The Vampire Sextette

by Marvin Kaye

  had put her right, the westering glow pouring in sideways to paint the face in her

  mirror, on its slim, long throat. She found, too, she had shoulders, and

  cheekbones. Hands, whose tendons flexed in fans. With the knowledge of beauty,

  Antoinette began to hope for something. Armed with her beauty she began to fall

  madly in love—with young officers in the army, with figures encountered in

  dreams.

  One evening at a parochial ball, the two situations became confused.

  The glamorous young man led Antoinelle out into a summer garden. It was a

  garden of Europe, with tall dense trees of twisted trunks, foliage massed on a lilac

  northern sky.

  Antoinelle gave herself. That is, not only was she prepared to give of herself

  sexually, but to give herself up to this male person, of whom she knew no more

  than that he was beautiful.

  Some scruple—solely for himself, the possible consequences—made him

  check at last.

  "No—no—" she cried softly, as he forcibly released her and stood back,

  angrily panting.

  The beautiful young man concluded (officially to himself) that Antoinelle was

  "loose," and therefore valueless. She was not rich enough to marry, and besides,

  he despised her family.

  Presently he told his brother officers all about this girl, and her "looseness."

  "She would have done anything," he said.

  "She's a whore," said another, and smiled.

  Fastidiously, Antoinelle's lover remarked, "No, worse than a whore. A whore

  does it honestly, for money. It's her work. This one simply does it."

  Antoinelle's reputation was soon in tatters, which blew about that little town of

  trees and societal pillars, like the torn flag of a destroyed regiment.

  She was sent in disgrace to her aunt's house in the country.

  No one spoke to Antoinelle in that house. Literally, no one. The aunt would

  not, and she had instructed her servants, who were afraid of her. Even the maid

  who attended Antoinelle would not speak, in the privacy of the evening chamber,

  preparing the girl for the silent evening supper below, or the lumpy three mattressed bed.

  The aunt's rather unpleasant lapdog, when Antoinelle had attempted,

  unwatched, to feed it a marzipan fruit, had only turned its ratlike head away. (At

  everyone else, save the aunt, it growled.)

  Antoinelle, when alone, sobbed. At first in shame—her family had already seen

  to that, very ably, in the town. Next in frustrated rage. At last out of sheer despair.

  She was like a lunatic in a cruel, cool asylum. They fed her, made her observe

  all the proper rituals. She had shelter and a place to sleep, and people to relieve

  some of her physical wants. There were even books in the library, and a garden to

  walk in on sunny days. But language— sound—they took away from her. And

  language is one of the six senses. It was as bad perhaps as blindfolding her.

  Additionally, they did not even speak to each other, beyond the absolute

  minimum, when she was by—coarse-aproned girls on the stair stifled their giggles,

  and passed with mask faces. And in much the same way, too, Antoinelle was not

  permitted to play the aunt's piano.

  Three months of this, hard, polished months, like stone mirrors which reflected

  nothing.

  Antoinelle grew thinner, more pale. Her young eyes had hollows under them.

  She was like a nun.

  The name of the aunt who did all this was Clemence—which means, of course,

  clemency—mild, merciful. (And the name of the young man in the town who had

  almost fucked Antoinelle, forced himself not to for his own sake, and then fucked

  instead her reputation, which was to say, her life … his name was Justus.)

  On a morning early in the fourth month, a new thing happened.

  Antoinelle opened her eyes, and saw the aunt sailing into her room. And the

  aunt, glittering with rings like knives, spoke to Antoinette.

  "Very well, there's been enough of all this. Yes, yes. You may get up quickly

  and come down to breakfast, Patice will see to your dress and hair. Make sure

  you look your best."

  Antoinelle lay there, on her back in the horrible bed, staring like the dead newly

  awakened.

  "Come along," said Aunt Clemence, holding the awful little dog untidily

  scrunched, "make haste now. What a child!" As if Antoinelle were the strange

  creature, the curiosity.

  While, as the aunt swept out, the dog craned back and chattered its dirty teeth

  at Antoinelle.

  And then, the third wonder, Patice was chattering, breaking like a happy stream

  at thaw, and shaking out a dress.

  Antoinelle got up, and let Patice see to her, all the paraphernalia of the toilette,

  finishing with a light pollen of powder, even a fingertip of rouge for the matte pale

  lips, making them moist and rosy.

  "Why?" asked Antoinelle at last, in a whisper.

  "There is a visitor," chattered Patice, brimming with joy.

  Antoinelle took two steps, then caught her breath and dropped as if dead on

  the carpet.

  But Patice was also brisk; she brought Antoinelle round, crushing a vicious

  clove of lemon oil under her nostrils, slapping the young face lightly. Exactly as

  one would expect in this efficiently cruel lunatic asylum.

  Presently Antoinelle drifted down the stairs, light -headed, rose-lipped and

  shadow-eyed. She had never looked more lovely or known it less.

  The breakfast was a ghastly provincial show-off thing. There were dishes and

  dishes, hot and cold, of kidneys, eggs, of cheeses and hams, hot breads in

  napkins, brioches, and chocolate. (It was a wonder Antoinelle was not sick at

  once.) All this set on crisp linen with flashing silver, and the fine china normally

  kept in a cupboard.

  The servants flurried round in their awful, stupid (secondhand) joy. The aunt

  sat in her chair and Antoinelle in hers, and the man in his, across the round table.

  Antoinelle had been afraid it was going to be Justus. She did not know why he

  would be there—to castigate her again, to apologise—either way, such a boiling of

  fear—or something—had gone through Antoinette that she had fainted.

  But it was not Justus. This was someone she did not know.

  He had stood up as she came into the room. The morning was clear and well

  lit, and Antoinelle had seen, with a dreary sagging of relief, that he was old. Quite

  old. She went on thinking this as he took her hand in his large one and shook it as

  if carelessly playing with something, very delicately. But his hand was manicured,

  the nails clean and white-edged. There was one ring, with a dull colourless stone in

  it.

  Antoinelle still thought he was quite old, perhaps not so old as she had

  thought.

  When they were seated, and the servants had doled out to them some food and

  drink, and gone away, Antoinelle came to herself rather more.

  His hair was not grey but a mass of silvery blond. A lot of hair, very thick,

  shining, which fell, as was the fashion then, just to his shoulders. He was thickset,

  not slender, but seemed immensely strong. One saw this in ordinary, apparently

  unrelated things—for example, the niceness with which he helped himself now

  from the coffeepot. Indeed, the d
angerous playfulness of his handshake with a

  woman; he could easily crush the hands of his fellow men.

  Perhaps he was not an old man, really. In his forties (which would be the

  contemporary age of fifty-five or -six). He was losing his figure, as many human

  beings do at that age, becoming either too big or too thin. But if his middle had

  spread, he was yet a presence, sprawled there in his immaculately white ruffled

  shirt, the broad-cut coat, his feet in boots of Spanish leather propped under the

  table. And to his face, not much really had happened. The forehead was both wide

  and high, scarcely lined, the nose aquiline as a bird's beak, scarcely thickened, the

  chin undoubted and jutting, the mouth narrow and well shaped. His eyes, set in the

  slightest rouching of skin, were large, a cold, clear blue. He might actually be only

  just forty (that is, fifty). A fraction less.

  Antoinelle was not to know, in his youth, the heads of women had turned for

  Gregers Vonderjan like tulips before a gale. Or that, frankly, now and then they

  still did so.

  The talk, what was that about all this while? Obsequious pleasantries from the

  aunt, odd anecdotes he gave, to do with ships, land, slaves, and money. Antoinelle

  had been so long without hearing the speech of others, she had become nearly

  word-deaf, so that most of what he said had no meaning for her, and what the aunt

  said even less.

  Finally the aunt remembered an urgent errand, and left them.

  They sat, with the sun blazing through the windows. Then Vonderjan looked

  right at her, at Antoinelle, and suddenly her face, her whole body, was suffused by

  a savage burning blush.

  "Did she tell you why I called here?" he asked, almost indifferently.

  Antoinelle, her eyes lowered, murmured childishly, thoughtlessly, "No—she—

  she hasn't been speaking to me—"

  "Hasn't she? Why not? Oh," he said, "that little business in the town."

  Antoinelle, to her shock, began to cry. This should have horrified her—she had

  lost control—the worst sin, as her family had convinced her, they thought.

  He knew, this man. He knew. She was ashamed, and yet unable to stop crying,

  or to get up and leave the room.

  She heard his chair pushed back, and then he was standing over her. To her

  slightness, he seemed vast and overpowering. He was clean, and smelled of

  French soap, of tobacco, and some other nuance of masculinity, which Antoinelle

  at once intuitively liked. She had scented it before.

  "Well, you won't mind leaving her, then," he said, and he lifted her up out of

  her chair, and there she was in his grip, her head drooping back, staring almost

  mindlessly into his large, handsome face. It was easy to let go. She did so. She

  had in fact learnt nothing, been taught nothing by the whips and stings of her

  wicked relations. "I called here to ask you," he said, "to be my wife."

  "But…" faintly, "I don't know you."

  "There's nothing to know. Here I am. Exactly what you see. Will that do?"

  "But…" more faintly still, "why would you want me?"

  "You're just what I want. And I thought you would be."

  "But," nearly inaudible, "I was—disgraced."

  "We'll see about that. And the old she-cunt won't talk to you, you say?"

  Antoinette, innocently, not even knowing this important word (which any way

  he referred to in a foreign argot), only shivered. "No. Not till today."

  "Now she does because I've bid for you. You'd better come with me. Did the

  other one, the soldier-boy, have you? It doesn't matter, but tell me now."

  Antoinelle threw herself on the stranger's chest—she had not been told, or

  heard his name. "No—no—" she cried, just as she had when Justus pushed her

  off.

  "I must go slowly with you then," said this man. But nevertheless, he moved

  her about and, leaning over, kissed her.

  Vonderjan was an expert lover. Besides, he had a peculiar quality, which had

  stood him, and stands those like him, in very good stead. With what he wanted in

  the sexual way, providing they were not unwilling to begin with, he could

  spontaneously communicate some telepathic echo of his needs, making them

  theirs. This Antoinelle felt at once, as his warm lips moved on hers, his hot tongue

  pierced her mouth, and the fingers of the hand which did not hold her tight, firefeathered her breasts.

  In seconds her ready flames burst up. Business-like, Vonderjan at once sat

  down, and holding her on his lap, placed his hand, making nothing of her dress, to

  crush her centre in an inexorable rhythmic grasp, until she came in gasping spasms

  against him, wept, and wilted there in his arms, his property.

  When the inclement aunt returned with a servant, having left, she felt, sufficient

  time for Vonderjan to ask, and Antoinelle sensibly to acquiesce, she found her

  niece tcarstained and dead white in a chair, and Vonderjan drinking his coffee, and

  smoking a cigar, letting the ash fall as it wished onto the table linen.

  "Well then," said the aunt, uncertainly.

  Vonderjan cast her one look, as if amused by something about her.

  "Am I to presume—may I—is everything—"

  Vonderjan took another puff and a gout of charred stuff hit the cloth, before he

  mashed out the burning butt of the cigar on a china plate.

  "Antoinelle," exclaimed the aunt, "what have you to say?"

  Vonderjan spoke, not to the aunt, but to his betrothed. "Get up, Anna. You're

  going with me now." Then, looking at the servant (a look the woman said after

  was like that of a basilisk), "Out, you, and put some things together, all the lady

  will need for the drive. I'll supply the rest. Be quick."

  Scarlet, the aunt shouted, "Now sir, this isn't how to go on."

  Vonderjan drew Antoinelle up, by his hand on her elbow. He had control of

  her now, and she need bother with nothing. She turned her drooping head, like a

  tired flower, looking only at his boots.

  The aunt was ranting. Vonderjan, with Antoinelle in one arm, went up to her.

  Though not a small woman, nor slight like her niece, he dwarfed her, made of her

  a pygmy.

  "Sir—there is her father to be approached—you must have a care—"

  Then she stopped speaking. She stopped because, like Antoinelle, she had

  been given no choice. Gregers Vonderjan had clapped his hand over her mouth,

  and rather more than that. He held her by the bones and flesh of her face, unable

  to pull away, beating at him with her hands, making noises but unable to do more,

  and soon breathing with difficulty.

  While he kept her like this, he did not bother to look at her, his broad body

  only disturbed vaguely by her flailing, weak blows. He had turned again to

  Antoinelle, and asked her if there was anything she wished particularly to bring

  away from the house.

  Antoinelle did not have the courage to glance at her struggling and apoplectic

  aunt. She shook her head against his shoulder, and after a little shake of his own

  (at the aunt's face) he let the woman go. He and the girl walked out of the room

  and out of the house, to his carriage, leaving the aunt to progress from her partial

  asphyxia to hysterics.

  He had got them married in three days by pulling such strings as money

  gener
ally will. The ceremony did not take place in the town, but all the town heard

  of it. Afterwards Vonderjan went back there, without his wife, to throw a lavish

  dinner party, limited to the male gender, which no person invited dared not attend,

  including the bride's father, who was trying to smile off, as does the death's-head,

  the state it has been put into.

  At this dinner, too, was Justus. He sat with a number of his friends, all of them

  astonished to be there. But like the rest, they had not been able, or prepared, to

  evade the occasion.

  Vonderjan treated them all alike, with courtesy. The food was of a high

  standard—a cook had been brought from the city—and there were extravagant

  wines, with all of which Gregers Vonderjan was evidently familiar. The men got

  drunk, that is, all the men but for Vonderjan, who was an established drinker, and

  consumed several bottles of wine, also brandy and schnapps, without much

  effect.

  At last Vonderjan said he would be going. To the bowing and fawning of his

  wife's relatives he paid no attention. It was Justus he took aside, near the door,

  with two of his friends. The young men were all in full uniform, smart as polish,

  only their bright hair tousled, and faces flushed by liquor.

  "You mustn't think my wife holds any rancour against you," Vonderjan

  announced, not loudly, but in a penetrating tone. Justus was too drunk to catch

  himself up, and only idiotically nodded. "She said, I should wish you a speedy

  end to your trouble."

  "What trouble's that?" asked Justus, still idiotically.

  "He has no troubles," added the first of his brother officers, "since you took

  that girl off his hands."

  The other officer (the most sober, which was not saying much—or perhaps the

  most drunk, drunk enough to have gained the virtue of distance) said, "Shut your

  trap, you fool. Herr Vonderjan doesn't want to hear that silly kind of talk."

  Vonderjan was grave. "It's nothing to me. But I'm sorry for your Justus,

  naturally. I shouldn't, as no man would, like to be in his shoes."

  "What shoes are they?" Justus belatedly frowned.

  "I can recommend to you," said Vonderjan, "an excellent doctor in the city.

  They say he is discreet."

  "What?"

  "What is he saying—"

  "The disease, I believe they say, is often curable, in its earliest stages."