Stainless

by Todd Grimson

  The next owner, Alfred Ulman, a half-Jewish movie producer, was reputedly homosexual. His wife, Minerva, often appeared in men’s clothes, sporting a cigarette holder, sometimes a riding crop. Ulman’s best friend, who lived at the house for a while, Laszlo Bloch, was later, retrospectively, thought to have been a Nazi agent. In any case, after a decade of extravagant masquerade parties and increasing alcoholism, Alfred Ulman shot himself in 1942. Minerva lingered on, in the company of her constant companion, the British poetess Jo Spurgeon, until 1954. Minerva died of asthma.

  The house then remained on the market, empty, until 1958. The reclusive heiress Caroline Maria Severance purchased it, moving in with her lover, the classical pianist, Anton Roubatieff. Possibly they were married, a year or two earlier, in Mexico. Their daughter, Olga, was most likely born in 1956. Nothing much is known for several years, except that the couple was seldom seen. In 1967 or so, Roubatieff disappeared, or left. Caroline Severance was rumored to be a morphine addict who never ventured out during the day. She died in 1973, under somewhat mysterious circumstances. According to Olga and her hippie friends, Caroline committed suicide, intentionally overdosing, allegedly driven to it by untreatable pain resulting from a fall off a horse in her youth. She had degenerative disc disease, Olga said. Unfortunately, none of this could be verified, because Olga burned her mother’s body, following, she said, instructions left her in the suicide note. She also, however, set fire to the note. Whatever the truth may have been, Olga’s behavior apparently was bizarre, and she was committed to a psychiatric clinic for the next three years.

  In the meantime, representatives of the Severance family, coming from Vermont, provided for Olga Roubatieff by selling the house, and establishing a trust.

  In 1975, the house came into the possession of the painter Richard Fabian, who was always able to sell his critically despised landscapes and portraits, but who lived off the money of his wife, Cerise. Richard Fabian was fiercely right wing, a member for some time of a paramilitary unit of the Minutemen. He worried about racial purity, Communism, and the manipulations of American culture by the Jews. If the art world generally saw his work as beneath criticism, he met this indifference with a vitriolic hatred centered on the lack, as he saw it, of “good drawing skills.” After Cerise died in a car wreck in 1984, Fabian turned solitary, and was bankrupt by the time he died in 1991. His long-estranged son Mark, working for NASA in Florida, married with two children, wanted nothing to do with the house or its contents. He gave it up for a song to Oswald Neff, the real estate agent, who’s known Chase Blessington for many years.

  Discovering all the strange antiques in the basement, Neff contacted Chase, thinking of the latter’s longtime interest in American folk art. Neff, trying not to rub a skin cancer on the bridge of his nose, was shocked when Chase actually wanted to buy the whole thing. Neff is the one who took an interest in discovering what he could of the history of the place, intrigued by his memory of the Severance woman’s death. He told Chase what he knew, just to pass the time of day, and the latter wanted more.

  “This place has possibilities,” Chase said, in the rear living room. “I feel something here.”

  He and Sabrina have had all of the rooms redecorated. Sabrina has a talent for this. The “junk” in the basement rooms has been left alone. Chase wants time to get used to it. All of the life-size figures, made of metal or wood, painted. Some seem ready to move. It seems as if Richard Fabian must have made them, in his last few years, when he was alone.

  Chase says, “When I went to Georgia, I ate sliced ham, greens and navy beans, cornbread with honey. Drank moonshine out of a jar. I did business with a man named Turnipseed. In Atlanta I introduced Turnipseed to my friend Raymond Singh, from Bombay.”

  They are in the basement, cursorily examining the figures, some of which have tape recorders or radio speakers in their heads. Sabrina is somewhat bored.

  “Size double-A batteries,” Chase announces. “Then we’ll find out what they have to say.”

  “I’m not sure I want to know. They give me the creeps.”

  Several of the figures have names. That is, engraved plaques either on the base or on little chains, hanging around their necks. “Lady Maude.” “Felix.” “Sam Bell.” Others are archetypes, like The Tattooed Man. The Snake Lady. The Knife Thrower. The Old Black Man with a White Beard. Bikini Girl. Carved and painted wood with clothing and movable joints. The feet are often rudimentary, in one case actual wheels. (Spaceman.)

  There are many canvases stacked against the walls. Fabian’s son doesn’t want them. He presumably has good reasons for his feelings about his dad.

  Sabrina is looking at the paintings idly, with no particular interest, when Chase goes into the wine cellar. There are no real finds in there, but he has to check once more.

  Some of these landscapes aren’t so bad. Here’s one that reminds Sabrina of rural Pennsylvania, where she’s never actually been. There’s something sort of ominous about these black-faced merino sheep. This isn’t really a very friendly landscape. The acid yellow sun looks poisonous, with a bit of a halo, the yellow sun itself outlined in black. The sky is absolutely blue, light blue, but the day seems dark. Unmoving. These asymmetric trees look unnatural, created rather than grown. The only inhabitants are these two cream-colored big sheep, with black faces and feet, thick coats. Sabrina does not think that human beings are welcome in their world.

  For some reason it brings to mind how Chase began, several weeks ago, to invoke “the late Tolstoy” as a model for his behavior. He would bring it up at dinners or with anyone, with people high in the U.S. government, with entertainment people, movie people, or with the Japanese. He would say, “When I want to see which way to go, what to do, I try to imagine what the late Tolstoy would have to say.” Or: “When I’m faced with a difficult problem, I try to think of the late Tolstoy.” Or, when told about someone’s situation, maybe how that person had screwed up, Chase would put on a suitably serious expression, shake his head, and say, “It might have helped him if he’d stopped a moment and considered: What would the late Tolstoy have done?”

  Chase would admit, if questioned, that he had never read much Tolstoy. He would explain that this did not disqualify him from having an impression, which he trusted, as to what was contained in his work and thought. Just to say “the late Tolstoy” conjured up an image, did it not? You didn’t necessarily have to read the books. The few remembered biographical details, and the aura surrounding the closed books—a great deal could be transmitted in this way.

  The explanation never failed to please. And the rare bibliophile who was intimately familiar with “the late Tolstoy” seemed to find the reference—just bringing up such a concept—sort of inspirational, or thought-provoking, and Chase knew when to keep his mouth shut, when it was better to simply raise an eyebrow, or nod, or say, “That’s true.”

  Now, however, the late Tolstoy seems to have run his course. These sheep remind Sabrina of the old man, how he dressed like a peasant, raging about what he saw as various refusals to look at or tell the truth. If peasants and children did not appreciate Chopin, for instance, then there was something wrong with Chopin. Simplicity was all that mattered. Simplicity meant unmediated truth. And yes, Sabrina has read Anna Karenina, and most of War and Peace. (She skipped some of the battle scenes and movements of troops.) Tolstoy could be one of these silent, possibly malevolent, mysterious, immovable sheep.

  “Sabrina, come in here!” Chase appears, just for a moment, a smudge of dirt on his forehead, like ashes, eyes shining. “I’ve found a secret passage!”

  She immediately follows him, to see. He shows her how by turning—that is, revolving—this one seemingly stuck-in-place but uncorked and empty wine bottle, the wall behind him opens, almost silently. You might not even notice unless you were quick. If, after turning the bottle, you push it in … the wall stays open.

  “I don’t know, Chase. What if it closes on us after we go in?”

  �
�We’ll wedge something in here.” He moves a box, and fetches a flashlight. Irrepressibly, he is delighted.

  He goes in first, and when he finds a light switch, and it works—well, Sabrina’s too curious, she can’t resist.

  This seems to be nothing more than a bare, cement-block walled passage, turning a corner, leading to a door. A big, carved wooden door. The single naked lightbulb behind them doesn’t illuminate things very well over here. It’s dim.

  “Look, there’s a key in the lock. Isn’t this incredible?” Chase is almost whispering. Sabrina nods. She’s excited, but part of this excitement arises with fear. She can see that Chase feels it too. He hesitates, then finally turns the key. He reaches for the door. The door opens, swinging inwards. They cautiously go in.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  No light switch is found in the secret room, but there is a large candelabra, with red candles halfway burned down, cobwebs connecting everything … Sabrina doesn’t want to be left here alone, so she goes and returns with wooden matches. The candles are lit.

  This room is filled with all kinds of things, but dominated by a very large fine dark wooden box, carved, like a puzzle-box somehow. It is, oddly, wrapped round with chains.

  Chase laughs. “This is something, isn’t it? What do you think is in there?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t understand the chains.” Sabrina doesn’t like it, actually, yet the wavering glow of candlelight helps make the adventure inevitable, or unavoidable, and she is not without physical daring. A part of her is definitely enlivened by risk.

  “I’m pretty good with locks,” Chase says, and if he says so he probably is. He studies this padlock, takes out his wallet, brings forth an iron needle or pin.

  Other boxes are all around. Sabrina sees, in the uncertain, untrustworthy light, many different items, one by one. An old, toy gas station, out of metal, with gas pumps and lift. A banjo with slack strings. A set of wooden bowling pins, paint peeling off. A framed, brown photograph of Berlin in 1932. In another box, she picks up some old magazines, one of a nudist colony … seeing this sickens her, she doesn’t know why. The woman standing there, naked, full frontal, in maybe 1953.

  She opens, cautiously, a big trunk, and discovers costumes, they smell ancient, but someone left a sachet in here. The extravagant fabrics feel as if she ought not touch them, they come from another world, a lost world.

  Yet there seems no going back.

  Costume jewelry, necklace upon necklace of faux-pearls, shiny silver beads, more delicate stuff, gold filigree. One red piece of glass catches the light and seems alive, red like she’s never conceived of red before. Sabrina is beguiled, and slowed, dulled, made old. But she is fascinated.

  “Chase, look.” She points out that on the wall above him, an outsize ragged black cross has been painted, or traced with a burning torch.

  “I’ve got it,” he says, and opens the padlock. He pauses, looking straight at her. She comes to him, and they begin unwinding the chain. It makes a noise hitting the floor, it rattles and clanks.

  The box itself—it’s hard to see how it opens. It’s carved in such a way, it’s hard to see a clear line that might be a break, indicating a lid. They touch it, run their hands over it, driven now to solve this, exchanging not a word.

  Chase presses on some little tab, it gives, and he now thinks he sees how it works. He pulls up, and pushes, and Sabrina helps him. After the first little bit, it moves easily, without creaking.

  Within, lying on his back. There reclines a man. He opens his eyes.

  “No!” Sabrina exclaims, and starts to retreat. But her legs feel heavy, her will is too weak. She turns to look, to see Chase, to exhort him, and the vampire catches her eye. She knows, it’s like she knew this was coming as soon as they came into this room. She tries to say, “Please,” and he knows what she’s thinking, and smiles. Not without mercy, perhaps. Chase, meanwhile, is going nowhere. As soon as he had the chance, he looked down deep into those black, bottomless eyes.

  “I’ve been dreaming about you for a long time,” the man says, standing by the side of his box. “I want to know all about you. I haven’t had anyone to talk to for such a long time. I’ve slept, they put me to sleep, but now I’ve been blessed, you’ve awakened me from my lonely sleep. You cannot believe how much I love you for this. You saved me. Now I will save you.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  The sunlight was of course a prime factor in Biograph and other early studios locating themselves in Los Angeles—another important reason was that it was close to Mexico, and so if one wished to flee subpoena servers, detectives, or saboteurs hired by Thomas Alva Edison’s Trust, heading across the border was an option easily and frequently used.

  David Henry Reid was drawn here from New York, where he had appeared with no particular distinction on the stage. There had been trouble, complications, and David had been glad to escape, to have some reason to come to California. As it turned out, he was much more effective on film than he had ever been on stage. He did not work with D. W. Griffith, but instead acted for Colonel John Bascombe, appearing as the lead in a number of features between 1910 and 1912. The Devil’s Eye, Blind Love (in which he played a blind man), The Sultan’s Spell, Thread of Fate, The Final Sin, and lastly, Rapture of the Night, after which he disappeared. Given the nature of actors, no one worried about or missed him too much. There were plenty more young men with pretensions to take his place.

  David had met a woman, someone who enchanted him, appearing only at night, refusing to talk about herself or where she came from. They walked together, late, past the Mission San Gabriel. Up Spring Street. David talked to her about his days in the theater, exaggerating, claiming to have played Hamlet to much acclaim. He quoted poetry to her while they gazed upwards at the stars. He spoke about the new cinema, and how different it was. He waxed enthusiastic about the films he had been in. Justine, he was disappointed to understand, had not seen one.

  What he suspected, after several such meetings, was that she was the mistress of some rich older man. She had become bored with being a cloistered flower, and in David she sought, with a certain licentiousness, someone better looking, more her own age, who would not expect matrimony. David found this all reasonable, and highly worthy of his time.

  Finally, she asked to visit his lodgings. He felt sure that tonight they would consummate the affair. It was lucky, too, because instead of staying in that wretched boarding house, for the last week he had been watching over a friend’s bungalow, while the friend and his wife traveled to Santa Fe.

  The orange and lemon trees outside, the avocados and date palms—these David showed off, in the moonlight, quite as if they were his own. Justine did not seem especially impressed, and it suddenly occurred to him, because of her accent, that she was a Countess, exiled from France, to Martinique, and now here. An adulterous passion had ruined her. This accounted for her air of melancholy—perhaps she took opium to quench her sorrows, to forget! David found this conjured-up fallen woman terrifically exciting. Once inside the bungalow, he sought to kiss Justine, only to find that his passion … swirled around him, it was as if he was falling from a great height while yet standing upright. It was a sweet pain, such a sweet pain, with sharp fangs biting ever more deeply into what felt like a huge, gaping dark wound. He didn’t understand, and he dreamed, he saw himself standing on the battlements of a castle, in winter, in Russia or someplace more strange. Down below was a river, covered with a thin sheet of ice. The day was heavy and cold, there was snow, and David was perhaps a hundred feet above the water, debating when (not whether or not, but just when) to dive into this river, feet first, breaking through the ice like glass, splintering shards of blue and gold and silver, purple and gray. The air was absolutely hushed, unearthly it was so still.

  If the maids had come as usual the next day, they would have found David’s dead body, but they had left town because their mother was sick. They had explained this to David, but his Spanish was not so good as he pretend
ed, he had nodded without understanding, and so had not engaged anyone to take their place.

  Colonel Bascombe assumed he was drunk, or had woman trouble; David had struck Bascombe as rather that sort. So the corpse lay undisturbed for three days and three nights. When it awakened, gradually, it did not know what it had become. It did not know that word. Everything was different, however. The new vampire was wracked with painful appetites: he kept vomiting, but nothing came up. Then he looked out the window, and he could see so far into the night, so far, so many things that had been invisible before.

  When Justine came in, it was as if he was saved, he had been forsaken and lost and now all would come clear. She would help him, together they would find a way.

  She said, “I am too late,” and he saw that she carried a knife. Somehow he knew at once that she had meant to kill him, to save him from this torment, this in-between state of the soul.

  She wanted nothing to do with him now. She left, he could not stop her, and he did not see her again for many years. In the meantime, on his own, he learned to survive.

  When he saw Justine, in a nightclub, in 1939, he found himself transfixed with love. She recognized him, of course, though he had changed. He spoke to her. He said, “Why don’t we go out, as we once did, and look at the stars?”

  Her eyes appraised him. It was heartbreaking. He meant nothing to her, he saw. She was not even curious about him. There was nothing to do, in such a public place, but watch her leave with her “date.”

  One other time, he caught a glimpse of her, in the sixties, in a turbulent mob scene, but he could not reach her. He is sure that she thinks of him sometimes. He is sure that she is still around. He will find her, and they will be united.