Anne Rice - Taltos

“Ash, you should never have drawn so close to them, never told them all you did. And then the gypsy, letting him just go back to the Talamasca.”

“Yuri? And what did you want me to do? How could I stop Yuri from going back to the Talamasca?”

“You could have lured him to New York, put him to work for you some way. He was a man with a broken life; but you sent him home to write volumes on what happened. Hell, he could have been your companion.”

“That was not right for him. He had to go home.”

“Of course it was right. And he was right for you-an outcast, a gypsy, the son of a whore.”

“Please don’t make your speech as offensive and vulgar as you possibly can. You frighten me. Look, it was Yuri’s choice. If he had not wanted to go back, he would have said so. His life was the Order. He had to go back, at least to heal all the wounds. And after that? He wouldn’t have been happy here in my world. Dolls are pure magic to those who love them and understand them. To others they are less than toys. Yuri is a man of coarse spiritual distinctions, not subtle ones.”

“That sounds good,” said Samuel, “but it’s stupid.” He watched the waiter set the fresh drink before him. “Your world is full of things that Yuri might have done. You could have turned him loose to build more parks, plant more trees, all these grandiose schemes of yours. What were you telling your witches, that you were going to build parks in the sky so that everyone could see what you see from your marble chambers? You could have kept that kid busy all his life, and you would have had his companionship-”

“I wish you would stop. This didn’t happen. It simply did not happen.”

“But what happened is that you want the friendship of those witches, a man and woman married to each other with a great clan around them, people who are a priori committed to a family way of living that is intensely human-”

“What can I do to make you stop?”

“Nothing. Drink the milk. I know you want it. You’re ashamed to drink it in front of me, afraid I might say something like ‘Ashlar, drink your milk!’ ”

“Which you now have, even though I have not touched the milk, you realize.”

“Ahh, this is the point. You love those two, the witches. And it is incumbent upon those two-as I see it-to forget all this, this nightmare of Taltos, and the glen, and murdering little fools who infiltrated the Talamasca. It is essential to the sanity of that man and woman that they go home and build the life the Mayfair family expects them to build. And I hate it when you love those who will only turn their backs on you, and those two have to do it.”

Ash didn’t answer.

“They are surrounded by hundreds of people for whom they must make this part of their lives a lie,” Samuel continued to expostulate. “They will want to forget you exist; they will not want the great realm of their day-to-day life lost in the glare of your presence.”

“I see.”

“I don’t like it when you suffer.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes! I like to open magazines and newspapers and read about your little corporate triumphs, and see your smiling face above flippant little lists of the world’s ten most eccentric billionaires, or New York’s most eligible bachelors. And now I know you will break your heart wondering if these witches are your true friends, if you can call them when your heart aches, if you can depend on them for the knowledge of yourself that every being requires-”

“Stay, please, Samuel.”

This put a silence to the lecture. The little man sighed. He drank some of the fresh drink, about half, and licked his heavy crooked lower lip with an amazingly pink tongue.

“Hell, Ash, I don’t want to.”

“I came when you called me, Samuel.”

“You regret that now?”

“I don’t think in that way. Besides, how could I regret it?”

“Forget it all, Ash. Seriously, forget it. Forget a Taltos came to the glen. Forget you know these witches. Forget you need anyone to love you for what you are. That’s impossible. I’m afraid. I’m afraid of what you will do now. The pattern’s all too familiar.”

“What pattern is that?” asked Ash quietly.

“You’ll destroy all this, the company, the corporation, the Toys Without Limit or Dolls for the Millions, whatever it’s called. You’ll sink into apathy. You’ll just let it go. You’ll walk out and far away, and the things you’ve built and the things you’ve made will just slowly fall apart without you. You’ve done it before. And then you’ll be lost, just the way I’m lost, and some cold winter evening, and why you always choose the dead of winter I don’t know, you’ll come to the glen again looking for me.”

“This is more important to me, Samuel,” he said. “It’s important for many reasons.”

“Parks, trees, gardens, children,” sang the little man.

Ash didn’t reply.

“Think about all those who depend on you, Ash,” said Samuel, continuing the same sermon for the same congregation. “Think of all these people who make and sell and buy and love the things you manufacture. That can substitute for sanity, I think, having other warm beings of intellect and feeling dependent upon us. You think I’m right?”

“It doesn’t substitute for sanity, Samuel,” said Ash. “It substitutes for happiness.”

“All right, that’s fine then. But don’t wait for your witches to come to you again, and for God’s sake never seek them on their own turf. You’ll see fear in their eyes if they ever see you standing in their garden.”

“You’re so sure of all this.”

“Yes, I’m sure. Ash, you told them everything. Why did you do that? Perhaps if you had not, they wouldn’t fear you.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“And Yuri and the Talamasca, how they will plague you now.”

“They will not.”

“But those witches, they are not your friends.”

“So you keep saying.”

“I know they are not. I know their curiosity and awe will soon change to fear. Ash, it’s an old cliché, they’re only human.”

Ash bowed his head and looked away, out the window at the blowing snow, at shoulders hunkered against the wind.

“Ashlar, I know,” Samuel said, “because I am an outcast. And you are an outcast. And look out there at the multitudes of humans passing on the street, and think how each one condemns so many others as outcast, as ‘other,’ as not human. We are monsters, my friend. That’s what we’ll always be. It’s their day. That we’re alive at all is enough to worry about.” He downed the rest of the drink.

“And so you go home to your friends in the glen.”

“I hate them, and you know it. But the glen we won’t have for long. I go back for sentimental reasons. Oh, it’s not just the Talamasca, and that sixteen genteel scholars will come with tape recorders, begging me to recite all I know over lunch at the Inn. It’s all those archaeologists digging up St. Ashlar’s Cathedral. The modern world has found the place. And why? Because of your damned witches.”

“You can’t lay that on me or on them, and you know it.”

“Eventually we’ll have to find some more remote place, some other curse or legend to protect us. But they’re not my friends, don’t think they are. They don’t.”

Ash only nodded.

Food had come, a large salad for the little man, the pasta for Ash. The wine was being poured in the glasses. It smelled like something gone utterly wrong.

“I’m too drunk to eat,” Samuel said.

“I understand if you go,” Ash said softly. “That is, if you’re bound to go, then perhaps you should do it.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Then the little man lifted his fork and began to devour the salad, shoveling it into his mouth, as bits and pieces fell to the plate despite his most diligent efforts. Loudly he scraped up every last bit of olive, cheese, and lettuce on the plate, and then drank a big gulp of the mineral water.