Anne Rice - Of Love and Evil

ALSO BY ANNE RICE

Angel Time
Called Out of Darkness
Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana
Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt
Blood Canticle
Blackwood Farm
Blood and Gold
Merrick
Vittorio, The Vampire
The Vampire Armand
Pandora
Violin
Servant of the Bones
Memnoch the Devil
Taltos
Lasher
The Tale of the Body Thief
The Witching Hour
The Mummy
The Queen of the Damned
The Vampire Lestat
Cry to Heaven
The Feast of All Saints
Interview with the Vampire

S ONGS OF THE S ERAPHIM ARE WORKS OF FICTION . H OWEVER , real events and real persons inspire some of what takes place in these books. And every effort has been made to present the historical milieu of the novels with full accuracy.

The tragic maiming and subsequent mutilation of a Jewish boy in Florence in 1493 is described in detail in Public Life in Renaissance Florence by Richard G. Trexler, published by Cornell University Press. However, nothing is noted in any source that I found as to the identity of the young man, his relatives or his ultimate fate. I have used these sources to create a fictional version of the incident in this novel.

The flower called the Purple Death is fictional. For obvious reasons I did not want to include details regarding a real poison in this book.

My principal sources for this novel were two books by Cecil Roth, one very large work entitled The History of the Jews of Italy and a shorter but no less informative work, The Jews of the Renaissance, both published by the Jewish Publication Society of America. Also of tremendous help was part of Jewish Community Series and translated by Moses Hadas and also published by the Jewish Publication Society of America. I was also helped by Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy by Robert Bonfil, translated by Anthony Oldcorn and published by the University of Chicago Press. The Renaissance Popes by Gerard Noel was also helpful, and I am indebted to Noel for the fact that Pope Julius II dined on caviar every day at lunch.

I consulted many other books on Rome, on Italy, on the Jews throughout the world during this period of history, and these books are far too numerous to name here. Any student interested in further study will find abundant resources at his or her fingertips.

Once again, I want to acknowledge Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.

With regard to the Renaissance lute, I listened to a good deal of music while writing this book, but was singularly inspired by a compact disc called The Renaissance Lute by Ronn McFarlane. Let me recommend to the listener selection No. 7, entitled only Pessemeze. This piece of music proved particularly haunting, and I imagine my hero, Toby, playing it during his concluding hours in Renaissance Italy.

Once again let me acknowledge the existence and the beauty of the Mission Inn in Riverside, California, and the beautiful Mission of San Juan Capistrano.

And let me thank again with special fervor and gratitude the Jewish Publication Society of America for all they have done for research in the field of Jewish history.

I DREAMED A DREAM OF ANGELS . I SAW THEM AND I heard them in a great and endless galactic night. I saw the lights that were these angels, flying here and there, in streaks of irresistible brilliance, and some as great as comets which seemed to draw so close the fire might devour me, and yet I felt no heat. I felt no danger. I felt no self.

I felt love around me in this vast and seamless realm of sound and light. I felt intimately and completely known. I felt beloved and held and part of all I saw and heard. And yet I knew I deserved nothing of it, nothing. And something akin to sadness swept me up and mingled my very essence with the voices who sang, because the voices were singing of me.

I heard the voice of Malchiah rise high and brilliant and immense as he said that I must now belong to him, that I must now go with him. That he had chosen me as his companion and I must do what he would have me do. How strong and brilliant was his voice rising higher and higher. Yet there came against him a smaller voice, tender, lustrous, that sang of my life on Earth and what I had to do; it sang of those who needed me and loved me; it sang of common things and common dreams, and pitted these with faultless courage against the great things which Malchiah sought to do.

Oh, that such a mingling of themes could be so very magnificent and this music should surround and enfold me as if it were a palpable and loving thing. I lay upon the breast of this music, and I heard Malchiah triumph as he claimed me, as he declared that I was his very own. The other voice was fading but not conceding. The other voice would never concede. The other voice had its own beauty and it would go on singing forever as it was singing now.

Other voices rose; or they had been there all the while. Other voices sang all around me and of me, and these voices vied with angelic voices as though answering them across a fathomless vault. It was a weave, these voices, angelic and other, and I knew suddenly that these were voices of people praying, praying for me. They were people who had prayed before and would pray after and in the far future and would always pray, and all these voices had to do with what I might become, of what I might be. Oh, sad, small soul that I was, and how very grand was it, this burning world in which I found myself, a world that makes the very word itself meaningless as all boundaries and all measures disappear.

There came to me the blessed knowledge that every living soul was the subject of this celebration, of this infinite and ceaseless chorus, that every soul was loved as I was loved, known now as I was known.

How could it not be? How could I, with all my failures, all my bitter losses, be the only one? Oh, no, the universe was filled with souls woven into this triumphant and glorious song.

And all were known and loved as I was known and loved. All were known as even their prayers for me became part of their own glorious unfolding within this endless and golden weave.

Dont send me away. Dont send me back. But if you must, let me do your Will, let me do it with all my heart, I prayed, and I heard my own words become as fluid as the music that surrounded me and sustained me. I heard my own particular and certain voice. I love You. I love You who made all things and gave us all things and for You I will do anything, I will do what it is You want of me. Malchiah, take me. Take me for Him. Let me do His will!

Not a single word was lost in this great womb of love that surrounded me, this vast night that was as bright as day. For neither day nor night mattered here, and both were blended and all was perfect, and the prayers rising and rising, and overlapping, and the angels calling were all one firmament to which I completely surrendered, to which I completely belonged.

Something changed. Still I heard the plaintive voice of that angel pleading for me, reminding Malchiah of all that I was to do. And I heard Malchiahs gentle reproof and ultimate insistence, and I heard the prayers so thick and wondrous that it seemed I would never need a body again to live or love or think or feel.

Yet something changed. The scene shifted.

I saw the great rise of the Earth beneath me and I drifted downwards feeling a slow but certain and aching chill. Let me stay, I wanted to plead, but I didnt deserve to stay. It was not my time to stay, and I had to feel this inevitable separation. Yet what opened now before me wasnt the Earth of my expectations but vast fields of wheat blowing golden under a sky more vivid in the brightening sun than I had ever beheld. Everywhere I looked I saw the wildflowers, the lilies of the field, and I saw their delicacy and their resilience as the force of the breeze bent them to and fro. This was the wealth of the Earth, the wealth of its blowing trees, the wealth of its gathering clouds.