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“I said, ‘No!’ I’d turned my back on her, on the corpse at her feet
“ ‘Are you mad, Louis? It can’t remain here!’ she said to me ‘And the boys You must help me! The other one’s dead from the absinthe! Louis!’
“I knew that this was true, necessary; and yet it seemed impossible
“She had to prod me then, almost lead me every step of the way We found the kitchen stove still heaped with the bones of the erous blunder, a stupidity So she scraped theed the sack across the courtyard stones to the carriage I hitched the horse y coachman, and drove the hearse out of the city, fast in the direction of the Bayou St Jean, towards the dark swamp that stretched to Lake Pontchartrain She sat beside as-lit gates of the few country houses, and the shell road narrowed and becareat wall of seely impenetrable cypress and vine I could s of the animals
“Claudia had wrapped Lestat’s body in a sheet before I would even touch it, and then, to -stemmed chrysanthemums So it had a sweet, funereal se It was al made of knots and cords, as I put it over my shoulder andsome path in the ooze beneath, away from where I’d laid the two boys I went deeper and deeper in with Lestat’s reh why, I did not know And finally, when I could barely see the pale space of the road and the sky which was coerously close to dawn, I let his body slip down out ofat the amorphous form of the white sheet beneath the slimy surface The nue left the Rue Royale threatened to lift and leave : This is Lestat This is all of transforone into eternal darkness I felt a pull suddenly, as if soo doith him, to descend into the dark water and never co that it made the articulation of voices seee, saying, ‘You knohat you o away’
“But at thatled vines, I saw her distant and tiny, like a white flame on the faint luminescent shell road
“That ainstshe loved me, that ere free now of Lestat forever ‘I love you, Louis,’ she said over and over as the darkness finally came doith the lid and mercifully blotted out all consciousness
“When I awoke, she was going through his things It was a tirade, silent, controlled, but filled with a fierce anger She pulled the contents from cabinets, emptied drawers onto the carpets, pulled one jacket after another fro the coins and theater tickets and bits and pieces of paper away I stood in the door of his roo her His coffin lay there, heaped with scarves and pieces of tapestry I had the co!’ she finally said in disgust She wadded the clothes into the grate ‘Not a hint of where he came from, who made him!’ she said ‘Not a scrap’ She looked to me as if for sympathy I turned away from her I was unable to look at her I moved back into that bedroom which I kept for s I’d saved from my mother and sister, and I sat on the bed I could hear her at the door, but I would not look at her ‘He deserved to die!’ she said to me
“ ‘Then we deserve to die The saht of our lives,’ I said back to her ‘Go away frohts, my mind alone only formless confusion ‘I’ll care for you because you can’t care for yourself But I don’t want you near ht for yourself Don’t come near me’
“ ‘I told you I was going to do it I told you…’ she said Never had her voice sounded so fragile, so like a little silvery bell I looked up at her, startled but unshaken Her face seeitation into the features of a doll ‘Louis, I told you!’ she said, her lips quivering ‘I did it for us So we could be free’ I couldn’t stand the sight of her Her beauty, her seeitation I went past her, perhaps knocking her backwards, I don’t know And I was ale sound
“Never in all the years of our life together had I heard this sound Never since the night long ago when I had first found her, a !
“It drew ainst h she meant no one to hear it, or didn’t care if it were heard by the whole world I found her lying on my bed in the place where I often sat to read, her knees drawn up, her whole fra with her sobs The sound of it was terrible It washad ever been I sat down slowly, gently, beside her and put my hand on her shoulder She lifted her head, startled, her eyes wide, herHer face was stained with tears, tears that were tinted with blood Her eyes brimmed with them, and the faint touch of red stained her tiny hand She didn’t seem to be conscious of this, to see it She pushed her hair back fro, low, pleading sob
“ ‘Louis… if I lose you, I have nothing,’ she whispered ‘I would undo it to have you back I can’t undo what I’ve done’ She put her arainst my heart My hands were reluctant to touch her; and then they moved as if I couldn’t stop them, to enfold her and hold her and stroke her hair ‘I can’t live without you…’ she whispered ‘I would die rather than live without you I would die the same way he died I can’t bear you to look at me the way you did I cannot bear it if you do not love reorse, more bitter, until finally I bent and kissed her soft neck and cheeks Winter plums Plums frohs Where the flowers never wither and die ‘All right, my dear…’
“I said to her ‘All right, ently ineternally happy, free of Lestat forever, beginning the great adventure of our lives
“The great adventure of our lives What does it mean to die when you can live until the end of the world? And what is ‘the end of the world’ except a phrase, because who k