The tale of the body thief - By Anne Rice Page 0,133

she said, “even though you’re wrong.”

I gave a little laugh as I looked up at her. I took a napkin from our little picnic and I wiped my nose and my eyes.

“But I haven’t shaken your faith, have I?”

“No,” she said. And this time her smile was different, more warm and more truly radiant. “You’ve confirmed it,” she said in a whisper. “How very strange you are, and how miraculous that you came to me. I can almost believe your way is right for you. Who else could be you? No one.”

I sat back, and drank a little sip of wine. It was now warm from the fire, but still it tasted good, sending a ripple of pleasure through my sluggish limbs. I drank some more of it. I set down the glass and looked at her.

“I want to ask you a question,” I said. “Answer me from your heart. If I win my battle—if I regain my body—do you want me to come to you? Do you want me to show you that I’ve been telling the truth? Think carefully before you answer.

“I want to do it. I really do. But I’m not sure that it’s the best thing for you. Yours is almost a perfect life. Our little carnal episode couldn’t possibly turn you away from it. I was right—wasn’t I?—in what I said before. You know now that erotic pleasure really isn’t important to you, and you’re going to return to your work in the jungle very soon, if not immediately.”

“That’s true,” she said. “But there’s something else you should know, also. There was a moment this morning when I thought I could throw away everything—just to be with you.”

“No, not you, Gretchen.”

“Yes, me. I could feel it sweeping me away, the way the music once did. And if you were to say ‘Come with me,’ even now, I might go. If this world of yours really existed … ” She broke off with another little shrug, tossing her hair a little and then smoothing it back behind her shoulder. “The meaning of chastity is not to fall in love,” she said, her focus sharpening as she looked at me. “I could fall in love with you. I know I could.”

She broke off, and then said in a low, troubled voice, “You could become my god. I know that’s true.”

This frightened me, yet I felt at once a shameless pleasure and satisfaction, a sad pride. I tried not to yield to the feeling of slow physical excitement. After all, she didn’t know what she was saying. She couldn’t know. But there was something powerfully convincing in her voice and in her manner.

“I’m going back,” she said in the same voice, full of certitude and humility. “I’ll probably leave within a matter of days. But yes, if you win this battle, if you recover your old form—for the love of God, come to me. I want to … I want to know!”

I didn’t reply. I was too confused. Then I spoke the confusion.

“You know, in a horrible way, when I do come to you and reveal my true self, you may be disappointed.”

“How could that be?”

“You think me a sublime human being for the spiritual content of all I’ve said to you. You see me as some sort of blessed lunatic spilling truth with error the way a mystic might. But I’m not human. And when you know it, maybe you’ll hate it.”

“No, I could never hate you. And to know that all you’ve said is true? That would be … a miracle.”

“Perhaps, Gretchen. Perhaps. But remember what I said. We are a vision without revelation. We are a miracle without meaning. Do you really want that cross along with so many others?”

She didn’t answer. She was weighing my words. I could not imagine what they meant to her. I reached for her hand, and she let me take it, folding her fingers gently around mine, her eyes still constant as she looked at me.

“There is no God, is there, Gretchen?”

“No, there isn’t,” she whispered.

I wanted to laugh and to weep. I sat back, laughing softly to myself and looking at her, at the calm, statuesque manner in which she sat there, the light of the fire caught in her hazel eyes.

“You don’t know what you’ve done for me,” she said. “You don’t know how much it has meant. I am ready—ready to go back now.”

I nodded.

“Then it won’t matter, will it, my beautiful one, if we get