on as manager with enough capital to stage larger and more wondrous spectacles than he’d ever before attempted. With my money and his cleverness, we could make the house the talk of Paris.
I didn’t answer right away. It took me more than a moment to realize that I could own the theater just like that. Own it like the gems in the chest, or the clothes I wore, or the dollhouse I’d sent to my nieces. I said no, and went out slamming the door.
Then I came right back.
“All right, buy the theater,” I said, “and give him ten thousand crowns to do whatever he wants.” This was a fortune. And I didn’t even know why I had done this.
This pain will pass, I thought, it has to. And I must gain some control over my thoughts, realize that these things cannot affect me.
After all, where did I spend my time now? At the grandest theaters in Paris. I had the finest seats for the ballet and the opera, for the dramas of Molière and Racine. I was hanging about before the footlights gazing up at the great actors and actresses. I had suits made in every color of the rainbow, jewels on my fingers, wigs in the latest fashion, shoes with diamond buckles as well as gold heels.
And I had eternity to be drunk on the poetry I was hearing, drunk on the singing and the sweep of the dancer’s arms, drunk on the organ throbbing in the great cavern of Notre Dame and drunk on the chimes that counted out the hours to me, drunk on the snow falling soundlessly on the empty gardens of the Tuileries.
And each night I was becoming less wary among mortals, more at ease with them.
Not even a month had passed before I got up the courage to plunge right into a crowded ball at the Palais Royal. I was warm and ruddy from the kill and at once I joined the dance. I didn’t arouse the slightest suspicion. Rather the women seemed drawn to me, and I loved the touch of their hot fingers and the soft crush of their arms and their breasts.
After that, I bore right into the early evening crowds in the boulevards. Rushing past Renaud’s, I squeezed into the other houses to see the puppet shows, the mimes, and the acrobats. I didn’t flee from street lamps anymore. I went into cafés and bought coffee just to feel the warmth of it against my fingers, and I spoke to men when I chose.
I even argued with them about the state of the monarchy, and I went madly into mastering billiards and card games, and it seemed to me I might go right into the House of Thesbians if I wanted to, buy a ticket, and slip up into the balcony and see what was going on. See Nicolas!
Well, I didn’t do that. What was I dreaming of to go near to Nicki? It was one thing to fool strangers, men and women who’d never known me, but what would Nicolas see if he looked into my eyes? What would he see when he looked at my skin? Besides I had too much to do, I told myself.
I was learning more and more about my nature and my powers.
MY HAIR, for example, was lighter, yet thicker, and grew not at all. Nor did my fingernails and toenails, which had a greater luster, though if I filed them away, they would regenerate during the day to the length they had been when I died. And though people couldn’t discern such secrets on inspection, they sensed other things, an unnatural gleam to my eyes, too many reflected colors in them, and a faint luminescence to my skin.
When I was hungry this luminescence was very marked. All the more reason to feed.
And I was learning that I could put people in thrall if I stared at them too hard, and my voice required very strict modulation. I might speak too low for mortal hearing, and were I to shout or laugh too loud, I could shatter another’s ears. I could hurt my own ears.
There were other difficulties: my movements. I tended to walk, to run, to dance, and to smile and gesture like a human being, but if surprised, horrified, grieved, my body could bend and contort like that of an acrobat.
Even my facial expressions could be wildly exaggerated. Once forgetting myself as I walked in the boulevard du Temple, thinking of