The End.
I see you now, Lestat. See you clear as day, for once your words and his were to finally be translated to ones I might be able to read, I drank them, to find they tasted both as wine had once done, and as it does now; from being a salvation, to becoming ash.
I was a better author than you, a better liar, however much you laid claim to the title ‘actor’, but these words are not of fiction. You’ll laugh, yes, as it is your nature to do so, but having read your words, your Louis’ words, and even those of Our Oldest ‘Friend’, I’ve decided it’s to be my turn. To laugh. For how funny it is, truly, that I might finally spill truths — though, as an author, how aesthetically good they may be is to yet be decided. Truths were, as you well know, not my forte.
Your Louis had insisted upon beginning at the beginning. In many senses, you were that beginning, and since it is you I have tried, these centuries, to deviate from? To begin at the beginning? This, I cannot do.
Instead, I shall begin at ‘The End’.
As flames scorched my skin, I laughed.
Armand spoke to Louis of ‘eras’ — how, after our era was done, so were we. That without that for which we stayed to spur us on wards, we too would fall waste to time. Perhaps he said this with thoughts of myself in-mind, but unlike you, Lestat, I shall not flatter myself by counting upon it.
I did not die because I depended upon you. Rather, I did not die at all, but I did not burn with the loss of you plaguing my mind. True that, to the surprise of many now knowing you as they do, you were once a break through the darkness cast by black clouds that I had needed. You were once a necessity. A light which, without, I would have fallen to peril had it not been for so much more.
To put it simply, without you as my ‘light’ (for you stopped being such before you left, if we’re both to be brutally honest), I sought a new flame. This, I had been Hell bent upon finding it in your words. Our Conversations, if you will. As you, to read your book, clearly did also.
I will answer it now, plainly and simply; you’d been so self-assured that no one else would burn in the name of God.
And then you took on He; stood before the footlights, danced as a demon with the elation of a messiah, arms outstretched, and for a moment I convinced myself that, were the Devil to exist, that you (not me, I assure you) believed him to do so in you. You, whom believed yourself to be a God as clearly as I believed myself a monster.
I soon had it proved to me that the Devil existed.
I would burn, as you said no one would, in the name of your God — you —, and in the name of your Devil — again, you —. Burn, but not die.
You may ask how I lived, and I shall answer you simply again — will.
Stubborn will, against all else. Not myself, for I’d never managed such a retaliation against my own person. I was never self-assured as you were, and so it may be difficult for you to comprehend. Instead, I was lacking such confidence of self, instead simply being selfish. It is with that I lived, acting in ‘death’ as I did in life; with defiance. Defy father, defy God, defy Armand, and finally — with a grin upon my lips —, defy Lestat.
‘O thou weed, who art so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet that the senses aches at thee———’
You’ll surely remember those words, which when you had yet learnt to read I had driven into you, repeated them to you so that you might learn them, but also that you might hear them in my tone all the same.
How I hated you, even then, and yet loved you, as a moth might be ravaged by its most coveted flame — longing to touch, yet knowing you might be my end — but what an end it would be!
Alas, I was never to gift myself such, nor were you, and so having burnt sufficiently that I might say I had rebelled against you and your ignorant talk of burning in God’s name, my will to rebel against Our Oldest ‘Friend’, Armand, the fiend, was to be set into motion. With that in mind, I hid away once more, in the depths of none other than Les Innocents, for where else was there?
Our Oldest Fiend knew, of course, as was the design — for what point would there be in the exercise if he were to remain ignorant? No. I was to show myself to him one last time, sat waiting in the pews of Notre Dame, a figure of silent disruption amongst the peace of such a place, where I was such without needing to move an inch.
Covered, of course, by the greyest of cloaks, for in my burnt state I would be a vision of terror, truly the disruption the surrounding peoples were unable to yet be aware of, he located me almost immediately, when I wished him to — though of him, Our Oldest Fiend, I expected no less.
‘Why?’
He’d sat almost beside me, though we were each fenced by a human between us, a woman whose head looked to be forward in prayer, though we each knew her head was to never rise again, and whatever prayers she’d once made would now remain, to her, unanswered.
I’d told her I’d lost my wife, child, and my appearance of humanity in recent blaze. That I, once a skeptic, had come to God for answers, and she, even seeing my charred face, comforted me in the darkness there. Held my hand. Only winced when I’d raised her wrist to my lips so as to press to it my obliged and indebted kiss———
‘Did you expect me to remain with you in his place, Armand?’
Our voices were nearly silent. To my left, we could each hear the words of a man in the nearest confession booth, speaking of how he’d stolen bread, and how the shop owner, seeing his stock so suddenly dwindled, had instead accused a beggar woman and her child instead. Both were to be condemned by law for his crime, whilst the only judgement he would receive was God’s.
‘I expected nothing.’ Our Oldest Fiend’s words were said so plainly that they reeked of bitterness. ‘And you intend to what? Remain in Paris when—’
‘—I shall not be remaining in Paris,’ I responded, too weak still to offer any real intonation to my words. They too remained plain, unembellished.
‘Then where?’ He perhaps scoffed, though only ever in his own way, as you’ll likely recall. ‘If you mean to follow—’
‘—I stopped needing him when you started.’ To draw a line to such a point? My statement was only almost the truth. But, then, I lied so often those days. ‘So tell me not where he is; I don’t care. I shan’t be crossing into the New World any moment soon.’ To our kind, of course, ‘soon’ might remain an eternity. ‘…Take me back, if you must, for we two both know I’m too weak to resist, but we two also both know I’m more trouble than what I’m worth.’
He had then looked, for a moment, as if he might challenge my words, and at that I must confess my impatience. Instead, however, he asked, ‘What do you hope to find?’
‘An era. A new one. And if I’m not to manage, then so be it.’
He nodded, as if he perhaps respected that, but to me the expression was a foreign one, and so my guess was as good as any. ‘And where shall you go?’
‘Don’t pretend to care now, Monsieur — be it for me, or for anyone else. I go wherever my horse will carry me, which you shall, by and by, return, as you shall my coffin. And, of course, my violin.’
Though it surely shouldn’t have, the last request seemed to surprise him, which was in turn to shock myself, each of us — though mine marred by skin and flesh that resembled nothing less than the hot grounds of an active volcano; lava muscle, sinew, and tendons, beneath a surface of ashen rock — wearing matching expressions of affrontation until, finally, he was to admit—
‘Your Lestat has the instrument.’
And at that, I’d been close to striking him, not caring of the current setting, nor that he as vastly more powerful than I, nor that in doing so my other companion would fall to the floor between the pews and reveal to all her state.
As I have said, I cared little for these things.
‘And the other? The first?’ My voice rose, insistent above the place’s silence.
‘Where you left it.’
With that, I gave a sigh of relief. ‘Have Eleni bring them to me tomorrow night, back to your old abode of Les Innocents. Come also, if you must, but I want nothing of the others. Tell them nothing.’
I’d always loved issuing Armand commands, simply because I knew how (like I) he loathed to follow them, particularly from those he deemed his inferior (unlike I, for it was my so-called superiors I held my vendettas against), and particularly when he had little choice in the matter. More paper, for example, had been one to kill him, despite its simplicity, and to have him grit his teeth, for it was a command he couldn’t deny me when its effect was one of the few I was good for.
Adequate, rather. I wasn’t good. Not from a moral standard. As anything, merely aesthetic.
‘Do you agree to my terms?’
‘How are we to know if you meet your end?’
I’d underestimated, until then, how much I’d desired to leave the Hell of Paris, even if only for a short time, for a new one.
‘You wish to know? Armand, even to me this comes as a surprise.’ You must understand that, after everything, nothing he did surprised me.
He said nothing. Instead, he sat, and were it not for his auburn hair, one might have mistaken him for one of the sexless angels that flanked the altar, so statue-esque was he.
‘I need your trust. To know you shan’t creep on behind me in the shadows, in such a way I know you to be liable to.’ I mused aloud, for I was and remain too stubborn to die by any hand which isn’t attached to my own wrist — for a time, that discounted even my own. In the state I was in, however, I had to consider the risks. ‘And you need my art, if only to sustain the others, to retain order. And so, when the art stops, so shall my heart.’
Armand expressed neither scorn nor any particular gratitude, though he did nod, a slow movement even for a human, before that half-smile of his tugged itself into place. ‘And what of my heart, Nicolas?’
At that, I laughed, the harsh sound piercing the space, echoing back, though perhaps thankfully not loud enough to disturb more than a handful of mortals.
‘My friend,’ I started, rising unsteadily to my feet, leaning my weight upon the pews in front. ‘If our acquaintance has taught me anything, it is that you don’t have one.’
It occurred to me, during my nine-year stay in Paris with the troupe, that you know little of me, Lestat, and surely now know less. For a time? That suited me. I reveled in it, that you knew couldn’t claim such knowledge, for being selfish I rather enjoy keeping such things close to me. Now, however, my mind has changed.
I remember Our Conversations perhaps as differently as you remember your time with me in Paris, as differently as you recall your time with your Louis — whom, by the way, I’m tempted to martyr for merely managing to spend such long years with you; clearly, o thou weed, I hadn’t his patience.
And to patiently put up with Armand, whose company was perhaps one of the worst tortures I’ve suffered? He’s clearly far more strength also. With him blatantly as my superior replacement, I should loathe him, but I assure you, I do not. Were I to meet him, I’d shake his hand if he would allow it.
Unlike all new aspects of your life, however, this is not about your Louis. Finally, it is about myself, particularly the times that don’t concern you. Still, so you might understand (for however much you might have tried to claim that you did, you cannot), I must start with Our Conversations. Or, rather, remind you of them. Retell them to you now my mind is clear of wine. Confess to that I neglected to elaborate upon.
I entered Paris, for the first time, wide-eyed, and left it cynical, this being how I shall put it plainly and simply. I entered it absolutist, and left it without a single direction. I entered it as a Haven, and by the time I left, it was Pandaemonium, whilst all else around it was the greater expanse of Hell itself.
When there are beasts such as you and I, there is surely no claiming my verdict incorrect.
Like all students of the era, I had lived comfortably; whilst you and your brothers huddled for warmth in the winters, my student friends and I laughed with our lips to fresh brews, munching on foods from far off places we might actually one day venture ourselves, so sure of each other were we.
The conversations we students had were not Ours — they were everyone’s. Talks of politics, science, religion, and revolution. For our group, ever-expanding as it was, there was never a Golden Moment, and we never desired one. Arguments were the basis of our friendships, were how we might learn, and we’d frown at those friends who were such out of necessity rather than desire.
I argued for religion, I argued for monarchy. Though less than a handful did the same, that was then fine — I didn’t want kindred spirits, and I didn’t need them. Want felt so much more preferable to need, however much of a sin it was to covet. We all sinned, and we each enjoyed it, all daring each other a little further, for however much we might claim to love our fellow ‘citizens’ (I plainly less than them, for I would call them sinners also when I saw fit, for Paris, being Pandaemonium, was clearly a world of sinners), we each loved our pride more.
I might go to confession several times a week. One by one, the priests throughout Paris would know me by name, eventually by step, though my sins were for months the forgivable kind, even by my God’s standards. The absolvable, even when repeated. The ‘Hail Mary’s would not yet lose their meaning.
‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’
The priest would sigh, for he’d heard my tone, the accent of Southern France in the thick consonants that I would spiel, but nonetheless he would maintain my promised anonymity, and I his — for I, often arriving for confession just prior to the church doors closing, knew something of his own nightly ventures.
‘Speak, Nicolas, my Son—’ I would smile quite warmly at such words, already knowing my own father would not state them to me in such a kindly manner again. ‘—and God shall hear you, see your heart, and exercise his unrivaled capacity to forgive.’
Clearly, the priest did not know my God very well. I recall smiling at such a fact, despite myself.
‘Last night, Father,’ I would start, my following words a surprise even to the priest I, at this stage, knew quite well. ‘I laid with another man’s wife, though I did not covet her as she did I. Confessing this to a friend in the early hours of this morning, a fellow student, I too laid with him as a result, though I didn’t covet him either.’
My priest was, for a moment, silent.
At this stage, I was not yet twenty, though already becoming the walking contradiction you met, as so many Parisians were at such a time, and as so many Parisians now remain.
‘My Son, acts committed against us, against our will—’
‘I was neither forced nor coerced, Father. On the contrary, I to some degree encouraged it, if my biology was anything to go by, which I now know it is—’ I had, of course, lived quite a sheltered life up until my induction into the hedonistic lifestyle of a true Parisian.
‘—My Son, you may spare me the vulgarities.’
‘What I mean is, Father…’ I did not apologize, but instead scowled as if in intense concentration. ‘I sinned not for the acts themselves, nor for the individuals — I might have picked anyone, any woman and any man, had they not so bafflingly coveted me first, before any other…’ Even then, I was profoundly unaware of how my aesthetic might possibly appeal. ‘For despite them being my firsts, I did it not for them, nor really for myself. As I have said, I neither loathed the act, nor loved it — I merely didn’t care, and I think that to some degree, Father… I perhaps sinned for the sake of sinning.’
Had I not wept, he’d have perhaps claimed me a devil, or at least possessed by one, so out of sorts were my words. So filled with gravitas in such an age… a sinner whom sinned merely intending to sin. He might have thrown me from the church, were he one of the many cruel priests I’d come across in my time. But he was not, and that there fact was something I despised.
‘My Son,’ he would say, voice soothing. I didn’t wish to be soothed! ‘My Son, that you weep clearly shows that you regret, that you repent, and if I see this clearly through a screen as I do, God saw it soon as you stepped into the vestibule.’
‘Stupid,’ I muttered, sobs now dry heaves, and as such the priest thought I was speaking of myself.
‘The Devil will implant such thoughts, my Son, as is his way.’
No, you oaf! You imbecile, you buffoon!
‘Stupid,’ I repeated again, despite knowing they would not be received with the ill-will I set the words with. The fleur-de-lis holes in the board that separated us seemed to act as a sieve, malice stubbornly remaining with me, hot enough to burn.
You never saw me weep, Lestat. Not like this, not even in our room in the inn, but I wept then, to such a degree that in my state, I endeavored to leave swiftly, so that God — or, at least, my priest’s God — had not the chance to issue through him any more words of forgiveness.
Doubtless, the three of you and the countless other vampires who too have followed the trend set by your Louis of putting your tales to paper… doubtless, they used artistic license. And, indeed, this shall reek of the stuff, but I swear by my God (love him or loathe him) that I use none.
That was the night I met my own Lenore.
I maintain my theory that when we fall in-love easily, and we fall in-love hard, we do so in moments of weakness; Romeo was weak, for his love for Rosaline rendered him so, hence how he fell for Juliet. You were weak with your isolation, hence how you fell for me as you did. The greatest loves begin with the most terrible weaknesses.
I have always been weak, but never so much as I had been then. And I’ve always fallen from such heights, and upon hearing the violin sing, my decrescendo was to be the longest fall of all.
All of this, I knew you could never empathize with, and never understand. You who believed you might only ever be reprimanded by your father, if that. Me? I had so many to contend with.
I found myself, then, wishing quite dearly that I didn’t have a brother. Already, I’d come to the conclusion that inevitably I would be disowned, as we both were, and though I wanted that fall into oblivion, the fact that it could be offered to me so easily and without so much consequence for anyone else… that my duty could so easily be handed to another… It was both a blessing and a curse. My sisters, they would live, they would each have one to hand them on, find them a husband, and finally become another’s responsibility.
I had loved my sisters, this you must understand; Aurore and Cendrillon, the twins whom had nearly killed my mother to bear, as different and as similar as smoke and steam. My parents too, despite how they came into this world, had loved them also, though perhaps in a similar way as they had myself --- as if their existence too was some form of punishment, to show that they ought to repent.
And then there was Florian; my brother, so much younger than myself and my sisters, barely yet ten upon my leaving Auvergne for good. Her miracle, my mother would fondly refer to him as, for after such trials with my sisters no doctor nor priest ever thought my mother would bear another child again. They were wrong, and upon the birth of their second son, my mother and father both rejoiced. Their miracle.
I don’t want to write to Lestat anymore. I don’t want to write for anyone. I don’t write to be read, just like I never played to be listened; I write for me. I play for me.
And that is, to some degree, how I survived, at least at first. That is the answer to questions that I know are to be repeatedly asked. Now? To go back, and answer any questions that might remain on how I lived.
Evading the queue that had formed under the chestnut trees, all tales of Lestat’s return had spread and borne Renard’s theatre a brand new reputation, enabling it to be noticed and credited as the place that showcased the impossible, I would of course, avoid the place like the plague. Not yet a vampire, their existence not yet even occurring to me, I remained quite ignorant, though certainly in no state of bliss.
He lied to me. He who cried at the witches’ place, as if it were mere morality! As if he merely pitied the innocent, when after all I’d saw him do I knew then that tales of witches and the likes were not mere fantasy! My mother, then, must have been right; powers did pollute this Earth that were not of God, evil did exist, and it was supposed to be our duty to rid the world of it. The priests, who had rebuked the old accounts, who said there were in reality no real witches--- fools! For I’d seen Lestat dance upon the stage, had seen him fly, had seen a bullet pass through his chest and leave not a mark but for the blood that stained his coat! He had killed the wolves! All eight of them had been slain upon the mountain, an impossible feat for any man alone, let alone one Lestat’s stature--- and upon my asking about it, he’d grown so agitated!
These were the years of Enlightenment, and how I’d been so blinded by it, and by him! Tales of vampires were as scoffed at as those of witches, and those of werewolves, and what relevance had vampires to us then? When had we ever spoken of them?
No, I was quite convinced --- quite mad, even, both in terms of psychology and temperament --- he was a witch. Never had I yet seen him drink a drop of blood, never had I yet seen those fangs properly. All I could see was the wool he had cast over my eyes, but at least I was aware of such a blindfold now; how could he not tell me? I had never to Lestat conveyed any doubt or belief in the existence of witches, I would not cast him aside and call him deranged, as he did so with me now!
He would not see me; instead, he dubbed me a madman, and though that might there have been accurate and remains so, I was not wholly incorrect. This he knew!
On my way to nowhere in particular, I would pass on by Place de Grève, and as one always would, I happened upon yet another public execution. Usually, I had tried to avoid them. Had always pulled Lestat away, for they were foul things, more so due to the crowds they would gather than the executions themselves --- great throngs of them, all staring up at the pillory for up to two hours, mouths agape, jeering, wincing, cheering, the whole lot of them--- I had no intention to be part of such a crowd, one which had gathered there upon the gravel for centuries before then, and even another thereafter --- for I, surely, had committed worse crimes than those so often strung upon those gallows. And what did they know of good and evil? It was then that I too would question --- what did anyone know of goodness?
Lestat had proved to me what he had once tried to deny, what he had surely lied to me about --- there were things beyond mankind that this society, under the veil cast by secularisation, was too blind to see, as I had been! But I had been right --- it was wrong to cast aside the old beliefs, rather than adapt them; mankind needed God on their side, even if it was too late for me. And good! My penance, then, for believing modern atheistic lies!
Taking a long series of gulps from my bottle, the wine bought with Lestat’s gifted money so that, if I did indeed drink myself to death, as I had so planned, the fault would be his. He who had shown me, after the months of abandonment and deception, something I hadn’t thought him capable; Lord of Lies also, rather than simply of Light. I thought the first title had been my own. And how I, already, loathed him for it!
To call me mad, rather than to come to me? To confirm my correct suspicions, deny my wrong ones, elaborate on those incomplete--- it was this I needed! For him to speak to me, for I was not crazed as he stated and spread, as he allowed all others to believe--- He would see me transported back to Auvergne, to Italy, and then what? When that didn’t work? To the madhouses? And who there already and unjustly wasted away as I would do so, correct in our claims of your evil? Of any others of your kind? But I would not be silenced --- for always, I was the stubborn one, and if Lestat would not see me, then so be it; allow my fate to be on his conscience.
Why was I not stood there amongst them, upon the pillories --- I had always evaded capture, evaded prosecution for a great many incidents, yes, but it was the night after Lestat’s reappearance at Renard’s theatre that I decided no such precautions would be made. Before, I had done it all merely to sin, merely to rebel, rather than any desire to be caught, and yet now? Let them find me, let them beat me to a bloody pulp as La Voisin had been before Louis the Sun King, and let Lestat stand-by and watch, knowing it was his fault, and that he too should stand there with me.
Around the square I would look, tongue licking savagely chewed lips, bitten by not only myself but also the cold. One might imagine the winter months would ensure those within Place de Grève were scarce, but no --- the homes of these people were likely as warm as the streets outside, and for them this was the little entertainment they had --- to see yet another man, woman, or child tortured or killed before them.
This was the Paris I had told Lestat of, in the inn; grand but not beautiful; narrow and foul-smelling streets; cramped with beggars and whores, heads still shaved from their time in La Salpêtrière, where they would doubtless return --- and at least there they would be fed.
Another drink from the bottle, the last drop the most bitter of all upon my tongue, before I cast it aside, glass smashing upon the pavement. Oh, but the mess would make no difference but to perhaps cut a beggar’s feet, but at such a point, I didn’t care. It was somewhat debateable as to whether I would have done so before or not, but now without the alcohol to at least keep myself somewhat distracted from those scattered around the outskirts of Place de Grève, yet my inhibitions undoubtedly dulled--- well, truth be told, I would have likely done what I did without the liquid in my system.
I knew where I might find one of them them, back turned against the street, pissing upon the walls of the Châtelet. It stank there, of course, for it was here a number of groups would tan leather, heaving the hides into pits of lime, bating them with dog manure and human urine, and then scraping off the fat and hair, all which would likely end up dumped in the Seine.
Kicking away the stray mongrel that crossed my path, nose wrinkled against the air, I would remain there for perhaps half an hour, lingering in the stench of it all. Before, I would have held a handkerchief against my face if ever I ventured anywhere, but now I pressed on, fighting stubbornly against my environment, until finally, after exchanging a glance with a nearby dandy whom stood-out almost as clearly as I did.
Upon him leaving, making his mark and advertising himself upon the limestone, he would leave the square, and after a moment, I would follow on behind him through the alleys, almost choking upon the fumes, before finally happening upon somewhat fresher air.
I knew the routine already; one had to prove one wasn’t one of the Mouches planted by the police, posing upon the streets so as to catch those guilty of sodomy, coming as close to the act itself as possible before they could secure a conviction. But we’d adapted --- mutual exposure was now something of a necessity, were one to expect anything of the other, therefore any potential police were implicated whilst attempting to get their quarry. I wouldn’t have cared, however, if he were a member of the Garde. Still, I had my aim and he had his, resulting in the two of us standing face-to-face, unbuckling our breeches in the semi-darkness
With him being younger than myself, shorter, and of a slighter figure, it was clear there would be little deviation from the position I’d grown so used to with Lestat, something of a comfort --- how funny that the concept of death didn’t frighten me in the slightest, and yet the very prospect of being emasculated would have sent me back to Châtelet! Even after drinking an entire bottle of wine!
I wouldn’t have cared had we remained in the alley, amongst the shit cast from the windows above, but apparently being one with standards, my new friend would lead me elsewhere, turning through streets I would make no note of, all as filthy as the last, until finally we reached the sound of laughter. Quiet at first, yes, for it was behind closed doors and paned windows, a well-cared for establishment amongst rubble and grime, at the sight of which I would take out some of Lestat’s coin. As expected, every occupant of the Molly House was male, a great number of them older than myself and my newfound companion --- in fact, bar one or two, we were to clearly be the youngest there, and I’d have to rely upon my height to surpass the lot of them if I were not to spend the evening with my exhibitionist.
