Chapter 28 The way You look
"I objected to this at once. 'My vampire nature has been for me the greatest adventure of my life; ail that went before it was confused, clouded; I went through mortal life like a blind man groping from solid object to solid object. It was only when I became a vampire that I respected for the first time all of life. I never saw a living, pulsing human being until I was a vampire; I never knew what life was until it ran out in a red gush over my lips, my hands!' I found myself staring at the two women, . the darker one now turning a terrible shade of blue. The blonde was breathing. \`She's not dead!' I said to him suddenly.
"'I know. Let her alone,' he said. He lifted her wrist and made a new gash by the scab of the other and filled his glass. \`All that you say makes sense,' he said to me, taking a drink. \`You are an intellect. I've never been. What I've learned I've learned from listening to men talk, not from books. I never went to school long enough. But I'm not stupid, and you must listen to me because you are in danger. You do not know your vampire nature. You are like an adult who, looking back on his childhood, realizes that he never appreciated it. You cannot, as a man, go back to the nursery and play with your toys, asking for the love and care to be showered on you again simply because now you know their worth. So it is with you and mortal nature. You've given it up. You no longer look "through a glass darkly." But you cannot pass back to the world of human warmth with your new eyes'
" \`I know that well enough!' I said. \`But what is it that is our nature! If I can live from the blood of animals, why should I not live from the blood of animals rather than go through the world bringing misery and death to human creatures!'
" \`Does it bring you happiness?' he asked. \`You wander through the night, feeding on rats like a pauper and then moon at Babette's window, filled with care, yet helpless as the goddess who came by night to watch Endymion sleep and could not have him.
And suppose you could hold her in your arms and she would look on you without horror or disgust, what then? A few short years to watch her suffer every prick of mortality and then die before your eyes? Does this give happiness? This is insanity, Louis. This is vain. And what truly lies before you is vampire nature, which is killing. For I guarantee you that if you walk the streets tonight and strike down a woman as rich and beautiful as Babbette and suck her blood until she drops at your feet you will have no hunger left for Babette's profile in the candlelight or for listening by the window for the sound of her voice.
You will be filled, Louis, as you were meant to be, with all the life that you can hold; and you will have hunger when that's gone for the same, and the same, and the same. The red in this glass will be just as red; the roses on the wallpaper just as delicately drawn. And you'll see the moon the same way, and the same the flicker of a candle. And with that same sensibility that you cherish you will see death in all its beauty, life as it is only known on the very point of death.
Don't you understand that, Louis? You alone of all creatures can see death that way with impunity. You . . . alone . . . under the rising moon . . . can strike like the hand of God!'
"He sat back now and drained the glass, and his eyes moved over the unconscious woman. Her breasts heaved and her eyebrows knit as if she were coming around: A
moan escaped her lips. He'd never spoken such words to me before, and I had not thought him capable of it. \`Vampires are killers,' he said now. \`Predators. Whose all- seeing eyes were meant to give them detachment. The ability to see a human life in its entirety, not with any mawkish sorrow but with a thrilling satisfaction in being the end of that life, in having a hand in the divine plan.'
" \`That is how you see it!' I protested. The girl moaned again; her face was very white. Her head rolled against the back of the chair.
" \`That is the way it is,' he answered. \`You talk of finding other vampires! Vampires are killers! They don't want you or your sensibility) They'll see you coming long before you see them, and they'll see your flaw; and, distrusting you, they'll seek to kill you. They'd seek to kill you even if you were like me. Because they are lone predators and seek for companionship no more than cats in the jungle. They're jealous of their secret and of their territory; and if you find one or more of them together it will be for safety only, and one will be the slave of the other, the way you are of me.'
" \`I'm not your slave,' I said to him. But even as he spoke I realized I'd been his slave all along.
" \`That's how vampires increase . . . through slavery. How else?" he asked. He took the girl's wrist again, and she cried out as the knife cut. She opened her eyes slowly as he held her wrist over the glass. She blinked and strained to keep them open. It was as if a veil covered her eyes. \`You're tired, aren't you?' he asked her. She gazed at him as if she couldn't really see him. \`Tired!' he said, now leaning close and staring into her eyes.