The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice Page B

had his familiar leatherbound diary in his hand, and he was writing with an ink pen, very rapidly. He had no sense at all that he was being watched. Now and then he consulted another leatherbound book, on the table at his side. I could easily see that this was a Christian Bible, with its double columns of small print and the gilt edges of its pages, and the ribbon that marked his place.
    With only a little effort I observed it was the Book of Genesis from which David was reading, and apparently making notes. There was his copy of
Faust
beside it. What on earth interested him in all this?
    The room itself was lined with books. A single lamp burned over David’s shoulder. It was as many a library in northern climes—cozyand inviting, with a low beamed ceiling, and big comfortable old leather chairs.
    But what rendered it unusual were the relics of a life lived in another clime. There were his cherished mementos of those remembered years.
    The mounted head of a spotted leopard was perched above the glowing fireplace. And the great black head of a buffalo was fixed to the far right wall. There were many small Hindu statues of bronze here and there on shelves and on tables. Small jewel-like Indian rugs lay on the brown carpet, before hearth and doorway and windows.
    And the long flaming skin of his Bengal tiger lay sprawled in the very center of the room, its head carefully preserved, with glass eyes and those immense fangs which I had seen with such horrid vividness in my dream.
    It was to this last trophy that David gave his full attention suddenly, and then taking his eyes off it with difficulty, went back to writing again. I tried to scan him. Nothing. Why had I bothered? Not even a glimmer of the mangrove forests where such a beast might have been slain. But once again he looked at the tiger, and then, forgetting his pen, sank deep into his thoughts.
    Of course it comforted me merely to watch him, as it had always done. I glimpsed many framed photographs in the shadows—pictures of David when he’d been young, and many obviously taken of him in India before a lovely bungalow with deep porches and a high roof. Pictures of his mother and father. Pictures of him with the animals he’d killed. Did this explain my dream?
    I ignored the snow falling all around me, covering my hair and my shoulders and even my loosely folded arms. Finally I stirred. There was only an hour before dawn.
    I moved around the house, found a back door, commanded the latch to slide back, and entered the warm little low-ceilinged hall. Old wood in this place, soaked through and through with lacquers or oil. I laid my hands on the beams of the door and saw in a shimmer a great oak woodland full of sunlight, and then only the shadows surrounded me. I smelled the aroma of the distant fire.
    I realized David was standing at the far end of the hallway, beckoning for me to come near. But something in my appearance alarmed him. Ah, well, I was covered with snow and a thin layer of ice.
    We went into the library together and I took the chair oppositehis. He left me for a moment during which time I was merely staring at the fire and feeling it melt the sleet that covered me. I was thinking of why I had come and how I would put it into words. My hands were as white as the snow was white.
    When he appeared again, he had a large warm towel for me, and I took this and wiped my face and my hair and then my hands. How good it felt.
    “Thank you,” I said.
    “You looked a statue,” he said.
    “Yes, I do look that way, now, don’t I? I’m going on.”
    “What do you mean?” He sat down across from me. “Explain.”
    “I’m going to a desert place. I’ve figured a way to end it, I think. This is not a simple matter at all.”
    “Why do you want to do that?”
    “Don’t want to be alive anymore. That part is simple enough. I don’t look forward to death the way you do. It isn’t that. Tonight I—” I stopped. I saw the old woman in her neat bed, in her