The tale of the body thief - By Anne Rice Page 0,224

give you all the many reasons, but I don’t know. I did it because I wanted to do it, because I wanted to. Because I wanted to see what would happen if I did it, I wanted to … and I couldn’t not do it. I knew that when I went back to New Orleans. I … waited and I waited, but I couldn’t not do it. And now it’s done.”

“You miserable, lying bastard. You did it from cruelty and meanness! You did it because your little experiment with the Body Thief went wrong! And out of it came this miracle to me, this youth, this rebirth, and it infuriated you that such a thing could happen, that I should profit when you had suffered so!”

“Maybe that’s true!”

“It is true. Admit it. Admit the pettiness of it. Admit the meanness, that you couldn’t bear to let me slip into the future with this body which you hadn’t the courage to endure!”

“Perhaps so.”

He drew in close and tried to drag me to my feet with a firm, insistent grip on my arm. Nothing happened, of course. He could not move me an inch.

“You’re still not strong enough to play those games,” I said. “If you don’t stop, I’ll hit you and knock you flat on your back. You won’t like it. You’re too dignified to like it. So leave off with the cheap mortal fisticuffs, please.”

He turned his back on me, folding his arms, bowing his head. I could hear the small desperate noises that came from him, and I could almost feel the anguish. He walked away, and I buried my face again in my arm.

But then I heard him coming back.

“Why? I want something from you. I want an admission of some kind.”

“No,” I said.

He reached out and snatched at my hair, tangling his fingers in it, and jerking my head up as the pain shot over the surface of my scalp.

“You’re really pushing it, David,” I growled at him, pulling myself loose. “One more little trick like that and I’m going to drop you at the bottom of the cliff.”

But when I saw his face, when I saw the suffering in him, I grew quiet.

He went down on his knees before me so that we were almost eye-to-eye.

“Why, Lestat?” he asked, and his voice was torn and sad, and it broke my heart.

Overcome with shame, overcome with misery, I pressed my closed eyes again on my right arm, and brought up my left to cover my head. And nothing, not all his pleas or curses or cries against me or his final quiet departure, could make me look up again.

WELL before morning I went to search for him. The little room was now straightened, and his suitcase lay on the bed. The computer had been folded up, and the copy of Faust lay upon its smooth plastic case.

But he was not there. I searched all about the hotel for him, but I couldn’t find him. I searched the gardens, and then the woodlands in one direction and another, but with no luck.

At last I found a small cave high on the mountain, and dug down deep into it and slept.

What is the use of describing my misery? Of describing the dull dark pain I felt? What is the use of saying I knew the full measure of my injustice, my dishonor, and my cruelty? I knew the magnitude of what I’d done to him.

I knew myself and all my evil to the fullest and I expected nothing back from the world now except the very same evil in kind.

I woke as soon as the sun had gone into the sea. On a high bluff I watched the twilight and then went down into the streets of the town to hunt. It wasn’t too long before the usual thief tried to lay hands on, me and rob me, and I carried him with me into a little alleyway and there drained him slowly and very enjoyably, only steps from the tourists passing by. I concealed his body in the very depths of the alley and went on my way.

And what was my way?

I went back to the hotel. His possessions were still there but he was not. Once again, I searched, fighting an awful fear that he had already done away with himself, and then realizing that he was far too strong for that to be a simple thing. Even if he had lain out in the fury of