Before Brazil, I'd pretty much discounted it. In fact, it was so disturbing, so perfectly unaccountable, that I'd put it out of my mind by the time I went to Rio. Yet now, I think of it all the time. I can't stop myself from thinking of it. And that's why I've turned to the Bible, as if I'll find some wisdom there.
Tell me.
Happened in Paris right before the war. I was there with my mother. I was in a cafe on the Left Bank, and I don't even remember now which cafe it was, only that it was a lovely spring day and a simply grand time to be in Paris, as all the songs say. I was drinking a beer, reading the English papers, and I realized I was overhearing a conversation. He drifted away again. I wish I knew what really happened, he murmured under his breath.
He sat forward, gathered up the poker in his right hand, an jabbed at the logs, sending a plume of fiery sparks up the dark bricks.
I wanted desperately to pull him back, but I waited. At last he went on.
I was in this cafe, as I said.
Yes.
And I realized I was overhearing this strange conversation . . . and it wasn't in English and it wasn't in French . . . and gradually I came to know that it wasn't in any language really, and yet it was fully understandable to me. I put down my paper, and began to concentrate. On and on it went. It was a sort of argument. And suddenly I didn't know whether or not the voices were audible in any conventional sense. I wasn't sure anyone else could actually hear this! I looked up and slowly turned around.
And there they were . . . two beings, seated at the table talking to each other, and just for a moment, it seemed normal-two men in conversation. I looked back at my paper, and this swimming feeling came over me. I had to anchor myself to something, to fix on the paper for a moment and then the tabletop, and make the swimming cease. The noise of the cafe came back like a full orchestra. And I knew I'd just turned and looked at two individuals who weren't human beings.
I turned around again, forcing myself to focus tightly, to be aware of things, keenly aware. And there they were still, and it was painfully clear they were illusory. They simply weren't of the same fabric as everything else. Do you know what I'm saying I can break it down into parts. They weren't being illuminated by the same light, for instance, they existed in some realm where the light was from another source.
Like the light in Rembrandt.
Yes, rather like that. Their clothes and their faces were smoother than those of human beings. Why, the whole vision was of a different texture, and that texture was uniform in all its details.
Did they see you?
No. I mean to say, they didn't look at me, or acknowledge me. They looked at each other, they went on talking, and I picked up the thread again instantly. It was God talking to the Devil and telling the Devil that he must go on doing the job. And the Devil didn't want to do it. He explained that his term had already been too long. The same thing was happening to him that had happened to all the others. God said that He understood, but the Devil ought to know how important he was, he couldn't simply shirk his duties, it wasn't that simple, God needed him, and needed him to be strong. And all this was very amicable.
What did they look like?
That's the worst part of it. I don't know. At the time I saw two vague shapes, large, definitely male, or assuming male form, shall we say, and pleasant-looking-nothing monstrous, nothing out of the ordinary really. I wasn't aware of any absence of particulars-you know, hair color, facial features, that sort of thing. The two figures seemed quite complete. But when I tried to reconstruct the event afterwards, I couldn't recall any details! I don't think the illusion was that nearly complete. I think I was satisfied by it, but the sense of completeness sprang from something else.
From what?
The content, the meaning, of course.
They never saw you, never knew you were there.
My dear boy, they had to know I was there. They must have known. They must have been doing it for my benefit! How else could I have been allowed to see it?
I don't know, David. Maybe they didn't mean for you to see. Maybe it's that some people can see, and some people can't. Maybe it was a little rip in the other fabric, the fabric of everything else in the cafe.
That could be true. But I fear it wasn't. I fear I was meant to see it and it was meant to have some effect on me. And that's the horror, Lestat. It didn't have a very great effect.
You didn't change your life on account of it.
Oh, no, not at all. Why, two days later I doubted I'd even seen it. And with each telling to another person, with each little verbal confrontation-'David, you've gone crackers'-it became ever more uncertain and vague. No, I never did anything about it.
But what was there to do What can anybody do on account of any revelation but live a good life David, surely you told your brethren in the Talamasca about the vision.
Yes, yes, I told them. But that was much later, after Brazil,, when I filed my long memoirs, as a good member should do. I told them the whole story, such as it was, of course.
And what did they say?
Lestat, the Talamasca never says much of anything, that's what one has to face. 'We watch and we are always there. ' To tell the truth, it wasn't a very popular vision to go talking about with the other members. Speak of spirits in Brazil and you have an audience. But the Christian God and His Devil No, I fear the Talamasca is subject somewhat to prejudices and even fads, like any other institution. The story raised a few eyebrows. 1 don't recall much else. But then when you're talking to gentlemen who have seen werewolves, and been seduced by vampires, and fought witches, and talked to ghosts, well, what do you expect?
But God and the Devil, I said, laughing. David, that's the big time. Maybe the other members envied you more than you realized.
No, they didn't take it seriously, he said, acknowledging my humor with a little laugh of his own. I'm surprised that you've taken it seriously, to be quite frank.