INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE

时间:2007-10-23 05:38:36来源: 作者:

ARMAND
But you asked the wrong questions. Do you know how few vampires have the stamina for immortality? How quickly they perish of their own will.

LOUIS
We can do that?

ARMAND
You would never give up life. If the world were reduced to one empty cell, on fragile candle, you stay alive and study it. You see too clearly. You see too much.

LOUIS
That's what the one who made me said.

ARMAND
How he must have loved you.

Armand suddenly grips Louis close to him.

ARMAND
Louis, I need you more than he ever did. I need a link with this century. The world changes. We do not. Therein lies the irony that ultimately kills us. I need you to make contact with this age.

Louis laughs bitterly.

LOUIS
He? Don't you see? I'm not the spirit of any age! I'm at odds with everything and always have been! I'm not even sure what I am!

Armand smiles.

ARMAND
But Louis, that is the very spirit of your age. The heart of it. You fall from grace has been the fall of a century.

Louis is stunned.

LOUIS
And the vampires of the Theatre?

ARMAND
Like moths around the candle of the age. Decadent, useless. They can't reflect anything. But you do. You reflect its broken heart.

Louis is speechless.

ARMAND
Are these not the answers you came for?

LOUIS (SOFTLY)
Yes... My God...

ARMAND
A vampire with a human soul. An immortal with a mortal's passion. You are beautiful, my friend. Lestat must have wept when he made you --

LOUIS
Lestat! You knew Lestat!

ARMAND
Yes I knew him. Knew him well enough not to mourn his passing.

Armand stands. He takes Louis by the arm, leads him towards the back wall.

ARMAND
But you must go now. You must get her safely out of Paris.

He opens a hidden door in the wall.

ARMAND
No-one else knows of this door. When you knock you will find me waiting...

EXT. THEATRE DES VAMPIRES. NIGHT.

Louis, in the street outside, as the door closes behind him.

LOUIS (VO)
I feld a kind of peace at last. I had found the teacher which Lestat could never, I knew now, have been. I knew knowledge would never be withheld by Armand. It would pass through him as through a pane of glass. And I knew Claudia must leave me...

INT. HOTEL SUITE. NIGHT.

Louis enters. There is unfamiliar scent in the air, a doll sitting by the mirror. Louis looks in the mirror and sees --

MADELEINE, the doll-maker, resplendent in green taffeta, sitting like a Madonna with Claudia on her lap. Claudia's arms are wound round her neck. The contrast between mortal woman and immortal child is plain.

CLAUDIA
Madeleine... Louis is shy.

Madeleine rises and comes towards Louis. She draws back the lace fringes round her throat, so he can see the two marks there. She says softly, dreamily.

MADELEINE
Drink.

Louis turns away. Claudia speaks, icy, from the bed.

CLAUDIA
Do it Louis. Because I cannot do it. I haven't the strength. You saw to that when you made me.

Louis turns to Madeleine.

LOUIS
You haven't the vaguest conception under God of what you ask!

MADELEINE
Au contraire, monsieur, I have.

Louis pushes her away. Claudia screams.

CLAUDIA
You have found your new companion, Louis! You will make me mine!

Louis grips Madeleine and shakes her.

LOUIS
How do we seem to you? Do you think us beautiful, magical, our white skin, our fierce eyes? Drink, you ask me! Have you any idea of the thing you will become?

CLAUDIA
Your evil is that you cannot be evil! And I will suffer for it no longer!

LOUIS
Don't make me, Claudia! I cannot do it!

CLAUDIA
Yet you could do it to me! Snatching me from my mother's hands like two monsters in a fairy-tale! Couldn't you have waited? Six more years and I would have had that shape! And now you weep! You haven't tears enough for what you've done to me.

She points to Madeleine

CLAUDIA
You give her to me! Do this before you leave me!

She begins to weep, sobbing like a child.

CLAUDIA
Oh God! I love you still, that's the torment of it. But you know I must leave you Louis...

LOUIS
Yes...

CLAUDIA
And who will care for me my love, my dark angel, when you are gone?

Louis looks at Madeleine

LOUIS
You promise to care for her then?

MADELEINE
Yes...

LOUIS
And you know what you ask for?

She wraps her arms around Claudia.

MADELEINE
Yes.

LOUIS
What do you think she is, Madeleine? A doll?

MADELEINE
A child who can't die...

Her finger clutches a locket around her neck, Louis touches it, opens it.

THE LOCKET --

A picture of a young girl, Claudia's age, wistful, beautiful.

LOUIS (SOFTLY)
And the child who did die?

MADELEINE
My daughter...

Louis takes her chin in his hand, gently.

LOUIS
Look at the gaslight. Don't tke your eyes off it. You will be drained to the point of death, but you must stay alive. Do you hear me?

MADELEINE
Yes!

Louis pulls her to him and starts to drink her blood.

EXT. HOTEL BALCONY. LATER.

Louis on the balcony, weakened terribly. A breeze blows on the gauze curtains behind him, through which we see --

SILHOUETTES of Madeleine and Claudia. Madeleine her arms outstretched, now a vampire, a long moan of pain coming from her. Claudia comes through the curtains, alarmed.

CLAUDIA (WHISPER)
Louis!

Louis speaks without turning.

LOUIS
She is dying. It happened to you too, but your child's mind can't remember.

CLAUDIA
But if she dies...

LOUIS
It's only mortal death.

He turns to look at Claudia.

LOUIS
Bear me no ill will, my love. We are now even.

CLAUDIA
What do you mean?

LOUIS
What died tonight inside that room was not that woman. It will take her many nights to die, perhaps yeaars. What has died in that room tonight is the last vestige in me of what was human.

She takes his hand.

CLAUDIA
Yes father. At last. We are een.

He bends down and kisses her. He looks up, at the wafting curtains. he sees --

MANY VAMPIRE SHADOWS

Silhouetted, coming closer.

CLAUDIA

Looks up and sreams.

THE CURTAINS

Are ripped aside. The vampires of the Theatre surge through.

ESTELLE
Time for justice, little one.

The vampires close on them as Louis struggles, Claudia's scream pierces the night air.

INT. CORRIDOR OF THEATRE DES VAMPIRES. NIGHT.