The young priest looked up at Christina, who was staring openly at her grandfather with a disturbed expression on her face.
“Well,” Father Howard answered, feeling quite uncomfortable and wanting very much to leave, “I’ve had several conversations about the subject with some of my colleagues, and . . . er . . . it’s . . . it’s such a difficult issue. It’s . . . it’s definitely something to be dealt with.”
“Grandfather, stop it,” Christina broke in.
The young priest smiled at her gratefully and relaxed in his chair.
“You’ll scare Father Howard away,” she said, trying to lighten the moment. Her grandfather’s face clouded over, and he looked very glum.
“Oh, no, no . . . it’s fascinating,” said Father Howard when he saw the old man’s expression. He spoke quickly, tripping over his words. “That kind of thing is fascinating. You ought to talk to Father Zulemas in Pittsburgh.”
“Father?”
“Zulemas. Oh, he’s a great old guy. Claims to have actually done the rite . . . I mean, for real . . . in fact, he went to see The Exorcist. Said it was done all wrong.” He tried to shatter the heaviness in the air with his laughter, but it only made the silence more obvious.
“Zulemas,” the old man repeated, as if making a mental note.
“Yeah, he’s a real old guy. I think he’s up in the clergyman’s graveyard . . . you know, the old place up behind the J&L mill.”
“Zulemas,” Cuda continued to mumble as if in a trance.
Christina sat on the edge of her chair and sipped her cordial nervously, afraid to think about her grandfather’s motives. The old man poured more into his glass from the bottle without looking up at the others.
Father Howard continued his inane babbling, “I don’t suppose you saw that movie. Well, I thought it was great. All anyone could talk about was how filthy and despicable it was. Well, after all, it was supposed to be depicting the devil.” He looked around at the two silent figures. “I thought it was great,” he said to himself.
The old man wasn’t listening to the priest’s foolish banter any longer. Christina noticed that he was starting to drift off. His eyelids seemed too heavy, and his chin fell on his chest.
She motioned for Father Howard to follow her out. The young priest took one look at the old man and moved toward the door. He lifted his hat off the bentwood hatrack.
“I’m sorry,” Christina said, as she led him to the massive front door. “Grandfather can be . . . well, very boring.”
“Hardly boring,” Father Howard laughed. He had enjoyed the evening up to a certain point and had found the company pleasant, except for the boy, until dessert.
“Difficult, then, but I hope you’ll come back.”
The priest’s face grew serious. “Actually I’m not going to be here long. I’m deserting like the rest of them.” He placed his hat on his prematurely graying hair as if for emphasis. “Your grandfather is right. The fact is there’s talk of closing the parish.”
“Oh,” Christina cried, anguished on her face. “They can’t.”
“May have to. There’s just . . . no way to keep it running.”
“Is this going to happen right away?” Christina asked, drawing closer to him in case the old man was awake.
“Well,” Father Howard said, feeling his confidence returning with this bit of news he had to impart. Tati Cuda had crushed him with his accusations all night long. “They’re still raggin’ it out, but not for a little while, I guess.” He laughed nervously at his next thought. “Some actually brought up at the meeting to try and sit it out for five years. Let the people around here pass away in their own parish. Five years . . . they’ll all be gone . . . and the church won’t matter to anybody.”
He failed to recognize the horror-stricken look on Christina’s face. It was as if he were signing her death certificate as well.
“That’s awful,” she said, woefully.
“Don’t think we can stick it out that long though. Nobody’s pickin’ up our tab.” He put his hand out to Christina.
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking it good-bye.
“Oh, it doesn’t affect me,” he replied, opening the door to leave. “Doesn’t affect me at all. I’ll get outa your hair. It was a delicious dinner. See you Sunday.”
Christina watched his broad back in his dark suit blend into the night, then turned back into the house, and closed the front door. “He’s a nice man,” she thought, “but a terrible priest.”
She walked quietly down the hall. A dim light still shone in the sittingroom.
“Christina,” the old man called out, his voice a weak whisper in the cavernous hallway.
She peered into the room. A thin stream of cigar smoke emanated from the big chair in which he sat. It wafted through the column of light from the sidetable lamp. She could barely see the top of his head from behind the chair.
“Come and sit,” he said when he had heard her steps draw closer.
Still disturbed from his earlier comments to the priest, she reluctantly walked into the room. The old man sat leafing through a stack of old family picture albums, never once looking up at his granddaughter. Christina returned to the chair she had previously occupied.
“You are angry with me,” Tati Cuda stated in his typical manner.
“Grandfather, it’s crazy,” she said softly. She felt as if she were a child again, complaining at her grandfather’s knee about some minor schoolgirl problem. Only the problem was bigger than life this time. Her whole world was crumbling around her—the deserted town, the strange boy, Arthur’s leaving.
“I . . . I can’t believe it’s happening. It’s a nightmare . . . for you and for him.”
Cuda looked at her over the rim of his reading glasses. He had passed into sobriety quite quickly, and Christina wondered if the drunkenness wasn’t all a guise to trick the young priest into revealing certain things to him.
“Your father was not from our part of the world,” he told her in a quiet soothing tone. “Your mother knew. She believed.”
“If she did, then thank God I was too little to know her. Cuda, I know, if anyone does, what it’s like for that boy. When Mother and Father died I went to live with uncles and grandfathers. To be without parents and then to go to people like you and Palonis and whomever before . . .”
“Martin had his father until he was thirty-two,” Cuda stated simply.
The statement startled Christina. She hadn’t really expected Cuda to believe all this nonsense, but he seemed to be dead serious.
“My God, Grandfather, he’s just a boy!”
Tati Cuda continued as if he had not registered her outburst.
“That was in 19 . . . 24 . . . 1923 . . . 1924,” he muttered on.
“How can you believe such . . .” she could not find the words. The mere thought repelled her.
“Look in the books, Christina. We have the books of the family. Did you ever look?”
She rose from the straight-backed chair and walked over to the window. The night was still, the crickets silent.
“Of course, the books will show it. The books!” she turned to him accusatorily. “Those damned books should be burned. That’s where you get your horrible ideas!”
“Ask the boy himself. Ask Martin. He will tell you,” the old man countered, clutching the precious books to his breast as if she had blasphemed the family name.
“He’s unbalanced. He’s mad,” she spat out the hated word disdainfully. “And you and your books have driven him to it.”
As if repeating a liturgy, Tati Cuda chanted, “He is Nosferatu. He was born to Elena Bulyaresse and Rudy Mathias in the old country in 1892.” The old man looked directly into her eyes. “He is young for Nosferatu!”
Christina turned to reply to the old man’s foolishness but something in his manner and his piercing eyes made her stop and listen. Everything was starting to make sense—everything was starting to make terrible sense.
“There have been
nine such accursed in the family. There are three still alive. Martin is one. He stays so young because he takes the blood of his victims for nourishment.” He pointed to the others, all pale shadows on the dark splotches of the old photographs.
“Chalso Maldolli is the eldest in the family now. From the old country he writes telling who will take the pamgri into their house. We obey. First for the family shame and again because to defy the evil one is to bring a curse upon oneself. I will not shame the family . . . but the devil . . . the devil can take my soul.” The old man’s eyes got a faraway distant look. He spoke so softly that Christina had to lean forward to hear him.
“I would have destroyed the children the moment they showed the signs.” Passion exploded in his tired, watery eyes.
“Elena Bulyaresse could not destroy her child. She took her own life instead. Now Martin comes to me.”
Christina was almost mesmerized by the old man’s solemn monologue. She sat hardly breathing, as if in awe of the powerful words and images.
“People cannot come to the other people’s beliefs,” Tati Cuda spoke quietly as if they were in a holy place. “It’s hard for you, I know. It’s hard for anyone young because the young today have all their . . . facts . . . and explanations. Do you believe God’s whole world runs by the law of the few sciences we have been able to discover? No, Christina. There is more. But people are satisfied. They know so much that they think they know all. And they don’t allow for anything behind that knowledge. All that makes it easy for Nosferatu. That makes it easy for all the devils. It’s also easy because there is so much evil.” He paused, wiping away the spittle that had formed on his dried, cracked lips, and taking a sip of the sweet chocolate by his side. “So we do not notice the devil at our side. In Sunday’s newspaper . . . nobody noticed . . .”
He pulled out a folded piece of newsprint from his vest pocket. It was the size of a notice or small advertisement. It had been carefully cut from the back page of the paper.
He readjusted his reading glasses, which he had taken off during his monologue. Clearing his throat, he read slowly, squinting in the dim light:
A man was found dead in Pittsburgh’s Highland Park by police early this morning. There are no suspects at the moment, but officers reported that robbery was clearly the motive. The man, Lewis Potter, of the city’s Oakland area, was reportedly visiting a friend in the fashionable Highland Park district, but she made no statement to officials. Potter’s death is the city’s fifty-eighth crime-related killing this year. Police reported that Potter’s throat had been punctured and that he bled to death.
Christina looked up at Cuda as if to say, “What does this have to do with us?”
“Martin went to Pittsburgh Saturday night,” he said in response to her silent question.
Chapter Seven
The next morning Martin came downstairs feeling cheerful. He attacked his breakfast vigorously while Christina and Tati Cuda barely tasted theirs. He was well aware of their emotional session the night before, but didn’t let on that he had heard much of their conversation.
By afternoon, after hours of strained silence in the shop, Martin was relieved to see the old man hand him a shopping bag with the familiar fluttering bills. He walked past his favorite resting point—the automobile compacting plant—and watched with glee as the great jaws of the compactor squeezed old machines into blocks of metal. Through the wire fence, Martin could see the big hulking body of Arthur Bolanis. Arthur spotted him before he could get away and gave him a friendly wave. To Martin’s dismay, the big man crossed the expansive junkyard and trotted over to him.
“Hey, kid. I won’t see you again. You know I’m leaving.” A broad smile crossed his red face. He looked happier than Martin had ever seen him.
But Martin did not share his joy. He only stared at him silently.
“Well . . . anyway . . . I won’t see you again. Hey, unless ya wanna come to the party tonight. There’s a party at Betty’s. For me leavin’. Why doncha come, huh?”
Martin remained mute for a long time. The big man looked at him imploringly with his puppy dog eyes. Finally, Martin shrugged his shoulders.
“All right,” Arthur said when he saw that Martin had made some attempt at communication. “So maybe I’ll see you there.”
He bounded away, his heavy work boots crunching bits of metal and glass into the ground as he ran. A new lightness showed in his step. He was abandoning the dying town before it crunched him in its jaws like so many junked cars.
Martin was glad that Christina didn’t like Arthur anymore. He didn’t want to see her sad all the time. She was prettier than the train lady and the supermarket lady and Mrs. Santini combined, and nicer too, and he hated to see her cry. But now he had more important things to think about. He was on his way to Mrs. Santini’s house and was so excited he could hardly move his legs fast enough. There was something very special he wanted to tell her.
• • •
“Oh, just a minute, Martin,” Mrs. Santini said to him after he had reached her house and held out the order. “I’ll get some money.”
As she brought the bags inside, Martin debated whether or not to say anything. He wasn’t sure if she would be happy or sad or angry or just slam the door in his face, but he thought she would be pleased. Halfway down the hall she stopped and looked over her shoulder at him. Her hair was neatly combed, and she had on a light flowery housedress. Without her painted mask, she had the fresh look of a teenager.
“How about a little painting, tomorrow?” she asked him, shyly. “Charlie’s out of town again, and he left the game room half-finished.”
But before Martin had time to respond to her question, she had disappeared into the kitchen. Martin could see that her nervousness was only a coverup for something more. Now he was sure that she would be happy with his surprise.
Taking a brief look up and down the street, Martin saw that the neighborhood was quiet and deserted, as if the area had been cleared for an air-raid drill. A heaviness weighed in the humid summer air like a blanket. He stepped into the house and closed the front door behind him. His heart was beating frantically and his palms were drenched with perspiration. The clicking latch seemed an explosion in the still hallway. Looking up, Martin saw Mrs. Santini coming back down the hall. At the sound of the closing door, she had stopped in her tracks, as if caught in a snapshot. Then, Martin stood watching as she fumbled with her wallet. She wouldn’t look up at him, but he could see that her face was flushed.
“You want me here so you can do sexy things with me, right?” he asked simply.
The wallet fell from her hands. Open-mouthed, she stared at him in astonishment.
“Well,” Martin said, taking a few tentative steps toward her. “I’ve never done it . . . and I’ve been shy. But I decided I’d like to do it with you.” He said it so innocently and sweetly that the woman felt all terror leave her and a warmth flow-through her body and compel her to walk toward the ungainly, naïve young man.
“You’ve never done it?” she asked, picking up her wallet and setting it down on the hall table as she walked toward him slowly. His eyes did not leave hers the entire time.
Martin shook his head.
“Poor baby,” she said, reaching up for his face with her hands. His skin was soft and smooth, with a hint of a beard. She pulled him toward her. She could feel his heart beating against her ear as if he were a frightened kitten. “You’ve never done it?” she repeated.
“I bought those things to wear. I got them in a machine.” He fumbled through his pockets and showed her the package as if it were a prize.
“No. They’re no good,” she said, with a smile of pity on her face. “You just leave that part of it to me. Don’t worry about it.” She almost laughed out loud at his guileless manner. “If Charlie could see me now,” she thought to herself. “He’s only a boy.”
Martin had a very serious expression on his face. He had planned it all out. He knew that he didn’t want to get her
pregnant, and he knew that he could get in a lot of trouble if he did.
“I don’t want to make a kid,” he insisted seriously. “I shouldn’t ever make a kid. Because of my sickness, you know.” He had heard too many stories about those who did not heed the warning in his family.
Mrs. Santini was completely taken by his concern. He approached the idea of their lovemaking with a reverence that she found embarrassing, though, she had to admit, flattering.
“Poor baby,” she said, pressing him close to her breast. “The kid is turning me on,” she thought, “although the idea is ludicrous.” She was practically old enough to be his mother. She grabbed his hand, which was clammy and so bony that it felt like a bag of twigs. He offered no resistance as she led him upstairs toward the bedroom. The house was a mess, and her clothes were strewn all over the bed and the floor. She pushed a dirty blouse, her bathrobe, and some soiled underwear and pantyhose to the floor from her bed. But Martin was undisturbed by, even oblivious to, the mess.
He stood by helplessly as she unbuckled his belt and let his pants fall to the floor. Then she unbuttoned his shirt and pushed that off his shoulders. He stepped out of his jeans, and pulled his shorts off in one swift movement, ducking under the covers as if he were afraid she’d laugh.
With one movement, Mrs. Santini stripped off her housedress. She was so excited that she didn’t even bother to unbutton it, but pulled it over her head. She was nude underneath the housedress and before she got into bed, she paused as he eyed her hungrily. “At least I still have my figure,” she thought as she dove under the covers with him, his slender body trembling with anticipation. She rolled on top of him, purring softly into his ear. He clutched her tightly, and she felt as if she would break. She kissed his ear gently, nibbling on the lobe, and then his neck and shoulder with her teeth. Martin responded by kissing her neck and tentatively brushing her lips.
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