Fiend, page 7
part #3 of Voice of Blood Series
Maria released my hand. I blinked, and I was in the café, on February eleventh, 1817. In the dim light, all surfaces glistened as though rimed with an infinitesimal layer of ice; all colors saturated, all details wavering and then leaping into sharp focus. Maria wore a pleased smile.
“How old are you? Truly?” I asked.
“Only the wormwood knows,” she said. “Listen closely, and it may tell you.” She took my hand, raised it to her mouth, and her fang teeth pricked through the skin of my wrist. I looked around me with alarm, to see if we held anyone’s attention, but the café continued with its business, heedless to the tiny act of lust and violence occurring within its midst. And then the inevitable shock of the pleasure jolted me, curving my spine and drawing a low moan from my throat.
As unconsciously as a baby seeking its primary pleasure, my other hand slid up her arm and cupped Maria’s breast. She struck me (but gently) in the face, severing the bond between us, the blood dribbling from the corner of her mouth.
“You will not touch me in that manner,” she said, the tone of her words chilling me to the bone. “No man is allowed to touch me thus. Do you understand?”
Desire made me desperate, and alcohol made me bold and foolish. I knew she could kill me where I sat, but it did not seem to matter. “But I must touch—I must be close to you, my Maria, I need you!”
“You do not need me,” she said, more gently, and from that very moment, like an electric current being broken, I did not. My lust for her feminine body vanished, leaving only devotion, admiration, respect—a filial love. I was now her child. Tears streamed over my cheeks.
She enfolded me in her arms then, and kissed me on the crown of my head; I felt the wet press of her lips on my scalp, stamping a rosette in blood. “Don’t cry, child. Don’t cry.”
“Mamma,” I said.
“She is dead, little one, she is dead.”
I do remember the waiter returning with the bottle and the spoon. I do remember dancing, in the café and in the blowing snow. But if the wormwood shared its knowledge of Maria’s true age, I have forgotten it.
One warm, cozy, quiet winter evening at home, I sketched Georgina sprawled on the rug before the fire, while Maria sat crocheting in her favorite chair. Georgina refused to sit still, and I had to keep starting over, much to her amusement. “Can’t you just remember how I was? My leg fell asleep!”
“No, no, I need more detail. Please. Put your foot flat on the floor again; I was drawing the tent of your skirt. Like a Bedouin residence.”
“That’s an idea,” Georgina said, sitting up entirely. “We should write to Jozef that I have been seized by an Arab prince—the prince of a haughty Bedouin tribe! He’ll love that.”
“My love, please.”
“I will sit for you,” said Maria.
I looked over at her; she had been so nearly silent, all through the night, that I had not expected her ever to move again. “Really?” I asked.
“I will sit for you,” she repeated, “and you will paint my portrait.”
“Oh, my lady! Oh! Oh, what an honor! What a delight!” I crawled to Maria and put my head on the heap of crocheted lace in her lap. She shooed me away with the gentle, nonverbal grumbles commonly used to address small, troublesome house pets.
“What about me?” Georgina pouted.
“You won’t sit still,” Maria said. “And I will. For as long as he likes.”
“I may be able to paint you from memory,” I said to Georgina guiltily. “It was quite a memorable pose.”
“Yes, and a view right up to her bush, no doubt. Simply tasteless.” Maria took up her needles again, humming to herself and smiling.
Georgina stood up and walked right over me, trapping me in the Bedouin tent between her legs, and ground her pelvis against Maria’s skirted thigh. “Right up to my bush,” she said mischievously. “Weren’t you looking?”
“I’ve seen it before,” Maria said, eyes on her knitting.
“Want to see it again?” Georgina offered, and grasped the trailing edge of her skirt. She flashed herself with a sharp, randy whistle at Maria, who still did not look up, and then let the skirt drop, with me inside, between her long, lean legs. I raised my eyes to Heaven.
“Georgina, I will deal with you later. Let Orfeo go.”
I crawled backward out of the skirts, and Georgina tossed the crochetwork aside and dropped herself onto Maria’s lap. At once they began kissing with abandon. I slid back on the rug, turned a page in my sketchbook, and drew a general outline of their bodies and their entwined mouths.
I felt Maria’s thoughts directing me to go to my room and read Voltaire. I shrugged and brought my pencil and paper, and instead of reading, added details to my sketch of Georgina. But my drawing of the two of them together was an incoherent blob that suggested nothing, and I threw it away.
Maria sat for me the next night, and many of the nights that followed. Depicting her was easy; my pencil flew as through it were directed by the hand of Apollo, and the paints drenched the paper exactly as I wanted them, to display the luminosity of her beauty. Her face, lit by firelight, had just enough color to add to the whiteness of the paper.
When Maria saw the finished painting, at first her expression did not change as her eyes scanned the image. “This is what you see?” she asked me.
I nodded.
“This is what I looked like . . . before,” she said, her voice breaking and her face at once wet with streaming tears. “You have seen it. You have seen me—not as I am, but as I once was.”
Maria handed the paper back to me and turned away, sinking into a chair, her heart in a turmoil of memories and emotions too rapid and complex for me to follow. Georgina immediately snatched the portrait and examined it closely. “You must paint me next,” she said decisively. “I promise I will sit still.”
My portrait of Georgina gave her as much astonishment, but rather than being devastated by it, it only made her laugh and smile to herself, unwilling to be parted from the painting even long enough for me to sign it. “He can do it,” she said. “This is a portrait of Jadzia Kopernik. Not of the Lady Georgina. Do you see, Maria? He painted me.”
“He painted Jadzia, not you,” Maria pointed out.
“I am—”
“My dears,” I said, “I feel like I’m about to be sick.”
“Go vomit outside,” said Maria.
“No, Maria. I don’t want to fight about this. This is a beautiful painting, Orfeo. Thank you.” Georgina kissed me and, giving Maria a significant look, she took the painting into her room and shut the door.
Maria and I followed suit without another word.
We Began at Midnight
“I want to keep him forever,” Georgina said.
Maria got very cross whenever Georgie said that. “Why can’t you leave your toys alone? Why must you always cut your dolls’ hair and dress them as Red Indians? Why must you write in the margins of your books, as though you could add anything to the text already there? What makes you think that your ideas are better? Why can’t you just be content?”
“Because I am young!” Georgina’s rallying cry. When she said this, it hurt Maria so much that it would make me physically sick with the force of her pain. It was the same when Maria accused Georgie of slothfulness or stupidity. When they argued, I would lie down in bed, or wherever I could, and writhe in an attempt to loosen the aching muscles.
I did everything I could to keep them happy. When they were both happy, I felt invincible; when their moods were violent, I paid for it with the agony of my senses, as though their words were blows; when either of them was melancholy, or worse, both of them, I could do nothing but weep alone in my darkened room. Nothing gave me comfort until one of them felt better, then I was up and about, like a jolly marionette, sliding down the polished floor of the sitting room in my stocking feet, dancing naked with my face painted up like a palsied whore until they shook with laughter.
Each evening I drank absinthe, for which I had developed an appreciation, and the women then drank of my blood, and became as drunk and dreamy as I was. Spring brought nights at the opera; summer, midnight walks in the Tuileries, and along the Seine, arm in arm, three abreast, with me in the center, my body acting as a conduit for their silent conversations.
I want to keep him forever, Maria, my love, Georgina expressed.
Are you certain that you know that which you ask?
I am certain that I want to keep him forever.
Forever is a horribly long time, Georgina, my love.
Why should I be bound to a future I cannot see? I only know about now. And now, I want Orfeo to be our equal, not our plaything. He deserves that, don’t you think?
“I desire only for your wishes to come true,” I said aloud.
“We aren’t talking to you,” said Maria. My mouth closed as though a hand had shut it.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Georgina broke in impatiently. “When you want him to shut up, he shuts up. When you wanted me to shut up, I shut up. It is better now that I am in control of myself.”
Better for you, perhaps. “Are you in control of yourself? I see very little self-control in you, my love.”
Bitch. “You are bourgeois!”
“Darling, I am aristocracy.”
“That is worse!”
I felt as though I was being stretched on the rack, my arms being slowly pulled from their sockets. “Please don’t fight,” I murmured. “I . . . only want . . . to make you happy.”
“Poor puppy,” said Maria softly, and the pain ceased. “I’m sorry; I don’t want to hurt you. I forget.”
“Please let’s bring him with us,” came Georgina’s plea. “No puppy! No plaything! Orfeo is a man. Let us make him a thousand times more even than that.”
“It is a terrible thing to ask! It is a terrible fate to have!” Maria, as passionate, clenched and shook her little fist. “To become like us, you have to die! You have to die a terrible death! Do you want this?” Maria asked, staring into my eyes. The world dropped away, leaving only her face, her pursuit of my honesty. “Don’t you want to father children?”
“I have never,” I said, powerless to veil the ignoble truth. I had never had to face this knowledge myself; I kept it, hidden, in a back pocket, aware of it, but delaying the confrontation. Now I beheld it, as surely as I saw my appearance through Maria’s eyes, too true and basic even to feel shame. “To me, it seems a prison, and the world is already a prison. The last thing I want to do is to create more inmates.”
Maria scoffed at my arch nihilism. “Inmates! You know nothing of prison, child. You will change your mind, I promise you. You have experienced nothing yet of prison.”
“My life is gone! I have lost everything. There is nothing left for me to want, but that I want to make her happy. I love her. I will do as she desires.”
“She will never be yours, Orphée. Never.”
As Maria said this, I was gazing into Georgie’s eyes, my mind generating music set to the jagged tune of her voice. I have ensnared you, Orfeo. But oh, how I love you, and I want you to stay just this way. I am yours. I shall always be yours.
Georgina’s pleasure suffused me with a gentle warmth more profound than any sunbeam or firelight. “You have seen to the bottom of his heart,” she murmured. “There is no going back for him. There never was. I have chosen him.”
Maria gazed at Georgina then; and I did not perceive what passed between them, but tears wet their pale cheeks, and they embraced for a long time while I stood aside, unable to take my eyes from them.
At last they came to me, and both embraced me at once. “Please forgive me; please forgive the Lady Georgina,” Maria whispered into my ear, “for what we are about to do. For it is an act of love, that which guides us all, for good or ill.”
Have I forgiven? It seems so gentle now in my recollection, and yet I recollect in a wooden box underneath a thousand tons of cathedral, dead and yet unable to die, for their act of love, for my act of devotion. Was it my own decision? I shall never know where my will ended and their stronger ones began.
At the end of a week of actual work—I could have hardly written more correspondence had I been employed as secretary to the King—I requested that we attend evening Mass together. Neither of them objected; both of them had accompanied me on previous visits, and I suspected Maria attended even more frequently than I. Maria and Georgina did not make confessions that night, but I resolutely walked into the confessional and took a seat on the hard, narrow bench that seemed to enact penance just in sitting down.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned . . .” I found myself at a loss. Was it my duty to confess to sins I had planned for the future?
“Speak, my son.”
I said all the usual things. But I did not feel complete when I had confessed everything that I had already done. “Father, I—This is my last night on this earth as a human creature,” I said all in a rush.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean . . . I . . . uh, never mind.”
“I don’t understand. Do you mean to take your own life? Please do not attempt this!”
“No, no, I’m not,” I said. “But I don’t think that I shall see another morning.” I was wrong about this, thank God. “I shall be transformed into something else, to sacrifice all that I am, to become something more rare and beautiful. And I do this for love. I want to stay, for eternity, with my love.”
There was silence from the other side, then the priest, in a dull and distracted voice, listed some fairly minor forms of penance. “And be sure that you do them as soon as you are able,” he added, “if you are correct about not seeing tomorrow.”
“Oh, I shall see tomorrow,” I replied. “Just not the morning. Thank you, Father. Thank you, Lord.”
I received the communion with a light, clear heart, lit candles for those martyred for love, and raced through a single recitation of the rosary. I would have all week to make up the rest, I thought.
With the women, I headed to the restaurant for a final late supper of rack of lamb, fresh bread, Camembert, turnips, and the infamous potato soup. The women watched me impassively, knowing what was to come but unwilling to spoil my supper by telling me of it.
Those solid hands tore the bread.
Blunt teeth chewed it.
That solid throat swallowed it.
The solid mind had no idea.
We began after midnight.
I stood on the stone floor in the empty courtyard of the house, alone, naked, and shivering in candlelight. The animal cages had been cleared away, and an empty bathtub stood a few feet away. I thought to myself: Tonight I shall die. I grasped for a sense of peace, but it slipped through my fingers, as nimble as mist. My heavy meal had made me dizzy and sleepy, and I wanted to crawl into a warm bed and doze off.
And then they came, bearing great buckets of busily steaming water, which they poured into the tub. They made several trips. I asked, after the third, “Why don’t you get Yves and Maignot to help you?”
“They are helping us,” said Georgina to me, as Maria returned silently to the kitchen. Maria had no expression whatsoever, her eyes like mirrors. “From inside.”
“Do you love me?” I begged. “I’m afraid. I need to feel that you love me.”
She gave me a small, sad smile, and I found that I no longer minded the cold. “It won’t be long,” she said.
When the tub was half full, they stood, one at each side of me. They kissed each other, and then each of them kissed me. I was overwhelmed by the ceremony; Maria had never kissed my mouth before, and I, of course, had never dared. Their mouths tasted of the night sky: dark, rich, mysterious, sensual. From inside. The servants were dead, drained, sucked into them, and it was their blood that I tasted. The animals had all disappeared that week, as well. Why had I not noticed? Too busy recopying Maria’s terrible handwriting? But surely I’d notice the din of screaming rabbits?
I had less than a second to consider this.
I do not know which of them slit my throat; I felt only an immediate panic, clutching at my bubbling, gushing neck with fingers already too slippery to do much good. Georgina slid her arms around me from behind, and she laid me down against the stones, adding the pressure of her hand against mine. “Stay awake,” she said to me, “stay awake,” insisting, even in my mind, in my body, my veins; and I did not lose consciousness. Oh, but the pain became a dimension in itself! I could barely see anything.
Maria tore at her forearm with her teeth and held the ragged wound to my mouth. Her blood was thick and alive, vibrating faintly against my tongue. With the first mouthful, I vomited, splashing our bodies with my last supper, but she did not remove her arm. “Drink now,” she hissed. “Swallow it! Hold it down!”
I struggled to command my throat muscles, but they were paralyzed with fright and revulsion. Some of her blood trickled down my gullet somehow, and immediately I regained the ability to swallow.
Maria’s thoughts created a dim echo in my mind. That’s one.
Georgina now held her wrist against my mouth, and I swallowed again. It wanted me to drink it; the blood itself possessed will! My belly clenched hard with the desire to retch, but something else prevented it.
“Georgina, now,” came Maria’s voice, sounding very tiny against the roaring in my ears. “That’s four; enough, or you’ll ruin him.” Georgina’s wrist pulled away from my mouth. I saw the marks of my teeth in bloody, blunt bruises; I had bitten hard into her flesh. I dropped onto the flagstones, gasping for breath, shivering again as the commingled gore on my arms and chest cooled in the dampish evening air. My jaws ached, as though I had clenched them for hours.
