Dear Illusion: Collected Stories

by Kingsley Amis

  At this point in his remarks Macneil saw what I had that moment seen, that Countess Valvazor was looking distinctly uncomfortable, even unwell.

  I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ I think I may have shouted a little in my anxiety.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she said, and took a deep breath. ‘I guess I am a tiny bit squeamish after all.’ She managed a smile then. ‘And those were my ancestors you were talking about, darn it.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Macneil. ‘How could I forget that? Countess, you haven’t touched your food.’ Here he too smiled, but in a very different, not altogether pleasant way. ‘Eat it up, now.’

  She shrugged her shoulders and did as she was told. At the end of the meal, the servant Magda brought in Turkish coffee, devilish sweet and strong. An eau-de-vie of the country, made it seemed from greengages, was also produced, but all three of us declined, Macneil because, according to him, he was off to bed shortly, having had a long day and being faced with an early start in the morning. He added that he would be in the castle library and at my disposal from eight o’clock onwards. Before finally departing he cautioned me against staying up too late, on the grounds that, even at these comparatively modest altitudes, a visitor found he needed his sleep. His actual leave-taking was civil enough, but the impression he’d made on me was by no means unequivocally favourable. I tried to convey this tactfully to the countess, who took my point at once.

  ‘He has a great deal of authority around here,’ she said. ‘And as you saw we dine together. It must be hard for him to remember he’s only an employee.’

  ‘How did he acquire his authority?’ I asked her.

  She hesitated. ‘He – how shall I put it? – he made himself useful to Baron Aleku.’

  ‘Baron Aleku?’ I said in surprise. ‘But he’s been dead for . . .’ Half-bemused by amorousness as I was, I couldn’t work it out.

  ‘Robert has been here since 1890; thirty-five years ago. He’s a clever man, a good organizer. But for him my life here would be impossible.’

  ‘I think I understand.’

  ‘Can’t we forget him?’ she asked softly.

  In an instant I had no breath. All I could do was nod my head.

  ‘Would you like to see some of the rooms?’

  ‘Very much.’

  The room we saw (though I saw little enough of it, at any rate at first) was the countess’s sitting-room. I gazed at the pretty curtains and covers and cushions and agreed in lethargic tones that they were beyond doubt pretty. For whatever reason, my companion seemed equally distracted. She listlessly indicated another portrait of her great-uncle, less striking than the one I had noticed in the hall, then a larger picture which did catch my attention. This was an outdoor scene showing what I identified as a funeral procession moving across a stretch of parkland towards a one-storey building of somewhat grotesque design, no doubt a place of entombment. The light might have been that of a rainy day at the end of winter. I learned from the plate that the funeral was that of Baron Aleku Valvazor in the year 1891. For a few moments, without any clear reason, I experienced a feeling of the most profound depression. I spoke before I thought.

  ‘Where did this happen?’

  ‘Here,’ said the countess with an inquiring look. ‘In the grounds just outside this window.’

  ‘And what I see there is some kind of . . . sepulchre.’

  ‘There are Valvazors in it that go back to the sixteenth century.’

  I made a non-committal noise. My interest had subsided again.

  ‘The ceiling in this room is supposed to be very unusual.’

  And then . . . My dear Charles, we should both of us have to be altogether different from what we are if I could tell you, even in outline, what happened then; you must use your own experience and your imagination. But this I will say, even to the loyal friend of Connie’s that I know you to be: it wasn’t so much that what happened then was better than any comparable experience of mine, it was more that there simply was no comparison. Afterwards, we agreed that in the very first instant of our meeting – but now, like an oaf, I’m once more on the point of embarrassing you. So, in the most strictly practical fashion, I’ll do no more than state flatly that Countess Valvazor is called Lukretia (the Dacian aristocracy, like the Rumanian, are fond of stressing their links with Ancient Rome), that she’s twenty-nine years old and, as you must know to appreciate what followed, that the setting was her bedchamber, a rather sombre room which she had done her best to cheer up with her gay cushions and rugs and so on.

  It was late when I fell asleep. At once, or so it appeared, I entered on a series of vivid yet incomprehensible dreams. There were animals quite unlike any real or even legendary beast, and manufactured objects, large and small, of unguessable purpose. And the people, so many of them, so active, so unremittingly interested in me – what were they all doing? What was happening? Where and what were these places? Was I dying? At last a horrified voice that called in a strange tongue banished this troubling phantasmagoria: ‘Aleku, you devil, you hound of hell!’ – yes, Charles, ‘tu kani d’infernu’, those very words; I was wide awake in a split second.

  Lukretia took some calming down. She said she had very little idea of what had caused her to shriek out like that, it had been too dark in her dream, but she knew it was something awful, something loathsome. I said it was over whatever it was, and she said it wasn’t, and then – I must get this part down as near as possible verbatim, because although I don’t understand it I know it’s important.

  She said, ‘Will you do something for me?’

  I said, ‘Anything I can.’

  ‘Will you pray to God and tell Him I thank Him for sending you to me? Because I’ve no doubt that He did. I thought He had abandoned me for ever, but now I see He hadn’t after all. Tell Him that, too. You will, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ I said, ‘but wouldn’t it be better if you told Him yourself?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘but in my state prayer is ineffective.’

  ‘In your state? What state?’

  ‘Of absolute sin.’

  ‘Can’t you confess it?’ I asked, I hope as gently as I intended.

  ‘The father won’t hear me. We . . . there was a quarrel.’

  ‘Then go to another father.’

  She shook her head; she had a funny look I couldn’t make out. ‘Please do as I ask.’

  ‘Gladly.’

  ‘Promise me, Stephen.’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘I’m going to hold you to it.’

  When I slept again I didn’t dream at all. For the experience I did have I can find no word; perhaps you know one. I was awoken by the sound of an enormous bell from somewhere overhead, somewhere quite near, still dying away as I listened. Lukretia hadn’t stirred, I could readily see. But how could I see it so readily? Because the room had grown lighter. How? With light from outside, through the chinks between the heavy curtains, bright light. But that wasn’t possible. We all carry a reasonably efficient clock in our head, and mine told me that it should still be dark out there. With my thoughts wandering slowly from festive illuminations to forest fires I put on a thick wrap of blanket-cloth (which I was soon to be mightily glad of) and hurried to the window. As I reached it the bell tolled again with an abruptness that made me blink. I pulled a corner of curtain aside and looked out.

  What I saw (and I saw it, I wasn’t drunk, I wasn’t mad, and I certainly wasn’t dreaming, I knew that as a normal waking man always knows it) – what I saw was the funeral procession of Baron Aleku Valvazor in 1891. No one who had seen the picture in the room next door could have been in the slightest doubt. Everything and everybody was there, the old priest, the young priest, the coffin on an odd-looking waggon drawn by six men pulling ornamental ropes, the family and friends, the more prosperous farmers and yeomen in their characteristic brimless hats, the peasants, all on a rather blustery, chilly February or March afternoon nearly thirty-four years ago. I could also see s
everal figures that I was nearly sure weren’t in the painting, like the one who must have been the artist himself furiously at work, an assistant at his side. And like Lukretia, clad in black, standing with bowed head near the entrance to the tomb and then suddenly glancing up and, as I recognized her, looking me straight in the eye.

  I say I recognized her; she must have been nearly a hundred yards away, or quite that, but the light though not perfect was good enough and I had caught not so much any lineament as, more distinctively, a tilt of the neck that, after those few hours, I now knew well. But of course I thought of none of this at the time. Instinct made me turn away towards where I had left Lukretia and there was nothing, not only was she not there but the bed, the dressing-table, the pier-glass, the pictures, the sculptures, the brasses were all not there, nothing was there but stone walls and floor, the floor whose chill now struck through to my bare feet. I turned back to the window and there was nothing there either, just uncurtained panes and starlight and approaching dawn. Would you have lingered? Shivering and gasping with more than cold I was out of that grim spot pretty smartly, I can tell you, but finding my way back to the countess’s room or to my own was a different kind of task. I wandered up and down the great staircases and along the twisting corridors for anything up to half an hour. By then I was very cold indeed. In the end I rounded a corner and almost walked into Macneil, who was dressed for the outdoors, indeed for the saddle. He gave me a look of surprise and suspicion.

  ‘Where have you been, Mr Hillier?’ he asked. His tone was almost accusing.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  After another look at me his manner softened a trifle and he said, ‘Have you been sleepwalking?’

  ‘I don’t know that either. I found myself in a room I’ve no memory of entering. Perhaps I did sleepwalk.’

  ‘What sort of room?’ he asked gently.

  ‘It was empty.’

  ‘Completely empty?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Now I mustn’t keep you standing here on this chilly floor. The countess sends you her apologies.’

  ‘Apologies?’ I said. ‘What for?’ I dare say I sounded rather stupid; it was how I felt.

  ‘She received a message to say that her old nurse was dying and was asking to see her, and so she hurried off. As she would. It’s a fair drive, nearly to the border of the province. I’d expect her back some time in the afternoon. And now I must speed you on your way before you catch your death of cold. Down to the end there, Mr Hillier, turn left, and your room’s in front of you. I hope to see you later if you feel well enough.’ And he turned his back and went.

  After a couple of hours in a warm bed, a comfortable bath and a large breakfast of scrambled eggs with strips of smoked mutton, hot rolls with quince jam and scalding coffee, I felt – well, still puzzled and wary, but I had got over the painful bewilderment that had gripped me earlier. I had another look at that picture of the funeral, and was more than ever sure I had seen what it portrayed, had not in any sense been dreaming. Next, a visit to the library, high-ceilinged and of ecclesiastical atmosphere, Macneil the complete professional in leather cap and taped-on cuffs, and informative. Much of interest, a few surprises, selective list enclosed. He (Macneil) was very proud, and with reason, of their Codex Palatine, which it seems no less a person than Dietrich Dittersdorf came all the way from Budapest some months ago to consult. I should have loved to hear more of all this, but you’ll understand I had a more pressing concern. When I had duly admired the Codex, I broached the matter.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Macneil,’ I said, ‘it was in 1891, was it not, that Baron Aleku was buried?’

  ‘Indeed,’ he replied; ‘25th February 1891, Ash Wednesday.’

  ‘It seems to have stuck in your mind.’

  ‘Odd how these things do.’ He was smiling that smile of his. ‘I was there, of course.’

  I won’t pretend I showed I was ready for that. I must have gaped. ‘Were you, by George!’ I said before I knew it. ‘I hadn’t quite realized you’d been in these parts for so long’ – though you remember I had heard about it from Lukretia. ‘Perhaps you can tell me which members of the family were also present. Out of interest.’

  He was grinning now. ‘You’ve been looking at that painting in the countess’s sitting-room, haven’t you, Mr Hillier?’

  ‘Yes, a fascinating piece.’

  ‘Oh, do you think so? I’ve always found it rather ordinary. However. Yes, there was the countess dowager and her sister, Count Zoltan and Countess Elizabeth, their three sons, of whom the eldest was to be the present countess’s father, Baron . . . Baron Horvath on the dowager’s side and Baroness . . . it’s gone, and the Rumanian cousins, those were the . . .’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’ I realized I had had a fat chance from the beginning. ‘I must have been mistaken. I mean you’re right, it isn’t a very good painting.’

  ‘If you want to know more about Aleku, I could show you the mausoleum after luncheon – you know, where he’s buried or is at rest.’

  I thanked him and accepted, though I hardly expected there would be much to see, and he picked up a shallow pile of grey folders that evidently held what he considered most likely to be of interest to me. I thanked him again for his trouble; he said that as a result of years of diligent subject-indexing it had been no trouble at all. (Librarians are much the same everywhere, eh, old boy?) Then, opening one of the folders, he muttered a question about the state of my Hungarian, and I saw fit to call it rusty, which I hope you’ll take as a pardonable exaggeration, or rather as whatever the opposite of that is. (Understatement. I must pull my brains together.) Accordingly, Macneil had the kindness to run over the main points of what had been an address given before the inner college of St Ladislas’ at Peks by a certain Dr Bela Hadik in 1913.

  The speaker’s main theme is apparently that the powers of the vampire and also its weaknesses, its limitations, can be rationally explained. On this view, the vampire is not in any sense dead, rather it has entered upon another kind of life, its activity confined to the hours of darkness but itself made potentially immortal and ageless. We are to remember that the victim of a vampire’s attack loses very little blood, and yet soon afterwards, perhaps after a second attack, perhaps not, is dead. Of what malady? Later he rises from the dead and functions once more – walks, talks, thinks, is capable of great physical exertion. In his turn the victim becomes the predator and himself imbibes blood, not much, and not often. For what purpose? Hardly for nutriment; no corporeal frame of that size could possibly subsist on such a meagre diet. Day-to-day sustenance must be provided by more conventional food.

  The postulate is that somehow, perhaps through the vampire’s saliva, a peculiar element reaches the victim’s bloodstream and multiplies within it. During the period of supposed death, actually suspended animation, a number of changes take place which curtail freedom of movement but confer enhanced strength and capability of self-repair and, it has been said, certain abnormal powers of the mind, such as the ability to detect malign forces at a distance.

  At this point, just to contribute something of my own, however obvious, I put in, ‘At any rate, the physical changes permit the creature to survive injuries that would kill an ordinary mortal and therefore, if he is to be destroyed, he must be damaged in ways no living being could withstand – impalement, decapitation, burning.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Macneil, ‘and just as the vampire transforms normal blood, so he needs something from it. Whatever that something is, it tends to overheat the body, so that during the warmer, daylight hours there must be not only rest but refrigeration.’

  ‘For which purpose,’ I said, ‘a stone coffin packed with earth and laid in an underground vault would be as good as anything science could come up with till just the other day.’

  He smiled at me again, but more pleasantly this time, like a schoolmaster at a pupil who has got it right for once. ‘Exactly, Mr Hillier. Well, I think you have the heart
of it there.’

  I said with a show of detachment, ‘Do you really believe any of this vampire stuff yourself?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said straight away.

  ‘Have you seen any of it?’

  Now he hesitated before saying firmly, ‘No.’

  ‘Do you believe any of this?’ I tapped the folder.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Oh, it’s rather rot, don’t you think? I mean it leaves out so much. You said last night that exposure to the light of the sun was the most effective means of destroying a vampire – widely believed to be so, that is. Is that accounted for here?’

  ‘Not specifically.’ He spoke as if he perhaps wanted to have done with the conversation. ‘Further overheating of the body would no doubt result.’

  I couldn’t resist saying, ‘To the tune of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit? If you’ll forgive me, Mr Macneil, your belief seems to be founded on a wish to believe.’

  ‘No doubt it does, Mr Hillier, but I’d like you to cast an eye on what I have here before you finally make up your mind on that point.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Part of the only known statement on vampirism committed to paper by a self-confessed vampire,’ he said impressively, handing over a single yellowed sheet covered with brownish writing, and added, ‘The most secret document in this library. Even the countess doesn’t know it’s here.’

  No doubt I should have inquired into the last part of that, but I was too eager to examine what I now had before me and allowed Macneil to withdraw, muttering as he went something about binding up a batch of pamphlets.