My next stop was the building on Rue Royale where Claudia and Louis and I had spent those splendid, luminous fifty years of earthly existence together in the early half of the old century-a place partially in ruins, as I have described.
A young man had been told to meet me on the premises, a clever individual with a great reputation for turning dismal houses into palatial mansions, and I led him now up the stairs and into the decayed flat.
"I want it all as it was over a hundred years ago," I said to him. "But mind you, nothing American, nothing English. Nothing Victorian. It must be entirely French." Then I led him on a merry march through room after room, as he scribbled hastily in his little book, scarce able to see in the darkness, while I told him what wallpaper I should want here, and which shade of enamel on this door, and what sort of bergere he might round up for this corner, and what manner of Indian or Persian carpet he must acquire for this or that floor.
How keen my memory was.
Again and again, I cautioned him to write down every word I spoke. "You must find a Greek vase, no, a reproduction will not do, and it must be this high and have upon it dancing figures." Ah, wasn't it the ode by Keats which had inspired that long-ago purchase? Where had the urn gone? "And that fireplace, that is not the original mantel. You must find one of white marble, with scrollwork like so, and arched over the grate.
Oh, and these fireplaces, they must be repaired. They must be able to burn coal.
"I will live here again as soon as you are finished," I said to him. "So you must hurry. And, another caution. Anything you find in these premises-hidden in the old plaster-you must give to me."
What a pleasure it was to stand beneath these high ceilings, and what a joy it would be to see them when the soft crumbling moldings were once more restored. How free and quiet I felt. The past was here, but it wasn't here. No whispering ghosts anymore, if there had ever been.
Slowly I described the chandeliers I wanted; when the proper labels eluded me, I drew pictures in words for him of what had once been there. I would have oil lamps here and there, also, though of course there must be limitless electricity, and we would conceal the various television screens in handsome cabinets, not to mar the effect. And there, a cabinet for my videotapes and laser disks, and again, we should find something suitable-a painted Oriental press would do the trick. Hide the telephones.
"And a facsimile machine! I must have one of those little marvels! Find someplace to conceal it as well. Why, you can use that room as an office, only make it gracious and beautiful. Nothing must be visible which is not made of polished brass, fine wool, or lustrous wood, or silk or cotton lace. I want a mural in that bedroom. Here, I shall show you. But look, see the wallpaper? That's the very mural. Bring in a photographer and record every inch and then begin your restoration. Work diligently but very fast."
Finally we were finished with the dark damp ulterior. It was time to discuss the courtyard in the back with its broken fountain, and how the old kitchen must be restored. I would have bougainvillea and the Queen's Wreath, how I love the Queen's Wreath, and the giant hibiscus, yes, I had just seen this lovely flower in the Caribbean, and the moonflower, of course. Banana trees, give me those as well. Ah, the old walls are tumbling. Patch them. Shore them up. And on the back porch above, I want ferns, all manner of delicate ferns. The weather's warming again, isn't it? They will do well.
Now, upstairs, once more, through the long brown hollow of the house and to the front porch.
I broke open the French doors and went out on the rotted boards. The fine old iron railings were not so badly rusted. The roof would have to be remade of course. But I would soon be sitting out here as I did now and then in the old days, watching the passersby on the other side of the street.
Of course the faithful and zealous readers of my books would spot me here now and then. The readers of Louis's memoir, come to find the flat where we had lived, would surely recognize the house.
No matter. They believed hi it, but that's different from believing it. And what was another young blond-faced man, smiling at them from a high balcony, his arms resting on the rail? I should never feed upon those tender, innocent ones- even when they bare their throats at me and say, "Lestat, right here!" (This has happened, reader, in Jackson Square, and more than once.)
"You must hurry," I told the young man, who was still scribbling, and taking measurements, and murmuring about colors and fabrics to himself, and now and then discovering Mojo beside him, or in front of him, or underfoot, and giving a start. "I want it finished before summer." He was in quite a dither when I dismissed him. I remained behind hi the old building with Mojo, alone.
The attic. In the olden times, I'd never gone there. But there was an old staircase hidden off the rear porch, just beyond the back parlour, the very room where Claudia had once sliced through my thin fledgling white skin with her great flashing knife. I went there now and climbed up into the low rooms beneath the sloping roof. Ah, it was high enough for a man of six feet to walk here, and the dormer windows on the very front let in the light from the street.
I should make my lair here, I thought, in a hard plain sarcophagus with a lid no mortal could hope to move. Easy enough to build a small chamber beneath the gable, fitted with thick bronze doors which I should design myself. And when I rise, I shall go down into the house and find it as it was in those wondrous decades, save I shall have everywhere about me the technological marvels I require. The past will not be recovered. The past will be perfectly eclipsed.
"Won't it, Claudia?" I whispered, standing in the back parlour. Nothing answered me. No sounds of a harpsichord or the canary singing in its cage. But I should have songbirds again, yes, many of them, and the house would be full of the rich rampaging music of Haydn or Mozart.
Oh, my darling, wish you were here!
And my dark soul is happy again, because it does not know how to be anything else for very long, and because the pain is a deep dark sea in which I would drown if I did not sail my little craft steadily over the surface, steadily towards a sun which will never rise.
It was past midnight now; the little city was humming softly around me, with a chorus of mingled voices, and the soft clickety-clack of a distant train, with the low throb of a whistle on the river, and the rumble of traffic on the Rue Esplanade.
I went into the old parlour, and stared at the pale luminous patches of light falling through the panes of the doors. I lay down on the bare wood, and Mojo came to lie down beside me, and there we slept.
I dreamed no dreams of her. So why was I weeping softly when it came time finally to seek the safety of my crypt? And where was my Louis, my treacherous and stubborn Louis? Paul. Ah, and it would get worse, wouldn't it, when I saw him soon enough?
With a start, I realized that Mojo was lapping the blood tears from my cheeks. "No. That you must never do!" I said, closing my hand over his mouth. "Never, never that blood. That evil blood." I was badly shaken. And he was at once obedient, backing off just a little from me in his unhurried and dignified way.
How perfectly demonic his eyes seemed as he gazed at me. What a deception! I kissed him again, on the tenderest part of his long, furry face, just beneath his eyes.
I thought again of Louis, and the pain hit me as if I'd been dealt a hard blow by one of the ancients, right in the chest.
Indeed, my emotions were so bitter, and so beyond my control, that I felt frightened and for a moment thought of nothing and felt nothing but this pain.
In my mind's eye, I saw all the others. I brought up their faces as if I were the Witch of Endor standing over the cauldron invoking the images of the dead.