The boy could see the furnishings of the room more clearly now, the round oak table, the chairs. A wash basin hung on one wall with a mirror. He set his brief case on the table and waited.
"But how much tape do you have with you?" asked the vampire, turning now so the
boy could see his profile. "Enough for the story of a life?"
"Sure, if it's a good life. Sometimes I interview as many as three or four people a night if I'm lucky. But it has to be a good story. That's only fair, isn't it?"
"Admirably fair," the vampire answered. "I would like to tell you the story of my life, then. I would like to do that very much."
"Great," said the boy. And quickly he removed the small tape recorder from his brief
case, making a check of the cassette and the batteries. "I'm really anxious to hear why you believe this, why you . . ."
"No," said the vampire abruptly. "We can't begin that way. Is your equipment ready?"
"Yes," said the boy.
"Then sit down. I'm going to turn on the overhead light."
"But I thought vampires didn't like light," said the boy. "If you think the dark adds to
the atmosphere."
" But then he stopped. The vampire was watching him with his back to the window.
The boy could make out nothing of his face now, and something about the still figure there distracted him. He started to say something again but he said nothing. And then he sighed with relief when the vampire moved towards the table and reached for the overhead cord.
At once the room was flooded with a harsh yellow light. And the boy, staring up at the vampire, could not repress a gasp. His fingers danced backwards on the table to grasp the edge. "Dear God!" he whispered, and then he gazed, speechless, at the vampire.
The vampire was utterly white and smooth, as if he were sculpted from bleached
bone, and his face was as seemingly inanimate as a statue, except for two brilliant
green eyes that looked down at the boy intently like flames in a skull. But then the
vampire smiled almost wistfully, and the smooth white substance of his face moved
with the infinitely flexible but minimal lines of a cartoon. "Do you see?" he asked
softly.
The boy shuddered, lifting his hand as if to shield himself from a powerful light. His
eyes moved slowly over the finely tailored black coat he'd only glimpsed in the bar,
the long folds of the cape, the black silk tie knotted at the throat, and the gleam of the white collar that was as white as the vampire's flesh. He stared at the vampire's full black hair, the waves that were combed back over the tips of the ears, the curls that barely touched the edge of the white collar.
"Now, do you still want the interview?" the vampire asked.
The boy's mouth was open before the sound came out. He was nodding. Then he said,
"Yes."
The vampire sat down slowly opposite him and, leaning forward, said gently,
confidentially, "Don't be afraid. Just start the tape."
And then he reached out over the length of the table. The boy recoiled, sweat running down the sides of his face. The vampire clamped a hand on the boy's shoulder and said, "Believe me, I won't hurt you. I want this opportunity. It's more important to me than you can realize now. I want you to begin." And he withdrew his hand and sat collected, waiting.
It took a moment for the boy to wipe his forehead and his lips with a handkerchief, to stammer that the microphone was in the machine, to press the button, to say that the machine was on.
"You weren't always a vampire, were you?" he began.
"No," answered the vampire. "I was a twenty-five year-old man when I became a
vampire, and the year was seventeen ninety-one."
The boy was startled by the preciseness of the date and he repeated it before he asked, "How did it come about?"
"There's a simple answer to that. I don't believe I want to give simple answers," said
the vampire. "I think I want to tell the real story. . . '
"Yes," the boy said quickly. He was folding his handkerchief over and over and
wiping his lips now with it again.
"There was a tragedy . . ." the vampire started. "It was my younger brother . . . . He
died." And then he stopped, so that the boy cleared his throat and wiped at his face
again before stuffing the handkerchief almost impatiently into his pocket.
"It's not painful, is it?" he asked timidly.
"Does it seem so?" asked the vampire. "No." He shook his head. "It's simply that I've
only told this story to one other person. And that was so long ago. No, it's not pa'
"We were living. in Louisiana then. We'd received a land grant and settled two indigo plantations on the Mississippi very near New Orleans . . . ."
"Ah, that's the accent . . ." the boy said softly.
For a moment the vampire stared blankly. "I have an accent?" He began to laugh.
And the boy, flustered, answered quickly. "I noticed it in the bar when I asked you
what you did for a living. It's just a slight sharpness to the consonants, that's all. I
never guessed it was French."
"It's all right," the vampire assured him. "I am not as shocked as I pretend to be. It's
only that I forget it from time to time. But let me go on. . . . '
"Please . . " said the boy.
"It was very late, after my sister had fallen asleep. I can remember it as if it were
yesterday. He came in from the courtyard, opening the French doors without a sound, a tall fair-skinned man with a mass of blond hair and a graceful, almost feline quality to his movements. And gently, he draped a shawl over my sister's eyes and lowered the wick f the lamp. She dozed there beside the basin and the cloth with which she'd bathed my forehead, and she never once stirred under that shawl until morning. But by that time I was greatly changed."
"What was this change?" asked the boy.
The vampire sighed. He leaned back against the chair and looked at the walls. "At
first I thought he was another doctor, or someone summoned by the family to try to
reason with me. But this suspicion was removed at once. He stepped close to my bed
and leaned down so that his face was in the lamplight, and I saw that he was no
ordinary man at all. His gray eyes burned with an incandescence, and the long white
hands which hung by his sides were not those of a human being. I think I knew
everything in that instant, and all that he told me was only aftermath. What I mean is, the moment I saw him, saw his extraordinary aura and knew him to be no creature I'd ever known, I was reduced to nothing. That ego which could not accept the presence of an extraordinary human being in its midst was crushed. All my conceptions, even my guilt and wish to die, seemed utterly unimportant. I completely forgot myself!" he said, now silently touching his breast with his fist. "I forgot myself totally. And in the same instant knew totally the meaning of possibility. From then on I experienced only increasing wonder. As he talked to me and told me of what I might become, of what his life had been and stood to be, my past shrank to embers. I saw my life as if I stood apart from it, the vanity, the self-serving, the constant fleeing from one petty annoyance after another, the lip service to God and the Virgin and a host of saints whose names filled my prayer books, none of whom made the slightest difference in a narrow, materialistic, and selfish existence. I saw my real gods . . the gods of most men. Food, drink, and security in conformity. Cinders."
The boy's face was tense with a mixture of confusion and amazement. "And so you
decided to become a vampire?" he asked. The vampire was silent for a moment.
"Decided. It doesn't seem the right word. Yet I cannot say it was inevitable from the
moment that he stepped into that room. No, indeed, it was not inevitable. Yet I can't
say I decided. Let me say that when he'd finished speaking, no other decision was
possible for me, and I pursued my course without a backward glance. Except for one."
"Except for one? What?"
"My last sunrise," said the vampire. "That morning, I was not yet a vampire. And I
saw my last sunrise.