Albergu snt. Ioanni,
Nuvakastra,
Dacia
31 August 1925
Darling Connie,
Well, I was always pretty sure I had the wisest of wives, but never has the truth of that proposition become as clear to me as this afternoon on the journey from Arelanópli. I had known in advance that there were no railways in this part of the world, and precious few motor-cars; I was quite unprepared for the roads. In many places, and almost everywhere in the foothills and higher, they simply don’t exist, except round the larger towns, which are few and far enough between. The equipage that brought me here was of a piece with them: a veritable box on wheels, iron-tyred wheels at that, a couple of scraggy horses straight out of Browning, ‘every bone a-stare’, and at the reins an unshaven fellow in a sheepskin jacket that looked as if he had made it with his own far from fair hands – and not taken it off since its first day on his back.
Our ride took us through some of the wildest and most beautiful scenery in Europe – distant peaks wreathed in cloud, great pine-forests that shut out the sun, mountain streams in white traceries down almost sheer cliffs, and sudden vistas of the green plain far below. But it was hard (or so I found it) to appreciate these delights at their true worth, or even to take them in at all, while being perpetually flung from side to side and bounced into the air only to be dropped an instant later on to an unpadded bench that grew harder with each descent. My attempts to contrive a cushion out of my travelling-rug were an utter fiasco, and when, after what seemed like many hours, I reached my destination, I had a violent headache and a sick feeling in my stomach, a dull pain racked every muscle and I could have sworn I was bruised from head to foot. Last but not least, my eyes, full of dust and pollen, stung and itched intolerably. How very wise of you to have stayed at home!
Now all my ills are a thing of the past. A bath, which incidentally revealed my almost complete bruiselessness, a change of clothes, and food and drink, have between them set me up again, and my eyes, though still a little bloodshot, have responded well to careful bathing with boracic solution. (Bless you for remembering to pop the tin into my luggage!) Although this place is nothing more than a village inn, it’s excellent of its kind – spotlessly clean, bone dry and providing quantities of plain wholesome food and the sturdy red wine of the region. Far from uncomfortable, too; I write this at a table by the window of a pleasant, light room of fair size, furnished with a handsome and ample bed, its mattress a little hard (that one expects) but commendably free from lumps. The landlord is a sterling chap with a swarthy skin and the unexpected blue eyes I’ve come across before in remote parts of the northern Balkans. He and his smiling, apple-cheeked wife have made a great fuss of me, bringing me plates of patties and bowls of fresh fruit quite unasked and providing enough hot water to bath a horse.
The first shades of dusk are here and I must pause to light my candle. With the passing of the day, what I see from this window has changed a little and goes on changing as I write. Beyond the dark-red roofs of the peasant cottages, sharply sloped against the heavy winter snows, there’s a level grassy stretch something like a mile across (though it’s hard to be precise) and bounded by an irregular line of low hills that give place to higher hills, these being in turn topped by summits of what must be pretty considerable elevation, seeing that Nuvakastra itself can’t be much less than two thousand feet up. Until a few minutes back, the expanse of the plateau, broken here and there by a farmhouse with its outbuildings, a mill, a church, at one point a tiny village of tiny houses, had a warm and inviting look, and the distant mountains, though indeed wild, seemed to offer a noble mystery, a kind of primeval innocence. But now, how remote, how lonely everything seems! Imagine what it must feel like to be a wayfarer on that exposed plain with night closing in, even more to be lost among those desolate ravines and crags, beset by strange sounds and half-fancied movements in the dark! What makes us think that hidden forces are likely to be benevolent?
Some people would say I’m overdoing it rather. Somebody called Constance or some such name would go further and accuse me of childish romancing, that old bad habit of mine. Well, it’s possible. I’ll see how I feel when I come back from this evening’s expedition. Nothing elaborate, hardly more than a stroll before dinner. I have a good hour to kill, it’s a clear evening and anyway I must get out and about. I’m so rested that I’m restless. (Can those two words really be connected?) Or perhaps I’m simply impatient to start my investigation. You must bear with me about this business, darling Connie. You must do more than that; I know (how well I know!) that you consider the whole thing to be the most perfect piffle imaginable, and you’re probably right, but do, like the sweetest as well as the wisest of wives, wish me luck in my search for the vampire.
This won’t go off till the morning (if then!) so I’ll leave it open and add any new information of interest before I finally post it. Meanwhile, I give you my love, I give you my thoughts, and my heart is joined with yours even though you are so far away.
31 August 1925 – The undirected uneasiness, the small vague fears I have been subjected to over these last weeks, sharpened tonight into foreboding: I sense the approach of danger. What kind or degree of danger still eludes me, but I hardly care if it should prove to be mortal. I take a long look at this statement now that I have committed it to paper and ask myself in all honesty whether it is true. Yes, I say, I believe it is. I am weary beyond all expression, and I have nothing to look forward to in my life. If only I could appeal to God to help me to endure! But everything is over between Him and my wretched self, and I am alone in perpetuity.
Again I reread what I have just written, and am struck equally by the self-pity in it and its quality of – what shall I call it? – determined hopelessness, refusal to consider any prospect of alleviation. In the impossible event that a stranger ever comes across these lines, he could think no differently. But, stranger, I would cry to him, these repulsive characteristics are part of my condition. They poison everything, they come between me and everything I once enjoyed: food and drink, literature, art. Here I am surrounded by beautiful objects, or so at least I regarded them at one time. Now, an abominable mist hangs over them, coarsening the outlines, tainting and muddying the colours. Poems I loved in the past are no longer intelligible; they are full of words that have lost their meaning for me, references to feelings I cannot remember. Come, whatever you are, whoever you are, do what you will with me, so long as you sweep the mist aside, make me see the way I used to see, help me to escape from myself.
My call has been heeded – no, impossible, for the unknown has been moving towards me since the middle of the month at latest. But all the same, now, without question, something, somebody, one or the other, is at hand. And this is no fancy – as I write these words there are sounds of movement under my window. What visitor is here?
Is it Death?
Castle Valvazor,
Nuvakastra,
Dacia
Later, 31 August
Darling Connie,
A new address calls for a new salutation. Well, your brainy husband has brought off the most stunning coup, as you can see. Here’s how it came about.
Fifteen minutes’ walk from the inn brought me to the front door of the castle, which I must explain isn’t a castle as we at home think of it but a large and splendid house, in this case in a sort of Byzantine style, all domes and pillars. (Early seventeenth century, I heard later.) I’d been intending just to have a look round and sample the atmosphere, and certainly the place looked sinister enough in all conscience, with the moon not yet risen and an owl hooting in a fashion that sounded more than just dismal. There was a lighted window on an upper floor that somehow caught my attention, and though I’d had no intention of paying a call until the next day I suddenly found myself at the great front door operating an enormous wrought-iron knocker. Two minutes later I was talking to Countess Valvazor – in Dacian!
To have got inside without an appointment was a sufficient surprise; these old families aren’t usually so accessible. Then the countess herself – all I’d been able to gather from the embassy in London was that the castle was occupied by someone of that style and name, someone older, I’d rather thought, than the youngish, expensively dressed woman in front of me. Quite striking, I suppose, if you like that aquiline type. But the real shock came when she led me out of the hall, which was about the size of a church and full of tapestries and suits of armour and goodness knows what, and into a (comparatively) small parlour opening off it. There are old pictures and old chairs and so on in here too, but also a cigarette-box, a typewriter, a gramophone and records (including some of Paul Whiteman, it turned out) and among other magazines (you won’t believe this) a copy of the Tatler! I’d just about taken all this in when the countess spoke to me again. She said she agreed it made a slightly bizarre sight, but she said it in English! Perfect English, too, or rather perfect American. It shouldn’t have been as surprising as all that, after the Tatler, but it was, just the same.
Well, she went on to explain that she’d been educated in America, and she was very nice about my Dacian, and she said I’d said I was a scholar, and I said the Dacian word skolari was the nearest I knew, but really I was just an amateur, a dabbler in popular mythology, and I told her a bit about the book, and in no time … Look, my old Constance, I may as well do things in style and set this out like a proper story, so far as I can. It’ll save time in the end, because I want to keep a detailed record and this way I won’t have to make a separate set of notes. And I think even you will find parts of it mildly interesting, or at least odd. Here goes.
The countess asked, in effect, ‘What brings you to Castle Valvazor?’ I sort of jumped in with both feet and mentioned vampires, and she said, ‘Oh, so you know about us! I suppose we must be quite famous, even in England!’
What a relief – I should have told you that she spoke in a completely friendly, natural way. I said, ‘Only among the well informed.’
She said, ‘For the moment, perhaps. Of course I’ll be glad to tell you everything I know, and let you see the family documents.’
I thanked her, and offered my cigarette-case, and she took one, saying she adored State Express. Then she asked me where my luggage was. (Actually she called it ‘baggage’ in the American style.)
I said it was in the – sorry. I said, ‘In my room at the Albergu Santu Ioanni.’
Without a second’s thought she rang a hand-bell and said, ‘We always keep a guest-room ready.’
Can you imagine how I felt! I tried to protest; I said, ‘You mustn’t let me impose myself on you.’
‘I’m doing the imposing,’ she said. ‘We get so few visitors here, and most of them are boring relatives. I’m being practical, too; it’ll take you at least a whole day to get through the archives.’
I murmured my thanks (I was really quite overwhelmed), and then the maidservant or housekeeper who had answered the front door came into the room. Name of Magda, it seems; about fifty; typical Dacian peasant stock; obviously devoted to the countess. Arrangements to fetch my things were quickly made. I gave special instructions about the letter to you I had left in my room (I have it in front of me now), and handed over a ten-florin note to compensate the landlord of the albergu for his trouble. (I had already paid for a full day’s board.) And that was that. So here I am, installed as a guest in the house of the most celebrated family of vampires in the whole of Dacia!
When Magda had gone, I said to the countess something like, ‘I have to admit I know virtually nothing about you, just that you’re the only child of the late Count and that you’re the mistress of this castle and its estates. Do you live here alone?’
‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘But I am the last of the Valvazors, this branch anyhow. I don’t imagine I’ll be around here very much longer.’
I asked her why not.
She said, ‘The kind of life my family used to live in this house is becoming a thing of the past. The Great War has changed everything. Very soon I shan’t be able to survive. In fact I spend most of my time putting the place in order so I can sell up and get out.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it.’
‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘There was a lot wrong with our old ways.’ I didn’t know quite how to take that, but she went on straight away to ask, ‘How are you on the family history?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I begin of course with Benedek Valvazor, who terrorized the whole province two hundred years ago.’
‘Of course nothing,’ drawled the countess with a smile. ‘We begin with Tristan the Wolf in the late seventeenth century.’ Seeing my look of surprise, she went on, ‘Surely you must know of him?’
‘Oh yes, but only as a warrior against the Turks.’
‘He was that too, but he was, or should I say his corpse, was beheaded and burnt and the ashes thrown into the air over running water in 1696.’
‘But he died in 1673,’ I protested, sure of my facts.
‘Right. The story never really leaked out because the king was hard on superstition, and a thing like that would have made him really mad.’
I nodded thoughtfully. Gregory IV had been on the throne at the material time, and his opposition to all forms of pagan belief and practice (and of course anything even remotely to do with vampirism comes under that heading) is a byword among historians of eastern Europe.
The countess said, ‘There’s a whole raft of stuff about Tristan in the files.’
‘Excellent,’ I said, still thinking.
‘Benedek too. But the star of the show is Red Mathias.’
‘Ah. The only vampire known to have been dispatched by a bishop.’
‘We have an eye-witness account by the bishop’s chaplain.’ She was obviously quoting from memory when she went on, ‘So dreadful was the cry when the stake reached the heart that my lord sank to his knees and begged me to pray for his soul forthwith and in that place.’
The utterly matter-of-fact tone in which she said this only made it the more convincing; I wish you could have heard her, Connie. Anyway, that wasn’t the end of our conversation by a long chalk, but it’s as far as I can take you just now. I’m to present myself for dinner in five minutes, and somehow I know that the Countess Valvazor wouldn’t take kindly to being kept waiting. So I’ll stop for now, but as always I have time to say that my loving thoughts go out to you and a little piece of you is here in my heart.
Later – It was not Death that came; I am tempted to call it Life. The change was complete and immediate, as soon as I set eyes on him. When – with what reluctance – I sent him away to make ready for the evening, I went instantly to the bookcase and took down the volume of Cantacuzinu I used to treasure so, and the pages fell open at ‘Mary in Spring’, and the tears sprang to my eyes just as they did in the past. Not content with that I hurried upstairs to the gallery and – I had almost forgotten where it was, but the moment I caught sight of the big Puvis de Chavannes, ‘St Martin of Vertou in his Hermitage’, I knew the veil had lifted; the work, by common consent our best picture, was restored in my eyes to all its old power and beauty. If I had needed proof, here it was.
My first impressions of him. Around forty, maybe a year or two older, rather tall, very dark – but I know that, anyone can see that. What else, what more? Honourable, brave, chivalrous, sentimental, a little shy at the best of times, a little cautious, a little fussy, enormously English. I find I forgot to say that, while far from being the best-looking man I ever saw, he is beyond question the loveliest one – no, the only lovely one. Every time he looks me in the eye, and he has a very straight look, I am afraid I will swoon.
A little shy at the best of times – and very shy at the worst of times, like on first meeting the love of his life; he knows that and the rest of it as well as I do. Shy, cautious, even conventional. I must make it easy for him. Certainly easier than I have made it so far, jolted with such violence by my feelings that I behaved as awkwardly as he, cannot remember anything I said for the first few minutes. I must have inquired his business, overridden any protests he might have made against the notion of becoming my guest – I do remember the feebleness of his attempt to seem anything but delighted – and no doubt discussed some of the Valvazor history. During our conversation I discovered something more about him: he is an interesting man. This quality is not necessary in somebody one loves – from what depth of experience do I write that? – but it is very agreeable. I was naturally full of curiosity about his remarks on vampires and what led him to study the subject. By this time I reckon I had ceased to blush and stammer and fall over my own feet like an infatuated schoolgirl.
‘The whole thing fascinates me,’ he said. ‘The idea of a creature once human, now no longer so, and yet in theory and on a low plane immortal, somehow protected from the destructive effects of time, existing at all only at night, its only desire to feed on human blood, driven by nothing else but fear, fear of the sun, fear of the crucifix and of the stake through the heart – it isn’t believable in these modern times and it isn’t in the least beautiful, but I feel its power, a sort of sullen, outlandish, desolate poetry. If I didn’t, I should never have travelled thousands of miles in pursuit of it.’
‘I understand,’ I replied. ‘It’s so much part of the local tradition, or rather it was, that I can’t think of it in any kind of elevated way without an effort. It’s just there. Now, may I offer you a drink, Mr Hillier?’
‘You may and welcome, countess,’ he said with a smile and, when I handed him a martini cocktail of my own making, sipped it attentively and pronounced it excellent.
‘You were saying a moment ago,’ I observed after making sure he was right about my mixing, ‘that your version of the vampire legend wasn’t believable today. It’s certainly hard to believe, but what’s your alternative explanation? Take the story of Red Mathias, for instance. What really happened in that vault? I mean, these weren’t superstitious peasants too terrified to see straight, nor mountebanks telling tall stories in the hope of picking up a few centimes – they were highly educated, responsible men. Are you going to tell me they were lying? What would be the point?’
He shook his head decisively. ‘They weren’t lying.’
‘Then,’ I pursued, ‘Red Mathias was a vampire and the bishop destroyed him.’
‘Not that either,’ he said to my bewilderment, but went on, ‘I can give you the answer in one word. Ergot.’
‘Ergot,’ I repeated. ‘A fungus that grows on …’
‘Rye. Yes. And the contaminated rye gets made into bread, and people eat the bread, and they go mad, for a time, until all the bad bread has been eaten. While they’re mad they see things, they suffer vivid and detailed hallucinations. They have convulsions and die a good deal too. There was a famous case in Prussia in the time of Frederick the Great, when a whole village fancied its dead had risen from their graves.’
‘I heard of something like that in one of the mountain villages.’
This surprised him. ‘Not recently?’
‘No, it was before I was born.’
‘Now these hallucinations are very easily communicated,’ he told me in the most charming professorial way imaginable. ‘If one man says he sees something, his friends will say they see it too. So if the original hallucination is of a creature returning to its coffin just before daybreak …’
‘Yes, but why should it be that rather than anything else?’ I objected.
‘An old folk-belief based on some long-forgotten incident such as the robbing or desecration of a grave. If this were Scandinavia people would “see” trolls and ogres.’
‘It’s possible.’
‘As time went by more care was taken to prevent ergot from getting into the bread. The vampire has died out in the last thirty or forty years because of improved baking methods.’ The smile he sent me then made me catch my breath. ‘I see you’re not convinced.’
‘There must be something more,’ I managed to say; ‘something strange and unearthly. You’re too reasonable, Mr Hillier.’
‘I can assure you, countess,’ he said, laughing, ‘I’m not too reasonable to find the mystery still absorbing when I think I know the explanation. But I’ve digressed. The family history. What about Baron Aleku Valvazor?’
‘My great-uncle. We have something.’
‘I hope it’s good. The accepted story is a sad let-down. All those promising tales about the young girls who died with the name of Aleku on their lips, and then he goes and dies himself, of typhus, and that’s that.’
‘I don’t think he’ll disappoint you altogether.’
‘We shall see. That’s a fine portrait of him in the hall.’
‘I noticed you were examining it. You’ll see more of him. I mean of course there are other pictures of him in the castle.’
He seemed to find this less than obvious, but remarked mildly, ‘On the evidence so far, a remarkable-looking man.’
And there I have to stop. In a moment my beloved and I are to meet again, and I must strive with all my might to prevent myself from perpetrating some idiocy. But I want to say one more thing. Thank you. It’s all I can say.
Castle Valvazor,
Nuvakastra,
Dacia
1 September 1925
. . . This brings me almost to dinner-time yesterday. You’ll have to forgive me, Charles, for telling my story in the strictest, most unadorned chronological order, without forward references to what I later did or discovered; I feel it’s only in that way that I stand the remotest chance of making sense of it.
After a couple of wrong turnings (the place really is huge) I found my way to the parlour pretty exactly at the appointed hour. A short, wiry man of about sixty, who I saw at once wasn’t a Dacian, rose politely to greet me. His name is Robert Macneil and he acts as a kind of steward, supervising the affairs of the castle and its estates and also acting as librarian – it was to fill this post that he had come to Valvazor in the first place. So much I had been told already; what I saw or thought I saw for myself was that, under a veneer of reserved amiability and a kind of donnishness more suggestive of the stage than any seat of learning I know, here was a very tough, determined fellow indeed.
Naturally I didn’t reach this conclusion all at once; other things had a claim on my attention. Or rather … Old boy, I despair of conveying to you the brilliance of her eyes, the profusion of her glorious hair, the voluptuousness of her figure, anything about her in a way that will do it justice. I had fallen for her like a ton of bricks literally the moment I set eyes on her. At that stage I didn’t dare to wonder about her feelings for me. No use telling myself I shouldn’t be in my present state; it seems to me that, again literally, I had no choice. By the way, we’ve known each other long enough for me to be able to admit to you that I’ve made the lady sound less than sensational when writing to Connie. Verb. sap. No, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t try to be flippant about it. Casual adventures aren’t my style.
Well, the three of us dined in a modestly sized room that is clearly not the one in use on grand occasions; hardly a pigsty all the same. The vaulting overhead reminded me a little of that at the western end of the chapel at Matt’s, though any resemblance must surely be fortuitous. We went from a delicious potato soup to chicken konstanta (with plum sauce) and thence to fingers of cheese dipped in a harsh local mustard. Two wines were offered, the red vigorous enough, the white a little thin, I thought, but the countess evidently preferred it. The Scotchman did most of the talking, and most of what he said was on the subject of vampirism. I’ll just summarize those parts of his discourse which were wholly or partly new to me.
‘Many details of the vampire legend turn out to have no basis in fact – I mean of course no basis in recorded statements, the testimony of alleged witnesses and so forth. For instance it’s widely believed, even in parts of this country, that the creature casts no shadow, and no reflection in water or looking-glass. How could that be so? As is clear from its other attributes and activities, a vampire is flesh and blood, in however modified a form. Then the alleged protection given by a crucifix – nothing more than a sign of the Church’s attempt to Christianize the essentially pagan rituals used to ward off or destroy the vampire. Which brings up another question – why should the being have to be in its coffin for destruction to be effective? Benedek Valvazor himself was decapitated and annihilated on the roof of this very castle. A spike or nail hammered into the skull is also held to be effective. There are other methods which strike one as bizarre in the extreme; the Cretan islanders, for example, boil the vampire’s head in vinegar. It seems the only means generally found serviceable is exposure to direct sunlight. Causing total disintegration. Into dust.’
At this point in his remarks Macneil saw what I had that moment seen, that Countess Valvazor was looking distinctly uncomfortable, even unwell.
I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ I think I may have shouted a little in my anxiety.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said, and took a deep breath. ‘I guess I am a tiny bit squeamish after all.’ She managed a smile then. ‘And those were my ancestors you were talking about, darn it.’
‘Indeed,’ said Macneil. ‘How could I forget that? Countess, you haven’t touched your food.’ Here he too smiled, but in a very different, not altogether pleasant way. ‘Eat it up, now.’
She shrugged her shoulders and did as she was told. At the end of the meal, the servant Magda brought in Turkish coffee, devilish sweet and strong. An eau-de-vie of the country, made it seemed from greengages, was also produced, but all three of us declined, Macneil because, according to him, he was off to bed shortly, having had a long day and being faced with an early start in the morning. He added that he would be in the castle library and at my disposal from eight o’clock onwards. Before finally departing he cautioned me against staying up too late, on the grounds that, even at these comparatively modest altitudes, a visitor found he needed his sleep. His actual leave-taking was civil enough, but the impression he’d made on me was by no means unequivocally favourable. I tried to convey this tactfully to the countess, who took my point at once.
‘He has a great deal of authority around here,’ she said. ‘And as you saw we dine together. It must be hard for him to remember he’s only an employee.’
‘How did he acquire his authority?’ I asked her.
She hesitated. ‘He – how shall I put it? – he made himself useful to Baron Aleku.’
‘Baron Aleku?’ I said in surprise. ‘But he’s been dead for …’ Half-bemused by amorousness as I was, I couldn’t work it out.
‘Robert has been here since 1890; thirty-five years ago. He’s a clever man, a good organizer. But for him my life here would be impossible.’
‘I think I understand.’
‘Can’t we forget him?’ she asked softly.
In an instant I had no breath. All I could do was nod my head.
‘Would you like to see some of the rooms?’
‘Very much.’
The room we saw (though I saw little enough of it, at any rate at first) was the countess’s sitting-room. I gazed at the pretty curtains and covers and cushions and agreed in lethargic tones that they were beyond doubt pretty. For whatever reason, my companion seemed equally distracted. She listlessly indicated another portrait of her great-uncle, less striking than the one I had noticed in the hall, then a larger picture which did catch my attention. This was an outdoor scene showing what I identified as a funeral procession moving across a stretch of parkland towards a one-storey building of somewhat grotesque design, no doubt a place of entombment. The light might have been that of a rainy day at the end of winter. I learned from the plate that the funeral was that of Baron Aleku Valvazor in the year 1891. For a few moments, without any clear reason, I experienced a feeling of the most profound depression. I spoke before I thought.
‘Where did this happen?’
‘Here,’ said the countess with an inquiring look. ‘In the grounds just outside this window.’
‘And what I see there is some kind of … sepulchre.’
‘There are Valvazors in it that go back to the sixteenth century.’
I made a non-committal noise. My interest had subsided again.
‘The ceiling in this room is supposed to be very unusual.’
And then … My dear Charles, we should both of us have to be altogether different from what we are if I could tell you, even in outline, what happened then; you must use your own experience and your imagination. But this I will say, even to the loyal friend of Connie’s that I know you to be: it wasn’t so much that what happened then was better than any comparable experience of mine, it was more that there simply was no comparison. Afterwards, we agreed that in the very first instant of our meeting – but now, like an oaf, I’m once more on the point of embarrassing you. So, in the most strictly practical fashion, I’ll do no more than state flatly that Countess Valvazor is called Lukretia (the Dacian aristocracy, like the Rumanian, are fond of stressing their links with Ancient Rome), that she’s twenty-nine years old and, as you must know to appreciate what followed, that the setting was her bedchamber, a rather sombre room which she had done her best to cheer up with her gay cushions and rugs and so on.
It was late when I fell asleep. At once, or so it appeared, I entered on a series of vivid yet incomprehensible dreams. There were animals quite unlike any real or even legendary beast, and manufactured objects, large and small, of unguessable purpose. And the people, so many of them, so active, so unremittingly interested in me – what were they all doing? What was happening? Where and what were these places? Was I dying? At last a horrified voice that called in a strange tongue banished this troubling phantasmagoria: ‘Aleku, you devil, you hound of hell!’ – yes, Charles, ‘tu kani d’infernu’, those very words; I was wide awake in a split second.
Lukretia took some calming down. She said she had very little idea of what had caused her to shriek out like that, it had been too dark in her dream, but she knew it was something awful, something loathsome. I said it was over whatever it was, and she said it wasn’t, and then – I must get this part down as near as possible verbatim, because although I don’t understand it I know it’s important.
She said, ‘Will you do something for me?’
I said, ‘Anything I can.’
‘Will you pray to God and tell Him I thank Him for sending you to me? Because I’ve no doubt that He did. I thought He had abandoned me for ever, but now I see He hadn’t after all. Tell Him that, too. You will, won’t you?’
‘Of course I will,’ I said, ‘but wouldn’t it be better if you told Him yourself?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘but in my state prayer is ineffective.’
‘In your state? What state?’
‘Of absolute sin.’
‘Can’t you confess it?’ I asked, I hope as gently as I intended.
‘The father won’t hear me. We … there was a quarrel.’
‘Then go to another father.’
She shook her head; she had a funny look I couldn’t make out. ‘Please do as I ask.’
‘Gladly.’
‘Promise me, Stephen.’
‘I promise.’
‘I’m going to hold you to it.’
When I slept again I didn’t dream at all. For the experience I did have I can find no word; perhaps you know one. I was awoken by the sound of an enormous bell from somewhere overhead, somewhere quite near, still dying away as I listened. Lukretia hadn’t stirred, I could readily see. But how could I see it so readily? Because the room had grown lighter. How? With light from outside, through the chinks between the heavy curtains, bright light. But that wasn’t possible. We all carry a reasonably efficient clock in our head, and mine told me that it should still be dark out there. With my thoughts wandering slowly from festive illuminations to forest fires I put on a thick wrap of blanket-cloth (which I was soon to be mightily glad of) and hurried to the window. As I reached it the bell tolled again with an abruptness that made me blink. I pulled a corner of curtain aside and looked out.
What I saw (and I saw it, I wasn’t drunk, I wasn’t mad, and I certainly wasn’t dreaming, I knew that as a normal waking man always knows it) – what I saw was the funeral procession of Baron Aleku Valvazor in 1891. No one who had seen the picture in the room next door could have been in the slightest doubt. Everything and everybody was there, the old priest, the young priest, the coffin on an odd-looking waggon drawn by six men pulling ornamental ropes, the family and friends, the more prosperous farmers and yeomen in their characteristic brimless hats, the peasants, all on a rather blustery, chilly February or March afternoon nearly thirty-four years ago. I could also see several figures that I was nearly sure weren’t in the painting, like the one who must have been the artist himself furiously at work, an assistant at his side. And like Lukretia, clad in black, standing with bowed head near the entrance to the tomb and then suddenly glancing up and, as I recognized her, looking me straight in the eye.
I say I recognized her; she must have been nearly a hundred yards away, or quite that, but the light though not perfect was good enough and I had caught not so much any lineament as, more distinctively, a tilt of the neck that, after those few hours, I now knew well. But of course I thought of none of this at the time. Instinct made me turn away towards where I had left Lukretia and there was nothing, not only was she not there but the bed, the dressing-table, the pier-glass, the pictures, the sculptures, the brasses were all not there, nothing was there but stone walls and floor, the floor whose chill now struck through to my bare feet. I turned back to the window and there was nothing there either, just uncurtained panes and starlight and approaching dawn. Would you have lingered? Shivering and gasping with more than cold I was out of that grim spot pretty smartly, I can tell you, but finding my way back to the countess’s room or to my own was a different kind of task. I wandered up and down the great staircases and along the twisting corridors for anything up to half an hour. By then I was very cold indeed. In the end I rounded a corner and almost walked into Macneil, who was dressed for the outdoors, indeed for the saddle. He gave me a look of surprise and suspicion.
‘Where have you been, Mr Hillier?’ he asked. His tone was almost accusing.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
After another look at me his manner softened a trifle and he said, ‘Have you been sleepwalking?’
‘I don’t know that either. I found myself in a room I’ve no memory of entering. Perhaps I did sleepwalk.’
‘What sort of room?’ he asked gently.
‘It was empty.’
‘Completely empty?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Now I mustn’t keep you standing here on this chilly floor. The countess sends you her apologies.’
‘Apologies?’ I said. ‘What for?’ I dare say I sounded rather stupid; it was how I felt.
‘She received a message to say that her old nurse was dying and was asking to see her, and so she hurried off. As she would. It’s a fair drive, nearly to the border of the province. I’d expect her back some time in the afternoon. And now I must speed you on your way before you catch your death of cold. Down to the end there, Mr Hillier, turn left, and your room’s in front of you. I hope to see you later if you feel well enough.’ And he turned his back and went.
After a couple of hours in a warm bed, a comfortable bath and a large breakfast of scrambled eggs with strips of smoked mutton, hot rolls with quince jam and scalding coffee, I felt – well, still puzzled and wary, but I had got over the painful bewilderment that had gripped me earlier. I had another look at that picture of the funeral, and was more than ever sure I had seen what it portrayed, had not in any sense been dreaming. Next, a visit to the library, high-ceilinged and of ecclesiastical atmosphere, Macneil the complete professional in leather cap and taped-on cuffs, and informative. Much of interest, a few surprises, selective list enclosed. He (Macneil) was very proud, and with reason, of their Codex Palatine, which it seems no less a person than Dietrich Dittersdorf came all the way from Budapest some months ago to consult. I should have loved to hear more of all this, but you’ll understand I had a more pressing concern. When I had duly admired the Codex, I broached the matter.
‘Tell me, Mr Macneil,’ I said, ‘it was in 1891, was it not, that Baron Aleku was buried?’
‘Indeed,’ he replied; ‘25th February 1891, Ash Wednesday.’
‘It seems to have stuck in your mind.’
‘Odd how these things do.’ He was smiling that smile of his. ‘I was there, of course.’
I won’t pretend I showed I was ready for that. I must have gaped. ‘Were you, by George!’ I said before I knew it. ‘I hadn’t quite realized you’d been in these parts for so long’ – though you remember I had heard about it from Lukretia. ‘Perhaps you can tell me which members of the family were also present. Out of interest.’
He was grinning now. ‘You’ve been looking at that painting in the countess’s sitting-room, haven’t you, Mr Hillier?’
‘Yes, a fascinating piece.’
‘Oh, do you think so? I’ve always found it rather ordinary. However. Yes, there was the countess dowager and her sister, Count Zoltan and Countess Elizabeth, their three sons, of whom the eldest was to be the present countess’s father, Baron … Baron Horvath on the dowager’s side and Baroness … it’s gone, and the Rumanian cousins, those were the …’
‘Yes. Thank you.’ I realized I had had a fat chance from the beginning. ‘I must have been mistaken. I mean you’re right, it isn’t a very good painting.’
‘If you want to know more about Aleku, I could show you the mausoleum after luncheon – you know, where he’s buried or is at rest.’
I thanked him and accepted, though I hardly expected there would be much to see, and he picked up a shallow pile of grey folders that evidently held what he considered most likely to be of interest to me. I thanked him again for his trouble; he said that as a result of years of diligent subject-indexing it had been no trouble at all. (Librarians are much the same everywhere, eh, old boy?) Then, opening one of the folders, he muttered a question about the state of my Hungarian, and I saw fit to call it rusty, which I hope you’ll take as a pardonable exaggeration, or rather as whatever the opposite of that is. (Understatement. I must pull my brains together.) Accordingly, Macneil had the kindness to run over the main points of what had been an address given before the inner college of St Ladislas’ at Peks by a certain Dr Bela Hadik in 1913.
The speaker’s main theme is apparently that the powers of the vampire and also its weaknesses, its limitations, can be rationally explained. On this view, the vampire is not in any sense dead, rather it has entered upon another kind of life, its activity confined to the hours of darkness but itself made potentially immortal and ageless. We are to remember that the victim of a vampire’s attack loses very little blood, and yet soon afterwards, perhaps after a second attack, perhaps not, is dead. Of what malady? Later he rises from the dead and functions once more – walks, talks, thinks, is capable of great physical exertion. In his turn the victim becomes the predator and himself imbibes blood, not much, and not often. For what purpose? Hardly for nutriment; no corporeal frame of that size could possibly subsist on such a meagre diet. Day-to-day sustenance must be provided by more conventional food.
The postulate is that somehow, perhaps through the vampire’s saliva, a peculiar element reaches the victim’s bloodstream and multiplies within it. During the period of supposed death, actually suspended animation, a number of changes take place which curtail freedom of movement but confer enhanced strength and capability of self-repair and, it has been said, certain abnormal powers of the mind, such as the ability to detect malign forces at a distance.
At this point, just to contribute something of my own, however obvious, I put in, ‘At any rate, the physical changes permit the creature to survive injuries that would kill an ordinary mortal and therefore, if he is to be destroyed, he must be damaged in ways no living being could withstand – impalement, decapitation, burning.’
‘Indeed,’ said Macneil, ‘and just as the vampire transforms normal blood, so he needs something from it. Whatever that something is, it tends to overheat the body, so that during the warmer, daylight hours there must be not only rest but refrigeration.’
‘For which purpose,’ I said, ‘a stone coffin packed with earth and laid in an underground vault would be as good as anything science could come up with till just the other day.’
He smiled at me again, but more pleasantly this time, like a schoolmaster at a pupil who has got it right for once. ‘Exactly, Mr Hillier. Well, I think you have the heart of it there.’
I said with a show of detachment, ‘Do you really believe any of this vampire stuff yourself?’
‘Yes,’ he said straight away.
‘Have you seen any of it?’
Now he hesitated before saying firmly, ‘No.’
‘Do you believe any of this?’ I tapped the folder.
‘Maybe.’
‘Oh, it’s rather rot, don’t you think? I mean it leaves out so much. You said last night that exposure to the light of the sun was the most effective means of destroying a vampire – widely believed to be so, that is. Is that accounted for here?’
‘Not specifically.’ He spoke as if he perhaps wanted to have done with the conversation. ‘Further overheating of the body would no doubt result.’
I couldn’t resist saying, ‘To the tune of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit? If you’ll forgive me, Mr Macneil, your belief seems to be founded on a wish to believe.’
‘No doubt it does, Mr Hillier, but I’d like you to cast an eye on what I have here before you finally make up your mind on that point.’
‘What is it?’
‘Part of the only known statement on vampirism committed to paper by a self-confessed vampire,’ he said impressively, handing over a single yellowed sheet covered with brownish writing, and added, ‘The most secret document in this library. Even the countess doesn’t know it’s here.’
No doubt I should have inquired into the last part of that, but I was too eager to examine what I now had before me and allowed Macneil to withdraw, muttering as he went something about binding up a batch of pamphlets.
As I read, I began to wish more fervently than ever before that the advance of science had reached the point at which books and other printed or written material could be copied at the pressing of a switch, for instance by some development of the photographic process. This is 1925, though, not 1975, and I have had to do what I could with pen and ink. As you see, I started to transcribe the original, which is jolly simple Dacian, but not simple enough, I suspect, for those whose knowledge of the tongue is worse than rusty. Being simple it has lost little by being translated, though I should add here that the writer was obviously an educated man and that one or two words and expressions, together with some slight formalities of construction, suggest a date in the last century, most likely its second half.
Enclosure
Duminu wobisku. Preko wos ni par mizerikordi ni par pieti.
The Lord be with you. I ask you not for pity nor for mercy, but for your prayers. You who are not accursed, pray to Almighty God for my wicked soul. You who go out in the day, petition all-loving God for His justice towards a child of His who lives in loneliness and misery, who stays always in the same place and who never sees the sun. Plead with Him that I have no choice in the end but to take my loathsome refection, and to lie and dissemble, which I loathe almost as bitterly, and suborn others to do evil on my behalf, for if I do not I shall surely die at last, and there is no life so miserable that it is not to be preferred to death. Say all this to Him, for His will is that I cannot say it myself; why should one of my vile condition obtain such relief? Say to Him also that I trust in His goodness and expect His deliverance. On that day there shall come one who will.
Main letter
One who will do what? is no doubt the question you’re asking yourself. I certainly asked it, and must have done so aloud, for Macneil, at my side again to write in an addition to the vast catalogue, expressed his ignorance and added that (as I had surmised) the following sheet or sheets were lost. He went on to say that he considered it to be about fifty years old, or a little less, and that it had been in the library when he first came, but with no press-mark or entry and no information as to its origin, merely a half-indecipherable note about a hearing before a quaestor or investigatory magistrate. Finally he asked me what I thought of the document. I told him I didn’t know, which was and is no more than the truth. It might be a fake, it might be the ravings of a madman, but I can’t believe it’s either, but as to why, that again I don’t know. Something about the handwriting bothers me; I’ve made a tracing of the first few words which you’ll forgive me for not sending on.
Luncheon, consisting mainly of toothsome and expertly cooked river trout, was pleasant enough, enlivened moreover by much interesting talk from Macneil on the subject of local history; he has his own style of being agreeable. After the meal, as arranged, he took me over to the family tomb in the grounds. This, especially the interior, proved sadly unspectacular. It was strange none the less to see a plate in the wall with the legend ‘Segnu Aleku Valvazor, 1841–1891’ and a Latin text mentioning eternal rest. Macneil told me that when – but this is another piece of talk which I feel instinctively calls for ipsissima verba.
‘Not more than a couple of weeks after the burial,’ he said, ‘a party from the village came up and broke open the coffin and found … a corpse. A corpse showing unmistakable signs of decay, not Aleku in his habit as he lived. There were no more rumours after that.’
I was startled, and exclaimed, ‘It took a damned lot of nerve to lead that coffin-breaking expedition.’
‘Yes, nobody seemed to know who did. Not a local man, it was said.’
‘When was this place built?’ I asked him.
‘In its present form it was completed in 1891. You’re quite right, Mr Hillier, the year of the baron’s death, by a melancholy coincidence much remarked on. No sooner had the Count prepared for a return to traditional practice by entombing the family dead outside the castle proper than his younger brother …’ He spread his hands.
‘Then there’s a burial chamber inside the castle proper.’
‘Oh indeed, an extensive one. I’d be happy to show it to you in the morning. I must be getting back to the library now; we take a large number of journals and I do so hate getting behind with them.’
We were strolling quite companionably towards the castle when he asked me something that filled me with suspicion on the instant.
‘Are your whereabouts known to your people in England, Mr Hillier?’
I replied carefully and truthfully, ‘No, at this moment not a soul has more than the vaguest idea of where I am.’
‘Dear dear,’ he said, ‘a most unwise omission in a country like this. If I may, I’ll send a man to the telegraph station. Tomorrow.’
Whether he does or he doesn’t, my vaguely based conviction that nobody here should know of this letter, much less be given it to post, has become intensified. I’ll be sure to get it off to you myself in the morning, along with one to Connie. Not that the story’s over yet by a long chalk, I bet.
I write this in the parlour I described to you earlier. Outside, the colours of the lawns and shrubs are beginning to fade as evening approaches; Magda has just brought me a lamp. Still Lukretia has not returned. With Macneil’s permission I brought here the library copy of De Mortuis Viventibus by Lartius Calasanctius, all of whose works I thought I knew; this one I’d never even heard of, but I’m too strung up to do as much as open it. Shameful of me. Perhaps I’ll be more capable tomorrow.
I’ll write again as soon as I have more news. Good luck with the James Barnes Hitchens prize.
Yours aye,
Stephen
1 September 1925 – … The last was no dream, but a memory of that fatal night, all except the moment when Stephen was there in my place, helpless as I was, and I woke cursing Aleku for a devil and a hound of hell. Now I have fed my hatred enough, and can come to the events of this very evening.
After making my arrangements with Magda, I found Stephen in the parlour with one of Robert’s ancient tomes on his knee. He sprang up and we kissed with every show of passion, but I immediately sensed a constraint in him. And yet it was he who, breaking the embrace, gave a look of misgiving and mistrust.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked gravely. ‘Is it your nurse?’
‘I stayed with her till she died,’ I told him, ‘that’s why I’m so late. It was quite peaceful. A good death. I had to go, Stephen.’
‘Of course.’ His voice was so gentle that I wanted to kiss his feet.
‘I’m sorry I rushed off without seeing you, but I just didn’t know …’
‘I understand.’
I tried to brace myself. ‘If I were to ask you to go now, this evening, not as far as Arelanópli but farther than Nuvakastra, and wait there for me to join you, and if I said it was very important to both of us for you to do that, would you go?’
‘After being told nothing more? Not even just how important “very important” is?’
‘Meaning we … might never see each other again.’
‘“Might”?’ he said, still gently. ‘How likely is “might”? Nine chances in ten? One in a hundred?’
‘Oh, darling …’ I felt great tenderness for him, and great exasperation. ‘You’d have to have it all spelled out, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes. Otherwise I might feel I was being got out of the way for some sinister purpose.’
‘Sinister? I don’t understand, Stephen.’
Now his look was stern. ‘Neither do I. Last night I saw the funeral of Baron Aleku Valvazor in the year 1891.’
‘You were remembering the picture in my sitting-room. That sort of thing often happens in dreams.’
‘This was no dream. I saw it.’
‘That’s impossible,’ I insisted.
‘It happened. I watched it from your bedroom window. At least that’s where I started.’
‘How could you see anything?’ I asked in bewilderment. ‘It was dark.’
‘Outside it was light. When the … performance was over I found I was standing in a strange, completely bare room in some other part of the castle. I had the devil’s own job finding my way back, in fact—’
I interrupted him. ‘All right, what if it did happen? How could it have anything to do with me and my sinister purposes?’
‘It has something to do with you all right. You were there. I recognized you.’
‘I was where?’
‘At the funeral. In 1891.’
‘Nonsense,’ I said coolly. ‘I was in somebody’s dream in 1925. Somebody I had just made a certain impression on, if I’m not flattering myself. But I’m going to humour you. Let’s suppose you’re right: you weren’t dreaming, you saw Aleku’s funeral, though I’m far from sure what that means. You couldn’t have seen me at it, because I wasn’t born then. But you might quite well have seen this person.’ And I opened my locket and showed him mummy’s picture. ‘My mother. She was there.’
‘It was you,’ he said, but he said it with lessened conviction.
‘You took it to be me. Of course you did. You would take it to be me rather than a person you’d never so much as thought about. Aren’t we always doing that? Taking someone for a person we know, even when the person doesn’t look anything like the someone? Haven’t you often done that? In your dreams?’
The truth of that observation obviously struck him with some force, and turned him almost sullen for the moment. ‘Well, how did I get to that strange room?’
‘Darling, you walked there in your sleep. How else could you have got there? I couldn’t have carried you.’
‘No’, and a rueful grin.
‘That’s better,’ I said, trying to sound as much like an English governess as I could. ‘Now let’s have no more childish talk of sinister purposes.’ With that I kissed him in a very ungovernessy fashion.
A little later he said, ‘All right – devilish odd, though,’ but I knew already that I had disarmed his suspicions. With his cheek against mine he went on softly, ‘But what was your real purpose? In trying to get rid of me?’
‘That was rather silly. I wasn’t trying to get rid of you. Did I sound like it?’
‘Not much, no.’
‘What I was doing was giving you the chance of ducking out if you wanted to. Making it easy for you.’
‘But why should I have wanted to duck out, as you call it?’ he went on as before.
‘I don’t know. Well, you might have. I had plenty of time for thinking on my trip, maybe too much, and in the cold light of day I found I just couldn’t believe in last night. For myself I could, but I couldn’t quite for you. I don’t know why, you gave me no cause.’
‘I say, Lukretia, really,’ he rebuked me.
‘Yes, I said it was silly.’
‘Was that what was wrong when you first came in tonight? My God, what an absurd question.’
‘I wasn’t thinking.’
‘You were not.’ He drew away a little and looked me in the eyes, smiling. When he smiles his mouth stays firm; it would not be quite so lovely otherwise. He has a little scar shaped like a V on the left side of his chin. Perhaps he got it playing some game in school, in that ‘quite decent’ school in Sussex county. I looked back at him and he said, ‘Would you like me to show you just how silly you were being?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘I would. I’d like that very much.’
What followed was joy, unlike anything he or I have ever had in our lives before or have ever thought about, but still very simple joy. Afterwards there was peace, for me the first I can remember; I cannot speak for him. But it had to end. I got out of bed, put on a robe, went behind the screen and opened the champagne.
I could hear him laughing. ‘Why all the concealment?’ he asked.
‘I was afraid if I didn’t arrange it this way you might be distracted.’ Back in bed I raised my glass to him and said in my native language, ‘I wish you happiness your life long.’
‘May your good fortune never fail,’ he responded at once, raising his own glass. His Dacian is very correct, but his consonants are heavy in the English way. A delightful way.
There was one more thing to be done. I fetched the small scissors from my dresser and snipped away a lock of hair. ‘Now your turn,’ I said. ‘No, let me do it for you.’ When I had taken a lock of his, thick and strong, I held on to it and handed him mine. ‘We’re official lovers now and can only cease to be by exchanging these again. Is that English? By giving them back.’
‘I follow you.’ There was a sadness in his eyes which at another time might have troubled me. ‘I’m glad we’ve done that. Is it a peasant custom?’
‘Well, a custom anyhow, though it’s dying out, as what isn’t? But I’m fond of it. I’ve never done it before. You needn’t go on holding that; the ceremony is concluded.’
I went back to the dresser and left the two locks and the scissors. Stephen was comfortably settled against the pillows with his eyes shut.
‘Well, what do we do tomorrow?’ he asked drowsily.
‘Tomorrow we prepare for England,’ I replied. ‘And the day following we leave for England. And after however many days it is we arrive in England. And we go to London and see the churches and the palaces and the people, and we walk in the park and sail on the river. And in the country we go riding and we sit in the garden early and late.’
I cried then, but there was no one to hear me; Magda’s potion certainly acted fast. Soon I made myself stop crying, for I had work to do, and tough work at that. I put on a gown of blazing scarlet and bedecked myself with my finest jewels. On my way out I bent and kissed Stephen’s forehead. As I did so it occurred to me that there was really no hurry; those with whom I had business would stay till I came. I settled myself at Stephen’s side and kissed his cheek, once, twice. By slow degrees a delicious languor stole over me; as I lay there I could no longer feel the pressure of the bed against my body; my vision clouded, so that I saw only vague coloured shapes without any meaning, and in my ears there was the sweetest melody I ever heard, in some sense under my control and yet at every turn delightful in its unexpectedness, always about to come to rest in a cadence of supreme poignancy before miraculously passing into fresh unbounded rapture. There was no name for the instruments that played it, nor for the bewitching odours that drifted to my nostrils. An inviolable warmth enfolded me. My well-being and happiness were both of them exquisite, and to be made perfect needed only a single small action on my part. And for its performance no volition would be necessary, nothing more than surrender to the onward flow of ravishment. Oh paradise, oh abode of the blessed …
Suddenly I was back in my dream, that cruel dream in which Aleku chained me to the dungeon wall in perpetual captivity, but now there was another beside me, gagged and blindfolded like myself, and I knew it was Stephen. I screamed and came to myself in an instant. After a second’s inexpressible agony of mind I ascertained that, though my teeth had indeed been at his throat, they had not penetrated the skin and, as I watched with equally intense relief, the marks I had left began to fade. I got off the bed and knelt down and tried to say a prayer of thanksgiving, for I had no doubt about where that warning had come from, but not a word could I utter, as always. So I offered thanks in my heart; even He cannot prevent that. They were double thanks; I knew now for a certainty what I had been pretending was not certain, that I could not for ever, nor even for long, suppress the abominable craving that defines my state, and that Stephen would be in deadly danger as long as I could get at him. This knowledge has hardened my resolution to do what must be done. It must all of it be done; the danger to Stephen comes not only from me.
Writing this last entry has brought me pain, not least in detailing the lies I had to tell my beloved. But it has helped me relive some of the most wonderful, the only wonderful moments of my life, and after forty years I find it hard to break the habit of confiding to these pages what nobody else must know and what, thanks to Magda, nobody else will ever know. So now, goodbye. To whom, to what do I say those words? No matter.
QUAESTOR: Fetch Prefect Sturdza.
REGISTRAR: Prefect Sturdza, in the name of Omnipotent God I charge you to tell the truth in all matters—
QUAESTOR: Hold your peace, registrar, and let the hearing proceed. This is not a court of law; it is not even an official council. I pray God our business today never comes before any such body. Speak, prefect.
PREFECT: Thank you, your rectitude. I have here the paper brought to me at the police office by the witness Magda Marghiloman. I have satisfied myself that the handwriting is that of Lukretia Iulia Klodia Valvazor i Vukcic, Countess Valvazor of the same.
QUAESTOR: Good, good, Read it, man.
PREFECT: Yes, sir. ‘In the year 1886, being then twenty-nine years old, I was forcibly reduced to the abject and abominable state of vampire by my father’s brother, Baron Aleku Valvazor, who also debauched me. For four years thereafter we continued our hideous practices to the horror and shame of my parents and at growing risk to ourselves. The danger was not from the subsequent activities of our unfortunate victims, who were made away with when they had served their turn, but from the number of unexplained disappearances in the surrounding country. The village people would have come for us one fine day.
‘At the end of that period, early in 1890, the Englishman Robert Macneil arrived at Valvazor, ostensibly to serve as librarian and nothing more, but though my father would never admit it I have always been certain that, through some intermediary unknown to me, he had obtained Macneil for another purpose, namely to protect his brother and daughter from the otherwise inevitable consequences of their vile acts. At any rate, Macneil soon set about an elaborate deception. He procured a middle-aged man – a Bessarabian corn-factor, I was told – who resembled Aleku closely, or closely enough, and somehow lured him here. Having caused it to be given out that the baron was gravely ill with typhus fever, he administered to the unhappy stranger a fatal dose of one of those poisons that leave no exterior sign. A pair of local women, chosen for their ready tongues, were brought in to prepare the deceased for burial. A funeral was then elaborately staged and the stranger laid to rest in the mausoleum that my father had refurbished for the purpose. The behaviour of the peasantry on this occasion was gratifyingly credulous, but Macneil would leave nothing to chance. With every appearance of spontaneity, though in fact at his instigation, a band of villagers broke open the tomb after a sufficient interval and found, not the untouched, immaculate form they had been half-expecting, but what could only have been a dead body. To all appearance, Baron Aleku was no more. No such stratagem was thought necessary in my case; I was then quite undistinguished in horror.
‘Thereafter the ingenious and industrious and unspeakable Macneil saw to it that those whose blood we drank were brought from far enough away for Castle Valvazor not to be an object of suspicion. So matters continued for decades; I grew inured to my uncle’s embraces, even – forgive me if you can – developed a taste for them. To my status as a creature altogether depraved, beyond the reach of divine mercy, I was perfectly indifferent. Then, one night, the night of 31 August, all was changed. God or His messenger spoke to me in a dream, commanding me to make an end to the evil and holding out hope, if I heeded the commandment, of my soul’s salvation. At once I was resolved; I made preparations and, as soon as opportunity presented itself, I struck.
‘Late the following evening, 1 September, I came upon my uncle and Macneil in the small parlour. Having contrived Macneil’s brief but sufficient absence from the room, I took a hammer and drove a large iron nail into the back of my uncle’s head, not remitting my blows until the point had emerged through the right eye. I had been less than certain whether this would prove enough to secure the demise of such a one, but very soon such extreme and dreadful changes had taken place in him that I could no longer be in doubt. So perished a creature of the utmost infamy, and so who knows how many innocent men and women were spared a terrible fate.
‘When Macneil returned to the room he expressed violent loathing at what he saw. He went on to utter various taunts and threats, which changed to entreaties and attempts to strike bargains when he saw what I intended. To no avail; my duty was clear and my determination absolute.
‘In all save immaterial particulars this account is true and complete, and that is the sufficient and necessary reason for offering it to you as guardian of good order. You must take it or leave it as it stands. I shall not be available for questioning.
‘Under my hand and seal, Lukretia Valvazor.’
QUAESTOR: Thank you, prefect. Well, that is at any rate clear. We will defer other considerations till we have more evidence before us. Fetch Dr Eótvos, if he is composed enough to address the inquest.
DOCTOR: Yes, sir, I think so, your rectitude. I must emphasize that the need for haste and secrecy has meant that my findings are necessarily tentative and rather general.
QUAESTOR: That is understood. Please go on.
DOCTOR: One body appears to be that of a man of extreme old age, perhaps as much as ninety years old. This I surmised from the state of the hair, the teeth and one or two other parts that had to some extent escaped the process of decomposition undergone by the remainder, which was so advanced that the corpse could not be moved as a whole and had to be examined on the spot. And yet among the remains of the alimentary canal there were fragments of partially digested food that could not have been swallowed more than an hour before, perhaps two at the most. Human physiology, human … what happens when a man dies … will not allow of such a thing.
QUAESTOR: Do you wish to rest, doctor? Very well. Are you saying that this was not the body of a human being?
DOCTOR: No, sir; well, not quite. There had been forces at work on it that I cannot guess at, producing effects I would have thought flesh and blood incapable of and have most assuredly never seen or heard the like of. Is that satisfactory? Thank you, sir – the other body was human in every respect. I identified it as that of Mr Robert Macneil, well known to most of us here. The … unusual factor in this case was the manner of death. The head was almost separated from the trunk, but not as the result of any blow from a weapon. The two had been pulled apart.
QUAESTOR: In your opinion, could a human being have done that?
DOCTOR: No, sir; well, again, it might be possible for a professional strong-man, but certainly not for a normally developed female, which I take to be where your question tends. I should add that the right humerus, the bone of the right upper arm, was at one point not merely broken but shattered into thirty or forty pieces, some of them barely visible to the naked eye. No weapon, nothing inorganic here either; the bruising showed it to be the work of a human hand, or something shaped like a human hand, in a squeezing motion. As before, impossible for a normal person, man or woman.
QUAESTOR: Could we amend that and say, impossible for a normal person in any state known to medical science?
DOCTOR: That would do very well, your rectitude.
QUAESTOR: Excellent. Thank you, doctor; you may retire. Fetch the witness Magda Marghiloman.
REGISTRAR: She will tell you nothing useful.
QUAESTOR: How do you know? And what do you suppose I might find useful? Now, Magda, if you are sensible this will take no more than a minute. You heard the prefect read the document your mistress gave you. Tell us where you were when she gave it you.
WITNESS: In her ladyship’s sitting-room, your rectitude.
QUAESTOR: What happened after that?
WITNESS: She kissed me, and she gave me the locket with her lady mother’s picture, and she said goodbye …
QUAESTOR: All right, Magda, we can pause here and no harm. Go on when you can.
WITNESS: … and I went out and left her there.
QUAESTOR: What time was this?
WITNESS: About midnight.
QUAESTOR: And that was the last you saw of her. Where is she now, Magda? Where is your mistress now?
WITNESS: She has gone away.
QUAESTOR: Magda, we all know she has gone away. What we desire to be told is where she is. At least, that is the question we are asking.
WITNESS: I do not know the answer, your rectitude.
QUAESTOR: Quite so. And in your opinion, Magda, just your opinion, is there anyone who does know?
WITNESS: No, sir.
QUAESTOR: Very well. Now, you heard the prefect mention a certain Mr Stephen Hillier, an Englishman, who was reported to be in Nuvakastra four days ago. We have been absolutely unable to discover where he went after that. Have you heard or seen anything of this man?
WITNESS: No, sir.
QUAESTOR: In fact, you have no news or other information about him whatever.
WITNESS: Nothing whatever, sir.
QUAESTOR: And, again in your opinion, Magda, everybody would say the same, everybody at Castle Valvazor, that is.
WITNESS: Everybody, your rectitude.
QUAESTOR: Thank you, Magda, that will be all. Registrar, clear the chamber. None to remain except Prefect Sturdza, Dr Eótvos and yourself.
Now, gentlemen, we are all Dacians, indeed we are all from round about, and my feeling is that we can settle this in no time. The only matter of the smallest complication touches Mr Hillier. We have to admit the possibility that he was somehow involved in the events at Valvazor. If so, we are bound to think it more than possible that he is dead. Should that be the case, we could expect to be told nothing to that effect by any of the castle people. The first we should hear would be an inquiry from his family in England – if he has one, if they know he came to Nuvakastra. Unless that happens, which God forfend, I say we do nothing. As things are, what reason would you give, my dear prefect, for detaining Mr Hillier, searching for him, mentioning him?
However, these are all remote contingencies, of the sort we jurists love to pursue, but of little practical import. I will wager our man is well out of it, and we are no less well rid of him. If, by a chance more distant than any we have considered, he has departed from this place having learned of these recent oddities, we need feel no concern. Left to himself he will keep his mouth shut, you may be sure.
As for our corpses, or rather our corpse, for Baron Aleku has been dead for thirty-four years, has he not? – as for Mr Macneil, he met with an accident from which he died. He fell down the stairs, drowned in his bath, what you will. Would you consent to certify that, doctor?
DOCTOR: Gladly, your rectitude.
QUESTOR: As for Countess Valvazor, she has disappeared. And that at least is a fact. We shall see no more of her in this life.
REGISTRAR: Or the next.
QUAESTOR: Amen; I wish I were so sanguine. I suggest to you, prefect, that a couple of trustworthy fellows saw the countess making for Arelanópli yesterday morning, would you agree? There will be the question of the inheritance to be settled. I look forward to that, not least to the arrival of some innocent cousin from Philadelphia, as it might be, to take possession of his property, like a young man in a ghostly tale.
Well, unless I have missed something, our business is concluded. Prefect, you will see to it that all documents are burnt. All documents.
DOCTOR: May I ask a question, your rectitude? Do you believe the countess’s story?
QUAESTOR: Must I believe anything? If I must believe something, then what else is there? And now, gentlemen, I invite you to take wine with me. There is that in what I have heard this evening that drives me almost irresistibly to a fortifying glass.
Hotel Astoria,
Budapest,
Hungary
6 September 1925
My dear Charles,
It’s no good, I shall have to tell someone, no, not someone, you, before I go mad, or die of I don’t know what, grief, or horror, or something like bewilderment, which I never thought could become an emotion as intense and as painful as the others. Sorry, I’m probably not making much sense. Let me concentrate on matters about which there can be no dispute.
On the 3rd, Friday morning, I left that castle and made the rotten journey to Arelanópli, where I took the first available train out of Dacia. It was a stopping train and I had made no arrangements to visit Hungary and it cost me a fiver to be let in, but I would cheerfully have paid ten times as much just to get out of that beastly country. I must say the Astoria is a very decent place and the servants are most considerate, appearing not to notice what I’m afraid must have been my obvious distress of mind, meeting without question my desire to take all meals in my room (not that I’ve wanted very much to eat) and leaving me alone as far as possible. As a result I’m better, well, better than I was, though not exactly chirpy at this stage. I reckon I shall be able to face a long journey in a couple of days and then will probably make for Paris, anyhow somewhere as unlike where I’ve been as possible. I can’t face Connie yet awhile; it’s not that I don’t – no, I won’t go into it now, I think you’ll understand when you’ve read what I have to say.
I remember at the end of my last (God knows how I managed to get it posted) I told you I was in the parlour trying to read and waiting for Lukretia. Charles, I want to skip over what happened that evening (there was nothing that can’t wait till I see you) and come to the next morning, I suppose about seven o’clock. That night I hadn’t dreamed at all, so that waking suddenly, as I did, was like being in a single instant thrust from a dark dungeon into the sunlight; the whole of that charming bedroom was ablaze with the sun. It made me blink. I felt at the same time sluggish and on edge, strung up, for a moment unable to remember where I was. It took me longer than that to piece together what had happened or must have happened before I fell asleep and later. I decided at last – Lukretia had given me champagne; there had been some drug in the champagne; I had succumbed to it; she had left the room; she had not returned. Possessed by a sudden urgency I jumped out of bed and dressed as quickly as I’ve ever done in my life. On the dressing-table there was an envelope with my name on it, also the lock of my hair had gone (explanation later). I put the envelope in my pocket and hurried out.
Downstairs, I found the parlour door shut, locked fast. I called repeatedly, but no one came, nor was there at first the least sound; I had the sense that I was alone in the castle. Then, faint but insistent, there came to my ears an irregular banging or slamming sound, as of an unfastened shutter caught by the wind, indescribably desolate. I found the cause soon enough, in fact a long glass door giving on to a small terrace at the side of the building. In the grip of the acutest dread, yet not knowing what it was that so afflicted me, I advanced through the doorway. The air was already warm; I could hear insect noises and the song of birds. A statue of a naked nymph or girl holding a lamb in her arms, no doubt a copy of a Hellenistic original, stood off to one side. I moved out of the shadow cast by the house and into the full light of the sun; it was very strong. A fitful breeze was stirring the dust on the flagstones. My eye fell on what might have been a thin wisp of dark hair, no more than four or five strands, but it had disintegrated before I could reach it. A thought too terrible to think was beating at the inside of my head. I remembered the envelope I had picked up and tore it open; there was a single sheet of writing inside. This is what it said.
My only dear love,
‘I have to go away and you will never see me again in this life. Anything that could drive me from you must be very powerful, very strong, and it is, so strong that I must not tell you what it is. But I am allowed to tell you what it is not. It is not your fault, neither in yourself nor in any deed or word of yours. It is no shortcoming in the love we feel for each other. That love has been the only true thing in my life and the means of deliverance from all my sorrows. It, and you, have made me happy in such a way that what other happiness I have known seems to me trivial and dull. And that means that the shortness of our time together matters much less to me; I hope, I know, that this will be a consolation to you.
Now I must go. Don’t try to find me; I cannot be found. Don’t try to learn more about me; think of me as you knew me. We may meet after all in a million years from now; I think perhaps God intends that. Goodbye, heart of my heart.
Your Lukretia
Remember your promise. Duminu wobisku.
And with the last two words the unbearable thought declared itself. I reached into my pocket again and brought out the tracing I had made of the first phrases of the document Macneil had shown me in the library. There was no question about it; the hands were the same. I knew now what had troubled me at the time: my unwitting perception that the writing was feminine had been up against my conscious assumption that what was in front of me was the work of a man. And I knew much more besides.
I won’t try to describe my feelings. I went back indoors and knelt down and prayed for Lukretia’s soul, as I have done on retiring and rising ever since and will continue to do for the rest of my life. Then I found Magda, or she me. She asked me my pleasure. I told her I wanted to be packed up and out of the place in the shortest possible time, and she set about it as if she was no less interested in my early departure than I was. How much had she seen and heard over the years? In the last thirty-six hours? I didn’t want to find out. After our first question and answer neither of us had anything to say till we were standing outside the great front door and a grim-faced fellow in an overall was loading my bags into a sort of wagonette. Even then Magda and I exchanged only a word of thanks as I tipped her and a word of farewell, but right at the last she gave me a look saying as plainly as words that we were united by our loss, and I hope I returned it adequately. Before the driver had whipped up his horses the door of the castle shut with a crash. Macneil didn’t appear, which suited my book all right.
I’m sorry to bother you with all this, old boy, but perhaps you see now why I had to tell you, or felt I had to tell you, and why I don’t feel like coming home just yet. I’ll probably see you about the 18th or the 20th. Thanks for listening!
Yours,
Stephen
PS: I wonder if I could ask you to keep this and my last under lock and key. Matt’s is a jolly decent place, I know, but one can’t be too careful.
Hotel Astoria,
Budapest,
Hungary
7 September 1925
Dearest Connie,
It must be a week since I wrote. As you can see, I’ve been on the move. I didn’t stay long at that Castle Valvazor place, which I soon found was a thorough wash-out. In my last letter I wasted your time (and a lot more of mine) with all those stories about Tristan the Wolf and Red Mathias and eye-witness accounts. Then when I went through the archives the next morning there was nothing there at all, just the dullest and most conventional family documents you can imagine. I complained about it at luncheon, or rather said I thought I must have been looking in the wrong place, and the countess said no, I’d seen all there was, and more or less admitted she’d spun me a yarn to induce me to stay on for a bit and cheer up the company. Well, I saw her point about the company, but I ask you! I hung on another night out of politeness and invented an engagement in Budapest. I want you to promise never to mention Countess Valvazor. Seriously. If you do I won’t reply. I mean it was such a sell and such a bore.
In a way, though, my visit wasn’t wasted. It set me thinking about this whole vampire business, made me take a second look at it, if you know what I mean. And, well, I’ve come to the very reluctant conclusion that you were right about it and I was wrong. It’s nothing but a string of peasant superstitions that don’t hang together and haven’t even got the merit of being charming. What on earth possessed me to imagine there was a book, a serious book, to be written on the subject? I’m afraid it’ll annoy old Charles Winterbourne, but I’m going to wind up my research. Something on, say, early Hungarian literature would be far more the sort of thing. I’ve been looking round the museums here and already have something to go on.
This is a fascinating city. I expect you knew it was originally two cities, Buda and Pest. The royal palace at Buda is very fine, with over eight hundred rooms (not that I’ve been in them all!). Near by stands the church of
I’m sorry, dear, I’ll have to break this off if I want to catch the post. I’ll be off again in a day or two. Will drop you a line as soon as I can.
In haste, with love,
Stephen