Page 113 (2/2)

d fire flooded them

The sun had fully risen

"I shall die now I shall die!" I whispered "And in this last one and there is nothing left, I hear herthe final notes of the Appassionata! I hear her I hear her tu "

Chapter 20

20

I DIDN'T DIE Not by any , but she and her piano were very far away In the first few hours after twilight, when the pain was at its worst, I used the sound of herincould make the pain stop

Deeply encased in snow, I couldn't move and couldn't see, save whatto die, I used nothing I only listened to her playing the Appassionata, and so with her in my dreams

All the first night and the second, I listened to her, that is, when she was disposed to play She would stop for hours, to sleep perhaps I couldn't know Then she would begin again and I'd begin with her

I followed her Three Movements until I knew them, as she must know them, by heart I knew the variations she worked into her music; I kne no two musical phrases she played were ever the same

I listened to Benja very rapidly and very el, you've not done with us, what are we to do with hiel, I have plenty of good cigarettes Coet; your own cigarettes But this is really vexing, you leaving this dead body, Angel Come back "

There were hours when I heard nothing of either of theth to reach out telepathically to theh the eyes of the other No That kind of strength was gone

I lay in mute stillness, burnt as ht, hurt and empty inside, and dead of h, wasn't it, in blackest irl and a mischievous streetwise boy who cared for her? There was no history to it,her brother Bravo, and finished There was five hundred years of history to the pain of everything else

There were hours when only the city talked tocity of New York, with its traffic forever clanking, even in the thickest snoith its layers upon layers of voices and lives rising up to the plateau on which I lay, and then beyond it, vastly beyond it in towers such as the world before this time has never beheld

I knew things but I didn't knohat toever deeper, and ever harder, and I didn't understand how such a thing as ice could keep away from me the rays of the sun

Surely, Iday, then the next I thought of Lestat holding up the Veil I thought of His Face But the zeal had left me All hope had left me