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Slowly, he sat down beside me and folded his legs, and looked offas though it was not polite to stare at me, the prisoner, wrapped inchains and rage.
He laid his fingers on my shoulder. His hair had a reasonable andfashionable look to it梩hat is, it was clipped and combed and not fullof dust. His clothes were clean and new, too, as if he had perhapsdressed for me.
I smiled to myself at that, his dressing for me. But from time totime he did, and when I saw that the shirt had antique buttons of goldand pearl, I knew that he had, and I accepted that the way a sick manaccepts a cool cloth on his forehead.
His fingers pressed me just a little harder, and I liked this too. ButI didn't have the slightest interest in saying so.
"I've been reading Wynken's books," he said. "You know, Ipicked them up. I went back for them. We'd left them in the chapel."And now, he did glance at me very respectfully and simply.
"Oh, thank you for that," I said. "I dropped the books in the dark.
I dropped them when I reached for the eye, or did she take my hand?
Whatever, I let the sacks fall with the books. I can't budge thesechains. I can't move.""I've taken the books home to our place in the Rue Royale.
They're there, like so many jewels strewn out for us to gaze at.""Yes. Have you looked at the tiny pictures, I mean, reallylooked?" I asked. "I've never really looked. I just ... it was allhappening so quickly, and I didn't really open the books. But if youcould have seen his ghost in the bar and heard the way he describedthem.""They are glorious. They are magnificent. You will love them.
You have years of pleasure ahead with them and the light at yourside. I've only begun to look at them and to read. With a magnifyingglass. But you won't need the glass. Your eyes are stronger thanmine.""We can read them perhaps . .. you and I... together.""Yes ... all his twelve books," he said. He talked softly of manymiraculous little images, of tiny humans, and beasts and flowers, andthe lion lying down with the lamb.
I closed my eyes. I was grateful. I was content. He knew I didn'twant to talk anymore.
"I'll be down there, in our rooms," he said, "waiting for you.
They can't keep you here much longer."What is longer?
It seemed the weather grew warm.
David might have come.
Sometimes I shut my eyes and my ears and I refused to listen toany sound that was deliberately directed to me. I heard the cicadassinging when the sky was red still from the sun, and other vampireswere asleep. I heard the birds swooping down on the limbs oroaks on Napoleon Avenue. I heard the children!
The children did come. Singing. And sometimes some one or twospeaking in a rapid whisper, as if exchanging confidences beneath atent made from a sheet. And feet on the stairs.
And then from beyond the walls, the blaring, amplified noise ofthe electric night.
One evening I opened my eyes and the chains were gone.
I was alone and the door was open.
My clothes were in tatters, but I didn't care. I stood up, creakily,achingly, and for the first time in a fortnight, perhaps, I put my handto my eye and felt it secure there, though of course I'd always seenthrough it. And I'd stopped thinking about it long ago.
I walked out of the orphanage, through the old courtyard. For onemoment I thought I saw a set of iron swings, the kind they made forchildren on old playgrounds. I saw the A-frames at each end, thecrossbar, and the swings themselves, and the children swinging, littlegirls with blowing hair, and I could hear them laughing. I looked up,dazed, at the stained-glass windows of the chapel.
The children were gone. The courtyard was empty. My palacenow. She'd cut all ties. She was long gone to her great, greatvictory.
I walked a long time down St. Charles Avenue.
I walked under oaks I knew, on old pavements and stretches ofbrick, past houses new and old, and on across Jackson Avenue intothe curious mix of taverns and neon signs, of boarded-up buildingsand ruined houses and fancy shops, the garish waste that stretches todowntown.
I came to an empty store that had once sold expensive automobiles.
For fifty years, they'd sold those fancy cars in this place, andnow it was a big, hollow room with glass walls. I could see myreflection perfectly in the glass. My preternatural vision was mine again,flawless, with both blue eyes.
And I saw myself.
I want you to see me now. I want you to look at me, as I presentmyself, and as I swear to this tale, as I swear on every word of it, frommy heart.
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