Merrick - Anne Rice [37]
“For us?”
“David, it had to be done in daylight, don’t you see? The first photographs belonged to mortals alone.”
“Of course, I didn’t even think of it.”
“She hated it,” he said. He looked again at the image. “And one night, unbeknownst to me, she broke the lock of one of the new studios—and there were many of them—and she stole all the pictures she could find. She broke them, smashed them in a fury. She said it was ghastly that we couldn’t have our pictures made. ‘Yes, we see ourselves in mirrors, and old tales would have it not,’ she screamed at me. ‘But what about this mirror? Is this not some threat of judgment?’ I told her absolutely it was not.
“I remember Lestat laughed at her. He said she was greedy and foolish and ought to be happy with what she had. She was past all tolerance of him, and didn’t even answer him. That’s when he had the miniature painted of her for his locket, the locket you found for him in a Talamasca vault.”
“I see,” I answered. “Lestat never told me such a story.”
“Lestat forgets many things,” he said thoughtfully and without judgment. “He had other portraits of her painted after that. There was a large one here, very beautiful. We took it with us to Europe. We took trunks of our belongings, but that time I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember how she tried to hurt Lestat.”
I was silent out of respect.
“But the photographs, the daguerreotypes, that’s what she wanted, the real image of herself on glass. She was furious, as I told you. But then years later, when we reached Paris, in those lovely nights before we ever happened upon the Théâtre des Vampires and the monsters who would destroy her, she found that the magic pictures could be taken at night, with artificial light!”
He seemed to be reliving the experience painfully. I remained quiet.
“You can’t imagine her excitement. She had seen an exhibit by the famous photographer Nadar of pictures from the Paris catacombs. Pictures of cartloads of human bones. Nadar was quite the man, as I’m sure you know. She was thrilled by the pictures. She went to his studio, by special appointment, in the evening, and there this picture was made.”
He came towards me.
“It’s a dim picture. It took an age for all the mirrors and the artificial lamps to do their work. And Claudia stood still for so long, well, only a vampire child might have worked such a trick. But she was very pleased with it. She kept it on her dressing table in the Hotel Saint-Gabriel, the last place that we ever called our home. We had such lovely rooms there. It was near to the Opera. I don’t think she ever unpacked the painted portraits. It was this that mattered to her. I’d actually thought she would come to be happy in Paris. Maybe she would have been . . . But there wasn’t time. This little picture, she felt it was only the beginning, and planned to return to Nadar with an even lovelier dress.”
He looked at me.
I stood up to receive the picture, and he placed it in my hands most carefully, as though it were about to shatter of its own accord.
I was dumbfounded. How small and innocent she seemed, this irretrievable child of fair locks and chubby cheeks, of darkened Cupid’s bow lips and white lace. Her eyes veritably blazed from the shadowy glass as I looked at her. And there came back that very suspicion of years ago, that I’d suffered so strongly with Merrick’s pictures, that the image was gazing at me.
I must have made some small sound. I don’t know. I shut the little case. I even worked the tiny gold clasp into the lock.
“Wasn’t she beautiful?” he asked. “Tell me. It’s past a matter of opinion, isn’t it? She was beautiful. One cannot deny that simple fact.”
I looked at him, and I wanted to say that she was, indeed she was, she was lovely, but no sound would come out of my mouth.
“We have this,” he said,