"Monsieur, what's the matter! " he said, almost helplessly, and I stood up and threw my arms around him and kissed him on both cheeks and kissed the violin.
"Stop calling me Monsieur, " I said. "Call me by my name. " I lay back down on the bed and buried my face on my arm and started to cry, and once I'd started I couldn't stop it. He sat next to me, hugging me and asking me why I was crying, and though I couldn't tell him, I could see that he was overwhelmed that his music had produced this effect. There was no sarcasm or bitterness in him now. I think he carried me home that night. And the next morning I was standing in the crooked stone street in front of his father's shop, tossing pebbles up at his window. When he stuck his head out, I said:
"Do you want to come down and go on with our conversation? "
5
From then on, when I was not hunting, my life was with Nicolas and "our conversation. " Spring was approaching, the mountains were dappled with green, the apple orchard starting back to life. And Nicolas and I were always together. We took long walks up the rocky slopes, had our bread and wine in the sun on the grass, roamed south through the ruins of an old monastery. We hung about in my rooms or sometimes climbed to the battlements. And we went back to our room at the inn when we were too drunk and too loud to be tolerated by others. And as the weeks passed we revealed more and more of ourselves to each other. Nicolas told me about his childhood at school, the little disappointments of his early years, those whom he had known and loved. And I started to tell him the painful things-and finally the old disgrace of running off with the Italian players. It came to that one night when we were in the inn again, and we were drunk as usual. In fact we were at that moment of drunkenness that the two of us had come to call the Golden Moment, when everything made sense. We always tried to stretch out that moment, and then inevitably one of us would confess, "I can't follow anymore, I think the Golden Moment's passed. " On this night, looking out the window at the moon over the mountains, I said that at the Golden Moment it was not so terrible that we weren't in Paris, that we weren't at the Opera or the Comedie, waiting for the curtain to rise.
"You and the theaters of Paris, " he said to me. "No matter what we're talking about you bring it back to the theaters and the actors-' His brown eyes were very big and trusting. And even drunk as he was, he looked spruce in his red velvet Paris frock coat.
"Actors and actresses make magic, " I said. "They make things happen on the stage; they invent; they create. "
"Wait until you see the sweat streaming down their painted faces in the glare of the footlights, " he answered.
"Ah, there you go again, " I said. "And you, the one who gave up everything to play the violin. " He got terribly serious suddenly, looking off as if he were weary of his own struggles.
"That I did, " he confessed. Even now the whole village knew it was war between him and his father. Nicki wouldn't go back to school in Paris.
"You make life when you play, " I said. "You create something from nothing. You make something good happen. And that is blessed to me. "
"I make music and it makes me happy, " he said. "What is blessed or good about that? " I waved it away as I always did his cynicism now.
"I've lived all these years among those who create nothing and change nothing, " I said.
"Actors and musicians-they're saints to me. "
"Saints? " he asked. "Blessedness? Goodness? Lestat, your language baffles me. " I smiled and shook my head.
"You don't understand. I'm speaking of the character of human beings, not what they believe in. I'm speaking of those who won't accept a useless lie, just because they were born to it. I mean those who would be something better. They work, they sacrifice, they do things. . . " He was moved by this, and I was a little surprised that I'd said it. Yet I felt I had hurt him somehow.
"There is blessedness in that, " I said. "There's sanctity. And God or no God, there is goodness in it. I know this the way I know the mountains are out there, that the stars shine. " He looked sad for me. And he looked hurt still. But for the moment I didn't think of him. I was thinking of the conversation I had had with my mother and my perception that I couldn't be good and defy my family. But if I believed what I was saying . . . As if he could read my mind, he asked:
"But do you really believe those things? "
"Maybe yes. Maybe no, " I said. I couldn't bear to see him look so sad. And I think more on account of that than anything else I told him the whole story of how I'd run off with the players. I told him what I'd never told anyone, not even my mother, about those few days and the happiness they'd given me.
"Now, how could it not have been good, " I asked, "to give and receive such happiness? We brought to life that town when we put on our play. Magic, I tell you. It could heal the sick, it could. " He shook his head. And I knew there were things he wanted to say which out of respect for me he was leaving to silence.
"You don't understand, do you? " I asked.
"Lestat, sin always feels good, " he said gravely. "Don't you see that? Why do you think the Church has always condemned the players? It was from Dionysus, the wine god, that the theater came. You can read that in Aristotle. And Dionysus was a god that drove men to debauchery. It felt good to you to lie on that stage because it was abandoned and lewd-the age-old service of the god of the grape-and you were having a high time of it defying your father-'
"No, Nicki. No, a thousand times no. "
"Lestat, we're partners in sin, " he said, smiling finally.
"We've always been. We've both behaved badly, both been utterly disreputable. It's what binds us together. " Now it was my turn to look sad and hurt. And the Golden Moment was gone beyond reprieve- unless something new was to happen.
"Come on, " I said suddenly. "Get your violin, and we'll go off somewhere in the woods where the music won't wake up anybody. We'll see if there isn't some goodness in it. "
"You're a madman! " he said. But he grabbed the unopened bottle by the neck and headed for the door immediately. I was right behind him. When he came out of his house with the violin, he said:
"Let's go to the witches' place! Look, it's a half moon. Plenty of light. We'll do the devil's dance and play for the spirits of the witches. " I laughed. I had to be drunk to go along with that. "We'll reconsecrate the spot, " I insisted,
"with good and pure music. " It had been years and years since I'd walked in the witches' place. The moon was bright enough, as he'd said, to see the charred stakes in their grim circle and the ground in which nothing ever grew even one hundred years after the burnings. The new saplings of the forest kept their distance. And so the wind struck the clearing, and above, clinging to the rocky slope, the village hovered in darkness. A faint chill passed over me, but it was the mere shadow of the anguish I'd felt as a child when I'd heard those awful words "roasted alive, " when I had imagined the suffering. Nicki's white lace shoes shone in the pale light, and he struck up a gypsy song at once and danced round in a circle as he played it. I sat on a broad burned stump of tree and drank from the bottle. And the heartbreaking feeling came as it always did with the music. What sin was there, I thought, except to live out my life in this awful place? And pretty soon I was silently and unobtrusively crying. Though it seemed the music had never stopped, Nicki was comforting me. We sat side by side and he told me that the world was full of inequities and that we were prisoners, he and I, of this awful corner of France, and someday we would break out of it. And I thought of my mother in the castle high up the mountain, and the sadness numbed me until I couldn't bear it, and Nicki started playing again, telling me to dance and to forget everything. Yes, that's what it could make you do, I wanted to say. Is that sin? How can it be evil? I went after him as he danced in a circle. The notes seemed to be flying up and out of the violin as if they were made of gold. I could almost see them flashing. I danced round and round him now and he sawed away into a deeper and more frenzied music. I spread the wings of the fur lined cape and threw back my head to look at the moon. The music rose all around me like smoke, and the witches' place was no more. There was only the sky above arching down to the mountains. We were closer for all this in the days that followed. But a few nights later, something altogether extra-ordinary happened. It was late. We were at the inn again and Nicolas, who was walking about the room and gesturing dramatically, declared what had been on our minds all along. That we should run away to Paris, even if we were penniless, that it was better than remaining here. Even if we lived as beggars in Paris! It had to be better. Of course we had both been building up to this.