I drew my sooty finger along the faded newsprint. ‘ “An Indian woman of about twenty was found dead at the foot of the gambling hall, apparently having jumped from the tower. Town Hall discussion to be held on whether to bury her on holy ground or not, pending decision of the Reverend Strömberg.” ’
That’s all it said. I rubbed my aching head and whispered, ‘Just like in the tale about the succubus.’
‘Do you think this Indian woman was the succubus? And this Strömberg mentioned in the article . . . that was your grandfather, right?’
‘Strange that the same day a young Indian woman was found dead, my mother was abandoned on the stairs of the church. Whoever the Muladona is, it knows about my mother. The creature was reading up on this for some reason. It has some connection with that woman’s death, I think.’
I heard someone shout nearby, ‘Oye . . . ¿qué carajo está haciendo?’
I looked up to see Carolina’s father taking long strides towards me, sloshing through the muddy street. The kind, wrinkled face I remembered was now hardened into a scowl, with deep lines carved about his mouth and eyes. His eyes were bloodshot.
‘Sí, I’m talkin’ to you, Strömberg!’ he shouted. He came unsteadily up the steps, grabbed me by the coat and slammed me against the wall. ‘What are you doin’ with my niñita,’ he demanded, ‘what are you doin’ with her?’ As he shouted, he peppered me with whisky spittle.
‘Nada, Papá,” Carolina shouted at him, ‘no hizo nada. Now let him go,’ and she grabbed at his arm.
He pushed her away with his elbow and said, ‘You’re filthy, covered in soot. He’s hurt you!’ he cried out. He shook me, and my whole body ached. My head wobbled like a rag doll’s.
‘There was a fire, down at the old gambling hall,’ Carolina sobbed. ‘Se quemó todo. That’s what happened. I was in it. Verge saved me, he pulled me out.’
‘That’s the smoke I seen risin’ when I came into town? You burned the place down?’ he mumbled. ‘What are you, a couple of delincuentes?’
‘We didn’t do nothin’, Papá. There was someone else there, and they started it. Lo juro a Dios. . . .’
‘Shut your mouth!’ he shouted back at her. ‘Don’t you take the Lord’s name in vain. You promised me you’d never see this boy again. You look like a hobo. Your mother would be ashamed of you, your mother . . .’ and I caught a sob in his voice, ‘your mother . . .’
‘Don’t blame her,’ I began. ‘It’s all my fault. I was trapped in my house, and your daughter . . .’ but he cocked his arm back and made as if he were going to hit me.
‘Cállese, cállese! No Strömberg’s ever going to tell me what to do, ever again!’
Holding up my arms to cover my face, I blurted out, ‘It’s the Muladona. It’s hunting me. It aims to kill me!’
Carlos seemed to lose steam. He staggered a bit where he stood. He looked from me to Carolina, unsure what to do next. ‘Wha . . . what do you mean? The Muladona? Es la verdad?’
‘Yes, yes, it’s true,’ I shouted.
‘No, no! Then the dream was true!’ He seemed to lose himself in his own thoughts. He stood there silently for a minute, still gripping me tightly. With a blank expression on his face, he said, ‘The creature’s back.’
Carolina grabbed him by the arm, ‘It’s okay, Papá. It’s okay. Why don’t you let me take you home, and I’ll make you supper? Just let Verge go. He ain’t done nothin’ wrong. Just let him go, that’s right.’
Slowly, hesitatingly, Carlos let go. I leaned against the front of my house, panting. He let himself be led away by Carolina, but he stopped halfway down the sidewalk and said, ‘If the creature’s back, there’s gonna be hell to pay . . . hell to pay. And I blame your family for it all.’ They disappeared inside their house.
There was nothing else for me to do but go back inside my own house. I needed to prepare for another terrible night, perhaps my last one on earth. I lay under the sheets, waiting in the darkness of my room. I hadn’t lit the candle because I didn’t think I could stomach seeing the creature or its shadow again.
It was well past midnight. I’d heard the chimes of the mantel clock I’d set next to me, and I’d make sure I’d wound it. I reminded myself to wind it again tomorrow . . . if there was a tomorrow.
I listened for further chimes, but I couldn’t hear a thing. Was it two o’clock, three o’clock? I knew that the creature was alive, and I knew it would come for me tonight. Just as I knew that the Indian woman who’d thrown herself from the tower forty years ago—or had been thrown—was linked, irrevocably, to my fate. I just didn’t know how.
I thought over the things I’d seen at the gambling house that day, to see if there was a clue to the creature’s identity. The Gazette page. The bloody gauze. The blade of the hobo’s knife. But there was something else. What was it? Something about a bag. I hadn’t given it much importance at the time, but now. . . .
As I lay in bed, I slowly realised that I couldn’t feel the covers on my face. I tried to move my nose against them, but I couldn’t feel a thing. Had I fallen asleep and kicked the sheets off of me inadvertently? Cautiously, I moved my hands and feet. At least, I thought I did. I couldn’t feel them either. I couldn’t feel the weight of my body or my position on the bed. Was I having an attack of some kind, since I hadn’t taken my medicine?
I strained my eyes in the darkness, to see if the Muladona had entered and was playing one of its tricks on me. I couldn’t see anything. There was nothing to see. There was nothing to touch. My senses were dissipating . . . my sight, my sense of touch, my hearing. I couldn’t hear the chimes of the mantel clock, the beating of my heart, or my breathing. I bit my tongue. At least I think I did, just to taste my own blood. I was desperate for some confirmation I was still alive, but I couldn’t feel it in the void. I was floating, disembodied, in the ether of the night.
I became awash in smells. I smelled the Muladona no more than two feet from me. It emitted the most hideous stench of manure and sweat, sulphur and brimstone. Also there was the heady smell of smoke from the fire in the gambling hall and charred fur and flesh. I could tell the thing had barely escaped from the flames, just as I had.
I also sensed its rage. Other emotions filled my nostrils—frustration, blame and scorn. It was all directed at me, pouring out of the Muladona’s putrid pores.
It was in this way that the fifth tale began. I didn’t hear it in the normal sense. Rather, the words washed over me, flowing from the creature’s scent glands. If evil is a smell, then I was engulfed in a miasma of damnation.
THE FIFTH TALE
Vanilla
Konrad pushed the old wheelbarrow down the curving alley of the cemetery, muddy after the rain. He adjusted his grip on the two splintery handles of the wheelbarrow, trying not to spill the bottles filled with brown water and bright red carnations. However, just as he turned the corner the wobbly wheel caught in a rut and it almost tipped over. Using all the strength in his forearms to right it, Konrad grunted, ‘Damned flowers,’ and continued on.
Konrad hated the smell of carnations. It was a cheap flower, a shabby flower. Skinflints put it on relatives’ graves when they were forced by convention to show some sort of affection for the dead, when they couldn’t be bothered with lilies or even violets. He always left the cemetery reeking of carnations. It didn’t matter how many showers he took, or how much he’d rub his hands with pumice stone, he still smelled them like they were coming out of his pores.
Dolores complained about the smell, too—she complained about everything!—But she was right, and that made it more unbearable. Konrad stopped in front of a mausoleum at the entrance to which stood guard a black-and-gold sarcophagus. He pulled out a wrinkled handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his sweaty brow. Then he wiped the cobwebs off the art deco letters, passing the handkerchief along the scarabs. He rubbed the ankh until it glinted in the early-morning sun, and then stuffed the handkerchief back in his pants.
Konrad checked the numb
er of the tomb against the grimy list in his front pocket. He ticked the number off with a nub of a pencil, and placed a bottle of carnations on the front steps. He then pushed the wheelbarrow down the alley, stopping at gravesites along the way, rubbing the dust from their nameplates and tin photographs and placing a bottle of carnations next to them. Soon, the terrible sun was straight above him, and he was down to the last bottle of flowers, most of the water from which had slopped into the bottom of the wheelbarrow.
He was sure he’d counted the graves correctly, and yet there was one bottle of carnations left, and he didn’t want to re-check them all over again. If he went back with the extra one, he was sure the pastor’s wife who’d set up the collection for the unattended graves—and took these matters quite seriously—would complain.
‘All right, who’s gonna be the lucky customer?’ he muttered. He looked around and found himself in a corner of the graveyard he didn’t usually visit. Although the sun was beating down on the other lots, this section was cool, even chilly. He noticed that he’d broken out in goose bumps. By a pile of old pots, bundles of wire and some rusting shovels, Konrad noticed the foot of a statue sticking out from behind a large piece of corrugated tin. Forgetting the business with the carnations, he was interested in that foot, because, in spite of all his years working in the graveyard, he’d never noticed it before.
He tried to peer behind the large piece of tin, but it was too dark to see anything, so he grabbed the tin by its edges and heaved it up and out of the soggy soil. Putting his back into it, he sliced open his hand on the jagged edge. Crying out in pain, he tossed the piece of tin onto a pile of junk, pots shattering from the impact, metal implements jangling. As quickly as he could, he pulled out his handkerchief and wrapped it several times around his palm.
‘Stupid, stupid,’ he said to himself, bitterly. ‘Why’d you have to go and get curious?’
He looked up and was astonished at the tomb he’d uncovered. On a sloping marble slab lay the bronze statue of a woman. And not just any woman. A goddess reclined there, leaning back on her elbows, legs bent, knees together, naked. There was a haughty look on her face, eyes half-closed, as if daring him to look at her. In spite of the blank staring eyes, in spite of the greening skin, the effects of time and mildew, Konrad found it hard to imagine this wasn’t a real woman whom he’d just surprised sunbathing, not an inanimate thing hidden behind an old piece of tin.
On a plaque behind the statue a single word was visible, ‘BEATRICE’, and then some vague letters stained with years of rainfall and rust from the tin covering. Just barely visible on the bottom edge was the scratched number ‘1,032’. Konrad approached the plaque cautiously, as a conductor approaches the window on a sleeper train, attempting to let in some air but without waking up any of the passengers. He unwrapped the handkerchief from his wound, although it hadn’t stopped bleeding yet, and rubbed it against the plaque. Slowly, the blood loosened the grime, and the words emerged:
‘Whom no man could have, God took. 1878.’
Konrad took a step back and murmured to himself, ‘1878 . . . the smallpox epidemic.’
There were many graves scattered about the cemetery from that time, but none as beautiful as this. Without thinking, his old muscle memory of years of cleaning off the graves kicked in and he began wiping the statue with his handkerchief. After a moment he looked down, only to see that he’d smeared one of the statue’s thighs with blood. Horrified—although he couldn’t quite say why—he rubbed it off with his shirt sleeve and then pressed the handkerchief tightly to his wound.
Konrad glanced at his watch and realised he was late for lunch. He looked back at the wheelbarrow, with its single bottle of carnations. Addressing the statue, he said, ‘I guess this is for you, milady.’ He’d intended this as a joke, but his voice came out serious in that cold corner of the cemetery. He was silent for a moment. Then he placed the bottle at the foot of the grave and backed away.
Gripping the handles of the wheelbarrow again, and wincing a bit from the pain in his hand, he took off down the alley. He looked once or twice over his shoulder at the statue, before he turned down the next row of crypts where he could no longer see it.
Konrad passed through the looming entrance to the cemetery and parked the wheelbarrow outside his shack just outside the gate. The main consolation, thought the gravedigger, of living so close to the cemetery was that he could have lunch and take a siesta before going back to work in the afternoon. He passed by a clump of bamboo grass, uncut and feral in front of the shack. He pushed open the rusty gate and thought, with a grimace, that, being so close to home also meant, unfortunately, that he was also close to his wife, Dolores.
He had just opened the front door and was kicking the mud from his boots when Dolores called in that shrill voice of hers, ‘You’re late, Konrad. You’ve kept me waiting . . . again.’
As Konrad stomped down the hallway to the kitchen, he saw Dolores’s shape getting clearer. The dishevelled thing in a house frock, its greying hair coming out wiry from underneath a kerchief, was frying steaks. He was about to say something, but she pre-empted him, ‘And it’s not bad enough the wind blows from the cemetery all day long, filling this house with its smell of putrefaction and rot, but then you come smelling of those damned carnations. You make this house smell like a plot, like a house of the dead.’
‘I dunno,’ came a sweet voice from deeper inside the kitchen. ‘I kind’a like it. Conrado smells like a real man, doin’ a real job.’
As Konrad peeked around his wife, he saw Guadalupe, Dolores’s younger half-sister, sitting at the kitchen table, flipping through the local Gazette. Long black eye lashes, long dark curly hair and a porcelain face, like Lillian Gish in An Unseen Enemy. Nothing could be more of a contrast to his wife hunching over the stove, perspiration dripping down her nose and into the frying pan, each heavy drop bursting into little puffs of steam as it hit the hot oil.
Taking off his hat, Konrad said, ‘Uh, I didn’t know you were there, Lupe,’ and suddenly the words came back to him, ‘Whom no man could have . . .’
Dolores said, ‘Yes, she’s staying with us for a few days, if it’s any business of yours. She’s lost another job, as a washer girl this time, so we’re going to help her until she gets back on her feet.’
Looking over at him with those long black lashes, Guadalupe said, ‘Oh, that’s such a pity, Sis. ’Cause bein’ on my feet ain’t the position I’d most rather be in.’
Konrad felt a bead of perspiration form on his upper lip. ‘I-I’d better wash up,’ he stuttered and quickly turned towards the sink. He unhooked his suspenders and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Then he opened the faucet and began to lather up with a big bar of soap, picking out flecks of dirt from the wound in his hand. He took out a stiff brush and scraped under his fingernails until they were raw and clean.
All the while, he could feel Guadalupe gazing at his strong back and his brown forearms. As he splashed water on his face, he stole a look at his wife and whispered, ‘Taken by God . . .’
Rubbing his face and arms with a towel, eyes to the dirty tile floor, Konrad went to the table and sat down. His wife hobbled to the table, slapping the blackened steaks out on their plates. Unwilling to let her first gripe die, she said, ‘Every day you come home late, and I gotta heat and reheat the food. It’s not like you got anyone waitin’ on you at work. I mean, all your customers are dead.’
Konrad was about to snap at her but stopped himself, because Guadalupe was there. ‘I dunno,’ Guadalupe said, easing her foot towards his under the table, ‘it must be kind’a nice to do nothin’ all day and havin’ a man support you.’
Konrad tried to stifle the surprise on his face, as he felt Guadalupe’s silk stockings rub up against his ankle.
‘You think I do nothin’ all day?’ Dolores asked, “I tell you, it’s good honest Christian work to keep a house. You gotta make a budget, and you gotta stick to it. And you gotta stay with your man,’ and she looked over at Ko
nrad, ‘through thick and thin.’
Dolores plunked a hard roll down on each of their plates and said, ‘You’re such a child, María Guadalupe. If you were in charge of this house, you’d spend all the money on ice cream and rouge.’
‘Yeah,’ Guadalupe said, and Konrad could feel her toes advancing up the leg of his trousers, ‘That’s just what I’d do. I’d lay around, eatin’ ice cream all day long, waitin’ for my man to come home. . . .’
A few days later, Konrad had finished work early. He’d thought of going back home, just to see if he could catch Guadalupe, but there wasn’t any use with his wife around. He picked up a stray carnation that was on the path and wandered aimlessly through the many twisting alleys of the cemetery. He ended up in the cool, abandoned corner, the place where Beatrice lay in her glory. Without looking the statue directly in the face, he picked up the old, dead carnation in the bottle and crushed it in his hands. Then he filled the bottle from a leaky pipe nearby. As he set it in front of the tomb and placed the new carnation there, he looked up, surprised by Beatrice’s beauty once again.
It seemed to him that the position of the body was slightly different. The statue seemed to have pushed itself farther off the slab with its elbows, almost imperceptibly, and her knees seemed bent closer to her chest.
Konrad went back to the leaky pipe and splashed some water on his face, because he was tired and thought he must have imagined it. But when he went back he noticed something else. It seemed Beatrice was smiling a little more devilishly at him, even though the eyes were still blank and cold. Perhaps it was because he hadn’t talked to anyone about the feelings that were burning inside of him of late. Perhaps it was because it had been a long, hard day, but he addressed the statue. ‘Hhm,’ he said. ‘ ’Scuse me, Ma’am. You haven’t moved, have you?’
There was silence. Of course there was. He felt stupid, stupid and ashamed, and looked about himself to make sure no one had seen him engaged in such stupidities. The only living thing around was a little stray cat standing in the shadow of another tomb staring at him. ‘Go on, get!’ shouted Konrad, picking up a piece of loose mortar from the ground and tossing it at him. He missed the cat and it scampered off behind the graves.
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