The Vampire Armand - Anne Rice [164]
He looked at me. He saw me. His round little Byzantine face might have come wonder-struck from the church wall, but he was here and real and he saw me and I was what he wanted to see.
“Look, you angel!” he shouted, his youthful voice sharpened with its Arab accent. “Can’t you see with your big beautiful eyes!”
I saw.
The whole reality of it came down at once. She, the young woman, Sybelle, was lighting to cling to the piano, not to be snatched off the bench, her hands out struggling to reach the keys, her mouth shut, and a terrible groan pushing up against her sealed lips, her yellow hair flying about her shoulders. And the man who shook her, who pulled at her, who screamed at her, suddenly dealing her one fine blow with his fist that sent her over backwards, falling off the piano bench so that a scream escaped from her and she fell over herself, an ungainly tangle of limbs on the carpeted floor.
“Appassionata, Appassionata,” he growled at her, a bear of a creature in his megalomaniacal temper. “I won’t listen to it, I will not, I will not, you will not do this to me, to my life. It’s my life!” He roared like a bull. “I won’t let you go on!”
The boy leapt up and grabbed me. He clutched at my wrists and when I shook him off, staring at him in bafflement, he clutched my velvet cuffs.
“Stop him, angel. Stop him, devil! He cannot beat her anymore. He will kill her. Stop him, devil, stop him, she is good!”
She crawled to her knees, her hair a shredded veil concealing her face. A great smear of dried blood covered the side of her narrow waist, a stain sunk deep into the flowered fabric.
Incensed, I watched as the man withdrew. Tall, his head shaven, his eyes bulging, he put his hands to his ears, and he cursed her: “Mad stupid bitch, mad mad selfish bitch. Do I have no life? Do I have no justice? Do I have no dreams?”
But she had flung her hands on the keys again. She was racing right into the Second Movement of the Appassionata as though she had never been interrupted. Her hands beat on the keys. One furious volley of notes after another rose, as if written for no other purpose than to answer him, to defy him, as if to cry out, I will not stop, I will not stop—.
I saw what was to happen. He turned around and glared at her, but it was only to let the rage rise to its full power, his eyes wide, his mouth twisted in anguish. A lethal smile formed on his lips.
Back and forth she rocked on the piano bench, her hair flying, her face lifted, her mind having no need to see the keys she struck, to plot the course of her hands that raced from right to left, that never lost control of the torrent.
Out of her sealed lips there came a low humming, a grinding humming right in tune with the melodies that gushed from the keys. She arched her back and lowered her head, her hair falling down on the backs of her racing hands. On she went, on into thunder, on into certainty, on into refusal, on into defiance, on into affirmation, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
The man made his move for her.
The frantic boy, leaving me in desperation, darted to come between them, and the man slammed him aside with such fury that the boy was knocked flat and sprawling on the floor.
But before the man’s hands could reach her shoulders, before he could so much as touch her—and she went now into the First Movement again, ah, ah aaaah! the Appassionata all over again in all its power—I had hold of him, and spun him round to face me.
“Kill her, will you?” I whispered. “Well, we shall see.”
“Yes!” he cried out, face sweating, protuberant eyes glistening. “Kill her! She’s vexed me to utter madness, that’s what she’s done, and she’ll die!” Too incensed even to question my presence, he tried to push me aside, his sights fixed already once again on her. “Damn you, Sybelle, stop that music, stop it!”
Her melody and chords were in the mode of thunder again. Flinging her hair from side to side, she charged onward.
I forced him backwards, my left hand catching his shoulder, my right pushing his chin up out of my way as I nuzzled in against his throat, tore