by Glen Duncan
Konstantinov put out his hand. Walker took it and, after a pause in which I noticed, belatedly, that the sky was giant and clear and crammed with stars, embraced him.
68
In the absolute snow-stillness and silence of the night, long after Madeline had fucked Cloquet and herself into exhaustion, and Lucy and Trish had staggered with slurred goodnights to their beds and been dropped-on by their slabs of sleep, and Walker and I (helped by whiskey and gin and the shock of Konstantinov’s transformation) had had hurried and precarious sex – sex to do nothing more than establish that we could do it, that Walker wasn’t terminally mangled – and he had fallen, razed by relief, into sleep, long after all this, the twins and I lay awake and restless.
For a while I fought against it, tried half a dozen variations on the sheep-counting theme, but eventually I got up and dressed, quietly, telling myself it was delayed shock: for three months life had reduced to a single purpose. A horror-purpose, yes, but it had relieved me of every other question and uncertainty, all unease and ambivalence and fear. Not any more. The world was open again, and the dizzying fact of four hundred years in it – with children to raise, with enemies to guard against – was reasserting itself. Four hundred years. There was no grasping that. You groped out vaguely through NASA and the Genome Project and special effects but it was pointless. There would be convulsions, revolutions, things of horrible originality, things that if you were to see them now would look like miracles or magic. I’d forgotten the vertigo I got thinking about it. It was just that keeping me awake, I told myself, just the sprawling potential of my condition.
No it isn’t, wulf said.
Zoë and Lorcan blinked up at me in the dark. I stared at them. Joy. Joy is a circularity. There is the joy. Then disbelief that says you must be dreaming. Then the mental pause or step back to give the universe a chance to wake you. Then the return to see if the joy is still there – and there is the joy again, insanely real and undeservedly all yours.
I took the bassinet and my newly-begun journal and crept downstairs.
The fire in the lounge was dead but the kitchen’s Aga still radiated heat, so I drew two chairs together in front of it, set the twins on the floor close by me, put my feet up and re-read the paragraph I’d written earlier.
You kill for two reasons. First, because it’s kill or die. Second, because it feels good. In the human court of appeal the first reason buys you theoretical mitigation. The second buys you a silver bullet.
The Hendricks bottle had a couple of swigs left in it. I didn’t bother with a glass. I wrote, Become a werewolf and you break up with humanity.
Or humanity breaks up with you. You can’t blame humanity. You can’t expect someone to go on loving you once they know you’re going to kill them and eat them. Unfortunately it’s not a clean break. In fact it’s the messiest kind of break. You still live together. You still have sex. You still have the memories. You still, at moments, feel the love. But sooner or later one of you ruins it. Humanity ruins it by reminding you you’re a murderer, or you ruin it by murdering someone. Which ought to be it for you and humanity, one final exchange of carrier bags, fuck you very much, and goodbye. But no. On it goes, the living together, the sex, the memories, the ghost of love—
‘It’s about time you stopped taking Jake’s word for everything,’ Marco’s voice said. ‘Although what he’d think of you drinking gin at this hour, God only knows.’
I’d started so violently I’d almost fallen off the chair – but jumped to my feet and got my body between him and the twins.
He hadn’t moved, except to raise a hand, palm out. He looked exactly as he had at the monastery, except that he’d apparently taken a shower and washed his hair. There was the dark-eyed face of monkeyish mischief, the odourless vibe of weary amusement and inexhaustible energy. He was sitting directly opposite me on one of the kitchen worktops, ankles crossed. My body was still reacting: armpits, scalp, bladder, adrenline-ravished, blood-rich. Not straightforward fear, though fear was the big flavour. Excitement, dread, something like recognition.
‘What do you want?’ I said.
‘Not to harm you or your children or anyone in this house,’ he said, ‘unless egregiously provoked. I thought we might have a chat.’ He pulled out a pack of American Spirits and a brass Zippo, lit up, took a visibly-relished drag. ‘I assume you have questions.’ He registered me keeping one eye on the bassinet. ‘Really, I promise you, you’re completely safe. The nippers too.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Straight in, no foreplay. I like it. Who am I? I think that’s one you know the answer to already.’
‘Remshi?’
‘You yourself say so.’
‘What?’
‘Tell me something. Do you still believe the universe is a meaningless accident?’
‘What?’
‘I was thinking of names, you see. Your own, for starters. Talulla Mary Apollonia Demetriou. “Talulla”, as you know, is an Anglicised form of the Gaelic name “Tuilelaith”, composed of the elements tuile, meaning “abundance”, and flaith, meaning “lady” or “princess”. Commonly said to mean “prosperous lady”. Then you’ve got “Mary”, with its connotation of miraculous birth – it certainly must have seemed miraculous to you when you found out you were pregnant – “Apollonia” is the feminine form of “Apollonios”, meaning “destroyer”, and then to cap it all “Demetriou”, the root of which is “Demeter”, goddess of fertility. So you’ve got a prosperous lady with a history of miraculous fertility who’s also, once a month, a destroyer.’
‘Wait. Stop talking. What do you want?’
‘I’ve already answered that: to talk to you. It doesn’t stop there, does it? Look at the kids: “Zoë”, Greek, meaning “life”, and “Lorcan” – this is my favourite – derived from Irish Gaelic lorcc, “fierce”, combined with a diminutive suffix to give “little fierce one”, when practically the first thing he did on entry into the world was bite someone!’
‘How do you know that? You were there?’
‘Twenty thousand years, you think you’ve seen it all.’
When he said this, it was as if he were standing right behind me. His breath touched my ear, though I could still see him across the room. The physical sensation was real. I couldn’t help spinning around.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m right here, sitting still. I shan’t move without your permission. No more tedious gimmicks.’
In the monastery I’d had the feeling of having heard his voice before. Twenty thousand years, you think you’ve seen it all. I had heard it before. That night in Alaska when my waters broke, spoken right behind my ear. Twenty thousand years. It was impossible. Except of course it wasn’t.
‘Someone’s awake upstairs,’ he said, looking up. ‘We’ll have commotion if they come down.’
It was Lucy, going unsteadily, barefoot to the bathroom. We listened to her peeing. An absurd suspense.
When her door had closed again, I said: ‘You are a vampire, right?’
‘The vampire, you might say.’
‘You don’t smell.’
‘Not at the moment.’
‘At the moment?’
‘It’s a long story. Is that really the one you want to hear?’
‘Did you write The Book of Remshi?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘When papyrus was new.’
Vertiginous compression again, the ancient past dragged here into the kitchen. The beautiful hands’ unimaginable history of touch. I got glimpses: a small jar made of lapis lazuli; a tooled leather saddle, sun-warmed; an oiled male shoulder, skin the colour of plain chocolate. I thought: I can’t. I can’t. I didn’t know what it was I couldn’t. I was excited and sickened.
‘In Egypt?’
‘I wasn’t in Egypt when I wrote it. I was in China.’
‘And you’ve been asleep?’
‘Yes, but I’ve been up and about since before you were born. Yo
u and Jake drove by my house in Big Sur.’
‘What?’
‘There are patterns all over the place. Stories. That’s my curse.’
‘Wait. Please. One thing at a time.’
‘Apologies. Fire away.’
I looked down at the twins. They were asleep again, Zoë with one arm across her brother. I was aware with a detached part of myself that I should be afraid, making plans, working out if there was anything sharp and wooden I could get to. I was aware of it, but stuck in the state of debilitating sickened excitement, full of useless energy.
‘Do you have answers?’ I said. ‘Does it mean anything?’
‘I have the answer to the missing verb.’
‘That’d be “no’”, then.’
‘God bless Manhattan for breeding the most impatient people on the planet! Manhattan impatience saves the world decades that would otherwise be spent not cutting to the chase.’
‘Look, if you’ve genuinely got— ’
‘Shshsh! That’s Walker.’
Sounds of movement from upstairs. Walker called out: ‘Talulla?’
The vampire was silently on his feet. ‘I’ll have to go. No good for any of us if he comes down and I’m here.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘I think you know.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘He’s guessed the missing verb.’
And so, with sudden embarrassment like a sickening roller-coaster drop, had I.
‘Vor klez mych va gargim din gammou-jhi. “When he drinks the blood of the werewolf.” It’s not mych. It was never mych. It was fanim. Present tense of the humble little verb fan, meaning “to join”. Vor klez fanim va gargim din gammou-jhi. “When he joins the blood of the werewolf.” I’ll see you another time.’
Walker was on his feet, moving with purpose. I was seeing what he was seeing: me gone, the kids too. I could feel him feeling the house keeping a secret. I looked down at the twins. They opened their eyes, simultaneously.
‘You haven’t told me anything,’ I said, looking up – but I was talking to myself. The vampire was gone.
EPILOGUE
TALULLA VICTRIX
‘It’s old money, Dad, I keep telling you,’ I say, quietly. ‘His father’s side was originally from England. Microelectronics back through steel through coal through cotton through rubber. That’s the official family line, but ask Walker and he’ll tell you it really began with selling Indian opium to the Chinese.’
‘Jesus, I’m not asking him that.’
‘Well, stop pestering me about it, will you?’
We’re in loungers by the pool at a luxury villa in the Napa Valley, just north of Calistoga (south of the Robert Louis Stevenson State Park – Jake would’ve approved) on a hot, static, blue mid-August day. Sunlight on the water. The smell of clean concrete, lavender, pine trees. We’re drinking; a Hendricks with lime on ice for me, a Bushmills and soda for him. Zoë and Lorcan are in a big sunshaded playpen, Zoë with immense frowning concentration pushing different yellow 3-D shapes into their appropriate holes in a red globe, Lorcan sitting cross-legged and sucking catastrophically on a sliver of mango. In two months, they’ll celebrate their first birthday.
Walker is indoors getting chips and salsa, since we’re mid-cycle and eating regular food like normal people. I’ve got a whole calendar worked out around this for when my dad can see us.
‘Look, you can’t expect me to just absorb all this like a... You can’t expect me not to be curious.’
‘I know, Dad. I get it. But this is months now, with the same shit. You’re spilling, you’re spilling – wait.’ He can’t stop monkeying with the lounger, and his latest adjustment has lost him half his drink. ‘Wait. Let me. There. Okay?’
Cloquet has been sent on a month-long all-expenses-paid vacation around the Caribbean. (You won’t need me any more, he’d said, after Crete, once it was apparent Walker was going to be more than a fling. I’ll look for something. It’s fine. I understand. Rubbish, I told him, my unhardened Pharaonic heart in a sentimental mess. Go if you want to, but not because you think I don’t need you. I’ll always need you. Always. I put my arms around him. We both cried. It was ridiculous. So he stayed with me. Practically, not much has changed anyway: Walker and I don’t, technically, live together, nor, with the exception of fuckkilleat, are we sexually monogamous, though we still do it with each other a lot more than we do it with anyone else. So Cloquet’s role has remained approximately the same, familiar, logistician, babysitter, friend. The kids adore him.) Anyway, he’s off in the Caribbean. Madeline (who told me the sex was ‘as a matter of fact fan fucking tastic’, and who descends every now and then, fucks Cloquet’s brains out, then disappears) will be ‘bumping into him’ in Barbuda. All planned by yours truly.
‘I don’t know why you’re obsessing about the money, anyway,’ I say to my dad. ‘Just be glad we’ve got it.’ Since Jake’s financial history was spare I put it to use and made it Walker’s. My husband’s. The father of my children. Lies, lies and lies again, but the old man needs a picture that’s safe, secure and sensible. Doubly so after the shock of me presenting him with twin grandchildren eight months ago. ‘You worried about money when we had enough,’ I tell him. ‘Now we’ve got more than enough and you’re still worrying. It’s depressing.’
‘All right, all right, fine. Jesus. Did you sign a pre-nup at least?’
‘Dad, for God’s sake. Yes. Yes. We divorce, I get a lot. Trust me, more than I’ll ever need.’
Walker, tan, lean, wolf-fit, in Bermudas, comes out of the house with the chips and salsa on a tray. ‘Nikolai, you look more than ready for a refresher there. Here, let me get that.’
My dad’s amazement at Walker’s alleged wealth regularly short-circuits his basic social functions and he ends up, as now, gawping at him, as if he expects to see fifties and hundreds sprouting from the man’s head.
‘Dad!’ I say. ‘Do you want a refill?’
‘What? Oh, sure, sure. Thanks, Robert.’
‘Miss D?’
‘Hell, yes.’
The afternoon melts away in heat and sun and alcohol and increasingly frank and freeform conversation. The sentence I wrote in my journal last night after Walker had fallen asleep keeps tugging at my brain: Talulla Demetriou, you have been a Very (pause) Bad (pause) Girl. My dad, drunk, cooks lamb with red and green peppers in a rich tomato sauce – arnaki kokkinisto – my favourite from when I was small. The sight of him in paunchy, grey-quiffed, long-eyelashed profile at the stove with one shirt tail out, cooking, calm as God, gives me profound pleasure. It’s a risk, of course, having contact with him. WOCOP (or SLOW COP, as we’ve taken to calling them) are lately wise to the existence of a new generation of werewolves (current count is fifty-plus: Fergus found out about the lovebite, and somewhere out there Devaz has been running amok) and Helios remains bent on cracking the daylight magic of the lycanthropic gene. Either organisation could get to me through the old man. But I know if I gave him the choice he’d want to see me and the kids. So I’ve made the choice for him. We just have to be careful. Very careful. Jacqueline Delon, rumour has it, survived the raid on the monastery, though with a Fifty Families price on her head she’s choosing her friends carefully. Mia hasn’t shown her face, but I know she’s been close. Sorority says she can’t quite bring herself to assassinate the woman who saved her (and her son’s) life. Wulf says she’s taunting me for fun. Something between sorority and wulf says that for the time being fascination’s sweeter than revenge. That’s what it feels like: the death of either of us would be an impoverishment to the other, the subtraction of a bitter but compelling magic.
After dinner Walker takes the kids up for a bath (they still don’t leave my sight unless he or Cloquet is with them; if it’s neurotic, fine, I’m neurotic) and my dad falls asleep in the recliner in front of the TV. I step outside with a fresh drink for a smoke. I’ve been dying for one all day, but I can’t in front of my dad. Cancer; my mother; sacrile
ge.
Barefoot, blissful after two drags, I wander down past the pool, across the lawn and out the gate, which opens onto a track that runs a little way uphill between the pines to meet the road above. The sun’s down and the air’s blue-golden, soft, warm. A cloud of gnats a few feet away in what looks like pointless frenzy.
I’ll see you another time.
That was eight months ago, and I haven’t seen him since.
I can’t pretend I’m not a little disappointed.
Vor klez fanim va gargim din gammou-jhi. When he joins the blood of the werewolf. When he joins. As in... joins. What God hath joined, let no man put asunder...
I almost didn’t tell Walker, that night. Five minutes’ surreal conversation with a vampire in the kitchen had felt like an unholy infidelity. But I did tell him. For once grace was given to me to do the right thing. Hot-faced, trembling, I blurted out the whole story. If I hadn’t, the concealment would’ve grown into contempt. That’s what happens when you keep a secret from someone you love: you start to hate them for allowing you to prove your own willingness to deceive them.
So I told him, but the feeling of infidelity didn’t entirely vanish. Hasn’t entirely vanished.
I finish the cigarette and walk back to the pool. The patio smells are benign: chlorine; clean stone; sun-tan lotion; lavender. I can hear basketball commentary from indoors.
I’ll see you another time.
Eight months. Twenty thousand years.
I can’t pretend a part of me isn’t still waiting.
In the house I discover Walker has fallen asleep on my bed in his underwear, with a twin nestled (also asleep) in each armpit. I draw the comforter over them and turn out the light. They won’t roll off. He won’t squash them. Species certainty. Species gravity.
In the lounge, my dad snores, open-mouthed, in the recliner. I cover him with a blanket, mute the TV and set a glass of water on the side table next to him for when he wakes up, parched. I should be sleepy myself, after so much booze and sun and food, but I’m not. I’m alert, restless, vaguely bereaved. It occurs to me that for the first time in a long time I’m not worried about anything.
