"There is someone out there watching me, " I said.
"Everyone's watching you, " Nicki said. "That's what you want. " He was feeling a little sad that evening, and his answer was slightly sharp. Earlier when he was making the fire, he had said he would never amount to much with the violin. In spite of his ear and his skill, there was too much he didn't know. And I would be a great actor, he was sure. I had said this was nonsense, but it was a shadow falling over my soul. I remembered my mother telling me that it was too late for him. He wasn't envious, he said. He was just unhappy a little, that's all. I decided to drop the matter of the mysterious face. I tried to think of some way to encourage him. I reminded him that his playing produced profound emotions in people, that even the actors backstage stopped to listen when he played. He had an undeniable talent.
"But I want to be a great violinist, " he said. "And I'm afraid it will never be. As long as we were at home, I could pretend that it was going to be. "
"You can't give up on it! " I said.
"Lestat, let me be frank with you, " he said. "Things are easy for you. What you set your sights on you get for yourself. I know what you're thinking about all the years you were miserable at home. But even then, what you really set your mind to, you accomplished. And we left for Paris the very day that you decided to do it. "
"You don't regret coming to Paris, do you? " I asked.
"Of course not. I simply mean that you think things are possible which aren't possible! At least not for the rest of us. Like killing the wolves... " A coldness passed over me when he said this. And for some reason I thought of that mysterious face again in the audience, the one watching. Something to do with the wolves. Something to do with the sentiments Nicki was expressing. Didn't make sense. I tried to shrug it off.
"If you'd set out to play the violin, you'd probably be playing for the Court by now, " he said.
"Nicki, this kind of talk is poison, " I said under my breath. "You can't do anything but try to get what you want. You knew the odds were against you when you started. There isn't anything else . . . except... "
"I know. " He smiled. "Except the meaninglessness. Death. "
"Yes, " I said. "All you can do is make your life have meaning, make it good. "
"Oh, not goodness again, " he said. "You and your malady of mortality, and your malady of goodness. " He had been looking at the fire and he turned to me with a deliberately scornful expression.
"We're a pack of actors and entertainers who can't even be buried in consecrated ground. We're outcasts. "
"God, if you could only believe in it, " I said, "that we do good when we make others forget their sorrow, make them forget for a little while that. . . "
"What? That they are going to die? " He smiled in a particularly vicious way. "Lestat, I thought all this would change with you when we got to Paris. "
"That was foolish of you, Nick, " I answered. He was making me angry now. "I do good in the boulevard du Temple. I feel it- " I stopped because I saw the mysterious face again and a dark feeling had passed over me, something of foreboding. Yet even that startling face was usually smiling, that was the odd thing. Yes, smiling . . . enjoying . . .
"Lestat, I love you, " Nicki said gravely. "I love you as I have loved few people in my life, but in a real way you're a fool with all your ideas about goodness. " I laughed.
"Nicolas, " I said, "I can live without God. I can even come to live with the idea there is no life after. But I do not think I could go on if I did not believe in the possibility of goodness. Instead of mocking me for once, why don't you tell me what you believe? "
"As I see it, " he said, "there's weakness and there's strength. And there is good art and bad art. And that is what I believe in. At the moment we are engaged in making what is rather bad art and it has nothing to do with goodness! "
"Our conversation " could have fumed into a full-scale fight here if I had said all that was on my mind about bourgeois pomposity. For I fully believed that our work at Renaud's was in many ways finer than what I saw at the grand theaters. Only the framework was less impressive. Why couldn't a bourgeois gentleman forget about the frame? How could he be made to look at something other than the surface? I took a deep breath.
"If goodness does exist, " he said, "then I'm the opposite of it. I'm evil and I revel in it. I thumb my nose at goodness. And if you must know, I don't play the violin for the idiots who come to Renaud's to make them happy. I play it for me, for Nicolas. " I didn't want to hear any more. It was time to go to bed. But I was bruised by this little talk and he knew it, and as I started to pull off my boots, he got up from the chair and came and sat next to me.
"I'm sorry, " he said in the most broken voice. It was so changed from the posture of a minute ago that I looked up at him, and he was so young and so miserable that I couldn't help putting my arm around him and telling him that he must not worry about it anymore.