miami, and how he’d sent me the message in London and then followed me to Paris as I supposed he would. Now we were to meet near the square tomorrow night. I explained the short stories and their meaning. I explained the strangeness of the young man himself, that he was not in his body, that I believed he could effect such a switch.

“You’re out of your mind,” Louis said.

“Don’t be so hasty,” I answered.

“You quote this idiot’s words to me? Destroy him. Put an end to him. Find him tonight if you can and do away with him.”

“Louis, for the love of heaven … ”

“Lestat, this creature can find you at will? That means he knows where you lie. You’ve led him here now. He knows where I lie. He’s the worst conceivable enemy! Mon Dieu, why do you go looking for adversity? Nothing on earth can destroy you now, not even the Children of the Millennia have the combined strength to do it, and not even the sun at midday in the Gobi Desert—so you court the one enemy who has power over you. A mortal man who can walk in the light of day. A man who can achieve complete dominion over you when you
yourself are without a spark of consciousness or will. No, destroy him. He’s far too dangerous. If I see him, I’ll destroy him.”

“Louis, this man can give me a human body. Have you listened to anything that I’ve said.”

“Human body! Lestat, you can’t become human by simply taking over a human body! You weren’t human when you were alive! You were born a monster, and you know it. How the hell can you delude yourself like this.”

“I’m going to weep if you don’t stop.”

“Weep. I’d like to see you weep. I’ve read a great deal about your weeping in the pages of your books but I’ve never seen you weep with my own eyes.”

“Ah, that makes you out to be a perfect liar,” I said furiously. “You described my weeping in your miserable memoir in a scene which we both know did not take place!”

“Lestat, kill this creature! You’re mad if you let him come close enough to you to speak three words.”

I was confounded, utterly confounded. I dropped down in the chair again and stared into space. The night seemed to breathe with a soft lovely rhythm outside, the fragrance of the Queen’s Wreath just barely touching the moist cool air. A faint incandescence seemed to come from Louis’s face, from his hands folded on the desk. He was veiled in stillness, waiting for my response, I presumed, though why, I had no idea.

“I never expected this from you,” I said, crestfallen. “I expected some long philosophical diatribe, like the trash you wrote in your memoir, but this?”

He sat there, silent, peering at me steadily, the light sparking for an instant in his brooding green eyes. He seemed tormented in some deep way, as if my words had caused him pain. Certainly it wasn’t my insult to his writing. I insulted his writing all the time. That was a joke. Well, sort of a joke.

I couldn’t figure what to say or do. He was working on my nerves. When he spoke his voice was very soft.

“You don’t really want to be human,” he said. “You don’t believe that, do you?”

“Yes, I believe it!” I answered, humiliated by the feeling in my voice. “How could
you
not believe it?” I stood up and commenced my pacing again. I made a circuit of the little house, and wandered out into
the jungle garden, pushing the thick springy vines out of my way. I was in such a state of confusion I couldn’t speak to him anymore.

I was thinking of my mortal life, vainly trying not to mythologize it, but I could not drive away from me those memories—the last wolf hunt, my dogs dying in the snow. Paris. The boulevard theatre. Unfinished!
You don’t really want to be human
. How could he say such a thing?

It seemed an age I was out in the garden, but finally, for better or worse, I wandered back inside. I found him still at his desk, looking at me in the most forlorn, almost heartbroken way.

“Look,” I said, “there are only two things which I believe—the first is that no mortal can refuse the Dark Gift once he really knows what it is. And don’t speak to me about David Talbot refusing me. David is not an ordinary man. The second thing I believe is that all of us would be human again if we could. Those are my tenets. There’s nothing else.”

He made a little weary accepting gesture and sat back in his chair. The wood creaked softly beneath his weight, and he lifted his right hand languidly, wholly unconscious of the seductive quality of this simple gesture, and ran his fingers back through his loose dark hair.

The memory pierced me suddenly of the night I had given him the blood, of how he had argued with me at the last moment that I must not do it, and then he’d given in. I had explained it all to him beforehand—while he was still the drunken feverish young planter in the sickbed with the rosary wound around the bedpost. But how can such a thing be explained! And he’d been so convinced that he wanted to come with me, so certain that mortal life held nothing for him—so bitter and burnt out and so young!

What had he known then? Had he ever read a poem by Milton, or listened to a sonata by Mozart? Would the name Marcus Aurelius have meant anything to him? In all probability, he would have thought it a fancy name for a black slave. Ah, those savage and swaggering plantation lords with their rapiers and their pearl-handled pistols! They did appreciate excess; I shall, in retrospect, give them that.

But he was far from those days now, wasn’t he? The author of
Interview with the Vampire
, of all preposterous titles! I tried to quiet myself. I loved him too much not to be patient, not to wait until he spoke again. I’d fashioned him of human flesh and blood to be my preternatural tormentor, had I not?

“It can’t be undone that easily,” he said now, rousing me from memory, dragging me back into this dusty room. His voice was deliberately gentle, almost conciliatory or imploring. “It can’t be that simple. You can’t change bodies with a mortal man. To be candid, I don’t even think it’s possible, but even if it were—”

I didn’t answer. I wanted to say, But what if it can be done! What if I can know again what it means to be alive.

“And then what about your body,” he said, pleading with me, holding his anger and outrage in check so skillfully. “Surely you can’t place all your powers at the disposal of this creature, this sorcerer or whatever he is. The others have told me that they cannot even calculate the limits of your power. Ah, no. It’s an appalling idea. Tell me, how does he know how to find you! That’s the most significant part.”

“That’s the least significant part,” I replied. “But clearly, if this man can switch bodies, then he can leave his body. He can navigate as a spirit for long enough to track me and find me. I must be very visible to him when he’s in this state, given what I am. This is no miracle in itself, you understand.”

“I know,” he said. “Or so I read and so I hear. I think you’ve found a truly dangerous being. This is worse than what we are.”

“How so worse?”

“It implies another desperate attempt at immortality, switching bodies! Do you think this mortal, whoever he is, plans to grow old in this or any other body, and allow himself to die!”

I had to confess I followed his meaning. Then I told him about the man’s voice, the sharp British accent, the cultured sound of it, and how it didn’t seem the voice of a young man.

He shuddered. “He probably comes from the Talamasca,” he said. “That’s probably where he found out about you.”

“All he had to do was buy a paperback novel to find out about me.”

“Ah, but not to
believe
, Lestat, not to believe it was true.”

I told him that I had spoken to David. David would know if this man was from his own order, but as for myself I didn’t believe it. Those scholars would never have done such a thing. And there was something sinister about this mortal. The members of the Talamasca were almost tiresome in their wholesomeness. Besides, it didn’t matter. I would talk to this man and discover everything for myself.

He grew reflective again and very sad. It almost hurt me to look
at him. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him, but that would only have made him furious.

“I love you,” he said softly.

I was amazed.

“You’re always looking for a way to triumph,” he continued. “You never give in. But there is no way to triumph. This is purgatory we’re in, you and I. All we can be is thankful that it isn’t actually hell.”

“No, I don’t believe it,” I said. “Look, it doesn’t matter what you say or what David said. I’m going to talk to Raglan James. I want to know what this is about! Nothing’s going to prevent that.”

“Ah, so David Talbot has also warned you against him.”

“Don’t choose your allies among my friends!”

“Lestat, if this human comes near me, if I believe that I am in danger from him, I will destroy him. Understand.”

“Of course, I do. He wouldn’t approach you. He’s picked me, and with reason.”

“He’s picked you because you are careless and flamboyant and vain. Oh, I don’t say this to hurt you. Truly I don’t. You long to be seen and approached and understood and to get into mischief, to stir everything up and see if it won’t boil over and if God won’t come down and grab you by the hair. Well, there is no God. You might as well be God.”

“You and David … the same song, the same admonitions, though he claims to have seen God and you don’t believe He exists.”

“David has seen God?” he asked respectfully.

“Not really,” I murmured with a scornful gesture. “But you both scold in the same way. Marius scolds in the same way.”

“Well, of course, you pick the voices that scold you. You always have, in the same manner in which you pick those who will turn on you and stick the knife right into your heart.”

He meant Claudia, but he couldn’t bear to speak her name. I knew I could hurt him if I said it, like flinging a curse in his face. I wanted to say, You had a hand in it! You were there when I made her, and there when she lifted the knife!

“I don’t want to hear any more!” I said. “You’ll sing the song of limitations all your long dreary years on this earth, won’t you? Well, I am not God. And I am not the Devil from hell, though I sometimes pretend to be. I am not the crafty cunning lago. I don’t plot ghastly scenarios of evil. And I can’t quash my curiosity or my spirit. Yes, I
want to know if this man can really do it. I want to know what will happen. And I won’t give up.”

“And you’ll sing the song of victory eternally though there is none to be had.”

“Ah, but there is. There must be.”

“No. The more we learn, the more we know there are no victories. Can’t we fall back on nature, do what we must to endure and nothing more?”

“That is the most paltry definition of nature I have ever heard. Take a hard look at it—not in poetry but in the world outside. What do you see in nature? What made the spiders that creep beneath the damp floorboards, what made the moths with their multicolored wings that look like great evil flowers in the dark? The shark in the sea, why does it exist?” I came towards him, planted my hands on his desk and looked into his face. “I was so sure you would understand this. And by the way, I wasn’t born a monster! I was a born a mortal child, the same as you. Stronger than you! More will to live than you! That was cruel of you to say.”

“I know. It was wrong. Sometimes you frighten me so badly I hurl sticks and stones at you. It’s foolish. I’m glad to see you, though I dread admitting it. I shiver at the thought that you might have really brought an end to yourself in the desert! I can’t bear the thought of existence now without you! You infuriate me! Why don’t you laugh at me? You’ve done it before.”

I drew myself up and turned my back on him. I was looking out at the grass blowing gently in the river wind, and the tendrils of the Queen’s Wreath reaching down to veil the open door.

“I’m not laughing,” I said. “But I’m going to pursue this, no sense in lying about that to you. Lord God, don’t you see? If I’m in a mortal body for five minutes only, what I might learn?”

“All right,” he said despairingly. “I hope you discover the man’s seduced you with a pack of lies, that all he wants is the Dark Blood, and that you send him straight to hell. Once more, let me warn you, if I see him, if he threatens me, I shall kill him. I haven’t your strength. I depend upon my anonymity, that my little memoir, as you always call it, was so very far removed from the world of this century that no one took it as fact.”

“I won’t let him harm you, Louis,” I said. I turned and threw an
evil glance at him. “I would never ever have let anyone harm you.” And with this I left.

O
F COURSE
, this was an accusation, and he felt the keen edge of it, I’d seen that to my satisfaction, before I turned again and went out.

The night Claudia rose up against me, he had stood there, the helpless witness, abhorring but not thinking to interfere, even as I called his name.

He had taken what he thought to be my lifeless body and dumped it in the swamp. Ah, naive little fledglings, to think you could so easily get rid of me.

But why think of it now? He had loved me then whether or not he knew it; of my love for him and for that wretched angry child, I had never the slightest doubt.