Chapter 21 Always think by My own
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 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.
"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 floor- length 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 most overwhelming experience I'd ever had. Your cigarette has become one
long cylindrical ash."