did not overwhelm me, did not actually visit me, did not make of me the wracked and desperate creature I might have expected to become. Perhaps it was not possible to sustain the torment I’d experienced when I saw Claudia’s burnt remains. Perhaps it was not possible to know that and exist over any period of time. I wondered vaguely, as the hours passed, as the smoke of the cafe grew thicker and the faded curtain of the little lamplit stage rose and fell, and robust women sang there, the light glittering on their paste jewels, their rich, soft voices often plaintive, exquisitely sad—I wondered vaguely what it would be to feel this loss, this outrage, and be justified in it, be deserving of sympathy, of solace. I would not have told my woe to a living creature. My own tears meant nothing to me.
“Where to go then, if not to die? It was strange how the answer came to me. Strange how I wandered out of the cafe then, circling the ruined theater, wandering finally towards the broad Avenue Napoléon and following it towards the palace of the Louvre. It was as if that place called to me, and yet I had never been inside its walls. I’d passed its long façade a thousand times, wishing that I could live as a mortal man for one day to move through those many rooms and see those many magnificent paintings. I was bent on it now, possessed only of some vague notion that in works of art I could find some solace while bringing nothing of death to what was inanimate and yet magnificently possessed of the spirit of life itself.
“Somewhere along the Avenue Napoleon, I heard the step behind me which I knew to be Armand’s. He was signalling, letting me know that he was near. Yet I did nothing other than slow my pace and let him fall into step with me, and for a long while we walked, saying nothing. I dared not look at him. Of course, I’d been thinking of him all the while, and how if we were men and Claudia had been my love I might have fallen helpless in his arms finally, the need to share some common grief so strong, so consuming. The dam threatened to break now; and yet it did not break. I was numbed and I walked as one numbed.
“ ‘You know what I’ve done,’ I said finally. We had turned off the avenue and I could see ahead of me the long row of double columns on the façade of the Royal Museum. ‘You removed your coffin as I warned you.…’
“ ‘Yes,’ he answered. There was a sudden, unmistakable comfort in the sound of his voice. It weakened me. But I was simply too remote from pain, too tired.
“ ‘And yet you are here with me now. Do you mean to avenge them?’
“ ‘No,’ he said.
“ ‘They were your fellows, you were their leader,’ I said. ‘Yet you didn’t warn them I was out for them, as I warned you?’
“ ‘No,’ he said.
“ ‘But surely you despise me for it. Surely you respect some rule, some allegiance to your own kind.’
“ ‘No,’ he said softly.
“It was amazing to me how logical his response was, even though I couldn’t explain it or understand it.
“And something came clear to me out of the remote regions of my own relentless considerations. ‘There were guards; there were those ushers who slept in the theater. Why weren’t they there when I entered? Why weren’t they there to protect the sleeping vampires?’
“ ‘Because they were in my employ and I discharged them. I sent them away,’ Armand said.
“I stopped. He showed no concern at my facing him, and as soon as our eyes met I wished the world were not one black empty ruin of ashes and death. I wished it were fresh and beautiful, and that we were both living and had love to give each other. ‘You did this, knowing what I planned to do?’
“ ‘Yes,’ he said.
“ ‘But you were their leader! They trusted you. They believed in you. They lived with you!’ I said. ‘I don’t understand you…why…?’
“ ‘Think of any answer you like,’ he said calmly and sensitively, as if he didn’t wish to bruise me with any accusation or disdain, but wanted me merely to consider this literally. ‘I can think of many. Think of the one you need and believe it. It’s as likely as any other. I shall give you the real reason for what I did,