“Armand's story seemed an ocean in which I might drown. This was worse than the blasted shore in Nicki's mind. This was for three centuries, this darkness, this nothingness. The radiant auburn (we can say raven*)-haired child by the fire could open his mouth again and out would come blackness like ink to cover the world.”
The first improvisation is for Nicolas, the second Armand.
Sometimes I think about Armand in relation to Nicolas.
I think they both know despair in a similar way.
Armand would say he knows it more deeply, as he’s existed with it for half a millennia. Nicolas would say he knows it more honestly.
The difference, as I see it, is that Nicolas looks into the abyss and sees pure, unrelenting truth: chaos, evil. Nicolas lets the lie of God go, but he cannot let the Devil go.
But Armand cannot relinquish the hope for meaning. He lets the Devil go, but he cannot let God go. He would survive eternity, for proof of God’s will. Centuries of keeping the tiny flame of the possible-God alive: a horror that’s softer than Nicolas's despair, yet, perhaps as dreadful.
Nicolas cannot tolerate illusion. Once he perceives the world as fractured, cruel, and fundamentally indifferent, he refuses any consolation that is not absolutely true. Nicolas’ despair admits no appeal, no reprieve, no future revelation. It cannot be unknown, or softened. There’s fierce, fatal, merciless integrity to it: a noble doom.
And, if there's no God and no meaning, Nicolas is correct and Armand is deluded. But Armand's delusion keeps him alive.
Nicolas recreates The Witches' Place for his death: the place where he first understood that evil exists, real and senseless. He walks deliberately into that truth.
And I know Armand envies that ability to end. To be consumed rather than endure.
I wonder whether S3 will go here? I hope so. Assad and Joe can show us, I know.
And which of them is The Devil’s Child: Armand, the ancient child who cannot stop believing? Or Nicolas: the child cut down so young, his eyes too clear, who cannot believe anymore?
(*) I don’t imagine book characters as their TV selves, except Armand. I see Assad’s Armand, or close to him, wherever I read or imagine Armand now.
