Anne Rice - The Vampire Armand

Now and then I fell asleep before antique altars. I had escaped my companions. I was solitary and happy on the damp cold stones. I fan-cied I could hear the water beneath the floor.

I took a gondola to Torcello and there sought out the great old Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta, famous for its mosaics which some said were as splendid in the antique way as the mosaics of San Marco. I crept about under the low arches, looking at the ancient gold Iconosta-sis and the mosaics of the apse. High above, in the back curve of the apse there stood the great Virgin, the Theotokos, the bearer of God. Her face was austere, almost sour. A tear glistened on her left cheek. In her hands she held the infant Jesus, but also a napkin, the token of the Mater Dolorosa.

I understood these images, even as they froze my soul. My head swam and the heat of the island and the quiet Cathedral made me sick in my stomach. But I stayed there. I drifted about the Iconostasis and prayed.

I thought sure no one could find me here. Towards dusk, I became truly sick. I knew I had a fever, but I sought a corner of the church and took comfort in only the cold of the stone floor against my face and my outstretched hands. Before me, if I raised my head I could see terrifying scenes of the Last Judgment, of souls condemned to Hell. I deserve this pain, I thought.

The Master came for me. I don't remember the journey back to the palazzo. It seemed that somehow in a matter of moments he had put me in bed. The boys bathed my forehead with cool cloths. I was made to drink water. Someone said that I had "the fever" and someone else said, "Be quiet."

The Master kept watch with me. I had bad dreams which I couldn't bring with me into my waking state. Before dawn, the Master kissed me and held me close to him. I had never loved so much the chill hardness of his body as I did in this fever, wrapping my arms around him, pushing my cheek against his.

He gave me something hot and spiced to drink from a warm cup. And then he kissed me, and again came the cup. My body was filled with a healing fire.

But by the time he returned that night my fever was bad again. I did not dream so much as I wandered, half asleep, half awake, through terrible dark corridors unable to find a place that was either warm or clean. There was dirt beneath my fingernails. At one point, I saw a shovel moving, and saw the dirt, and feared the dirt would cover me, and I started to cry.

Riccardo kept watch, holding my hand, telling me it would soon be nightfall, and that the Master would surely come.

"Amadeo," the Master said. He hoisted me up as if I were truly still a small child.

Too many questions formed in my mind. Would I die? Where was the Master taking me now? I was wrapped in velvet and furs and he carried me, but how?

We were in a church in Venice, amid new paintings of our time. The requisite candles burned. Men prayed. He turned me in his arms and told me to look up at the giant altarpiece before me.

Squinting, my eyes hurting, I obeyed him and saw the Virgin on high being crowned by her beloved Son, Christ the King.

"Look at the sweetness of her face, the natural expression to her," the Master whispered. "She sits there as one might sit here in the church. And the angels, look at them, the happy boys clustered around the columns beneath her. Look at the serenity and the gentleness of their smiles. This is Heaven, Amadeo. This is goodness."

My sleepy eyes moved over the high painting. "See the Apostle who whispers so naturally to the one beside him, as men might at such a ceremony. See above, God the Father, gazing down so contentedly on all."

I tried to form questions, to say it was not possible, this combination of the fleshly and the beatific, but I couldn't find eloquent words. The nakedness of the boy angels was enchanting and innocent, but I could not believe it. It was a lie of Venice, a lie of the West, a lie of the Devil himself.

"Amadeo," he continued, "there is no good that is founded in suffering and cruelty; there is no good that must root itself in the privation of little children. Amadeo, out of the love of God grows beauty everywhere. Look at these colors; these are the colors created by God."

Secure in his arms, my feet dangling, my arms about his neck, I let the details of the immense altarpiece sink into my consciousness. I went back and forth, back and forth, over those small touches I loved.

I raised my finger to point. The lion there, just sitting so calmly at the feet of St. Mark, and look, the pages of St. Mark's book, the pages are actually in motion as he turns them. And the lion is tame and gentle as a friendly fireside dog.

"This is Heaven, Amadeo," he said to me. "Whatever the past has hammered into your soul, let it go."

I smiled, and slowly, gazing up at the saints, the rows and rows of saints, I began to laugh softly and confidentially in the Master's ear.

"They're all talking, murmuring, talking amongst themselves as if they were the Venetian Senators."

I heard his low, subdued laughter in answer. "Oh, I think the Senators are more decorous, Amadeo. I've never seen them in such informality, but this is Heaven, as I said."

"Ah, Master, look there. A saint holds an ikon, a beautiful ikon. Master, I have to tell you-." I broke off. The fever rose and the sweat broke out on me. My eyes felt hot, and I couldn't see. "Master," I said. "I am in the wild lands. I'm running. I have to put it in the trees."

How could he know what I meant, that I spoke of that long-ago desperate flight out of coherent recollection and through the wild grasses with the sacred bundle in my keep, the bundle that had to be unwrapped and placed in the trees. "Look, the ikon."

Honey filled me. It was thick and sweet. It came from a cold fount, but it didn't matter. I knew this fount. My body was like a goblet stirred so that all that was bitter dissolved in the fluids of it, dissolved in a vortex to leave only honey and a dreamy warmth.

When I opened my eyes, I was in our bed. I was cool all over. The fever was gone. I turned over and pulled myself up.

My Master sat at his desk. He was reading over what he had apparently just written. He had tied back his blond hair with a bit of cord. His face was very beautiful, unveiled as it were, with its chiseled cheekbones and smooth narrow nose. He looked at me, and his mouth worked the miracle of the ordinary smile.

"Don't chase these memories," he said. He said it as if we'd been talking all the while that I slept. "Don't go to the church of Torcello to find them. Don't go to the mosaics of San Marco. In time all these harmful things will come back."

"I'm afraid to remember," I said.

"I know," he answered.

"How can you know?" I asked him. "I have it in my heart. It's mine alone, this pain." I was sorry for sounding so bold, but whatever my guilt, the boldness came more and more often.

"Do you really doubt me?" he asked.

"Your endowments are beyond measure. We all know it, and we never speak of it, and you and I never speak of it."

"So why then don't you put your faith in me instead of things you only half recall?"

He got up from the desk and came to the bed.

"Come," he said. "Your fever's broken. Come with me."

He took me into one of the many libraries of the palazzo, messy rooms in which the manuscripts lay helter-skelter, and the books in stacks. Seldom if ever did he work in these rooms. He threw his purchases there to be cataloged by the boys, taking what he needed back to the writing desk in our room.

He moved among the shelves now until he found a portfolio, a big flopping thing of old yellowed leather, frayed at the edges. His white fingers smoothed a large page of vellum. He laid it down on the oak study table for me to see.

A painting, antique.