PART I
" 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
2
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
3
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
4
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.
5
" 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
6
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. "
7
" 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. "
8
" 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
9
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
10
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? "
11
" 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
12
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
13
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.
" Have you ever lost a great amount of blood? " asked the vampire. "
Do you know the feeling? " The boy's lips shaped the word no, but no
sound came out. He cleared his throat.
" No, " he said.
" Candles burned in the upstairs parlor, where we had planned the
death of the overseer. An oil lantern swayed in the breeze on the
14
gallery. All of this light coalesced and began to shimmer, as though a
golden presence hovered above me, suspended in the stairwell, softly
entangled with the railings, curling and contracting like smoke.
`Listen, keep your eyes wide,' Lestat whispered to me, his lips moving
against my neck. I remember that the movement of his lips raised the
hair all over my body, sent a shock of sensation through my body that
was not unlike the pleasure of passion. . . " He mused, his right
fingers slightly curled beneath his chin, the first finger appearing to
lightly stroke it. " The result was that within minutes I was weak to
paralysis. Panic-stricken, I discovered I could not even will myself to
speak. Lestat still held me, of course, and his arm was like the weight
of an iron bar. I felt his teeth withdraw with such a keenness that the
two puncture wounds seemed enormous, lined with pain. And now
he bent over my helpless head and, taking his right hand off me, bit his
own wrist. The blood flowed down upon my shirt and coat, and he
watched it with a narrow, gleaming eye. It seemed an eternity that he
watched it, and that shimmer of light now hung behind his head like
the backdrop of an apparition. I think that I knew what he meant to
do even before he did it, and I was waiting in my helplessness as if I'd
been waiting for years. He pressed his bleeding wrist to my mouth,
said firmly, a little impatiently, `Louis, drink.' And I did. `Steady,
Louis,' and `Hurry,' he whispered to me a number of times. I drank,
sucking the blood out of the holes, experiencing for the first time since
infancy the special pleasure of sucking nourishment, the body focused
with the mind upon one vital source. Then something happened. "
The vampire sat back, a slight frown on his face.
" How pathetic it is to describe these things which can't truly be
described, " he said, his voice loci almost to a whisper. The boy sat as
if frozen.
" I saw nothing but that light then as I drew blood. And then this
next thing, this next thing was . . . sound. A dull roar at first and
then a pounding like the pounding of a drum, growing louder and
louder, as if some enormous creature were coming up on one slowly
through a dark and alien forest, pounding as he came, a huge drum.
And then there came the pounding of another drum, as if another
giant were coming yards behind him, and each giant, intent on his
own drum, gave no notice to the rhythm of the other. The sound grew
louder and louder until it seemed to fill not just my hearing but all my
senses, to be throbbing in my lips and fingers, in the flesh of my
temples, in my veins. Above all, in my veins, drum and then the other
drum; and then Lestat pulled his wrist free suddenly, and I opened my
eyes and checked myself in a moment of reaching for his wrist,
15
grabbing it, forcing it back to my mouth at all costs; I checked myself
because I realized that the drum was my heart, and the second drum
had been his. " The vampire sighed. " Do you understand? " The boy
began to speak, and then he shook his head. " No . . I mean, I do, " he
said. " I mean, I . . .'
" Of course, " said the vampire, looking away.
" Wait, wait! " said the boy in a welter of excitement. " The tape is
almost gone. I have to turn it over. " The vampire watched patiently
as he changed it.
" What happened then? " the boy asked. His face was moist, and he
wiped it hurriedly with his handkerchief.
" I saw as a- vampire, " said -the vampire, his voice now slightly
detached. It seemed almost distracted. Then he drew himself up. "
Lestat was standing again at the foot of the stairs, and I saw him as I
could not possibly have seen him before. He had seemed white to me
before, starkly white, so that in the night he was almost luminous; and
now I saw him filled with his own life and own blood: he was radiant,
not luminous. And then I saw that not only Lestat had changed, but
all things had changed.
" It was as if I had only just been able to see colors and shapes for the
first time. I was so enthralled with the buttons on Lestat's black coat
that I looked at nothing else for a long time. Then Lestat began to
laugh, and I heard his laughter as I had never heard anything before.
His heart I still heard like the beating of a drum, and now came this
metallic laughter. It was confusing, each sound running into the next
sound, like the mingling reverberations of bells, until I learned to
separate the sounds, and then they overlapped, each soft but distinct,
increasing but discrete, peals of laughter. " The vampire smiled with
delight. " Peals of bells.
" `Stop looking at my buttons,' Lestat said. `Go out there into the
trees. Rid yourself of all the human waste in your body, and don't fall
so madly in love with the night that you lose your ways'
" That, of course, was a wise command. When I saw the moon on
the flagstones, I became so enamored with it that I must have spent an
hour there. I passed my brother's oratory without so much as a
thought of him, and standing among the cottonwood and oaks, I
heard the night as if it were a chorus of whispering women, all
beckoning me to their breasts. As for my body, it was not yet totally
converted, and as soon as I became the least accustomed to the sounds
and sights, it began to ache. All my human fluids were being forced
out of me. I was dying as a human, yet completely alive as a vampire;
and with my awakened senses, I had to preside over the death of my
16
body with a certain discomfort and then, finally, fear. I ran back up
the steps to the parlor, where Lestat was already at work on the
plantation papers, going over the expenses and profits for the last year.
`You're a rich man,' he said to me when I came in. `Something's
happening to me,' I shouted.
" `You're dying, that's all; don't be a fool. Don't you have any oil
lamps? All this money and you can't afford whale oil except for that
lantern. Bring me that lantern.'
" `Dying!' I shouted. `Dying!'
" `It happens to everyone,' he persisted, refusing to help me. As I
look back on this, I still despise him for it. Not because I was afraid,
but because he might have drawn my attention to these changes with
reverence. He might have calmed me and told me I might watch my
death with the same fascination with which I had watched and felt the
night. But he didn't. Lestat was never the vampire I am. Not at all. "
The vampire did not say this boastfully. He said it as if he would truly
have had it otherwise.
" Alors, " he sighed. " I was dying fast, which meant that my capacity
for fear was diminishing as rapidly. I simply regret I was not more
attentive to the process. Lestat was being a perfect idiot. `Oh, for the
love of hell!' he began shouting. `Do you realize I've made no
provision for you? What a fool I am.' I was tempted to say, `Yes, you
are,' but I didn't. `You'll have to bed down with me this morning. I
haven't prepared you a coffin.' " The vampire laughed. " The coffin
struck such a chord of terror in me I think it absorbed all the capacity
for terror I had left. Then came only my mild alarm at having to share
a coffin with Lestat. He was in his father's bedroom meantime, telling
the old man good-bye, that he would return in the morning. But
where do you go, why must you live by such a schedule!' the old man
demanded, and Lestat became impatient. Before this, he'd been
gracious to the old man, almost to the point of sickening one, but now
he became a bully. `I take care of you, don't I? I've put a better roof
over your head than you ever put over mine! If I want to sleep all day
and drink all night, I'll do it, damn you!' The old man started to
whine. Only my peculiar state of emotions and most unusual feeling
of exhaustion kept me from disapproving. I was watching the scene
through the open door, enthralled with the colors of the counterpane
and the positive riot of color in the old man's face. His blue veins
pulsed beneath his pink and grayish flesh. I found even the yellow of
his teeth appealing to me; and I became almost hypnotized by the
quivering of his lip. `Such a son, such a son,' he said, never suspecting,
of course, the true nature of his son. `All right, then, go. I know you
17
keep a woman somewhere; you go to see her as soon as her husband
leaves in the morning. Give me my rosary. What's happened to my
rosary?' Lestat said something blasphemous and gave him the rosary.
. . . "
" But . . " the boy started.
" Yes? " said the vampire. " I'm afraid I don't allow you to ask
enough questions. "
" I was going to ask, rosaries have crosses on them, don't they? "
" Oh, the rumor about crosses! " the vampire laughed " You refer to
our being afraid of crosses? "
" Unable to look on them, I thought; ' said the boy.
" Nonsense, my friend, sheer nonsense. I can look on anything I like.
And I rather like looking on crucifixes in particular. "
" And what about the rumor about keyholes? That you can . . .
become steam and go through them. "
" I wish I could, " laughed the vampire. " How positively delightful.
I should like to pass through all manner of different keyholes and feel
the tickle of their peculiar shapes. No. " He shook his head. " That is,
how would you say today . . . bullshit? " The boy laughed despite
himself. Then his face grew serious.
" You mustn't be so shy with me, " the vampire said. " What is it? "
" The story about stakes through the heart, " said the boy, his cheeks
coloring slightly.
" The same, " said the vampire. " Bull-shit, " he said, carefully
articulating both syllables, so that the boy smiled. " No magical power
whatsoever. Why don't you smoke one of your cigarettes? I see you
have them in your shirt pocket. "
" Oh, thank you, " the boy said, as if it were a marvelous suggestion.
But once he had the cigarette to his lips, his hands were trembling so
badly that he mangled the first fragile book match.
" 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.
18
" 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 floorlength
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
19
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 reach 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
20
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. Rye 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 ;o
snakes and insects I was utterly invulnerable, and that I must
concentrate on my new ability to see in total darkness. Instead, he
21
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 tamed, 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
22
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 m 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'