Midnight Harvest

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  TEXT OF A LETTER FROM DRUZE SVINY IN WINNIPEG, MANITOBA, CANADA, TO FERENC RAGOCZY, CARE OF OSCAR KING, KING LOWENTHAL TAYLOR & FROST, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA.

  Compton House

  658 Selkirk Road

  Suites 4–9

  Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

  24 November, 1936

  Ferenc Ragoczy

  le Comte de Saint-Germain

  c/o Oscar King

  King Lowenthal Taylor & Frost

  630 Kearny Street

  San Francisco, California, USA

  My dear Comte,

  I trust this finds you well and flourishing, in spite of your recent misadventures in Spain. I cannot thank you enough for making it possible for me to emigrate to Canada. This has proven to be the best move of my life. I have never enjoyed myself as much as I have these last several weeks. Manitoba Chemicals, Ltd. is a wonderful company, and I have rarely felt so good about my work since I left Prague.

  When I received the offer of employment that brought me here, I accepted it as a kind of last opportunity. To be frank, its distance from Spain was more important to me than the work that was going on here. I accepted the job because I was desperate. The terms were unbelievably favorable, the salary well beyond anything I expected, and I thought it would provide me the chance to recoup some of the losses I had sustained in Córdoba. This was not the best frame of mind to have to begin a new position, but it was mine.

  You will be astonished to learn that I am delighted with Winnipeg, and Canada. It is a very genial city, well-designed and filled with interesting persons and places. The Canadians I have met have been hospitable and well-mannered, willing to extend a welcome to me no matter what my reason for arriving on their shores may be. I am purchasing a small house—not out of necessity, but out of choice, that is not far from the laboratory where I have been installed. The neighborhood is pleasant, the neighbors are kindly, and I have now two cats and a dog to keep me company. I cannot tell you how much I like the way I live. Even the prospect of a Canadian winter does not frighten me, although they tell me that three years ago, the conditions were as bad as anyone here can remember. I will hope that I will not have to sustain such a harsh season, but if I do, it is a small price to pay for all the benefits I have gained in coming here.

  I have recently heard from my cousin in Brno, and the word from there is grave indeed. Say what they will about the Berlin Olympic Games and all the good-will Hitler is supposed to be showing the world (and I think Hitler’s slighting of that American Negro runner was disgraceful), the Germans are readying for war, and unless the rest of Europe moves now to stop them, they will be running rampant again before the decade is quite over. I wish I had some good reason to contradict him, but even at this distance, I can feel the winds rising and hear the clarions sounding. My cousin told me that six of his colleagues are trying to get permission to go to America while they are able to, not wanting to be caught up once again in the toils of war. I cannot say that I blame them for wanting to leave; in fact, I hope to convince my cousin to join them in their move. So little of our family is left that I would be greatly saddened to see him go the way of so many of the others.

  Of course, no one wants war, and everyone is terrified that it could all begin again. So many are willing to look the other way in the name of peace. But one must look: look at Italy, and all they’re doing in Ethiopia. Calling deadly bombs blooming red flowers! What sort of sophistry is that? And the least said about Spain, the better. Mola and Franco are turning the entire country into a slaughter-house, and the loyalists are taking a beating that beggars description that no one outside of the country wants to admit. There are some idealists who have gone there to support the loyalists, socialists, and communists, and no one wonders that they are as much cannon-fodder as any peasant, and are important more to journalists than generals. But I fear that in seeking to maintain the illusion of peace, the cost of war may become monstrous before any resolution is possible.

  It may be wrong of me, but I don’t think there is much I can do to ease the hostility in the world. Not even a newspaper columnist can do much to move the public, no matter what one hears. So I have resigned myself to my happiness in this place, and in this work, all the while aware that it may be more ironic than unfettered. Still, I am able to do what I do best in a place that values my work and treats me far more generously than I have been treated by anyone but you. I hope in time I may find some way to thank you for making this possible for me. Manitoba Chemicals is a fine business, and those who work here are very aware of their good fortune; I am first among their number, and I hope it will always be so.

  With utmost gratitude and my pledge of good-will,

  Sincerely yours,

  Druze Sviny

  chapter ten

  “Do you have any plans for Christmas?” Rowena asked Saint-Germain as she came back into her studio with a wrapped package in her hands. She had changed from her puce-wool suit into a hostess-gown of golden-umber velvet, and had put on the tiger’s-eye frog earrings he had made for her so many years ago. It was a rainy December evening, and they had spent part of the day at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, taking in the latest exhibits and avoiding the downpour outside. “Or are you going to do something at Clarendon Court?”

  “No,” said Saint-Germain, mildly amused. “It isn’t a holiday I usually celebrate, unless not doing so would generate suspicions I would rather not have to sustain.” He was meticulous in his three-piece black wool suit, his white silk shirt, and burgundy tie; his hat and overcoat had been laid over the back of the settee at the other end of the double room. “There have been times I have been very diligent about observing it.” The sardonic humor in his face vanished as swiftly as it had appeared. He accepted the package and held a chair for her.

  Rowena sat down in the fashionably low, rounded chair, tucking one leg up under her. “Would you like to come here? For Christmas, I mean? I usually have a tree and a proper dinner—not that you care about such things—but I would be glad of the company. The friends I have often celebrated with are not available this year, and I know it will seem empty without some other guests. It used not to bother me, spending the holidays alone, but now that I am over fifty, it weighs on me. At least tell me you’ll think about it.” The light from her floor-lamp cast its soft glow upon her face.

  “I can do more than that.” Saint-Germain turned on the table-lamp beside him, and sat down immediately opposite to her and put the package on his lap. “If you would like my company at Christmas, it’s yours for as much of the holiday as you want.” He said nothing about having been born at the dark of the year, on the day now reckoned as Christmas Eve; marking his birth after forty centuries struck him as hubris at the least, absurdity at the most.

  “Thank you,” she said, and held out her hand. As he took it, she went on, “I haven’t known how to bring this up. I couldn’t seem to find the right moment…” She looked to him for help.

  “Christmas?” he asked, not following her thought.

  “No,” she said, smiling a bit self-consciously. “I had a call two days ago. From a policeman. An Inspector John Smith. Is there something I should know about?”

  A flicker of disquiet went through Saint-Germain, but no trace of it showed outwardly. “No, I don’t think so. He’s the one assigned to the matter of my suite being burgled.”

  “So he said. But I can’t think why he’d want to talk to me,” she prompted, hoping he would have answers she had been unable to get from Smith.

  “Nor I, on the face of it,” he admitted. “I don’t like that he bothered you.”

  “He wanted to know all manner of things about you: how long I’d known you, where we had met, your situation in the world, those you might know in the city.” She pulled her hand back from his. “I was not pleased that he was so suspicious about you.”

  Saint-Germain considered this, becoming more alarmed. “How very odd.”

  “Isn’t it?” she agre
ed. “I assured him that I had known you more than a quarter century, and that you had done diplomatic service in England. I was right to tell him, wasn’t I?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “He was a bit surprised that you should have been given such a mission so young,” she went on as if confessing a fault. “It took me aback, for I realized how he had assumed—quite naturally—that you must have been in your twenties then, given how you appear now.”

  “That is a bit awkward,” Saint-Germain said, hoping to reassure her.

  “I said you were older than you looked and left it at that. It seemed the only safe thing to do. But I thought I should tell you, in case you have to answer any more questions.” She joined her hands over her knee. “I don’t know why something so … so natural as years should bother me as it does. They didn’t used to. But talking with the inspector brought it all into sharp relief. I never thought the years would weigh on me, but I’ve found out differently. It’s not as if I’ve been a young woman recently, and my youth is slipping away, and I mourn its passing; it’s been gone for more than a decade, and I usually think good riddance. So that’s not it.”

  “It may be you feel that life is passing, and you are losing your chances,” said Saint-Germain as kindly as he could. “That can be a far greater loss than youth.”

  “Does that ever happen to you?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes. Constantly,” said Saint-Germain with a wry smile. “I have become accustomed to it, but it still feels as if I’m standing in a cold wind that blows everything past me.”

  She shivered a little. “A powerful image,” she said softly.

  “I’d prefer not to dwell on it,” he said lightly. “Don’t let it trouble you.”

  “But I have to consider these things, if I am going to become like you when I die; I had better learn what I am going to have to deal with. You told me about your life, back in Amsterdam, but I haven’t thought much about that since.” She leaned forward.

  “There are ways you can circumvent coming to my life, if that’s what you prefer,” he said, unable to keep the sorrow from his dark eyes as a sudden image of Tulsi Kil formed in his mind.

  “I know; you told me: fire, severing the spine, prolonged exposure to sunlight. I am considering my options.” She held out her hand to him.

  Their fingers touched this time with the intensity of the blue heart of a flame. “Whatever you decide, I will honor it.”

  Rowena met his gaze with her own. “Thank you.”

  Her gratitude surprised him. “You seem to think I would impose my will upon you. Why would I do such a thing?”

  “I may decide to reject your life,” she said, as if this must be obvious. “You might see that as a deliberate slight.”

  “If you do not want to be a vampire, then you would do well to reject coming to my life,” he said, and when he saw her confusion, he added, “I have known four women who came to my life and discovered it wasn’t what they wished. Two of them died the True Death by their own hands, one by the hands of others, and one decided the Blood Bond wasn’t what she wanted and cut off all contact with me and my kind.” He smoothed the lapel of his suit with his free hand, using the motion to cover his need to think. “I have no desire to cause you anguish, nor the wish to compel you to act against your inclinations.”

  For several seconds she remained still, and then she said, “I have no idea what your life is like, not really, though I’ve been thinking about it a lot I know it must be unlike anything I’ve known before, and that makes me uncertain. I realized I can’t have an audition for vampirism, and that means that I must continue to debate with myself; how can I know if I want it, that life?” She pulled her hand back. “I know about the native earth, and the problems with sunshine and running water, and the lack of reflection, and the other matters you described. But that’s not the same thing as knowing—really knowing—what it is to be nourished solely by intimacy and blood.”

  “I wish I could describe it adequately, but I’ve never hit upon the words to depict the experience. I suspect it is one of those things that cannot be expressed in words.” He regarded her, his eyes filled with compassion.

  “But how then am I to know if it is a life I want for myself? How can I decide without knowing?” Rowena shook her head. “You mustn’t be troubled by this; I am inclined to ruminate aloud—it comes from living alone.”

  “Is Clara in the house? Should I expect her to announce dinner, or supper?” Saint-Germain asked. “If she’s going to—”

  “No.” She laughed a bit unsteadily. “I’m not so heedless as that. She’s left for the day. I give her half-days for two weeks before Christmas, and the week between Christmas and New Year off. She has shopping to do and arrangements to make for her three children, who visit twice a year. She’s been planning for their arrival for more than a week. She’ll pick them up at the train station in two days, and I won’t see Clara until after the New Year, after she’s sent them back to their grandparents in Michigan.” She was soothed by speaking of these very ordinary things; her edginess faded, and she relaxed. “So you and I will have time together—as much as you like.”

  “Thank you,” he said, watching her. “I’m looking forward to it.” He paid no attention to the expanse of windows in which the room was reflected; he had long since ceased to be disoriented by his missing reflection, although he was comforted by the realization that she could not see the windows behind her.

  She got up and went to the cabinet to Saint-Germain’s right. Opening the carved doors, she took out a bottle of brandy and a bubble-snifter and set them down on the wide lip beneath the doors. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to have a drink.” The color of her velvet hostess-gown almost exactly matched the shine of the brandy. “I’ve been wondering about my life a lot of late.”

  “As you like; drink what pleases you,” said Saint-Germain, watching her, his eyes contemplative. “You know, Rowena, you have much to be proud of.”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked, stopped in the task of pouring the fine Mattei brandy.

  “I think you often underestimate your accomplishments because you have not achieved all you have set out to do,” he said at his most gentle.

  “Well, you’re right about that—I haven’t; nowhere near,” she said, judiciously gauging the amount of brandy in the snifter; she put the cap back on the bottle and returned it to the cabinet, closing the carved doors before lifting the snifter. “You don’t know how much I haven’t done.”

  “No; only you know that,” said Saint-Germain. “All I have to go by is what you have done, and you have done a great deal.”

  “No, I haven’t, not really; I should have done much more,” she said. “I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time.” She sat down again, and again tucked one leg under her, the snifter resting in her hand. “Every year that passes, I can’t help but compare what I’ve done to what I had intended to do. It seems to me the gap widens a little with every passing year. It troubles me that I haven’t accomplished all I have set out to do. I could have done so much more if I hadn’t spent so long at meaningless events that everyone said were important but turned out to be nothing more than a gathering of gossips. Thank God I was never in that group that takes tea at the Saint Francis, or it would be much worse.” She gave a slow sigh. “I don’t mean that it’s wrong to have a social life, but so often that means—”

  “No one can work every hour of every day, or night; all creatures need rest, or exhaustion sets in and stops all work, and thought,” said Saint-Germain. He waited a long moment, giving her a chance to speak; when she said nothing, he went on, “If you had attempted to soldier on at all costs, you would probably have produced fewer works, not more, and you probably would have liked them less. Insight cannot be forced, Rowena, and it cannot thrive without stimulation, which includes reflection.” He rose and went to stand behind her, his small, beautiful hands resting on her shoulders.

  “That may be true, but I kn
ow I could have done so much more.” She sounded mournful; her face grew more somber. “I keep thinking about it”

  “You speak as if you are going to stop all work tomorrow, or run out of subjects to sketch and paint,” he told her.

  She turned and lifted her head so she could look directly at him. “I don’t plan to, but it is possible. And what then?”

  “The conundrum of all living things—and the undead. None of us know when it will end, or how.” He bent down and softly kissed the nape of her neck. “Any of my blood could die the True Death at any time, just as you breathing people might perish. But I must assume—and so must you—that it isn’t apt to be today.”

  Rowena sipped her brandy. “But it is growing closer, the end of life.”

  “For all living things,” said Saint-Germain. “And all of us as well.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you?” She sipped again, then put her snifter down on the end-table. “The knowing you’ll die?”

  “But I already have died, once. I was executed and left on a dung-heap.” It still bothered him slightly to recall that horrible afternoon four thousand years ago, and how he had behaved for five centuries thereafter.

  She made a face. “How can you talk about it like that?”

  “How do you mean?” he asked as he half-sat on the back of her chair.

  “You know, so calmly,” she said.

  “It happened a long time in the past,” he said. “I cannot cling to it as much as I once wished to because it has vanished. If I searched for it, I would hardly be able to find the ruins. My people are long-dead, and they left the Carpathians many centuries before they disappeared from the earth. Some went east and some went west, but they abandoned Transylvania about three thousand years ago.” They had not wholly gone from the West, for their name, in a reshaped form, still echoed in Tuscany. “It would be foolish of me to yearn for those times. They were harsh, as all men were in those times, and I was cut of the same cloth.” He touched her hair, smoothing the tailored waves carefully. “You would not have liked that age.”