The conductor who had shown the fantasy woman to her compartment was announcing the next station.
“Pittsburgh! Pittsburgh!”
Several passengers were moving down the corridors of the Pullman and the sleeper cars. Martin joined the stream of passengers, gripping his duffel bag in one hand and slinging his jacket over his shoulder with the other.
The clacking of the train wheels ground to a halt. Martin squinted at the early morning light. The conductor stopped at each of the compartments of the sleeper, calling out the station and checking off his list at each door. Martin cautiously watched as the conductor stopped at door number thirteen and knocked:
“Pittsburgh!”
He moved on to number eleven:
“Pittsburgh!”
Martin and the conductor met in the corridor, almost directly abreast with the door of compartment number nine. The conductor paused and Martin caught his breath. The man checked his list and moved on to number seven:
“Pittsburgh!”
Martin moved slowly toward the end of the car. A big, satisfied grin spread across his face. And the only sign of his fatal act was a drop of blood on the carpet beside the door to compartment number nine.
Chapter Two
The train had come to a stop in the underground station, its air brakes hissing and enveloping the disembarking passengers in a cloud of steam. The passengers scurried off in a spectacle of purpose, waving greetings to waiting relatives, picking up luggage and hailing cabs, bounding off for other connections. Martin walked slowly, not looking forward to his landing in the decaying elegance of Pittsburgh’s Pennsylvania Station. The grand old stone edifice seemed to puff out its chest with the pride in a lost era. The other passengers were far too busy and involved in their own affairs to notice the contrast of the station’s refined beauty to the city of coldly impersonal metal and glass towers.
Martin walked through the majestic arches of the building, inattentive to the stone angels high on the parapets which heralded his arrival. The angels and gargoyles had, in days gone by, welcomed important visitors to the Steel City, once the pride of the Industrial Revolution, heartbeat of a country that had put the highest value on the muscle and sweat of a day’s work well done.
Now the angels’ trumpets were tuned to the deaf ears of the hobos and derelicts and servicemen looking for the cheap thrills of a one-night stand.
A lone black man slumped at the shoeshine stall, where once dashing brown boots and blood-red cordovans lined up for their ritual shining. The polish-stained brush was limp in the man’s hand. Now, in the days of Corfam and imitation leather, a two-bit shoeshine was a novelty.
Past the shoeshine stall was a boarded-up refreshment stand which advertised fresh orange juice on a peeling and filthy sign. A few paces away a man in a grease-stained apron hawked hot dogs from his GI Joe cart. The umbrella over the cart tipped precariously as the hot dogs sizzled in their own unappetizing juices.
As Martin strode through this desolated battleground of travelers, he spotted an old man in the process of neatly folding a newspaper and placing it under the arm of his sparkling white suit. The suit was a testament to, and a vestige of, the late, great days of the once-powerful railroads.
The man’s gray hair looked as if it were recently covered by a light fall of virginal snow. He sported a neatly trimmed moustache and a small goatee on his clear, pink-cheeked face. His attire was completed by an equally presentable white vest and an antique gold watch chain in burnished tones of age and care. His small, delicate feet were housed in white as well. Only his liver-spotted hand, which gripped the ornately carved handle of a walking stick, belied his impeccable appearance. He relied upon the stick as he took a few tentative steps toward Martin.
A fleeting expression of recognition crossed Martin’s face as he continued to watch the old man. It wasn’t his features as much as an aura that drew Martin toward the singular old gentleman.
“Are you Martin Mathias?” the old man inquired as he drew closer.
Martin nodded affirmatively.
“I am Tati Cuda,” the old man said simply. “We must take another train.”
With that perfunctory greeting, the old gentleman turned on his white-shoed heel and strode off. Martin had not been expecting an open-armed embrace but at least an offer to help with the luggage, a smile to indicate pleasure at his arrival, an inquiry about his trip or his health was not too much to desire. Too dazed to move, Martin watched as the old man crossed the huge terminal waiting room, not once turning back to see if his relative had followed. Recovering, Martin traced the path of the old man, who walked swiftly despite his reliance on the cane, toward the building’s main entrance.
The old man in white walked with dignity through Pittsburgh’s strip district, down uneven cobblestone streets with huge potholes, past little produce stands that proudly displayed rosy tomatoes and purple eggplants, firm and shining in the morning sun, as yet undamaged by the probing fingers of housewives. The stands were crowded together, threatening to topple into the street. Muscular Italians and Greeks unloaded the great wooden crates of vegetables, seafood, and fruit from the groaning trucks and passed through the clouds of steam which rose from the manhole covers. Tati Cuda expertly wound his way through the narrow side-walkless streets, crossing the loading docks with careful measured steps. Almost as if defying the huge trucks to run him over, he walked down the middle of the street. The slight figure of Martin, clutching his duffel bag and sports coat, always lagged a few respectful steps behind. They continued their silent journey, only veering for puddles and spilled crates of vegetables, mushy fruit and crushed, abandoned crates which littered both sides of the street.
They passed the old stone courthouse and the jail, magnificent monuments from the days of the city’s prime. The great clock on the courthouse tower chimed the seventh hour as the street prepared for the hustle and bustle of shoppers and office workers. People began to trickle out of the electric streetcars and move off, to be swallowed up by the old stone office buildings. In the distance, the sun-kissed glass and chrome oblong towers encroached upon the caverned walls of the old town, as if they were an invading army, soon to overtake and digest the proud past.
After a fifteen-minute walk, they reached the B&O Station at the other end of the city and waited for the 7:15 commuter train on the outside platform. All during the winding journey Tati Cuda had not broken stride and now he paced right up to a specific spot of the platform and stopped cold. As if posing for a portrait, he placed his hands upon the walking stick, securely planting it in the ground. He drew himself to his full five foot four height and posed as proud as an eagle, to wait for the train. Seeing the determined set of the old man’s chin, Martin sensed that Tati Cuda would not speak, nor move until the train arrived.
Martin’s slow mind took in his surroundings. Behind his blank stare, he noticed that beyond the platform cars swarmed on the parkway. The major traffic tie-up had not yet started. In the distance, he could make out the silhouette of the great steel mills, their enormous smokestacks and furnaces belching their fumes into the stagnant summer morning air, and obscuring the view of Mount Washington.
The station was quiet, as if steeling itself for the onslaught of suburban commuters due in an hour or so. Only one other person, an old woman in the traditional black of her widowhood, stood several yards away, clutching her old net bag filled with produce and a long, slender Italian bread. Once or twice Martin glanced at Tati Cuda. Martin knew that he felt the stare, but in his age-old stubbornness Tati Cuda would not acknowledge the young man’s presence.
Leaving his duffel bag on the station platform, Martin suddenly walked toward the men’s room in the main terminal. Tati Cuda caught a glimpse of him as the young man walked away, but he wouldn’t twitch or move. He just stared across the platform until he sensed that Martin was out of sight. All at once, the old man’s strength seemed to drain from him, and he relaxed upon his sturdy walking stick.
“This is not
going to be easy,” he thought to himself. “Oh, God, why am I cursed with this evil? Can’t I have any rest from this demon?”
His face showed the concern of generations, the weight of hundreds of years of superstition and ancient legends. The young man seemed normal to him, but he particularly noticed his pallor and his greenish hazel eyes. “The eyes gave him away,” Tati Cuda thought. They were not the vibrant, dancing eyes of youth, but those of a tired old man.
In the dirty washroom, Martin splashed water on his face and observed the graffiti-covered walls. Each emblem seemed to be crying out for recognition. An unconscious bum sprawled unceremoniously in one corner of the putrid-smelling, grimy room. His precious paper-bag encased bottle lay beside him like a bride.
Martin tried the paper towel dispenser, but it was empty. Unsuccessfully, he attempted to wipe the water off his face with his sleeve. In the stained and broken mirror, however, a warm happy smile indicated Martin’s pleasure at seeing his reflection.
“Another old myth that is a lie,” Martin thought. He paused for a moment by the pitiful drunkard.
“Big cities are easy. There are always people who I could do it to and not get caught,” he pondered. “People don’t care who you are in big cities. They don’t care how you look. They don’t try to talk to you all the time. I hate when people talk to you when you don’t want to talk. I usually don’t talk much.”
He turned and left the washroom through the battered and stained door. Like a child in a toy store, he ran his fingers lovingly over the worn-out rusting vending machines, half filled with cigarettes and water-stained candy bars. He settled for a piece of bubble gum from the glass ball and put a penny inside. He was rewarded with a blue gum ball which he popped into his mouth. At the sound of the train approaching, Martin hurried toward the platform and the stiff, unwavering form of Tati Cuda.
“Tati Cuda’s little town will be hard,” Martin reasoned in his simple way. “But it’s not that far from the city. I can save my money and ride the train and come to the city when I want to. I don’t know if I’ll like that Tati Cuda or not.”
The old man refused to acknowledge Martin’s presence as the train pulled into the station.
“He doesn’t talk much,” Martin mused. “That part is nice. But he doesn’t seem happy with me at all. Maybe he’s just not a happy person. But I don’t think so. I think it has to do with me.”
Tati Cuda and Martin waited politely for the passengers to disembark. Then in unison, without looking at each other, they boarded the train. Martin followed the old man to the back of the car and waited until he took a seat near the window. Then Martin slung his bag and his jacket up onto the luggage rack and settled himself next to Tati Cuda. As the train pulled out, Tati Cuda opened his neatly folded newspaper and started to read the article he had been involved in before he was so rudely interrupted by Martin’s arrival. Martin looked past him and the reflection of the dapper little old man in white and the decaying buildings of the railroad yard blended into a disturbing montage.
“He doesn’t talk much. That part is nice. But he doesn’t seem happy with me at all.”
• • •
“Braddock! Braddock!” the conductor called to the nearly empty train. “All passengers please leave by the front of the car.”
Only Martin, Tati Cuda, and the woman in black responded to the conductor’s call. All the other passengers had gotten off at the modern stations and driven in station wagons and compact cars to new housing developments and townhouse apartment complexes in the exurban sprawl. But Braddock lay in that no man’s land between the city and the suburbs. Not even a ticket window or newsstand graced its sagging station platform. Only the pigeons which had encrusted the roof with their droppings found the bare shell of a building inviting.
Tati Cuda and Martin walked through what seemed like a ghost town. Once a bustling mill center, the industry had moved to more tax-advantageous neighborhoods, and the deserted buildings and public housing projects were silhouetted against the sky like the skeleton of an already rotten corpse.
Martin absorbed the unfamiliar sights and sounds. His feet crushed decaying newspapers and rusting tin cans. But his mind was not on esthetics. Unsettling thoughts entered his head:
“Tati Cuda is old, and they say in the family that he still believes in the old ways. That could be very bad for me. But he’s not a gypsy like Uncle Palonis.”
They walked down an old street where the residences were remnants of more prosperous times. The wooden structures, once inhabited by the captains of the steel town, now peeled in the sun. Great reaching fingers of tall weeds groped through cracks in walls and fences as bees and horseflies buzzed about the wild flowers and garbage. The once fashionable street had become a dumping ground for the discarded implements of a new and prosperous society. Rusting hulks of cars, twisted bicycles, crushed cans, and broken shards of glass formed a littered path for the old man and youth to follow. Occasionally, a woman trudged by with her groceries, a sign of life in the emptiness and disintegration that the street reflected. But there were only old people who trod these streets; the younger ones were frightened off by the deathly, stifling atmosphere that the town and its inhabitants gave off like a bad odor.
As Martin walked along, the woman in black from the train darted out from a time-worn shortcut and nearly collided with him. Martin looked at her with real curiosity, but she was oblivious and continued on her way as if she were a donkey mindlessly following the path to fresh hay and oats.
Martin stopped for a moment to observe her, but Tati Cuda plodded onward, not once turning back. Martin watched as the old woman went up a weedy path that led to a large house. An older man, sitting on the stoop, greeted her and moved to take the grocery bag. With blind eyes, as if by reflex, she slapped his wrist and entered the house. The old man, his shoulders stooped with arthritic pain, followed her like a mongrel dog into the house.
Martin scanned the neighborhood with shaded eyes. The morning sun was getting brighter. The neighborhood was no different from any other ethnic, decaying settlement in hundreds of cities across the country. In one side yard a group of old Italians rolled the boccie ball. On another stoop an old woman sat with a grandchild on her knee, cooing and making faces for the child’s amusement. An old man in a wrinkled shirt and tie vigorously polished a violin as he sat in a second-story window. Martin took in the sights and sounds of the village with a certain enjoyment. Then he noticed that Tati Cuda was far ahead, and he quickly stepped out to catch him. The old man turned into the pathway that led to his home, an old house indistinguishable from any other on the block except that it was more neatly kept, had fewer weeds in the yard, and was in the process of being painted. The ladder which Tati Cuda used waited patiently for the next free moment so the job could be completed.
The old man pulled a set of keys from a retractable device which hung on the belt loop of his neatly pressed trousers. The well-oiled lock responded to his touch as easily as the lock on compartment number nine had to Martin’s. He entered the dark front hall, leaving the door ajar for Martin, but again making no gesture of welcome.
Martin walked slowly up the path to the house, which seemed inviting and warm despite Cuda’s coolness. Martin had never really known a home, being shuffled here and there to various relatives, never having a place to call his own. He longed for the security, the normality that was restricted to those without the sickness. He knew that his journey would never be over, that after Tati Cuda passed away, he would again be the unwelcome guest in another relative’s home.
He paused and looked up at the crumbling Victorian structure that was a monument to the old man’s industriousness, but crumbling nevertheless.
“There are good old ways and there are bad old ways. My least favorite things about the old ways is the magic. The way some of the old ones believe in the magic. And in ghosts and other scary things like Uncle Palonis did.”
With great effort, Martin put one foot in front of
the other and climbed the front stoop. He entered through the huge old mahogany door, closing it quietly behind him. At the clothes tree, Cuda was involved in his daily ritual. He removed his jacket, hung it on the brass branch of the clothes tree. Then he meticulously rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and loosened his tie, but left his vest on.
Martin observed him as if he were a creature from another planet.
“The old ones who believe in the magic never like me because they think I’m part of all that,” he thought. “They think I’m a kind of a ghost.”
Without warning, the old man turned to Martin with a vehement look in his eye and broke the silence with his bitter words of hatred:
“Nosferatu!” he spat out in four distinct syllables.
Martin’s facial muscles tightened upon hearing the word that represented the old man’s beliefs. The accusatory, damning word’s translation: Vampire!
Tati Cuda composed himself and in a soft, soothing voice continued, “I will first save your soul. Then I will destroy you.”
Martin was taken aback by his hostility, but equally confused by the subsequent calmness and certainty in the old man’s voice. With a minimum of motion, he set his duffel bag down on the worn oak floor.
“Not there,” Cuda commanded. “I show you your room.”
Martin picked up his belongings and followed him as he walked briskly up the carpeted stairs.
The two men’s feet fell lightly on the patterned, worn carpeting. The hallway was musty with the lingering odor of cooking smells and moth balls. The walls were covered with a paper whose print had faded with the years and left behind a dim and dingy impression. A few sepia photographs behind dusty glass frames adorned the walls. Midway down the hall they passed a bedroom door which had recently received a new lock. The bright brass of the hardware was a stark contrast to the dark old wood of the door. To Martin’s amusement, a great spray of garlic also graced the doorway. But on second thought the hideous garlic, which was designed as a protective measure, served only to anger him when he realized its superstitious implications. Yet he would not utter a word of displeasure, not allow the old man a moment’s satisfaction.
Martin Page 3
