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I told them everything. Every word spoken by Memnoch and God Incarnate. Everything I had seen in Heaven and in Hell and on Earth. I told them about the smell and the colors of Jerusalem. I told them and told them and told them. . . .
The story devoured the night. It ate the hours, as I paced, raving, repeating those parts I wanted to get exactly right, the stages of Evolution which had shocked the angels, and the vast libraries of Heaven, and the peach tree with both bloom and fruit, and God, and the soldier lying on his back in Hell, refusing to give in. I described to them the details of the interior of Hagia Sophia. I talked about the naked men on the battlefield. Over and over I described Hell. I described Heaven. I repeated my final speech, that I couldn't help Memnoch, I couldn't teach in this school!
They stared at me in utter silence.
"Do you have the veil?" Dora asked, her lip quivering. "Do you still have it?"
So tender was the tilt of her head, as if she'd forgive me in an instant if I said, No, I lost it in the street, I gave it to a beggar!
"The veil proves nothing," I said. "Whatever is on the veil means nothing! Anyone who can make illusions like that can make a veil! It proves neither truth nor lies, neither trickery nor witchery nor theophany. "
"When you were in Hell," she asked, so kindly, so gently, her white face shining in the warmth of the lamp, "did you tell Roger you had the veil?"
"No, Memnoch wouldn't let me. And I only saw him for a minute, you see, one second it was one way, and then it was another. But he's going up, I know he is, he's going because he's clever and he's figured it out, and Terry will go with him! They will be in the arms of God unless God is a cheap magician and all of this was a lie, but a lie for what? For what purpose?"
"You don't believe what Memnoch asked of you?" asked Armand.
Only at this moment did I realize how shaken he was, how like the boy he must have been when made a vampire, how young and full of earthly grace. He wanted it to be true!
"Oh, yes, I do!" I said. "I believed him, but it could all be a lie, don't you see?"
"Didn't you feel it was true," asked Armand, "that he needed you?"
"What?" I demanded. "Are we back to that, arguing whether or not when we serve Satan we serve God? You and Louis arguing about that in the Theater of the Vampires, if we are children of Satan, are we children of God?"
"Yes!" said Armand. "Did you believe him?"
"Yes. No. I don't know," I said. "I don't know!" I shouted it. "I hate God as much as I ever did. I resent them both, damn them!"
"And Christ?" Dora asked, her eyes filled with tears. "Was He sorry for us?"
"Yes, in His own way. Yes. Perhaps. Maybe. Who knows! But He didn't go through the Passion as a man alone, as Memnoch had begged Him to do, He carried His cross as God Incarnate. I tell you their rules are not our rules! We have conceived of better rules! We are in the hands of mad things!"
She broke into soft, sorrowful cries.
"Why are we never, never to know?" she cried.
"I don't know!" I declared. "I know they were there, that they appeared to me, that they let me see them. And still I don't know!"
David was scowling, scowling rather like Memnoch could scowl, deep in thought. Then he asked:
"And if it was all a series of images and tricks, things drawn from your heart and your mind, what was the purpose? If it was not a straight proposition that you become his lieutenant or prince, then what could have been the motive?"
"What do you think?" I asked. "They have my eye! I tell you not a word of it is a lie from me. They've got my bloody eye, damn it. I don't know what it was all about, unless it was true, absolutely true to the last syllable. "
"We know you believe it's true," said Armand. "Yes, you believe it completely. You bore witness. I believe it's true. All of my long wandering through the valley of death, I've believed it was true!"
"Don't be a common fool," I said bitterly.
But I could see the flame in Armand's face; I could see the ecstasy and the sorrow in his eyes. I could see the entire galvanization of his form with belief, with conversion.
"The clothes," said David thoughtfully, calmly, "in the other room. You've gathered them all up, and the evidence will tell some scientific tale. "
"Stop thinking like a scholar. These are Beings who play at a game only they can understand. What is it to them to make pine needles and dirt cling to my clothes, but yes, I saved those relics, yes, I've saved everything but my goddamned eye, which I left on the steps of Hell so I could get out. I, too, want to analyze the evidence on those clothes. I, too, want to know what forest it was where I walked and listened to him!"
"They let you get out," said David.
"If you could have seen his face when he saw that eye on the step," I said.
