A second door along the hallway was dressed the same way. A third door, distinguished by its distance from the other two, was bare. It was in this room that Tati Cuda showed Martin the place to put his duffel bag.
The small rectangular room had a single window at one end, covered by a flimsy cracked shade and an old pair of print curtains. A faded and worn, once proud oriental rug adequately covered the smooth wooden planks of the floor. The narrow bed was neatly made with snowy white sheets and a gray army blanket. The bed’s brass headboard was blackened with age. On the upright cherrywood dresser stood an old bottle of cologne, probably a gift to Tati Cuda’s long-dead wife. Spread beneath the bottle was a hand-crocheted lace doily. On the night table, there was a small oil lamp and a clock radio. An old tintype landscape hung squarely from a single nail on the closet door.
Impulsively, and without warning, Tati Cuda lunged for an article covered by a second doily and hidden behind the bottle of cologne. It was a hand mirror, the kind used in a barber shop. He held it up and looked into it at such an angle so that it would catch Martin’s reflection.
To the old man’s chagrin, Martin’s face bounced back toward him in all its pale reality.
“Pamgri!” the old man shrieked.
But Martin just smiled as another part of the myth was shattered and dispelled. He was tired of dealing with such foolishness. He thought the old stories had been disproven years ago. The mere fact of his existence, his presence in the old house, should have told Cuda that the garlic and the mirrors and the curses were for naught.
“You are the first one to come to me,” Tati Cuda moaned. “I knew one day one of you would come to me. It is the family’s shame.” He lowered his head and placed the mirror on the nightstand.
“When we knew Palonis would die, I got the letter from the old country. It told me it was you who would come. And now . . . I see you. You are here.”
Gone were the dignity and pride that the old man had worn at the train station. He was now as bent and stooped as the gnarled oak that grew outside the bedroom window. For generations his family had borne the weight of “Nosferatu.” Never would he escape—it was his fate and he accepted it unquestionably as he did the sun’s rising and setting. It was the way of the world. And there were some times when you simply did not ask why.
The two men, separated by more than age, looked at each other deeply for a few moments. Martin started to say something but stopped himself and merely smiled, his expression sinister and frightening to the old man.
When he had regained his composure, the old man continued:
“Cousin. Nosferatu. To see you . . . tells me I am right. You are from Elena Bulyaresse. From Derekuoi, my father’s province. You are older than I. Yet you are so young. Just beginning.”
The old man’s face turned white and his lips started to twitch. Martin was shocked to watch the diabolical expression overcome his face and to see his lips twist in anger. It literally erased the smile from Martin’s face.
“I will not allow it,” Tati Cuda exploded. “You will not leave here, Nosferatu. I will not expose you, for it would be the disgrace of all of us. But I will cleanse you and you will find salvation before epiphany.”
At the mention of the religious occasion, the smile returned to Martin’s face.
“Family law puts you in my house,” Tati Cuda continued. “In the shame of the house I will feed you . . . I will give you work.”
As the old man moved toward the door, Martin moved to face him. With his hand on the doorknob, Tati Cuda turned and spoke more:
“You may come and go . . . but you may not take people from this town. If I hear of it . . . a single time . . . I destroy you without salvation.” The old man gripped the doorknob; his breathing was labored as he continued his list of regulations. “You may not enter my room. When I wish to speak with you, I will. My granddaughter stays with me. You may not enter her room. I have told her not to speak with you, but she will. You will not answer. Tomorrow, you may rest. The next day you work in my shop.”
Perspiration ran from the old man’s forehead. His cheeks burned with anger. “I have been told you are imbecile. Can you speak?”
Martin nodded his head.
“Speak,” he ordered as if to a dog.
The wicked smile returned to the young man’s face.
“Speak so I can hear your voice. Speak, Nosferatu!”
Martin’s voice shattered the stillness of the air, startling both him and the old man with its shrillness.
“It isn’t magic, Tati Cuda. It’s just sickness. It’s . . . just sickness.”
How could he explain? Words were not enough. They didn’t tell the whole story; the feelings, the tortured nights, the loneliness. Tati Cuda was almost hypnotized by the soft-spoken words. He had expected the boy to be more aggressive in his speech, more positive about his powers. “He’s fooling me with his gentleness,” the old man thought, and the ancient fears flashed across his face. He must remain calm, forget the curse, control the demon.
“You . . . you can write . . . and read?” he asked.
Martin nodded again. He had no hatred for the frightened, superstitious old man, locked into his age-old beliefs.
“You will need it in your job,” Tati Cuda continued, and turned quickly into the hall, pulling Martin’s door shut behind him.
Martin remained still for a moment, grinning foolishly at the closed door. In an instant, however, the smile was wiped from his face as if by a powerful wind, and his eyes took on the customary demonic glare that was a preamble to an attack. He peered at the mirror, the instrument that was supposed to sap him of his mysterious strength. He felt a familiar sensation. He was fighting off the ghosts of a past life, struggling with forgotten apprehensions that were now coming to the fore. He lunged at the door, tore it open, and just caught a glimpse of the door to the old man’s room as it was closing. With long determined strides, Martin moved swiftly to the old man’s room and grabbed the doorknob. He heard a loud click, as Tati Cuda frantically made use of the newly installed lock.
The hallway started to spin about Martin. The patterned carpeting wavered before his eyes. He heard voices—familiar voices—voices of another life:
Before him he sees a man in a costume of the late 1800’s running into a bedroom. The door slams in his face.
Martin stirred from his trancelike state. He found himself staring at another door in another time.
He gripped the doorknob with all his strength. On the other side Tati Cuda scrambled to the little religious shrine in the corner of his room, his body quivering with fear.
He, too, knew the story, although not firsthand. He knew of the crashing wood, of the crucifix held high. Yet he went through the motions, hoping, praying that the time-honored rites would hold true.
Martin crashed through Tati Cuda’s door with uncharacteristic power. The old man spun, holding the crucifix before him like a shield.
“You will not enter my room,” he chanted. “Nosferatu . . . you will not!” his voice rose in a horrified scream. Martin’s mind went blank again. He gripped the edge of the bed.
A stranger in the nineteenth-century garb runs toward him, the anger on his face ready to explode. An old woman, with the muscular arms of her peasant stock, rushes into the room.
A voice cries out, confusing Martin. Where does it come from?
“You will not take family blood,” the voice screams. “You will not take family blood . . .”
Martin stopped quivering. He returned to the present and faced the terror-stricken old man, clutching his crucifix. Martin charged al Tati Cuda, running him over and tumbling through the useless shrine. The statue of the Madonna wobbled like a bowling pin, about to fall.
The spinning started again. Martin was unable to tell the present from the past. All the images, the noises, the smells were impinging upon his brain in quick succession. He grabbed his head. The pain was unbearable. He was spinning as if on a speeding Ferris wheel.
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He sees the man in the ruffled shirt running toward the wobbling Madonna. He sees it shatter on the floor. But his eyes are closed. What is real, what is real? The man is pulling a lace doily from the shrine, the heavy peasant woman is grabbing his arms from behind.
The woman is calling: “Nosferatu!”
Tati Cuda called: “Nosferatu!”
“What is real, what is real?” Martin thought, his head whizzing.
The man in the costume scrambles toward the canopied bed. He kicks something loose from under the bed. It skitters across the wood floor. Martin recognizes it as the instrument of death—a long pointed stick of wood. The man lunges for a mallet. Martin’s eyes go wide with terror. He is helpless in the peasant woman’s grip. The man lunges again, this time for the wooden stake. Martin struggles and kicks, dragging the woman behind him.
He now feels himself mouthing the words, “It isn’t magic, it isn’t magic . . . It’s sickness . . . it’s sickness,” the familiar liturgy passes through the two time periods, its sound ringing in his ears.
Martin swings wildly. The man in costume is just about to close in on the stake when Martin kicks it away. The stake flies into a corner. Martin spins violently. He breaks the old woman’s grip. The woman wobbles, teetering on the edge of time.
The Madonna teetered on the edge of the bureau. As if by magic, it stopped wobbling and did not fall. Tati Cuda whispered hoarsely, only a vestige of his former self.
“Nosferatu.”
Martin stared at the old man, unable to remember where he was. Yet his anger was spread across his face like a red welt. He tried to calm himself, to take the deep breaths that always seemed to work.
He opened his mouth. As if in an echo chamber he heard two voices—both his—one from now, the other from the past:
“The old ways are bad.” The sounds vibrated through the room, through the years, through the centuries. “It isn’t magic . . . I am not a ghost . . . I am not a ghost . . .”
The old man barely raised his head. He managed to make out the meaning of Martin’s words.
The young man was now screaming, “I am your cousin, I am your cousin, Martin!”
To prove his point, he rushed over to the door jamb and ripped the garlic sprays off, hanging them about his neck in a parody of a Hawaiian lei.
“You see . . . you see,” he drew closer to Tati Cuda.
The old man clutched the crucifix, but his grip was weakening.
“You see,” Martin leaned closer and ripped the garlic cloves from the spray. They bounced all over the room like a child’s rubber balls. Martin pushed a bunch into his mouth and bit violently.
“You see . . . you see,” he cried between bites.
His mouth was full. Pulpy pieces of the pungent stuff fell from between his teeth.
Tears streamed from his eyes, brought on by the garlic but also by a deeper sadness. Suddenly he stopped. He looked down at his cousin, a pitiful shell of a man, foolishly holding the crucifix on high.
Martin spat out the garlic and snatched the cross from Tati Cuda’s shaking and feeble hand. Gripping the artifact, Martin easily snapped it in two pieces and threw it roughly across the room.
Then he spoke quietly, as if comforting a child.
“There is no magic, Tati Cuda. Even I know that. There is no . . . magic.”
With no further ceremony, he turned and walked out of the room. He was frustrated with his own inability to speak articulately. Words would not do. They hadn’t helped when he was with the peasant woman and the man with the stake. They had not understood. “How can I expect Tati Cuda to learn what his ancestors would not,” Martin thought. “Why must I be persecuted? Why in eighty-four years have I had no peace!”
As soon as Martin left the room, Tati Cuda recovered and scrambled on all fours to the drawer under the shrine. He pulled it open and rummaged through its contents—brightly painted eggs with colorful designs. He grabbed one which bore the childlike image of a horned demon sprawled under a crucifix with a sharply pointed end about to pierce the demon’s heart.
He rushed into the hall. Martin was just abreast of the second door when he heard his cousin. He turned and saw the old man crack a small hole in one end of the egg with the sharp edge of his crucifix and suck out the contents of the shell.
Martin’s blood began to boil at the familiar ritual. He had thought his theatrical display with the garlic had dispelled all myths.
But the old man was desperate. Unthinkingly, he returned time and time again to the old disproven and unreliable ways. Martin angrily reached up and pulled the garlic off the granddaughter’s door, throwing it on the floor. Reeling, he charged back toward his own room where he fell against the door jamb, pounding his fists on the old wooden frame.
With rotten egg stuffed in his mouth, the old man advanced on Martin, holding the egg and the crucifix out ahead of him. As he drew close, Martin beseeched him with his eyes. For one brief instant the old man pitied him. “No.” he told himself. “It is the trick of Nosferatu to make you feel sorry for him. No, I will not let him trick me,” he decided as he spat out the contents of his mouth and spewed rotten egg all over the boy’s forehead.
“Nosferatu, you will not survive me!”
Then, backing away slowly, all the way to the end of the hall, Tati Cuda waited for Martin to strike back. When he reached the landing, he turned and scurried down the stairs, half expecting Martin’s flying body to push him down to the bottom.
But Martin only stood in the doorway to his room, a forlorn expression on his egg-smeared face. Tears of rage and frustration mingled with the yellow stain. Then, calmly, matter-of-factly, he moved into his room, closing the door behind him and walking to his wash basin. He diligently scrubbed the egg from his face, feeling as if he were drugged. His head still spun slightly from his duplicate vision. He gripped the edge of the wash basin to further calm himself.
“There is no magic, there is no magic,” he silently intoned.
Chapter Three
At nine o’clock on the morning of Martin’s arrival in Braddock, another crisis was taking place. The women of the town, empty shopping bags hanging limply from their wrists, were clustered around the doorway of Tati Cuda’s butcher shop like so many crows on a telephone cable. They raised their voices in tones of astonishment and disbelief.
“Never, in all the years I’ve known him has he been late,” one woman exclaimed, her gray hair neatly covered by a challis scarf, her black dress covering her varicose-veined calves.
“You are so right, Maria,” another woman with a tight black bun agreed. “I certainly hope nothing is wrong. The last time was for the funeral of his wife.”
“But he was in the best of health yesterday when I stopped in for some sweet sausage. You know I’m always forgetting things and running out again. He looked all right to me, although I think he might have said his arthritis was bothering him again.”
“Oh, no,” a third woman piped in. She was younger than the others but her face was worn and tired from raising ten children, and her body sagged with the burden of the eleventh. “It must be Christina. I’ve always said the girl was sickly. Look at her poor mother, who died so young.”
“No, no, no,” insisted the raspy voice of an old woman, her face cracked and yellow as in an old photograph. “I saw Tati Cuda on his way to the train station this morning. You know how it is, I can’t sleep, I sit by the window and watch the sun rise. I saw him as the sun came over the horizon. He was on his way to the station.”
“Yes, yes,” agreed the woman with the black bun. “Now I remember, as I said goodbye to Joseph I noticed an old man. He was dressed in his Sunday best. What a beautiful white suit that matched his hair, and I thought to myself: There goes Tati Cuda. How stupid to forget. And how wonderful for him, to be meeting the train. I hope it will bring us good luck.”
“We certainly need the luck,” the expectant mother commented, looking down at her ballooning belly. “Nothing happens here
anymore since the factory closed. Nothing ever happens here anymore.”
“Something will happen,” the old woman predicted, her cataract-covered eyes blinking wildly in the sunlight. “Something very bad will happen when Tati Cuda returns from the train.”
“Reading tea leaves again, Cassandra Bellini,” the women taunted her. “When will you begin telling fortunes again?”
They laughed as they gathered their shopping bags and headed for the other markets. “They will never learn,” the old woman thought sadly.
• • •
Later that morning, after what seemed like a lifetime to Tati Cuda, he made his way to his butcher shop. He tried to put the distressing events of the past few hours out of his mind, to think about what he loved the best. For forty-three years he had relished the walk to his shop, which he had worked at as a young man and had finally inherited when the old butcher died. It was his pride and joy, even more rewarding than children, for it never talked back, never gave him cause for alarm. The bright, clean windows glistened in the morning sun. The small brick building boasted a big sign over the door and a few spindly evergreen trees about the exterior. Tati Cuda walked with the sprightly gait of a younger man, and swung his cane from side to side. He was dressed in his typical weekday suit—a replica of the white suit but in more somber tones of gray, with a crisp white shirt.
He turned the key in the door to his little shop, a lonely reminder of more prosperous days on Braddock’s major business district street. Since the advent of the parkway all the traffic had been diverted and the once busy thoroughfare was now only traveled by the elderly inhabitants’ early-model cars and an occasional stray dog.
“Sorry, ladies,” Tati Cuda said to several old women impatiently milling around the entrance and murmuring their complaints about his lateness. With one swift movement he removed the sign which read: Monday, June 9. Not open until 11 a.m. Unavoidable business.
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