I wandered empty and alone. The moon was low in the sky, and my shadow trailed at my heels. But not for long. Soon the clouds gathered, blacker than the night, and it began to rain. A real spring rain, heavy and falling fast. Despite my hood I quickly became soaked to the skin. My wandering might have seemed aimless, but it turned out not to be. When I found myself in front of the tavern I knew so well I realized it had been my destination all along.
The rain was pouring down, and I made my way through sheets of water. I knocked three times with the heavy brass ring, waited, knocked again twice, waited, and then knocked twice more. The door swung back on its creaking hinges.
The faces were all familiar. I’d often seen them of a Friday evening. Just the right time for all those who have fallen away from faith and family. They might go drinking and whoring every night of the week, and probably did, but nothing was so sweet as breaking the Sabbath. They knew it’s not enough simply to sin: you have to plan your sinning not just go about it randomly. Not only do you need to justify your sinning in advance, you need to be angry that others don’t join you, and to believe that what you’re doing is noble and proper. And to keep at it until the need for sin – a need which, no matter what others may say, is not of the body but of the spirit – grows into a new religion with its own priests and its own philosophers who are responsible for thinking up yet more ways to sin.
Such people never repent. It’s easy to beat your breast over a night here and there, a woman here, a man there, a gold piece or two; it’s not at all easy to feel sorry because of the very meaning of your life.
I took a quick look around: some drunkards and whores, two sailors, some of Barabbas’s henchmen, one spy for the Romans and one spy for the Sanhedrin. I could tell they were spies by how well they were dressed and how poorly they were drinking: the service may have provided their tunics, but the drinks were coming out of their own pockets. The imperial spy was practically regimental in his crisp Caesar cut, while the spy for the Sanhedrin was trying hard not to break the Sabbath any more than necessary. He kept calling the tavern-keeper to fill his small clay goblet from the great jug of wine.
I sat at an empty table and ordered some sweet Samarian wine. The wench brought it right away. It was an inferior wine, watered down, and the night was only just beginning. I ordered more, for the longer the dark lasted, the less it would matter how much water and how much wine was served. That’s how it always goes, whether new wineskins or old.
At the next table sat a sailor, regaling two drunkards and a whore with tales. What was he doing so far from the sea? Lying his way from one place to another in hopes of wine, something to do at night, passing the time – what else?
I knew she wouldn’t be there yet. How well I remembered her time, the late evening, after the day’s work was done, when she’d come to make merry. Only this day had brought no work. Nor would there be any merry-making. But I knew she would still come, for habit is a refuge like no other.
‘Call me Ishmael,’ said the sailor.
‘I know that story,’ I remarked. ‘It’s long and dull.’
He ignored me, continuing his tale. The others listened raptly.
I called for more wine. I didn’t want to get drunk, so I merely sipped it. But I was starting to get a headache. From the stale air in the tavern. From the change in the weather. It was always changing. And the sailor was going on and on. I stood up and spoke to the sailor’s audience.
‘Just so you know, the whale gets it in the end.’
He moved to strike me, but I dodged him. Everyone stood up. The tavern-keeper stepped between us. A jug fell. Curses flew. The other sailor came at me. A whore was laughing. Barabbas’s men had their hands on the daggers at their breasts. The spies were taking it all in. The whore laughed again. The sailors looked at each other and nodded. The tale-teller pulled out a crooked knife.
And then she was at the door. Hair unbound, wet. Dripping with rain. Her eyes with the same old fire in them. The hour was mine.
The sailor spoke her name in a low voice. ‘Mary.’
Mary. Maria. Maria Augusta. She lay there in all her helplessness. How does that Serb put it in that poem they’re always quoting? She sleeps, perhaps. / Her eyes outside all evil. But the vampire wouldn’t let her. And, outside, evil was standing watch. The red count sat beside me, quite unconcerned. He was twirling one of the many curls of his red wig.
‘Herr Graf,’ I said, ‘it will be easier to bear our guard duty with some conversation rather than in silence.’
‘But if we’re talking we won’t be able to hear the enemy sneaking up on us,’ he answered cannily.
‘The dangerous enemies are the ones who can’t be heard, and I dare say vampires move without making a sound. So let’s at least talk a bit, for fear is always sharper in silence. Why, all of these new stories coming out in German, the ones you call Gothic – the terrifying bits have no dialogue at all, just dark and stormy descriptions. As soon as the sun comes up or the characters pluck up their courage, that’s when you get direct speech.
‘What shall we talk about?’ he asked politely. ‘About Wittgenstein.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘The one who came to investigate the cistern.’
‘Ah, you mean Count Wittgenau.’
It’s all in the name, I thought; even a rose would reek if it were called stinkweed.
‘The count had discovered … Well, I think I can go ahead and tell you. I mean, it hardly matters now … So, the count had found out, don’t ask me how, that the regent had arranged with the Turks, in exchange for the right sum of gold, to deliver Serbia into their hands. He’d been told – Count Wittgenau, I mean – that the regent’s mistresses and hunting companions and drinking bouts were costing him more than he could wring out of Serbia in taxes. Serbia is a poor country…’
‘Mistresses and companions are rich indulgences,’ I said helpfully.
‘What? I suppose. I wouldn’t know. In any case –’
‘And the world is all that is the case,’ I added.
‘What? I don’t know that one. In any event, Count Wittgenau found out that the regent had hidden the gold in that cistern at Kalemegdan. Several times he tried to get to the bottom of it, in both senses of the word, but the cistern is well guarded. He quickly saw that it would be impossible to enter the cistern from the fortress. But he also quickly heard of the old Roman aqueduct that runs from some village near Belgrade all the way to the cistern at Kalemegdan. The aqueduct is partly underground and partly above. It’s encased in brick along its entire length, and is mostly a canal with water no deeper than the average man’s height. Some Serbs told the count where to go outside the city in order to enter the aqueduct, and what turnings to take along the various conduits in order to reach the fortress. One early morning the count rode out of Belgrade. He was disguised as a tax-collector…’
‘Not a very wise choice.’
‘He was escorted by several soldiers. They went slowly, for it had to appear that they were travelling far from the capital, and yet they didn’t want to go out of their way. They spent the night at an inn not far from the watermill. The next morning the count was nowhere to be found, and the soldiers were drunk and seemed to remember nothing. The investigation, carried out at the regent’s orders, also discovered nothing. This came as no surprise to us in Vienna. What did surprise us was the sudden reappearance of Wittgenau’s body six months later at the same inn where he’d gone missing. The corpse was perfectly preserved, as though not long dead. In fact, it almost seemed alive. Vampire-like. Now do you understand? Myself, I’m just beginning to understand. The regent directed that the body be prepared for Christian burial, but, in fact, he ordered that a stake be driven through its heart, as we ourselves recently witnessed, and that it be burned. And so we lost our most important piece of evidence.’
‘Evidence that the regent was a traitor or that the count was a vampire?’
‘The two are not mutually exclusive.’
The moon had come back out.
‘You wouldn’t really seize a vampire as evidence and take it back to Vienna?’
‘Certainly. How else to prove the existence of vampires other than by showing the emperor a genuine specimen?’
‘But then the vampires would spread!’
‘Ah, but we’re men of science and would keep matters under strict control. But we could never allow science and emperor to be deprived of such an important discovery.’
‘Keeping that control would give you the very devil of a time.’
‘The Devil is beyond our purview. You mistake me.’
‘You …’ I sputtered. ‘If you were to find another vampire, you mean you would pack it up and ship it off to Vienna?’
‘Without a second thought!’
‘Why didn’t you then, when we found Sava Savanović?’
‘We couldn’t, not in front of all those peasants. But that’s why we ordered Schmidlin not to cover the vampire’s mouth with his hand so that the leptirak could fly free and …’
I jumped on him and seized him by the neck, shouting. ‘You … madmen … turning the whole world into vampires … the final judgement … final judgement …’
He was thrashing about, trying to kick me away, to bite me, but I squeezed and I squeezed and I squeezed. My hands and fingers hurt. I gritted my teeth. My nostrils flared. I hated him. He struck at my head with his fists, his wig fell off, and I was strangling him. Let the vampires out of Serbia. Conquer everything in their path. And I should come to an end for science! My whole world come to an end!
Wasn’t it Socrates who said Ego scire me non scirem, meaning ‘The science did not teach me anything’?
He didn’t struggle long. The moment came when he just slumped. I let go of him, and he fell to the ground and lay there.
The vampires are not getting out of Serbia, not while I’m still alive.