by James Lyon
And then the power came back on.
* * *
The next day Steven wrote Professor Slatina a long letter, describing his impressions, his progress with research, and the overall situation. At the end he wrote:
Given the large number of references I’m finding in newspapers and historical documents, as well as the similarity among recorded folk accounts from regions that are geographically separated, I suspect there might have once been some phenomenon that led to the establishment of these myths. In fact, there are days when I wonder if vampires might actually have once existed. Sounds silly, doesn’t it, but after a while the sheer weight of the historical evidence makes one begin to wonder. How can there be so many consistent reports of a supposedly mythical phenomenon that keep occurring nearly up to the present day?
* * *
That Saturday Dusan invited Steven to go out with him. Steven – feeling he deserved a break from research – accepted.
They met up with some of Dusan’s friends at 10:30 PM and walked past a spray-painted Woody Woodpecker graffiti with a caption that read inanely: “it never would have come to this if Woody had gone to the police in time.”
‘That’s the moral of our story,’ Dusan said, pointing at it.
‘Huh?’
‘Yeah…none of this ever would have happened if somebody had gone to the police in time,’ Dusan said.
‘I don’t get it,’ Steven answered.
‘You will, you will,’ Dusan smiled. ‘Just stay here long enough.’ Then he added: ‘It means that we’re really not responsible for any of this. Someone else is to blame because they didn’t report us to the police in time. That’s the way it is with us. Someone else is always to blame… There’s no sense of personal responsibility.’
They fought their way onto an overcrowded trolleybus that took them to the Square of the Republic. Even though it was past midnight and cold, the square was filled with young and old as though at mid-day.
Dusan led them to a non-descript door in the side of an old building with a small plaque that read INFERNO, down an unheated dirty white hallway, increasingly enveloped by the ever-louder thump of a deep bass beat that intensified as they approached the head of a stairway. Out of the stairway thick clouds of tobacco smoke billowed up into the hallway and out a nearby window, partly obscuring a sign in Italian that read Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate, urging those who entered to abandon every hope. And of course, they entered.
They descended into darkness and felt their way down through the smoke, groping at the flesh of shadowy bodies lining both sides of the crowded stairwell. The stairs felt slippery underfoot, and the farther they went, the warmer it became until Steven was sweating and gasping for air. An acrid ammonia-jolt of concentrated urine struck his nose and purged it of smoke as they passed the lavatories, doors hanging askew from hinges, fluids dripping down the steps. At the bottom of the stairs, dim lighting cast hellishly red shadows throughout a vaulted basement as wraithlike figures writhed in and out of focus. Human forms crowded the corridors, forcing Steven and Dusan to swim against a tide of human flesh. Hauntingly beautiful women in black sucked nervously on cigarettes, glaring at Steven with the look of those damned to eternal boredom, while leather-clad men glared fiercely with sunken cheeks. The passage reeked of sweat and cheap perfume.
The music overpowered and squeezed Steven’s heart in a deep bass vice. Bodies everywhere, pushing, shoving, groping, squeezing...he could barely breathe as they fought their way forward like rugby players in a scrum. Unseen hands touched him, patted him, and some fondled him intimately. He couldn’t see who the hands belonged to, and it wouldn’t have mattered. A violent 10 minute journey took them 70 feet, until they halted in the middle of a crowded chamber, the bass vibrations penetrating his muscle, bone and skin. The amplified sounds of Yugoslav rock bombarded their senses. One song caught Steven’s attention and he strained to make out the lyrics:
One day I won’t be here,
And I won’t ever come.
Friends that I know,
I no longer recognize when I pass.
As if I was never in this world,
As if her body didn’t want me.
People wore the desperate smiles of drunks facing a firing squad, singing at the tops of their lungs. The men all appeared to have long ago lost hope in God and life, and were now seeking any possible escape from this world and the war, short perhaps of death. The women, the most beautiful Steven had ever seen, drifted as apparitions in and out of the light, ghostly and ghastly with unsmiling faces, flowing to the throbbing rhythm, glancing about furtively as the music continued to pound. Everybody shouted the song’s refrain in unison:
Balkans, Balkans, My Balkans,
Be powerful and stay well.
Balkans, Balkans, My Balkans,
Be powerful and stay well.
And they seemed to be finding escape, however temporary: the smell of marijuana and hashish mingled with the stench of tobacco, spilled beer and alcohol-rancid breath. Yet to find it they had imprisoned themselves in this dungeon, without light, air, sun, God or hope. In one voice of alienated desperation they all sang frenetically:
We are people,
Gypsies damned by Fate.
Someone around us always
Comes and threatens us.
Not even the gangs
Are what they used to be.
My people are amateurishly
Preparing to play…
They were escaping from a hell they had neither chosen nor sought, into one of their own making, if anything worse than what they were trying to escape. All were held captive by a power that encouraged physical and spiritual degradation as the only release. And here they found solace, after a fashion.
Balkans, Balkans, My Balkans,
Be powerful and stay well.
Balkans, Balkans, My Balkans,
Be powerful and stay well.
The music was too loud for conversation, so Dusan and his friends just stood rocking back and forth with beer bottles in their hands, the vaulted brick ceiling arching scant inches overhead, holding them tightly. Steven felt disembodied and estranged. After half an hour he put his mouth next to Dusan’s ear and yelled: ‘How long will we stay here?’ Dusan smiled and yelled back: ‘In just a little while it’s gonna get really good.’ So Steven waited. Fifteen minutes later he once again put his mouth next to Dusan’s ear and yelled: ‘When’s it gonna get good? What’s gonna happen?’ Dusan once again yelled: ‘Just a little…it’s gonna be really good.’ This continued for the next hour, and Steven finally realized that Dusan had now become like all the others…oblivious, feeling no pain. For him it was really good.
‘This sucks. I’m leaving,’ Steven shouted at Dusan, who smiled vacantly.
Steven fought his way across the room, up the stairs and into the refreshing chill of the winter night. His lungs burned with pain as he sucked in the cold and his head spun from the noise, beer and poisoned air. He sat down on the steps outside INFERNO, holding his face with his hands, trying to regain his senses as vomit lapped at the back of his throat.
The sound of retching turned his attention to a thin blonde girl bending over a dark haired girl who was crouching and vomiting on the sidewalk. She stopped vomiting, coughed several more times, and struggled to her feet, assisted by her friend, then turned to Steven and spat sarcastically: ‘Aren’t vampires enough for you? Do you also get your thrills watching people get sick?’ She was absolutely beautiful – in a fallen angel sort of way – and Steven realized he had seen the two before, at Professor Ljubovic’s place.
‘I’m Tamara,’ the blonde approached Steven apologetically. ‘This is Vesna…she’s sick.’ The dark-haired fallen angel smiled wanly. ‘It’s really bad down there. I don’t know why we keep going back, but we do.’
‘Yeah, it’s pretty bad,’ he agreed. ‘I’m going to get a sandwich. Are you hungry?’
‘Whenever you get sick like this you need to eat
,’ Tamara urged Vesna.
‘Come with me, then. My treat,’ Steven said.
They went to an all night sandwich shop, then headed slowly towards the Square of the Republic. As they walked Tamara placed her hand tenderly around Vesna’s arm and snuggled up to her.
‘Your presentation really was excellent,’ said Tamara, between bites of bread, cheese, ham and lettuce.
‘I didn’t like it… it didn’t make me feel good,’ Vesna said, food spurting from her mouth.
‘But it was good,’ rejoined Tamara. ‘You looked at something that everyone thinks is a joke and showed how integral it is to our culture. I can’t wait to hear more.’
‘I’m glad you liked it. I think my next presentation will be even better,’ Steven said. ‘At first I thought vampires weren’t a serious topic, but it’s turned out to be quite interesting.’
‘You’ve found a real gold mine. Everything you’ve discovered is original and completely unknown,’ Tamara gushed. ‘It’s what every graduate student dreams of. You could base your entire academic career on vampires. I wish I could find such a good topic for my dissertation.’
‘Well, I got lucky on this one,’ Steven said.
‘And you got lucky bumping into us tonight,’ Tamara teased.
Steven looked at Vesna’s face, pale, drawn slightly sickly looking, and realized that there was something in her eyes that he found attractive.
‘I still think it’s terrible,’ Vesna said. ‘There’s nothing good about it. There are too many unpleasant things happening and we don’t need more. Don’t you sometimes think that there just might be vampires? What about all these mutilated bodies floating down the rivers and everything on television? Something horrible is going on in Croatia, and nobody will speak honestly about it. I feel as if evil has swallowed our country and there’s nothing we can do, as if vampires are running the country. What if Milosevic is a vampire? What if all the generals are vampires? What if all of Milosevic’s cronies are vampires? What if the paramilitary formations are vampires? What if Croatia’s President, Franjo Tudjman, is a vampire? What if the DB are vampires,’ she said, referring to the secret police.
‘What if you’re a vampire?’ Tamara shot back: ‘the way you’re drinking Stefan’s blood right now you’re the vampire.’
‘She’s not drinking my blood,’ Steven said.
‘I didn’t mean it literally. That’s our expression for when someone is nagging someone else,’ answered Tamara.
‘I still don’t like it,’ Vesna continued. ‘There’s blood everywhere…in the rivers, the newspapers, the television, and here on the streets. Did you hear about the body they found last week in the Botanical Garden that was missing its kidneys? Or about the girl’s body they found under the Brankov Bridge without any blood in it? I think there are real vampires and that they’re having the biggest feast of their lives, and no one notices because of the war. If I were a vampire I’d be enjoying all this chaos and would do nothing but eat, because no one would ever find out…they’d just blame it on the war.’
Steven smiled at her, silently. He liked her fire.
‘Vesna, enough. Stop it,’ Tamara ordered.
At the Square of the Republic, Vesna and Tamara gave him their telephone numbers and suggested they meet for coffee. ‘And if you’re not doing anything next Saturday, then perhaps we can go out to a place where we won’t get sick,’ Tamara said.
‘Ladies, it will be my pleasure,’ Steven said, bowing in an exaggerated fashion.
‘But leave the vampires at home,’ Vesna cautioned.
‘Okay, okay,’ Steven laughed. ‘No vampires…at least, not this time.’
The girls drove off in a taxi leaving Steven alone in front of the National Theater. He walked slowly across the street towards the trolleybus stop and thought about Vesna’s outburst. ‘She’s right,’ he thought to himself. ‘If I were a vampire this’d be the perfect time to feed. There’s war, lawlessness, the complete disintegration of society, economic disruption, ethnic cleansing, lots of dead bodies, complete and utter chaos. It would be a vampire’s paradise.’
‘I’m living in a vampire’s paradise,’ he suddenly spoke out loud in English to nobody in particular, causing the other person waiting at the bus stop to stare at him.
A derelict red trolleybus with one working headlight and a loud air compressor crawled towards the bus-stop, driven by a pale, middle-aged ghoul. Steven climbed aboard and sat at the back of the nearly deserted bus. ‘A vampire’s paradise,’ he thought once more. The thought made him giggle softly to himself. The more he thought about it the more he giggled, until finally other passengers began to turn and look at him, but saw just one more drunk coming home from a night out on the town.
He began singing softly to himself:
We are people,
Gypsies damned by Fate.
Someone around us always
Comes and threatens us...
Balkans, Balkans, My Balkans,
Be powerful and stay well.
Balkans, Balkans, My Balkans,
Be powerful and stay well.
When he got home he removed his smoke-drenched clothing and cast it aside. Then, for the first time since he’d arrived, he felt the need to bow his head and seek out God in prayer.
* * *
Interlude III: Vienna: Tuesday, 12 May 1733
The gaily attired Watch Commander of the Imperial Household Guard escorted the Captain, stepping carefully to avoid dirtying the trousers of his dress uniform, his pace slowed by knee-high riding boots. ‘My Captain, much has happened since you left’, the Watch Commander said.
‘Did I see horses stabled in the Maximillian Palace?’ the Captain asked in astonishment, glancing over his shoulder. ‘So much has changed.’
‘Those are the Lipizzaners for the Riding School,’ the Watch Commander gestured, ‘which they say will be finished soon, but the contractors...thieves, the lot of them.’
The Captain nodded knowingly.
‘Since you left they completed the new wing of the palace…it’s to be the Reichskanzlei.’ The Watch Commander gestured at a large building pierced by gateways. He led him to an archway in the Leopold Wing, past some guards who snapped to attention, up a flight of stairs, and down a corridor.
‘Vienna grows because we’ve secured the southern marches,’ the Captain smiled. ‘Each year we push the Turks further south.’
The Watch Commander nodded affirmatively. ‘And here in Vienna everyone is building...new palaces are sprouting like mushrooms. Have you seen what our old general Prince Eugene of Savoy has built for himself, his Belvedere? Do you remember the prizes we took from Damad Ali Pasha’s army at Tekije? Well, I’ve invested mine in two new apartment houses just outside the old city walls, so now I have a hefty income.’
‘Yes, and a waistline to match,’ the Captain laughed good-naturedly.
‘Well, my Brigitta is a wonderful cook, and palace life is not as harsh as the military frontier. All I have to do is keep from getting too drunk and make certain I don’t fall off my horse when someone’s watching,’ he laughed. ‘But what about you? You haven’t aged a day since you led us against the Janissaries eighteen years ago. How do you keep the pace of a front line soldier? I must insist you come to dinner. Brigitta will put some meat on your bones.’
‘Frontier life is healthier than city life. The air’s fresh, the food’s good and there are fewer impure vapors to pollute the body’s humors. I’ll accept your invitation with pleasure, if His Majesty permits.’
‘Yes, well, here we are.’ The Watch Commander stopped at a richly inlaid wooden door, music seeping from behind. ‘Be quiet when you enter. He dislikes interruptions.’ He pushed gently on the brass knob and opened the door, permitting the Captain to slip through.
The Captain squinted at the bright light of the high-ceilinged hall, its windows thrown open to the spring air. The late morning sun glistened off the richly inlaid parquet floor as the light danced from tall
, narrow mirrors, their ornate gold-leaf frames set in rich red velvet wallpaper with stylized Pomegranates. Through the windows he saw the massive Burgthor, the city wall and the new suburbs spreading outward towards the Linienwall. He sniffed: the air smelled of wood polish and snuff.
In the center of the hall a robust, bewigged man with an expanding belly exuberantly directed a small string ensemble from an ornately decorated harpsichord. Charles VI’s droopy eyes took pleasure in each note, his long nose and protruding Habsburg chin bobbing with the tempo. The Emperor squinted at the sheet music as the minuet danced enthusiastically towards its climax. Catching sight of the Captain from the corner of his eye, he jerked his head, lost his concentration and missed several chords.
‘Damn it,’ he shouted, and the ensemble stumbled to a halt in mid bar. He stood and faced the Captain, who removed his three-cornered hat and bowed deeply.
‘Your Majesty,’ he said.
Charles squinted at him, nearsightedly. ‘Is it really you?’
‘At your command, Majesty.’
‘Out, out! Everybody out. Out at once,’ the Emperor shouted and clapped his hands at the musicians. ‘Leave us alone.’ They hurriedly fled the room as an anxious courtier barged in. ‘Out, We said! Out! We will be left alone! At once!’ The courtier fled, leaving the Emperor alone with the Captain.
‘Pray forgive me, your Majesty, for the interruption.’
The Emperor looked at him, then advanced and gave him a hearty handshake. ‘My dear Venetian friend, how good to see you.’
‘The pleasure is mine, your Grace.’