Lessa spoke again, urgency in her soft voice.
“Isaac, there is something I’ve been meaning to tell you. Do you remember that day in the field, right after we were married, when we made love in the rain? And do you remember how we talked about one day going to the Greek Islands, how we would look at the beautiful pictures and drink Ouzo on the floor of your mother’s house? Well, darling, that day in the field, when you were inside of me…I went there. It was so lovely, Isaac, better than the pictures. The breeze was warm, and we walked in the sand, and we made love in the sea. Oh Isaac, I want us to go there now! You and me, far away from here. The others in this car won’t notice. Let us touch each other. Let us love each other…”
Isaac raised his head slowly and looked into her pleading eyes. She amazed him. It was all there. She was still his wife, after all. He had drifted out upon the frightful currents of the midnight sea, but she was still tending the shore-fires for him, and was calling him back to her now. She asked him to go with her once before, and he had refused. He would not refuse her again.
They rose together and pressed back into the corner. The sway of the car gave discretion to their movements. Their mouths opened to one another and his hands moved over her, feeling the slow curves of her breasts, the purifying fire between her legs, and she consumed him with it. Burning away the pain, the sorrow, leaving only white ashes in the embers of her forgiveness. He felt it now. The power coursed through their connected bodies like a thick chord. They were there, and they were laughing, swinging in a hammock, sharing a cool drink as the island music eclipsed the rail song. Then they were running in the sand, shedding their clothes like those two innocent children that they had always been. It was the sea. It was the sky. It was all. They arched against the current and they gasped against the sky. The seabirds cried out above them, and cried out again. And then, the long doppler of the whistle as the train slowed into the village of Birkenau.
“Juden, raus! Raus!”
The blinding lights of the Auschwitz platform drove like spikes into their car and pried the fearful from their huddled corners, drawing them all forward onto the dock. Under such nightmarish conditions one expected a madness, a chaos of confusion. But there was no confusion. The madness would not be tolerated…only allowed, when the Nazis allowed it. And they would allow it. The fabled German efficiency was very much in evidence.
Two lines were formed. Two impersonal, forever-goodbye lines that somehow managed to progress as though a vital thing were happening…as though the business at hand was were quite necessary to some cosmic purpose. It was simple and thorough and without the slightest ceremony, this vocation, this commerce, this genocide.
Lessa clung to Isaac’s hand until the last possible moment, when it was savagely wrenched from her by a guard. Isaac was shoved up ahead of her into a separate line, too numb to speak, to cry out. He turned and looked back at her, and a lifetime of conversation passed through the pleas of a people, through the tearful implorings of the panicking crowd, and rang like church bells in their breaking hearts.
Lessa had held her tears for as long as she could, and now they fell freely upon her face. But her gaze remained fixed on her husband, strong and constant. His hands were shaking so badly that he was certain she could see them, and he thrust them into his pockets as he was pressed forward. It was a machine, Isaac suddenly realized. It was a machine with gears and levers and a terrible purpose. And his people were the grist.
For a moment, shock overcame him and he found himself staring down at the concrete beneath his feet, wondering at the untold tears that had fallen there. This was beyond Hell, beyond the reaches of mercy. Nothing could save them. Nothing could even offer the slimmest hope of salvation. This was the boundary of midnight.
As the darkness descended upon him, he looked back once more, straining over the oceanic grief, and caught a final moment of her. She stretched her arms out toward him, and her words flew into his black surrender.
“Believe, Isaac! I believe in forever! This place has no power over love! I love you, Isaac, I love…”
She was slapped harder than he had ever seen anyone hit in his life, and knocked to the ground. He moved in a blur and got to within five feet of the man who had suddenly taught him the meaning of hate when he was struck in the side of the head with the butt of a rifle. And as the darkness rose up to claim him, as the long, solitary night of his life was born there on the tear-washed concrete of Auschwitz, he knew that he was seeing his wife for the last time.
Isaac shook his head from side to side, still reeling from the blow. The recollection was so powerful that his skull felt shattered. He touched it, expecting to feel the flow of blood and the tapestry of torn skin. There were tears on his face. The murderer was seated across from him.
The two of them sat there in silence as the minutes fell away. Isaac wiped at his eyes, wanting to face the killer with dignity. There was an instant transference of rage from the Nazi who had slapped Lessa to the man who sat now before him.
A waitress appeared at their table and the stranger ordered brandy, Isaac’s poison. He looked the man over carefully. One certainly could not judge the book from the cover. This was a well-groomed cat, one that was accustomed to the finer things. Just slightly gray, just slightly exotic, he was dressed for a European train, or a Jules Verne balloon, all linen and worsted wool. The watch was expensive, but not commercial. The look on the man’s face was one of vague amusement…and this stoked the fire of Isaac’s rage.
“I am Julian Germain. And I am quite curious, Mr. Bloom, to know where we have met.” He spoke the words as statement of fact and curious condescension at once. Isaac’s response issued forth like a spring flood.
“It was in Atlanta…Piedmont Park…last month. The night you killed the old woman with the doll.” Isaac gazed into the chalkboard blackness of Julian’s eyes. “Why was that necessary?”
Julian seemed mildly surprised by the answer, and the ensuing question.
“First of all,” he replied, “you will notice that your thoughts are your own, but that at my bidding you will reveal them to me. Therefore you may only ask questions until I tire of them. Or of you. Secondly, you very nearly perished that night. You are most fortunate to have survived to this point. One might say that you are blessed. As I watched you wandering the warehouses in St. Louis, I knew that you were seeking me…or something like me. I do recall you now.
“You were out of your element. There are no “visitors” of your age in that park after the sun has departed. At first I mistook you for one of them…one of the walking dead. But when you paused there on the path I sensed an odd contradiction. There is death in you, but there is something else…something. In any case, I haven’t killed anyone with the true life-light in a very long while. So I passed you by. But I would like to know why you were there. And more importantly, how you came to find me in Biloxi and St. Louis.”
Isaac explained how he had experienced a sort of bonding with the old woman, and that after reading of her death in the obituaries, he had connected it with their encounter on the path.
“It was really just a strange series of coincidences that led me to you. Call it dumb, and very bad, luck.”
“Hm,” Julian looked unimpressed. “I hardly believe in coincidence. Tell me then, what were you thinking about when I arrived? Was it the fear of dying that brought tears to your eyes?”
Isaac shifted in his seat. He had no desire to divulge the details of his personal pain. But it was out of his hands.
“I was thinking of the last time I saw my wife.”
Julian could see that the response had been wrenched from him. He could sense a strength that he would not have guessed at in the dark warehouse in St. Louis. He wondered where it came from.
“And when, and where, was that?” He asked without emotion.
“1943. Auschwitz.”
The stranger r
esponded with the slightest wincing of the eyes. He reached across the table and took Isaac’s wrist, turned it over and gazed at the tattoo. Then he turned to the bar and motioned with a raised hand.
Moments later, a very old bottle of Cognac arrived. Julian poured generously into Isaac’s glass, then two fingers into his own. He stared at Isaac with a precise observation.
“The Cognac is pre-phylloxera, very old. There is precious little of it left in this world. As the vines of Europe were being laid to waste by the grape-plague, it took the grafting of American vines (which, ironically, had caused the issue in the first place) to salvage the vineyards of the Old World. But we shall miss this old Cognac when it is gone.” He raised his glass to Isaac’s. “So let us enjoy the past. It becomes more precious with the disappointments of time.”
Isaac raised the amber fluid to his nose and inhaled deeply. Oh yes. This was a rare treasure. And there was that odd sensation again. He could appreciate the artistry and the significance of the wine and want to linger over it. There was a certain implication there, but it flitted away from him. Julian wasn’t finished singing its praises.
“This brandy is older than you. Taken with loving care from the nurturing womb of the barrel and allowed to spill like a dreamy jinni into the bottle. As that transference was taking place, hundreds and thousands of young men from dozens of countries were crawling forward on their muddied bellies. Crawling wormlike over the decomposing bodies of their comrades, under the razor wire, around the mines, through the ooze and the slime and the rotting death of the First World War. The newspapers referred to it as ‘Trench Warfare.’ The soldiers referred to it as Hell.” With that, Julian took a mouthful of the amber liquid, inhaled over it, swallowed and exhaled slowly as Isaac’s brow furrowed in pain. “This century has been even more brutal than all before it. As man evolves technologically, to the point where all life now lives in the shadow of an existential threat, he regresses in his humanity. I have witnessed that regression for some six hundred years.”
He arched his eyebrows and watched Isaac’s response with that same vague smile. Isaac swallowed hard. This man was obviously quite insane. But at the instant the thought entered his mind, it was swept effortlessly aside by a profound sense of the truth. Julian drank blood because he was a vampire.
Julian’s eyes remained on Isaac’s face as he continued to add to the surrealism of the moment.
“There is a great deal of sorrow within you. That is the death I sensed that night. But it is balanced by something I haven’t quite identified…”
Isaac suddenly interrupted him with the question that he had been carrying for weeks.
“How could you have known that all of your victims were dying?”
“Your two questions are connected, Mr. Bloom. You asked why it was necessary to kill the old woman. And you wonder how I knew that they were dying. Finish your drink. There are things to discuss while the night is yet innocent of answers. We will walk for awhile.”
Isaac drained his glass, keenly aware of the differences in the two brandies he had consumed this night. He had only had Cognac that good on one other occasion. It seemed a shame to drain his glass so abruptly.
As they exited the bar, Isaac was amazed at how relaxed he felt. How matter-of-fact it all seemed. There was such an absence of concern that it almost left him giddy.
They neared the heart of the Quarter and the music and revelry paraded around them. They were among the full strength of the tourists now. Isaac was wondering at their destination when Julian broke the spell.
“Look around you, Isaac, and pick a club or a bar at random. There is something I want you to see.”
Isaac stopped and turned 360 degrees in the street. On the opposite corner was an establishment with what seemed an appropriate name: The Zoo.
“Whatever you have in mind, I’m confident that we can find it there.”
Julian frowned and led the way into the club.
Chapter Ten
“The Zoo,” indeed. As they entered, Isaac felt almost foolish for choosing such a dive. The place was deserted except for three rather unwholesome characters, who lounged contemptuously at a littered table near the wall. But The Zoo was a two-story affair. And what was down in no way prepared Isaac for what was up.
There was muted, high-decibel music coming from above them. In looking for it, Isaac found a dark hallway that kept the staircase a secret. Julian was already there. He glanced once at Isaac and began his ascent. The stairs ended at a heavy steel door with a sliding screen that would not have been out of place in an old gangster movie. Julian rang the bell, and after several minutes the screen slid back and a pair of thickly-browed eyes peered out at them.
The door swung open and Isaac was assaulted by music, incense, and the chaos of lasers. Unimagined spectrums of light careened off the walls and mirrors. The floor itself was a kaleidoscope of color. Alice had tumbled into the looking glass.
It was one vast room. The furnishings were limited to cushions and futon mattresses thrown randomly about. Two of the four corners offered cocktails. Isaac noticed that the art on the walls was of a specifically voluptuous nature. The incense was doing a poor job of masking the unmistakable aroma of premium marijuana.
Through this carelessly-hedonistic landscape was a hungry wandering of men and women of all ages and all social backgrounds. This was a meeting place of the sensually-jaded…the envelope-pushers who had stepped beyond the boundaries of “normal” eroticism too often, and who could no longer be satisfied by less esoteric pleasures.
In the middle of the room they were dancing. At least, Isaac supposed that dancing was the proper coinage. But two was not the common pairing. More often it was three or four people together. They moved against one another with a kind of serpentine friction. The jarring acoustics served to mute the private jargon of their public voracity.
Isaac looked at Julian as if to ask, “What is this all about?” Julian was taking it all in with a serious intent that seemed out of place. He surveyed the scene with a scrutiny that Isaac felt fortunate not to be the object of.
Julian’s gaze had come to rest upon a small group of men reclining on one of the futons not far from where they stood. They surrounded a willowy, sandy-haired young woman of considerable beauty. The men took turns touching her and speaking into her ear. She seemed hardly to notice. Her attention was focused on the writhing bodies that moved all around them.
Julian touched Isaac’s arm and spoke just loudly enough to be heard above the din.
“We must be patient. Even a place such as this must eventually nod its head in the direction of the fable of Romance. They will play something slow and sentimental for these people, something to allow them to cling to one another, to whisper in a stranger’s ear of their insatiable need. In the interim, you will go and bring us two brandies, as the service here is also a myth.”
Isaac found his way to the nearest of the bars and ordered. With the brandies, he returned to the area that he had occupied with Julian, but he was no longer there. He looked around and located him prowling among the crowd in such a deliberate manner that it made Isaac uneasy. At last he returned to Isaac’s side and took his drink.
The better part of an hour passed with no words spoken between them. This was not a place where conversation was encouraged, or even necessary. This was the domain of the pleasure-senses. Everyone knew why they were here.
Then the predicted moment arrived, and the token slow song was cued up. Isaac couldn’t help but smile as dozens of couples took to the floor and embraced each other with a sophomoric tenderness that belied their previous gropings. Julian made his move.
He walked to where the blonde was shaking her head at the requests from the men around her. He bent gracefully at the waist, spoke into her ear, and held forth his hand. She took it and rose to join him in the dance.
Julian moved fluidly, leading a
nd guiding her with an apparent familiarity. It was lovely to watch them. With some effort, Isaac fought off the warmly-intrusive memories of dancing with Lessa. This was not the place to sully those visions.
When the song ended, Julian took her hand and led her back to where Isaac stood waiting. The three of them found a cushioned corner and sat down.
“This is my acquaintance, Isaac Bloom. Isaac, I would like to introduce Erica Nance.”
She held out her hand and Isaac shook it lightly, absorbing her beauty. His curiosity was mixed with a growing concern for the woman’s safety. What did Julian have in mind? Was Isaac going to be forced to witness something more horrible than he had in St. Louis?
But the conversation seemed normal enough, and eventually managed to ease most of Julian’s concerns. The three of them discussed the city and the music and other related trivialities. There was easy laughter, and some flirtation forming between Julian and the young woman. The question of why they were here, in this particular club, hung like an unspoken code of thieves’ honor between them. There was to be no questioning of the motives of dark need.
After about an hour Erica excused herself for the lady’s room. When she had gone, Julian looked at Isaac and spoke in his direct fashion.
“She is dying. There is little time left for her.”
Isaac was incredulous. “Did she tell you that while you were dancing?”
“No. I am not certain if she knows it herself, though I suspect she does. That is the likely reason she has ventured into a world such as this. She has no place here. But I would venture that she has a terrible need to know a range of experiences before she vacates this life. It cannot be an easy thing to know that you must die soon. It can only be harder to know that you never will. When she returns we will learn her story.”
Isaac mulled it over. It was too incredible. Did the reading of minds come with the vampire tool box? How could he possibly know that this young lady was dying? Yet his previous victims bore a silent testimony to his methods.
Nocturnes Page 8
