Anne Rice - Vampire Chronicles 1 - Interview With The Vampire

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The Vampire Chronicles

Volume 1

INTERVIEW with the VAMPIRE

Anne Rice

Part One

"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 brief case 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 brief

case, 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 pa'

"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. "ran 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 oft 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 leather-bound 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 bad 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. "Ali . 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.

"Ali . . . 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 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 w 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 rd 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 (r)f 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 coin, 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 lust 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 of 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."

The vampire was looking out the window again. And when he stopped, the silence

was so sudden the boy seemed to hear it. Then he could hear the noises from the

street. The sound of a truck was deafening. The light cord stirred with the vibration.

Then the truck was gone.

"Do you miss it?" he asked then in a small voice.

"Not really," said the vampire. "There are so many other things. But where were we?

You want to know how it happened, how I became a vampire."

"Yes," said the boy. "How did you change, exactly?"

"I can't tell you exactly," said the vampire. "I can tell you about it, enclose it with

words that will make the value of it to me evident to you. But I can't tell you exactly,

any more than I could tell you exactly what is the experience of sex if you have never

had it."

The young man seemed struck suddenly with still another question, but before he

could speak the vampire went on. "As I told you, this vampire Lestat, wanted the

plantation. A mundane reason, surely, for granting me a life which will last until the

end of the world; but he was not a very discriminating person. He didn't consider the

world's small population of vampires as being a select club, I should say. He had

human problems, a blind father who did not know his son was a vampire and must not

find out. Living in New Orleans had become too difficult for him, considering his

needs and the necessity to care for his father, and he wanted Pointe du Lac.

"We went at once to the plantation the next evening, ensconced the blind father in the

master bedroom, and I proceeded to make the change. I cannot say that it consisted in

any one step really-though one, of course, was the step beyond which I could make no

return. But there were several acts involved, and the first was the death of the

overseer. Lestat took him in his sleep. I was to watch and to approve; that is, to

witness the taking of a human life as proof of my commitment and part of my change.

This proved without doubt the most difficult part for me. I've told you I had no fear

regarding my own death, only a squeamishness about taking my life myself. But I had

a most high regard for the life of others, and a horror of death most recently developed

because of my brother. I had to watch the overseer awake with a start, try to throw oft

Lestat with both hands, fail, then lie there struggling under Lestat's grasp, and finally

go limp, drained of blood. And die. He did not die at once. We stood in his narrow

bedroom for the better part of an hour watching him die. Part of my change, as I said.

Lestat would never have stayed otherwise. Then it was necessary to get rid of the

overseer's body. I was almost sick from this. Weak and feverish already, I had little

reserve; and handling the dead body with such a purpose caused me nausea,. Lestat

was laughing, telling me callously that I would feel so different once I was a vampire

that I would laugh, too. He was wrong about that. I never laugh at death, no matter

how often and regularly I am the cause of it.

"But let me take things in order. We had to drive up the river road until we came to

open fields and leave the overseer there. We tore his coat, stole his money, and saw to

it his- lips were stained with liquor. I knew his wife, who lived in New Orleans, and

knew the state of desperation she would suffer when the body was discovered. But

more than sorrow for her, I felt pain that she would never know what had happened,

that her husband had not been found drunk on the road by robbers. As we beat the

body, bruising the face and the shoulders, I became more and more aroused. Of

course, you must realize that all this time the vampire Lestat was extraordinary. He

was no more human to me than a biblical angel. But under this pressure, my

enchantment with him was strained. I had seen my becoming a vampire in two lights:

The first light was simply enchantment; Lestat had overwhelmed me on my deathbed.

But the other light was my wish for self-destruction. My desire to be thoroughly

damned. This was the open door through which Lestat had come on both the first and

second occasion. Now I was not destroying myself but someone else. The overseer,

his wife, his family. I recoiled and might have fled from Lestat, my sanity thoroughly

shattered, had not he sensed with an infallible instinct what was happening. Infallible

instinct. . ." The vampire mused. "Let me say the powerful instinct of a vampire to

whom even the slightest change in a human's facial expression is as apparent as a

gesture. Lestat had preternatural timing. He rushed me into the carriage and whipped

the horses home. `I want to die,' I began to murmur. `This is unbearable. I want to die.

You have it in your power to kill me. Let me die.' I refused to look at him, to be

spellbound by the sheer beauty of his appearance. He spoke my name to me softly,

laughing. As I said, he was determined to have the plantation."

"But would he have let you go?" asked the boy. "Under any circumstances?"

"I don't know. Knowing Lestat as I do now, I would say he would have killed me

rather than let me go. But this was what I wanted, you see. It didn't matter. No, this

was what I thought I wanted. As soon as we reached the house, I jumped down out of

the carriage and walked, a zombie, to the brick stairs where my brother had fallen.

The house had been unoccupied for months now, the overseer having his own cottage,

and the Louisiana heat and damp were already picking apart the steps. Every crevice

was sprouting grass and even small wildflowers. I remember feeling the moisture

which in the night was cool as I sat down on the lower steps and even rested my head

against the brick and felt the little wax-stemmed wildflowers with my hands. I pulled

a clump of them out of ,the easy dirt in one hand. `I want to die; kill me. Kill me,' I

said to the vampire. `Now I am guilty of murder. I can't live.' He sneered with the

impatience of people listening to the obvious lies of others. And then in a flash he

fastened on me just as he had on my man. I thrashed against him wildly. I dug my

boot into his chest and kicked him as fiercely as I could, his teeth stinging my throat,

the fever pounding in my temples. And with a movement of his entire body, much too

fast for me to see, he was suddenly standing disdainfully at the foot of the steps. `I

thought you wanted to die, Louis,' he said."

The boy made a soft, abrupt sound when the vampire said his name which the

vampire acknowledged with the quick statement, "Yes, that is my name," and went

on.

"Well, I lay there helpless in the face of my own cowardice and fatuousness again," he

said. "Perhaps so directly confronted with it, I might in time have gained the courage

to truly take my life, not to whine and beg for others to take it. I saw myself turning

on a knife then, languishing in a day-to-day suffering which I found as necessary as

penance from the confessional, truly hoping death would find me unawares and render

me ft for eternal pardon. And also I saw myself as if in a vision standing at the head of

the stairs, just where my brother had stood, and then hurtling my body down on the

bricks.

"But there was no time for courage. Or shall I say, there was no time in Lestat's plan

for anything but his plan. `Now listen to me, Louis,' he said, and he lay down beside

me now on the steps, his movement so graceful and so personal that at once it made

me think

of a lover. I recoiled. But he put his right arm around me and pulled me close to his

chest. Never had I been this close to him before, and in the dim light I could see the

magnificent radiance of his eye and the unnatural mask of his skin. As I tried to move,

he ,pressed his right fingers against my lips and said, Be still. I am going to drain you

now to the very threshold of death, and I want you to be quiet, so quiet that you can

almost hear the flow of blood through your veins, so quiet that you can hear the flow

of that same blood through mine. It is your consciousness, your will, which must keep

you alive.' I wanted to struggle, but he pressed so hard with his fingers that he held

my entire prone body in check; and as soon as I stopped my abortive attempt at

rebellion, he sank his teeth into my neck."

The boy's eyes grew huge. He had drawn farther and farther back in his chair as the

vampire spoke, and now his face was tense, his eyes narrow, as if he were preparing

to weather a blow.

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TheVampireChroniclesVolume1INTERVIEWwiththeVAMPIREAnneRicePartOne"Isee...'saidthevampirethoughtfully,andslowlyhewalkedacrosstheroomtowardsthewindow.ForalongtimehestoodthereagainstthedimlightfromDivisaderoStreetandthepassingbeamsoftraffic.Theboycouldseethefurnishingsoftheroommoreclearlynow,theroundoa...

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Anne Rice - Vampire Chronicles 1 - Interview With The Vampire

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