vampire chronicles | Page 5

a vampire . . . didn't know for
certain whether . .
"I want to take things in or der," said the vampire, "I want to go on telling you things as
they happened.

"No, I don't know about the visions. To this day." And again he waited until the boy said.
"Yes, please, please go on."
"Well, I wanted to sell the plantations. I never wanted to see the house or the oratory
again. I leased them finally to an agency which would work them for me and manage
things so I need never go th ere, and I moved my mother a nd sister to one of the town
houses in New Orleans. Of course, I did not escape my brother for a moment. I could
think of nothing but his body rotting in th e ground. He was buried in the St. Louis
cemetery in New Orleans, and I did everything to avoid passing those gates; but still I
thought of him constantly. . Drunk or sober, I saw his body rotting in the coin, and I
couldn't bear it. Over and over I dreamed that he was at the head of the steps and I was
holding his arm, talking kindly to him, urging him back into the bedroom, telling him
gently that I did believe him, that he must pray for me to have faith. Meantime, the slaves
on Pointe du Lac (that was my plantation) had begun to talk of seeing his ghost on the
gallery, and the overseer couldn't keep order. Pe ople in society asked my sister offensive
questions about the whole incident, and she b ecame an hysteric. She wasn't really an
hysteric. She simply thought she ought to react that way, so she did. I drank all the time
and was at home as little as possible. I liv ed like a man who wanted to die but who had
no courage to do it himself. I walked black streets and alleys alone; I passed out in
cabarets. I backed out of two duels more from apathy than cowardice and truly wished to
be murdered. And then I was attacked. It might have been anyone-and my invitation was
open to sailors, thieves, maniacs, anyone. But it was a vampire. He caught me lust a few
steps from my door one night and left me for dead, or so I thought."
"You mean . . . he sucked your, blood?" the boy asked.
"Yes," the vampire laughed. "He sucked my blood. That is the way it's done."
"But you lived," said the young man. "You said he left you for dead."
"Well, he drained me almost to the point of death, which was for him sufficient. I was put
to bed as soon as I was found, confused and re ally unaware of what had happened to me.
I suppose I thought that drink had finally caused a stroke. I expected to die now and had
no interest in eating of drinking or talking to the doctor. My mother sent for the priest. I
was feverish by then and I told the priest everything, all about my brother's visions and
what I had done. I remember I clung to his arm, making him swear over and over he
would tell no one. `I know I didn't kill him,' I sa id to the priest finally. `It's that I cannot
live now that he's dead. Not after the way I treated him.'
" 'That's ridiculous,' he answered me. `Of course you can live. There's nothing wrong
with you but self-indulgence. Your mother ne eds you, not to mention your sister. And as
for this brother of yours, he was possessed of the devil.' I was so stunned when he said
this I couldn't protest. The devil made the visions, he went on to explain. The devil was
rampant. The entire country of France was under the influence of the devil, and. the
Revolution had been his greatest triumph. No thing would have saved my brother but
exorcism, prayer, and fasting, men to hold him down while the dev il raged in his body
and tried to throw him about. `The devil thre w him down the steps; it's perfectly obvious,'
he declared. `You weren't talking to your brother in that room, you were talking to the
devil.' Well, this enraged me. I believed before that I had been pushed to my limits, but I
had not. He went on talking about the dev il, about voodoo amongst the slaves and cases

of possession in other parts of the world. And I went wild. I wrecked