The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life

by Talbot, Michael

  I heard a sound behind me.

  I turned to see Madame Villehardouin standing in the shadows just a few feet away.

  “Are you really in so much curiosity?” she asked.

  “What is happening up there?”

  A warm wind wafted through the house and fluttered the rotting curtains as she stepped forward. She appeared gilded in the flickering light of the ormolu candelabrum. Her pearls rustled languorously over her bodice. Her teeth shone white, as white as her necklace.

  “Of what concern is it to you?”

  I blushed. I had never been so discourteous in my life. A gentleman had no place doing and saying the things I found myself doing and saying. On the other hand, my every uncivil inquiry might prove vital to my survival. How preposterous my mannerly existence was in the face of the unknown.

  A faint suspiration rose from the room.

  “You have heard of the incubus?” she said. “The male spirit or devil who seduces women?” She tossed a glance at the door above. “Just because we are of such low blood pressure does not mean certain bodily functions do not work.”

  “You mean Hatim’s... well, his more gentlemanly operations are intact?”

  “How delicate!” she chortled. She spun impishly about, throwing her head back and closing her eyes in wicked amusement. “How vedy, vedy proper!” Her movement caused a tempest of dust to stir from the walls and swirl through the candlelight. It was a disarming juxtaposition, the vibrancy of her beauty against the deteriorating house.

  “Accounts of the incubus invariably refer to their uncommonly low body temperature. Have you ever wondered why? C’est la mer à boire. Chacun à sa marotte. Go and witness for yourself!”

  She stepped in front of the falcon as she nodded me on. I climbed the rotting stairs carefully. I peered through the crack in the door at the decrepit little room. It had not changed. It was still malodorous. The floor was worn black from endless pacing. My vision passed over the sparse furnishings, the table, the falconer’s glove. I could not see the mattress for the angle.

  “The archives of the Parliament of Paris in 1616 recorded the testimony of a twenty-three-year-old woman who had been seduced by one of those wanderers of the night,” Madame Villehardouin called from below.

  I leaned far over the railing until at last I saw the ticking of the mattress and the shadows rippling over Hatim’s naked torso. His breeches were loose and his brown and muscled loins moved rhythmically.

  . she knew the devil once,’” the Oriental woman continued. Her breath was sibilant.

  Beneath the Persian was a woman, her face severed by darkness. He moved a brown hand slowly up her rib cage, kneaded the large pink aureole of her white breast.

  “‘... and his member was like that of a horse, cold as ice and ejected ice-cold semen.’”

  A pearl of saliva dripped slowly to her neck as he moved with sinister precision.

  “‘... and on his withdrawing it burned her as if it had been on fire.’”

  I am ashamed to say I was frozen in my voyeurism. It was the same immobility I had felt at the eggshell window of my youth. Who was the woman, I thought? With terrifying grace he sunk his fangs into her jugular. She shot up, wracked by the draining kiss as she wound her arms around his dark shoulders and enveloped him in the tangle of her hair.

  For a moment I thought the hair looked familiar. The hands. The image wavered in my mind. No, it couldn’t be.

  “Ursula!” I cried.

  Madame Villehardouin tried to stop me, but I burst into the room. Hatim dropped the woman and lurched back, blood frothing at his lips. His eyes were aflame with the same obsidian gleam of the falcon’s.

  “Ursula!” I repeated, but it was then that I saw. It was not Ursula. It was Geneviève. Her eyes were red and glassy Only the faintest hint of awareness shot out of them, a furtive, half present modesty.

  I quickly retreated.

  Within moments, in the darkness, I heard Madame Villehardouin’s slippers padding in the rotted carpet. There was a hush of breath near me.

  “Who is this Ursula?”

  I turned and gazed into the petal eyes. They were darkly intent upon my answer.

  “My daughter?’ I said simply.

  She accepted the information, and something told me her cerebral machinery, a mind centuries old, was quickly mulling it over, processing it behind the sublime and probing eyes. “I see,” she said with a knowing edge to her reply. She looked at me with an odd mixture of distance and sympathy.

  All of these things—her reception at the party, her searching eyes, her uncharacteristic hint of sympathy-convinced me my theory was correct. Madame Villehardouin, like Niccolo, had been changed to a vampire because of her phenomenal beauty. Even Hatim had been changed because of a talent, not because of genius. This was the dividing line. She was an outcast because she was not privy to their secret language. I had suffered just a fragment of the resulting alienation only minutes before in the gathering below. What sort of melancholy or spiritual devastation would such segregation cause over the centuries? To be alone from humanity, to be a vampire, was one thing. But then to be alone again. I began to understand the depth of Niccolo’s sadness and Hatim’s abandon to his instincts. She had not changed as the other vampire had. She had not shed the last vestige of her humanity. Therein lay a hope.

  My eye traced over the bridge of her nose, her cheekbone. “May I venture to tell you how exquisitely beautiful you are,” I said. I had hoped the compliment might soften her, but it had exactly the opposite effect. Her pupils narrowed.

  “I was a concubine of the Kublai Khan,” she said without feeling. “Just as he collected leopards and roe bucks and sent hordes of elephants over all his territories to bring back the most grand and immense trees for his gardens, so he collected beautiful women. We were rated in carats, like gold. Every feature had its measure, one carat for shape of face, another for sweetness of breath. He imported five hundred of them a year, from Ungut, in Tartary. For many years I was one of his more favored.” She ended abruptly. I wanted to ask her to continue, but I did not want to offend her. My heart was pounding. “May I inquire as to what happened next?”

  She turned to me slowly, the gauze of her bodice whispered over her shoulders. I realized she came from an age and culture of even more rigid protocol than my own. There was a time when even the most trifling breach of social etiquette made in her presence might have resulted in a flogging. A trace of contempt passed through her expression as if she were considering putting an end to further questions, but then she looked at me with the same remote pity.

  “I died,” she said unadornedly.

  Again I noticed the ambiguity of her age. There was something both youthful and timeworn in her.

  “My last human memory is of touching my hard, dry lips. I was taken in a pestilence. I drifted into darkness.”

  “How is it that you are here to tell me these things?”

  “I am here because an astrologer of the court also favored my countenance, a vampire. In China the dead were not immediately buried. They were kept in their coffins in the stables, often for many months, until the astrologers fixed upon a favorable day for their interment. In the delirium of my fever the astrologer infected me. My first vampire memory is of the coffin opening and seeing the face of the astrologer framed by the stars.”

  She emitted a long exhalation and I gazed at her rising breast behind the veil of her dress. There was no trace of pestilence, of chancre or open sore. Her flesh was as healthy, as smooth and golden as a fallow deer.

  “So you were changed because of your beauty.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that why you are an outcast?”

  She turned to me and glowered.

  “Madame, I most humbly beg your pardon—”

  She shook her head, anger brimming in her eyes. “The times... the times,” she said. She looked past me and lapsed into a deep reflection. “I once met an artist here in a café. He was a very
disturbed man. His name was Edvard. He said there were three types of women, only three: the virgin, the widow, and the whore. He could not desire without feeling it was evil. He was afraid of women. He thought their hair was embued with life. He feared it would entwine and smother him.”

  I was at a loss as to why she was telling me this.

  She looked back at me. “Why did you come to my house? Why did you chase me all over Paris?”

  I told her the entire story, of Camille and Lodovico, and she raised her eyebrow. When I finished she spoke.

  “You see, they are up to something.”

  “You do not know what?”

  She became scornful. “They do not tell me anything. But I do know they are very busy these days. There are vampire all over Paris, stealing about and mingling with the unsuspecting. They are playing a strange game. I do not know what the game is, but I do know one thing: If Lodovico was here on the Île Saint-Louis, des Esseintes knew about it. Des Esseintes knows everything that goes on in this city There is no stone he does not have eyes under.”

  I had already realized it was true, but her confirmation still had its effect upon me. It had happened again. Like Niccolo, des Esseintes had lied from the beginning. He, too, was working for Lodovico. He had used Ambrose to gain control of Lady Dunaway. He most assuredly knew where Camille was. And where was Camille? Something in my heart told me she was not in this old house.

  A breeze once again fluttered the candle flames and the flower in Madame Villehardouin’s ebony hair. Once again the visage of a young girl, ardent and nubile, appeared like a specter in the mature lines of the face. The advent of the apparition caused her to take another deep breath.

  “What do you think of des Esseintes?” I ventured to ask.

  The eyes darted sadly. “What can I think? I despise him.”

  It was as I had thought. Here was my chance, my one opportunity. “Madame Villehardouin,” I entreated, “if you have any notion of how I must feel here, if you have ever loved as I love my daughters, would you help me escape?” She was struck dumb with horror and surprise. The youthful presence instantly faded. “Oh, no, monsieur, I cannot do that,” she said, shaking her head as the full extent of her dread slowly shone in her face. “I dare not.”

  “Madame, with all submission I beg of you.”

  She shrunk back, still shaking her head. She gently lifted her skirts and turned to leave. “Daintily, daintily, I retire,” she said, saturnine and deranged, “with a footfall so light not even the moth is disturbed.” Her dress scraped against the rotted carpet as she quickly rushed away.

  There was one thought in my mind, one thought alone. I tinned in the opposite direction and rushed down the hallway. I descended the first set of stairs, the falcon flapping and hopping behind me. When I reached the rosewood staircase I discovered the party had moved into the foyer and were lounging about on chairs and pillows, passing the hookah. Their eyes were glassy, and a cloud of blue smoke hovered in the room. Monsieur des Esseintes was seated at the black harmonium. Around him were strewn orchids.

  He looked up.

  “Monsieur le Docteur, you are just in time. I’m going to play now.”

  I noticed Fernande smiling.

  “I did not know you were musical,” I said.

  “It is not music, exactly,” des Esseintes returned. “You see, I’ve disconnected the pipes. A different fragrance of orchid has been placed in each bellows. When I play, sound does not come out, but smells!”

  He adjusted the harmonium.

  “How like the vampire the orchid is,” he said, holding a bloom aloft. “They are called parasites, and yet they do not kill their host.” He placed the bloom in a receptacle attached to one of the pipes. “They can live in darkness. They would wither in the hot sun.” He sealed another bloom. “They are rare and delicate creatures, and they grow in hidden places.”

  I noticed Lady Dunaway sitting next to the glass globe containing the bullrushes. To her left the young gentleman with the Hapsburg mustache finished with the hookah and passed it to her. To my horror she accepted it. She inhaled deeply and then gazed at me. She was not sheepish, but blank. Changed.

  Des Esseintes posed his white hands over the keyboard. He began to play.

  Silence.

  A chorus of admiration rose from the throng as the first smell swelled in the room. His long fingers danced over the keys in haunting silence. He brought them crashing down in empty cadenzas and graceful imaginary arpeggios as fragrance after fragrance filled the room. Cattleya. Cymbidium. Lepanthes. A dream garden. A phantasmagoric fugue of scent.

  They were lost, lost in their own world.

  I was not a part of it. I was awed by its foreign splendor, as I might be awed by the world of the shark, or the deep-sea fishes, but I could never survive in it. I looked at des Esseintes. He had lied with such ease. At least Niccolo had felt some anguish, but des Esseintes had woven a tapestry of deception with callous and unflinching facility. How could I ever feel safe again? He had assured me I would not be hurt, but how did I know that was not just another deception? Nothing could surprise me. Anything could happen next. I had to escape.

  I left the foyer and wandered into the corridor of the statues, searching still another time for something I had overlooked. The falcon watched me closely. I burst into the turquoise sitting room and madly scanned the black-lacquered fan-vaulted ceiling, the wainscoted walls. I spun about and gave a slight gasp when I noticed la machine standing motionless in the corner.

  “Ilga,” I burst, “is it true? Will I die if I attempt to leave this house?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Then it is impossible for me ever to escape?”

  Her pale gray eyes fluttered. “Oh, no.”

  I was stunned. “What do you mean?”

  “You would die if you attempted it on your own. But you could escape if you had help.”

  She rattled off the words mechanically. Not a speck of emotion played in her face.

  I trembled. “Ilga,” I asked falteringly, “would you help me? Would you tell me how I might escape?”

  “Why, yes,” she said with perhaps just the tiniest bit of surprise.

  I checked the hall to make sure no one was within earshot, and then I returned to the timid creature. She explained in detail how I might make my escape, noting to the second precisely how much time I would have for each of my actions. She finished and lapsed back into her vapid, dreamy state.

  “Ilga,” I prodded, “if I do this, des Esseintes will not be able to stop me?”

  She looked vaguely worried. “If you do everything correctly. As I have said, time is the crucial element. You must not waste a second, or all is lost.”

  I looked down into her eyes. There was only a fleeting and bleary awareness in them. “Ilga, I have one other question.”

  She made no reaction.

  “Do you know where my daughter, Camille, is?”

  “In Italy.”

  “Where in Italy?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Do you know why they have taken her?”

  “No.”

  I looked toward the door. I had to hurry. I did not want anyone to see me speaking with her. I grasped her cold, lifeless hand within my own. “Thank you, Ilga.”

  I ran over everything in my mind as I returned to the foyer. Des Esseintes was still seated at the black harmonium, crooking his arms and swaying like a spider over its web. His head fell back weightlessly. His eyes were closed in ecstasy. The vaporous tracings of the hookah hung low over the room. Each face smiled, eyes closed. Even Lady Dunaway was enchanted by the spell.

  I had a decision to make. Would I take her with me?

  I no longer trusted her. I had no idea what concessions she had made to the vampire, but my sense of English honor ran too deeply I could not abandon her. It would be the ultimate act of cowardice and dishonor. I crept behind the crowd and placed a hand upon her shoulder. I was somewhat relieved to feel the warmth of he
r flesh. Her head lolled back, eyes glassy. When she saw the expression on my face she took a grip upon herself Her gaze became more serious. She followed me into the corridor of the statues.

  “I’m leaving,” I said.

  “Now?” she demanded.

  “I’ve asked Ilga. She’s explained to me a way.”

  “What about the falcon?”

  “Ilga has told me something about our little friend here. He doesn’t like the orchid conservatory. He’s afraid of it. He never goes in. If we enter through the sitting room and cross over to the parlor entrance to the cellar we will gain exactly three minutes, forty-seven seconds’ lead on our little demon. Enough time for us to escape through the cellar and into the sewers.”

  “It’s a trick. It won’t work.”

  “I’ll have to take that chance.”

  “They’ll catch you in the sewers. You can’t outrun them.”

  “I have a trick of my own up my sleeve. I believe it will work.”

  She was obviously very troubled. She glanced back anxiously in the direction of the foyer.

  “Lady Dunaway,” I said, gripping her arm, “I know about Ambrose.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “I know they are using him to control you, but if you ever want to get away from here, have your child back on your own terms, we must leave.”

  “Then what?”

  “The authorities.”

  Her temper flared. “No, you can’t... we can’t. The vampire are not evil. I have spoken with des Esseintes at length. He does not confide in me any more than he confides in you, but I have observed him closely. I believe he is a creature of ethics.”

  “His ethics.”

  “But he is not evil .”

  “He lied to me.”

  “He lets me see Ambrose. He has been kind to Ambrose.”

  “If they are not evil, why have they taken our children?”

  “If you turn him in, what do you think it will gain for you? The authorities laughed at me. Do you think they will believe you?”

  “At the very least we can use what we know of his identity as ransom to get our children back.”