by A. L. Mengel
“Point taken.”
Antoine pulled out a crystal decanter, and placed it on the bar carefully yet with triumph. He stood and looked over at Cristoph expectantly. “Shall I?”
“Of course. But I would love it if you could tell me a little more about Darius.”
Antoine stopped pouring the wine.
The deep red liquid had almost reached the crest of the bulbous base, towards where the etching and carving began. “You must know about Darius. Is that where we are to begin?”
“Yes, I must know about Darius.”
Antoine sighed and handed Cristoph a glass of wine, and then sat back on the deep, overstuffed pillows of the sofa, lay his head back, and closed his eyes. “Where are we to begin…where oh, where?”
“If you want to know about Darius, Cristoph, then I have to start at the beginning of the story, as I said before, I cannot tell this story again. I cannot put words into sentences and sit on this sofa and regail you with so many stories of adventure and bloodlust. It was not that simple, my friend.”
Cristoph set his wine down on a small side table. “And Darius? What became of him?”
Antoine looked over a Cristoph. “He passed away. He was human, Cristoph. He no longer had the gift.”
“The gift of immortality?”
Antoine nodded. “Yes, it was taken from him. I was dragged to the altar and burned to ashes. I was betrayed by the one who I created to be my child. I was pursued by a monstrous demon.” Antoine looked down and examined his wine, noticing tiny bubbles in the dark red liquid hugging the side of the glass. “And then after, the dark, and the cold…”
Cristoph paused for a moment. “When did you experience that?”
“When I was in the casket.”
“You mean you could feel that, despite being dead? You still had your senses?”
And then Antoine closed his eyes, treasuring the warmth of the wine as it travelled down his throat, and he tried to remember…
…the cold, dark solitude of the casket. The experience of the sensation of the cool satin beneath his head, the soft, supple pillow which hugged his ears; he tried to recall the claustrophobic feel as the lid closed, trapping out the light.
I can feel you as the lid closes. I can feel the darkness, I can see the nails hammering into the sides; I can sense being lowered into the ground. The confinement overwhelms me; the blood is determined to consume me.
And then I deploy the silence.
And the darkness is overwhelming. I fight for the light but do not find it; I seek for the journey to understand but I lose my way on the path. I yearn for the transformation I was always promised…but I do not hear an answer.
“Yes, I remember the casket. I remember each passing day. The cold, dark and claustrophobic feeling. Like it was something I was meant to experience. My own personal punishment.”
“For wrongdoing?”
“For such is life. It’s an inevitable certainty. Completely unavoidable.”
Cristoph leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Except for you.”
Antoine paused, and then stared upwards towards the ceiling. “Except for me…”
I have no more blood to give. The decanter has run dry.
Antoine stood. “But it happened to me. I spent those years in the coffin…I once thought I had been so innocent…”
And there was, as the sky darkened and the fire continued to crackle, a point in the conversation when Antoine did finally decided that Cristoph may have been right. Death was never a certainty for him. Not for Antoine. But would it be a certainty for Darius?”
As Antoine prepared for bed later that evening, long after Cristoph had left, he kept on thinking of his father. Of the days past, longing for a relationship with the man once again, wishing he could. And then, he looked in the mirror. What was the purpose of that young man’s visit? If just to open his eyes, perhaps?
“Have I lied to the High Council? Was there really only blackness when I had been dead? Was there really only the nothingness I claim?” The sound of himself talking out loud to an empty room sounded strange. “Or was there something else?”
He walked over to the bed and climbed under the sheets. “How do I remember? Maybe there was something that I experienced while I was gone…”
As he felt sleep overtake his body, he thought, one last time, about his meeting in Rome, and then the subsequent visit in his front parlor.
“I think I was always alive…never dead…always alive…and I never stopped existing.”
BADULLA
In the days of his youth, when Antoine was still a mortal and still a child, he would spend his days running through the dusty streets of Badulla, assisting in the coffee fields in the farm behind his small house.
He stopped running and Antoine looked down at his feet.
They were covered in mud.
His sandals were heavily worn, and needed to be replaced. He stood in the center of a large clearing of sand and pebbles in the center of a large field of sawgrass, waiting for the sun to set, looking at the horizon, and how the sky changed from blue, to orange and deep red, and finally to purple and black.
He looked over at the barn, inside the barn where he knew his father lay, dead, motionless, waiting to be carried away and buried.
And then he thought of the old woman.
He could still picture her hefty figure, her silver-gray hairs, tied neatly back in a bun, but still, despite that, she had the persona of a hard worker. The wisps of hair just above her forehead, that had escaped and blew freely in the wind, would lend a thought that the old woman did indeed care for her appearance, but placed work before vanity.
Antoine remembered those small details about the woman. But as he stared into the genesis of the evening, into the sky where stars were just starting to reveal themselves, he wondered where the old woman could be.
“Where did she go?” Antoine wandered around the kitchen, later that evening, as his mother hung her head down at the table. “Where did the woman go off to?”
His mother did not answer, but spoke. She looked over at Antoine with red, puffy eyes. “We must get your father out of there, Antoine. He will start to rot and start to stink up the grounds. We must bury him and move on with our lives.”
Antoine paused for a moment. “Mama, where is the woman? Can she help me with father’s body?”
Mother banged her fist on the table. “Do not worry about the old woman! She does not exist! She is a figment of your imagination!”
Mother stood and walked over to the kitchen.
She looked down at the pots and pans, shifting them around as she spoke, never looking at Antoine as she did so. “I have someone who will come by and help you with the body. But it must be buried before sunrise tomorrow. I am sorry, Antoine, but I cannot help you. You are his first born son, it must be you.”
Antoine sat at the table, and crossed his arms. He looked up at his mother, who was aimlessly shifting dishes around the kitchen as she spoke.
“What am I to do?” Antoine asked. He sat back in his chair.
He closed his eyes.
And he saw Father, lying in the middle of the hay-covered dirty floor, in the middle of the barn, out in the cold, dark night. And then Antoine let his breath out. “Mother, please.”
She walked over to the table, a small, dirty rag in her hand, and joined Antoine at the table in the opposite chair. She set the rag on the table and looked at her son. “There are many things that you don’t understand, my son. Your Father died because he was much more than what you might think. There will be someone coming to the house to help you bury your Father’s body, and he will explain to you what I am talking about.”
“And what about me? What will become of me?”
Mother leaned back in her chair. The back creaked. “You will do the same that you are doing. You will continue school. You will grow into a man. And then you will learn more. You will become a great leader in Badulla, my son. It is your destiny.”
“Learn more? About what?”
She leaned forward, now hovering over the table. “You will learn more about what you are…about who you are. About how you are chosen, just like your Father had been chosen. That none of this is happening by chance.”
Antoine looked down at the table and studied the white rag that Mother had placed there. “When will this man come?”
She sighed. “Antoine, my dear, I don’t know. He does not come at a specific time. He comes in his own time. What you can do now, is go out to the stables, and prepare your Father’s body.”
“What shall I do?”
“You shall take his body and clean it up. Wash him down, clean all of the blood off his skin, and lay it out on a large cloth. You will find one out there in the barn. When it is done, come back to me.”
*****
Antoine gathered a bucket and some hot, soapy water, a sponge and a towel and placed it outside the barn door. The sun was just setting over the horizon, and the trees were black, everything was dark except for a small slit of light on the horizon.
He looked down at his equipment and thought of his mother’s instructions. Wash off the blood, clean his body and leave it there.
There was a heaviness to the air; it weighed down on Antoine’s shoulders like unseen boulders. He could feel every breath move in and out of his chest. He preferred concentrating on each breath. A child should not have to perform the task he was preparing for.
He looked at the latches to the giant, sliding wooden doors, and reached the rusted, sliding lock.
And then he heard movement in the stable. Footsteps in the hay. He set the bucket down and peered through the crack in the doors. He could see the flash of an arm, perhaps a torso. But he couldn’t tell.
“Father? Are you alive?”
Only silence replied.
And in an instant, he was inside the barn. Moonlight shined through a window; a square, pale light on the bed of hay on the barn floor.
He turned around. “Father?”
He squinted his eyes and looked towards the far corner. No body.
And then came the rustling footsteps through the hay. He turned around completely, scanning each dark corner, seeing nothing.
Then the short creaks. Was someone climbing the ladder?
He turned to open the sliding barn doors but they were locked. He could feel his heart beating faster in his chest, and wiped the sweat from his forehead.
When the creaking stopped, he looked up towards the hay loft. He squinted, it was difficult to see in the darkness. He turned and grabbed at the doors with all of his strength, but they would not open. “Mother! Mother help me!” He called through the crack, looking outside, seeing the coca leaves blowing in the breeze.
The rustling in the hay was louder; the footsteps were getting closer – leading to a thump. He dared not turn around. It was approaching and getting closer…he could feel the chill in the air against his skin, as he closed his eyes and pressed his body against the hard, dry wooden door…
*****
The next morning, Antoine woke with a start and felt his wet bedsheets. He rose with the sun and looked out toward the back barn. Had that been a dream?
Mother was still sleeping.
He went to the table, picked up his sandals, and put them on, very slowly, quietly as to not wake Mother who was snoring in the next room. Antoine looked over at the far window, out towards the back of the house. “Are you there, old woman?”
There was a quiet knock on the door as Antoine shot a glance to Mother. She rolled over on her side. He got up and walked over to the door, and pulled the light pink curtain aside. He almost yelped when he saw her face. It was the same grey hair, a wide open smile, the same familiar face. He smiled and nodded, and opened the door. “Shhh…don’t wake Mother, please. She will be very upset.”
The woman did not enter the house, but nodded.
Antoine stepped outside and noticed a chill in the air. The old woman smiled, placed an arm around him, and guided him down the steps towards the barn. When they approached the door, Antoine looked up at her. “I had a horrible dream last night. At least I think it was a dream. Is that why you come to me? My mother says you don’t exist.”
They stopped walking and the old woman looked down at Antoine. She had wrinkles traveling down her cheeks from her eyes to her chin. “You don’t remember me? You don’t remember me there when your father met his death? I was there, Antoine, I assure you, I was there.”
There was a light breeze and the coca leaves rustled in the brilliant sunshine, under a bright blue sky.
“I don’t care what Mother says. I remember you. She thinks you don’t exist.”
The old woman smiled. “I only exist to you, dear young Antoine. Only you.”
And then he paused. There was a moment that he didn’t understand why he would have an old woman watching over him, but then it all made sense. “I remember learning in school about guardian angels.”
The old woman nodded and smiled.
Antoine approached the barn doors. They were shut tight. The same rusted lock held the giant, wooden sliding doors together. He shuddered and closed his eyes. Antoine looked over at the old woman. “Why do I have to do this?” She nodded.
“Because I must show you.”
He pulled the doors apart with all of his strength. “Father! I am coming!”
The doors opened with a thud, and Antoine peered inside. The morning sunlight did not penetrate the barn that day, save for the slits at the top on the hay loft, and despite his efforts, he could not see across to the other side of the barn where his Father’s body lay.
He thought about his dream. And as he looked towards the dusty corners, they did not seem so dark and threatening as they had been.
“Father?” He called to the empty barn and its silence. There was only the reply of a rooster which called in the distance as Antoine looked back over at the old woman. She stood at the threshold, her arms clasped in front of her and looked downwards, shaking her head back and forth. “He is no longer here, dear Antoine. He lives again, but in the world of darkness. You will not see him again. This is why I must show you.”
“The world of darkness?”
She placed her arms around Antoine’s shoulder. “His body was here last night, yes, but in that time he transformed. He is no longer here. Look there back in the corner. There is no body there.”
“No there isn’t,” Antoine said. “So why is that?”
The old woman guided Antoine away from the barn, leading him back towards the house. “You will understand in time,” she said. “Your father now has a gift, but he is no longer here. You must now be the man of the house.”
Antoine looked down and studied the rocks on the path. He kicked a few stones. “I cannot be the man of the house. I am too young.”
“You must go out and earn a living, dear Antoine. Your family will count on your support as the first born. Your father is no longer part of your mortal family.”
*****
Antoine stood on the steps of Cathedral of the Gardens in Miami, centuries later.
It had been a long time since he had been in the barn from his days as a youthful mortal. Now, he was standing in the same spot where Darius had once waited for Father Bauman.
After a few minutes standing in the afternoon sun, one of the large, heavy wooden doors opened with a creak. Antoine looked over to the open doorway, which opened to darkness. A black abyss. A wall of cool air spilled from the atrium.
The priest stood outside the door, and smiled. He had bags under his eyes, but he looked warm and inviting. He placed his arm around Antoine’s shoulder. “I understand that you must be Antoine? You are the one who Darius was missing for those years I spoke with him?”
“Yes, Father.”
He ushered Antoine through the door. The chill of the air-conditioned air hit his face like a glacier. It was a relief from the sweltering Miami afternoon heat. Once inside, he looked aro
und, and saw a somewhat muted, dark vestibule, an atrium of sorts with soaring ceilings. He stood for a moment and let his eyes adjust.
“Your friend Delia came and spoke to me a few weeks ago,” Father Bauman said.
As they walked into the worshipping area, Antoine saw the same statue – the same Christ on the Cross that held him frozen, in its stare, as he had last been in front of the same altar. But those were different days – he was a different Antoine then, and since then, he had felt a lifting of the veil of evil that had surrounded his life since his transformation; there was a time, not long ago, that Darius had spoken to him about the yearning for redemption. “It’s a very common thing, amongst us immortals,” Darius had said to him, on a night, many years ago, as they had walked together up the sprawling steps to their Chateau outside Lyon in France. “We are inherently evil,” Darius had explained. “I know I have told you this before. You need to accept your darkness.”
And as Antoine stood in the cathedral, so many years later, he felt, for a moment, that some of the darkness had lightened.
There was hope.
He could feel like, there were comforting arms wrapping around him, holding him tight, swaddling him in clothes; he felt the comfort. Somehow, and in some way, as he stood next to the same, tired priest that Darius had confided in when he was dying, he felt that everything was going to be alright. Maybe not right away. Maybe not in a very long time. But eventually, everything would be alright.
“Darius had always been like a father figure to me,” Antoine said as they approached the vestment room.
Father Bauman nodded. “Follow me through here to the rectory. We can sit there.”
The priest opened a door that was flush with a stone wall. It looked like it had been added on at some point. Inside, the apartment was furnished with modest couches and shelves, lined with books, and basic living requirements. Nothing posh or opulent like at the Coral Gables estate or the Chateau. They sat on a small, uncomfortable couch just inside the door. Father Bauman turned on a small lamp and there was a warm, yellow glow.