Last Stories and Other Stories (9780698135482)

by Vollmann, William T.

  At dawn, dragging himself back to the revered Father Hauser, who had once catechized his charmed childhood, he had to ask himself how much he should be expected to sacrifice for the town of H——. Would he yield up his life?— Well, if he had to; any brave man would, although his aspiration had been to retire before his hair went utterly white, and buy a flock of sheep.— What about his immortal soul? That was a blurrier proposition; for wasn’t anyone who did such a deed, even in order to achieve good, a bad person? Fortunately, Father Hauser infallibly promised him absolution.

  Richter von Lochner declined to be present at that difficult conference, for he too had a heart; it pained him to send anyone in uniform to certain death, no matter how easily he disposed of evildoers. So the inspector and Father Hauser stood face to face like two Bohemian eagles staring down one another on a faded tapestry, while the gaunt grimy-faced Virgin painted on the ceiling stared down past her locked hands, with her cadaverous head, framed in a blue wimple, glowing blotchily; and Hans Trollhand, well wrapped in his black-and-red cloak (for last time he had caught a cold), kept watch in the crypt, not that he detected the slightest scratching or groaning. Perhaps he would have made an even better hero than that cipher of an inspector; for he had always been more acute than the latter at ferreting out the tiny snake-holes which vampires make (although sometimes there is nothing below but a snake). He was also very mercantile, which helps one to get renown. Sometimes he sold the blood of people he beheaded, for it was a charm against arson. He collected tips for a good view of the torture platform. All the same, his children were malnourished, and his wife Margaritha owned but one dress. There was hope expressed (I cannot say by whom) that this time the inspector would become famous, a possibility which must have occupied Trollhand in some fashion—and certainly warmed the inspector even through his constraint. He and the priest now discussed such minimally unacceptable methods as choking to death on a crucifix, or forcing holy water into one’s lungs. But in the end, he ate mushroom poison, courtesy of a convicted witch whose torture von Lochner accordingly suspended. Justice was on the march! Before Hans Trollhand had even set that witch on fire, the inspector died in anguish, losing himself ever more sorrowfully behind the phosphorescent rainbow of the churchyard spectrum, while Father Hauser sent him off with prayers. So far, the secret retained its honorable virginity. It was an accident, proclaimed the town crier (for in the service of truth it is permitted to our authorities to lie), and so Father Hauser presided over his burial. Because the mayor, who considered that by lending out that newspaper he had already done enough, declined to tax the citizens of H—— for the price of a silver casket, which might have guarded our inspector more securely from the enemies of God, the sexton stuffed cloves of garlic into his shroud, while Hans Trollhand, whom nobody could accuse of not being goodhearted, dug up an irreproachable old Christian woman named Jette and hacked off her right hand, for shouldn’t that be nearly as good as a saint’s relic? This gift he laid across the inspector’s breast. Now for the eulogy, two prayers and three cheers. Down sank our hero, and this time the dirt blanketed him.

  Since a man who is merely dead remains of small use to either side in the war between good and evil, the undead-hunters’ next task was to bring the inspector back to duty before the vampires got him. Father Hauser accordingly summoned the widow Doroteja, one of his favorite parishioners, who had never missed a day of church.

  He said: Doroteja, my child, the church has need of you.

  Yes, Father, although I’m but a simple woman . . .

  Doroteja, what I’m about to demand of you must be kept secret, on pain of rendition to eternal fire. Do you understand?

  Yes, Father.

  We know that you enter the churchyard at night.

  Please don’t burn me, Father! I won’t go there anymore—

  Doroteja, he who would save his soul must lose it. She who condemns her soul shall save it, now and forever, amen. Sing one of those pretty spells of yours. Wake up the inspector. Do this, and I’ll be well pleased.

  Forgive me, Father, for I’ve always been ignorant of such arts.

  Hans Trollhand would love to see that pretty hair of yours catch fire, Doroteja. We’ll burn you from your feet up, to save the best for last. Now listen. You’re a witch, and there’s no use pretending otherwise. Richter von Lochner stands ready to interrogate you today. I’ll ask but once more. Now do as I say, witch, or forfeit your life.

  And you’ll burn me?

  Doroteja, my girl, don’t you believe in my fondness for you? It’s a sin to displease me.

  Yes, Father.

  You can count on that. Can you bring him up in daylight?

  Finding herself in much the same situation as one of our linen-weavers in northeastern Bohemia, who must both buy the raw linen and then sell back the cloth she has made, Doroteja said merely: Will you come with me, Father?

  Shame, woman! I cannot be associated with such Devil’s errands. And give him this. Have you seen one before?

  The second medallion of the sun, Father, to release the imprisoned. Is it true gold?

  Of course. Richter von Lochner inherited it from a Jewish sorcerer. A pretty pentacle, if I may say so! That’s the Face of Shaddai on this side, and on the other, that secret symbol which resembles a gallows, can you comprehend it?

  No, Father.

  Well, it’s supposed to be infallible, but the Jew who owned it went down to hell nonetheless.

  2

  Since the inspector was already accustomed to the vileness of criminals and the misery of torture chambers, never mind the thick grief and futility within the cottages where the poor lay starving on beds of sickness, his new quarters scarcely troubled him.

  At first he thought, as he had when alive, that no food could be better than the fresh tears and saliva of one of those young witches whom he and Hans Trollhand so frequently interrogated; but presently he began to fancy menstrual blood; and then, as his tastes grew more catholic, any blood would have done, the more the better; and as this desire grew up in him, so did his strength and will, until with an exultant blasphemy he found himself rising through wood, dirt, roots and grass, into the night sky. All the while he knew he could set these impulses aside; they were coloring, not proclivity.

  He felt almost gleeful to be in possession of Richter von Lochner’s medallion. Although he could not follow the inscription of the outer ring, DIRUPSITI VINCULA MEA; TIBI SACRIFICABO HOSTIAM LAUDIS, ET NOMEN INVOCABO, it gave him self-confidence to own something gold, although even underground it perilously outshone all those long golden bones which resemble breadsticks, so that he had to triple-wrap it in the shroud of a deaf-mute child, which Doroteja had given him for a good luck gift. He scratched out a hole in the earth with his ever-growing fingernails and concealed it there, much as a squirrel hides acorns.

  His new friends liked him right away, for he pretended to be innocent. Two periwigged old vampires even got into a quarrel as to which of them could better help him grow into his supposed inclinations. It astonished him how trusting they were—for had they not caught him in recent deception? But, as they remarked, we all die, pretenders or not. And I suspect that they so much enjoyed discovering likely young men, and advancing them on their way downward, that they frequently overlooked their own interests, like a multitude of frogs with whom a snake pretends to make friends, in order to swallow them one by one in secret. Moreover, accomplished fiends grow as egotistical as the living, and what can be more gratifying to a settled old soul for whom sinking two fangs into a strange throat has lost its thrill than imparting information to a wide-eyed yet stalwart type who once served the other side? For his part, the inspector was far too busy spying on them to feel indignant at their loathsomeness. In the first six weeks they taught him how to suck blood and how to frighten children to death.— But you’re still in your youth, they said. You don’t need to get serious yet. Why not run
out and play a few pranks? For instance, you could hide in the bed of some lonely widow. Then you could kill her, rape her or both. It’s also great fun to come up through the crypt and throw corpse-fat at the altar. Don’t get too close or the cross will burn you.

  He pretended to go along. In fact, even that medallion of Saint Polona held more power than they could conceive. It allowed him, although not without distress, to move about at dawn or dusk, and confer with Father Hauser in the church. The sexton had been laid under instructions to keep a mendicant’s hooded cloak in the tool shed, right behind the second-best shovel, so when the inspector slipped into this, it disguised him well enough from the living, and, moreover, kept the sun off. When he took up the pentangle of the sun, he could even go out in full daylight, which of course was safest, although it tired him a good deal. And so the authorities of H—— finally began to hope for results. Richter von Lochner sent away to Prague for more silver bullets, and the town council required of every citizen three perfectly finished and sharpened vampire-stakes; while Hans Trollhand, hoping for the best, laid more firewood in stock.

  Being the cause of their hopes, the inspector found himself feeling very free, even if he sometimes would have liked not to be dead. Father Hauser was sweeter with him than ever before. For a fact, he liked pretending to be what he was not, right down to effacing every indication of virtue—and who would not have considered it delicious to make friends, which policemen in uniform ordinarily find difficult? Moreover, he continued to condemn and despise them, so that he had the best of everything: the solace of virtue, the sweet thrills of vice, the comradeship of interesting creatures, the joy of keeping secrets from everybody, and, above all, the approbation of authority.

  Why did you kill yourself? they asked him, and he replied: To defy God.

  O brother! they shouted out in glee. Then let’s hear you curse Him.

  This he did, secretly curling his fingers around the medallion of Saint Polona. The more he insulted God and the saints (even his beloved Saint Polona), the more loudly they laughed, sometimes even until they choked up their guts, not that they minded since they no longer troubled to breathe. The witch who once upon a time conjured worms into her husband’s stomach until one of them bit his heart, so that he fell dead (Trollhand broke her arms and legs on the ravenstone, then hung her up alive to be eaten by carrion crows), thought the inspector the most hilarious soul she had ever met; she offered to make a troll-baby with him anytime. The inspector had never considered himself a charming person before, and so their admiration gave him more pleasure than he had ever received, even when the colonel awarded him a medal during his term of military service. Although mere logic would indicate that there ought to be but scant prospects for an apprentice vampire without relatives, joviality goes far in every underworld, as was proved even during the private wars of the German states.

  He was sitting on a tomb one night when he saw a certain green-eyed demon leaping toward him.

  My plan, it explained, is certain as blood. All we need to do is slip through the wall of Doroteja’s house—you do slip through walls, don’t you?

  Of course I do, my boy.

  That’s good, since otherwise I’d know you were alive, and have to kill you.

  Kill me? What the devil are you talking about?— And with his best ghoulish laugh, the inspector dug his sharp black fingernails into his own blue throat, and tore the dead veins to ribbons.

  All right, all right; it’s just that we undead have to be careful these days. Now, come along and help me. This Doroteja is a hot-blooded widow, as you know, and rather simple. Since I’m the more handsome of us two, I’ll get her excited, while you figure out where she keeps her holy bric-a-brac. Once I get her to undressing, and that cross comes off her neck, if you have her other weapons out of reach, we’ll be set. Just give me first suck; that’s all I ask, for I could use a drop of the old red! Cross my moldering heart, I’ll pass her over to you before her heart stops beating. And once she’s buried and one of us, she’ll be quite the seductress.

  Count on me, brother, said the inspector.

  They darted over the cemetery wall like lizards. Within a quarter-hour they were making terrifying faces at Doroteja’s window—for monsters of this sort, as you have seen, tend to be quite high-spirited, even to their own detriment; they cannot help but lurch and caper.

  On my faith as a throat-ripper, said the inspector, I believe you’ve forgotten to count some grains of barley.

  (He had, of course, dribbled them out of a secret pocket in his shroud.)

  At once the demon got lost in this task, and the inspector slipped away to rouse Father Hauser, who established himself in the outhouse with Hans Trollhand, each of them bearing a silver cross, a sharpened stake and an arquebus. Before Doroteja had finished screaming, they were torturing the monster into helplessness, and then Hans Trollhand, terrifying in his black-and-red cloak, served justice with a silver bullet from behind.

  Frequenting the evilest shadows of that graveyard, the inspector succeeded in putting several more vampires out of the way. The trick was to get them before they tattled to the others. (It was unpleasant to imagine the glee of that subterranean crew if they could only neutralize him, preferably by draining his veins.) One night he lay chatting with a skeletal lad who had died some forty years before, and, like him, could creep around even in weak sunlight. When the inspector asked how he managed this, his new friend showed him a wrist-charm which he had gained from a witch in barter.— Who is she? asked the inspector. I’d love to give her a tickle.— And so the very next day, justice fell upon Old Hilda, who trafficked in the hair, bones, blood and fingers of the murdered. Before she could even call once upon Beelzebub, Hans Trollhand had gagged her and thrown her in a cage. By sunset the whole village was there, razing her house and helping themselves to whichever rags and crusts of hers they liked. Trollhand began singing his favorite song, the one about the brave soldier who kills his faithless betrothed. Then from the smoldering timbers they built a bonfire, and threw her on it, cage and all, so that once more heavenly virtue won the victory. The inspector kept prudently out of sight, but hearing the wailing and raging of his friends that night gave him the satisfaction he most certainly deserved.

  By Christmas he had done for three dozen evildoers, for he sought out murder-conclaves as diligently as the peddler who goes to every fair to sell pictures of the holy saints. Come Easter, his score stood at ninety-nine. On the thirtieth of April, when we burn witches, half a dozen fresh women were sent to hell by Hans Trollhand, thanks to the inspector’s reports. A week later he even betrayed a werewolf, the first to be captured in H—— for nearly a century. For a good while he continued to be surprised by the cavalier ignorance with which all these creatures fell into his snares, but presently he simply lowered his opinion of Satan’s followers.

  On Midsummer’s Eve a troll whom he knew but slightly came loping up to him and said: What a fine dark escape we’ve had just now! You wouldn’t believe how close that priest came to catching us! We were enjoying a little boy; I did for the mother last year—what a treat she was!—and there’s only the girl left, who frankly smells anemic to me. Anyhow, I had my fangs in the boy, and Kobold here was just about to open his belly when the priest came running, cocking his cross at us! So I called on Satan, who sent me a nice little fart of an earthquake, but Kobold never got any food! That’s why he looks so green—

  Father Hauser and the executioner rose up just then from behind the Margrave’s vault and fired off a load of silver bullets. Kobold escaped, but the troll died screeching. The inspector sank rapidly into his grave. The next morning, taking up his golden pentacle and medallion, he slipped into the church to complain.— Excuse me, Father, but you’ve put me at great risk by not consulting me beforehand. If anyone saw you and me—

  Inspector, you have your work and we have ours. Richter von Lochner is pleased with your accomplishme
nts, but he expects much more from all of us. Don’t get self-important. God bless you, and go away; you stink up my church.

  3

  Kobold had indeed expressed his suspicions about the inspector, and so in a certain nitrous vault, where witches, ghouls and vampires sat assembled, their officials presently marched in with many a tooth-clack, dressed far more presentably than he ever would have imagined. Up in the realm of the living, our judges wear the black of mourning and the red of blood when they are condemning people. Here the magisterial colors are green and blue, and whether they represented the daylight fields and rivers so inimical to churchyard monsters, or simply two different varieties of mold, the inspector had to admit that they were pretty. Their boots were greased with the fat from unbaptized infants, and they were armed (as death’s heads ought to be) with scythes. Their eyeballs burned greenly or redly from deep within their skulls.