The tale of the body thief - By Anne Rice Page 0,123

believes in us. And that’s how it’s meant to be. Perhaps we are to die of despair, to vanish from the world very slowly, and without a sound.

“Only I can’t bear it. I can’t bear to be quiet and be nothing, and to take life with pleasure, and to see the creations and accomplishments of mortals all around me, and not to be part of them, but to be Cain. The lonely Cain. That’s the world to me, you see—what mortals do and have done. It isn’t the great natural world at all. If it was the natural world, then maybe I would have had a better time of it being immortal than I did. It’s the accomplishments of mortals. The paintings of Rembrandt, the memorials of the capital city in the snow, great cathedrals. And we are cut off eternally from such things, and rightfully so, and yet we see them with our vampire eyes.”

“Why did you change bodies with a mortal man?” she asked.

“To walk in the sun again for one day. To think and feel and breathe like a mortal. Maybe to test a belief.”

“What was the belief?”

“That being mortal again was what we all wanted, that we were sorry that we’d given it up, that immortality wasn’t worth the loss of our human souls. But I know now I was wrong.”

I thought of Claudia suddenly. I thought of my fever dreams. A leaden stillness came over me. When I spoke again, it was a quiet act of will.

“I’d much rather be a vampire,” I said. “I don’t like being mortal. I don’t like being weak, or sick, or fragile, or feeling pain. It’s perfectly awful. I want my body back as soon as I can get it from that thief.”

She seemed mildly shocked by this. “Even though you kill when you are in your other body, even though you drink human blood, and you hate it and you hate yourself.”

“I don’t hate it. And I don’t hate myself. Don’t you see? That’s the contradiction. I’ve never hated myself.”

“You told me you were evil, you said when I helped you I was helping the devil. You wouldn’t say those things if you didn’t hate it.”

I didn’t answer. Then I said, “My greatest sin has always been that I have a wonderful time being myself. My guilt is always there; my moral abhorrence for myself is always there; but I have a good time. I’m strong; I’m a creature of great will and passion. You see, that’s the core of the dilemma for me—how can I enjoy being a vampire so much, how can I enjoy it if it’s evil? Ah, it’s an old story. Men work it out when they go to war. They tell themselves there is a cause. Then they experience the thrill of killing, as if they were merely beasts. And beasts do know it, they really do. The wolves know it. They know the sheer thrill of tearing to pieces the prey. I know it.”

She seemed lost in her thoughts for a long time. I reached out and touched her hand.

“Come, lie down and sleep,” I said. “Lie beside me again. I won’t hurt you. I can’t. I’m too sick.” I gave a little laugh. “You’re very beautiful,” I said. “I wouldn’t think of hurting you. I only want to be near you. The late night’s coming again, and I wish you would lie with me here.”

“You mean everything you say, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“You realize you are like a child, don’t you? You have a great simplicity to you. The simplicity of a saint.”

I laughed. “Dearest Gretchen, you’re misunderstanding me in a crucial way. But then again, maybe you aren’t. If I believed in God, if I believed in salvation, then I suppose I would have to be a saint.”

She reflected for a long time, then she told me in a low voice that she had taken a leave of absence from the foreign missions only a month ago. She had come up from French Guiana to Georgetown to study at the university, and she worked only as a volunteer at the hospital. “Do you know the real reason why I took the leave of absence?” she asked me.

“No; tell me.”

“I wanted to know a man. The warmth of being close to a man. Just once, I wanted to know it. I’m forty years old, and I’ve never known a man. You spoke of moral abhorrence. You used those words. I had an