The Vampire Sextette

by Marvin Kaye

The bird which cries Shadily! Shadily! flies over the island above the boiling

  afternoon lofts, and is gone, back to the upper city mainland, where there are more

  trees, more shade.

  In the branches of the snake-willow, a wind chime tinkles, once.

  Yse's terrace is full of people, sitting and standing, with bottles, glasses, cans,

  and laughing. Yse has thrown a party. Someone, drunk, is dog-paddling in the

  alley of water.

  Lucius, in his violet shirt, looks at the people. Sometimes Yse appears. She's

  slim and ash-pale, with long, shining hair, about twenty-five. Closer, thirty-five,

  maybe.

  "Good party, Yse. Why you throw a party?"

  "I had to throw something. Throw a plate, or myself away. Or something."

  Carr and the fat man, they got the two lids up off the piano by now. It won't

  play, everyone knew it wouldn't. Half the notes will not sound. Instead, a music

  centre, straddled between the piano's legs, rigged via Yse's generator, uncoils the

  blues.

  And this in turn has made the refrigerator temperamental. Twice people have

  gone to neighbours to get ice. And in turn these neighbours have been invited to

  the party.

  A new batch of lobsters bake on the griddle. Green grapes and yellow

  pineapples are pulled apart.

  "I was bored," she says. "I couldn't get on with it, that vampire story."

  "Let me read it."

  "You won't decipher my handwriting."

  "Some. Enough."

  "You think so? All right. But don't make criticisms, don't tell me what to do,

  Lucius, all right?"

  "Deal. How would I know?"

  He sits in the shady corner, Shadily ! the bird cried mockingly [J'ai des lits!]

  from Yse's roof) and now he reads. He can read her handwriting, it's easier than

  she thinks.

  Sunset spreads an awning.

  Some of the guests go home, or go elsewhere, but still crowds sit along the

  wall, or on the steps, and in the loft people are dancing now to a rock band on the

  music centre.

  "Hey, this piano don't play!" accusingly calls Big Eye, a late learner.

  Lucius takes a polite puff of a joint someone passes, and passes it on. He sits

  thinking.

  Sunset darkens, claret colour, and now the music centre plays Mozart.

  Yse sits down by Lucius on the wall.

  "Tell me, Yse, how does he get all his energy, this rich guy? He's forty, you

  say, but you say that was like fifty, then. And he's big, heavy. And he porks this

  Anna three, four times a night, and then goes on back for more."

  "Oh that. Vonderjan and Antoinelle. It's to do with obsession. They're

  obsessive. When you have a kink for something, you can do more, go on and on.

  Straight sex is never like that. It's the perversity—so-called perversity. That revs it

  up."

  "Strong guy, though."

  "Yes."

  "Too strong for you?"

  "Too strong for me."

  Lucius knew nothing about Yse's "obsession" with Per Laszd. But by now he

  knows there is something. There has never been a man in Yse's life that Lucius has

  had to explain to that he, Lucius, is her friend only. Come to that, not any women

  in her life, either. But he has come across her work, read a little of it —never

  much—seen this image before, this big blond man. And the sex, for always, unlike

  the life of Yse, her books are full of it.

  Lucius says suddenly, "You liked him, but you never got to have him, this

  feller."

  She nods. As the light softens, she's not a day over thirty, even from two feet

  away.

  "No. But I'm used to that."

  "What is it, then? You have a bone to pick with him for him getting old?"

  "The real living man, you mean? He's not old. About fifty-five, I suppose. He

  looks pretty wonderful to me still."

  "You see him?" Lucius is surprised.

  "I see him on TV. And he looks great. But he was—well, fabulous when he

  was younger. I mean actually like a man out of a fable, a myth." She's forgotten,

  he thinks, that she never confided like this in Lucius. Still though, she keeps back

  the name.

  Lucius doesn't ask for the name.

  A name no longer matters, if it ever did.

  "You never want to try another guy?"

  "Who? Who's offering?" And she is angry, he sees it. Obviously, he is no use

  to her that way. But then, did she make a friendship with Lucius for just that

  reason?

  "You look good, Yse."

  "Thank you." Cold. Better let her be. For a moment.

  A heavenly, unearthly scent is stealing over the evening air.

  Lucius has never seen the plant someone must have put in to produce this

  scent. Nothing grows on the terrace but for the snake-willow, and tonight people,

  lobster, pineapple, empty bottles.

  "This'll be a mess to get straight," he says.

  "Are you volunteering?"

  "lust condoling, Yse."

  The sunset totally fades. Stars light up. It's so clear, you can see the Abacus

  Tower, like a Christmas tree, on the mainland.

  "What colour are his eyes, Yse?"

  "… Eyes? Blue. It's in the story."

  "No, girl, the other one."

  "Which—? Oh, that one. The vampire. I don't know. Your vampire had yellow

  eyes, you said."

  "I said, he made me feel like a king. But the sex was good, then it was over.

  Not as you describe it, extended play."

  "I did ask you not to criticise my work."

  "No way. It's sexy. But tell me his eyes' colour?"

  "Black, maybe. Or even white. The vampire is like the piano."

  "Yeah. I don't see that. Yse, why is it a piano?"

  "It could have been anything. The characters are the hotbed, and the vampire

  grows out of that. It just happens to form as a piano—a sort of piano. Like

  dropping a glass of wine, like a cloud—the stain, the cloud, just happens to take

  on a shape, randomly, that seems to resemble some familiar thing."

  "Or is it because you can play it?"

  "Yes, that, too."

  "And it's an animal."

  "And a man. Or male. A male body."

  "Black as black is black. Not skin-black."

  "Blacker. As black as black can be."

  He says quietly, "La Danse aux Vampires."

  A glass breaks in the loft, and wine spills on the wooden floor—shapelessly?

  Yse doesn't bat an eyelash.

  "You used to fuss about your things."

  "They're only things."

  "We're all only things, Yse. What about the horses?"

  "You mean Vonderjan's horses. This is turning into a real interrogation. All

  right. The last one, the white one like a fish, escapes, and gallops about the

  Island."

  "You don't seem stuck, Yse. You seem to know plenty enough to go on."

  "Perhaps I'm tired of going on."

  "Looked in the mirror?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Look in the mirror, Yse."

  "Oh that. It's not real. It won't last."

  "I never saw a woman could do that before, get fifteen years younger in a

  month. Grow her hair fifty times as thick and twenty times longer. Lose forty

  pounds without trying, and nothing loose. How do you feel, Yse?"

  "All right."

  "But do you feel good?"

  "I feel all right."

 
; "It's how they make you feel, Yse. You said it. They're not beautiful, they don't

  smell like flowers or the sea. They come out of the grave, out of beds of earth, out

  of the cesspit shit at the bottom of your soul's id. It's how they make you feel,

  what they can do to change you. Hudja-magica. Not them. What they can do to

  you."

  "You are crazy, Lucius. There've been some funny smokes on offer up here

  tonight."

  He gets up.

  "Yse, did I say, the one I followed, when he went into his grave under the

  headstone, he say to me, You come in with me, Luce. Don't mind the dark. I

  make sure you never notice it."

  "And you said no."

  "I took to my hot heels and ran for my fucking life."

  "Then you didn't love him, Lucius."

  "I loved my fucking life."

  She smiles, the white girl at his side. Hair and skin so ivory pale, white dress

  and shimmering eyes, and who in hell is she? "Take care, Yse."

  "Night, Lucius. Sweet dreams."

  The spilled wine on the floor has spilled a random shape that looks like a

  screwed-up sock.

  Her loft is empty. They have all gone.

  She lights the lamp on her desk, puts out the others, sits, looking at the piano

  from the Sound, forty feet away, its hind lid and its forelid now raised, eyes and

  mouth.

  Then she gets up and goes to the piano, and taps out on the keys four notes.

  Each one sounds.

  D, then E, then A. And then again D.

  It would be mart in French, dood in Dutch, tod in German. Danish, Czech, she

  isn't sure… but it would not work.

  I saw in the mirror.

  PianO. O, pain.

  But, it doesn't hurt.

  8. Danse Macabre

  A wind blew from the sea, and waxy petals fell from the vine, scattering the lid

  of the piano as it stood there, by the house wall.

  None of them spoke.

  Jeanjacques felt the dry, parched cinnamon breath of Nanetta scorching on his

  neck, as she waited behind him. And in front of him was Vonderjan, examining the

  thing on the terrace.

  "How did it get up here?" Jeanjacques asked, stupidly. He knew he was being

  stupid. The piano was supernatural. It had run up here.

  "Someone carried it. How else?" replied Vonderjan.

  Did he believe this? Yes, it seemed so.

  Just then a stifled cry occurred above, detached itself and floated over them.

  For a moment none of them reacted to it; they had heard it so many times and in

  so many forms.

  But abruptly Vonderjan's blond head went up, his eyes wide. He turned and

  strode away, half running. Reaching a stair that went to the gallery above, he

  bounded up it.

  It was the noise his wife made, of course. But she made it when he was with

  her (inside her). And he had been here—

  Neither Nanetta nor Jeanjacques went after Gregers Vonderjan, and neither of

  them went any nearer the piano.

  "Could someone have carried it up here?" Jeanjacques asked the black woman,

  in French.

  "Of course." But as she said this, she vehemently shook her head.

  They moved away from the piano.

  The wind came again, and petals fell again across the blackness of its

  carapace.

  Jeanjacques courteously allowed the woman to precede him into the salon, then

  shut both doors quietly.

  "What is it?"

  She looked up at him sleepily, deceitfully.

  "You called out."

  "Did I? I was asleep. A dream…"

  "Now I'm here," he said.

  "No," she said, moving a little way from him. "I'm so sleepy. Later."

  Vonderjan stood back from the bed. He gave a short laugh, at the absurdity of

  this. In the two years of their sexual marriage, she had never before said anything

  similar to him. (And he heard Uteka murmur sadly, "Please forgive me, Gregers.

  Please don't be angry.")

  "Very well."

  Then Antoinelle turned, and he saw the mark on her neck, glowing lushly

  scarlet as a flower or fruit, in the low lamplight.

  "Something's bitten you." He was alarmed. He thought at once of the horses

  dying. "Let me see."

  "Bitten me? Oh, yes. And I scratched at it in my sleep, yes, I remember."

  "Is that why you called out, Anna?"

  She was amused and secretive.

  Picking up the lamp, he bent over her, staring at the place.

  A little thread, like fire, still trickled from the wound, which was itself very

  small. There was the slightest bruising. It did not really look like a bite, more as if

  she had been stabbed on purpose by a hat pin.

  Where he had let her put him off sexually, he would not let her do so now. He

  went out and came back, to mop up the little wound with alcohol.

  "Now you've made it sting. It didn't before."

  "You said it itched you."

  "Yes, but it didn't worry me."

  "I'll close the window."

  "Why? It's hot, so hot—"

  "To keep out these things which bite."

  He noted her watching him. It was true she was mostly still asleep, yet despite

  this, and the air of deception and concealment which so oddly clung to her, for a

  moment he saw, in her eyes, that he was old.

  When her husband had gone, Antoinelle lay on her front, her head turned, so

  the blood continued for a while to soak into her pillow.

  She had dreamed the sort of dream she had sometimes dreamed before

  Vonderjan came into her life. Yet this had been much more intense. If she slept,

  would the dream return? But she slept quickly, and the dream did not happen.

  Two hours later, when Vonderjan came back to her bed, he could not at first

  wake her. Then, although she seemed to welcome him, for the first time he was

  unable to satisfy her. She writhed and wriggled beneath him, then petulantly flung

  herself back. "Oh finish, then. I can't. I don't want to."

  But he withdrew gently, and coaxed her. "What's wrong, Anna? Aren't you

  well tonight?"

  "Wrong? I want what you usually give me."

  "Then let me give it to you."

  "No. I'm too tired."

  He tried to feel her forehead. She seemed too warm. Again, he had the thought

  of the horses, and he was uneasy. But she pulled away from him. "Oh, let me

  sleep, I must sleep."

  Before returning here, he had gone down and questioned his servants. He had

  asked them if they had brought the piano up on to the terrace, and where they had

  found it.

  They were afraid, he could see that plainly. Afraid of unknown magic and the

  things they beheld in the leaves and on the wind, which he, Vonderjan, could not

  see and had never believed in. They were also afraid of a shadowy beast, which

  apparently they, too, had witnessed, and which he thought he had seen. And

  naturally, they were afraid of the piano, because it was out of its correct situation,

  because (and he already knew this perfectly well) they believed it had stolen by

  itself out of the forest, and run up on the terrace, and was the beast they had seen.

  At midnight, he went back down, unable to sleep, with a lamp and a bottle, and

  pushed up both the lids of the piano with ease.

  Petals showered away. And a wonderful perfume exploded from the inside of

&nbs
p; the instrument, and with it a dim cloud of dust, so he stepped off.

  As the film cleared, Vonderjan began to see that something lay inside the piano.

  The greater hind lid had shut it in against the piano's viscera of dulcimer hammers

  and brass-wire strings.

  When all the film had smoked away, Vonderjan once more went close and held

  the lamp above the piano, leaning down to look, as he had with his wife's bitten

  throat.

  An embalmed mummy was curled up tight in the piano.

  That is, a twisted knotted thing, blackened as if by fire, lay folded round there

  in a preserved and tarry skin, tough as any bitumen, out of which, here and there,

  the dull white star of a partial bone poked through.

  This was not large enough, he thought, to be the remains of a normal adult. Yet

  the bones, so far as he could tell, were not those of a child, nor of an animal.

  Yet it was most like the burnt and twisted carcass of a beast.

  He released and pushed down again upon the lid. He held the lid flat, as if it

  might lunge up and open again. Glancing at the keys, before he closed them away,

  too, he saw a drop of vivid red, like a pearl of blood from his wife's neck, but it

  was only a single red petal from the vine.

  Soft and loud. In his sleep, the clerk kept hearing these words. They troubled

  him, so he shifted and turned, almost woke, sank back uneasily. Soft and loud—

  which was what pianoforte meant…

  Jeanjacques's mother, who had been accustomed to thrash him, struck him

  round the head. A loud blow, but she was soft with grown men, yielding, pliant.

  And with him, too, when grown, she would come to be soft and subserviently

  polite. But he never forgot the strap, and when she lay dying, he had gone

  nowhere near her. (His white half, from his father, had also made sure he went

  nowhere near his sire.)

  Nanetta lay under a black, heavily furred animal, a great cat, which kneaded her

  back and buttocks, purring. At first she was terrified, then she began to like it.

  Then she knew she would die.

  Notes: The black keys are the black magic. The white keys are the white magic.

  (Both are evil.) Anything black, or white, must respond.

  Even if half black, half white.

  Notes: The living white horse has escaped. It gallops across the Island. It

  reaches the sea and finds the fans of the waves, snorting at them, and canters

  through the surf along the beaches, fish-white, and the sun begins to rise.