by Paula Guran
When he could get up, he went to her. He had kneeled, and stammered something; he was only sixteen, and she not much older. But she had simply looked at him quietly and said: “I know. You are welcome.” The words had been in a language they seldom spoke together now. Yet always, when he recalled that meeting, she said them in that tongue, and with the same gentle inflection.
All about, in the small café where he had paused to sit and drink coffee, vague shapes came and went. Of no interest to him, no use to her. Throughout the morning, there had been nothing to alert him. He would know. He would know, as he had known it of himself.
He rose, and left the café, and the waking dream walked with him. A lean black car slid by, and he recaptured a carriage carving through white snow—
A step brushed the pavement, perhaps twenty feet behind him. The old man did not hesitate. He stepped on, and into an alleyway that ran between the high buildings. The steps followed him; he could not hear them all, only one in seven, or eight. A little wire of tension began to draw taut within him, but he gave no sign. Water trickled along the brickwork beside him, and the noise of the city was lost.
Abruptly, a hand was on the back of his neck, a capable hand, warm and sure, not harming him yet, almost the touch of a lover.
“That’s right, old man. Keep still. I’m not going to hurt you, not if you do what I say.”
He stood, the warm and vital hand on his neck, and waited.
“All right,” said the voice, which was masculine and young and with some other elusive quality to it. “Now let me have your wallet.”
The old man spoke in a faltering tone, very foreign, very fearful. “I have—no wallet.”
The hand changed its nature, gripped him, bit.
“Don’t lie. I can hurt you. I don’t want to, but I can. Give me whatever money you have.”
“Yes,” he faltered, “yes—yes—”
And slipped from the sure and merciless grip like water, spinning, gripping in turn, flinging away—there was a whirl of movement.
The old man’s attacker slammed against the wet gray wall and rolled down it. He lay on the rainy debris of the alley floor, and stared up, too surprised to look surprised.
This had happened many times before. Several had supposed the old man an easy mark, but he had all the steely power of what he was. Even now, even dying, he was terrible in his strength. And yet, though it had happened often, now it was different. The tension had not gone away.
Swiftly, deliberately, the old man studied the young one.
Something struck home instantly. Even sprawled, the adversary was peculiarly graceful, the grace of enormous physical coordination. The touch of the hand, also, impervious and certain—there was strength here, too. And now the eyes. Yes, the eyes were steady, intelligent, and with a curious lambency, an innocence—
“Get up,” the old man said. He had waited upon an aristocrat. He had become one himself, and sounded it. “Up. I will not hit you again.”
The young man grinned, aware of the irony. The humor flitted through his eyes. In the dull light of the alley, they were the color of leopards—not the eyes of leopards, but their pelts.
“Yes, and you could, couldn’t you, Granddad.”
“My name,” said the old man, “is Vasyelu Gorin. I am the father to none, and my nonexistent sons and daughters have no children. And you?”
“My name,” said the young man, “is Snake.”
The old man nodded. He did not really care about names, either.
“Get up, Snake. You attempted to rob me, because you are poor, having no work, and no wish for work. I will buy you food, now.”
The young man continued to lie, as if at ease, on the ground.
“Why?”
“Because I want something from you.”
“What? You’re right. I’ll do almost anything, if you pay me enough. So you can tell me.”
The old man looked at the young man called Snake, and knew that all he said was a fact. Knew that here was one who had stolen and whored, and stolen again when the slack bodies slept, both male and female, exhausted by the sexual vampirism he had practiced on them, drawing their misguided souls out through their pores as later he would draw the notes from purse and pocket. Yes, a vampire. Maybe a murderer, too. Very probably a murderer.
“If you will do anything,” said the old man, “I need not tell you beforehand. You will do it anyway.”
“Almost anything, is what I said.”
“Advise me then,” said Vasyelu Gorin, the servant of the Vampire, ”what you will not do. I shall then refrain from asking it of you.”
The young man laughed. In one fluid movement he came to his feet. When the old man walked on, he followed.
Testing him, the old man took Snake to an expensive restaurant, far up the white hills of the city, where the glass geography nearly scratched the sky. Ignoring the mud on his dilapidated leather jacket, Snake became a flawless image of decorum, became what is always ultimately respected, one who does not care. The old man, who also did not care, appreciated this act, but knew it was nothing more. Snake had learned how to be a prince. But he was a gigolo with a closet full of skins to put on. Now and then the speckled leopard eyes, searching, wary, would give him away.
After the good food and the excellent wine, the cognac, the cigarettes taken from the silver box—Snake had stolen three, but, stylishly overt, had left them sticking like porcupine quills from his breast pocket—they went out again into the rain.
The dark was gathering, and Snake solicitously took the old man’s arm. Vasyelu Gorin dislodged him, offended by the cheapness of the gesture after the acceptable one with the cigarettes.
“Don’t you like me anymore?” said Snake. “I can go now, if you want. But you might pay for my wasted time.”
“Stop that,” said Vasyelu Gorin. “Come along.”
Smiling, Snake came with him. They walked, between the glowing pyramids of stores, through shadowy tunnels, over the wet paving. When the thoroughfares folded away and the meadows of the great gardens began, Snake grew tense. The landscape was less familiar to him, obviously. This part of the forest was unknown. Trees hung down from the air to the sides of the road. “I could kill you here,” said Snake. “Take your money, and run.”
“You could try,”’ said the old man, but he was becoming weary. He was no longer certain, and yet, he was sufficiently certain that his jealousy had assumed a tinge of hatred. If the young man were stupid enough to set on him, how simple it would be to break the columnar neck, like pale amber, between his fleshless hands. But then, she would know. She would know he had found for her, and destroyed the finding. And she would be generous, and he would leave her, aware he had failed her, too.
When the huge gates appeared, Snake made no comment. He seemed, by then, to anticipate them. The old man went into the park, moving quickly now, in order to outdistance his own feelings. Snake loped at his side.
Three windows were alight, high in the house. Her windows. And as they came to the stair that led up, under its skeins of ivy, into the porch, her pencil-thin shadow passed over the lights above like smoke, or a ghost.
“I thought you lived alone,” said Snake. “I thought you were lonely.”
The old man did not answer anymore. He went up the stair and opened the door. Snake came in behind him, and stood quite still, until Vasyelu Gorin had found the lamp in the niche by the door, and lit it. Unnatural stained glass flared in the door panels, and the window-niches either side, owls and lotuses and far-off temples, scrolled and luminous, oddly aloof.
Vasyelu began to walk toward the inner stair.
“Just a minute,” said Snake. Vasyelu halted, saying nothing. ”I’d just like to know,” said Snake, “how many of your friends are here, and just what your friends are figuring to do, and how I fit into their plans.”
The old man sighed.
“There is one woman in the room above. I am taking you to see her. She is a princess. Her
name is Darejan Draculas.” He began to ascend the stair.
Left in the dark, the visitor said softly:
“What?”
“You think you have heard the name. You are correct. But it is another branch.”
He heard only the first step as it touched the carpeted stair. With a bound the creature was upon him, the lamp was lifted from his hand. Snake danced behind it, glittering and unreal.
“Dracula,” he said.
“Draculas. Another branch.”
“A vampire.”
“Do you believe in such things?” said the old man. “You should, living as you do, preying as you do.”
“I never,” said Snake, “pray.”
“Prey,” said the old man. “Prey upon. You cannot even speak your own language. Give me the lamp, or shall I take it? The stair is steep. You may be damaged, this time. Which will not be good for any of your trades.”
Snake made a little bow, and returned the lamp.
They continued up the carpeted hill of stair, and reached a landing and so a passage, and so her door.
The appurtenances of the house, even glimpsed in the erratic fleeting light of the lamp, were very gracious. The old man was used to them, but Snake, perhaps, took note. Then again, like the size and importance of the park gates, the young thief might well have anticipated such elegance.
And there was no neglect, no dust, no air of decay, or, more tritely, of the grave. Women arrived regularly from the city to clean, under Vasyelu Gorin’s stern command; flowers were even arranged in the salon for those occasions when the Princess came downstairs. Which was rarely, now. How tired she had grown. Not aged, but bored by life. The old man sighed again, and knocked upon her door.
Her response was given softly. Vasyelu Gorin saw, from the tail of his eye, the young man’s reaction, his ears almost pricked, like a cat’s.
“Wait here,” Vasyelu said, and went into the room, shutting the door, leaving the other outside it in the dark.
The windows that had shone bright outside were black within. The candles burned, red and white as carnations.
The Vampire was seated before her little harpsichord. She had probably been playing it, its song so quiet it was seldom audible beyond her door. Long ago, nonetheless, he would have heard it. Long ago—
“Princess, “ he said, “I have brought someone with me.”
He had not been sure what she would do, or say, confronted by the actuality. She might even remonstrate, grow angry, though he had not often seen her angry. But he saw now she had guessed, in some tangible way, that he would not return alone, and she had been preparing herself. As she rose to her feet, he beheld the red satin dress, the jeweled silver crucifix at her throat, the trickle of silver from her ears. On the thin hands, the great rings throbbed their sable colors. Her hair, which had never lost its blackness, abbreviated at her shoulders and waved in a fashion of only twenty years before, framed the starved bones of her face with a savage luxuriance. She was magnificent. Gaunt, elderly, her beauty lost, her heart dulled, yet—magnificent, wondrous.
He stared at her humbly, ready to weep because, for the half of one half moment, he had doubted.
“Yes,” she said. She gave him the briefest smile, like a swift caress. “Then I will see him, Vassu.”
Snake was seated cross-legged a short distance along the passage. He had discovered, in the dark, a slender Chinese vase of the yang ts’ai palette, and held it between his hands, his chin resting on the brim. “Shall I break this?” he asked.
Vasyelu ignored the remark. He indicated the opened door. “You may go in now.”
“May I? How excited you’re making me.”
Snake flowed upright. Still holding the vase, he went through into the Vampire’s apartment. The old man came into the room after him, placing his black-garbed body, like a shadow, by the door, which he left now standing wide. The old man watched Snake.
Circling slightly, perhaps unconsciously, he had approached a third of the chamber’s length toward the woman. Seeing him from the back, Vasyelu Gorin was able to observe all the play of tautening muscles along the spine, like those of something readying itself to spring, or to escape. Yet, not seeing the face, the eyes, was unsatisfactory. The old man shifted his position, edged shadowlike along the room’s perimeter, until he had gained a better vantage.
“Good evening,” the Vampire said to Snake. “Would you care to put down the vase? Or, if you prefer, smash it. Indecision can be distressing.”
“Perhaps I’d prefer to keep the vase.”
“Oh, then do so, by all means. But I suggest you allow Vasyelu to wrap it up for you, before you go. Or someone may rob you on the street.”
Snake pivoted, lightly, like a dancer, and put the vase on a side table. Turning again, he smiled at her.
“There are so many valuable things here. What shall I take? What about the silver cross you’re wearing?”
The Vampire also smiled.
“An heirloom. I am rather fond of it. I do not recommend you should try to take that.”
Snake’s eyes enlarged. He was naïve, amazed.
“But I thought, if I did what you wanted, if I made you happy—I could have whatever I liked. Wasn’t that the bargain?”
“And how would you propose to make me happy?”
Snake went close to her; he prowled about her, very slowly. Disgusted, fascinated, the old man watched him. Snake stood behind her, leaning against her, his breath stirring the filaments of her hair. He slipped his left hand along her shoulder, sliding from the red satin to the dry uncolored skin of her throat. Vasyelu remembered the touch of the hand, electric, and so sensitive, the fingers of an artist or a surgeon.
The Vampire never changed. She said:
“No. You will not make me happy, my child.”
“Oh,” Snake said into her ear. “You can’t be certain. If you like, if you really like, I’ll let you drink my blood.”
The Vampire laughed. It was frightening. Something dormant yet intensely powerful seemed to come alive in her as she did so, like flame from a finished coal. The sound, the appalling life, shook the young man away from her. And for an instant, the old man saw fear in the leopard yellow eyes, a fear as intrinsic to the being of Snake as to cause fear was intrinsic to the being of the Vampire.
And, still blazing with her power, she turned on him.
“What do you think I am?” she said, “some senile hag greedy to rub her scaly flesh against your smoothness; some hag you can, being yourself without sanity or fastidiousness, corrupt with the phantoms, the leftovers of pleasure, and then murder, tearing the gems from her fingers with your teeth? Or I am a perverted hag, wanting to lick up your youth with your juices. Am I that? Come now,” she said, her fire lowering itself, crackling with its amusement, with everything she held in check, her voice a long, long pin, skewering what she spoke to against the farther wall. “Come now. How can I be such a fiend, and wear the crucifix on my breast? My ancient, withered, fallen, empty breast. Come now. What’s in a name?”
As the pin of her voice came out of him, the young man pushed himself away from the wall. For an instant there was an air of panic about him. He was accustomed to the characteristics of the world. Old men creeping through rainy alleys could not strike mighty blows with their iron hands. Women were moths that burnt, but did not burn, tones of tinsel and pleading, not razor blades.
Snake shuddered all over. And then his panic went away. Instinctively, he told something from the aura of the room itself. Living as he did, generally he had come to trust his instincts.
He slunk back to the woman, not close, this time, no nearer than two yards.
“Your man over there,” he said, “he took me to a fancy restaurant. He got me drunk. I say things when I’m drunk I shouldn’t say. You see? I’m a lout. I shouldn’t be here in your nice house. I don’t know how to talk to people like you. To a lady. You see? But I haven’t any money. None. Ask him. I explained it all. I’ll do anything
for money. And the way I talk. Some of them like it. You see? It makes me sound dangerous. They like that. But it’s just an act.” Fawning on her, bending on her the groundless glory of his eyes, he had also retreated, was almost at the door.
The Vampire made no move. Like a marvelous waxwork she dominated the room, red and white and black, and the old man was only a shadow in a corner.
Snake darted about and bolted. In the blind lightlessness, he skimmed the passage, leaped out in space upon the stairs, touched, leaped, touched, reached the open area beyond. Some glint of starshine revealed the stained-glass panes in the door. As it crashed open, he knew quite well that he had been let go. Then it slammed behind him and he pelted through ivy and down the outer steps, and across the hollow plain of tall wet trees.
So much, infallibly, his instincts had told him. Strangely, even as he came out of the gates upon the vacant road, and raced toward the heart of the city, they did not tell him he was free.
“Do you recollect,” said the Vampire, “you asked me, at the very beginning, about the crucifix?”
“I do recollect, Princess. It seemed odd to me, then. I did not understand, of course.”
“And you,” she said. “How would you have it, after—” She waited. She said, “After you leave me.”
He rejoiced that his death would cause her a momentary pain. He could not help that, now. He had seen the fire wake in her, flash and scald in her, as it had not done for half a century, ignited by the presence of the thief, the gigolo, the parasite.
“He,” said the old man, “is young and strong, and can dig some pit for me.”
“And no ceremony?” She had overlooked his petulance, of course, and her tact made him ashamed.
“Just to lie quiet will be enough,”’ he said, “but thank you, Princess, for your care. I do not suppose it will matter. Either there is nothing, or there is something so different I shall be astonished by it.”
“Ah, my friend. Then you do not imagine yourself damned?”
“No,” he said. “No, no.” And all at once there was passion in his voice, one last fire of his own to offer her. “In the life you gave me, I was blessed.”
