Violin by Anne Rice Page A

rank, soiled white-tiled passage, the water on the black floors, so filthy that they are not even black, and look, the engines, the boilers, the giant cylinders with screwed-on caps and seals, so ominous, covered in peeling paint, amid a din of noise that’s almost silence.
    Why, this is like the engine room of an old ship, the kind you wandered aboard when you were a child and New Orleans was still a living harbor. But no, we are not on board a ship. The proportions of this corridor are too massive.
    I want to go back. I don’t want to dream this part. But by now, I know it’s no dream. I’ve been brought here somehow! This is some punishment I deserve, some awful reckoning. I want to see the marble again, the pretty richfuchsia marble against the side panels of the stairs; I want to memorize the goddesses in the glass.
    But we walk in this damp, rank, echoing passage. Why? Foul smells rise everywhere. Old metal lockers stand here, as if left behind by soldiers in some abandoned camp, battered, stuck with cutout magazine girls from years before, and once again we view this vast Hell of machines, churning, grinding, boiling with noise as we walk along the steel railing.
    “But where are we going?”
    My companions smile. They think it a funny secret, this, this place to which they are taking me.
    Gates! Great iron gates lock us out, but lock us out of what? A dungeon?
    “A secret passage,” confesses Mariana with undisguised delight. “It goes all the way under the street! A secret underground passage …”
    I strain to see through the gates. We can’t go in. The gates are chained shut. But look, back there, where the water shimmers, look.
    “But someone’s there, don’t you see? Good God, there’s a man lying there. He’s bleeding. He’s dying. His wrists are slashed and yet his hands are laid together. He’s dying?”
    Where are Mariana and Lucrece? Flown up again into the domed ceilings of the marble temple where the Grecian dancers make their easy graceful circles in the murals?
    I am unguarded.
    The stench is unbearable. The man’s dead! Oh, God! I know he is. No, he moves, he lifts one of his hands, his wrist dripping blood. Good God, help him!
    Mariana laughs the softest sweetest laugh and her hands stroke the air as she speaks.
    “Don’t you see him dead, good God, he’s lying in filthy water …”
    “…   secret passage that used to go from here to the palace and …”
    “No, listen to me, ladies, he’s there. He needs us.” I grabbed the gates. “We have to get to that man there!” The gates that bar our way are like everything here—immense. They’re heavy iron, fitted from floor to ceiling, hung with chains and locks.
    “Wake up! I will not have it!”
    A torrent of music crashed to silence!
    I sat up in my own bed.
    “How dare you!”

6
    I SAT up in the bed. He sat beside me, his legs so long that even on this high four-poster, he could sit in manly fashion, and he stared at me. The violin was wet. He was wet, his hair soaked.
    “How dare you!” I said again. I reared back, bringing my knees up. I reached for the covers, but his weight held them.
    “You come into my house, my room! You come into this room and tell me what I will and will not dream!”
    He was too surprised to answer. His chest heaved. The water dripped from his hair. And the violin, for God’s sake, had he no concern at all for the violin?
    “Quiet!” he said.
    “Quiet!” I spat at him. “I’ll rouse the city! This is my bedroom! And who are you to tell me what to dream! You … what do you want?”
    He was too astonished to find words. I could feel his groping, his consternation. He turned his head to the side. I had a chance to look at him close, to see his gauntcheeks and smooth skin, the huge knuckles of his hands and the delicate shaping of his long nose. He was by any standards—and even filthy and dripping wet—very handsome to look at. Twenty-five. That was the age I calculated, but no