Tourmaline

by Paul Park

  There was a scurrying in the wall. The house was overrun with vermin and stray cats. In the dining room the baroness discovered what she was looking for, a painted portrait of the vampire mounted on a wall above a rubble of broken plaster. She lit the face within the circle of the lantern's eye. There he was. He had the same face as Zelea Codreanu, the same lustrous eyes and fat red lips.

  The house was now a shrine for the worship of Hecate, banned by the order of the German government. The baroness herself had signed the order, forwarded from the Committee for Roumanian Affairs. The locations of the cult had now withdrawn from public view. There was a witch's circle drawn in chalk on the bare floorboards underneath the painting. There were stubs of candles and the stiff body of a rat, hung from a piece of lath thrust through the wall. Its desiccated belly was full of coins and nails.

  The baroness had brought some of her own paraphernalia, including the tourmaline, which she gripped against her chest. "Gnose sauton," she began, and then continued for a long time in the Greek language. The air was dense and thick. No draft or current threatened the lantern or disturbed the flames from the candle stubs that she now stooped to light.

  Always the waiting was tedious as she murmured her charms and listened to the scratching in the walls. Not having eaten much at dinner, she was hungry and her throat was dry. It was long past midnight when she heard a creak outside the door and caught a glimpse of a girlish shadow. She addressed her in the language of the dead. "Oh, my dear—please come. Livia—is that your name? Your father has told me how beautiful you are. Please let me see. I've brought a gift for you."

  In the center of the witch's circle, surrounded by candlelight, she had laid the presentation necklace of the jeweler's guild, given to her that evening after a series of brief speeches. It was made of feldspar and yellow diamonds, woven together on a platinum chain.

  ALSO PAST MIDNIGHT, WHILE THE baroness enticed Livia Hirscher under the light, ths vampire came to Insula Calia with his men. With muffled oarlocks they had rowed upstream from the village of Chiscani on the western bank. When he'd felt the presence of the ghost in the salt chamber, then he'd guessed what he would find.

  Under the fat yellow moon the four boats pulled out of the main current and around to the stone landing on the east side of the island. They came ashore at the stone dock where they tied the boats up to the iron rings. Zelea Codreanu was the first ashore.

  Above him rose the crest of the small hill. All was in darkness. While the men waited for his signal, he raised his delicate nose into the night air. That night they were hunting the white tyger. They had brought nets and spears because they wanted to capture her alive.

  The vampire never slept. By day he pored and fussed over dry papers, wearing his gray civil-service uniform. But at night he allowed himself more elegant fabrics. He wore a black silk shirt and leather pants. A strip of cloth was knotted around his upper arm, bearing the insignium of his political party, the Legion of Aphrodite: a phoenix rising from the ashes of its nest.

  And he had brought his legionaries, the usual mix of unemployed stevedores and fishermen from the port of Galati. They had accompanied him before on various raids. Now they climbed ashore, nineteen ragged barefoot men and boys. Some carried torches, bundles of kerosene-saturated burlap on the tops of poles, which he now lit with his cigarette lighter as they clustered around, despite the risk of fire in the dry reeds. "Men," he whispered, "I know you would not hesitate to shed your blood for Great Roumania and what is right. We're here to apprehend a criminal. Have a care, but she is only a girl, doubtless asleep, one of a parasitic race of so-called aristocrats who have sucked the life of our dear country, kept us all in poverty and shame. . . ."

  BUT MIRANDA WAS NOT ASLEEP. She was in the white salt chamber with the seven-metal mirror in her hands.

  Then she let it drop. In a moment she felt too confined in that small space. And the lamp burned too bright for her new eyes. She'd lost sight of the rat and couldn't hear its squeaking. Had it escaped as well?

  Miranda ducked her head into the low tunnel and scrambled out into the night. Above her was the golden moon. She climbed out of the dell onto the ridge and looked down to see the torchlight gathered at the dock. She was no longer afraid. Now I have lost everything, she thought. And so she came walking down the forest path, alive to every birdsong and whisper until she stood on the dry slope above the legionaries as they came ashore. Her eyes had settled into a different kind of vision. She saw clearly in the dark, a low palette of blacks and brights and grays, and she was aware of tiny movements.

  The men, by contrast, saw her indistinctly, and to some of them she seemed to hang above them like a brooding and expectant beast, poised to jump. They had guns but did not use them. When she came down the slope they pulled away, trapping her in a circle of light. None would approach her. And to her it seemed as if they were the beasts, not she, and they were cringing in silence when she moved, as if afraid she might notice them. Though some of them were shouting, and Zelea Codreanu was telling them what to do, Miranda heard nothing of all that. But she was surrounded by a ring of tiny squeaks and groans she heard over the roaring in her ears, the pumping of her heart. Their faces were inhuman, distorted not just by thuggishness and fear, but by a new kind of nature. In each of them she could see a spirit animal scratching and struggling to get out, as if caught in a transparent human bag. In seme cases the membrane had already peeled away, revealing the stalklike eyes and active mandibles of insects and shellfish or the unformed faces of baby animals, as if seen through a splitting caul.

  Only Codreanu had kept his human shape. Or it was as if the caul had ripped to show the same face underneath, made shiny and new and even more beautiful. Pale skin tinged golden in the torchlight, soft, long-lashed eyes, red lips that were open now to cry out exhortations and political rants. But it was as if the shell that had surrounded these words had also cracked apart, revealing something soft and quiet. The Roumanian words had cracked apart to reveal a core of French: "Longtemps j'attendais—now I have you."

  Roumanian was the language of Zelea Codreanu. But the vampire spoke in French. Miranda looked up at the moon. With her new, quick eyes she saw a bird fluttering overhead, and with her new ears she heard a voice that might have been inside herself. "Don't be afraid." But she was not afraid.

  She reached out her hand, which was indistinct to her. But she could see the claws. She could feel the movement of her joints and muscles. She could hear the pounding of her heart. She stepped into the grip of a young man and with a sweep of her hand she slit the membrane that covered him from top to bottom. The bag deflated and collapsed around an animal that was neither large nor fierce, a little dog that yipped and complained when she reached down to grab him underneath the belly and flip him into the air, into the water. A long pole with a sharpened end clattered to the stones.

  All of them—bugs, beasts, and scuttling crabs—now spread away from her into the dark. They were the frightened ones, and it was right they should be frightened. She leaped after them, grabbing them and throwing them aside. Flung down, one of the torches made a fire in the small dry grass. Through its light she saw the vampire start away, running down the flat spine of the island toward its low south end. But in a bramble patch he tripped and fell, and she was on him.

  She turned him over. He was weak under her hands. He also was afraid and she could feel it. The moon shone in his face. His fear was like a tremor in his flesh. It thrilled under her fingers while she waited to do—what? Her hands were stiff with power while she waited to do—what?

  Zelea Codreanu lay on his back. He was a man in his early thirties with pale skin under which she now saw a blush of color. His blood was rising to the surface. He opened his lips and she could see his teeth, smell his breath. In an instant she remembered all the small things she had heard about him during the previous days, how he'd been born into a peasant family in Galati. How he'd been taken in by the Sisters of Diana and sent to the temple
school where he'd excelled.

  Not another one, Miranda thought. Not after the policeman in the garden of the Russian consulate—as she looked down she could see her hands again. There was a change, and the vampire understood it. His eyes opened, and with a surge of strength he turned her over and put his hands around her throat. "Ca-y-est maintenant," he whispered. "Let me."

  She had hesitated too long. Now his red lips were near her own. One hand was on her throat, while with the other he was touching her on the neck and shoulders. But she was not frightened, though the vampire's thumb had pressed into her windpipe. She had resources, wells of power and disgust. But she couldn't breathe. Her hands pulled uselessly at the vampire's hands; his mouth was near her own. "Is this what you like?" he murmured, before he bit her on the lips, drawing blood.

  They lay in the short grass above the beach. Miranda could hear the susurration of the river. And then something else. "Papa! Papa! Est-ce que c'est vraiment vous? Ah, comme je vous cherchais—how I was looking for you!"

  A girl stood on the riverbank below where they lay in the dry grass. "Papa, what are you doing—do you want to make me jealous? Who is she, please?"

  Miranda felt the vampire's grip loosen on her neck, slippery now with sweat. She saw him raise his head, and so she twisted underneath him, batted at his hands. At first she didn't think he recognized the girl. But then a flicker of something passed across his face. "Livia," he murmured.

  "Papa, is this how you repay me? After I have given you so much?" The girl had climbed up the slope and stood above them now. Her saturated dress trailed behind her. Weeds hung from her wet hair. She carried a knife with a serrated blade. Around her throat shone a gaudy necklace, alternating yellow and gray stones.

  Down by the dock the torch had lit a fire. Miranda saw the girl by the light of a smoky fire, which was spreading through the drought-starved reeds. Miranda had turned her head so that her cheek was against the stones and she could breathe. She studied the girl's old-fashioned hook-and-eye-laced boots.

  Miranda pushed up and pushed away with all her strength, and she was free. She saw the gream of the blade as the girl raised it up. The vampire also raised his hands to protect himself. The girl had grabbed him by his long hair. Then she was hacking at his face with her knife; Miranda rolled away over the stones and staggered up. Beyond the struggling figures, the fire had begun to spread up the east slope of the hill toward the dell and the salt cave. Ludu Rat-tooth was chained there on the salt throne.

  It was Miranda's instinct to escape, to run away. Whoever she was, wherever she had come from, the girl in the high boots didn't need her help. The vampire was on his knees now as the girl cut him with the knife. Miranda backed away from them. And then she turned and staggered up the hill. But she stopped when she heard the voice, whether the brandywine bird or else something internal—"You must fetch him."

  In her mind she caught a glimpse of Ludu Rat-tooth, locked and chained. The fire was burning in the dry underbrush. The Gypsy girl was her first duty and Mirandi continued up, climbing where the grass was green. Then she stopped again. "Go back," said the voice. "Fetch him. This is your chance."

  Twenty feet above the riverbank she turned around. Below her she could see the vampire's body sprawled out on the pebbles. Beyond it the girl had waded out into the water. She stood with the water around her thighs. She had her back to Miranda and was staring out over the calm dark river, lit now with reflections from the fire.

  "Don't worry about her," said the voice.

  That was bad advice. As Miranda stumbled down again, Livia Hirscher turned in the water and came to shore. The fire burned in patches over the low end of the island. The air was full of smoke. In her big wet dress she flounced ashore and met Miranda at her father's body. Jealous, she was snarling more like a wild beast than a human being. But then the brandywine bird flew around her head, pecking at her eyes. And she was flailing at it with the knife until her slashing strokes unbalanced her—her wet leather boots, the yards of wet cloth around her legs. She fell to her hands and knees with the bird still in her hair, while Miranda dragged the vampire by its wrist. She pulled it through the high grass. Now she knew what she was doing. Mary Magdalene had locked this creature in a prison for a thousand years.

  But Mary Magdalene, doubtless, had been muscular and tall. It was hard work for Miranda to move the body a few yards. And she wouldn't have managed it if she had not felt the body change under her hand, diminish and dry out. The wrist clenched in her fingers grew thin as bone—she didn't look back. She climbed from the west side of the hill and found the path. There were the cedar posts, the baskets and bedrolls. Below her the fire struggled and spread, and the air was full of smoke. She threw the body down the slope into the dell, then staggered after it and dragged it to the entrance of the mine among the wooden crosses. The sky was murky red.

  She pulled the vampire by his wrist into the salt chamber. There was the lighted lantern. There was Ludu Rat-tooth on the salt throne, conscious now, her eyes shining with fear. The chains, undisturbed, were around her arms. She struggled to pull them from the wall. Miranda slid the locks out of their rings. The girl was free.

  "Miss, what is that?" she asked. "Codreanu."

  Openmouthed, terrified, the girl was no help. But Miranda pulled the dry black body onto the seat and locked him fast. Ludu Rat-tooth was making little squeaks and cries; tears burst out of her. Miranda worked grimly, her teeth clenched and set. She wrapped the chains around the shriveled corpse which was not dead, not altogether dead. She could feel a tremor underneath her fingers. "Go," she said, and the girl left her, staggering to the tunnel and then out the door.

  "Go," said another voice. Miranda turned and recognized her aunt, whom she had seen in dreams and photographs and once in tara mortilor. Now Aegypta Schenck was coming toward her over the rough floor, out of a corner in the chamber where she'd hidden in darkness. She was dressed in rich, old-fashioned clothes, with a lamb's-wool hat and a stole made of fox fur. Miranda could see one of the wicked heads hanging down.

  "Oh, my child," said the old woman, "oh my dear child," and proffered her gray cheek to kiss. From the depths of memory Miranda summoned up the scent of the perfumed powder her aunt wore, and she was hugging her around the neck. "There, my child—there, there. That's enough. You must leave now. Leave him to me."

  Miranda hugged her and rubbed her face on the fox fur. Then she turned away out of the tunnel, out to where Ludu Rat-tooth was waiting in the smoky air. They even managed to rescue their food and their blankets, dragging them after them as they climbed down the west side of the hill away from the fire. Then they carried their bundles south along the low ridge of the island, past the deserted beach and to a circle of bare ground where they sat watching the flames lick the crest of the hill.

  And as they watched, Miranda found herself gradually overcome with nausea and disgust. She was clutching a beaded purse—where had it come from? Had her aunt thrust it into her hands? It had more money in it, she could tell, and she unbuttoned the flap and let the coins spill on the ground. There was a letter: many fragile pages, which she unfolded. She held them up close to her face. Just barely in the uncertain light, she could see the tiny words. "My dear girl. You will go to Mogosoaia, where I have left my key. . . . If you are as I think a princess of Roumania . . ."

  She couldn't stand it. What was this, a steeplechase? A scavenger hunt?

  Once on her birthday Stanley had sent her and her friends racing all around Williamstown searching for little paper clues.

  She almost ripped the letter into pieces without reading it. She almost left the gold coins where they lay, except she didn't. Instead she snatched them up angrily and thrust them into her pockets, along with her aunt's folded pages.

  "Look, miss!"

  Now Miranda was aware of a new noise, and she realized she had heard it intermittently. It was thunder, and on the black horizon she could see the lightning stabbing down. There was a wind that blew t
he smoke away from them, and then a few drops of rain.

  The Wrestling Match

  PETER WOKE UP WITH the words of the poem in his ears, as clear as if he'd heard them spoken:

  So the sun went down and the stars came out all over the summer sea.

  But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.

  He lay on his back in a dark room on a white slab of a table, and his hands and feet were bound. But he could move his head, which still ached where the guard had clubbed him from behind. Aristophanes Turkkan had bit his hand. Afterward they had taken him to a different prison, to a private cell.

  And they must have drugged his food or something, because he couldn't remember coming here. How many days had gone by? Had the man really hit him so hard? Above him was a stone, vaulted ceiling. There were barred windows high up on the walls. Sunlight came from them. The air was stuffy and hot. But he was not in prison, Peter decided, because of the statues carved in niches in the left-hand wall. Four stern old men with flowing beards. One was obviously Moses. One was Ezekiel with his wheel. One was Elisha with a raven on his wrist, Peter guessed. His mother had loved myths and Bible stories. One statue was of Daniel, his hand touching the mane of a sleeping lion.

  With difficulty Peter turned his head to the other side. He was surprised to see the room stretch out into the darkness, and four living men against the far wall. In contrast to the prophets close at hand, they had their backs to him, They were grouped around an ornate piece of furniture, a sideboard or a desk on which a gas lamp burned. And now Peter could hear they were conversing in low tones that competed with the roaring in his ears. He strained to understand, but could not because they were too far away, and because of the pain in his head, and because they spoke in Turkish.