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"Is there a God, Dora?" I whispered. I had spoken these samewords so many times! I had asked this question of Gretchen when Iwas flesh and blood in her arms.
"Yes, there is a God, Lestat," Dora answered. "Be assured of it.
Maybe you've been praying to Him so loud and so long that finallyHe has paid attention. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't thedisposition of God, not to hear us when we cry, to deliberately shut Hisears!""Shall I leave you here or take you home?""Leave me. I don't ever want to make a journey like that again. Iwill spend a good part of the rest of my life trying to remember itprecisely and failing to do so. I want to stay here in New York withmy father's things. With regard to the money? Your mission has beenaccomplished.""And you accept the relics, the fortune.""Yes, of course, I accept them. I'll keep Roger's precious booksuntil such time as they can be properly offered for others to see梙isbeloved heretical Wynken de Wilde.""Do you require anything further of me?" I asked.
"Do you think ... do you think you love God?""Absolutely not.""Why do you say that?""How could I?" I asked. "How could anyone love Him? What didyou just tell me yourself about the world? Don't you see, everybodyhates God now. It's not that God is dead in the twentieth century. It'sthat everybody hates Him! At least I think so. Maybe that's whatMemnoch is trying to say."She was amazed. She frowned with disappointment and yearning.
She wanted to say something. She gestured, as though trying to takeinvisible flowers from the air to show me their beauty, who knows?
"No, I hate Him," I said.
She made the Sign of the Cross and put her hands together.
"Are you praying for me?""Yes," she said. "If I never lay eyes on you again after tonight, if Inever come across a single shred of evidence that you really exist orwere here with me, or that any of these things were said, I'll still betransformed by you as I am now. You are my miracle of sorts. You'regreater proof than millions of mortals have ever been given. You'reproof not only of the supernatural and the mysterious and thewondrous, you're proof of exactly what I believel""I see." I smiled. It was all so logical and symmetrical. And true. Ismiled, truly smiled, and shook my head. "I hate to leave you," I said.
"Go," she said, and then she clenched her fists. "Ask God whatHe wants of us!" she said furiously. "You're right. We hate Him!"The anger blazed in her eyes, and then subsided, and she stared atme, her eyes looking larger and brighter because they were wet nowwith salt and tears.
"Good-bye, my darling," I said. This was so extraordinary andpainful.
I went out into the heavy, drifting snow.
The doors of the great cathedral of St. Patrick's were closed andbolted, and I stood at the foot of the stone steps looking up at thehigh Olympic Tower, wondering if Dora could see me as I stoodhere, freezing in the cold, and letting the snow strike my face, softly,persistently, harmfully, and with beauty.
"All right, Memnoch," I said aloud. "No need to wait any longer.
Come now, please, if you will."Immediately I heard the footsteps!
It was as though they were echoing in the monstrous hollow ofFifth Avenue, among the hideous Towers of Babel, and I had cast mylot with the whirlwind.
I turned round and round. There was not a mortal in sight!
"Memnoch the Devil!" I shouted. "I'm ready!"I was perishing with fear.
"Prove your point to me, Memnoch. You have to do that!" Icalled*.
The steps were getting louder. Oh, he was up to his finest tricks.
"Remember, you have to make me see it from your point of view!
That's what you promised!"A wind was collecting, but from where I couldn't tell. All of thegreat metropolis seemed empty, frozen, my tomb. The snow swirledand thickened before the cathedral. The towers faded.
I heard his voice right beside me, bodiless and intimate. "All right,my beloved one," he said. "We'll begin now."1OWE WERE in the whirlwind and the whirlwind was a tunnel, butbetween us there fell a silence in which I could hear my own breath.
Memnoch was so close to me, his arm locked around me, that Icould see his dark face in profile, and feel the mane of his hair againstthe side of my own face.
He was not the Ordinary Man now, but indeed the granite angel,the wings rising out of my focus, and folded around us, against theforce of the wind.
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