“Yes, darling?” It took him a moment, but eventually and noisily he came down the stairs and into the room. It was the shirtless man from before, now dressed only in shorts.
“My husband Simon. This is Nicky, my sister’s boy.” Simon nodded toward him and sat on Rifka’s lap to whisper something in her ear. The young woman entered, attired as before, now though Nicolai noticed that her thigh was wet. Rifka reached deep into a pouch and presented Simon with some money, in exchange for which he kissed her on the cheek and went back upstairs, tapping the girl on her buttocks as he passed. “Elizabeth, this is Nicky. My daughter.” She said hello and also exited. “Simon has been so kind to us since her father passed.”
“I’m sorry.” He wasn’t sure how he meant it.
“Five years ago. Car accident. He left and I am here.”
“It must have been awful.”
“Awful?” The word sounded doubly bad coming from her tiny electronic device. “Best thing to happen. You know before I used to have a slight limp, now none at all.”
“Yes, I see that.”
Simon and the girl came down the stairs again. “Bye kids,” he said and gave Elizabeth a kiss on the mouth before he left.
“And Simon is wonderful with Elizabeth. Such a good man.” Elizabeth then came and sat with them, next to Nicolai on the sofa; the plastic crunched as she did.
“Be a dear, dear and get me a glass of water.” Elizabeth got up and headed for the kitchen and Nicolai was glad for it, he was intensely attracted to her looking so much like the Rifka he knew and peeped upon and her close proximity was making it difficult for him to concentrate on this present Rifka’s unclear voice. She had gotten as far as the door when Rifka stopped her with some loud vocalizations. “Elizabeth, dear, maybe your cousin would like something too?”
The girl turned around. “Want anything?”
Oh yes, dear, I want something. “No, thank you.” She huffed and the door swung a couple of times after her.
“Can you believe she’s mine, Nicky? Still so young. Sixteen years. I worry about her. It’s good that you are here for her. You can be friends I think, yes?” Nicolai agreed that he would do what he could. The thought of Sloppy Simon having access to all that wonderful basil under the bridge maddened him.
“Rooka is dead,” he finally said.
“Yes, I know. I’m supposed to receive some money, or something. The letter was not clear and I cannot guess why, I barely knew the man.” What was this? She too was part of the inheritance? Impossible, she’d never visited him, she didn’t sit for years through his impossible stories. She hadn’t slept in his empty castle on dark nights with the wolves howling below! Barely knew him? What a ruse, but she didn’t know that he’d seen.
“May I...May I see it?” She searched for a moment and produced an international envelope, he had to rise to take it from her. It was concise and to the point. She had been included in the will and was slated to receive some inheritance which would be specified at a later date. And the name, yes, Contrari, that is it. Elizabeth returned now with the water. Something must have looked out of order to her, for as she entered she stopped to ask if everything was all right. Nicolai realized that he was looming above Rifka in a not unthreatening manner, immediately he relaxed. “Ha. Yes I got one too, wonder what it could be all about?” Yes, yes I will find out what it’s all about and you will not see even a bit of it!
“You and Nicky ought to get to know each other, you are cousins after all.” She’s trying to throw me off the scent. I’ll play along for now. Above all I mustn’t let her know that I am on to her scheme.
“Yes, Elizabeth,” he said, “we must be sure to spend some time together. Oh, and I’ve brought something very pretty to show you.” His loins burned with fire for her, the stickiness of her thigh as captive as a spider’s thread. He had brought the ring to use on Rifka, but now that was unthinkable, this girl would substitute just fine and would be a dandy source of revenge, yes, and information too! “I have it just here.” The ring was now floating free in his pocket, resistant to any chains yet put on it. It twinkled in the light when he displayed it. Ring...ring...
“Oh, that’s for me!” She turned and ran away to another more enticing (at her age) ring.
“Crazy teenagers. Always on the phone.” Nicolai saw that Rifka addressed this not to him, but to the ring at which she had been staring since he revealed it. Uh, oh. He hid it immediately.
“Aunt Rifka, it’s growing late. Perhaps I should go.”
“No. No. Please stay, I get so little company these days. Stay a while. Come, let me sit with you there and we will forget this time-passing and be as we were young.” And she did just that and they sat together on the couch and she stank. Rifka, are you there inside that blob of flesh somewhere? Is that a hint of you I see hiding in the corner of your eye? This damn ring, it works, but the aim is off. I’ve wanted you to submit to me a lifetime, must I now to you? Now that you are abysmal and old and that, as you say, your limp is quite gone? It seems the ring has its power on me too. He was embarrassed at the size of the great mammoth in his pants and could not help but put her hand on it. She slid to the ground and forced his knees apart and in a moment he was the source of her chubby cheeks. Looking down at her hair, she was, for a moment young again. “Age has not touched you.” Chaucer had his words to say about gat-toothed women, and Nicolai now did too.
Disturbingly, because of her disability, she could speak as she consumed him. “Nicky, oh Nicky, I need to have you, &c.,” but he could not bring himself to stop her. Suddenly he looked down, after having glanced at the stairwell and door for signs of unwanted interruption, and was shocked to see his gold ring on her finger.
“Rifka!” he screamed both in shock and completion, somehow her subtle thievery had brought him to the pinnacle of ecstasy. She shifted backwards and looked up at him with a crazed grin and then continued her motion, falling onto her back with a thud.
It must have been loud, for Elizabeth immediately called down from upstairs, “Momma? Momma, is everything OK? Momma?” Her momma did not answer because she was presently occupied with rolling on the floor and gasping for air she could not take in. Nicolai stood and sealed his zipper. He pointlessly asked her if she needed some help, then saw what had happened, her voice-box had collapsed into her throat, leaving a hole of approximately one inch in diameter through which milky fluids oozed. “Momma?” Elizabeth began down the stairs and as she reached the last step, Rifka suddenly stopped, stopped grunting, stopped breathing, stopped everything. Simon entered the house then too and seeing what had happened, tearfully cried out, “Oh momma mia, oh mia momma [pet names, no doubt]!” SomeoneNicolai did not notice who (it might even have been he)called an ambulance and two paramedics miraculously arrived moments later. Throwing a crying Elizabeth clear of the body they began pounding on Rifka’s chest and were able to elicit one final cough. An argument ensued over whether mouth-to-mouth or mouth-to-hole-in-the-throat resuscitation should take place and the moral implications thereof. Simon took the opportunity to demonstrate his skills in that area on Elizabeth and each of the medical men followed suit. As Nicolai attempted the same, he was scolded for the inappropriateness of his behavior and thereafter retreated to a corner of the room. Eventually the police arrived, coroner in tow, and took control of the situation. The coroner, attired in stained whites and what appeared (to Nicolai) to be a lobster bib, kneeled by her body, momentarily placed a stethoscope upon her breast and then stood.
“This woman is dead!”
Everyone gasped and Elizabeth fell, swelling with tears, into Simon’s embrace. He stoically took the news with nary a tear and consoled her tenderly upon the buttocks. The coroner continued, first placing a monocle over his left globe, “But it was no accident.” Eyes darted immediately to Nicolai, who shook in his corner and waved hello to them all. The continuing coroner finished his sentence, “These sutures,” he lifted several strands of thin thread from Rifka’s bl
ow-hole, “were entirely unsuitable for the task to which they were put. Young lady, if I were you I’d take the doctor who did this for everything he’s worth.”
“But doctor,” Elizabeth cooed (and she did), “you performed the operation in your office at the clinic nigh on two years ago.”
“Poor child, suffering from shock no doubt. Now, if you will excuse me I have a plane to catch and a lifetime of Portuguese to catch up on. Danke Schön.” He made a quick exit, painting on a thin mustache as he did.
Nicolai visibly relaxed, but everyone noticed, so he visibly tensed again to throw off suspicion. “Don’t worry ma’am,” it was the taller detective who spoke, “we’ve suspected Dr. Kiltruth of unsavory practices for sometime now. He won’t get far. I only regret that you had to get tangled in our little dragnet. Cart her up, boys.” It took all four of them to hoist Rifka onto the stretcher and with that they left.
Danger behind him, guilt welled to the surface and Nicolai fell to his knees in grief. “Nicky. Nicky, dear?” It was Rifka’s voice, her true voice, not that false devil’s which possessed her of late...until late. “You mustn’t be sad. She loved you an awful lot.” He looked up, Elizabeth was next to him on the floor. He apologized, she consoled him, and though his sadness did not lift, he thought it better to leave them. He thanked them and they assured him that as soon as arrangements were made he would be notified. He thanked them again, apologized again, and then left. As he walked toward the subway he felt the looming of that yellow (paler now) house behind him, he felt it burn into his spine, and even once underground the heat of it seared his bones. What he did not feel, did not know was that as Elizabeth surveyed her now emptier living space, Simon gently took her shoulders and kissing her first on the temple, proposed marriage, a new possibility with Rifka’s passing and something, he said, long desired. In their bliss, Rifka’s larger-than-life, yet empty of it, body remained unclaimed in the morgue until the city in time assumed the responsibility of her cremation.
Having not had the chance, or really the foresight, to recover his ring, Nicolai found himself reaching into his pocket to find a sole token which he used to board the train back into Manhattan. In mocking coincidence, Nicolai set his eyes upon a poster displaying a cross-section of a small yellow house, on the second floor of which a young boy sat munching on some chipped paint as his sister pulled at a doll’s hair. Other posters likewise taunted him with depictions of various disabilities and debilitating illnesses. His eyes shot from misfortune to misfortune, but neither the courage nor destiny of Oedipus had he, and so settled them eventually on something more pleasant, a pretty young woman who had taken the seat opposite and just a shimmy to the left. She saw him watching, perhaps, and he shifted his focus to her small feet, clad in soft, brown boots which ended at her ankles. That particular style always reminded him of the prostitutes in Dickens’s novels, specifically of the sweet and sour Nancy in Oliver Twist and he would be Sikes the oppressor, her powerful male master. He lifted his eyes again, no whore this one, soft blond curls spilled from her tightly drawn hat. And Rifka was young once too, yes and alive, but she was not as delicate as this creature and in this girl’s eyes (green) no desperate ambition. I think the old man’s guzzling angel might look something like this. She caught him again and again his eyes dove. Not now, not today, and not without my ring into which it seems I’ve already put so much of myself; gone now to the grave as I have with Rifka, but he did look again. Now she was rising, balancing a tawdry bag on her shoulder, and passing through the welcoming partition the opening doors made. The train began to pull away and Nicolai at last felt safe in his staring, and as he did he swore that as that darling departed she turned around to catch him one last time, but was suddenly grasped by a large, angry hand, it was certainly a friend’s, for she smiled at that hand, that man’s hand, and left and as she did (they did) he (Nicolai) was absolutely positive that he saw, ever so briefly, a familiar gruff beard and a familiar heavy gait, but it was only for a moment.
Chapter 4
With Rifka, passed a third chapter in Nicolai’s life; in his later or, at the very least, American life which now was the only life he could recall. That other, pre-Betan, pre-Minan, pre-Gramercian life was the stuff of dreams, leaks from the joints in the rusting multisectional pipes through which time flowed. That younger, or older (never could get it straight) Nicolai taken in the same glance with this present one would probably not even pass for a distant cousin. In name alone they were alike, he even thought he might have lost an inch or two to that other fellow. No, Rooka, there is nothing inborn in a Vicoff except relation to you; all else must be learned and in truth the only one displaying all of those wonderful things in one incarnation was you.
There was something though, some connection to that other mock Nicolai: a small gravel road which brought an occasional dusty traveler to his brain, tiny pieces of childhood and youth. All that though was too distant to consider a part of this story. Still, appropriate, subtle memories often leaked through which at times held relevance, most of which centered around Rifka and Rooka, an aunt and an uncle, both childhood loves, both gone. No, but those days were but a prologue swiftly, cursorily read and quickly forgotten; and if secrets were coyly revealed to him there about an impending tragic conclusion (Mr. “Nicolai Vicoff” died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl), they too were ignored or misread. For him, his story began on an ocean liner, a cruise shipa slap-shod little vessel reallysteaming toward New York. To this point only his memory harkened (less, of course, the few dribbles of a dream-like youth which occasionally and inaccurately slipped through) and beyond that a soft fog of shapes, colors, and scentsmostly displeasing.
Even now the people and events of that first chapter eluded him, silently drifting back into that other Nicolai’s head, quietly populating it with softened, censored events which being so filtered secured him in a belief that he was doing something right. It was along that slim connecting rod that he left one thing and embraced another; he transformed that shadowy Nicolai of indeterminate structure into a being of matter and cause, and while he stumbled clumsily through a newly discovered phenomenal world, that other executed orders to trudge on, a general misreading the weariness of his troops. Then, even as that first chapter’s final words were being decoded, orders were given to move on and so he passed into a second, embarrassing period of discovery. In partial retreat he was forced to experiment with childlike progressions, or regressions in ignorance of earned growth. Denial will often be the fool’s turban, wrapped so tightly about the head as to restrict blood and reasonable thought. The diverse, yet one-track, actions of childhood through which he had trudged once and now (then) was compelled to repeat, left their twice-born scars on his brain, as fun and exciting as they may have been to his loins which seemed to welcome intermittent returns to the pubescent adventures of peeping and masturbation unaware of the often messy clean-up, but a mimeograph so oftand overused must eventually run out of ink and those bitter days of blind exploration (note: over ground already duly traversed) ended somewhere where beer and fear sojourned in secret. He had not marked that ending as such then, its identity only now became clearly delineated to him and these segments as divisible as any set of counting integers: one, two, and three. Those two there ticked away, boiling into a steam which produced greater and greater pressure on the inside of his skull. That three now, that third, so recently concluded so abruptly; this last of this past triumvirate was wholly circumscribed by a magic little ring which even now leadened him with despairno, not that yet, grief, leadened him with grief. But these more recent memories, distressing as they were, offered some comfort for they were still his and as long as he could keep them there in his foggy noggin, General Nicolai Vicoff sat in a comfy lounge chair and slept and with that came this easy freedom to cognate.
How easy it is then to play this game of subdividing a life into equal, but arbitrary pieces compiled of thoughts, ideas, growth, mourning, change,
all the things which cannot be physically handled or verified and may be shuffled by the dealer at will. Each unturned card undetermined and mysterious holding either fortune or bust, but the trick of course is to hedge your bets enough to survive through another hand and the question is: to what degree has the dealer determined what those shy little cards have in store? Nicolai’s stack of chips was running low into only the third hand, but he refused to get up from the table and walk away, instead he was determined to (or depending on point of view, it was determined that he) stay and wait for the mother-load to come in and as poorly as events had turned that jackpot was assured to be even bigger now that Rifka (poor Rifka) was out of the picture; Simon and Elizabeth’s little affair should be enough to disqualify them and after that only Nicolai. There was a time when he shied away from this sort of overused metaphor, but that too was another sign of the pages turning. How many chapters would he be able to trudge through before the end; nine, ten? An epilogue perhaps, or not, and the obligatory blurb about the author, oh but that might fill another book.
Well Aunt Rifka, I suppose that you are mine for life, mine to keep. It is now only in my mind that everything you truly were survives, not this (that) thing you had become, enough have known that, but I amso far as I knowthe only one alive who remembers your beauty, the way your voice seduced our family. So many voices of seduction in my life, or am I just easy? I suppose that is a bit inaccurate, your beauty does live on in that daughter of yours. That is solace in some degree, solace at least to Simon.
The streets passed by as quickly as the years seemed to, Thirty-four, Forty-two, Forty-nine. He’d missed his stop at Eighth because of that pretty girl. Always causing so much trouble my pretty little things, we’ll soon put an end to that. Nonsense, a criminal’s words, not mine; a crazy man’s passion and a brave man’s course of action, none of these epitaphs for me. In any case he couldn’t have gotten off there, unable somehow to cease the ride just yet. Of course the streets didn’t jump by in just increments of ten or fifteen, it was simply that he only took the time to look around at the stations where different people got on and off, the doors opening and closing repeatedly begging him to get off the damn train already. Above though, in the darkness, the streets counted neatly up one at a time, fast for sure, but faster still because they didn’t announce their presence as they passed. You’d only deboard this sort of train when at last you couldn’t see yourself feasibly going any further. For Nicolai, that point was reached at Fifty-ninth street.
I Thought My Uncle Was A Vampire, But He Was Just A Creep Page 8
