by Dan Simmons
My father had been invested in the Order of the Dragon on February 8, 1431…the year I was born. As a Draconist…a follower of draco, dragon in Latin…my father carried this insignia on his shield and had it inscribed on his coins. Thus he became Vlad Dracul, dracul meaning both dragon and devil in my native language.
Dracula meant simply Son of the Dragon.
The Dobrin brother set the medallion around my neck. I felt the weight of gold trying to drag me down. The dozen or so men in the room chanted a short hymn, then filed forward one after the other to kiss my ring and return to their places.
“I am tired,” I said. My voice was the rustle of ancient parchment.
They moved around me then, removing the medallion and my expensive suit. They dressed me carefully in a linen nightshirt and Dobrin pulled back the linen bedclothes. Gratefully, I got into bed and lay back on the high pillows.
Radu Fortuna moved closer. “You’ve come home to die then, Father.” It was not a question. I had neither the need nor energy to nod.
An old man who may have been one of the other surviving Dobrin brothers came closer, went to one knee, kissed my ring again, and said, “Then, Father, is it time to begin thinking about the birth and investiture of the new Prince?”
I looked at the man, thinking how the Vlad Ţepeş in the portrait above me would have had him impaled or disemboweled for the inelegance of that question.
Instead, I nodded.
“It will be done,” said Radu Fortuna. “The woman and her midwife have been chosen.”
I closed my eyes and resisted a smile. The sperm had been collected many decades ago and declared viable. I could only assume that they had preserved it well in this inefficient, hapless nation where even hope had trouble surviving. I did not want to know the crass details of the selection and insemination.
“We will begin preparations for the Investiture,” said an old man I had known once as the young Prince Mihnea.
There was no urgency in his voice and I understood the lack of it. Even my dying was to be a slow thing. This disease that I had embraced so very, very long ago would not release me lightly. Even now, riddled and made rotten by old age, the disease ruled my life and resisted the sweet imperative of death.
I will not drink blood after this day. This is my decision and it is irrevocable. Having entered this house again, this bed, I will not leave either willingly.
But even fasting, my body’s relentless ability to heal itself, to prolong itself, will struggle with my urge to die. This deathbed may hold me for a year or two or even longer before my spirit and the insidious, cell-deep compulsion to continue must surrender to the inevitable need to cease.
I am determined that I shall live until the new Prince is born and until his Investiture, no matter how many months or years may intervene until then.
But by then I will no longer be the aged but vital Vernor Deacon Trent; I will be only a mummified caricature of the man with the strange face in the portrait above my bed.
I lay back deeper into the pillows, my yellowed fingers frail above the bedclothes. I do not open my eyes as—one by one—the eldest Family members in the room file by to kiss my ring a final time and then to stand, whispering and murmuring like peasants at a funeral, in the hall outside.
Below, on the ancient stairs of the home where I was born, I hear the soft creaking and shuffling as other Family members—long lines of Family members—ascend in reverent silence to view me like some museum mummy, like a waxwork Lenin ail hollowed and yellowed in his tomb, and to kiss the ring and medallion of The Order of the Dragon.
I close my eyes and allow myself to slip away to dreams.
I feel them hovering above me, these dreams of past times, dreams of sometimes happier times, and all too frequently these dreams of terrible times. I feel their weight, these dreams of blood, and of iron.
I close my eyes and surrender to them, dreaming fitfully while my final days file through my mind, shuffling past like the curious and mourning members of my Family of Night.
Chapter Seven
DR. Kate Neuman had reached the point where she could not take it anymore. She left the children’s ward, passed the isolation ward where her eight hepatitis B cases were recovering, stopped outside the unnamed, dying infant’s room just long enough to peer through the window and slam her fist into the doorframe, and then she strode quickly toward the doctors’ lounge.
The halls of Bucharest’s District One Hospital reminded Kate of an old Massachusetts binding factory she had worked in one summer while saving money to put herself through Harvard; the hallways here had the same grimy green paint, the same cracked and filthy linoleum tile floors, the same lousy fluorescent lighting that left long stretches of darkness between the pools of sick light, and the same kind of men wandering the hall with their stubbled faces and swaggering gait and smug, sexist, sidelong glances.
Kate Neuman had had enough. It had been six weeks since she had come to Romania for a “brief advisory tour”; it had been forty-eight hours since she had slept and almost twenty-four since she had taken a shower; it had been countless days since she had been outside in the sunlight; it had been only minutes since she had seen her last baby die, and Kate Neuman had had enough.
She swept through the door to the doctors’ lounge and stood breathing hard, surveying the startled faces looking up at her from the sprung couch and long table. The doctors were mostly men, sallow-faced, many with soiled surgical fatigues and scraggly mustaches. They looked sleepy, but Kate knew that it was not from long hours in the wards; most of these physicians put in banker’s hours and lost sleep only in what passed for nightlife in post-revolution Bucharest. Kate caught a glimpse of blue jeans far down the couch and for a second she felt a surge of relief that her Romanian friend and translator Lucian was back, but the man leaned forward, she saw that it was not Lucian but only the American priest whom the children called “Father Mike,” and Kate’s anger flowed back over her like a black tide.
She noticed the hospital administrator, Mr. Popescu, standing by the hot water dispenser and she rounded on him. “We lost another infant this afternoon. Another baby dead. Dead for no reason, Mr. Popescu.”
The chubby administrator blinked at her and stirred his tea. Kate knew that he understood her.
“Don’t you want to know why she died?” Kate asked the little man.
Two of the pediatricians began moving toward the door, but Kate stepped into the doorway and held one hand up like a traffic cop. “Everybody should hear this,” she said softly. Her gaze had not left Mr. Popescu. “Doesn’t anyone want to know why we lost another child today?”
The administrator licked his lips. “Doctor Neuman…you are…perhaps…very tired, yes?”
Kate fixed him in her gaze. “We lost the little girl in Ward Nine,” she said, her voice as flat as her gaze. “She died because someone was careless in setting up an IV…a goddamn simple everyday fucking IV…and the fat nurse with the garlic breath injected a bubble straight into the child’s heart.”
“Îmi pare foarte rău,” muttered Mr. Popescu, “nu am înţeles.”
“The hell you don’t understand,” snapped Kate, feeling her anger mold itself into something sharp and finely edged. “You understand perfectly well.” She turned to look at the dozen or so medics standing and sitting and staring at her. “You all understand. The words are easy to understand…malpractice…professional carelessness…slovenliness. That’s the third child we’ve lost this month to sheer bullshit incompetence.” She looked directly at the closest pediatricians. “Where were you?”
The taller man turned to his companion, smirked, and said something in whispered Romanian. The words tiganesc and corcitura were clearly audible.
Kate took a step toward him, resisting the impulse to punch him right above his bushy mustache. “I know the child was a Gypsy halfbreed, you miserable piece of shit.” She took another step toward him and, despite the fact that she was five inches shorter and se
venty pounds lighter than the Romanian, the pediatrician backed against the wall.
“I also know that you’ve been selling the babies that survive to the dipshit Americans wandering around here,” she said to the pediatrician, raising a finger as if she were going to stab it through his chest. At the last second she turned away from him as if repelled by his smell. “And I know the business dealings the rest of you have, too,” Kate said, her voice so weary and filled with disgust that she hardly recognized it as her own. “The least you could do is save more of them…”
The two pediatricians by the door went through it in some haste. The other doctors at the table and on the couch abandoned their tea and left the room. Mr. Popescu came closer and made as if to touch her arm, then thought better of it. “You are very tired, Mrs. Neuman…”
“Doctor Neuman,” said Kate, not raising her gaze. “And if there isn’t better supervision in the wards, Popescu, if one more child dies for no reason, I swear to Christ that I’ll turn in a report to UNICEF and Adoption Option and Save the Children and all the other organizations that are feathering your nest…a report so strong that you’ll never see another American cent and your greedy friends downtown will send you to whatever passes for a gulag in Romania these days.”
Mr. Popescu had turned red and then pale and then red again as he backed away, slid backwards along the side of the table toward the door, set his teacup behind him, missed the table with it, hissed something in Romanian, and stalked out the door.
Kate Neuman waited a moment, her eyes still lowered, and then went over, lifted his cup off the floor, wiped it with a rag from the counter, and set it back in its niche above the hot water dispenser. She closed her eyes, feeling the fatigue move beneath her like long, slow waves under a small ship.
“Your tour here almost over then?” asked an American voice.
Kate snapped upright. The bearded priest was still seated on the couch, his blue jeans, gray sweatshirt, and Reeboks looking incongruous and a bit absurd. Kate formed a snappish reply and then let it slide away. “Yes,” she said. “Another week and I’m gone no matter what.”
The priest nodded, finished his tea, and set the chipped mug away. “I’ve been watching you,” he said softly.
Kate glared at him. She’d never liked religious people very much and celibate clerics grated on her more than most. Priests seemed like a useless anachronism to her—witch doctors who had exchanged their fright masks for Roman collars, dispensers of false care, carrion crows hovering around the sick and dying.
Kate realized how tired she was. “I haven’t been watching you,” she said softly. “But I have noticed you with the new children and working in the wards. The children like you.”
The priest nodded. “And you save their lives.” He went over to the window and shoved back thick drapes. Rich evening sunlight flooded the room, possibly for the first time in decades.
Kate blinked and rubbed her eyes.
“It’s time to call it a day, Doctor Neuman,” said the priest. “I’d like to walk with you.”
“There’s no need…” began Kate, trying to feel anger again at the man’s presumption, but mustering nothing. She felt her emotions grinding like a dead battery. “All right,” she said.
He walked with her out of the hospital and into the Bucharest evening.
Chapter Eight
USUALLY Kate had a cab take her home to her apartment in the dark, but this evening they walked. Kate blinked at the thick evening light painted on the sides of buildings. It was as if she had never seen Bucharest before.
“So you’re not staying at one of the hotels?” said the priest.
Kate shook herself out of her reverie. “No, the Foundation rented a small apartment for me on Ştirbei Vodă.” She gave the address.
“Ah,” said Father O’Rourke, “that’s right near Cişmigiu.”
“Near what?” said Kate. The last word had sounded much like a sneeze.
“Cişmigiu Gardens. One of my favorite places in the city.”
Kate shook her head. “I haven’t seen it.” She twitched a smile. “I haven’t seen much since I got here. I’ve had three days off from the hospital, but I slept those away.”
“When did you get here?” he asked. Kate noticed his limp as they hurried across busy Bălcescu Boulevard. Here on the sidestreets by the university, the shade was deeper, the air cooler.
“Hmmm… April four. God.”
“I know,” said Father O’Rourke. “A day seems like a week at the hospital. A week is an eternity.”
They had just reached the large plaza on Calea Victoriei when Kate stopped and frowned. “What’s the date today?”
“May fifteenth,” said the priest. “Wednesday.”
Kate rubbed her face and blinked. Her skin felt anaesthetized. “I’d promised CDC that I’d be back by the twentieth. They sent me tickets. I’d sort of forgotten just how close…” She shook her head again and looked around at the plaza, still busy with evening traffic. Behind them, Creţulescu Church was a mass of scaffolding, but the bullet holes were still visible on the sooty façade. The Palace of the Republic across the piaţa had been even more heavily damaged. Long red and white banners hung over the columned entrance, but the doors and shattered windows were boarded up. To their right, the Athenée Palace Hotel was open but with vacant windows and stitcheries of bullet holes like fresh scars on a heroin addict’s skin.
“CDC,” said Father O’Rourke. “You’re out of Atlanta?”
“Boulder, Colorado,” said Kate. “The big brass still hang out in Atlanta, but it’s been the Centers for Disease Control for several years. The Boulder facility’s fairly new.”
They crossed Calea Victoriei at the light and headed down Strada Ştirbei Vodă, but not before three Gypsy beggars in front of the Hotel Bucureşti saw them and came swooping toward them, thrusting babies at them, kissing their own hands, tapping Kate’s shoulders, and saying, “Por la bambina…por la bambina…”
Kate raised a tired hand but Father O’Rourke dug out change for each of them. The Gypsy women grimaced at the coins, snapped something in dialect, and hurried back to their places in front of the hotel. The blue-jeaned and leather-coated money changers in front of the hotel watched impassively.
Ştirbei Vodă was a narrower street but still busy with cheap Dacias and the moneychangers’ Mercedes and BMWs rumbling past over brick and worn asphalt. Kate noticed the priest’s slight limp again but decided not to ask him about it. Instead, she said, “Where do you call home base?” She had considered adding the Father, but it did not come naturally to her.
The priest was smiling slightly. “Well, the order I work for is based in Chicago, and on this trip I take my instructions from the Chicago Archdiocese, but it’s been awhile since I was there. In recent years I’ve spent a lot of time in South and Central America. Before that, Africa.”
Kate glanced to her left, recognized the street called 13 Decembrie, and knew that she was just a block or two from her apartment. The avenue seemed different in daylight, and on foot. “So you’re sort of a Third World expert,” she said, too tired to concentrate on the conversation but enjoying the sound of English.
“Sort of,” said Father O’Rourke.
“And do you specialize in orphanages around the world?”
“Not really. If I have a specialty, it’s children. One just tends to find them in orphanages and hospitals.”
Kate made a noise of agreement. A few chestnut trees along the avenue here caught the last reflected light from the buildings on the east side of the street and seemed to glow with a gold-orange corona. The air was thick with the smells of any Eastern European city—undiluted car exhausts, raw sewage, rotting garbage—but there was also a scent of greenery and fresh blooms on the soft evening breeze.
“Has it been this pleasant the whole time I’ve been here? I seem to remember it being cold and rainy,” Kate said softly.
Father O’Rourke smiled. “It’s been like summer s
ince the first of May,” he said. “The trees along the avenues north of here are fantastic.”
Kate stopped. “Number five,” she said. “This is my apartment complex.” She extended her hand. “Well, thanks for the walk and the conversation…uh, Father.”
The priest looked at her without shaking her hand. His expression seemed a bit quizzical, not directed at her but almost as if he were debating something with himself. Kate noticed for the first time how strikingly clear his gray eyes were.
“The park is right there,” said Father O’Rourke, pointing down Ştirbei Vodă. “Less than a block away. The entrance is sort of hard to notice if you’re not aware of it already. I know you’re exhausted, but…”
Kate was exhausted and in a lousy mood and not the least bit tempted by this celibate cleric in Reeboks, despite his startlingly beautiful eyes. Still, this was the first non-medical conversation she’d had in weeks and she was surprised to find herself reluctant to end it. “Sure,” she said. “Show me.”
Cişmigiu Gardens reminded Kate of what she had imagined New York’s Central Park to have been like decades ago, before it surrendered its nights to violence and its days to noise: Cişmigiu was a true urban oasis, a hidden vale of trees and water and leaf shade and flowers.
They entered through a narrow gate in a high fence that Kate had never noticed, descended stairs between tall boulders, and emerged into a maze of paved paths and stone walkways. The park was large, but all of its vistas were intimate: a waterway here threading its way under an arched stone bridge to widen into a shaded lagoon there, a long meadow—unkempt and seemingly untouched by a gardener’s blade or shears—but strewn with a riot of wild flowers, a playground abuzz with children still dressed for the winter just past, long benches filled with grandparents watching the children play, stone tables and benches where huddles of men watched other men play chess, an island restaurant bedecked with colored lights, the sound of laughter across water.
