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softly. We had reached the street, crossed, and were slowly skirting
the fountain before the Plaza.
"Yes," I said. "At some time or other."
"And you remember Ethan Brand's search for the unpardonable
sin?"
"I think so. He went off to search for it and left his fellow man
behind."
"Recall this paragraph," he said gently. We made our way down
Fifth, a street that is never empty, or dark. He quoted the lines to me:
" 'He had lost his hold of the magnetic chain of humanity. He was
no longer a brother-man, opening the chambers or the dungeons of
our common nature by the key of holy sympathy, which gave him a
right to share in all its secrets; he was now a cold observer, looking on
mankind as the subject of his experiment, and, at length, converting
man and woman to be his puppets, and pulling the wires that moved
them to such degrees of crime as were demanded for his study.' "
I said nothing. I wanted to protest, but it was not an honest thing
to do. I wanted to say that I would never, never treat humans like
puppets. All I had done was watch Roger, damn it all, and Gretchen
in the jungles, I had pulled no strings. Honesty had undone her and
me together. But then he wasn't speaking of me with these words. He
was talking about himself, the distance he felt now from the human.
He had only begun to be Ethan Brand.
"Let me continue a little farther," he asked respectfully, then
began to quote again. " 'Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He
began to be so from the moment that his moral nature had ceased to
keep the pace of improvement with his intellect ' " He broke off.
I didn't reply.
"That's our damnation," he whispered. "Our moral improvement
has reached its finish, and our intellect grows by leaps and bounds."
Still I said nothing. What was I to say? Despair was so familiar to
me; it could be banished by the sight of a beautiful mannikin in the
window. It could be dispelled by the spectacle of lights surrounding a
tower. It could be lifted by the great ghostly shape of St. Patrick's
coming into view. And then despair would come again.
Meaningless, I almost said, aloud, but what came from my lips was
completely different.
"I have Dora to think of," I said.
Dora.
"Yes, and thanks to you," he said, "I have Dora too, now don't I?"
6
HOW AND when and what to tell Dora? That was the
question. The journey we made to New Orleans early the next
night.
There was no sign of Louis at the town house in the Rue Royale,
but this was by no means unusual. Louis took to wandering more and
more often, and he had been seen once by David in the company of
Armand in Paris. The town house was spotless, a dream set out of
time, full of my favorite Louis XV furnishings, luscious wallpaper,
and the finest carpets to be found.
David, of course, was familiar with the place, though he hadn't
seen it in over a year. One of the many picture-perfect bedrooms,
drenched in saffron silks and outrageous Turkish tables and screens,
still held the coffin in which he had slept during his brief and first
stay here as one of the Undead.
Of course, this coffin was heavily disguised. He had insisted that it
be the real thing as fledglings almost invariably do, unless they are
nomads by nature but it was cleverly enough concealed within a
heavy bronze chest, which Louis had chosen for it afterwards a
great hulking rectangular object as defeating as a square piano, with
no perceivable opening in it, though of course, if you knew the right
places to touch, the lid rose at once.
I had made my resting place as I had promised myself, when
restoring this house in which Claudia and Louis and I had once lived.
Not in my old bedroom, which now housed only the de rigueur heavy
four-poster and dressing table, but in the attic, beneath the eave, I
had made a cell of metal and marble.
In sum, we had a comfortable base immediately, and I was frankly
relieved that Louis was not there to tell me he didn't believe me when
I described the things that I'd seen. His rooms were in order; new
books had been added. There was a vivid and arresting new painting
by Matisse. Otherwise, things were the same.
As soon as we had settled in, checked all security, as immortals
always do, with a breezy scan and a deep resistance to having to do
anything mortals have to do, we decided that I should go uptown and
try to catch a glimpse of Dora alone.
I had seen or heard nothing of the Stalker, though not much time
had passed, of course, and I had seen nothing of The Ordinary Man.
We agreed that either might appear at any moment.
Nevertheless, I broke from the company of David, leaving him to
explore the city as he wished.
Before leaving the Quarter for uptown, I called upon Mojo, my
dog. If you are unacquainted with Mojo from The Tale of the Body
Thief, let me tell you only what you need to know that he is a giant
German shepherd, is kept for me by a gracious mortal woman in a
building of which I retain ownership, and that Mojo loves me, which
I find irresistible. He is a dog, no more, or less, except that he is
immense in size, with an extremely thick coat, and I cannot stay long
away from him.
I spent an hour or two with him, wrestling, rolling around with
him on the ground in the back garden, and talking to him about
everything that happened, then debated as to whether I should take him
with me uptown. His dark, long face, wolflike and seemingly evil, was
full of the usual gentleness and forbearance. God, why didn't you
make us all dogs?
Actually, Mojo created a sense of safety in me. If the Devil came
and I had Mojo. . . . But that was the most absurd idea! I'd fend off
Hell on account of a flesh-and-Wood dog. Well, humans have
believed stranger things, I suppose.
Just before I'd left David, I'd asked, "What do you think is
happening, I mean with this Stalker and this Ordinary Man?" And David
had answered without hesitation, "You're imagining both of them,
you punish yourself relentlessly; it's the only way you know how to
go on having fun."
~~~~~~
I should have been insulted. But I wasn't.
Dora was real.
Finally, I decided I had to take leave of Mojo. I was going to spy
upon Dora. And had to be fleet of foot. I kissed Mojo and left him.
Later we would walk in our favorite wastelands beneath the River
Bridge, amid the grass and the garbage, and be together. That I
would have for as long as nature let me have it. For the moment it
could wait.
Back to Dora.
Of course Dora didn't know Roger was dead. There was no way
that she could know, unless perhaps Roger had appeared to her.
But I hadn't gathered from Roger that such was even possible.
Appearing to me had apparently consumed all his energy. Indeed, I
thought he had been far too protective of Dora to have haunted her
in any practical or deliberate way.
But what did I know about ghosts? Except for a few highly
mechanical and indifferent apparitions, I'd never spoken to a ghost until
I'd spoken to Roger.
And now I would carry with me forever the indelible impression
of his love for Dora, and his peculiar mixture of conscience and
supreme self-confidence. In retrospect, even his visit seemed to me to
exhibit extraordinary self-assurance. That he could haunt, that was
not beyond probability since the world is filled with impressive and
credible ghost stories. But that he could detain me in conversation
that he could make me his confidant that had indeed involved an
enormous and almost dazzling pride,
I walked uptown in human fashion, breathing the river air, and
glad to be back with my black-barked oaks, and the sprawling, dimly
lighted houses of New Orleans, the intrusions everywhere of grass
and vine and flower; home.
Too soon, I reached the old brick convent building on Napoleon [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]