I’m a Vampire

I’m a vampire. One of the old guard. I can’t even remember how long it’s been. Nine hundred years, at the very least. But I have no complaints. Considering I’m a vampire, I’m in really good shape despite the centuries I’ve been around.

The vampire I once was and the one I am now share nothing in common. We are two different beings. I won’t deny I’ve committed all kinds of excesses in the course of my lengthy career, but with time I’ve learned to curb my natural instincts. You could say I’ve become a very restrained vampire. It’s true, circumstances didn’t give me much choice. I’ve proved to be an adaptable beast.

When I first turned into a vampire, I did the usual: slept by day, went out by night and sucked the blood of virgins … Nowadays, ever since I discovered sunblock and can venture out whenever I feel like it, I’m more of a day person. I have greater freedom of movement, and that has helped me change my habits and enjoy new experiences; though, naturally, in the heat of high summer I don’t act the fool; I stay put, prostrate in my crypt. Sun creams are all well and good; they cost the earth and leave grease everywhere, but a vampire without a single gram of melanin in his skin had better not take any risks. I’ve had a couple of upsets and don’t want to end up being singed like a sausage.

I was born and became a vampire in Savall, a village that’s now become an upmarket residential estate around a huge golf course. In the Middle Ages, when I was a youngster, Savall was a prosperous town, with a castle, a lord of the manor and a vampire. The lord of the manor and the vampire were one and the same, and the vassals were accustomed to the local feudal big shot – that is, yours truly – paying a night-time visit to suck the blood of their daughters. I still feel nostalgia for an era when virgins were reasonably easy to find and relations with the Church were good because the clergy were too busy burning heretics and expelling Jews, and left me to my own devices. What’s more, a vampire in the locality was good for tourism: we pedigree, classy vampires were much in demand. The people of Savall couldn’t complain: thanks to the gloomy air of my castle and the horrific stories they recounted about my misdeeds, the town was sitting on a regular gold mine.

The good folk of Savall soon accepted my nightly incursions and reacted phlegmatically. They never harassed me, and I in return sucked the blood of their daughters in moderation: very few died from my bites or were transformed into vampires. It’s a hassle when you have more than one sleeping in the same crypt, and as I’d had a couple of bad experiences, I made sure I stopped biting the girls the second they showed the first signs of transmuting. On the other hand, the peasants always struggled to get together the money to pay the dowries for their daughters, and in years when there was a bad harvest or taxes were hiked, they felt relieved when I took the odd one to the other side. Some were so grateful they even sent me a card and a basket of hams and fruit for Christmas.

Unfortunately, things changed in Savall with the onset of the age of industrialization and all that nonsense about Marxism, atheism and the death of God. Psychoanalysis also did its best to downgrade me; it dubbed me a childhood trauma or worse, and the townspeople began to lose their respect for me. As some had read the novel by Bram Stoker (an Irishman, I ask you!), one fine day they decided to set fire to the castle and crypt, and they’ve been in a shocking state ever since: I’m not what you’d call a handyman. In any case, since the time the Fascists decided I was an anarchist because of my cloak (which sported the traditional red and black), I’ve always been very wary. The bastards executed me and threw me in a common grave, but as we vampires only die when someone thrusts a stake through our hearts or if we expose our skin to the glare of the sun, I immediately revived and flew back to the crypt. I hid there, drinking rats’ blood and nibbling insects until the war ended. I survived the situation as best I could.

The fact is, I’ve become very refined over the centuries and have abandoned some unpopular practices. I’ve not sucked the blood of young girls for years, because I accept it’s not the done thing any more. It’s a barbaric custom. I survive by drinking the blood from the lambs and hens I keep in my yard, and, as all the small farmers have gone to live in the city after selling their land to the property developers, the Barcelona families who spend the summers and weekends here think I’m an eccentric and have invented a bunch of amusing anecdotes about me. That I run around stark naked when there’s a full moon – as if we vampires had nothing better to do. That I’m a crazy artist who fetches high prices in New York (I really should do something with those tubes of sun cream piling up in the kitchen garden). Some reckon I’m a failed fashion designer, no doubt because I’m still wearing the same clothes I wore a couple of centuries ago, and others think that I’m an ecologist. The yard and kitchen garden I had built next to the crypt when the Germans bombed the castle and I was left homeless are indeed misleading. The shed and kitchen garden are for show, since I sleep in the crypt and my stomach can’t cope with solids, but the yard and the animals are needed because I have to get my proteins from somewhere. All in all, my culinary habits aren’t as peculiar as you might think. Or what the hell do people think goes into their butifarra sausages?

Until quite recently, then, my non-life as a vampire was a tranquil affair, and mostly hassle-free. Nevertheless, it all almost went pear-shaped a few months ago, when something happened that really upset me and which, to tell the truth, I still find perplexing.

*

It all began one particularly hot August afternoon. It was almost twilight, and I’d gone out to fly because the crypt was like an oven and nobody could have stood it in there. As the chemist’s on the estate stays open till ten, I decided to pay a visit and buy a few tubes of sun cream. On my way to the shop in the centre of the sparse collection of houses that the spin merchants like to call a “village”, I went down one of the avenues between the villas, which I like because the foliage of the plane trees is very thick and cool. While I was roaming, wondering what I should do next, I was surprised to see graffiti on the west-facing walls of one of the mansions and froze on the spot when I read it. Somebody had scrawled the word VAMPIRE in red paint.

I went around the house, scared stiff, and found a couple more bits of graffiti on the other garden wall. The first said SON OF A WHORE, and the second, YOU’RE A VAMPIRE, SORRIBES! My hair stood on end and I almost fainted. I could hardly believe my eyes: for the first time in many a century, a vampire from elsewhere had established himself in my territory (in fact, it’s not really mine, but I like to pretend it is).

That unknown vampire and I had something in common – my mother had also earned an honest crust exercising the oldest trade in the world – but that was our only similarity. To begin with, this fellow lived in an upmarket mansion and not in a crypt where you could have baked bread at noon. Secondly, this Sorribes was a nomadic vampire, or at least a vampire who liked to travel, which was in itself intriguing, because everyone knows we vampires are territorial creatures and that, other than in exceptional circumstances, we don’t like moving far, let alone going on holiday. We think that’s very vulgar. Besides, as tradition forces us to sleep inside a coffin and directly above the land of our ancestors, travelling is real torture, not to mention the fact we end up paying a fortune in excess baggage. If this guy Sorribes decided to spend his cash this way, that was his choice, but I was worried by the fact that the people living on the Savall golf complex had flushed him out.

The presence of a self-styled vampire in the area could be a problem that would have an impact on me and my routine non-existence. I didn’t know the habits of my colleague, and thus didn’t know if he was a New Vampire or if he implanted his fangs and donned his cloak at twilight before flying off in search of a maiden’s fresh blood. In any case, someone in Savall was clearly on the case. I decided to investigate, to be on the safe side.

As it was dinnertime and I was hungry, I forgot the sun cream and went back to the crypt and drank a lamb. While I was lying in my coffin digesting my meal, I thought up a strategy that would enable me to find out something without attracting too much attention or arousing the suspicions of my neighbours. I hadn’t assumed the shape of a bat for years, but after carefully weighing up all the options I concluded that the best strategy would be to try to slip discreetly in through a window and take a look around. Right away. Thinking I’d take advantage of the fact it was night and that the vampire must have abandoned his nest, I donned my cloak and flew off in the direction of the villa.

I soon discovered I had a problem. Getting my bearings wasn’t at all easy: there were too many aerials, satellite dishes and mobile phones sending out waves left, right and centre. We bats have very sensitive hearing, and my head soon felt like a football with all those waves bouncing around. After crashing into an electricity pole that knocked me out for a while, I decided to forget about flying and walk there like a normal person. As soon as I reached the mansion, I transformed myself back into a bat and started to look for a window so I could fly inside. After circling around and around, I was forced to accept that it was impossible to get in that way. The cunning bastard had air conditioning.

People used to sleep with their windows open in the summer, making it easy to creep in. New technology means that everyone sleeps with their windows shut when it’s hot, so there’s no way to get inside. Yet again defeated by the wonders of progress, I had to recover my human form and force an entry, a delicate operation that’s never been one of my fortes. What’s more, the mansion was full of alarms and security cameras, and finally I had to beat it before the police arrived. I clearly needed to try a different tactic.

The next morning, after I’d consulted my silk-lined pillow, I decided to speak to my friend Sebastià. Sebastià is a local Catalan policeman and we’ve known each other almost forever. As the residential estate has changed Savall into a desirable luxury golf complex and the wealthy are a bunch of paranoids, Sebastià drops by now and again on the pretext that he wants to see if I need anything and to check that all is in order. In fact, I know the summer holiday crowd think I’m rather offbeat and send Sebastià to keep tabs on me. That’s fine as far as I’m concerned.

Sebastià is a fine fellow. He may not be very bright, but he’s pleasant enough and full of common sense, a quality that’s been lacking in these parts recently. He usually comes in his jeep once a week, about 9 a.m., and eats breakfast with me. When he finishes his filled roll and beer (he’s theoretically on duty and isn’t allowed to drink, but he knows I won’t let on), we walk round the garden putting the world to rights. While he gossips, or complains that his wife spends too much with her credit card, I get him a bag of home-grown vegetables, which he says are very tasty because they’re so obviously organic. He insists on paying, I refuse to take his money, though I finally relent. To tell the truth, if it weren’t for Sebastià and his fondness for my vegetables, I don’t how I’d afford my tubes of sun cream.

Thanks to our conversations, I know that he usually goes to Barbes’s bar for a late-morning aperitif. Sebastià had already paid me his regular visit, so I decided to go and see him in the bar and try out my own skills as a detective.

They looked astounded when I walked in, because they know I never set foot in there. It’s a place I avoid, basically because it annoys me that I can’t drink alcohol and because Barbes has a huge mirror hanging over the counter and I’m afraid someone will notice I don’t have a reflection. He also has a few strings of garlic hanging up next to the mirror, either to spice up his cooking or to add a rustic touch, but that’s really not a problem, because all those stories they tell about vampires and garlic are pure supposition. It’s true we’re allergic to the sun, holy water and crosses, but garlic makes no odds. The only drawback is that if you sink a fang into the carotid artery of someone who’s been eating aioli or a garlicky gazpacho it’s really disgusting. The blood of garlic aficionados tastes awful and, what’s more, makes you belch something awful.

I ordered vermouth and olives as routinely as possible and sat next to Sebastià, who was also surprised to see me. I justified my presence by saying I was on my way to the chemist’s to buy painkillers because my back was hurting. We argued for a while about whether lumbago was more painful than kidney stones; the latter finally won out. Sebastià started talking about the water restrictions that locals were having to suffer because of the golf course, and the conversation immediately turned to the holiday crowd, their residential estate and the nuisance they caused. I easily steered it to what was concerning me and whether my friend knew anything about the new vampire who’d set up in town.

“Sebastià, what’s the meaning of the graffiti on the wall of the villa next to the duck pond?” I asked, as deadpan as can be.

“Ah, yes … The Sorribes family!” Sebastià sighed. “A vampire’s moved in, old boy!”

“You already know he’s a vampire?”

“Of course! As soon as he bought the villa, we knew what he was. What gets me,” Sebastià added, chewing an olive, “is that I now have to catch the idiots who painted the graffiti!”

“But if you know he’s a vampire, why not simply kick him out?” I asked, even more perplexed.

“I’d like to, you bet …” he chuckled. But then he suddenly got all serious and shouted, “These sons of bitches have no right to suck our blood!”

“What’s more, you’ve found him out. You know what he is. And thanks to the graffiti, everybody does.”

“I tell you, forget the fucking graffiti!” Then, lowering his voice to a whisper, Sebastià leaned forward. “I’d personally string him up by his balls in the middle of the town square. That would teach him and his ilk a lesson!”

I nodded. I understood how Sebastià was feeling, because in my heyday I used to drive people crazy and stir up similar feelings. Anyway, I decided not to tell him it wasn’t a good idea to string him up by the balls because he’d simply fly off.

“And is this fellow sucking your blood as well?” I’d heard of cases of vampires attacking sturdy, muscular men, but I’d always thought it must be a myth.

“Mine and the blood of everyone who’s got a mortgage!” He sighed yet again. “And if only it were just him! But you’re all right with your little house and garden. You’re set for life!”

“Are you sure there’s nothing you can do?” I insisted. “There must be a way to stop him in his tracks …”

Sebastià shrugged his shoulders and chewed another olive. “The Russians had a bash with their revolution, and look what happened! And the less said about Cuba the better.”

So this Sorribes had wrought havoc in Russia and Cuba, and I was totally oblivious. That was only to be expected; I read Cosmopolitan rather than the broadsheets.

“Do you reckon his wife and children are vampires as well?” I asked, determined to leave the bar as well informed as possible.

“You bet!” Sebastià responded, apparently totally convinced. “You’ve only got to see his wife strutting around the golf club, as if she were a duchess … And their children are vile. If I told you what they get up to at night …”

“I think I can imagine …”

“Those kids will be worse than their parents, you mark my words,” Sebastià concluded.

I conspicuously ate an olive and realized the whole bar was looking at us. I judged it sensible to change tack and talk about more mundane matters while pouring my vermouth on the sly into the pot with the rubber plant, which immediately perked up. When it came to the bill, Sebastià insisted on paying, and, as I’m always broke, I made a token protest but let him do the honours.

When we hit the road, that damned August sun was so blistering I had to rush back into the bar to avoid disintegrating. I used the excuse that my back was hurting, and Sebastià, who’s a real ace, offered to drive me home in his jeep. Once I was home, I immediately went to the crypt to rest because I was smouldering all over. In the jeep I’d noticed my right hand had begun to smell scorched, so I took a painkiller before going to sleep. I also decided it was high time to install air conditioning in the crypt: I’m well aware it’s most inelegant to be sleeping nude in the coffin.

I had nightmares all day. I was out of sorts. I was upset an unknown vampire was sucking my friend’s blood, and decided I must do something. Killing vampires is no easy task, but I was clear that was what I had to do.

The first challenge would be breaking in by day and catching them all asleep. The second would be finding the stake for killing vampires; I’d no idea where I’d left it. I was forced to give the crypt a thorough clean, which took a couple of days because you can’t imagine the junk that piles up over nine centuries. Finally, the stake surfaced in a corner next to the skeleton of my great-great-grandfather, covered in fungi and cobwebs. I cleaned it up and put it in a sports bag, next to the iron sword for decapitation. After transfixing vampires through the heart with a stake, you have the option of beheading them. There’s been a lot of theoretical debate on the subject, but, as these vampires were from elsewhere and unfamiliar with our customs, I thought it better to err on the side of excess. When in doubt, go the whole hog. The sword was rusty and weighed a ton.

I chose a cloudy afternoon when it looked like rain to put my plan into action. I knew they had a maid, because Sebastià had told me, and also that she wasn’t a vampire because the Sorribeses were sucking her blood too. I knocked on the door politely and the maid almost fainted. Sebastià and the other locals were used to my pallor (I’d explained it away one day by claiming that I’d used an anti-acne lotion as a teenager and had never recovered my dark skin), but people who have never seen me before are sometimes frightened by me. As the maid didn’t seem to want to let me in, and looked as if she’d ring the police, I decided hypnosis was my only course of action.

I’d not hypnotized anyone for years. Initially it was an effort, because the girl was hysterical and unfocused, but I succeeded after a few seconds and was able to enter the villa. Hypnosis is supposedly one of the skills that we vampires enjoy, but some are more skilled than others. In my case it’s not easy, as I’ve been cross-eyed since birth, but on this occasion my powers worked. Once I had the maid under control, I questioned her and she revealed that everyone except her, who had to do the ironing, took an afternoon nap. That was all I needed to know.

Stressed out at the idea of killing vampires, I started to look for the cellar, where I imagined the Sorribeses asleep in their coffins, but however much I searched, I couldn’t find a door down to any crypt. I questioned the maid again and was shocked by what I learned.

The house didn’t have a cellar and the family slept in bedrooms on the top floor. O tempora! O mores! Something totally unexpected! However, stranger things have been known. I took a deep breath and headed up the stairs, determined to carry out my plan. I opened the door of a very beguiling bedroom papered in a Laura Ashley floral pattern and immediately felt a shiver of pleasure run down my spine. The air conditioning was full on, and it was like an icebox inside despite the heat in the street. It was exactly the powerful piece of technology I needed in my crypt; I took a mental note of the brand and continued my inspection.

A middle-aged vampire was asleep in the bed, naked under a sheet: she gave me a real thrill. Rather reluctantly, I opened my bag and took out the stake and the sword. As I was surprised that she was sleeping in a bed and not in a coffin, I wanted to check she was one of us, so before starting on my task I lifted the sheet and touched her breast. She was indeed ice-cold. I stuck the stake through her heart before she could wake up, and then beheaded her. A deft, professional blow. Her head rolled across the floor, under the dressing table, and came to rest next to her slippers, which is where I left it spurting blood. I assumed the vampire must have had a feast before falling asleep, because the room was soon splattered in red and we vampires only bleed when digesting. The two youngsters were no problem either, but their room smelled pleasantly of strange herbs that put me on a high and made me want to laugh: while I was sticking the stake into Sorribes I did laugh, and the fool woke up. In fact, his screams rather dampened my spirits. Luckily, that was it.

The Sorribes vampires were history. Sebastià could stop worrying now. I retrieved my stake and sword and returned to my crypt, feeling as pleased as Punch at a job well done. The sight of so much blood had given me an appetite, and I decided to celebrate my feats with a couple of hens and a small lamb. As I was exhausted, I went off to rest in my comfortable coffin, wondering how I’d manage to slip in an electricity cable unnoticed and install air conditioning. That evening I dreamed of that lady vampire’s breasts and at ten woke up with a hard-on.

The following morning Sebastià dropped by, and he didn’t look too happy. I was still wearing the bloodstained shirt, but as Sebastià is red-green colour-blind, I decided to let it slide.

“What’s new, Sebastià? Anything the matter?” I asked, knowing there’d been at least one change in town.

“For God’s sake, haven’t you heard about the disaster at the Sorribes mansion?” he replied, obviously distressed.

“No …”

“Butchery, old boy! Real butchery! They’ve dispatched a contingent of police from Barcelona. The TV people are here as well! I’ve just popped by to tell you to watch out because there’s a madman around.”

“A madman?” I asked, taken aback.

“A very dangerous madman. Yesterday someone broke into the Sorribes villa and stabbed the lot of them. Chopped their heads off as well. The four of them: husband, wife and two kids. This morning the postman found the maid in a state of shock and discovered the corpses.” He added in a worried voice, “This is a psychopath at work!”

“But he was a vampire …” I replied warily.

“Vampire or not, this was barbaric!” countered Sebastià indignantly.

“You said he was sucking your blood …”

“Yes … But they’ve been done in so brutally!” He went on, thinking aloud. “I expect it’s one of those gangs from Eastern Europe …”

“I’m at a loss for words. You’ve chilled me to the bone. If you pricked me now, you’d not get a drop of blood out of me!”

“I know how you feel. In a case like this, you don’t know what to say. Poor family! If you’d seen them …”

I was really confused. I thought Sebastià would be pleased I’d destroyed that colony of bloodsucking vampires, but that clearly wasn’t the case. Something had gone wrong.

“Keep a watch out,” he shouted as he left. “Keep your eyes peeled. And change that shirt, for Christ’s sake. It’s a mess!”

*

It’s obvious I’m getting past it: there’s no way I can understand these mortals. I’ve probably spent too long roaming this benighted world and the time has come to bid farewell. Basically, it’s only fun being immortal if, in fact, you’re not, and I’ve felt a little out of place for a couple of centuries amid so much modernity. What’s the fun in being a vampire if people aren’t frightened any more and the categorical imperative doesn’t allow you to go around chomping on necks? What’s the point in being immortal if you can’t enjoy a bottle of Dom Pérignon or go to the Botafumeiro and have a proper shellfish blowout? These are the questions I’ve been asking myself of late, and I can find no answers. Perhaps the bottom line is that being a vampire isn’t so wonderful. It’s obvious I really got my wires crossed over the Sorribeses. I don’t mean that Savall ought to organize a homage to me or name a street after me (though I don’t see why not), but frankly I was expecting a different reaction. At the very least, I thought that Sebastià would be thrilled to bits.

At any rate, I did what a vampire had to do, and my conscience is clear. And isn’t that what it’s really all about? As my mother used to tell customers who couldn’t get it up, at the end of the day, it’s the thought that counts.