The Vampire Tapestry

by Suzy McKee Charnas

  “Again,” said Scotty, and the lion coughed.

  Katje woke. She was sitting in front of the TV, blinking at the sharp, knowing face of the talk-show host. The sound had gone off again, and she had dozed.

  She didn’t often dream, hardly ever of her African childhood—her mother, Uncle Jan, Scotty the neighboring farmer whom Uncle had begun by calling a damned rooinek and ended treating like a brother. Miss Donelly’s request for a lecture about Africa must have stirred up that long-ago girlhood spent prowling for game in a landscape of yellow grass.

  The slim youngster she had been then, brown-skinned and nearly white-haired from the sun, seemed far distant. A large-framed woman now, Katje worked to avoid growing stout as her mother had. In the gray New England climate her hair had dulled to the color of old brass, paling now toward gray.

  Yet she could still catch sight of her child-self in the mirror—the stubborn set of her firm, round jaw and the determined squint of her eyes. She had not, she reflected with satisfaction, allowed the world to change her much.

  * * *

  Miss Donelly came in for some coffee the next afternoon. As Katje brought a tray to her in the long living room, a student rushed past calling, “Is it too late to hand in my paper, Miss Donelly?”

  “For God’s sake, Mickey!” Miss Donelly burst out. “Where did you get that?”

  Across the chest of the girl’s T-shirt where her coat gapped open were emblazoned the words SLEEP WITH WEYLAND HE’S A DREAM. She grinned. “Some hustler is selling them right outside the co-op. Better hurry if you want one—Security’s already been sent for.” She put a sheaf of dog-eared pages down on the table beside Miss Donelly’s chair, added, “Thanks, Miss Donelly,” and clattered away again on her high-heeled clogs.

  Miss Donelly laughed and said to Katje, “Well, I never, as my grandma used to say. That man certainly does juice this place up.”

  “Young people have no respect for anything,” Katje grumbled. “What will Dr. Weyland say, seeing his name used like that? He should have her expelled.”

  “Him? He wouldn’t bother. Wacker will throw fits, though. Not that Weyland won’t notice—he notices everything—but he doesn’t waste his super-valuable time on nonsense.” Miss Donelly ran a finger over the blistered paint on the windowsill by her chair. “Pity we can’t use some of the loot Weyland brings in to fix up this old place. But I guess we can’t complain; without Weyland, Cayslin would be just another expensive backwater school for the not-so-bright children of the upper middle class. And it isn’t all roses even for him. This T-shirt thing will start a whole new round of backbiting among his colleagues, you watch. This kind of stuff brings out the jungle beast in even the mildest academics.”

  Katje snorted. She didn’t think much of academic infighting.

  “I know we must seem pretty tame to you,” Miss Donelly said wryly, “but there are some real ambushes and even killings here, in terms of careers. It’s not the cushy life it sometimes seems, and not so secure either. Even for you, Mrs. de Groot. There are people who don’t like your politics—”

  “I never talk politics.” That was the first thing Henrik had demanded of her here. She had acquiesced like a good wife; not that she was ashamed of her political beliefs. She had loved and married Henrik not because of but in spite of his radical politics.

  “From your silence they assume you’re some kind of reactionary racist,” Miss Donelly said. “Also because you’re a Boer and you don’t carry on your husband’s crusade. Then there are the ones who’re embarrassed to see the wife of a former instructor working at the Club—”

  “It’s work I can do,” Katje said stiffly. “I asked for the job.”

  Miss Donelly frowned. “Sure—but everybody knows the college should have done better by you, and besides you were supposed to have a staff of people here to help out. And some of the faculty are a little scared of you; they’d rather have a giggly cocktail waitress or a downtrodden mouse of a working student. You need to be aware of these things, Mrs. de Groot.

  “And also of the fact that you have plenty of partisans too. Even Wacker knows you give this place tone and dignity, and you lived a real life in the world, whatever your values, which is more than most of our faculty have ever done.” Blushing, she lifted her cup and drank.

  She was as soft as everyone around here, Katje thought, but she had a good heart.

  * * *

  Many of the staff had already left for vacation during intersession, now that new scheduling had freed everyone from doing mini-courses between semesters. The last cocktail hour at the Club was thinly attended. Katje moved among the drinkers unobtrusively gathering up loaded ashtrays, used glasses, crumpled paper napkins. A few people who had known Henrik greeted her as she passed.

  There were two major topics of conversation: the bio student who had been raped last night leaving the library, and the Weyland T-shirt, or, rather, Weyland himself.

  They said he was a disgrace, encouraging commercial exploitation of his name; he was probably getting a cut of the profits. No he wasn’t, didn’t need to, he had a hefty income, no dependents, and no appetites except for study and work. And driving his beautiful Mercedes-Benz, don’t forget that. No doubt that was where he was this evening—not off on a holiday or drinking cheap Club booze, but roaring around the countryside in his beloved car.

  Better a ride in the country than burying himself in the library as usual. It was unhealthy for him to push so hard; just look at him, so haggard and preoccupied, so lean and lonely-looking. The man deserved a prize for his solitary-bachelor-hopelessly-hooked-on-the-pursuit-of-knowledge act.

  It was no act—what other behavior did people expect of a great scholar? There’d be another fine book out of him someday, a credit to Cayslin. Look at that latest paper of his, “Dreams and Drama: The Mini-Theatre of the Mind.” Brilliant!

  Brilliant speculation, maybe, like all his work, plus an intriguing historical viewpoint, but where was his hard research? He was no scientist; he was a mountebank running on drive, imagination, a commanding presence, and a lucky success with his first book. Why, even his background was foggy. (But don’t ever suggest to Dean Wacker that there was anything odd about Weyland’s credentials. Wacker would eat you alive to protect the goose that laid the golden eggs.)

  How many students were in the sleep project now? More than were in his classes. They called his course in ethnography “The Ancient Mind at Work.” The girls found his formality charming. No, he wasn’t formal, he was too stiff-necked and old-fashioned, and he’d never make a first-rate contribution to anthropology. He’d simply appropriated poor Milnes’s beautiful adaptation of the Richman-Steinmolle Recording System to the documentation of dreams, adding some fancy terminology about cultural symbols to bring the project into his own field of cultural anthropology. And Weyland thought he knew all about computers too—no wonder he ran his assistants ragged.

  Here was Peterson leaving him because of some brouhaha over a computer run. Charming, yes, but Weyland could also be a sarcastic bastard. Sure, he was temperamental—the great are often quarrelsome, nothing new in that. Remember how he treated young Denton over that scratch Denton put on the Mercedes’ fender? Gave him a tongue-lashing that could warp steel, and when Denton threw a punch Weyland grabbed him by the shoulder and just about flung him across the street. Denton was bruised for a month, looked as if he’d been on the bottom of a football pile-up. Weyland’s a tiger when he’s roused up, and he’s unbelievably strong for a man his age.

  He’s a damned bully, and Denton should have gotten a medal for trying to get him off the roads. Have you seen Weyland drive? Roars along just barely in control of that great big machine . . . .

  Weyland himself wasn’t present. Of course not, Weyland was a supercilious son-of-a-bitch; Weyland was an introverted scholar absorbed in great work; Weyland had a secret sorrow too painful to share; Weyland was a charlatan; Weyland was a genius working himself to death to keep alive the Cayslin Cen
ter for the Study of Man.

  Dean Wacker brooded by the huge empty fireplace. Several times he said in a carrying voice that he had talked with Weyland and that the students involved in the T-shirt scandal would face disciplinary action.

  Miss Donelly came in late with a woman from Economics. They talked heatedly in the window bay, and the other two women in the room drifted over to join them. Katje followed.

  “ . . . from off campus, but that’s what they always say,” one of them snapped. Miss Donelly caught Katje’s eye, smiled a strained smile, and plunged back into the discussion. They were talking about the rape. Katje wasn’t interested. A woman who used her sense and carried herself with self-respect didn’t get raped, but saying so to these intellectual women wasted breath.

  They didn’t understand real life. Katje went back toward the kitchen.

  Buildings and Grounds had sent Nettie Ledyard over from the student cafeteria to help out. She was rinsing glasses and squinting at them through the smoke of her cigarette. She wore a T-shirt bearing a bulbous fish shape across the front and the words SAVE OUR WHALES. These “environmental” messages vexed Katje; only naïve, citified people could think of wild animals as pets. The shirt undoubtedly belonged to one of Nettie’s long-haired, bleeding-heart boyfriends. Nettie herself smoked too much to pretend to an environmental conscience. She was no hypocrite, at least. But she should come properly dressed to do a job at the Club, just in case a professor came wandering back here for more ice or whatever.

  “I’ll be helping you with the Club inventory during intersession,” Nettie said. “Good thing, too. You’ll be spending a lot of time over here until school starts again, and the campus is really emptying out. Now there’s this sex maniac cruising the place—though what I could do but run like hell and scream my head off, I can’t tell you.

  “Listen, what’s this about Jackson sending you on errands for him?” she added irritably. She flicked ash off her bosom, which was pushed high like a shelf by her too-tight brassiere. “His pal Maurice can pick up his own umbrella, he’s no cripple. Having you wandering around out there alone at some godforsaken hour—”

  “Neither of us knew about the rapist,” Katje said, wiping out the last of the ashtrays.

  “Just don’t let Jackson take advantage of you, that’s all.”

  Katje grunted. She had been raised not to let herself be taken advantage of by blacks.

  Later, helping to dig out a fur hat from under the coat pile in the foyer, she heard someone saying, “ . . . walk off with the credit; cold-bloodedly living off other people’s academic substance, so to speak.”

  Into her mind came the image of Dr. Weyland’s tall figure moving without a break in stride past the stricken student.

  * * *

  Jackson came down from the roof with watering eyes. A damp wind was rising.

  “That leak is fixed for a while,” he said, hunching to blow on his chapped hands. “But the big shots at Buildings and Grounds got to do something better before next winter. The snow will just pile up and soak through again.”

  Katje polished the silver plate with a gray flannel. “What do you know about vampires?” she said.

  “How bad you want to know?”

  He had no right to joke with her like that, he whose ancestors had been heathen savages. “What do you know about vampires?” she repeated firmly.

  “Not a thing.” He grinned. “But you just keep on going to the movies with Nettie and you’ll find out all about that kind of crap. She got to have the dumbest taste in movies there ever was.”

  * * *

  Katje looked down from the landing at Nettie, who had just let herself into the Club.

  Nettie’s hair was all in tight little rings like pigs’ tails. She called, “Guess what I went and did?”

  “Your hair,” Katje said. “You got it done curly.”

  Nettie hung her coat crookedly on the rack and peered into the foyer mirror. “I’ve been wanting to try a permanent for months, but I couldn’t find the spare money. So the other night I went over to the sleep lab.” She came upstairs.

  “What was it like?” Katje said, looking more closely at Nettie’s face; was she paler than usual? Yes, Katje thought with sudden apprehension.

  “It’s nothing much. You just lie down on this couch, and they plug you into these machines, and you sleep. They keep waking you up in the middle of your dreams so you can describe what’s going on, and you do some kind of tests—I don’t remember, it’s all pretty hazy afterwards. Next morning there’s a sort of debriefing interview, and you collect your pay and go home. That’s all there is to it.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Okay. I was pretty dragged out yesterday. Dr. Weyland gave me a list of stuff I’m supposed to eat to fix that. He got me the day off, too. Wait a minute, I need a smoke before we go into the linens.”

  She lit a cigarette. “Really, there was nothing to it. I’d go back for another session in a minute if they’d have me. Good money for no work; not like this.” She blew a stream of smoke contemptuously at the linen-closet door.

  Katje said, “Someone has to do what we do.”

  “Yeah, but why us?” Nettie lowered her voice. “We ought to get a couple of professors in there with the bedding and the inventory lists, and us two go sit in their big leather chairs and drink coffee like ladies.”

  Katje had already done that as Henrik’s wife. What she wanted now was to sit on the stoep after a day’s hunting, sipping drinks and trading stories of the kill in the pungent dusk, away from the smoky, noisy hole of a kitchen: a life that Henrik had rebelled against as parasitical, narrow, and dull. His grandfather, like Katje’s, had trekked right out of the Transvaal when it became too staid for him and had started over. Katje thought sometimes that challenging his own people about the future of the land, the government, and the natives had been Henrik’s way of striking out afresh. For herself, she wished only to return to her old country and its old ways.

  Nettie, still hanging back from the linen closet, ground out her cigarette on the sole of her shoe. “Coming to the meeting Friday?”

  Dr. Weyland was giving a lecture that same evening, something about nightmares. Katje had been thinking about attending. Now she must decide. Going to his lecture was not like going to his laboratory; it seemed safe enough. “No union meeting,” she said. “I’ve told you, they’re all Reds in those unions. I do all right for myself. I’ll be going to Dr. Weyland’s open lecture that night.”

  “Okay, if you think it’s fine to make what we make doing this stuff.” Nettie shrugged. “Me, I’ll skip his lecture and take the bucks for sleeping in his lab. You ought to go over there, you know? There’s hardly anything doing during intersession with almost everybody gone—they could take you right away. You get extra pay and time off, and besides Dr. Weyland’s kind of cute, in a gloomy way. He leaned over me to plug something into the wall, and I said, ‘Go ahead, you can bite my neck any time.’ You know, he was sort of hanging over me, and his lab coat was sort of spread, like a cape, all menacing and batlike—except white instead of black, of course—and anyway I couldn’t resist a wisecrack.”

  Katje gave her a startled glance. Nettie, missing it, moved past her into the closet and pulled out the step stool. Katje said cautiously, “What did he say to that?”

  “Nothing, but he smiled.” Nettie climbed up onto the step stool. “You know how his mouth turns sort of down at the corners? It makes him look grim all the time? Well, real serious anyway. When he smiles you’d be amazed how good he looks; he could really turn a girl on. We’ll start up top in this closet, all right? I bet all the guys who work nights at the labs get those kind of jokes all the time. Later he said he was hoping you’d come by.”

  Taking a deep breath of the sweet, sunshine smell of the clean sheets, Katje said, “He asked you to ask me to go there?”

  “He said to remind you.”

  The first pile of blankets was handed down from the top shelf
. Katje said, “He really accepts anyone into this project?”

  “Unless you’re sick, or if you’ve got funny metabolism or whatever. They do a blood test on you, like at the doctor’s.”

  That was when Katje noticed the little round Band-Aid on the inside of Nettie’s elbow, right over the vein.

  * * *

  Miss Donelly was sharing a jug of cheap wine with three other faculty women in the front lounge. Katje made sure the coffee machine was filled for them and then slipped outside.

  She still walked alone on campus when she chose. She wasn’t afraid of the rapist, who hadn’t been heard of in several days. A pleasurable tension drove her toward the lighted windows of the labs. This was like moving through the sharp air of the bushveldt at dusk. Awareness of danger was part of the pleasure.

  The lab blinds, tilted down, let out only threads of light. She could see nothing. She hovered a moment, then turned back, hurrying now. The mood was broken, and she felt silly. Daniel from Security would be furious to find her alone out here, and what could she tell him? That she felt herself to be on the track of something wild and it made her feel young?

  Miss Donelly and the others were still talking. Katje was glad to hear their wry voices and gusts of laughter, equally glad not to have to sit with them. She had never been comfortable among Henrik’s highly educated colleagues.

  She had more on her mind than school gossip, too, and she needed to think. Her own impulsive act excited and astonished her: sallying forth to the lab at dusk at some risk from the rapist (her mind swerved neatly around the other, the imaginary danger), but for what? To sniff the breeze and search the ground for tracks?