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"Of course, we both knew the threat to her reputation. You'vehelped by eliminating me. But there'll be news of my disappearancesoon, has to be. 'Televangist financed by cocaine king.' How long canher secrecy last? It has to survive my death and she has to survive mydeath. At all costs! Lestat, you hear what I'm saying.""I am listening to you, Roger, to every word you say. They aren'ton to her yet, I can assiire you.""My enemies are a ruthless lot. And the government . . . whoknows who the hell the government is or what the hell thegovernment does.""She's afraid of this scandal?""No. Brokenhearted, yes, afraid of scandal, never. She'd take whatwould come. What she wanted was for me to give it all up! Thatbecame her attack. She didn't care that the world might find out wewere father and daughter. She wanted me to renounce everything.
She was afraid for me, like a gangster's daughter would be, like agangster's wife.
" 'Just let me build the church,' I kept pleading. 'Take themoney.' The television show has proved her mettle. But no more. . . things are in ruins around her. She's a little one-hour programthree times a week. The ladder to heaven is hers alone to climb. I'mout of it. She's relying on her audience to bring the millions neededto her.
"And the female mystics she quotes, you've heard her read fromthem, Hildegard of Bingen, and Julian of Norwich. Teresa of Avila.
You've read any of those women?""All of them," I said.
"Smart females who want to hear smart females listen to her. Butshe's beginning to attract everyone. You cannot make it in this worldif you speak to only one gender. That isn't possible. Even I knowthat, the marketeer in me knows that, the Wall Street genius, and Iam that, too, have no doubt. She attracts everyone. Oh, if I only hadthose last two years to do over, if only I could have launched thechurch before she discovered?
"You're looking at this all wrong. Stop regretting. If you'd madethe church big, you would have precipitated your exposure and thescandal.""No, once the church was big enough, the scandal wouldn't havemattered. That's just the catch. She stayed small, and when you'resmall, a scandal can do you in!" He shook his head again, angrily. Hewas becoming too agitated, but the image of him only grew stronger.
"I cannot be allowed to destroy Dora. . . ." His voice drifted offagain. He shuddered. He looked at me:
"What does it come to, Lestat?" he asked.
"Dora herself must survive," I said. "She has to hang on to herfaith after your death is discovered!""Yes. I'm her biggest enemy, dead or alive. And her church, youknow, she walks a thin line; she's no puritan, my daughter. She thinksWynken's a heretic, but she doesn't know how much her ownmodern compassion for the flesh is just what Wynken was talking about.""I get it. But what about Wynken, am I supposed to save Wynkentoo? What do I do with Wynken?""She is a genius in her own way, actually," he went on, ignoringme. "That's what I meant when I called her a theologian. She's donethe near impossible thing of mastering Greek and Latin and Hebrew,even though she was not bilingual as a small child. You know howhard it is.""Yes, it's not that way for us, but. . , ." I stopped. A horriblethought had occurred to me with full force.
The thought interrupted everything.
It was too late to make Roger immortal. He was dead!
I hadn't even realized that I was assuming all this time, all thistime, as we talked and his story poured out, that I could, if I wantedto, actually bring him to me, and keep him here, and stop him fromgoing on. But suddenly I remembered with a ferocious shock thatRoger was a ghost! I was talking to a man who was already dead.
The situation was so hideously painful and frustrating and utterlyabnormal that I was thunderstruck and might have begun to groan, ifI hadn't had to cover it up so that he would go on.
"What's the matter with you?" he asked.
"Nothing. Talk more about Dora to me. Tell me the sort ofthings Dora says.""She talks about the sterility of now, and how people need theineffable. She points to rampant crime and goalless youth. She'sgoing to make a religion where nobody hurts anybody else. It's theAmerican dream. She knows Scripture inside and out, she's coveredall the Pseudepigrapha, Apocrypha, the works of Augustine,Marcion, Moses Maimonides; she's convinced that the prohibitionagainst sex destroyed Christianity, which is hardly original with her,of course, and certainly appeals to the women who listen to her, youknow. . . .""Yes, I understand all that, but she must have felt some sympathyfor Wynken.""Wynken's books weren't a series of visions to her as they are tome.""I see.""And by the way, Wynken's books are not merely perfect, theyare unique in a number of ways. Wynken did his work in the lasttwenty-five years before the Gutenberg printing press. Yet Wynkendid everything. He was scribe, rubicator, that is, the maker of thefancy letters, and also the miniaturist who added all the naked peoplefrolicking in Eden and the ivy and vine crawling over every page. Hehad to do every step himself at a time when scriptoria divided upthese functions.
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