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“This meant word would get to the entire coast. And though I firmly believed the entire coast to be impervious to a wave of hysteria, I did not intend to risk notice of any kind. I hurried back to the plantation house to tell Lestat our game of playing planter was over. He’d have to give up his slave whip and golden napkin ring and move into town.
“He resisted, naturally. His father was gravely ill and might not live. He had no intention of ru
“ ‘You’re talking madness. The fact is I want you gone from here.’
“ ‘You want me gone! You,’ he sneered. He was building a card palace on the dining room table with a pack of very fine French cards. ‘You whining coward of a vampire who prowls the night killing alley cats and rats and staring for hours at candles as if they were people and standing in the rain like a zombie until your clothes are drenched and you smell like old wardrobe trunks in attics and have the look of a baffled idiot at the zoo.’
“ ‘You’ve nothing more to tell me, and your insistence on recklessness has endangered us both. I might live in that oratory alone while this house fell to ruin. I don’t care about it!’ I told him. Because this was quite true. ‘But you must have all the things you never had of life and make of immortality a junk shop in which both of us become grotesque. Now, go look at your father and tell me how long he has to live, for that’s how long you stay, and only if the slaves don’t rise up against us!’
“He told me then to go look at his father myself, since I was the one who was always ‘looking,’ and I did. The old man was truly dying. I had been spared my mother’s death, more or less, because she had died very suddenly on an afternoon. She’d been found with her sewing basket, seated quietly in the courtyard; she had died as one goes to sleep. But now I was seeing a natural death that was too slow with agony and with consciousness. And I’d always liked the old man; he was kindly and simple and made few demands. By day, he sat in the sun of the gallery dozing and listening to the birds; by night, any chatter on our part kept him company. He could play chess, carefully feeling each piece and remembering the entire state of the board with remarkable accuracy; and though Lestat would never play with him, I did often. Now he lay gasping for breath, his forehead hot and wet, the pillow around him stained with sweat. And as he moaned and prayed for death, Lestat in the other room began to play the spinet. I slammed it shut, barely missing his fingers. ‘You won’t play while he dies!’ I said. ‘The hell I won’t!’ he answered me. ‘I’ll play the drum if I like!’ And taking a great sterling silver platter from a sideboard he slipped a finger through one of its handles and beat it with a spoon.
“I told him to stop it, or I would make him stop it. And then we both ceased our noise because the old man was calling his name. He was saying that he must talk to Lestat now before he died. I told Lestat to go to him. The sound of his crying was terrible. ‘Why should I? I’ve cared for him all these years. Isn’t that enough?’ And he drew from his pocket a nail file, and, seating himself on the foot of the old man’s bed, he began to file his long nails.
“Meantime, I should tell you that I was aware of slaves about the house. They were watching and listening. I was truly hoping the old man would die within minutes. Once or twice before I’d dealt with suspicion or doubt on the part of several slaves, but never such a number. I immediately rang for Daniel, the slave to whom I’d given the overseer’s house and position. But while I waited for him, I could hear the old man talking to Lestat; Lestat, who sat with his legs crossed, filing and filing, one eyebrow arched, his attention on his perfect nails. ‘It was the school,’ the old man was saying. ‘Oh, I know you remember… what can I say to you…’ he moaned.
“ ‘You’d better say it,’ Lestat said, ‘because you’re about to die.’ The old man let out a terrible noise, and I suspect I made some sound of my own. I positively loathed Lestat. I had a mind now to get him out of the room. ‘Well, you know that, don’t you? Even a fool like you knows that,’ said Lestat.
“ ‘You’ll never forgive me, will you? Not now, not even after I’m dead,’ said the old man.
“ I don’t know what you’re talking about!” said Lestat.
“My patience was becoming exhausted with him, and the old man was becoming more and more agitated. He was begging Lestat to listen to him with a warm heart. The whole thing was making me shudder. Meantime, Daniel had come, and I knew the moment I saw him that everything at Pointe du Lac was lost. Had I been more attentive I’d have seen signs of it before now. He looked at me with eyes of glass. I was a monster to him. ‘Monsieur Lestat’s father is very ill. Going,’ I said, ignoring his expression. ‘I want no noise tonight; the slaves must all stay within the cabins. A doctor is on his way.’ He stared at me as if I were lying. And then his eyes moved curiously and coldly away from me towards the old man’s door. His face underwent such a change that I rose at once and looked in the room. It was Lestat, slouched at the foot of the bed, his back to the bedpost, his nail file working furiously, grimacing in such a way that both his great teeth showed prominently.”
The vampire stopped, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter. He was looking at the boy. And the boy looked shyly at the table. But he had already looked, and fixedly, at the vampire’s mouth. He had seen that the lips were of a different texture from the vampire’s skin, that they were silken and delicately lined like any person’s lips, only deadly white; and he had glimpsed the white teeth. Only, the vampire had such a way of smiling that they were not completely revealed; and the boy had not even thought of such teeth until now. “You can imagine,” said the vampire, “what this meant.
“I had to kill him.”
“You what?” said the boy.
“I had to kill him. He started to run. He would have alarmed everyone. Perhaps it might have been handled some other way, but I had no time. So I went after him, overpowering him. But then, finding myself in the act of doing what I had not done for four years, I stopped. This was a man. He had his bone-handle knife in his hand to defend himself. And I took it from him easily and slipped it into his heart. He sank to his knees at once, his fingers tightening on the blade, bleeding on it. And the sight of the blood, the aroma of it, maddened me. I believe I moaned aloud. But I did not reach for him, I would not. Then I remember seeing Lestat’s figure emerge in the mirror over the sideboard. ‘Why did you do this!’ he demanded. I turned to face him, determined he would not see me in this weakened state. The old man was delirious, he went on, he could not understand what the old man was saying. ‘The slaves, they know… you must go to the cabins and keep watch,’ I managed to say to him. ‘I’ll care for the old man.’
“ ‘Kill him,’ Lestat said.
“ ‘Are you mad!’ I answered. ‘He’s your father!’
“ ‘I know he’s my father!’ said Lestat. ‘That’s why you have to kill him. I can’t kill him! If I could, I would have done it a long time ago, damn him!’ He wrung his hands. ‘We’ve got to get out of here. And look what you’ve done killing this one. There’s no time to lose. His wife will be wailing up here in minutes… or she’ll send someone worse!’”
The vampire sighed. “This was all true. Lestat was right. I could hear the slaves gathering around Daniel’s cottage, waiting for him. Daniel had been brave enough to come into the haunted house alone. When he didn’t return, the slaves would panic, become a mob. I told Lestat to calm them, to use all his power as a white master over them and not to alarm them with horror, and then I went into the bedroom and shut the door. I had then another shock in a night of shocks. Because I’d never seen Lestat’s father as he was then.