our wigs and fine clothes, our black ruffled vampire dancing costumes, forming the old circle, singing with an actor's bravado the old chants.
"We should have done it on the boulevard," he said. "But here, send this on to my maker," and he put the violin in my hands. We began to dance, all of us, to induce the customary frenzy, and I think we were never more moved, never more in terror, never more sad. He went into the flames.
I know how this news will affect you. But understand we did all that we could to prevent what occurred. Our Oldest Friend was bitter and grieved. And I think you should know that when we returned to Paris, we discovered that N. had ordered the theater to be named officially the Theater of the Vampires and these words had already been painted on the front. As his best plays have always included vampires and werewolves and other such supernatural creatures, the public thinks the new title very amusing, and no one has moved to change it. It is merely clever in the Paris of these times.
Hours later when I finally went down the stairs into the street, I saw a pale and lovely ghost in the shadows -- image of the young French explorer in soiled white linen and brown leather boots, straw hat down over the eyes.
I knew who she was, of course, and that we had once loved each other, she and I, but it seemed for the moment to be something I could scarce remember, or truly believe.
I think I wanted to say something mean to her, to wound her and drive her away. But when she came up beside me and walked with me, I didn't say anything. I merely gave the letter to her so that we didn't have to talk. And she read it and put it away, and then she had her arm around me again the way she used to long ago, and we were walking together through the black streets.
Smell of death and cooking fires, of sand and camel dung. Egypt smell. Smell of a place that has been the same for six thousand years.
"What can I do for you, my darling?" she whispered. "Nothing," I said.
It was I who did it, I who seduced him, made him what he was, and left him there. It was I who subverted the path his life might have taken. And so in dark obscurity, removed from its human course, it comes to this.
Later she stood silent as I wrote my message to Marius on an ancient temple wall. I told about the end of Nicolas, the violinist of the Theater of the Vampires, and I carved my words deep as any ancient Egyptian craftsman might have done. Epitaph for Nicki, a milestone in oblivion, which none might ever read or understand.
It was strange to have her there. Strange to have her staying with me hour by hour.
"You won't go back to France, will you?" she asked me finally. "You won't go back on account of what he's done?"
"The hands?" I asked her. "The cutting off of the hands?"
She looked at me and her face smoothed out as if some shock had robbed it of expression. But she knew. She had read the letter. What shocked her? The way I said it perhaps.
"You thought I would go back to get revenge?"
She nodded uncertainly. She didn't want to put the idea in my head.
"How could I do that?" I said. "It would be hypocrisy, wouldn't it, when I left Nicolas there counting on them all to do whatever had to be done?"
The changes in her face were too subtle to describe. I didn't like to see her feel so much. It wasn't like her.
"The fact is, the little monster was trying to help when he did it, don't you think, when he cut off the hands. It must have been a lot of trouble to him, really, when he could have burnt up Nicki so easily without a backward glance."
She nodded, but she looked miserable, and as luck would have it, beautiful, too. "I rather thought so," she said. "But I didn't think you would agree."
"Oh, I'm monster enough to understand it," I said. "Do you remember what you told me years ago, before we ever left home? You said it the very day that he came up the mountain with the merchants to give me the red cloak. You said that his father was