by Rob Rosen
But it was a difficult time in Udmurtia. Crops had failed and plague had spread throughout the towns. Russians blamed the Jews, as they always did. Dr. Rogovsky was Jewish, so he made hasty plans to move to Moscow, where he had learned his medical skills. I asked to go with him. Under his tutelage, I would learn not just about blood but how the body works. And, of course, there would be my medicine.
Luckily, he agreed to take me with him. We packed his equipment and our belongings, and left one moonless night for Moscow. The city amazed me—so many tall buildings and such beautiful men. I think my cock stayed erect the first three days without pause.
Dr. Rogovsky said I should study at the university, his alma mater. He still had friends there. But my Russian wasn’t very good and my basic medical knowledge was inadequate, so he spent two more years teaching me, with the goal of preparing me for medical school. I practiced my Russian, especially with the many men I met. My Udmurt red hair and pale skin were novelties in Moscow, though they had never been back home. Many Udmurts look like me. Russians are dark or blond. In Moscow, I was a rare commodity and in demand.
The men would say their names when we met. They looked confused when I told them mine. “I’m not Russian,” I would explain. None of them had ever been to Udmurtia. My ethnic background seemed as exotic to them as my looks. At one time, I thought I would make my name more Russian, but too many people already knew me as Vesya.
I became more Dr. Rogovsky’s associate than his assistant. I did research at the great medical libraries of Moscow, admitted by his name and credentials, and reported to him what I learned. He thought my interest in the blood system novel. I developed medicines and tried them with animals, and eventually, with his approval, on volunteers among his patients. We made many beneficial discoveries together. When I applied to medical school, my fame was already beginning. I was accepted without examination.
The school authorities allowed me to study with the best teachers, right away. Indeed, they treated me almost as a colleague. They were excited by my blood research and encouraged me to continue, as well as to study medicine in general, of course. This left me little time with Dr. Rogovsky, but I did continue clinic hours with him out of gratitude and because he was growing older. It was difficult for him to see his old patients, much less anyone new. I obtained more than enough blood at the university, but I was loyal to Dr. Rogovsky. He treated me almost as a son.
When he died suddenly—I diagnosed it as heart attack—he left me his house and practice. I was a doctor myself by then, focusing on research medicine, but I gladly took over his practice. I was still looking for a cure for my disease and needed humans with blood disorders for my experiments.
People commented on how young I looked, so I took to adding white to my hair and applying special lotions to my face and hands that made me appear older. Still, I knew the ruse couldn’t last, so I evaluated where next to live and applied for a position as an instructor at the great medical college in Heidelberg. The Germans were surprised when such a young man with such a strange name arrived from Russia.
I stayed at Heidelberg many years, now knowing to gradually age my hair and skin. I had sex with men as my older self if I knew them and as the ageless me if I did not. I continued my fruitless research until it was time to die and start a new life.
After Heidelberg, I moved to Paris. I lived through revolutions and counterrevolutions, never leaving because of the beauty of the city and her men. Paris was also a scientific center, and I could continue my research. I kept trying for a cure, testing each possibility on animals and then, if rabid symptoms were alleviated, on myself. But none of the medicines or vaccines ever helped my vampirism. I still needed blood every month during the new moon, but at least the dosage never increased. I always wanted more, but managed never to take it.
I discarded the practice of bloodletting in Paris. I espoused adding fresh blood, not subtracting it. I was the first one to call adding blood a transfusion. I was not given credit, but I was still the first.
I developed more sophisticated crèmes to protect my skin from the sun. This led to other discoveries, which aided sufferers of skin disease. I studied dermatology at the great Hôpital Saint-Louis. This bemused many of my colleagues. Why would a famous researcher and practitioner in blood disease be interested in dermatology? I decided to move on again, before the questions were answered—or worse.
I became adept at preparing my death. I aged myself and “died,” substituting a cadaver for my body, always arranging for cremation. I left my practice to other men, having no natural heirs, and would quickly find my way as a new man to a new place.
New York was my next home. I appeared once again as a young man, and set up a practice on Park Avenue, among other fashionable doctors. My name was now Henri-Luc Chenault. I was a graduate of the Hôpital Saint-Louis, which was true. I had a dual practice in dermatology and hematology, and I still yearned for a cure for immortality.
Most of my patients wanted my services as a dermatologist. They were mainly middle-aged or elderly matrons with time and wealth who wanted to stay young forever, or at least to appear younger looking. I could have argued against eternal youth, but they would not have agreed. My own skin was my best advertisement. When people asked, I told them the truth: I used my own crèmes and stayed out of the sun.
In New York I found more men who looked like me— not vampiric, of course—but there were many redheads with pale skin and pale eyes like mine. Most often, they were Irish and working class. I enjoyed being naked with them, but I didn’t expect to find a continuing relationship among them. I didn’t expect to find it with anyone, in fact. I wanted love but worried about having it. Wouldn’t my lover discover my secrets? So, I remained distant with the men I met.
There came a day, however, when there was an exception.
Jack Callaghan was Scottish, as well as a doctor. He had the thick, woolly red hair of the Scots, but, unlike my Irish encounters, was a professional. He had gone to medical school in Edinburgh, and was in New York for further studies at Lenox Hill Hospital on the Upper East Side. I lived nearby, as did the majority of my patients. I sometimes lectured at Lenox Hill on dermatology and blood diseases. I met Jack there at one of my classes.
“We have something in common,” were the first words he said to me after we were introduced.
I blanched—though I was already as pale as one could get—but did my best to recover. “And what is that, Dr. Callaghan?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t hear the quaver in my voice. He pointed at my hair and his. “Oh,” I said, greatly relieved. He suggested we go for coffee, and I agreed, taking care to don my tinted glasses before we exited the building.
“You wear glasses against the sun?”
“Yes, my eyes are sensitive.”
“Mine too,” he said. “Perhaps I should try dark lenses as well.”
He wore eyeglasses to see. Behind them, I noticed that his eyes were green. They looked back at me calmly, and we shared the look of recognition. I stuffed my feelings back inside myself and promised to give him the name of the service who made my lenses.
We walked to a café near the hospital, on upper Madison. There, over his tea and my coffee, we talked about ourselves. “I’ve been to Paris many times,” he said. “Your accent is strange.” My heart skipped a beat. “Are you from Provence?” he asked.
I settled back in my chair, hoping he hadn’t seen my alarm. “No, Nancy,” I replied, as blandly as I could. “In the north, near Belgium.”
“I’ve never been there,” he said, smiling. “Is it nice?”
“Not especially,” I answered, forcing a laugh. I steered him back to Paris. By our second cups, we had arranged a dinner, both knowing what would follow.
In Jack’s bedroom I found that his body was as white and ethereal as the man’s who had made me a monster. Was he like me in more ways than hair color? I lay down beside him and gave my neck to him. His lips grazed my skin. I waited for the fangs, but none cam
e. I adjusted our positions and made love to his body, paying careful attention to his small, pink, pointed nipples, since he shivered so when my lips brushed over them. I raised his legs and entered him slowly, joyous to hear him gasp in pleasure. His legs clinched my back to hold me close. I leaned toward his face, toward his lips, toward his achingly inviting neck.
“What is it?” he asked, when I abruptly pulled away from him.
“I should not have stayed,” I said, brushing my longish hair out of my eyes before sitting up.
“Why?” he asked, which I didn’t answer. “Stay with me, Henri,” he insisted seductively, his pale, muscular arms reaching up, his neck stretching.
My fangs ached to rip into his flesh. The moon would not be full for several days, but I wanted Jack’s blood as much as I wanted his body. I wanted the life force of him inside me. I wanted my come inside him.
I forced myself to stand and dress. Jack sat up. “Is it something I did or said?” he asked, while I pulled on my trousers.
“No,” I answered simply, afraid to say more.
He stopped me from doing up my trouser buttons, and pulled them and my underpants back down, taking my erection into his mouth before beginning to suck. I let him swallow my seed while I held him by his copper hair. When he asked again, I agreed to stay, my first full night with a man since those with Mardan.
In the morning, he drew apart the heavy curtains across the bedroom window. I yelped when the instant heat singed my body. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” he yelped back, and hurriedly shut the drapes.
“So much sun so suddenly,” I tried to joke. “Do you have a robe?” He showed me two. One reached to the floor, so I put it on. Jack slipped into the other.
We had coffee and tea, wearing his robes. He suggested breakfast nearby, but I demurred. “My patients,” I explained, which was true. I promised to see him again for dinner. Afterward, I invited him to my home, which was better prepared for defense against the sun. Thereafter, we always spent our nights together at my house on Upper Fifth.
Within three months, I found myself in love. I didn’t say the word to Jack, hoping he’d lose interest in me, but one night he said it first.
“I love you, Henri.”
My heart sank. He waited through my silence and the ticking of the standing clock in the hallway.
“Don’t you love me?” he asked at last.
“Yes,” I replied, with a heavy sigh.
He sat up against the dark walnut headboard, folding his arms as he frowned. “You don’t sound at all happy about it.”
In truth, I wasn’t. It meant I would have to die again. I lay prone on the bed, watching my lives parade before me in the midair of my bedroom.
Jack spoke into my silence. “Well, that’s it then; I’m going home.”
I didn’t try to stop him, but did ask, “Will I still see you tomorrow?”
“No, I’m going home. To Scotland.”
“When did you reach this decision?” I asked, surprised I didn’t feel relieved.
“Just now,” he replied. His green eyes stared at me without anger, without any emotion at all. “I’ve had an offer to join a practice. McLeod. In Edinburgh.” I’d heard of him. Eminent. Growing older. Likely needing a sharp young doctor on the rise to bequeath his patients to. “I had thought to turn him down, but now . . . ” He waited for me to say something. I wanted to. I longed ferociously to plead with him to stay, to love me, but that was impossible. I couldn’t love anyone, for their sake and mine. The gods were giving me a gift I simply could not accept. I remained silent as he dressed and left, without a look back.
Jack left for Scotland a month later.
I returned to my old habits: teaching, caring for patients, seeing men only for sex. I tried, unsuccessfully, to forget Jack. I embraced my work with patients frenetically, accelerating my blood research. I wanted so much to be just a man, a man who could let himself be loved. I was getting closer. My fangs rarely emerged, once Jack was gone. I still needed fresh blood once a month, but had successfully decreased the dosage to half.
My time in New York grew short. Over the years, I had gradually grayed my hair and aged my skin cosmetically. I stooped slightly for effect, but my colleagues and their wives became suspicious, especially the wives, who knew cosmetics and the details of aging more intimately than their husbands. So, once again, I prepared my death. I began the rumor that I was ill, that it was a hopeless ailment. At last, I left my hat, coat, and suicide note on the Brooklyn Bridge in the middle of the night, when no one was near. I’d booked my passage on a freighter heading for Australia as a young man named Paul, looking for adventure.
In Sydney, I applied for medical school and was accepted. I began my life and research again, but this time with a greater sadness than before. I thought a great deal about Jack. He had become a world-renowned doctor and medical researcher himself. I began a foolish correspondence with him, as the new me, not the old. Of course, at first it seemed harmless, just hero worship for a great physician from a medical student in faraway Australia. But our words became more personal when we began speaking once a week by telephone.
The first time there was silence when I answered. Then, one word: “Henri?” My heart sank. I had been unbelievably foolish. I started to hang up, but then he shouted, “Paul! I’m sorry. Your voice reminds me of . . . oh, well, in any case, how are you?”
He said several times in succeeding conversations that he would visit me, but I always put him off. Yes, I looked younger than him now, but I suspected he would know me in an instant, as he had known my voice. It was easy to dissuade him—the long distance and increasing trouble in Europe. The Germans had forced Austria into a union of German-speaking peoples and taken the Sudetenland. It was not a time to be traveling far from home.
When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and Darwin, Australia and the United States both declared war. I had finished medical school and my residency. I volunteered to be an Australian Military Forces doctor.
We set up field hospitals throughout the East Indies. My fellow Aussies always marveled at my bravery. I retrieved the wounded fearlessly, running into action while gunfire blazed. They didn’t know I couldn’t die, at least not from ordinary bullets.
Somehow, Jack and I kept up an irregular correspondence throughout the war. He was too old and too important to fight, but he organized the home hospitals for those wounded in battle and aerial bombings. He became even more famous and beloved. I felt pride in his accomplishments, more than in my own.
After the war ended, Jack announced he was flying to Australia and could not be put off by any more reasons or excuses. I debated whether to disappear again or just not be in Sydney when Jack arrived, but I couldn’t make myself do either. I’d joined a prestigious medical practice. I had my patients to think of. Besides, the more I thought of Jack, the more desperate I became to see him, so I made a deal with myself: one visit. Then, after his return to Scotland, I would prepare my own departure, but to where and as whom I didn’t yet know.
I watched the BOAC plane land at Sydney Airport. It seemed so small to have come so far. Steps were rolled to it. The door opened. I stretched my neck to locate Jack, reminding myself that he was so much older now. I recognized him immediately, however. He still had copper hair, albeit with some white throughout the red. He was dressed for our summer, in a light suit, carrying a broad-brimmed hat. I wanted to run to him. I wanted to sing with happiness. But I did neither. I had never met Jack Callaghan before, at least to his eyes. I made myself walk deliberately to baggage claim, where we had agreed to meet.
His back was to me, but I knew whose back it was. I tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned around, smiling then not, exclaiming loudly, “Henri!” The people around us stared.
“Paul Evans,” I told him in my Australian accent, holding my hand out to shake. He pulled me in close in a clamping hug.
“I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!”
My fears had been realized—someone
knew me—and, for the first time in nearly two hundred years, I gave up my pretense. I struggled, but my body betrayed me. I held Jack in my arms as willingly as he held me in his. I loved him. If he still loved me, there was only one thing left to do.
I drove us to my home, a two-story house with a basement laboratory. Once I’d closed the door on the outside world, Jack’s arms went around me again. His lips kissed mine repeatedly and at length. I led the way upstairs to my bedroom.
As I undressed him, I saw that Jack’s body had thickened a little, but he still moaned when I played with his tight, pink nipples and he still eagerly sucked my cock, preparing me to enter him, and, when I did, his eyes still danced with the same delight. My groans also seemed to come from the past, though farther back, from times with Mardan in my first safe place, so very far away. I thought of Mardan dying. Jack would die as well. Still, I pushed away my thoughts of history and pressed Jack’s legs back as far as they would go. We were here now, the place I’d never wanted to be.
I pummeled his ass, as if I hadn’t fucked anyone in the many intervening years. That was not true, of course. I was always young and beautiful, and men were always willing. I kissed along Jack’s neck without fear; my fangs never emerged in those days, not anymore, not if I didn’t want them to. Only my lips and tongue traced his veins. My hands went to his shoulders when my mouth reached his chest. He was still so handsome, all red and pink and glorious, but, yes, I could see the wrinkles and the aging skin. I felt the loss of all those years, as much as I felt Jack’s body. He began to yell, interrupting my reverie.
“I’m coming, Henri! I’m coming!”
When he shot into the narrow space between us, I let my cock explode inside him. We roiled together, conjoined and coming. I stayed inside him afterward, reluctant to leave, now that I was there.
He frowned up at me. “You’re alive,” he said, his face showing his mind was reasserting control. “I heard . . . ” he began. I started to pull out of him. “Don’t! Please, don’t. Never mind what I heard. But how?” I eased myself back inside him, still fully engorged, and began my story.