The Vampire Armand - Anne Rice [29]
I raised my finger to point. The lion there, just sitting so calmly at the feet of St. Mark, and look, the pages of St. Mark’s book, the pages are actually in motion as he turns them. And the lion is tame and gentle as a friendly fireside dog.
“This is Heaven, Amadeo,” he said to me. “Whatever the past has hammered into your soul, let it go.”
I smiled, and slowly, gazing up at the saints, the rows and rows of saints, I began to laugh softly and confidentially in the Master’s ear.
“They’re all talking, murmuring, talking amongst themselves as if they were the Venetian Senators.”
I heard his low, subdued laughter in answer. “Oh, I think the Senators are more decorous, Amadeo. I’ve never seen them in such informality, but this is Heaven, as I said.”
“Ah, Master, look there. A saint holds an ikon, a beautiful ikon. Master, I have to tell you—.” I broke off. The fever rose and the sweat broke out on me. My eyes felt hot, and I couldn’t see. “Master,” I said. “I am in the wild lands. I’m running. I have to put it in the trees.” How could he know what I meant, that I spoke of that long-ago desperate flight out of coherent recollection and through the wild grasses with the sacred bundle in my keep, the bundle that had to be unwrapped and placed in the trees. “Look, the ikon.”
Honey filled me. It was thick and sweet. It came from a cold fount, but it didn’t matter. I knew this fount. My body was like a goblet stirred so that all that was bitter dissolved in the fluids of it, dissolved in a vortex to leave only honey and a dreamy warmth.
When I opened my eyes, I was in our bed. I was cool all over. The fever was gone. I turned over and pulled myself up.
My Master sat at his desk. He was reading over what he had apparently just written. He had tied back his blond hair with a bit of cord. His face was very beautiful, unveiled as it were, with its chiseled cheekbones and smooth narrow nose. He looked at me, and his mouth worked the miracle of the ordinary smile.
“Don’t chase these memories,” he said. He said it as if we’d been talking all the while that I slept. “Don’t go to the church of Torcello to find them. Don’t go to the mosaics of San Marco. In time all these harmful things will come back.”
“I’m afraid to remember,” I said.
“I know,” he answered.
“How can you know?” I asked him. “I have it in my heart. It’s mine alone, this pain.” I was sorry for sounding so bold, but whatever my guilt, the boldness came more and more often.
“Do you really doubt me?” he asked.
“Your endowments are beyond measure. We all know it, and we never speak of it, and you and I never speak of it.”
“So why then don’t you put your faith in me instead of things you only half recall?”
He got up from the desk and came to the bed.
“Come,” he said. “Your fever’s broken. Come with me.”
He took me into one of the many libraries of the palazzo, messy rooms in which the manuscripts lay helter-skelter, and the books in stacks. Seldom if ever did he work in these rooms. He threw his purchases there to be cataloged by the boys, taking what he needed back to the writing desk in our room.
He moved among the shelves now until he found a portfolio, a big flopping thing of old yellowed leather, frayed at the edges. His white fingers smoothed a large page of vellum. He laid it down on the oak study table for me to see.
A painting, antique.
I saw there drawn a great church of gilded domes, so beautiful, so majestic. Letters were blazoned there. I knew these letters. But I couldn’t make the words come to my mind or my tongue.
“Kiev Rus,” he said. Kiev Rus.
An unsupportable horror came over me. Before I could stop myself, I said, “It’s ruined, burnt. There is no such place. It’s not alive like Venice. It’s ruined, and all is cold, and filthy and desperate. Yes, that’s the very word.” I was dizzy. I felt I saw an escape from desolation, only it was cold and dark, this escape, and it led by twists and turns into a world of eternal darkness where the raw earth