by Joshua Sobol
That’s true, she agrees, but it doesn’t make them happy.
No, he agrees, vampires aren’t happy creatures, but they have the strength to withstand it.
What’s the source of their sadness? wonders her id, which uses her young voice with whorish charm.
The source of their sadness is not known, says Shakespeare.
In sooth I know not why I am so sad, Melissa unthinkingly quotes Antonia’s opening lines from the first scene of ‘The Merchant-woman of Venice’. It wearies me, she goes on quoting, you say it wearies you.
It won’t weary me, Shakespeare reassures her, I have to write the fifth and last act, even though my inspiration dried up after the fourth act, which is why the last act is going to be lousy, but Melissantonia isn’t reassured:
But how I caught it, found it, or came by it, what stuff ’tis made of, whereof it is born, I am to learn.…
Me too, such a want-wit sadness makes of me, that I have much ado to know myself, admits Shakespeare, without remembering which of his characters he is quoting now, although he is clearly quoting someone, because he himself feels neither sadness nor witlessness at the moment, only emptiness, an abyss of emptiness gaping between them, and all the contradictory statements that he makes, and all the conflicting acts that he performs, circle round the edge of this abyss, and apparently this is the strange force attracting them to each other: a black hole, which is signified by black-hole bypassing sentences, such as the next sentence that comes out of her mouth:
When a vampire encounters an ordinary human being, who falls in love with it, it doesn’t help it to understand anything about itself.
And Shakespeare supports her:
But when a vampire meets a vampire—
What happens when a vampire meets a vampire? She asks, and her direct gaze bores a long dark tunnel inside him, leading to a vast underground space, hollowed out of the bowels of a mountain in which no one imagines there to be winding passages, opening into dark secret cathedrals, where an eternal silence has reigned since the day the voices of the anonymous miners who quarried these underground galleries were stilled.
When a vampire meets a vampire, Shakespeare embarks on a voyage to an unknown land over the simmering cauldron of wine she has brewed for them, for the night of the vampires—
18
We’ll continue the meeting tomorrow, Mona cuts sharply into the train of his thoughts, and before he can recover she commands:
And you’re coming with me.
He leaves the conference room behind her and follows her down the corridor. She stops in front of the elevator, and he stands next to her. She presses the button. They wait in silence. The numbers change over the elevator door. The elevator rises from the ground floor, reaches their floor and comes to a halt with a click. The stainless steel jaw gapes. Mona steps inside, and he steps in after her. He looks to see where she is taking him, to the roof or the ground. She takes him below ground, to the parking level. The elevator stops.
They get out. Only a few cars are scattered here and there in the underground lot, deserted at this late hour. They walk silently to the blue Land Rover. Mona walks with a brisk, resolute step, and he trails behind her, contemplating the tight walnut colored leather pants, the red sweater whose neckline reveals the curves of her breasts, and notes her athletic build, the pomellas of her firm buttocks, her muscular calves and thighs, and the strong tendons of her ankles, twining like roots into her running shoes. As she walks she whistles to herself a kind of improvised cover version of Roberta Flack’s ‘Killing me softly’, which she turns into a kind of jazzy march. Accompanied by the clattering of her keys, which are attached to a steel ring ten centimeters in diameter and look like the keys of a mediaeval prison warder. She’s in a belligerent mood, he says to himself, and as if she has read his thoughts, she turns her head and surveys him with an amused expression. For a moment it seems to him that she is about to open her mouth, but no. She throws her key ring into the air, catches it with one hand, right on the remote of her Land Rover, and presses the button with an imperceptible sleight of hand. The Land Rover whinnies and snorts with the joy of a wild horse that knows its owner, and its eyes flash her two mischievous winks, and already she jumps in and sits behind the wheel, starts the engine and engages the automatic gear with a movement full of dynamism and power, as if she’s operating the lever of the manual gear box of an old Titanic truck, or at least a Mac Diesel from the middle of the previous century. He hardly has time to take his place beside her before the wild beast leaps forward with a powerful thrust that sticks him to the back of his seat. With a savage screech of its tires the monster veers and tilts sideways, scraping the curb of the sidewalk as it makes a right turn, like a plane changing direction after takeoff. He wants to tell her to be careful, but before he can open his mouth Mona presses the button that transfers the gearbox into sports drive and steps ferociously on the accelerator, humming to herself a tune she picked up from a French commercial many years ago, in the days when she was an Intelligence officer in their liquidation squad and drove a Mini Cooper, whose gear stick was equipped with an overdrive button: ‘La conduite sportive à la portée de tous’. The engine growls threateningly and the Land Rover cuts across an intersection at a red light, weaving in a slalom like a drunken cruise missile dancing a samba between cars screeching to a stop or getting out of the way in a panic. Mona leaves behind her a cacophony of hysterical hoots and curses, which only egg her on to give the hundred and fifty fire horses imprisoned under the hood their heads. And in this way they burn through another two red lights with traffic swerving right and left in front and behind them the last tenth of a second before or after they enter the intersection, borne on the wings of a terrifying demon chariot. Hanina puts his hand on the handbrake, ready to pull on it with all his might the moment they enter the collision course opposite another vehicle or post or tree at the side of the road. The speedometer needle goes into the red and hovers next to a hundred and eighty. Mona’s eyes are focused on the dense darkness in front of them, through which the headlamps carve a tunnel of light. From time to time the rear lights of other cars flicker in the gloom, rushing towards them with dizzying speed. Mona passes them and leaves them far behind like a vampire, yes! Like a vampire gliding through the darkness and flitting between the branches of the trees without so much as touching a leaf. His hand remains resting on the handbrake.
19
He’s on the back seat of the Harley Davidson which Yadanuga races at the speed of a plane taking off—swerving acrobatically between giant trucks and private cars, leaving behind Fiats, Alfas, Lancias, and even one Lamborghini, red with shame or anger, which they fly past like a rocket, when suddenly a patrol car leaps out of the lay-by at the side of the Autostrada del Sol, five hundred meters ahead of them, and it is clear that it intends to stop them, or even to open fire on them, and Yadanuga yells into the fierce wind, ‘Hang on with all your strength—we’re taking off!’ and he tightens his grip on Yadanuga’s waist, and the motorcycle veers to the left and leaps over the wide strip of lawn dividing the lanes, and they fly over the traffic hurtling in the opposite direction, and Yadanuga makes a masterly landing on the bicycle lane on the other side of the busy motorway, and they race against the direction of the traffic, and he bursts out laughing at the imagined sight of the flabbergasted faces of the policemen, and ‘What are you laughing at?’ asks Mona, who is now racing the Land Rover towards the parking lot next to the marina, and he says: I remembered a certain liquidation, and he wonders why they had given that terrorist the strange code name of ‘Santa Rosa’, they had always called their targets Abu-something, and only ‘Tino Rossi’ was the exception to the rule, and suddenly they were told that the next one on the list was ‘Santa Rosa’. But in fact they never told them who the man they were required to remove from the world was. They restricted themselves to general information: So-and-so is responsible for the deaths of such-and-such a number of people. Here’s his picture. Here�
��s his surveillance file. The addresses where he stays. His daily schedule. Habits. People he meets on a regular basis. The address of his mistress. When he goes to her. When he leaves. Choose your own MO. Access routes. Escape routes. If you’re caught, you haven’t got a father or mother in the world. You’re on your own with God and the devil. That’s it. Any questions? No questions. Get to work.
20
Come, she says.
They go down to her boat. A white sloop emblazoned with the strange name ‘Cadenabia’. Mona had bought it from a Greek Cypriot skipper who had made her promise not to change its name. He too had acquired it under the same name, from an Italian grain dealer, who told him that the name had brought him a lot of luck. Mona unfurls the beautiful sail, which swells with the wind that at this quiet early-morning hour is blowing from the land to the sea. She seizes the mainsheet with her right hand, and tilts the sail to an angle of thirty degrees to the boat, which slides soundlessly out of the jetty. Now Mona leans over the side of the sloop and increases the windward angle of the sail, and the craft picks up speed and skips lightly over the little breakers which Mona calls ‘ducks’. Or so he understands, because just then she announces that they have a choppy sea ahead of them, and when he asks her how she knows, she replies: ‘Look at those ducks.’ Hanina doesn’t know if this is her own private metaphor, or an accepted term for little waves of this kind, which for some reason break far from the shore.
Ducks are a sign of an approaching storm? he asks anxiously.
A choppy sea isn’t a storm, she replies with a certain contempt and throws him a yellow life belt: Put it on, she instructs him, and hold the helm in a straight line with the prow, if you can.
Hanina wonders to himself what the difference is between a choppy and a stormy sea. He has never been attracted to the sea, and in spite of Mona’s increasing expertise on matters concerning the sea and seamanship, Hanina is not well up on nautical terms, and he doesn’t even know the names of the parts of the sailing boat, never mind the type of the sail, not to mention its various components. As far as he is concerned there’s a boat, a prow and a stern, a helm, a mast and a sail. All the rest are poles and ropes without names or meanings. Mona shows no inclination to include him in the intimacy she has developed over the years with this mysterious entity. The sea is her territory, and she guards her exclusive sovereignty over her vast and rebellious realm jealously. When two or three times in the past he had brought up ideas for improving the protection of the exposed metal parts, or suggested up-to-the-minute survival kits, which he had come across in the guerilla warfare magazines he continued to receive in the mail, she dismissed his suggestions with utter contempt, and he had stopped showing an interest. He contemplates her skill and efficiency with balancing the boat with the help of her taut body, stretched like a powerful spring over the side. She holds strongly onto the pole to which the bottom of the sail is attached, responding to the slightest movements of the boat which slides with a faint swishing sound over the fathoms of water, and gaining the greatest amount of speed possible from the wind, sailing over the ducks heralding the approaching turbulence.
He looks at her pear shaped head, with its short, boyish crown of platinum bristles, and wonders what goes on in the depths of her mind. What submarine plants grow there? What drunken old ships are wrecked there? What deep water fish glide majestically between silent engine rooms, whose metal parts are covered with plumes of sea weeds and algae? From one of the empty spaces rises the head of a little girl with short, boyish, wet hair, a head which is all water and whose eyes are a fount of tears.
Timberlake. Timber-lake. Timber.
With a tumbler of whiskey in her hand—
21
She lounges on the thick carpet, indifferently exposing her unfeminine body with its long skinny limbs. Holding a tumbler of whiskey in her left hand, and lightly brushing the calf of his left leg with the cobweb fingers of her infinitely long right arm. Her touch is not sensual, her fluttering fingers do not give rise to any desire, which is precisely what is so good and suits him so well in this strange strait of his life, rocking like a drunken boat whose engines died in the middle of the sea, borne along aimlessly by the waves.
You really don’t want to fuck me? she asks.
No, he says, I hope you’re not insulted.
Not in the least, she says. It’s the last thing I need now.
They lie supine side by side, and he listens to her quiet breathing.
You’re not just being considerate, she wants to make sure.
I’m lying next to you naked, he says. If I felt like fucking, would I be able to hide it?
You don’t suffer from impotence? she asks directly.
No, he says, and I don’t have any need to prove it.
Because if you have any problems performing, I can give you Viagra, she says.
I’ve got something much better in my coat pocket, he reassures her, and I don’t need it.
Something better than Viagra? She asks with interest. What is it?
A Midsummer Night’s Dream pill, says Shakespeare. Good for both sexes. Gives rise to emotional and sexual excitement, produces a terrific erection, shortens the recovery time and lengthens and thickens the male sexual organ. You want to try it?
Do you want to? she asks.
I don’t need it, he says.
That’s good, she says, I’m sick and tired of disturbed men.
So am I, he says.
Maybe you’re sick and tired of disturbed women, she suggests a correction.
That too, he says. But I’ve had more to do with disturbed men.
Are you gay? she asks.
I don’t know, he says. I never tried.
Then you’re not gay, she pronounces. A queer knows he’s a queer, just like a Jew knows he’s a Jew.
Are you a rabbi? he asks.
Why? Do rabbis turn you on? she laughs and covers his penis with her palm and stringy fingers. A deep sigh breaks from his chest.
Why are you sighing? she asks in surprise.
A Jewish reaction, he says.
I hope I’m not making you suffer, she says.
No, he sighs again, we sigh when we’re happy too.
I had a Jew once, she says.
A boyfriend? he asks.
A client, she says. A Hasid from Queens. I even remember his name: Bornstat. He looked like a plucked chicken, but when he took out his thing, I got a shock. It was something between a piano leg and a fireman’s hose. I didn’t want to insult him, so I said: Sorry, I’m done working for the day. But he insisted: The rabbi sent him to a prostitute, because his wife refused to go to bed with him. I told him: Go to your rabbi, ask him to give you his wife.
The Hasid was insulted, made a scene, Tony came and beat me up: Because of you we’ll lose the whole Yeshiva.
I hope it didn’t turn you into an anti-Semite, he says.
I don’t hate people more than they deserve, she reassures him.
He laughs, and she plays with his pubic hair and asks:
How do you learn to sigh?
It’s simple, he says. You need to be chased out of a few countries, be the victim of pogroms, have your house burned down, your grandmother and grandfather and all your aunts and uncles murdered, and after a few hundred years of treatments along those lines, it comes of its own accord, without any effort.
I understand, she laughs. I guess I won’t learn to sigh in this incarnation.
They lie there relaxed, without wanting to do anything. The noise of the city beyond the window, a cacophony of screaming tires, screeching brakes, the groans of the tortured iron of the subway, sounds like a chorus of howling wild animals in a distant jungle.
It feels so good to be able to hold your cock without it starting to stiffen, it’s really nice to hold a soft dick, she confesses, and after a minute she adds: But maybe it’s not so nice for you.
If it didn’t feel nice I would remove your hand, he says. You can leave it there if it feels
good to you. It feels good to me.
What kind of business did you have with disturbed men? she asks.
I killed a few of them, he says. There are still too many left.
Did you do it for fun?
No, he says, I performed a mission.
Who for? she inquires.
For the human race, he says.
After a further silence, during which the only sound is that of their breathing, his deep and slow and hers quick and light, she asks:
Can I come closer to you?
As close as you like, he says.
She turns onto her left side, and the skinny string of her body clings to his. The unripe peaches of her breasts brush against the sides of his ribs, the taut skin of the drum of her belly touches his waist, her pubic hair tickles the edge of his buttocks, and when she lifts her thigh and lays the stalk of her long leg on his leg, and tucks her sharp knee between his knees, he feels the lips of her open pussy licking the skin of his thigh like a blind puppy groping with its wet nose for its mother’s teats and greedily fastening onto the nipple—and all this time his penis stays still in the web of her fingers weaving it a nest. For a while they lie like this, profoundly at rest, far from all the labors of the flesh, and then her voice begins to trickle softly between her warm lips into his ear.
22
I’m so tired, she whispers, I’m so glad you don’t want to fuck me and I can just lie next to you and rest, rest for one night like a normal human being. You don’t have to pay me for tonight.
I spend the night in expensive hotels, he says, and enjoy myself less. I’ll pay you what it would have cost me to go to a hotel.
