Feeling insane about Nicolas de Lenfent again. Most specifically about the fact that this version of Louis and Claudia know about him.
What do they know? How much did Lestat tell Louis? Not just his name, but his nickname. Surely about their shared love of the arts. Did he tell him of “(their) conversation”? That “only the impossible can do the impossible” came from him? Did he tell him he reminds him of him? That he was ever made a vampire? Does Louis know how he died?
When did he tell him? Was it before Claudia? During Claudia? After she ran away? Did he tell Louis about his own attempts to escape from Auvergne to try and connect to him during his days of grief at Claudia’s loss? Did Louis ask questions, and ecstatic to have him say something, anything, desperate to not lose this thread, did he open up?
I’ve been thinking so much of “this silence is cruel, Louis, and you were never cruel.” How much silence, being shut out, is a trigger for Lestat. Gabrielle spent most of his childhood shut out and away. When he and Nicki become friends it’s not just their shared passion for the arts, their shared disdain for life in Auvergne, their family traumas, desire for something more. It’s “our conversation”. It’s having a person there to talk with to begin with. And then it is lost. When Nicki is given the Dark Gift not only can Lestat not hear his thoughts but Nicolas won’t say a word at all. And he can’t stand it.
Does Lestat feel the same way, when Claudia leaves and Louis pulls away? Shuts himself off, reading alone like Gabrielle did. Sits in silence, sinking into depression, losing his mind, like Nicki?
When Lestat goes back for Claudia does he know how close he is to losing him? Is he scared of losing Louis to himself, as he did Nicki?
Lestat warns them time and again of the European vampires. How they are much worse.
Lestat had loved once before. He was a violinist. His name was Nicki. But how much else? Did he tell him that they went to Paris together?
Did he tell him, of their little theater there?
