Blood 20

by Tanith Lee

‘It’s all right –’ he cried. He thought she must not see what he had seen, and that they might leave him here. ‘I missed my footing,’ he whined, ‘that’s all.’

  And when the boat went out, they let him go with it.

  The great sails shouldered up into the sky. The master looked Jeanjacques over, before moving his gaze after Nanetta. (Stronn had avoided them. The other whites, and the housekeeper, had hidden themselves somewhere below, like stowaways.)

  ‘How did you find him, that Dutchman?’ the master asked idly.

  ‘As you said. Vonderjan was falling.’

  ‘What was the other trouble here? They act like it was a plague, but that’s not so.’ (Malignly Jeanjacques noted the master too was excluded from the empathy of the Island people.) ‘No,’ the master went on, bombastically, ‘if you sick, I’d never take you on, none of you.’

  Jeanjacques felt a little better. ‘The Island’s gone bad,’ he muttered. He would look, though, only up into the sails. They were another sort of white to the white thing he had seen on the rock. As the master was another sort of black.

  ‘Gone bad? they do. Land does go bad. Like men.’

  Are they setting sail? Every grain of sand on the beach behind is rising up. Every mote of light, buzzing –

  Oh God – Pater noster – libera me –

  The ship strode from the bay. She carved her path into the deep sea, and through his inner ear, Jeanjacques hears the small bells singing. Yet that is little enough, to carry away from such a place.

  XIII

  Seven months after, he heard the story, and some of the news­papers had it too. A piano had been washed up off the Sound, on the beach at the Abacus Tower. And inside the lid, when they hacked it open, a woman’s body was curled up, tiny, and hard as iron. She was Caucasian, middle-aged, rather heavy when alive, now not heavy at all, since there was no blood, and not a single whole bone, left inside her.

  Sharks, they said.

  Sharks are clever. They can get inside a closed piano and out again. And they bite.

  As for the piano, it was missing – vandals had dest­royed it, burned it, taken it off.

  Sometimes strangers ask Lucius where Yse went to. He has nothing to tell them. (‘She disappears?’ they ask him again. And Lucius once more says nothing.)

  And in that way, resembling her last book, Yse disapp­eared, disappears, is disappearing. Which can happen, in any tense you like.

  ‘Like those hallucinations that sometimes come at the edge of sleep, so that you wake, thinking two or three words have been spoken close to your ear, or that a tall figure stands in the corner … like this, the image now and then appears before him.

  ‘Then Jeanjacques sees her, the woman, sat on the rock, her white dress and ivory-coloured hair, hard-gleaming in a post-storm sunlight. Impossible to tell her age. A desiccated young girl, or unlined old woman. And the transparent sea lapping in across the sand …

  ‘But he has said, the Island is quite deserted now.’

  ISRABEL

  For John Kaiine, who showed me her image more clearly than any mirror could.

  Israbel ran through the streets of Paris. The cobbles were slick with filth and wet, the city was made of thick grey rain. Israbel was 16 – probably, who could be quite sure? Her mother was long dead, her father always unknown. Somewhere behind her waited a man with his belt drawn off, like a sword to smite her with. Israbel ran.

  The narrow streets were mostly empty now, for night was coming. A fellow with a torch went by to light the lamps along the front of some tavern. Wet cats, thin as strings, shot across the alleys, or slunk over the roofs above.

  When Israbel turned a corner into the Place du Coeur, she did not know where she was, but in the deepening dusk one further cat came slinking out to cross her path. This cat was not like the others. It was very big, the size, she was afterwards to believe, of a horse. Though the light was gone, some peculiar sheen on the darkness showed her the faint dapplings along its back, its neck, which was longer than that of any ordinary feline, and the narrow ruff about its head. Its eyes were luminous, and grey as the death of the light. It stopped.

  She too, the running girl, had halted.

  She thought, confusedly, It’s escaped from the great circus up at Montmartre.

  Israbel had heard of a circus, that it had many curiosities, including both people and beasts of weird appearance and characteristics.

  She was not afraid of the cat. That is, not more afraid of it than of the darkness, the sadist she had escaped, the world, everything. And so, she did not, now, run away, only stood watching it, as it stood also watching her.

  A hundred years later when Israbel, still 16, rich, lovely, and, in her own way, dangerous, came occasionally to explain about the great cat, she would always add, ‘Its pelt was so soft and warm, so smooth and plush, like the double velvets of Venice. Like my hair, you say? Well, perhaps very like that. But truly, its pelt was much better than my hair.’

  ‘She is the woman I intend to be my wife.’

  Plinta stared, a moment. He thought, Your wife? And then, She looks like an insect. Oh, a beautiful insect – some sort of exquisite beetle, with gilded black wings.

  ‘Really?’ he said.

  ‘You don’t approve.’

  Plinta shivered – but unseen: inside his mind.

  ‘Does it matter to you that I approve?’

  ‘Well, no.’

  By then, the woman – the creature – was approaching them, slipping between the candlelit marbles of the salon.

  Dumiere held out his hands. She paused, smiling, and took neither.

  ‘Good evening, my love,’ said Dumiere. ‘May I present my friend, Monsieur Plinta, the painter.’

  She looked at Plinta.

  Her eyes were like a flash of blackness seen through blue smoke.

  Yes, she was beautiful. A perfect, sculpted face, large dark eyes – blue? – black? – whose lids were just barely touched with kohl, a long aquiline nose (perhaps she was a Jewess?), a wonderful mouth, not large – yet full, and capable of lengthening its shape – blushed either with rouge or uncommon good health.

  She was not young. That is, she was about 25 or so, Plinta thought. Not that, physically, she seemed much older than 16. Yet her eyes knew things. Perhaps her clear and unlined eyes were even older – thirty, forty – fifty?

  Plinta, the artist, now realised why he had thought of her pictorially and specifically as a beetle. Her black dress wrapped her closely, thrusting up a velvet glimpse of breasts, holding her corseted waist like two tight ebony hands ringed with gold. Her hair, too, which she wore partly loose, was quilled and rayed with gold – wings.

  He thought, distinctly, She is a vampire.

  ‘Madame,’ he said, and bowed.

  ‘Oh, but, Monsieur,’ she said, ‘I’m not married.’

  ‘Not yet,’ agreed Dumière. Now he reached out and took hold of her, like the tight hands of her dress on her waist. ‘Come on, let’s dance.’

  As he led her away, she glanced back once, and directly into Plinta’s eyes.

  What was her name? Had Dumière not told him?

  The next evening, as Plinta, who had just left his bed, lay on the sofa reading the morning’s journals and drinking bitter coffee, his shambling servant Colas showed Israbel into the studio.

  Plinta did not get up. Then he thought he had better, to be rude was too obvious. So he rose. But, when he did that, she laughed at him.

  She said, ‘I saw last night, Monsieur Plinta, you’d penetrated my disguise.’

  Today she wore very dark blue-green, with a lemon plume in her hat. She was still like a beautiful beetle. Or maybe a lizard –

  ‘Disguise? I didn’t know you’d worn fancy-dress, madame.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. Always. But you saw right through to me, didn’t you? As if I were – naked.’

  Plinta felt at once an unmistakable and vivid surge of lust. Positioned high in his own brain, he looked down at the
lust, tingling and flaring about in his body, and said, cautiously, ‘I don’t know what you mean, madame.’

  ‘I’m not “madame”. I have only one name. Israbel. Under that name I sometimes sing and act at the Opèra.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Please sit down.’

  She too, he sensed, saw right through him. She knew what he felt, still felt. She knew, too, he was still in command of himself.

  Israbel seated herself. She drew off the plumed hat, and her hair fell all around her, down to her waist. There were no longer golden quills and spangles in it, yet it glittered with strange gilding.

  ‘I want you,’ she said, ‘to paint my portrait.’

  ‘You honour me. Alas, I’m very busy.’

  ‘No, you are not. You haven’t had a commission, nor any paid work, for 18 months. You mustn’t forget, I know Dumière, who knows you.’

  ‘Dumière doesn’t know everything about me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘No. You’re a secretive man. But your painting is interesting. Wouldn’t you like me to sit for you?’

  ‘Frankly, Madame Israbel –’

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ she finished for him.

  The door opened. In blundered Colas with more wood for the stove, for it was a chilly evening. Israbel watched Colas, then she turned her eyes back to Plinta. And, annoyed, he realised he had been hungry for their return to him, sulky in the split second of her looking away.

  Colas banged the stove door shut again and lumbered out. Like two interrupted lovers, they resumed their murmured conversation.

  ‘Dumière may have told you, monsieur, I’m well-off. I can pay you handsomely for your portrait of myself.’

  ‘Why do you want such a portrait?’

  She said, without hesitation, ‘I’d like to look at it. I’d like to see myself in it.’

  And, before he could quite stop himself, if he had even meant to stop himself, Plinta added, ‘That being because a portrait is the only way you ever could see yourself. Am I correct, madame? You don’t reflect in mirrors.’

  Israbel smiled once more. It was difficult to take your gaze away from her mouth – unless you looked into her eyes; and then you could only look at those ….

  ‘I note you understand my predicament, monsieur,’ she said, as if they had spoken of something dull.

  Plinta decided not to reply.

  Israbel got up, and as she did so, even clothed in her fashionable Parisian dress, something fell from her like a seventh veil.

  ‘Others are fooled, of course,’ she remarked. ‘It’s commonly thought no-one can make out a vampire in a mirror. But naturally anyone can see us reflected there – save only we, ourselves.’

  ‘Then you have kindred?’ said Plinta, between wonder and alarm.

  ‘Perhaps – but I’ve met none of them. No, no, I’m quite alone. I speak of them only in the historical and mythic sense. I belong, you understand, monsieur, to an ancient sisterhood, brotherhood, packed with persons. Except I’ve never met any of them.’

  ‘Then how did you become what you are?’ Plinta asked, inevitably.

  ‘If I tell you that, will you paint me? Will you give me my mirror, Monsieur Plinta?’

  He turned his back and walked off to the window.

  Stood by the frozen glass, he gazed down at the icy, barely lit streets running toward the River Seine; the bell-clanging local church; then, to the sky like black lead. But talking to her was a game he seemed unable to give up playing.

  ‘Why do you want to see yourself, madame? Anyone else’s face can tell you how beautiful you are.’

  ‘Not yours,’ she said.

  Plinta lurched inside his skin. In utter silence, she had drawn physically close to him. Her narrow hand was on his shoulder. Almost as tall as he, she leaned to his ear: ‘I’ll tell you my story anyway,’ she murmured, ‘perhaps …’

  Plinta did not move. He wondered if she would sink her teeth, or some other blood-letting implement, into his neck. But he felt only her perfumed warmth, and then a coldness, and turning, he saw she was once more seated far off across the studio, her feet stretched out to the stove, drinking coffee like an ordinary human woman.

  She did not appear at the Opèra very often. When she did, she always took some small cameo part, usually limited to a single appearance lasting maybe five minutes, during which she sang an aria by Handel, Rameau, or Voulé. Her voice was good, if not especially brilliant, but nevertheless, a great hush would grip the theatre while she voiced her lines and sang her music. She was always rapturously applauded, and flowers rained on the stage.

  She was said to have slept with some of the richer or more notorious patrons – bankers, poets, that sort. None of them had ever seemed any the worse for it. That is, none of them mysteriously died or otherwise disappeared. None of them, perhaps, more to the point, metamorphosed in any way. They merely went on with their own earthbound lives, long after they parted from her.

  Men did become infatuated, of course. One had drowned himself, Plinta thought. Plinta had never paid her name much attention, nor even seen her, until Dumière became in turn obsessed by her.

  Dumière took Plinta to dinner at the Café d’Orleans. Here they ate oysters and various roasted meats and drank wine and liqueurs. Dumière spoke mostly – solely – of Israbel. Plinta, to his own consternation, listened with interest and completely failed to be bored. He had already agreed with Israbel to paint her. There had seemed to be nothing else he could do. He did not tell Dumière, however, as if this were a guilty secret. He sensed Dumière would call him out over it to a dawn duel in the Bois, and perhaps shoot him dead in jealousy.

  Dumière was not really Plinta’s friend. Dumière used him as a sort of social musical instrument, a piano perhaps, coming up to him and playing him with enthusiasm for a few hours now and then, even in public, in restaurants and salons, then forgetting him again entirely for months – years – on end.

  Plinta watched Dumière all through the dinner. Even over the crystallised fruits, brandy and cigars, Dumière seemed the same as ever: handsome, spoiled and charming.

  Finally, when they were drunk enough, Plinta said to him, ‘Have you had her yet?’

  ‘Had her?’

  ‘The kiss that is more than a kiss.’

  ‘Why, Plinta! What do you think? Aren’t I irresistible? Isn’t she?’

  ‘You have, then.’

  ‘You prude! Do you want me to describe it?’ Amused in victory, Dumière glowed above the glowing cigar. ‘Well? I will if you like.’

  Plinta thought he would like; that was, his body would have liked to hear every detail. Conversely, his clever appraising mind was also highly curious.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘I’ll tell you this, Plinta, she isn’t like any other woman I’ve ever known.’

  ‘Doesn’t the new lover always think that?’

  ‘No, of course he doesn’t. How absurd. We pretend we do, but we don’t.’

  ‘Then –’ cautious still, Plinta leaned back – ‘then how is she different? Is she perverse?’

  ‘No such luck. Not that anything like that is necessary with her. Oh, her skin’s soft and smooth, her hair’s a marvel, she has a special scent she wears – like spice – her body is lithe as a snake’s. It isn’t any of that.’

  ‘And do you mean to marry her?’ asked Plinta, as Dumière fell silent, hypnotised by absorbing thoughts of Israbel.

  ‘I might. I wouldn’t mind it. Just to keep her to myself.’

  ‘Do you think you could?’

  ‘Yes. I’d put her in a cage. Like a panther. She only lets me visit her at night. She’s nocturnal, like most panthers.’

  ‘A cage –?’ Despite himself, Plinta was shocked, mostly at Dumière’s suddenly active imagination.

  ‘Oh, I mean a house, man, a big, glorious house – but I’d have the only key. I’d keep her there. Do you know,’ he added abruptly, ‘the strangest thing is when she looks into a mirror. I bought her one, you se
e, a gorgeous thing from Italy, silvered glass, gilt cupids – she stood in front of it nearly half an hour. Staring in at her reflection. She had such a puzzled look – a sad look – as if she were searching for something she couldn’t find – I wonder what …?’

  Her soul, Plinta thought.

  Worse than Dumière’s invented cage-house, a door slammed in Plinta’s heart then, trapping him inside with Israbel.

  Israbel told Plinta at once she wished to pose for him in the nude.

  This, rather than excite, made cool sense to him. After all, if she wanted to see herself – which no mirror could now ever show her – she wanted to see her flesh, not her clothes – she need only look into her wardrobe to behold those.

  When she came out naked to the lamplight from behind the studio screen, he noted, unsurprised, her body was beautiful. But Plinta had seen the beautiful unclad bodies of women – and men – often in his trade.

  What moved him was Israbel herself. Her gestures, expressions. Even the sound of her voice. For she would talk to him as he began his sketches.

  Her voice was pleasant, restful. It was elusive, too. Neither young nor old, barely even feminine. A slightly tarnished silver voice, to vie with the gold glints in her eyes and hair.

  He found her easy to capture on paper, and presently on canvas. Even her colours were simple – cream and black, with highlights of turquoise, navy and warmer tones, like shining metals. But her red mouth burned for him.

  What would it be like – not to kiss – but to be bitten by the teeth of that burning mouth?

  Plinta recalled that awareness he had had before, of the casting of a seventh veil – less the provocative act of a dancing Salome, it had been as if Israbel cast a skin.

  She had not yet, despite her pledge, told him the tale of how she became what he knew she was, a vampire, who lived on the blood of others. But, for that matter, he did not know when or how she took blood. She had never approached him in any way, either in seduction or attack. Naturally, she would want the portrait completed to her satisfaction first. However, one day he would finish.