Merrick - Anne Rice [135]
“You know my arguments,” I said, shaking my head. “What will you do now? Whatever your plan, you can’t go forward without telling me what it is.”
“I know, mon ami, I’m aware of that,” he answered. “And you must know now I won’t be with you for very long.”
“Louis, I beg you—.”
“David, I’m weary,” he said, “and I would swap one pain for another. There was something she said, you see, which I can’t forget. She asked if I would give up my comforts for her? Do you remember?”
“No, old man, you’ve got it wrong. She asked if you’d give up your comforts for death, but she never promised that she would be there! That’s just the point. She won’t be. Good Lord, how many years in the Talamasca did I study the history of apparitions and their messages, how many years did I pore over first person accounts of those who’d trafficked with ghosts and recorded their wisdom. You can choose what you will believe about the hereafter. It doesn’t matter. But once you choose death, Louis, you can’t choose life again. Belief ends. Don’t make that choice, I implore you. Stay for me, if you won’t for any other reason. Stay for me, because I need you, and stay for Lestat, because he needs you as well.”
Of course my words didn’t surprise him. He put his left hand to his chest and pressed on the wound lightly, and a grimace, for one moment, disfigured his face.
He shook his head.
“For you and Lestat, yes, I’ve thought of that. And what of her? What of our lovely Merrick? What does she need from me too?”
It seemed he had a great deal more to say, but suddenly he fell silent, and his brows were knitted, and he looked young and impossibly innocent as his head quickly turned to the side.
“David, do you hear it?” he asked with mounting excitement. “David, listen!”
I heard nothing but the noises of the city.
“What is it, man?” I asked.
“David, listen to it. It’s all around us.” He rose to his feet, his left hand still pressed to the pain he felt. “David, it’s Claudia, it’s the music, it’s the harpsichord. I hear it all around us. David, she wants me to come. I know it.”
I was on my feet in a second. I took hold of him.
“You’re not going to do it, friend, you can’t do it without a farewell to Merrick, without a farewell to Lestat, and there are not enough hours left in this night for that.”
He was gazing off, mesmerized and comforted, and his eyes were glazed and his face was softened and unchallenging. “I know that sonata. I remember it. And yes, she loved it, she loved it because Mozart had written it when he was only a child. You can’t hear, can you? But you did once, think back on it. It’s so very lovely, and how fast she plays, my Claudia.”
He made a dazed laugh. The tears thickened; his eyes were veiled in blood.
“I hear the birds singing. Listen. I hear them in their cage. The others—all our kind who know of her—they think of her as heartless, but she wasn’t heartless. She was only aware of things which I didn’t learn till so many decades had passed. She knew secrets that only suffering can teach. . . .”
His voice trailed off. He pulled back gracefully from my grasp and he walked to the center of the room. He turned about as though the music were truly surrounding him.
“Don’t you see what a kindness she’s done?” he whispered. “It’s going on and on, David, it’s getting all the more rapid. Claudia, I’m listening to you.” He broke off, and turned again, his eyes moving over everything yet seeing nothing. “Claudia, I’ll be with you very soon.”
“Louis,” I said, “it’s almost morning. Come with me now.”
He stood still with his head bowed. His hands had dropped to his sides. He seemed infinitely sad and infinitely defeated.
“Has it stopped?” I asked.
“Yes,” he whispered. Slowly he looked up, lost for the moment, then