“But we were driving on, away from the smoke and the cries. We were leaving Paris. I had done it. The Theatre des Vampires was burning to the ground.
“And as I felt my head fall back, I saw Claudia and Madeleine again in one another’s arms in that grin yard, and I said to them softly, bending down to the soft heads of hair that glistened in the candlelight, ‘I couldn’t take you away. I couldn’t take you. But they will lie ruined and dead all around you. If the fire doesn’t consume them, it will be the sun. If they are not burnt out, then it will be the people who will come to fight the fire who will find them and expose them to the light of day. But I promise you, they will all die as you have died, everyone who was closeted there this dawn will die. And they are the only deaths I have caused in my long life which are both exquisite and good.
Two nights later I returned. I had to see that rain-flooded cellar where every brick was scorched, crumbling, where a few skeletal rafters jabbed at the sky like stakes. Those monstrous murals that once enclosed the ballroom were blasted fragments in the rubble, a painted face here, a patch of angel’s wing there, the only identifiable things that remained.
“With the evening newspapers, I pushed my way to the back of a crowded little theater cafe across the street; and there, under the cover of the dim gas lamps and thick cigarsmoke, I read the accounts of the holocaust. Few bodies were found in the burnt-out theater, but clothing and costumes had been scattered everywhere, as though the famous vampire mummers had in fact vacated the theater in haste long before the fire. In other words, only the younger vampire had left their bones; the ancient ones had suffered total obliteration. No mention of an eye-witness or a surviving victim. How could there have been?
“Yet something bothered me considerably. I did not fear any vampires who had escaped. I had no desire to hunt them out if they had. That most of the crew had died I was certain. But why had there been no human guards? I was certain Santiago had mentioned guards, and I’d supposed them to be the ushers and doormen who staffed the theater before the performance. And I had even been prepared to encounter them with my scythe. But they had not been there. It was strange. And my mind was not entirely comfortable with the strangeness.
“But, finally, when I put the papers aside and sat thinking these things over, the strangeness of it didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was more utterly alone in the world than I had ever been in all my life. That Claudia was gone beyond reprieve. And I had less reason to live than I’d ever had, and less desire.
“And yet my sorrow did not overwhelm me, did not actually visit me, did not make of me the wracked and desperate creature I might have expected to become. Perhaps it was not possible to sustain the torment I’d experienced when I saw Claudia’s burnt remains. Perhaps it was not possible to know that and exist over any period of time. I wondered vaguely, as the hours passed, as the smoke of the cafe grew thicker and the faded curtain of the little lamplit stage rose and fell, and robust women sang there, the light glittering on their paste jewels, their rich, soft voices often plaintive, exquisitely sad — I wondered vaguely what it would be to feel this loss, this outrage, and be justified in it, be deserving of sympathy, of solace. I would not have told my woe to a living creature. My own tears meant nothing to me.
“Where to go then, if not to die? It was strange how the answer came to me. Strange how I wandered out of the cafe then, circling the ruined theater, wandering finally towards the broad Avenue Napoleon and following it towards the palace of the Louvre. It was as if that place called to me, and yet I had never been inside its walls. I’d passed its long facade a thousand times, wishing that I could live as a mortal man for one day to move through those many rooms and see those many magnificent paintings. I was bent on it now, possessed only of some vague notion that in works of art I could find some solace while bringing nothing of death to what was inanimate and yet magnificently possessed of the spirit of life itself.
“Somewhere along the Avenue Napoleon, I heard the step behind me which I knew to be Armand’s. He was signaling, letting me know that he was near. Yet I did nothing other than slow my pace and let him fall into step with me, and for a long time we walked, saying nothing. I dared not look at him. Of course, I’d been thinking of him all the while, and how if we were men and Claudia had been my love I might have fallen helpless in his arms finally, the need to share some common grief so strong, so consuming. The dam threatened to break now; and yet it did not break. I was numbed and I walked as one numbed.
“ ‘You know what I’ve done,’ I said finally. We had turned off the avenue and I could see ahead of me the long row of double columns on the facade of the Royal Museum. ‘You removed your coffin as I warned you.’
“ ‘Yes,’ he answered. There was a sudden, unmistakable comfort in the sound of his voice. It weakened me. But I was simply too remote from pain, too tired.
“ ‘And yet you are here with me now. Do you mean to avenge them?’
“ ‘No,’ he said.
“ ‘They were your fellows, you were their leader,’ I said. ‘Yet you didn’t warn them I was out for them, as I warned you?’
“ ‘No,’ he said.
“ ‘But surely you despise me for it. Surely you respect some rule, some allegiance to your own kind.’
“ ‘No,’ he said softly.
“It was amazing to me how logical his response was, even though I couldn’t explain it or understand it.
“And something came clear to me out of the remote regions of my own relentless considerations. ‘There were guards; there were those ushers who slept in the theater. Why weren’t they there when I entered? Why weren’t they there to protect the sleeping vampires?’
“ ‘Because they were in my employ and I discharged them. I sent them away,’ Armand said.
“I stopped. He showed no concern at my facing him, and as soon as our eyes met I wished the world were not one black empty ruin of ashes and death. I wished it were fresh and beautiful, and that we were both living and had love to give each other. ‘You did this, knowing what I planned to do?
“ ‘Yes,’ he said.
“ ‘But you were their leader! They trusted you. They believed in you. They lived with you!’ I said. ‘I don’t understand you… why…?’
“ ‘Think of any answer you like,’ he said calmly and sensitively, as if he didn’t wish to bruise me with any accusation or disdain, but wanted me merely to consider this literally. ‘I can think of many. Think of the one you need and believe it. It’s as likely as any other. I shall give you the real reason for what I did, which is the least true: I was leaving Paris. The theater belonged to me. So I discharged them.’
“ ‘But with what you knew…’
“ ‘I told you, it was the actual reason and it was the least true,’ he said patiently.
“ ‘Would you destroy me as easily as you let them be destroyed?’ I demanded.
“ ‘Why should I?’ he asked.
“ ‘My God,’ I whispered.
“ ‘You’re much changed,’ he said. ‘But in a way, you are much the same.’
“I walked on for a while and then, before the entrance to the Louvre, I stopped. At first it seemed to me that its many windows were dark and silver with the moonlight and the thin rain. But then I thought I saw a faint light moving within, as though a guard walked among the treasures. I envied him completely. And I fixed my thoughts on him obdurately, that guard, calculating how a vampire might get to him, how take his life and his lantern and his keys. The plan was confusion. I was incapable of plans. I had made only one real plan in my life, and it was finished.
“And then finally I surrendered. I turned to Armand again and let my eyes penetrate his eyes, and let him draw close to me as if he meant to make me his victim, and I bowed my head and felt his firm arm around my shoulder. And, remembering suddenly and keenly Claudia’s words, what were very nearly her last words — that admission that she knew that I could love Armand because I had been able to love even her — those words struck me as rich and ironical, more filled with meaning than she could have guessed.