by Rice, Anne
“Paolo’s, I have to find Paolo’s but how am I going to get any food? I need food too, don’t I? I can’t simply go without food. I’ll get weak if I don’t have food.”
When I came to the corner of Wisconsin Avenue, I saw lights and people down the hill. The street had been cleared of snow, and was definitely open to traffic. I could see the people moving busily back and forth under the street lamps, but all this was maddeningly dim, of course.
I hurried on, my feet painfully numb now, which is not a contradiction in terms, as you well know if you have ever walked in snow, and finally I saw the lighted window of a café. Martini’s. All right. Forget Paolo’s. Martini’s will have to do. A car had stopped out front; a handsome young couple climbed out of the back and hurried to the door of the place and went inside. I drew up slowly to the door, and saw a fairly pretty young woman at the high wooden desk gathering up a pair of menus for the young couple, whom she then led into the shadows beyond. I glimpsed candles, checkered tablecloths. And I realized suddenly that the awful, nauseating smell that was filling my nostrils was the smell of burnt cheese.
I would not have liked this smell as a vampire, no, not in the least; but it wouldn’t have sickened me quite this much. It would have been outside of me. But now it seemed connected to the hunger in me; it seemed to tug on the muscles inside my throat. In fact, the smell seemed suddenly to be inside my guts and to be nauseating me with a pressure, rather than a mere smell.
Curious. Yes, have to note all these things. This is being alive.
The pretty young woman had come back. I saw her pale profile as she looked down at the paper on her little wooden desk, and lifted her pen to make a mark. She had long wavy dark hair, and very pale skin. I wished I could see her better. I struggled to pick up her scent, but I couldn’t. I only caught the scent of the burnt cheese.
I opened the door, ignoring the heavy stench that hit me, and moved through it, until I was standing in front of the young woman, and the blessed warmth of the place was wrapping itself around me, smells and all. She was painfully young, with rather small sharp features, and long narrow black eyes. Her mouth was large, exquisitely rouged, and she had a long beautifully shaped neck. The body was twentieth century—all bones beneath her black dress.
“Mademoiselle,” I said, deliberately thickening my French accent, “I am very hungry, and it’s very cold outside. Is there anything I can do to earn a plate of food? I shall wash the floors if you wish, scrub the pots and pans, do whatever I must.”
She stared at me blankly for a moment. Then she stood back, tossed her long wavy hair, and rolled her eyes, and looked at me again coldly, and said: “Get out.” Her voice sounded tinny and flat. It wasn’t, of course, it was merely my mortal hearing. The resonance detected by a vampire could not be detected by me.
“May I have a piece of bread?” I asked. “A single piece of bread.” The smells of food, bad as they were, tormented me. I couldn’t actually remember what food tasted like. I couldn’t remember texture and nourishment together, but something purely human was taking over. I was desperate for food.
“I’m going to call the police,” she said, her voice quavering slightly, “if you don’t get out.”
I tried to scan her. Nothing. I looked around, squinting in the dark. Tried to scan the other humans. Nothing. Didn’t have the power in this body. Oh, but that’s not possible. I looked at her again. Nothing. Not even a glimmer of her thoughts. Not even an instinct really as to what sort of human she was.
“Ah, very well,” I said, giving her the gentlest smile I could manage, with no idea of how it appeared or what its effect might be. “I hope you burn in hell for your lack of charity. But God knows, I don’t deserve any more than this.” I turned and was about to leave when she touched my sleeve.
“Look,” she said, trembling slightly in her anger and discomfort, “you can’t come here and expect people to give you food!” The blood was pulsing in her white cheeks. I couldn’t smell it. But I could smell a sort of musky perfume rising from her, part human, part commercial scent. And suddenly I saw two tiny nipples sticking against the fabric of the dress. How amazing. Again, I tried to read her thoughts. I told myself I must be able to do this, it was an innate power. But it was no good.
“I told you I’d work for the food,” I said, trying not to look at her breasts. “I’d do anything you asked. Look, I’m sorry. I don’t want you to burn in hell. What a dreadful thing to say. It’s only that I’m down on my luck now. Bad things have happened to me. Look, that’s my dog there. How am I to feed him?”
“That dog!” She looked through the glass at Mojo, who sat majestically in the snow. “You must be joking,” she said. What a shrill voice she had. Utterly without character. So many sounds coming at me had that very quality. Metallic and thin.
“No, he is my dog,” I said with faint indignation. “I love him very much.”
She laughed. “That dog eats here every night at the back kitchen door!”
“Ah, well, marvelous. One of us will eat. I’m so happy to hear it, mademoiselle. Maybe I should go to the back kitchen door. Perhaps the dog will leave something for me.”
She gave a little chilly and false laugh. She was observing me, quite obviously, looking with interest at my face and my clothes. Whatever did I look like to her? I didn’t know. The black overcoat was not a cheap garment, but neither was it stylish. The brown hair of this head of mine was full of snow.
She herself had a sort of scrawny, fine-toned sensuality. Very narrow nose, very finely shaped eyes. Very beautiful bones.
“All right,” she said, “sit down up there at the counter. I’ll have them bring you something. What do you want?”
“Anything, I don’t care. I thank you for your kindness.”
“All right, sit down.” She opened the door, and shouted to the dog: “Go around to the back.” She made a quick gesture.
Mojo did nothing but sit there, a patient mountain of fur. I went back out into the freezing wind, and told him to go to the kitchen door. I gestured to the side alley. He looked at me for a long moment and then he rose and moved slowly down the alley and disappeared.
I went back inside, grateful for a second time to be out of the cold, though I realized that my shoes were full of melted snow. I moved into the darkness of the interior of the restaurant, stumbling on a wooden stool that I didn’t see, and nearly falling, and then seating myself on the stool. A place had already been set on the wooden counter, with a blue cloth mat and a heavy steel fork and knife. The smell of cheese was stifling. There were other smells—cooked onions, garlic, burnt grease. All revolting.
I was most uncomfortable sitting on this stool. The round hard edge of the wooden seat cut into my legs, and once again, I was bothered that I couldn’t see in the dark. The restaurant appeared very deep, indeed to have several more rooms in a long chain. But I couldn’t see all the way back there. I could hear frightful noises, like big pots being banged on metal, and they hurt my ears just a little, or more truly I resented them.
The young woman reappeared, smiling prettily as she set down a big glass of red wine. The smell was sour and potentially sickening.
I thanked her. And then I picked up the glass, and took a mouthful of the wine, holding it and then swallowing. At once I began to choke. I couldn’t figure what had happened—whether I had swallowed in some wrong way, or it was irritating my throat for some reason, or what. I only knew I was coughing furiously, and I snatched up a cloth napkin from beside the fork and put it over my mouth. Some of the wine was actually caught in the back of my nose. As for the taste, it was weak and acidic. A terrible frustration rose in me.
I shut my eyes, and leaned my head against my left hand, the hand itself closed around the napkin in a fist.
“Here, try it again,” she said. I opened my eyes and saw her filling the glass once more from a large carafe.
“All right,” I said, “thank you.” I was thirsty, powerfully thirsty. In fact, t
he mere taste of the wine had greatly increased this thirst. But this time, I reasoned, I wouldn’t swallow so hard. I lifted the glass, took a small mouthful, tried to savor it, though there seemed almost nothing there to savor, and then I swallowed, slowly, and it went down the correct way. Thin, so thin, so totally different from a luscious filling swallow of blood. I must get the hang of this. I drank the rest of the contents of the glass. Then I lifted the carafe and filled it again, and drank that down too.
For a moment, I felt only frustration. Then gradually I began to feel a little sick. Food will come, I thought. Ah, there is food—a canister of bread sticks, or so they appear to be.
I lifted one, smelled it carefully, ascertaining that it was bread, and then I nibbled at it very fast until it was gone. It was like sand to the last tiny bit. Just like the sand of the Gobi Desert which had gotten into my mouth. Sand.
“How do mortals eat this?” I asked.
“More slowly,” said the pretty woman and she let out a little laugh. “You’re not mortal? Which planet are you from?”
“Venus,” I answered, smiling at her again. “The planet of love.”
She was studying me unreservedly, and a little flush came back to her sharp white little cheeks. “Well, stick around until I get off, why don’t you? You can walk me home.”
“I shall definitely do that,” I said. And then the realization of what this could mean settled over me, with the most curious effect. I could bed this woman, perhaps. Ah, yes, that was definitely a possibility as far as she was concerned. My eyes drifted down to the two tiny nipples, protruding so enticingly through the black silk of the dress. Yes, bed her, I thought, and how smooth was the flesh of her neck.
The organ was stirring between my legs. Well, something is working, I mused. But how curiously local was this feeling, this hardening and swelling, and the odd way that it consumed all my thoughts. The need for blood was never local. I stared blankly before me. I did not look down when a plate of Italian spaghetti and meat sauce was set down at my place. The hot fragrance went up my nostrils—moldering cheese, burnt meat, and fat.
Go down, I was saying to the organ. This is not the time yet for that.
Finally I lowered my gaze to the plate. The hunger ground in me as if someone had my intestines in both hands and was wringing them out. Did I remember such a feeling? God knows I had been hungry enough in my mortal life. Hunger was like life itself. But the memory seemed so distant, so unimportant. Slowly I picked up the fork, which I had never used in those times, for we had none—only spoons and knives in our crude world—and I shoved the tines under the mess of wet spaghetti and lifted a heap of it to my mouth.
I knew it was too hot before it touched my tongue, but I didn’t stop quickly enough. I was badly burnt and let the fork drop. Now, this is plain stupidity, I thought, and it was perhaps my fifteenth act of plain stupidity. What must I do to approach things with more intelligence, and patience and calm?
I sat back on the uncomfortable stool, as well as one can do such a thing without tumbling to the floor, and I tried to think.
I was trying to run this new body, which was full of uncommon weakness and sensation—painfully cold feet, for instance, wet feet in a draught running along the floor—and I was making understandable but stupid mistakes. Should have taken the galoshes. Should have found a phone before coming in here and called my agent in Paris. Not reasoning, behaving stubbornly as if I were a vampire when I was not.
Nothing of the temperature of this steaming food would have burnt me in my vampire skin, obviously. But I wasn’t in my vampire skin. That’s why I should have taken the galoshes. Think!
But how far was this experience from what I had expected. Oh, ye gods. Here I was talking about thinking when I’d thought I would be enjoying! Ah, I’d thought I would be immersed in sensations, immersed in memories, immersed in discoveries; and now all I could do was think how to hold back!
The truth was, I’d envisioned pleasure, a variety of pleasures—eating, drinking, a woman in my bed, then a man. But none of what I’d experienced was even vaguely pleasurable so far.
Well, I was to blame for this shameful situation, and I could make it change. I wiped my mouth now with my napkin, a coarse bit of artificial fiber, no more absorbent than a bit of oilcloth might have been, and then I picked up the wineglass and emptied it once more. A wave of sickness passed over me. My throat tightened and then I even felt dizzy. Good God, three glasses and I was getting drunk?
Once again, I lifted the fork. The sticky goo was cooler now, and I shoveled a heap of it into my mouth. Again, I almost choked! My throat locked convulsively, as if to prevent this mass of slop from smothering me. I had to stop, breathe slowly through my nostrils, tell myself this wasn’t poison, I wasn’t a vampire, and then chew the mess carefully so as not to bite my tongue.
But I’d bit my tongue earlier, and now that patch of sore skin began to hurt. The hurt filled my mouth, and was far more perceptible than the food. Nevertheless I continued to chew the spaghetti, and began to reflect on its tastelessness, its sourness, its saltiness, and its general awful consistency and then I swallowed it, feeling a painful tightening again, and then a hard knot lower in my chest.
Now, if Louis were going through this—if you were your old smug vampire self, sitting opposite, watching him, you would condemn him for everything that he was doing and thinking, you would abhor him for his timidity, and his wasting of this experience, for his failure to perceive.
Again, I lifted the fork. I chewed another mouthful, swallowed it. Well, there was a sort of taste. It simply wasn’t the pungent delicious taste of blood. It was much tamer, and grainier, and stickier. Okay, another mouthful. You can get to like this. And besides, maybe this just isn’t very good food. Another mouthful.
“Hey, slow down,” said the pretty woman. She was leaning against me but I couldn’t feel her juicy softness through the coat. I turned and looked up into her eyes again, marveling at her long curving black lashes, and how sweet her mouth looked as she smiled. “You’re bolting your food.”
“I know. Very hungry,” I said. “Listen to me, I know this sounds dreadfully ungrateful. But do you have something that is not a great coagulated mass such as this? You know, something tougher—meat, perhaps?”
She laughed. “You are the strangest man,” she said. “Really where are you from?”
“France, the countryside,” I said.
“All right, I’ll bring you something else.”
As soon as she’d gone, I drank another glass of the wine. I was definitely getting dizzy, but I also felt a warmth that was sort of nice. I also felt like laughing suddenly, and I knew that I was partially intoxicated, at least.
I decided to study the other humans in the room. It was so weird not being able to pick up their scents, so weird not being able to hear their thoughts. I couldn’t even really hear their voices, only a lot of racket and noise. And it was so weird to be both cold and hot here, my head swimming in the overheated air, and my feet freezing in the draught that ran along the floor.
The young woman set a plate of meat before me—veal, she called it. I picked up some small sliver, which seemed to amaze her—I should have used the knife and fork—and bit into it and found it to be rather tasteless like the spaghetti; but it was better. Cleaner, it seemed. I chewed it fairly lustily.
“Thank you, you’ve been kind to me,” I said. “You are really lovely, and I regret my harsh words earlier, I really do.”
She seemed fascinated, and of course I was playacting somewhat. I was pretending to be gentle, which I am not.
She left me so that she might take the payment from a couple who were leaving, and I returned to my meal—my first meal of sand and glue and bits of leather full of salt. I laughed to myself. More wine, I thought, it’s like drinking nothing, but it’s having an effect.
After she’d cleared the plate, she gave me another carafe. And I sat there, in my wet shoes and socks, cold and uncomfortab
le on the wooden stool, straining to see in the dark, and getting drunker and drunker as an hour passed, and then she was ready to go home.
I was no more comfortable at that point than I’d been when this all began. And as soon as I stood up off the stool, I realized I could hardly walk. There was no sensation in my legs at all. I had to look down to be certain they were there.
The pretty woman thought it very funny. I wasn’t so sure. She helped me along the snowy sidewalk, calling to Mojo, whom she addressed simply as “Dog,” with great respectful emphasis, and assured me that she lived only “a few steps up the street.” The only good aspect of all this was that the cold did bother me less.
I was really off balance. My limbs were now totally leaden. Even the most brightly illuminated objects were out of focus. My head was aching. I thought sure I was going to fall. Indeed the fear of falling was becoming a panic.
But mercifully we reached her door, and she led me up a narrow carpeted flight of steps—a climb which left me so exhausted that my heart was pounding and my face was veiled with sweat. I could see almost nothing! It was madness. I heard her putting her key in the door.
A new dreadful stench assaulted my nostrils. The grim little apartment appeared to be a warren of pasteboard and plywood, with undistinguished printed posters covering the walls. But what could account for this smell? I realized suddenly that it came from the cats she kept in this place, which were allowed to relieve themselves in a box of earth. I saw the box of earth, full of cat excrement, sitting on the floor of a small open bathroom, and I really thought it was all over, I was going to die! I stood still, straining to keep myself from vomiting. There was a grinding pain in my stomach again, not hunger this time, and my belt felt painfully tight.
The pain grew sharper. I realized I had to perform a similar duty to that already performed by the cats. Indeed, I had to do it now or disgrace myself. And I had to go into that very same chamber. My heart came up in my throat.
