by Tanith Lee
Naturally he knew. He had known from the day he saw her in an interview on TV. Rather as he had seen the actress Bette Davis in an interview years before, and she had been asked how her first name was pronounced. So that he therefore knew it was not pronounced, as most persons now did, in the French way, Bett, but – for he had heard the actress herself reply – as Betty. And in the same way he knew the female being before him now did not pronounce her name as so many did, Ché Kasee-ah, but Ch’high-kazya.
She did not ask who he was. They would have told her, when they said he would be coming. After all, without her permission, he would never have been allowed into this room. And all the way here, if the truth were known, he had been sweating, thinking she would, after his journey of two thousand miles and more, suddenly change her mind.
‘Help yourself,’ she said idly, ‘to a drink.’
So he thanked her, and went and poured himself one. To his surprise, when he sipped it, it was a decent malt whisky. Despite her words, he had expected anything but alcohol. Yet obviously, they knew she would never drink this.
When she beckoned to him, he sat down facing her, where she had once more sat down. The side lamps cast the mildest glow, but behind her the harsh white neon of moon was coming up with incredible rapidity. It would shine into his face, not hers.
In the soft, flattering light, he studied her.
Even under these lamps, she looked old. He had been prepared for that. No-one knew her exact age, or those who did kept quiet. But twenty, twenty-five years ago, when he had seen her in that interview, or more recently in little remaining clips of film, she had looked only a glamorous thirty, forty. Now he would have said she was well into her sixties. She looked like that. Except, of course, she was still glamorous, and still she had her wonderful mask of bones, on which the flesh stayed pinned, not by surgery, but by that random good luck that chance sometimes handed out, just now and then, to the chosen few.
In fact, she was still beautiful, and he had a feeling that even when she looked seventy, eighty, one hundred, she would even then keep those two things, the glamour and the beauty.
Although again, probably she wouldn’t live that long, not now. Now she was in captivity, and ruined.
She lost a little more each day, they had told him that. A little more.
But you’d never know.
Her hair was long as in the old pictures and just as lustrous and thick, though fine silver wires of the best kind of grey silked through it. She wore a minimum of make-up, eye-shadow and false lashes. No powder he could detect. And though her lips were a startling scarlet, it was a softer scarlet, to suit the aging of her face.
Her body, like her throat, was long and slender. She wore one of those long black gowns, just close enough in fit he had seen, in her rising and sitting, her figure looked, at least when clothed, like that of a woman half her apparent age.
And she had on high heels – black velvet pumps on slender tapering pins. She had surrendered very little, that way.
As for her hands, always the big giveaway, she wore mittens of thin black lace, and her nails were long and painted dull gold.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘What do you wish to know?’
‘Whatever you’re kind enough to tell me.’
‘There is so much.’
‘Yes.’
‘Time,’ she said. She shrugged.
‘We have some time.’
‘I mean, my time. Such a great amount. Like the snows and the forests. Like the mountains I saw from the beginning of my life. And always in moonlight or the light of the stars. So many nights. Centuries, and all in the dark. ‘
She had hypnotised him. He felt it. He didn’t struggle. But she said, ‘Don’t be nervous,’ as if he had stuttered or flinched or drawn back. ‘You know, don’t you, you are perfectly safe with me tonight?’
‘Yes, Madame Chaikassia.’
‘That’s good. Not everyone is able to relax.’
‘I know,’ he said, ‘that you’ve given your word. And you never break your word.’
She smiled then. She had beautiful teeth, but they were all caps. Thank God, he thought, with a rare compassion, she had not needed new teeth until such excellent dentistry had become available.
He could remember the little headline in a scurrilous magazine: False Fangs for a Vampire.
‘Do you know my story?’ she asked, not coyly, but with dignity.
Surely it would be impossible not to respond to this pride and self-control? At least, for him.
‘Something of it. But only from the movies, and the book.’
‘Oh, my book.’ She was dismissive. Any authorial arrogance had left her, or else she had never had any. ‘I did not write everything I should have done. Or they would not let me. Always there are these restraints.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
She said, ‘It must surprise you to find me here.’
He waited, careful.
She sighed. She said, ‘As the world shrinks, I have been taken like an exotic animal and put into this zoo – this menagerie. And I have allowed it, for there was nothing else I could do. I am the last of my kind. A unique exhibit. And of course, they feed me.’
At the vulgar flick of her last words, he found, to his slight dismay, the hair crawled on his scalp. Then curiosity, his stock-in-trade, made him say, ‘Can I ask you, Madame, in the realm of food, on what do they –?’
‘On what do you think?’
She leaned forward. Her black eyes, that had no aging mark on them beyond a faint reddening at their corners, burned into his. And he felt, and was glad to feel, an electric weakening in his spine.
If only I could give you what you need.
He heard the line in his head, as he had heard and read it on several occasions. But he kept the sense not to say it.
She had given her word, La Vampiresse, that she would not harm him. But there was one story, if real or false he hadn’t been able to find out. One journalistic interviewer had teasingly gone too far with her, and left this place in an ambulance.
So he only waited, letting the recorder tick unheard in his pocket – they had said, she didn’t object to such machines, provided she didn’t have to see or hear them.
And she leaned back after a moment and said, ‘They bring me what I must have. It is taken quite legally. And only from the willing, and the healthy.’
He risked it. ‘Blood, madame.’
‘Blood, monsieur. But I will tell you something. They must, by law, disguise what it is.’
‘How is that possible?’
‘They add a little juice, some little meat extract or other. This is required by the government. Astonishing, their hypocrisy, would you not say?’
‘I’d say so, yes.’
‘For everyone knows what I am, and what I must have, to live. But in order to protect the sensibility of a few, they perpetrate a travesty. However,’ she folded her hands, her rings dark as her eyes, ‘I can taste what it really is, under its camouflage. And it does what it must. As you see. I am still alive.’
He had been an adolescent when he saw her first, and that was on film. He was not the only one whose earliest sexual fantasies had been lit up all through by La Vampiresse.
But also, romantically, he had fallen in love with her world, recreated so earnestly on the screen. A country and landscape of forests, mountains, spired cities on frozen rivers, of winter palaces and sleighs and wolves, and of darkness, always that, where the full moon was the only sun. Russia, or some component of Russia, but a Russia vanished far away, where the aristocrats spoke French and the slavery of serfdom persisted.
As he grew up, found fleshly women that, for all their faults, were actually embraceable, actually penetrable, he lost the dreams of blood and moonlight. And with them, perhaps strangely, or not, lost to the romance of place. So that when, all these years after, he had been looking again at the film, or at those bits of it that had been – aptly – dug up, he was amused. At himself, for ev
er liking these scenarios at all. At the scenarios themselves, their naivety and censored charms. Oh yes, the imagination, in those days, sexual and otherwise, had had to work overtime. And from doing it, the imagination had grown muscular and strong. So that in memory after, you saw what you had not been shown, the fondling behind the smoky drape, that closed boudoir door, or even the rending among that hustle of far-off feeding wolves …
Altogether, he was sorry the romance had died for him with his youth. What was more, though they had only been, to begin with, such images, a recreation, coming here he grew rather afraid she too, La Vampiresse herself, would also disappoint. Worse, that she would horrify him, with scorn or pity or disgust.
But now, sat facing her, he had to admit he was nearly aroused. Oh, not in any erotic way. Better than that – imaginatively. Those strong imagination-muscles hadn’t after all wasted completely away. For here and now he was filling in once more the hidden or obscured vision. So that under her age, still, he could make out what she had been and was, in her own manner.
And when she spoke of her food, the blood, he didn’t want to smile behind his hand or gag at the thing she had told him. He felt a kind of wild rejoicing. Despite the fact she was here in this building in the desert, despite her growing old and – nearly – tame, she had remained Chaikassia. Everything else had gone, or was in retreat. Not that.
Because of this, he was finding it easy to talk to her, and would find it easy to perform the interview. And he wondered if others had found this too. He even wondered if that had been the problem for the one who left under the care of paramedics – it had been, for him, too easy.
At the nineteenth hour, when the moon was at the top of the first window and crossing to the top of the second, someone came in to check on them.
They had been talking about two and a half hours.
Verbally, they had crossed vast tracts of land, lingered in crypts and on high towers, seen armies gleam and sink, and sunrise slit the edge of air like a knife. And she had been, through memory, a child, a girl, a woman.
She had spoken of much of her life, even of her childhood, of which, until now, he had known little. A vampire’s childhood, unrevealed in her book, or in any other medium. He had even been able to glimpse her own adolescence, where she stood for him, frosted like the finest glass with candleshine and ghostly falling snow.
As the door was knocked on, this contemporary and unforgivable door, in such an old-fashioned and fake way, Chaikassia threw back her head and laughed.
‘They must come in. To see if I have attacked you.’
He knew quite well that there were three concealed cameras in the room, perhaps for her protection as much as his. He suspected she knew about these cameras too.
But he said, ‘They see, surely, you would never do that.’
She glanced playfully at him. ‘But I might after all be tempted.’
He said, ‘You’re flattering me.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But also I am telling you a fact. But again, I have given my word, and you are safe.’
Then a uniformed man and woman were in the room. Both gave a little brief bow to La Vampiresse. Then the man came over and handed her a beaker like a little silver thimble on a silver tray.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘is it time for this, now?’
‘Yes, madame.’
She glanced at him again. ‘Did you know, they make me also swallow such drugs?’
‘I knew something about it.’
‘Here is the proof. For my health, they say. Do you not?’ she added to the man. He smiled and stood waiting. Chaikassia tipped the contents of the silver thimble into her mouth. Her throat moved smoothly, used to this. ‘But really, it is to subdue me,’ she murmured softly. And then, more softly, almost lovingly, ‘As if it ever could.’
The uniformed woman had come over and stood by his chair. She said to him politely, ‘Do you wish for coffee, sir, hot tea, or a soft drink?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘I must remind you, sir, that your three hours are nearly through.’
‘Yes, I’m keeping count.’
When they had gone out again, Chaikassia stood up.
‘Three hours,’ she murmured. ‘Have we talked so long?’
‘We have twenty-four minutes left.’
‘Twenty-four. So exact. Ah, monsieur, what a captain you would have made.’
He too had got up, courteous, in the old style. He saw now, taken aback for a moment, that even in her high heels she was shorter than he. He had gained the impression, entering, approaching, she was about a tenth of a metre taller, for he wasn’t tall.
She had always seemed tall to him, as well. Perhaps she had shrunk a little. Despite their best efforts – the diet she now lived on … like the loss of her own teeth.
‘What else shall I tell you?’ she asked.
‘Anything, madame. Everything you wish to.’
So she began again one of her vivid rambling anecdotes. Only now and then did he require to lead her with a question, or comment. Of all the things she had already told him, many he recognised from the other material. Yet others had proved changeable, or quite fresh, like the childhood scenes, different and new. He was aware, they alone might make a book. The tape chugged on over his heart, a full four hours of it, to be on the safe side, its clever receptor catching every nuance, even when, for a moment, she might turn her head. And he marvelled at her coherence. So much and all so perfectly rendered. If she repeated herself, he barely noticed. It didn’t matter. This was a reality more real than anything else, surely? More impactful and apposite than any tragedy that was human.
‘Look at the moon,’ she suddenly said. ‘How arid and cold and old she is tonight.’ Her voice altered. ‘Have they told you? I’m always better, when the moon’s up. When it’s full. I wonder why the hell that is? Crazy, isn’t it?’
And something in him stumbled, as it seemed something had done in her. For not only the pattern of her speech had altered, the faint accent wiped away, but as she looked back at him her face was fallen and stricken. And from her eyes ran out two thin shining tears. Lost tears, all alone.
Made dumb, he stood there, seeing her oldness and her shrunkenness. Then he heard his voice come from him, and for a second was afraid of what it would say.
‘Madame Chaikassia, how you must miss your freedom. It must be so intense, the lonely sorrow of all these hundreds of years you have lived – and you are the last of your kind. You must feel the moon is your only friend at last, the only thing that can comprehend you.’
And then her face was smoothing over, the strength of imagination working its power upon her. The trite banality of his words, like some splash of bad dialogue from the worst of the scripts, but able to change her, give her back her courage and her centre. So that again she rose, towering over him, her eyes wiser than a thousand nights, older than a million moons.
‘You are a poet, monsieur. And you are perceptive. Come to the window. Do you see – the bars are of finest steel, otherwise, they think, my captors, I will escape them. But they have forgotten – oh, shall I tell you my secret?’
They leaned together by the cold glass, observing the slender bars.
She said, ‘Unlike most of my kind, I am able to make myself visible, monsieur, in mirrors – have they ever told you? Oh, yes, an old trick. How else was I able for so long to deceive your race and live among you? But there is, through this, a reverse ability. I can pass through glass. Through this glass, through these bars. I do go out, therefore, into the vastness of the night. But I am then invisible. I see you believe me.’
‘Yes, Madame Chaikassia. Many of us have long thought this was what you must be doing.’
She leaned back from him, triumphant, and laughed sharply again. He caught the faint antiseptic tang of the drug on her breath, the drug they gave her to ‘subdue’ her.
‘I fly by night. And though I return then to this prison-cage – one night, one night when I am ready �
� believe me, I shall be gone forever.’
Her eyes glittered back the stars.
He knew what to do. He took her hand, and brushed the air above it with his lips.
‘I’m so glad, so very glad, madame, you are no longer shut in. I salute your intrepid spirit, and your freedom.’
‘You will tell no-one.’ Not a plea, an order. (Yes, she had now forgotten the cameras.)
‘I swear I will tell no-one.’
‘Nor when you print your story-piece about me.’
‘Nor even then. Of course not then.’
Flirtatiously she said, ‘You are afraid I will kill you otherwise?’
‘Madame,’ he said, ‘you could kill me, I’m well aware, at any instant. But you’ve given your word and will not. Now I have given my word, and your secret is secure with me, to my grave.’
He found his eyes had filled, as hers had, with tears. This would embarrass him later, but at the time it had been, maybe, necessary.
She saw his emotion. Still smiling, she turned from him and walked away across the room, and up the steps to her gallery of books. She did this with the sublime indifference of her superior state, dismissing him, now and utterly, for all her unfathomable length of time, in which he had been only one tiny dot.
So he went to the door and pressed the button, but it opened at once, because the cameras had shown the interview was over.
A copy of the piece he wrote – less story or interview than article – would be sent to her, apparently. She had stipulated this as part of the deal.
And so had he. He had made sure, too, the copy she received, which would be only one of three, one for her, one for himself, and one for the archive, was exactly and precisely right. Which meant that it stayed faithful to the flawless lie she was now living.
He didn’t want her or intend her ever to see the real article, the commissioned one. Nobody wanted her to see that. But that one was the one the public would see. Christ, he would cut his throat if she ever saw that one – well, perhaps not go so far as cutting his throat … But he had made absolutely certain. The truth was the truth, but he’d never grasped why truth always had to be used to hurt someone. To her, life had done enough. And death would do the rest.