The vampire turned towards him and studied him, so that the boy flushed and looked away 
again anxiously. But then he raised his eyes and looked into the vampire's eyes. He 
swallowed, but he held the vampire's gaze.
  "Is this what you want?" the vampire whispered. "Is this what you wanted to hear?"
  He moved the chair back soundlessly and walked to the window. The boy sat as if stunned 
looking at his broad shoulders and the long mass of the cape. The vampire turned his head 
slightly. "You don't answer me. I'm not giving you what you want, am I? You wanted an 
interview. Something to broadcast on the radio."
  "That doesn't matter. I'll throw the tapes away if you want!" The boy rose. "I can't 
say I understand all you're telling me. You'd know I was lying if I said I did. So how 
can I ask you to go on, except to say what I do understand . . . what I do understand is 
like nothing I've ever understood before." He took a step towards the vampire. The 
vampire appeared to be looking down into Divisadero Street. Then he turned his head 
slowly and looked at the boy and smiled. His face was serene and almost affectionate. And 
the boy suddenly felt uncomfortable. He shoved his hands into his pockets and turned 
towards the table. Then he looked at the vampire tentatively and said. "Will you . . . 
please go on?"
  The vampire turned with folded arms and leaned against the window. "Why?" he asked.
  The boy was at a loss. "Because I want to hear it."
  He shrugged. "Because I want to know what happened."
  "All right," said the vampire, with the same smile playing on his lips. And he went 
back to the chair and sat opposite the boy and turned the recorder just a little and 
said, "Marvelous contraption, really . . . so let me go on.
  "You must understand that what I felt for Babette now was a desire for communication, 
stronger than any other desire I then felt . . . except for the physical desire for . . . 
blood. It was so strong in me, this desire, that it made me feel the depth of my capacity 
for loneliness. When I'd spoken to her before, there had been a brief but direct 
communication which was as simple and as satisfying as taking a person's hand. Clasping 
it. Letting it go gently. All this in a moment of great need and distress. But now we 
were at odds. To Babette, I was a monster; and I found it horrible to myself and would 
have done anything to overcome her feeling. I told her the counsel I'd given her was 
right, that no instrument of the devil could do right even if he chose.
  " `I know!' she answered me. But by this she meant that she could no more trust me than 
the devil himself. I approached her and she moved back. I raised my hand and she shrank, 
clutching for the railing. `All right, then,' I said, feeling a terrible exasperation. 
`Why did you protect me last night! Why have you come to me alone!' What I saw in her 
face was cunning. She had a reason, but she would by no means reveal it to me. It was 
impossible for her to speak to me freely, openly, to give me the communication I desired. 
I felt weary looking at her. The night was already late, and I could see and hear that 
Lestat had stolen into the wine cellar and taken our caskets, and I had a need to get 
away; and other needs besides . . . the need to kill and drink. But it wasn't that which 
made me weary. It was something else, something far worse. It was as if this night were 
only one of thousands of nights, world without end, night curving into night to make a 
great arching line of which I couldn't see the end, a night in which I roamed alone under 
cold, mindless stars. I think I turned away from her and put my hand to my eyes. I felt 
oppressed and weak suddenly. I think I was making some sound without my will. And then on 
this vast and desolate landscape of night, where I was standing alone and where Babette 
was only an illusion, I saw suddenly a possibility that I'd never considered before, a 
possibility from which I'd fled, rapt as I was with the world, fallen into the senses of 
the vampire, in love with color and shape and sound and singing and softness and infinite 
variation. Babette was moving, but I took no note of it. She was taking something from 
her pocket; her great ring of household keys jingled there. She was moving up the steps. 
Let her go away, I was thinking. `Creature of the devil!' I whispered. `Get thee behind 
me, Satan,' I repeated. I turned to look at her now. She was frozen on the steps, with 
wide suspicious eyes. She'd reached the lantern which hung on the wall, and she held it 
in her hands just staring at me, holding it tight, like a valuable purse. `You think I 
come from the devil?' I asked her.
  "She quickly moved her left fingers around the hook of the lantern and with her right 
hand made the sign of the Cross, the Latin words barely audible to me; and her face 
blanched and her eyebrows rose when there was absolutely no change because of it. `Did 
you expect me to go up in a puff of smoke?' I asked her. I drew closer now, for I had 
gained detachment from her by virtue of my thoughts. `And where would I go?' I asked her. 
`And where would I go, to hell, from whence I came? To the devil, from whom I came?' I 
stood at the foot of the steps. `Suppose I told you I know nothing of the devil. Suppose 
I told you that I do not even know if he exists!' It was the devil I'd seen upon the 
landscape of my thoughts; it was the devil about whom I thought now. I turned away from 
her. She wasn't hearing me as you are now. She wasn't listening. I looked up at the 
stars. Lestat was ready, I knew it. It was as if he'd been ready there with the carriage 
for years; and she had stood upon the step for years. I had the sudden sensation my 
brother was there and had been there for ages also, and that he was talking to me low in 
an excited voice, and what he was saying was desperately important but it was going away 
from me as fast as he said it, like the rustle of rats in .the rafters of an immense 
house. There was a scraping sound and a burst of light. `I don't know whether I come from 
the devil or not! I don't know what I am!' I shouted at Babette, my voice deafening in my 
own sensitive ears. `I am to live to the end of the world, and I do not even know what I 
am!' But the light flared before me; it was the lantern which she had lit with a match 
and held now so I couldn't see her face. For a moment I could see nothing but the light, 
and then the great weight of the lantern struck me full force in the chest and the glass 
shattered on the bricks anti the flames roared on my legs, in my face. Lestat was 
shouting from the darkness, `Put it out, put it out, idiot. It will consume you!' And I 
felt something thrashing me wildly in my blindness. It was Lestat's jacket. I'd fallen 
helpless back against the pillar, helpless as much from the fire and the blow as from the 
knowledge that Babette meant to destroy me, as from, the knowledge that I did not know 
what I was.
  "All this happened in a matter of seconds. The fire was out and I knelt in the dark 
with my hands on the bricks. Lestat at the top of the stairs had Babette again, and I 
flew up after him, grabbing him about the neck and pulling him backwards. He turned on 
me, enraged, and kicked me; but I clung to him and pulled him down on top of me to the 
bottom. Babette was petrified. I saw her dark outline against the sky and the glint of 
light in her eyes. `Come on then!' Lestat said, scrambling to his feet. Babette was 
putting her hand to her throat. My injured eyes strained to gather the light to see her. 
Her throat bled. `Remember!' I said to her. I might have killed you! Or let him kill you! 
I did not. You called me devil. You are wrong.'"
  "Then you'd stopped Lestat just in time," said the boy.
  "Yes. Lestat could kill and dank like a bolt of lightning. But I had saved only 
Babette's physical life. I was not to know that until later."
  "In an hour and a half Lestat and I were in New Orleans, the horses nearly dead from 
exhaustion, the carriage parked on a side street a block from a new Spanish hotel. Lestat 
had an old man by the arm and was putting fifty dollars into his hand. `Get us a suite,' 
he directed him, `and order some champagne. Say it is for two gentlemen, and pay in