Chapter Fourteen
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The balmy nights of May brought with them a keen loneliness, for during the whole month I was bereft of contact with Joshu. Luke, who had amused me for a while, now satisfied me less and less. Still, he proved useful for learning more about the monk who did intrigue me.
One night when I did not find Michael in the weight room I wandered to the greenhouse. The lights there annoyed me, but I shaded my eyes and strolled quietly toward voices that rose above the rows of plants grown to raise money for the monastery. (The plants were transported to a market in Knoxville.) Concealed behind a wall of tall ficus, I listened to the conversation between Michael and Luke.
"It is different, Mike. God, I can't explain it. It's not like the other times. Why don't you just lay off!"
"What are we about here, Luke? You can argue for that kind of love all you want. For the sake of argument, let's say you're right. Homosexual love is legitimate. Even so, you're a monk. You took a vow of celibacy."
"That's when I thought I'd go straight to hell if I didn't kill the urges. Hell, Mike, I don't wanna kill 'em when I'm with him. It's like it's a sign from God or something."
One of the two took a few steps, and I drew back behind the foliage.
"You want to know what a sign from God is?" Michael sounded impatient. "Good fruit. Remember when Jesus says you'll know them by their fruit?"
"Hell, yes. And that's exactly right. God is love, right? That's what we have, Victor and me. Where two or three are gathered and all that, you know. I understand it now."
"Attractions are deceptive, Luke. Attractions don't mean love. Why do you think you still feel guilty? You think if this little affair were such a good thing, you'd be heading to confession all the time?"
"You're pissing me off."
"I'm telling you the truth."
"It's just the old shit." Luke nearly shouted, but he seemed to collect himself, lowering his voice. "God don't send guilt trips. Brother Matthew said so himself. Lotsa times, they're from the devil. He gets a person all tied up in knots to do his dirty work."
"If he were good," Michael implored, "if he were good and if the love were pure…Luke, don't you see this is exactly how Satan works, not through what seems grotesque and repulsive, but through what seduces us. That's what I'm trying to tell you: The man has seduced you. He has no love to give you."
"You'd take away the only joy I ever had, wouldn't you?" Luke sounded choked-up now. "Here I thought you was my friend."
"He doesn't give a damn about you. Open your eyes." Michael's voice quivered, perhaps as he shook Luke by the shoulders—the plants blocked my view.
"He wants me. Don't look at me like that, damn you. I ain't crazy. Don't you think I know when someone wants me?"
"For what, Luke? For what? It's some power game he's playing. He likes to have people under his thumb."
"You know what I think? I think you're as jealous as all get out. Someone else takes a shine to me, and you go bananas. That's what it is. You like to play like some high and mighty judge. But you're in the game too."
A definite hit on the part of young Luke, I thought. I waited for Michael to go on the defensive. His response was a pleasant surprise.
"Maybe I am jealous." He spoke softly, seriously. "Maybe I envy this intimacy you feel, the physical affection. Maybe I feel Victor's power myself. But that only confirms what I'm saying to you. You don't seduce someone you love. This is his mode of operating."
"So that makes him Satan? Maybe it's the only way he knows."
Michael sighed, defeated. "Maybe it is."
That night after compline, Michael remained kneeling in the dark. I remained, too. A cross-breeze from the opened windows carried in sweet smells of lilacs and irises blooming in the courtyard.
I willed him to cross the chapel to me, but he resisted. His own will pressed upon my chest like hands keeping me at bay. But his bowed head, his kneeling form betrayed no hint of struggle, he was so composed. Suddenly he looked up, recognized me in the shadows, and spoke.
"Where are you from?"
"Many places. England was the last place. Brother Matthew told the community all about me, didn't he?"
"Why did you become a monk?"
I smiled. "If it's a heart-to-heart you want, Michael, perhaps we should adjourn to my cell, if you don't mind violating the Grand Silence."
"Did you listen to the reading tonight? 'The Lord has given an opportunity of repentance to all who would return to him.' "
"Yes, Clement of Rome waxes on, doesn't he?"
"The words didn't faze you."
I crossed the aisle and stood before him where he knelt. "You're not a prig, Michael. And you're not as self-righteous as you sound. So why are you preaching to me? What is it that possesses you? Surely it's more than the love for your friend." I touched his hand. He pulled it away and stood. We were so close I could smell the wine from dinner on his breath.
"I have a responsibility to Luke. If he won't listen to reason, I'll have to go to the abbot. It's my duty. I'm telling you so you'll back off."
"He's like a brother to you, eh?"
"He is my brother. So are you."
"Funny, I don't feel like your brother."
He started to turn away, but I grabbed his firm arm. "You're intelligent, Michael. Surely you don't take all this too seriously." I waved toward the chapel, as though it were a world rather than a room. "Dogmatism, I mean. Human rules, penances, busy rituals. Surely for you spirituality is something more…how should I put it… elastic, expansive, spontaneous. God speaks to each soul in a different way, don't you think?"
"Yes, he does. And I know his voice when I hear it." He jerked his arm away.
"Ah. One of the fortunate ones. The chosen few. You can discern good from evil, like hot and cold. No warm for you. Perhaps my first assessment of you was wrong after all. Perhaps you are self-righteous." As he walked away from me, I called after him, "If you run into Luke, tell him I'll be waiting for him in my cell."
Chapter Fifteen
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My father was a true paterfamilias. As a Roman patriarch, he ruled his sons and his sons' families by the laws of practicality, reserving sentiment for private moments with my mother. Embedded in my memory is the sight of my youngest brother, Justin, sick with fever after serving in a provincial regiment. Moaning in pain, he lay naked on his cot, his youthful body still firm and muscular but writhing now, his eyes glazed, his face pallid as the linens. My father, a senator, was involved at the time with some important state matters that required careful attention. My mother, exhausted from attending Justin, was in danger of nervous collapse. I was home on leave from Palestine, but family business occupied my time. My other brothers, both officers, were stationed abroad.
"What are his chances?" My father had taken the physician and me outside my brother's room, away from my mother. Still fit and straight of carriage at the age of 60, my father was a fierce-looking man. His cold blue eyes, focused on the physician, gazed intensely from beneath a wide brow.
The old physician, a bald curmudgeon with a great beak of a nose and thin lips, scratched his chin. "I have seen this fever before in those returning from the provinces in the far south. If he survives it, his mind will be touched. If not, he will die within the week."
My father hesitated not one second. "In that case, it must end. Today, no later. Take care of the matter in haste. Let my wife learn nothing of it."
The physician bowed and disappeared. Immediately my mother, who'd been eavesdropping, rushed to the corridor and fell in hysterics at my father's feet, a bundle of white robes.
"No, Lucretius, I beg of you. Let him live. Do not take him from me." Justin, who had her fine features and high cheekbones, was her favorite son.
"What would you have, woman?" My father's face remained immobile. "Unbearable pain for him, madness if he's unlucky enough to live?"
"I will tend to him myself," she said, grabbing his le
gs, her reddened eyes turned up to him. "You needn't waste one moment here."
"You have duties, Lydia." Her emotion only made my father speak more sternly. "Now release me."
Mother collapsed into a heap, sobbing violently.
Following my father's lead, I ignored her and accompanied him to his rooms to discuss business matters needing urgent attention.
"She will recover," he said as we crossed the courtyard, which was gleaming in the midday sun. "And so shall we."
Recover he might, but for three days and three nights after my brother's funeral rites he locked himself in his rooms. As for myself, though I shed not a single tear in public, though I reprimanded my mother for her tears, I knew for the first time the emptiness that a final death, a mortal's death, brings. Especially when it is your own flesh and blood whom Charon ferries across the river Styx to the Underworld—a boy you taught to ride, to handle a sword, to swear admirably.
For some reason, after my chapel interview with Michael, my mind returned to the scene of my brother's fever and my father's pragmatic decision. Cold blood guaranteed survival, not only of an individual, but of a people. Certainly a vampire needed it.
I was not given to brooding, but in certain periods the isolation that was the fruit of such coldness, the isolation of centuries, came over me like a blanket of darkness that even my sight could not pierce. In moments like these, I rallied my spirit by dreaming of the time when, after entering the realm of night, I would be joined by whomever I had chosen on earth, a beloved who would wipe away all thoughts of Joshu.
In the meantime, I took comfort where I could. That night I willed Luke to my cell. With a flashlight to guide us—for Luke's sake—we hiked out to the woods, to a spot cleared by mountain dwellers, and rested against a stump overgrown with vines. Along the way he asked me questions about the Church with an interest, an ebullience, of one who never previously conceived of the possibility of questioning.
"What do you mean the Church's power is arbitrary?" he asked, cradling my head in his lap. Around us a warm breeze rustled the branches and cicadas whirred.
"I mean the Pope's a foolish old man who invents laws."
"But he's the Vicar of Christ."
"He's nothing. He knows nothing of Christ but the wives' tales passed on about him by ignorant fishermen and tent-makers."
"But didn't Christ call Peter to feed his sheep?"
"Your Christ, the Church's Christ, is a god made in the image of effete men who've never had a good fuck in their lives, or if they have, who've thrashed themselves with whips to relieve their guilt. They hate their own cocks so much they'd light votive candles to make them fall off, if it would do the trick. Good old Origen, revered Church Father that he was, castrated himself. Did you know that?"
"Shit!" Luke winced.
"Virgins. Celibates. What kind of god makes bodies and forbids you to use them? And makes you feel holy and superior when you do manage to turn into gutless, passionless stone?"
"But Jesus didn't—"
"He worshiped a demented god. He was deluded." I stood. "Let's get off this subject. Before I tear off someone's head."
"If you feel this way, Victor," Luke timidly pursued, "how come you ended up in a monastery?"
I picked up a fallen branch and cracked it against the stump with such force that the sound reported like shotgun fire. "It is my mission, damn you! We hear the gospel every day. Well, I have my own gospel, the true gospel. Not the one that serves a possessive, tyrannical god, but one that frees us from submission to him. I live it. Daily. Why grovel at his feet for eternity? Do you want an eternity on your goddamned knees?"
"Jesus said God is our father." The boy was frightened by my outburst. For all his delight in unorthodox talk, I had gone too far.
"I am your father." I fell on the boy, worked up his habit, and with only the dew for lubrication, forced myself into him. He groaned in pain at first, then in pleasure as I rode him.
In that moment I wanted his blood more than ever.
Nuzzling my face against his throat, I heard the blood pumping through his jugular as loud as a bass drum. My fangs descended. I bared them. They grazed his soft skin, barely scratching its surface, before I jerked my head away, just as my thrusting body brought him to his climax.
"God, I love you, Victor." He panted the words.
"Go back. I need to walk. Alone." I got up and disappeared into the woods before he had time to protest. My urge for food had suddenly driven me to near-insanity. Spotting a raccoon nosing the carcass of an animal, I rushed to it, grasped its furry throat, and sank my fangs into its tough hide. I sucked every drop of gamy blood from its veins and hurled the hairy mass against a tree.
Just before dawn, tired from aimless tramping about the woods, I crawled into the mausoleum and settled into my pine bed. Exhausted, I drifted toward a welcome sleep, when my eyes snapped open. Someone lurked outside the tomb, someone strong and unafraid—I felt such a presence within my bowels. Then I smiled and closed my eyes.
IV
Clearing the Path
Chapter Sixteen
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Brother Matthew stood before the communion rail, the saints in all their glory inspecting the crown of his balding head from their niches in the high altar. He removed his wire-frame spectacles and rubbed his close-set eyes. "This isn't the best time of day for serious news," he said, "but it is one of the few times we're all gathered together."
All 23 monks had remained in their stalls after compline, which had been moved to 10 o'clock to accommodate me during the summer months when the shadows of dusk didn't collect until after 9. A couple of the older bastards regularly nodded off before the final blessing, and they had to be nudged now.
"It looks like there've been some break-ins up in the hills. The police aren't sure what the motive is. As you know, the folks up there have no valuables to speak of. They're also as isolated as can be, so we're not even sure why anyone would wander around up there." Matthew replaced his glasses, clasped his hands, and rocked nervously back and forth. "It seems some people have abandoned their houses. Brother George and Brother Michael first noticed that several months ago."
I glanced across the aisle at Michael, whose dark hair, pulled back into a ponytail, gleamed after his post-workout shower. He was all intensity, scratching his new goatee, studying the abbot as though he were pondering metaphysics rather than the disappearance of hillbillies.
"As you know, it's nothing new for people to move down to the city's shelters during the winter months to get out of the cold, so at first no one was alarmed. Then relatives put in missing person reports. And the disappearances continued when the weather warmed up. The county police started to investigate. Of course you can imagine how seriously they pursued trudging through mountain thickets to investigate the cases of missing indigent people."
Several of the monks shook their heads or mumbled something about the shame of it.
"However," Brother Matthew continued, "earlier this week they found a body."
A rumble of voices echoed through the chapel.
"Brother George, perhaps you would like to take it from here." The abbot turned to Brother George, a short, middle-aged man who managed the community's finances and was second in command after Matthew. His silver hair, clipped close to his skull, fuzzed the outline of his squarish head. He stood to address the group, and the abbot rested against the communion rail.
"You all know that the monastery regularly sends food to some of the mountain folks." His voice was a deep, gravelly smoker's voice. "Well, Michael and I got worried when one of our regulars disappeared without a trace—an older woman with no family, practically lame in one foot and with no transportation. We searched the woods ourselves, thinking maybe she fell and hurt herself. At first we didn't see any sign of her. Then we noticed a trail of something—it could have been blood—leading up to a fallen tree, a big oak about five feet around. It was strange since how could she have gotten under it? But we
got the police out here a couple days ago. They sent for a crew of workers with a crane. They found her body under it. Molly Spaker was her name. Nice old woman. Husband died last year. He was a miner from up in Kentucky."
"How did she get under the tree?" Brother Alfred asked the question, a swarthy man at St. Thomas to complete a book on some drivel in Aquinas's Summa Theologiae.
"They don't have a clue," George answered. "But evidently her neck was broken. And, well, I might as well say it—her blood was drained."
The chapel buzzed with murmurs.
The abbot stood, looking grave. "The concern here is that some psychopath is on the loose in the woods. The police are continuing their search for the missing folks, with the help of our information about them. And they're hunting for the killer of Mrs. Spaker. In the meantime, we've got to tighten our own security measures since we're obviously sitting ducks for a killer at large."
"That means all outside doors stay locked," Brother George threw in. "Please use your keys. And keep windows facing the exterior of the monastery shut. If you open your transoms, the interior courtyard windows should keep your rooms cool."
"We probably have nothing to worry about," the abbot continued. "If someone had wanted one of us, they could have had him by now. Probably, we're talking about someone smart enough to pick victims who wouldn't be missed."
The monks for the most part were not gossips—scholars rarely are, content to keep the world at bay while they bury themselves in their studies—but several of the monks did whisper together in the foyer after we had prayed for the deceased and for the apprehension of the murderer, apparently feeling the Grand Silence warranted violation under the circumstances. The shadows of the robed men rose like spirits on the walls.
Vampire Vow Page 6
