The way he saw it, there were two possibilities. One, he could turn himself in to the Romanian Orthodox Church, see if they were still in the business of sending vampires back to God. It might be painful, but it would be quick. The second choice was easier, but would take some courage; he could simply walk outside and wait to greet the sunrise.
As if in response, a harried rustling began in the plane trees below, like the wings of a thousand birds taking flight; it came to a tumultuous crescendo, then died slowly away.
There must be a God, he thought, otherwise, how else to explain the existence of a creature such as himself? And if he had been, as the old Archbishop had said, part of His design, perhaps there would also be forgiveness.
He would have liked very much to believe this; he did not, however, hold much confidence in the quality of His mercy. Isaiah had died and he had lived, where was the justice in that? If there were indeed a heaven and a hell, he was sure to be sent straight to the latter. He entertained no vain hopes of a heavenly reunion with Sofia. She had died a martyr’s death, she was a shining star; he had been an agent of the Other.
The long-case clock bonged softly, told him it was five a.m. It was almost dawn. Suddenly, he felt a deep longing to hear Tessa’s voice. He took the stairs two at a time. He climbed into bed, slid his arms around her waist.
“Mm,” she said. There was a silky commotion of sheets as she rolled over to face him, nestling back into the quilts. Her scent, blackberry and musk, trapped in the tangle of sheets and blankets, escaped lazily into the air.
“Hello, sweet girl,” he said. A feeling of peace washed over him. He pushed the twists of her hair, not blond, not brown, not red, away from her face. “I just wanted to say good night.”
Her eyes cracked open, eased closed again. “Come to bed,” she sighed.
He put his mouth very close to her ear. “I love you,” he told her, wanting to be sure she heard it.
“Love you,” she repeated drowsily, tucking herself into the hollow of his chest.
He held on to her, reluctant to let go of her soft, warm body. Then he pulled the covers up around her chin, pressed his lips to her raspberry mouth. She smiled in her sleep.
Sitting down to his desk, he took out a sheet of monogrammed notepaper, scratched out a letter of explanation. The thought of her searching the house for him, calling his name, was unbearable. By the time she awoke, there would be nothing left of him but a handful of ashes.
He didn’t want to die. Far from it; he wanted to live forever with his darling Tessa, just the two of them, playing house forever in the brownstone at the edge of Gramercy Park. But he couldn’t do it to her, couldn’t do it to Sofia.
A quiet voice arose within him, presenting itself for consideration. Go back to bed, it suggested. Everything looks worse at night. Just go to Paris, memories be damned.
I can’t, he answered sadly. Sofia’s face is imprinted on every Rue and Boulevard. And not just Sofia. All those living, breathing human beings that I transformed into lifeless corpses. I can never go back.
All right then, the voice argued reasonably. Just tell her the truth, that you’ll die without her. Ask her to stay.
Was it that simple, then? Just forget all this sacrifice and nobility, live happily ever after, like in the fairy tales, Little Red Riding Hood with the Big Bad Wolf?
“No,” he said out loud. “I can’t. It’s wrong.”
He was shivering, and not from the cold. Still wearing only pajama bottoms, he unlatched the French doors, stepped out onto the balcony.
There was a haze hiding the face of the moon, a fresh breeze blowing down from Canada. He closed his eyes, felt it caress the hair off of his forehead. His mind wandered back through the years, over all the accidents of chance and the choices he had made, that had brought him to this place, to this moment. The lonely boy at school, finding salvation in Art. The broken-hearted young man, letting his lover walk away into the blue of a Paris evening. The angry young man, foolishly entering the cracked and cobbled courtyard with a beautiful stranger, his life bleeding away into the cracks between the paving stones. The murderous young man, waiting for unfortunate stragglers amidst the billowing smoke and the crackling fire pits of the Blitz. The same young man, hapless witness to a modern massacre of the innocents. A changed young man, his head filled with plans to save his lover and her child, unaware that they had already been claimed by the jaws of history no matter what he did.
The monster. The philanthropist. The lover. The unlikely founder of an arcane and necessary art school. The Angel of Healing.
Do I have a purpose? he had asked the old Archbishop. Am I part of God’s plan?
Raphael Sinclair, no longer young, no longer angry or hapless or murderous or monstrous, suddenly understood that he had been given the answer to his long-ago question. It had come to him in the form of another girl who needed saving, and who had, to his infinite surprise, saved him right back. The circle was complete; perhaps that had been God’s plan all along.
Tessa was the best of both of them, he realized. She had inherited Sofia’s exquisite sensitivity, yes. Her artistic gifts, her beauty, also yes. But under the fragile girlish surface lay a natural self-reliance, a stubborn streak of independence, an insouciant, easygoing embrace of life that Sofia could never have known. Those had been qualities of his, when he was still a man.
He had loved Sofia Wizotsky without reservation or condition, with all his heart and all his soul. But he had also wanted to own her, to possess her, to control her destiny. He had been entirely prepared to kill her rather than see her with another man. Fifty years later, with his heart breaking inside of him, he just wanted his darling girl to be happy.
Birds were twittering in the trees below, it was almost dawn. The sky turned from a velvety black to a celestial blue. His hands were shaking; he clung to the wrought iron bars for courage. The first pink streaks appeared on the horizon. He closed his eyes, waiting for the sunrise.
Epilogue
Tessa,” said Portia Ballard in surprise. “Come on in.” It was nine-thirty on a steamy May night, and she had been strapping duct tape around her last box of books when she thought she heard a knock at the door.
The cozy ground floor studio apartment she had occupied for the past nine months seemed remote and anonymous now, her belongings stowed away in boxes and bags except for some old furniture.
“Have a seat,” she said, indicating an empty chair with a round back and a threadbare needlepointed cushion that had belonged to her great-grandmother. “Can I get you some tea?”
“No thanks,” she said. “I’m kind of in a hurry.” She shifted from one foot to the other, glanced over her shoulder, then came in anyway. “I tried to call. Your phone just kept ringing.”
“It’s already disconnected. Auden’s been driving around the neighborhood for half an hour, looking for a place to park the van. We’re leaving in the morning.”
On the streets of New York City, girls were already showing off their new tans in camisoles with skinny straps, their skin burnished brown by the late spring sun. By contrast, Tessa seemed paler than ever, dreamy, ethereal. She handed Portia a package wrapped in butcher paper.
“But I didn’t get you anything.” Curiously, she peeled off the paper, revealing the dustcover of the Balthus book. She looked at her questioningly.
“Rafe wants you to have it. He says you’ll make better use of it.”
“Wow. Tell him thank you.” She ran her hand lovingly over the book’s smooth surface, then narrowed her eyes, looked at her friend. “Okay, let’s hear it. What’s going on?”
Tessa’s hair was like a barometer; some days curly, some days fluffy, some days waving around her head like Medusa’s snakes. Tonight it hung down her back in loose ringlets, casting her as a da Vinci angel, or a Titian Magdalene. She sighed, glanced at her feet. Took a long deep breath, blurted it out. “I’m not going to Paris.”
Portia blanched. “What do you mean? Why not?”
“We’re going away for a while. Rafe has some places he wants to show me in Eastern Europe.”
She was stunned. “Tessa. You can’t.” The words gushed out of her before she could think. “Sure, he loves you now, but for how long? He’ll be young and beautiful forever, while you get older and older.” Desperate to save her friend from making an irrevocable mistake, she abandoned all gestures at diplomacy. “He’s a vampire, Tess. He killed your grandfather. He killed Isaiah. He almost killed you.”
Tessa said nothing. In the wake of the news, Portia had forgotten to close the door behind her. Just beyond the stoop, past the moths batting themselves against the single neo-Gothic lamp at the entrance to the building, darkness reigned, the dim yellow glare from the streetlights breaking only intermittently through the heavy canopy of trees.
Goosebumps lifted the hairs on the back of her neck, the backs of her arms. Something moved in the shadows under the tree by the curb, something dark and immeasurably powerful. Portia saw the end of a cigarette glow suddenly red, silhouetting for a moment the figure of a man in an overcoat and a fedora.
Tessa smiled at the shadows. Something whooshed on inside of her, like a furnace coming suddenly to life. Her cheeks flushed pink, her lips grew red, even the hairs on her head seemed to stand up and quiver.
“You know,” she said, without rancor. “Everyone’s always so sure they know what’s best for me. My grandfather, my family…David, Levon, Anastasia…you…even Rafe. So I packed up my studio. I made ticket reservations. I made all these arrangements. Today, at five in the morning, it came to me. I’m already here.”
Portia shook her head, not understanding.
“This is my Paris,” Tessa said, spreading her arms wide. “This is where I belong.” She smiled. “In New York, you can be anyone you want to be.”
Portia was perspiring. It was warm in the small, airless room. “Tessa. Let’s say I’m wrong. Let’s say nothing happens. What about the future? Can you picture Rafe at your Shabbos table? With your parents? At a piano recital? At a playground?”
“What about children, Tessa?” She was almost shouting. Wiry blond hairs were springing free of her tightly wrapped bun. “A family? A normal life?”
“David was normal,” said Tessa.
Portia put her head wearily into her hands. Tessa perched on the edge of the bed, regarding her with sympathetic brown eyes. It wasn’t that she wanted Portia’s approval; she just wanted her to understand.
“I’m not saying I don’t want those things,” she said. “Maybe someday I will. But not now. Not for a long while. Right now, we’re taking it one day at a time.”
This was a terrible idea, Portia was thinking. What could she possibly say to talk her out of it? And then she had it.
“Tessa,” she said. “What would Sofia say?”
Immediately, she wished she could take the words back. With that one statement, she had gone vaulting over the boundaries of their friendship, of history, of civilized behavior.
But there was no reproach in the soft voice. “What would Sofia say,” she mused, almost to herself. “When I woke up this morning, I just knew. What I really want to do was stay in New York City. Of course, I wanted to tell Rafe right away, but he wasn’t there. So I went to look for him.”
She was massaging her fingers in slow circles across her forehead, a gesture Portia realized she had picked up from Rafe. “His coat was still in the closet, his hat was on the dresser where he left it…a breeze was blowing the curtains in and out. That was when I noticed. The doors leading to the balcony were open.”
“He was outside?” said Portia, puzzled. “At sunrise? But if he’s a vampire, isn’t that…wouldn’t he…” she stared at her, aghast.
“He needs me, Portia,” Tessa said simply. “And I need him. He makes me a better person. He makes me a better artist. Everything in my life is better, in every way, because of him. Can you understand that?”
Portia sat down heavily in her great-grandmother’s chair, bowed by the impending sense of doom she felt hovering just overhead.
“To answer your question. I don’t know what Sofia would say. But if she was here, if she could speak for herself, I think she would say this. If you are fortunate enough to have someone to love, treasure them for as long as you can. Because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring.”
There was an expression on her face that Portia had never seen before on a living human being, only in certain paintings by da Vinci, by Titian, by Raphael. It spoke of peace, of consolation. Of redemption. Of love beyond understanding. Of a forgiveness beyond earthly comprehension.
Tessa got up to go, shouldering her knapsack. She seemed very small and vulnerable in her thin cotton summer dress, framed against the black backdrop of night. Tendrils of tawny hair fell around her shoulders, backlit by the streetlamp like a halo.
Portia relented. “Send me a postcard from Prague,” she said.
Relieved, Tessa broke into a smile. “I will.”
“And call me. So I know you haven’t been turned into the evil undead, over there in Romania, or Transylvania, or wherever the heck you’re going.”
She laughed. “They might not have phones, some of the places we’re going. I’ll write.”
An early cicada rattled and whirred at the top of a linden tree. Moments later, it was answered by another cicada from a tree down the block. Portia saw Tessa’s gaze wander out the door, to the shadow waiting for her in the impenetrable gloom under the tree.
Suddenly she smiled. Something seemed to stir the air around her face, lofting and fanning the intricate loops and whirls of her hair like a warm wind. Tessa was alight, glowing with an inner fire, and Portia knew she had never seen her friend happier, or more beautiful.
She sighed. “So go to him already,” she said.
Tessa beamed at her one last time. Then she turned, running lightly down the stairs on sandaled feet. Knee-deep in moving boxes, Portia watched as she disappeared into the shadows just beyond the stoop.
She heard the tender whisper of a girl’s voice in the dark. She heard another voice rumble in response, rich and impassioned, touching the heart like a sad and beautiful love song.
Portia Ballard, engaged to be married to a handsome and socially appropriate young man with whom she was deeply in love, experienced an unexpected stab of envy. Wrong or right, what they had was the kind of love the great poets wrote about. A glamorous aura surrounded them, Tessa Moss and Raphael Sinclair, the artist and her muse. Together, they were Art.
She went to close the door. As she stood there, she saw two shadows come together under the tree by the curb, embrace. Holding hands, the shadows flitted across the street. She watched until they turned the corner, vanishing into the vast, sheltering darkness of the New York City night.
Acknowledgements
This book couldn’t have happened without the extraordinary support of many extraordinary people.
My heartfelt gratitude to my agent, Jean Naggar, whose efforts on behalf of this story has been nothing short of Herculean. Her unshakable faith in this manuscript has gotten me through a lot of dark nights of the soul. Her wisdom and her grace are a constant inspiration.
I am indebted to my team at JVNLA; Jennifer Weltz, who is always there for me with insight, patience and guidance, Laura Biagi, whose skill with editing made the story better than it was before, Tara Hart, who made my cover art sing. Thank you, too, to the many others at the agency who helped bring this book to life.
My eternal thanks to David Naggar, my first beta reader, who called me from a vacation in Paris to suggest that I get a copy of the manuscript to his mother.
Myriam Auslander, Leora Fineberg, Olivia Fischer Fox, my friends, my first readers. Thank you for plowing through those early versions, and for being brave enough to tell me what worked and what didn’t. Your friendship has kept me more or less sane through births, deaths, rejections, homework, car pools and three-day yontifs. Thanks also to Jessica Raab and Blu
ma Katz Uzan, who made me feel that I’d written something special.
For the World War II section of the book, I turned to The Yizkor Book of Wlodawa, available online at the Nizkor Project. Philip Soroka, Chaim Melzcer, and Dieter Schlüter shared their wartime experiences with me, confirming and filling out my mother’s war stories.
My gratitude to Siu Wong and Rivkie Greenland, whose suggestions made the cover more beautiful than I could have made it on my own.
Many thanks to my fellow masters from the New York Academy of Art class of 1993, Doug Blanchard, Conrad Cooper, Cessna Decosimo, Ken Hochberg, Sean Leong, Terry Marks, Alissa Siegal, Patrizia Vignola, with whom, thanks to Facebook, I still share a virtual studio.
Sometimes, when you put up a flyer in a student union building advertising for a new roommate, you get a wonderful surprise, someone who becomes part of your family. Big hugs to Karen Benchetrit Naggar, my dear French roommate, who always makes me feel like I’m family.
To all Maryleses, Sorokas and Shankmans, thanks for your unending support. Life is a journey, and it is a better journey when I travel it with you.
From the moment I landed in New York, Daisy Maryles welcomed me into her home, made me laugh, and showered me with free books. I can never thank you enough.
Gabriella, Raphael, Ayden and Jude, who grow tall and brilliant and beautiful on pizza, hot dogs and chicken nuggets while I punch obsessively away on the computer, thank you for putting up with me. You are my greatest creations.
This book would not have existed without my mother, Brenda Soroka Maryles. With her immigrant English, she read to me when I was little, took me to classes at the Chicago Art Institute, and reported her Holocaust experiences with pitiless accuracy. My dad, Barry Maryles, told me family stories of blinding courage and incomprehensible horror. I pass them on the only way I know how.
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