The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life

by Talbot, Michael

  With that I finished. Several of the internes began to nod slowly, appeased for the moment by my explanation, but Cletus simply glared. He had no retort, but he had read the meaning in my pause. He knew I was hiding something. I could feel his eyes burning into the back of my head as I turned the doorknob in its brass collar and entered the room. As usual the blinds were drawn and several bedsheets stretched tightly over each window kept all but a faint hint of sunlight from entering. According to Mr. Cavalanti’s directions the room was illuminated by two or three dozen candles arranged over the tables and ledges. It gave the room an almost ecclesiastical glow and in the midst of the flickering golden light rested the boy. Nature could not have chosen a creature more diametrically opposed to the man I had just left. The boy’s gentle face was flushed and beaded with perspiration. His hair was disheveled. An acrid trace of paraldehyde still lingered in the air.

  He gave a terrified start as I entered and then sank back heavily against his pillow. “Oh, it’s you,” he gasped weakly. “I’d thought you’d forgotten about me.”

  “I would never do that,” I said quickly. “I’m so terribly sorry about what happened.”

  “I told you! I knew I shouldn’t have stayed here.” He turned toward me desperately; his eyes flashed. “Do you know how awful it was, me being helpless while those men held me down, and that little gremlin came at me with his furious eyes?”

  For a moment I imagined this fragile boy thrashing wildly as the internes surrounded him, the candle flames flickering in the commotion. I could see Dr. Hardwicke hobbling about, leering with the satisfaction that he was only doing his duty as he plunged the hypodermic down and the angel emitted a pained and agonizing cry.

  “What will the paraldehyde do to you?” I asked inquisitively.

  “What does it do to you?”

  “It would make me go into a very deep sleep.”

  “It has made me sick, but I will not sleep.”

  I nodded as I approached the bed and began to undo his bandages. He drew back at first, but then he huffed and relented. As I removed the gauze I discovered with a mixture of awe and expectation that the flesh had already bonded together. Miraculously, the discoloration had already started to fade, and only a faint pink line remained where I had made the incisions. “And the bones?” I asked.

  “They have already set,” he replied. “It will be a day or two before they’re healed completely, but I could walk on them if it meant my life.” He fumbled for the gold pillbox and popped one of the shiny black pills into his mouth.

  “You won’t be very safe here after this incident,” I conceded. “As soon as my colleagues ponder the implications of your surviving their massive dose of paraldehyde, they’ll be hack. A few of the more noble ones might bring needles and scalpels, but most of them—” I stopped abruptly as I heard the floorboards creak outside the door. I imagined Dr. Hardwicke just happening to drop a cigarette near the keyhole and stooping to pick it up. My young friend glared intently at the open transom.

  “Most of them will be medieval,” he said in a hushed and distraught voice. “You don’t know how they’ll be, but I’ve had to deal with this sort of thing before. Anything that people don’t understand, they fear; and anything people fear, they hate. You’ll see a side of—” He was becoming so anxious and frightened I had to gesture for him to be quiet.

  He lowered his eyes as I walked over to the night table. “I’m a transgression,” he continued as he shook his head slowly and drifted off into silence.

  While he was distracted in his thoughts I carefully slipped one of the black pills out of the little gold pillbox and placed it in my pocket.

  “Niccolo,” I said abruptly. He looked up at me, his eyes wide and curious when he realized I had called him by his first name. “Are you sure your legs are healed enough that you could walk a little?”

  He nodded slowly.

  “Well, then, when I come back on my evening rounds,’” I whispered quietly, “I’ll bring you one of the interne’s uniforms. At ten o’clock sharp the nurses change shift and for a few moments no one will be paying much attention to your door. If you slip out then I’m sure you could make it to the back receiving door undetected.”

  He gazed at me unbelievingly as I sketched him a map of the hospital.

  “I’ll have a carriage waiting for you there,” I ended. “Do you think your legs are strong enough for you to make it that far?”

  He nodded yes.

  I shook my head with amazement. “Even if you do arouse a little suspicion, no one would dare consider that the unusual young patient in room 214 could be walking on his own accord for many months to come.” I glanced once again at his legs.

  “Dottore,” he said incredulously, “why should you alone be so different? Why are you doing this for me?”

  “Let’s just say I’m trying to make some amends,” I returned as I stood to leave. I reached for his hand and he drew back reluctantly, as if for some inexplicable reason he did not want me to shake it. His eyes met mine as I clenched his hand reassuringly. The poor dear boy was so flushed with worry his hand was actually cool to the touch.

  That afternoon I went to a chemist’s I frequented on Piccadilly, and waited for the tall, thin wren of a fellow to come from the back room. The shop itself was dark and brooding with walls cluttered to the ceiling with boxes, bottles, and apothecary jars filled with every imaginable pill and tonic. A row of stuffed birds lined the perimeter of the ceiling, and two immense mirrors in Chinese frames behind the counter gave it an illusion of space.

  “Good day to ya, Dr. Gladstone,” the shopkeeper greeted when he appeared. “Peevish weather we’re havin’.”

  “Peevish, indeed, Mr. Sedgemoor. I wonder if you might oblige me in a rather unusual request.”

  I laid the shiny black pill on the counter. “One of my patients is taking this medication, and refuses to tell me what they are. I was wondering if you could try to track it down for me?”

  “There won’t be any problem in that, Dr. Gladstone,” he replied. “Of course, if it’s a home remedy and not in any formularies, it might take a couple of weeks to test it.”

  “Whatever,” I returned. “Just get in touch with me as soon as possible.”

  He smiled and slipped the pill into a small brown envelope as I turned and left the shop.

  The evening was warm and muggy and midge swarms hovered in haloes around the gas lamps. I drove the brougham myself so that it would not be necessary to fabricate any explanations for my driver. I did not want anything surrounding Niccolo’s escape to lead to me. I know I sighed with relief when I saw the white-coated figure walk carefully down the steps, and I caught a glimpse of the shining face in the lamplight. The ride to Bond Street was uneventful.

  When we finally reached the house I led Niccolo directly to the study, and he sank heavily into one of the two padded and buttoned black leather armchairs in front of the fireplace. Even though he remained silent I could tell he was carefully scanning the details of the room. The walls were of black paneling, and a deep scarlet Axminster carpet covered the floor. Huge aspidistras towered everywhere, and dark walnut bookcases shimmered in the light of the fire. A gilt pendulum clock upon the chimneypiece ticked loudly under a glass dome supported by a red, plush-covered plinth, flanked by two other domes containing carefully mounted African grasshoppers. In the corner by the door sat my desk cluttered with papers and inks, and between the chairs by the fireplace was a huge mahogany table containing an epergne, a pair of wine coolers, candelabra, and innumerable salvers, mugs, coasters, goblets, and other silver articles covered with repoussé work.

  I poured Niccolo a cognac without stopping to think that he never drank, and he accepted it greedily, rolling it 3lowly in the snifter as he savored the aroma. “Ahh, brandy,” he sighed. “It has been so long since I’ve sniffed brandy.”

  I poured myself one and sat down in the chair opposite his when suddenly a rustling in the corner caused Niccolo to lu
rch forward in his seat. “It’s all right,” I said as a brown, furry creature crept out from behind one of the aspidistras. “It’s only Deirdre, our hedgehog.”

  He eyed me inquisitively as the little animal nosed along the baseboard and waddled out through the partially open door. “She eats beetles,” I explained, and Niccolo sank back into his chair. “Many English households have them.”

  After many long moments he finally stared directly into my eyes. “Signore Gladstone, I cannot express enough gratitude for your assistance, but I must ask you again: Why did you do it?”

  “Help you escape?” I replied, and contemplated the question for a moment. “I suppose I did it because you were in trouble. You were quite right: People were beginning to fear you, and besides, what is that old saying? Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

  The faintest hint of a smile crossed his face only to be crowded out once again by his continued uneasiness. “Is that the only reason, because you think I’m an angel?”

  I took a long sip of my cognac before I answered. “I have to admit that you pique my scientific interests as well. I mean, the fact that your metabolism heals itself so miraculously fast is of more than a little interest to the physician in me. And, of course”—I hesitated—“I want to know why you haven’t aged a day since the first time I saw you.”

  “Signore Gladstone,” he said chuckling evasively, “I have no memory of this meeting. And, besides, how can you be so sure it was me? How long did you say it was? Almost forty years ago?” He continued to laugh quietly, and sniffed the brandy again, but still he did not drink it.

  For the first time I grew uneasy, even frightened in the young man’s presence. I stood up and got a large red book bound in Russian leather from one of the walnut cases, and quickly thumbed through it. When I found the engraving of the London Madonna of the Rocks I offered it to him. He hesitantly accepted it. “It’s no coincidence,” said once again, gazing intently into his dark and deceptively innocent eyes. “Every line, every delicate contour is exactly the same.” I leaned closer and placed my hand upon his shoulder. “I helped you escape, Niccolo. The least I deserve is to know who and what you are.”

  At this he hissed the same outraged hiss of a cat before it strikes, and pounced upon me. It was then, as the terrifyingly angelic face was only inches from my own, that I saw he had filed the canine teeth on either side of his mouth into points. “You’re such a fool,” he shrilled, and although he had not touched his drink his breath was warm and moist with brandy. He continued his exhalations slowly, even passionately, as his lips drew close to my flesh.

  I screamed and struggled to escape, but the slender and frail hands held me with unusual strength. Then, as suddenly as he had leaped up from the chair, he threw me down and walked over to one of the windows. “Aren’t you going to run now?” he asked bitterly.

  I gasped and tried to compose myself. “Why should I?” This remark startled him greatly. “My teeth! Look at my teeth!” He stepped forward and opened his mouth, revealing the teeth he had filed down.

  “Why on earth would you do that to yourself?” I asked as I stepped forward and scrutinized them. They had been filed into tremendously sharp points. Moreover, they must have been abnormally long to begin with, for they protruded a good eighth of an inch below his other teeth.

  I might have been mistaken but he seemed amused. I reached up and gingerly touched one of the canines, making sure not to puncture myself. As I slowly withdrew my hand I recalled the peculiarities of his metabolism, his refusal to eat, and his miraculous ability to heal. A shudder passed through me. “You’re awfully strange,” I said.

  “Stranger than you suspect.”

  I chuckled. “What are you, a vampire?”

  He smiled.

  I felt as if all of the wind had been knocked out of me by a heavy blow. Every fiber of my being doubted even the remotest possibility of such a preposterous notion and yet at one and the same time I realized it was absolutely true. “Am I in danger?” I asked.

  “You are in the presence of the vampire!” he hissed and began to pace furiously.

  I wanted to run but I summoned all of my courage and remained. “But am I in danger?” I repeated.

  At this his expression softened, and he regarded me imploringly. “Couldn’t I have taken you in the garden? Or couldn’t I just as easily have killed you now?” shook his head sadly. “Signore Gladstone, I have never had any intentions of ever hurting you. Indeed, I have given you a trust that I seldom give any human being. It is very rare for a vampire ever to reveal himself. It is too dangerous.”

  “Then why are you confiding in me?”

  “Because you are different from all others,” he answered. “In you I sense a curiosity, even an admiration. You knew I wasn’t human. You knew it in the hospital, and yet you had compassion instead of ignorance and fear. But tell me, Signore Gladstone, now that you know exactly what I am, what are you going to do about it?”

  “I don’t rightly know,” I returned. “You’re not well enough to be put out on the street, but—” I stopped abruptly.

  “—but you have your family to think about.”

  “My two daughters are away visiting, but they’ll be home in a couple of days.”

  “Mio caro, Dottore Gladstone, you are so naïve. Do you think vampires are so crass as to go around biting children?”

  I blushed. “Isn’t that what people say?”

  Niccolo folded his arms indignantly and sat back down in his chair. “That’s what the rabble says. But what does the rabble say about medicine, about disease? What superstitious prattle circulates about anything that people don’t understand and are afraid of?” He paused and reached for his cognac. “That isn’t to say that there isn’t a basis to the legend. We do subsist primarily upon blood, but we don’t just go around leaving conspicuous marks on random necks. That’s dangerously flagrant. It starts panics and witch-hunts, and innocent people end up with silly things like stakes in their chests. The first law of survival in the world of the vampire is never to attract attention, and besides, we don’t have to worry about where we get what we need. There are many individuals who offer themselves freely to the vampire.” There was a rustling and we both noticed that Deirdre had once again entered the study and was nosing along the baseboard. A large wood spider scurried out and she gobbled it up greedily. Niccolo chuckled and swirled the golden liquid around in his snifter as he continued to inhale the bouquet. “Oh, no, there are other things that the vampire is much more concerned about than blood.”

  “And what are those?” I asked, returning to my chair.

  He smiled. “Well, first there’s pleasure and the delights of the senses. The older you get the more you realize you should drink life’s liquors before the cup goes dry, as friend Omar puts it. Once you’re no longer afraid of dying and not getting into heaven you become numbed with abandon. Yes, pleasure is always a concern, but come now, Dottore Gladstone, you’re an intelligent man, can you tell me what the most important thing is to a vampire?” As he regarded me the firelight made strange patterns upon his face. “Think about it. If you were a vampire, what would you feel? What would be important to you after you watched the entire folly and pageant of humanity pass before your deathless eyes? Well, I’ll tell you: You would soon realize that being a vampire is a very special thing. Of course, at first it’s frightening because you’ve been taught you’re one of the undead, a monster. But then you realize you’ve changed in ways that don’t seem monstrous at all. Yes, your metabolism becomes so refined that you can digest only blood, and that may seem a little monstrous, but there are many wonderful things as well. Your senses become incredibly acute. You can smell what kind of hard rock candy a child has in his pocket, and you can sense the heat of a man’s footprints hours after he has paced a carpet. You no longer get colds in the winter, or sneeze from the goldenrod, or get cholera when an epidemic ravages everyone around yo
u. And when you get hurt, your wounds heal as if touched by saints. Cuts don’t bleed and scars fade like mosquito bites. And you know what else?” His voice lowered to a reverent hush. “You can see many things other men don’t see. You can watch the sharp lines of cliffs grow soft, religions that people once died for, die themselves and be forgotten, and great cities rise and fall, for you see, my dear Dottore, you never grow old.

  “Now contemplate that, Dottore Gladstone. What would be important to you if you had all the advantages of being a vampire, and you realized you were immortal? Not blood, or helpless young women wandering into dark old castles. Knowledge would become your Holy Grail, knowledge and all the learning you could glean about this phenomenon we call humanity, about a universe awesome enough to create such a thing as a vampire.”

  After many long moments of silence I shifted my weight excitedly in my chair. “Is it you, then? Are you the angel in the painting?”

  Niccolo drew in his breath very slowly, and then nodded. “I was the model who posed for the master, Leonardo.”

  To my amazement his confession didn’t surprise me in the least, and I realized that I, or some part of me, had known how old Niccolo was from the very first time I set eyes on him. As I glanced at the smooth, youthful hands I noticed all of his cognac had evaporated, and I proffered him more. He accepted it eagerly.

  “Were you a vampire when you knew Leonardo?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Was Leonardo a vampire also?”

  “No.”

  “How did you meet him and what was he like?”

  “Our meeting was planned,” Niccolo said, and paused before he added, “by Lodovico.”

  As he murmured the name I thought I noticed an almost imperceptible trace of sadness in his voice.

  “You see,” he continued, “I am not the only vampire. There are many others, and many of them are much older and wiser than I. The oldest and the wisest one I’ve ever met was Lodovico.” Niccolo tilted his head back against the chair as he gazed dreamily off into space. “Ahh, Lodovico,” he sighed. “What do I tell you about Lodovico?