Lasher

by Anne Rice

  Would the father blame him that he had not called a doctor? He did not know. The father was talking to the bellhop. Then the bellhop went away and the father sat in a chair and merely looked at his son. The father didn't seem sad or alarmed so much as merely worried in a mild sort of way. He had kindly blue eyes, and hands with large knuckles, and heavy blue veins. Old hands.

  Andrew dozed for a long time. Then he asked again for Yuri to tell him the story about the maharaja's palace. Yuri was distressed by the father's presence. But he blotted out the presence of the father. This man was dying. And the father was not calling a doctor! He was not insisting upon it. What in the name of God was wrong with this father that he did not take care of his son? But if Andrew wanted to hear the story again, fine.

  He remembered once his mother had been with a very old German man in the Hotel Danieli for many days. When one of her women friends had asked how she could stand such an old man, she'd said, "He's kind to me and he's dying. I would do anything to make it easy for him." And Yuri remembered the expression in her eyes when they had come at last to that miserable village and the gypsies told her that her own mother was already dead.

  Yuri told all about the maharaja. He told about his elephants, and their beautiful saddles of red velvet trimmed in gold. He told about his harem, of which Yuri's mother had been the queen. He told about a game of chess that he and his mother played for five long years with nobody winning as they sat at a richly draped table beneath a mangrove tree. He told about his little brothers and sisters. He told about a pet tiger on a golden chain.

  Andrew was sweating terribly. Yuri went for a washcloth from the bathroom, but the man opened his eyes and cried out for him. He hurried back, and wiped the man's forehead and then all of his face. The father never moved. What the hell was wrong with this father!

  Andrew tried to touch Yuri with his left hand but it seemed he could not move that hand either now. Yuri felt a sudden panic. Firmly, he lifted the man's hand and stroked his own face with the man's fingers, and he saw the man smile.

  About a half hour after that, the man lapsed into sleep. And then died. Yuri was watching him. He saw it happen. The chest ceased to move. The eyelids opened a fraction. Then nothing more.

  He glanced at the father. The father sat there with his eyes riveted upon the son. Yuri dared not move.

  Then at last the father came over to the bed, and stood looking down upon Andrew, and then he bent and kissed Andrew's forehead. Yuri was amazed. No doctor, and now he kisses him, he thought angrily. He could feel his own face twisting up, he knew he was going to cry, and he couldn't stop it. And suddenly he was crying.

  He went into the bathroom, blew his nose with toilet tissue, and took out a cigarette, packing it on the back of his hand, shoving it in his mouth and lighting it, even though his lips were quivering, and he began to smoke in hasty but delicious gulps as the tears clouded up his eyes.

  In the room, beyond the door, there was much noise. People came and went. Yuri leaned against the white tile, smoking cigarette after cigarette. He soon stopped crying. He drank a glass of water, and stood there, arms folded, thinking, I ought to slip away.

  The hell he would ask this man for help against the gypsies. The hell he would ask him for anything. He'd wait until they had finished all their commotion in there, and then slip out. If anyone questioned him, he would give some clever little excuse, and then be off. No problem. No problem at all. Maybe he'd leave Rome.

  "Don't forget the safe-deposit box," said the father.

  Yuri jumped. The white-haired man was standing in the door. Behind him, the room appeared to be empty. The body of Andrew had been taken away.

  "What do you mean?" demanded Yuri in Italian. "What are you saying to me?"

  "Your mother left it for you, with your father's passport, and money. She wanted you to have it."

  "I no longer have the key."

  "We'll go to the bank. We'll explain."

  "I don't want anything from you!" said Yuri furiously. "I can do well on my own." He made to move past the man, but the man caught his shoulder, and the man's hand was surprisingly strong for such an old hand.

  "Yuri, please. Andrew wanted me to help you."

  "You let him die. Some father you are! You sat there and you let him die!" Yuri shoved the man off balance, and was about to make his getaway when the man caught him around the waist.

  "I'm not really his father, Yuri," he said, as he set Yuri down and pushed him gently against the wall. The man collected himself somewhat. He straightened the lapels of his coat, and he gave a long sigh. He looked calmly at Yuri. "We belong to an organization. In that organization, he thought of me as his father, but I wasn't really his father. And he came to Rome in order to die. It was his wish to die here. I did what he wanted. If he had wanted anything else done he would have told me. But all he asked of me was that I take care of you."

  Again, mind reading. So clever, these men! What were they? A bunch of rich gypsies? Yuri sneered. He folded his arms, and dug his heel into the carpet and looked at the man suspiciously.

  "I want to help you," the man said. "You're better than the gypsies who stole you."

  "I know," said Yuri. He thought of his mother. "Some people are better than others. Much better."

  "Exactly."

  Bolt now, he thought. And he tried it, but once again the man tackled him and held him tight. Yuri was strong for ten and this was an old man. But it was no good.

  "Give up just for a moment, Yuri," said the man. "Give up long enough for us to go to the bank and open the deposit box. Then we can decide what to do."

  And Yuri was soon crying, and letting the man lead him out of the hotel and into the waiting car, a fine German sedan. The bank was vaguely familiar to Yuri, but the people inside it were perfect strangers. Yuri watched in keen amazement as the white-haired Englishman explained everything, and soon the deposit box was opened, and Yuri was presented with the contents--several passports, the Japanese watch of his father, a thick envelope of lire and American dollars, and a packet of letters, one of which at least was addressed to his mother at a Rome address.

  Yuri found himself powerfully excited to see these things, to touch them, to be close again in his mind to the moment when he and his mother had come here and she had placed everything in the box. After the bank men put all these articles into brown envelopes for him, he held these envelopes to his chest.

  The Englishman led him back out and into the car, and within minutes they were making another stop. It was a small office, where the Englishman greeted a person familiar to him. Yuri saw a camera on a tripod. The man gestured for Yuri to stand in front of it.

  "For what?" he asked sharply. He was still holding the brown envelopes. He stared angrily at the white-haired man and his friendly companion, who laughed now at Yuri as if Yuri were cute.

  "For another passport," said the Englishman in Italian. "None of those you have is exactly right."

  "This is no passport office," said Yuri contemptuously.

  "We arrange our own passports," said the man. "We like it better that way. What name do you want to have? Or will you leave this to me? I would like you to cooperate, and then you can come to Amsterdam with me and see if you like it."

  "No," said Yuri. He remembered Andrew saying no doctors. "No police," said Yuri. "No orphanages, no convents, no authorities. No!" He rattled off several other terms he knew for such persons in Italian and Romanian and Russian. It all meant the same thing. "No jail!" he said.

  "No, none of that," said the man patiently. "You can come with me to our house in Amsterdam, and go and come as you like. This is a safe place, our house in Amsterdam. You will have a room of your own."

  A safe place. A room of his own.

  "But who are you?" asked Yuri.

  "Our name is the Talamasca," the man said. "We are scholars, students if you please. We accumulate records; we are responsible for bearing witness to things. That is, we feel we are responsible.
It's what we do. I'll explain all to you on the plane."

  "Mind readers," said Yuri.

  "Yes," said the man. "And outcasts, and lonely ones, and ones sometimes who have no one else. And people who are better sometimes than others, much better sometimes. Like you. My name is Aaron Lightner. I wish you would come with me.

  In the Motherhouse in Amsterdam, Yuri made certain that he could escape any time he wanted. He checked and re-checked the many unlocked doors. The room was small, immaculate, with a window over the canal and the cobblestoned quais. He loved it. He missed the bright light of Italy. This was a dimmer place, northern, like Paris, but that was all right. Inside were warm fires, and soft couches and chairs for dozing; firm beds, and lots of good food. The streets of Amsterdam pleased him, because the many old houses of the 1600s were built right against each other, making long stretches of solid and beautiful facades. He liked the steep gables of the houses. He liked the elm trees. He liked the clean-smelling clothing he was given, and he came to even like the cold.

  People with cheerful faces came and went from the Motherhouse. There was steady day-to-day talk of the Elders, though who these people were, Yuri didn't know.

  "You want to ride a bike, Yuri?" asked Aaron. Yuri tried it. Taking his cue from the other riders young and old, he rode the bike like a demon through the streets.

  Still Yuri wouldn't talk. Then, after constant prodding, he told the story of the maharaja.

  "No. Tell me what really happened," asked Aaron.

  "Why should I tell you anything?" Yuri demanded. "I don't know why I came here with you." It had been a year since he had spoken real truth about himself to anyone. He had not even told Andrew the real truth. Why tell this man? And suddenly, denying that he had any need of telling the truth, or confiding, or explaining, he began to do both. He told all about his mother, about the gypsies, about everything...He talked and talked. The night wore on and became the morning, and still Aaron Lightner sat across from him at the table listening, and Yuri talked and talked and talked.

  And when he finished he knew Aaron Lightner and Aaron Lightner knew him. It was decided that Yuri would not leave the Talamasca, at least not right then.

  For six years, Yuri went to school in Amsterdam.

  He lived in the Talamasca house, spent most of his time on his studies, and worked after school and on weekends for Aaron Lightner, entering records into the computer, looking up obscure references in the library, sometimes merely running errands--deliver this to the post office, pick up this important box.

  He came to realize that the Elders were in fact all around him, rank and file members of the Order, but nobody knew who they were. It worked like this. Once you became an Elder, you didn't tell anybody that you were. And it was forbidden to ask a person, "Are you an Elder?" or, "Do you know whether or not Aaron is an Elder?" It was forbidden to speculate on such matters in one's mind.

  The Elders knew who the Elders were. The Elders communicated with everyone via the computers and the fax machines in the Motherhouse. Indeed, any member, even an unofficial member like Yuri, could talk to the Elders whenever he chose. In the dead of night, he could boot up his computer, write a long letter to the Elders, and sometime later that very morning an answer would come to him through the computer printer, flowing out page after page.

  This meant of course that there were many Elders, and that some of them were always "on call." The Elders had no real personality as far as Yuri could detect, no real voice in their communications, except that they were kindly and attentive and they knew everything, and often they revealed that they knew all about Yuri, maybe even about things of which he himself was unsure.

  It fascinated Yuri, this silent communication with the Elders. He began to ask them about many things. They never failed to answer.

  In the morning, when Yuri went down to breakfast in the refectory, he looked around him and wondered who was an Elder, who here in this room had answered his letter this very night. Of course, his communication might have gone to Rome, for all he knew. Indeed, Elders were everywhere in every Motherhouse, and all you knew was that they were the old ones, the experienced ones, the ones who really ran the Order, though the Superior General, appointed by them, and answerable only to them, was the official head.

  When Aaron relocated to London, it was a sad day for Yuri, because the house in Amsterdam had been his only permanent home. But he would not be separated from Aaron, and so they left the Amsterdam Motherhouse together, and went to live in the big house outside London which was also beautiful and warm and safe.

  Yuri came to love London. When he learnt that he was to go to school at Oxford, he was delighted by this decision, and he spent six years there, corning home often on weekends, wallowing as it were in the life of the mind.

  By the age of twenty-six, Yuri was ready to become a serious member of the Order. There was not the slightest doubt in his mind. He welcomed the travel assignments given him by Aaron and David. Soon he was receiving travel instructions directly from the Elders. And he was making out his reports to them on the computer when he returned.

  "Assignment from the Elders," he would say to Aaron on leaving. Aaron never questioned it. And never seemed particularly surprised.

  Always, wherever he went and whatever he did, Yuri talked on the phone long distance to Aaron. Yuri was also devoted to David Talbot, but it was no secret that David Talbot was old and tired of the Order and might soon step down as Superior General, or even be politely asked by the Elders to resign the post.

  Aaron was the one to whom Yuri responded, Aaron was the one about whom Yuri cared.

  Yuri knew that between him and Aaron there was a special bond. For Yuri, it was the powerful irrational love that forms its roots in childhood, in loneliness, in ineradicable memories of tenderness and rescue, a love that no one but the recipient can destroy. Aaron is my father, Yuri thought, just as Aaron must have been a father to Andrew, who had died in the hotel in Rome.

  As Yuri grew older he was away more of the time. He loved to wander on his own. He was most comfortable when anonymous. He needed to hear different languages around him, to submerge himself in giant cities teeming with people of all ranks and ages; when he was so immersed--with his individuality an entirely private and unrecognized matter--he felt most alive.

  But almost every day of his life--wherever he was--Yuri spoke to Aaron by phone. Aaron never chided Yuri for this dependence. Indeed, Aaron was always open and ready for Yuri, and as the years passed, Aaron began to confide to Yuri more of his own feelings, his own little disappointments and hopes.

  Sometimes they talked in a guarded way about the Elders, and Yuri could not discern from the conversation whether Aaron was an Elder or not. Of course Yuri wasn't supposed to know if Aaron was an Elder. But Yuri was almost certain Aaron was. If Aaron wasn't an Elder, then who were the Elders, for Aaron was one of the wisest and oldest men in the entire Talamasca worldwide?

  When Aaron stayed month after month in the United States investigating the Mayfair Witches, Yuri was disappointed. He'd never known Aaron to be away from the Motherhouse so long.

  When Christmas came near, a lonely time for Yuri as it is for so many, Yuri went into the computer and accessed the File on the Mayfair Witches, printing it out in its entirety and studying it very carefully to get a grasp of what was keeping Aaron in New Orleans for so much time.

  Yuri enjoyed the story of the Mayfair Witches, but it aroused no special feeling in him any more than any other Talamasca file. He looked for a role to play--could he perhaps gather information on Donnelaith for Aaron? Otherwise, the totality of the story did not impress itself on his mind. The Talamasca files were filled with strange stories, some far stranger than this.

  The Talamasca itself held many mysteries. They had never been Yuri's concern.

  The week before Christmas, the Elders announced the resignation of David Talbot as Superior General, and that a man of German-Italian background, Anton Marcus, would take his pl
ace. No one in London knew Anton Marcus.

  Yuri didn't know Anton. Yuri's main concern was that he had never had the chance to tell David good-bye. There was some mystery surrounding David's disappearance, and, as often happens in the Talamasca, the members spoke of the Elders, and the remarks were made reflecting puzzlement and resentment, and confusion as to how the Order was organized and run. People wanted to know--would David remain an Elder, assuming he had always been one, now that he was retired? Were Elders made up of retired members as well as active ones? It seemed a bit medieval at times that no one knew.

  Yuri had heard all this before. It only lasted a few days. Anton Marcus arrived the day after the announcement and at once won everyone over with his charming manner and intimate knowledge of each member's history and background, and the London Motherhouse was immediately at peace.

  Anton Marcus spoke after supper in the grand dining room to all members. A man of large frame with smooth silver hair and thick gold-rimmed glasses, he had a clean corporate appearance to him, and a smooth British accent of the kind which the Talamasca seemed to favor. An accent which Yuri now possessed himself.

  Anton Marcus reminded everyone of the importance of secrecy and discretion regarding the Elders. The Elders are all around us. The Elders cannot govern effectively if confronted and questioned. The Elders perform best as an anonymous body in whom we all place our trust.

  Yuri shrugged.

  When Yuri went to his room one morning at two a.m. he found a communique from the Elders in his printer. "We are pleased that you have gone out of your way to welcome Anton. We feel that Anton will be a superb Superior General. If this adjustment is difficult for you, we are here." There was also an assignment for Yuri. He was to go to Dubrovnik to pick up several important packages and take them to Amsterdam, then come home. Routine. Fun.

  Yuri would have gone to spend Christmas with Aaron in New Orleans, but Aaron told him long distance that this was not possible, and that the investigation was at this point very discouraging, the most discouraging of his career.

  "What's happened with the Mayfair Witches?" asked Yuri. He explained to Aaron that he had read the entire file. He asked if he might perform some small task in connection with the investigation. Aaron said no.