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to the nonexistent audience, to the world. They bowed to the
footlights, and frolicking and screaming they leapt up to the rafters
and then let themselves drop down with a stoma of reverberation of
the boards. The last shimmer of the music was gone, replaced by this
cacophony of shrieking and stomping and laughter, like the clang of
bells. I do not remember turning my back on them. I don't remember
walking up the steps to the stage and going past them. But I must
have. Because I was suddenly sitting on the low narrow table of my
little dressing room, my back against the corner, my knee crooked, my
head against the cold glass of the mirror, and Gabrielle was there. I
was breathing hoarsely and the sound of it bothered me. I saw things-
the wig I'd worn on the stage, the pasteboard shield-and these evoked
thundering emotions. But I was suffocating. I could not think. Then
Nicki appeared in the door, and he moved Gabrielle to the side with a
strength that astonished her and astonished me, and he pointed his
finger at me:
"Well, don't you like it, my lord patron? " he asked, advancing, his
words flowing in an unbroken stream so that they sounded like one
great word. "Don't you admire its splendor, its perfection? Won't you
endow the Theater of the Vampires with the coin of the realm which
you possess in such great abundance?- How was it now, `the new evil,
the canker in the heart of the rose, death in the very midst of things' . .
. " From a mute he had passed into mania, and even when he broke
off talking, the low senseless frenzied sounds still issued from his lips
like water from a spring. His face was drawn and hard and glistening
with the blood droplets clinging to it, and staining the white linen at
his neck. And behind him there came an almost innocent laughter
from the others, except for Eleni, who watched over his shoulder,
trying very hard to comprehend what was really happening between
us. He drew closer, half laughing, grinning, stabbing at my chest with
his finger:
"Well, speak. Don't you see the splendid mockery, the genius? " He
struck his own chest with his fist. "They'll come to our performances,
fill our coffers with gold, and never guess what they harbor, what
flourishes right in the comer of the Parisian eye. In the back alleys we
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feed on them and they clap for us before the lighted stage.. . "
Laughter from the boy behind him. The tink of a tambourine, the thin
sound of the other woman singing. A long streak of the man's
laughter-like a ribbon unfurling, charting his movement as he rushed
around in a circle through the rattling scrims. Nicki drew in so that
the light behind him vanished. I couldn't see Eleni.
"Magnificent evil! " he said. He was full of menace and his white
hands looked like the claws of a sea creature that could at any given
moment move to tear me to bits. "To serve the god of the dark wood
as he has not been served ever and here in the very center of
civilization. And for this you saved the theater. Out off your gallant
patronage this sublime offering is born. "
"It is petty! " I said. "It is merely beautiful and clever and nothing
more. " My voice had not been very loud but it brought him to
silence, and it brought the others to silence. And the shock in me
melted slowly into another emotion, no less painful, merely easier to
contain. Nothing but the sounds again from the boulevard. A
glowering anger flowed out of him, his pupils dancing as he looked at
me.
"You're a liar, a contemptible liar, " he said.
"There is no splendor in it, " I answered. "There is nothing sublime.
Fooling helpless mortals, mocking them, and then going out from here
at night to take life in the same old petty manner, one death after
another in all its inevitable cruelty and shabbiness so that we can live.
And man can kill another man! Play your violin forever. Dance as
you wish. Give them their money's worth if it keeps you busy and eats
up eternity! It's simply clever and beautiful. A grove in the Savage
Garden. Nothing more. "
"Vile liar! " he said between his teeth. "You are God's fool, that's
what you are. You who possessed the dark secret that soared above
everything, rendered everything meaningless, and what did you do
with it, in those months when you ruled alone from Magnus's tower,
but try to live like a good man! A good man! " He was close enough
to kiss me, the blood of his spittle hitting my face.
"Patron of the arts, " he sneered. "Giver of gifts to your family, giver
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