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“And there was ot her five years of mortal life at once, or so it seemed, for she was mysteriously quiet And from time to time I even feared that she had lost all sense, that the illness of her ht have robbed her of reason; but this proved hardly the case She was simply unlike Lestat and me to such an extent I couldn’t comprehend her; for little child she was, but also fierce killer now capable of the ruthless pursuit of blood with all a child’s deer to her, he did not threaten her at all but was loving to her, proud of her beauty, anxious to teach her that we must kill to live and that we ourselves could never die
“The plague raged in the city then, as I’ve indicated, and he took her to the stinking ceue victims lay in heaps while the sounds of shovels never ceased all through the day and night ‘This is death,’ he told her, pointing to the decaying corpse of a woman, ‘which we cannot suffer Our bodies will stay always as they are, fresh and alive; but wedeath, because it is hoe live’ And Claudia gazed on this with inscrutable liquid eyes
“If there was not understanding in the early years, there was no s of fear Mute and beautiful, she played with dolls, dressing, undressing them by the hour Mute and beautiful, she killed And I, transformed by Lestat’s instruction, was now to seek out hu of them that soothed sohts on Pointe du Lac, when I sat with only the co nurew quiet, cabarets which never shut their doors, balls which lasted till dawn, theout of the open s; people all around reat love I’d felt for my sister and Babette, but with some new detachment and need And I did kill thereat distances apart, as I walked with the vaeoning city,es, their brothels I lingered only a short while, long enough to take what I ave ers
“For that was it I fed on strangers I drew only close enough to see the pulsing beauty, the unique expression, the new and passionate voice, then killed before those feelings of revulsion could be aroused in me, that fear, that sorrow
“Claudia and Lestatin the co the splendid hu friendship with death But I still could not bear it And so topopulation was a mercy, a forest in which I was lost, unable to stop ain and again the invitation to death rather than extending it
“We lived meantime in one of , lavish upstairs flat above a shop I rented to a tailor, a hidden garden court behind us, a well secure against the street, with fitted wooden shutters and a barred carriage door — a place of far greater luxury and security than Pointe du Lac Our servants were free people of color who left us to solitude before dawn for their own hoht the very latest imports from France and Spain: crystal chandeliers and Oriental carpets, silk screens with painted birds of paradise, canaries singing in great doods and beautifully painted Chinese vases I did not need the luxury anymore than I had needed it before, but I found myself enthralled with the new flood of art and craft and design, could stare at the intricate pattern of the carpets for hours, or watch the gleae the so
“All this Claudia found wondrous, with the quiet awe of an unspoiled child, and marveled when Lestat hired a painter to olden birds and laden fruit trees over sparkling streams
“An endless train of dressmakers and shoemakers and tailors came to our flat to outfit Claudia in the best of children’s fashions, so that she was always a vision, not just of child beauty, with her curling lashes and her glorious yellow hair, but of the taste of finely tri velvet coats and capes, and sheer white puffed-sleeve goith gleanificent doll, and I played with her as if she were a ive up ray coats and gloves and black capes Lestat thought the best color at all times for vampires was black, possibly the only aesthetic principle he steadfastlywhich sure we cut, the three of us in our box at the new French Opera House or the Theatre d’Orleans, to which ent as often as possible, Lestat having a passion for Shakespeare which surprised h the operas and woke just in tiht supper, where he would use all his skill to make her love him totally, then dispatch her violently to heaven or hell and coive to Claudia
“And all this ti in her tiny seashell ear that our eternal life was useless to us if we did not see the beauty around us, the creation ofthe depth of her still gaze as she took the books I gave her,
whispered the poetry I taught her, and played with a light but confident touch her own strange, coherent songs on the piano She could fall for hours into the pictures in a book and listen to ht of her jarred me, made me put the book down, and just stare back at her across the lighted roo to life, and say in the softest voice that I must read some more
“And then strange things began to happen, for though she said little and was the chubby, round-fingered child still, I’d find her tucked in the ar the work of Aristotle or Boethius or a new novel just co out the ht before with an infallible ear and a concentration thatthe ether Claudia was mystery It was not possible to knohat she knew or did not know And to watch her kill was chilling She would sit alone in the dark square waiting for the kindly gentleman or woman to find her, her eyes more mindless than I had ever seen Lestat’s Like a child nuentle, ad patrons, and as they carried her out of the square, her arue between her teeth, her vision glazed with consuer They found death fast in those first years, before she learned to play with theave her stea cups of chocolate or tea to ruddy her pale cheeks, cups she pushed aaiting, waiting, as if feasting silently on their terrible kindness
“But when that was done, she wasfaster and faster the knowledge I gave her, sharing withwhich could not include Lestat At dawn she lay with ainst my heart, and many times when I looked at her — when she was at herand didn’t know I stood in the rooular experience I’d had with her and no other, that I had killed her, taken her life from her, had drunk all of her life’s blood in that fatal embrace I’d lavished on soin the damp earth But she lived, she lived to put her arms around my neck and press her tiny cupid’s bow toeye to nay eye until our lashes touched and, laughing, we reeled about the roohter Lover and Lover You can iine hoell it was Lestat did not envy us this, but only s until she came to him Then he would take her out into the street and they would wave to me beneath the , off to share what they shared: the hunt, the seduction, the kill
“Years passed in this way Years and years and years Yet it wasn’t until some time had passed that an obvious fact occurred to me about Claudia I suppose frouessed, and you wonder why I didn’t guess I can only tell you, time is not the same fora taut and jerking chain; rather, thewaves”
“Her body!” the boy said “She was never to grow up”
The vampire nodded “She was to be the demon child forever,” he said, his voice soft as if he wondered at it “Just as I a man I hen I died And Lestat? The same But her mind It was a vampire’s mind And I strained to kno she h she was never other than a reflective person and could listen to me patiently by the hour without interruption Yet more and more her doll-like face seemed to possess two totally aware adult eyes, and innocence seelected-toys and the loss of a certain patience There was so on the settee in a tiny nightgown of lace and stitched pearls; she became an eerie and powerful seductress, her voice as clear and sweet as ever, though it had a resonance which o; After days of her usual quiet, she would scoff suddenly at Lestat’s predictions about the war; or drinking blood frolass say that there were no books in the house, we et more even if we had to steal them, and then coldly tell me of a library she’d heard of, in a palatialSt-Marie, a woman who collected books as if they were rocks or pressed butterflies She asked if I et her into the woman’s bedroom