you how much his appearance had shaken me. For when I bring death, it is swift and consciousless, leaving the victim as if in enchanted sleep. But this was the slow decay, the body refusing to surrender to the vampire of time which had sucked upon it for years on end.'Lestat,' he said.'Just for once, don't be hard with me. Just for once, be for me the boy you were. My son.' He said this over and over, the words, 'My son, my son'; and then he said something I could not hear about innocence and innocence destroyed. But I could see that he was not out of his mind, as Lestat thought, but in some terrible state of lucidity. The burden of the past Was on him with full force; and the present, which was only death, which he fought with all his will, could do nothing to soften that burden. But I knew I might deceive him if I used all my skill, and, bending close to him now, I whispered the word,'Father.' It was not Lestat's voice, it was mine, a soft whisper. But he calmed at once and T thought then he might die. But he held my hand as if he were being pulled under by dark ocean waves and I alone could save him. He talked now of some country teacher, a name garbled, who. found in Lestat a brilliant pupil and begged to take him to a monastery for an education. He cursed himself for bringing Lestat home, for burning his books.'You must forgive me, Lestat,' he cried.
"I pressed his hand tightly, hoping this might do for some answer, but he repeated this again.'You have it all to live for, but you are as cold and brutal as I was then with the work always there and the cold and hunger! Lestat, you must remember. You were the gentlest of them all! God will forgive me if you forgive me.'
"Well, at that moment, the real Esau came through the door. I gestured for quiet, but he wouldn't see that. So I had to get up quickly so the father wouldn't hear his voice from a distance. The slaves had run from him.'But they're out there, they're gathered in the dark. I hear them,' said Lestat. And then he glared at the old man.'Kill him, Louis!' he said to me, his voice touched with the first pleading I'd ever heard in it. Then he bit down in rage.'Do it!'
"'Lean over that pillow and tell him you forgive him all, forgive him for taking you out of school when you were a boy! Tell him that now.'
"'For what!' Lestat grimaced, so that his face looked like a skull.'Taking me out of school!' He threw up his hands and let out a terrible roar of desperation.'Damn him! Kill him!' he said.
"'Nor' I said.'You forgive him. Or you kill him yourself. Go on. Kill your own father.'
"The old man begged to be told what we were saying. He called out,'Son, son,' and Lestat danced like the maddened Rumpelstiltskin. about to put his foot through the moor. I went to the lace curtains. I could see and hear the slaves surrounding the house of Pointe du Lao, forms woven in the shadows, drawing near.'You were Joseph among your brothers,' the old man said.'The best of them, but how was I to know? It was when you were gone I knew, when all those years passed and they could offer me no comfort, no solace. And then you came back to me and took me from the farm, but it wasn't you. It wasn't the same boy.'
"I turned on Lestat now and veritably dragged him towards the bed. Never had I seen him so weak, and at the same time enraged. He shook me off and then knelt down near the pillow, glowering at me. I stood resolute, and whispered,'Forgive!'
"It's all right, Father. You must rest easy. I hold nothing against you," he said, his voice thin and strained over his anger.
"The old man turned on the pillow, murmuring something soft with relief, but Lestat was already gone. He stopped short in the doorway, his hands over his ears.'They're coming!' he whispered; and then, turning just so he could see me, he said,'Take him. For God's sake'
"The old man never even knew what happened. He never awoke from his stupor. I bled him just enough, opening the gash so he would then die without feeding my dark passion. That