Captain Vampire

by Marie Nizet

  “Prieteni!” 38 called Liatoukine–and they went forward.

  “Right!” said Bogomil, nudging his companions with his elbow. “I recognize the voice of the silliest and richest boy in Bucharest.”

  “What! Is that you, Comanescu?” cried Igor, feigning surprise. “Have they pushed irreverence to the point of giving you sentry-duty, like any common-or-garden plebeian?”

  “Yao!” yawned young Relia, in an eloquently plaintive manner.

  “Well, we’ll relieve the sentinel,” said Liatoukine, briefly.

  “Impossible! I’m here by order of Colonel Leganescu.”

  Liatoukine was unwilling to allow the acknowledgement, at least in his presence, of any authority but his own. Relia’s observation offended him, and he filed it away in a corner of his memory.

  “And we’re relieving you by order of Leganescu,” Sokolich hastened to say.

  “Ah, so much the better!” cried he young aristocrat, with an outburst of childish joy. Then, quite seriously, he went on: “Where, then, is my replacement?”

  “Here,” said Liatoukine, shoving Yuri Levine by the shoulders. The latter pulled a frightful face, accompanied a dull groan–but a glance from the Colonel reminded him that one did not trifle with the desires of Captain Vampire without severe consequences. He began standing guard without saying a word, while privately cursing the ridiculous whim of his superior officer, which was going to cost him six hours of additional duty.

  Bogomil and Igor had each taken Relia by one arm, although the latter seemed more sustainer than sustained. Liatoukine marched on ahead–he had the air of a man leading a flock of sheep–while Stenka formed the rearguard. In this formation, the four friends and the little Rumanian arrived without further interruption at Liatoukine’s lodgings–which is to say, the house of the late Aga, which Boris had “repatriated.”

  In addition to sums derived from legal contributions, this functionary had received, while alive, revenues from a host of petty taxes, which he had instituted to his own profit. In his apartments, Oriental splendor mingled with European luxury; there were brocade divans and Venetian glasses everywhere. The whole place was only slightly damaged by bullets, which had, fortunately, spared the bottles of French and Spanish wines that the good Muslim–who had reputedly been extremely devout–had crammed into his cellars.

  The Aga’s wine-cellar was immediately put to pillage by the young madmen, who wanted to revive the suppers of the Hugues Hotel on a Sardanapalesque scale.39 The startled appearance and gross naïveté of “Mademoiselle Aurélie,” who had no inkling of the fate in store for him, drew tears of hilarity from the officers, and the impassive face of Liatoukine, presiding over the orgy, was reminiscent of the skeleton that the ancients exposed during their feasts in order that its empty orbits and rictus smile might remind the guests of the brevity of human life–except that the sight of Boris did not evoke any funereal notion in brains already disturbed by the onset of inebriation.

  “And you studied at the Collège Mabille, didn’t you?” Bogomil asked Relia, putting as much interest into his voice as he could.

  “You’re mistaken,” said the young man, with a candid smile. “The Mabille isn’t a college, it’s a dance-hall. Actually, I was at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand...”

  “That’s right–Louis-le-Grand!” Bogomil said, unctuously. “That’s what I meant to say.”

  “We went out every Sunday,” Relia went on, seemingly disposed to tell the exciting tale of his experiences as a student. “We went as far as the Arc de Triomphe. We were very tired when we got back. It was very enjoyable.”

  Stenka raised his head. “Mademoiselle Aurélie” was still smiling, and speaking very seriously. “He’s too stupid for words,” Stenka murmured in Igor’s ear. Then, addressing the schoolboy, he said, rudely: “Didn’t your mother ever send you anything?”

  Relia’s face lit up. “Oh, yes! Pots of jam!” And the memory of these preserves absorbed his mind so completely that he did not see his comrades smile.

  “I was talking about money,” Stenka said, shrugging his shoulders, “not sweets.”

  “Money? Oh, we had no need of money at the school–they fed us, lodged us...”

  “Fed! Lodged! Here’s a boy who’s easily contented,” Igor muttered behind his moustache.

  “But when I was at university...”

  “How many mistresses did you have?” Liatoukine said, abruptly.

  Relia jumped in his chair and reddened to his ears. “Oh!” he stammered. “I never...”

  “Come, come!” said Bogomil. “No secrets among comrades. Was she beautiful, eh?”

  Relia turned scarlet, and plunged his nose into his glass.

  “Was she beautiful?” Tchestakoff repeated, in a thunderous voice that made the poor student quiver.

  “Oh, yes!” he sighed, finally, without raising his eyes.

  “And what was her name?” Igor continued, intent on analyzing this youthful romance.

  Relia allowed the words to be drawn out, as it were, from between clenched teeth. “Athénaïs Beaubuisson,”40 he articulated, in a whisper.

  “Athénaïs!” cried Bogomil, in a piercing one. “That’s a splendid name!”

  “Athénaïs means...” the student began, thinking that an etymological definition might serve to deflect the course of a conversation that was subjecting his modesty to torture.

  “We’re not concerned with philology,” Sokolich put in. “We’re talking about love.”

  The terrible interrogation got under way again, and Relia decided to take the confessional route.

  “How old was she?”

  “About 30.”

  “Damn! She was ripe!” Bogomil exclaimed.

  “Pardon?”

  “And did you see her often,” said Tchestakoff, who rarely had difficulty maintaining his sang-froid.

  “Oh! Not as often as I would have liked–once a month, when I went to pay the rent. I’d rather have paid the rent every day!” cooed “Mademoiselle Aurélie” in his softest voice.

  “Pay the...what?” said Bogomil, who did not understand.

  “The rent,” young Relia repeated, complacently. “She was my landlady–in the Boulevard Saint-Michel, No. 55.”

  A gesture from Liatoukine stopped a loud burst of laughter on their lips, which would have shaken the windows of the room. Igor swallowed two large glasses of selbovitza one after the other; Stenka pulled the tips of his moustache; Bogomil’s face disappeared under the peak of his cap. A beatific smile brightened Relia’s features as he shut his eyes, to improve the passage through his imagination of the majestic silhouette of Lady Athénaïs Beaubuisson.

  Stenka was the first to control his suppressed hilarity. He bowed to Relia, and said: “Well, my boy, you’re stronger than I am. When I was at Heidelberg, where I scribbled essays in philosophy before making notches in the skin of my peers, I never got as far as domesticating my landladies–although it’s true that they were older than 30 and I never went to pay the rent.”

  “I drink to our friend’s amours!” said Bogomil, raising his glass. “To Madame Athénaïs Beaubuisson!”

  “Boulevard Saint-Michel,” Igor continued.

  “No. 55,” added Boris, maintaining his invariable grimace of a smile.

  The glasses suspended their ascendant movement at shoulder-level. The three officers’ mouths remained open; it was the first time that a pleasantry of that sort had ever escaped Captain Vampire’s thin lips.

  Relia wriggled in his uniform; unable to do anything but respond in kind, he seized the bottle of selbovitza that he found in front of him, mechanically, and drank directly from it.

  “By the way,” said Igor, gently retrieving the bottle from Relia’s hands, “how do you say ‘I love you’ in Rumanian?” He added, thinking of a stylish little girl:41 “It’s bound to cost me some day, if I don’t know how.”

  “Eu te, iubescu,” said Relia.

  “You tay, youbesk!” repeated Igor, jaw-wrenc
hingly. “A beautiful language, but a bit hard!”

  “Comanescu, my friend, it would be very obliging of you to sing us one of your country’s sings–a doïna–so that we can judge the genius of the idiom,” Bogomil said, assuming a wheedling manner.

  Domna Rosanda’s teachings had borne their fruit, however. “Oh,” said “Mademoiselle Aurélie,” with a disdainful pout, “doïne are what the peasants sing.”

  “It’s unnecessary to sully your aristocratic throat with plebeian airs,” said Sokolich, sententiously. “In any case, we’re not that fond of songs, are we, Colonel?”

  Liatoukine sketched out a negative gesture.

  “Since you won’t sing,” Bogomil, making himself more and more persuasive, “the least you can do is dance for us.”

  “Me, dance!” said Relia, with an ingenuous laugh.

  “Colonel Liatoukine has expressed his intention to write an opuscule 42 on the various Moldo-Walachian dances, and he’s counting on you to initiate him into the mysteries of the hora, which you shall dance for us forthwith.”

  “I can’t dance the hora all alone,” poor Relia replied. “It’s a round dance.”

  “Oh well, you have the batuta, the piper and God knows what! There’s plenty of choice.”

  “The batuta! The piper!” cried “Mademoiselle Aurélie.” “But they’re drunkards’ dances!”

  “Why should hold that you back?” Bogomil riposted, filling Relia’s glass to the brim.

  “Let’s go, Monsieur–the piper!” 43

  The little Rumanian turned to his interlocutor, intending to protest–but Captain Vampire’s gaze froze the words on the student’s livid lips.

  “Do you know what this is?” said Sokolich, setting before the bewildered young boyar a long lash made of hardened and creased leather. “We call this plaything a knout.” He added, in a detached manner: “We make use of it in caressing the epidermis of recalcitrant soldiers.”

  Reflexively, Relia passed his delicate fingers over the thick stock of the instrument.

  “It strikes hard,” Bogomil said, with conviction.

  “Monsieur Comanescu,” Captain Vampire’s strident voice resumed, “I’m not accustomed to giving the same order twice, you know.”

  Relia went pale, and tears came into his eyes. “But, Colonel...” he ventured. The little Walachian’s attitude was almost supplicatory; he was reminiscent of a lamb at the mercy of a pack of wolves. With smiles on their lips and their formidable knouts in their hands, the Russians surrounded their victim and only seemed to be waiting for a word from Liatoukine to make use of their weapons.

  “Let’s go, little one, jump to it!” said Bogomil, ostentatiously lifting his whip. But Relia did not budge, and slowly shook his head. The Slavic blood he had inherited from his mother had not entirely annihilated the passive courage that is one of the dominant traits of the Rumanian character.

  “One, two, three...hop!” howled Sokolich. The thong of the knout was already brushing Relia’s hair.

  “No,” he said, in a firm voice.

  And the knout came down.

  In response to that degrading contact, Relia leapt to the other side of the room, his fists clenching convulsively. His blue eyes–ordinarily so soft–flashed, and with an energy that his frail and sickly appearance would scarcely have suggested, he cried: “Cowards! Are you not ashamed to attack a child?”

  The epithet “cowards,” so justly applied, brought the fury of he Russians–already excited by successive draughts of alcohol–to the boil.

  “Oh, you refuse to recognize the power of our will!” they shouted. “Well, we’ll show you how heavy our Muscovite arms can be! As we crush you, so we shall one day annihilate your miserable country, and all the men of your execrable race, if they aren’t prepared to meet our demands!”

  Under the frenetic impulsion of the bandits, the knouts clove the air and traced blue lines across the unfortunate young man’s limbs. He was unable to defend himself.

  Liatoukine, who had not abandoned his habitual indifference, came towards the damnable group, and moderated their ardor with a gesture. “You’re striking too hard, gentlemen,” he said.

  Liatoukine’s words and attitude exasperated the poor Rumanian. “And it’s you,” he cried, “that my father welcomed into his home like a son! Oh, you’re even viler than your hired assassins!”

  Liatoukine’s eyes sparkled. “Don’t add insult to your other sins, Monsieur,” he said, gratingly. “You might have the opportunity to repent of them.”

  Relia fell silent. His gaze was caught and held by an enormous mirror, broken in several places, which was facing him; his features suddenly expressed a sentiment that partook of both joy and sorrow.

  “I may be small and weak,” he said, in a voice tremulous with hope, “but I’m not so completely forgotten and abandoned that I can’t find a friendly soul to pity me and a powerful arm to protect me! Help me, Isacescu, help me!”

  VII. O Frailty...!

  The hiss of the whips died away. An unknown man of taller stature and coarser features had just appeared next to the exhausted and bloodied Relia Comanescu. His left hand was crumpling a wad of papers, and his right hand was extended, in a gesture replete with nobility, between the young man and his executioners. The man was evidently strong, and conscious of his strength. Without taking stock of the influence to which they were obedient, the Russians recoiled from him like jackals before a lion.

  Relia had recognized Ioan; Ioan had remembered Relia. Ioan had repaid the debt contracted by Mariora, and the boyar’s lip brushed the peasant’s tanned fingers.

  The dorobantz’s extraordinarily calm gaze surveyed the entire company, to various degrees. Not a muscle quivered in his face; one might have thought that no hatred had ever subverted his soul–and yet, his enemy was in front of him, nonchalantly perched on a divan, within range of his dagger! Ioan could see his enemy, though.

  “Which of you is Boris Liatoukine?” he asked, coolly.

  “That’s me,” said Captain Vampire, sitting up straighter. Ironically, he added: “Is your memory so short that you can’t recognize me?”

  The Imperial missive slipped from the messenger’s fingers.

  “Oh, yes, I recognize you,” he said, with a bitter smile. “A Rumanian’s memory is trustworthy, as is his khanjar! 44 But I did not know the name of the monster who takes pride in insulting old men, beating children an violating women!”

  “My boy,” said Bogomil, slapping Ioan on the shoulder and causing him to take a step backwards to avoid contact with the drunkard, “you’re not very polite, and you talk like my Archimandrite uncle. No more of your pious sermons, I beg you; it’s not Lent any more and morality gets on my nerves!”

  An irritated glance from Liatoukine imposed silence on Tchestakoff.

  “Are you alluding to the Slobozianu woman?” Boris said, calmly, picking the Archduke’s letter up with the point of his saber. He continued, addressing his companions in debauchery: “It’s to do with Mariora, gentlemen.”

  “Mariora!” exclaimed Igor, smoothing his moustache. “I knew her–a lovely sprig of a girl!”

  “I knew her too–she wasn’t shy!” said Stenka, performing a pirouette.

  Ioan thought that he was in the grip of a horrible nightmare. The name of Mariora, which he produced as if it were that of a goddess, tripped from the mouths of these libertines accompanied by epithets! So they knew Mariora! Where and when had they known her?

  This flood of questions was rising to the dry lips of the dorobantz when Bogomil, sticking both hands in his pockets, advanced towards him again, studying him with an impertinent curiosity. “Is it you, my boy, who is engaged to marry Maruschinka?”

  “It is me!” said Ioan indignantly, “and I forbid you...”

  “Well, I congratulate you–sincerely, I congratulate you,” Tchestakoff repeated, with a false bonhomie–and he turned his broad back to resume his place.

  Igor got up in his turn, and said, with th
e disdain that stamps the least movement and most insignificant remark of a great lord, from the heights of his nobility: “It’s a great honor for you!”

  Stenka’s word became much clearer.

  Ioan’s knees buckled; a red mist passed before his eyes. “You’re lying!” he cried, crushing the officer’s arm in his own despairing grip. “You’re lying!”

  Stenka calmly disengaged his arm and elevated his shoulders. “I’m lying?” he said. “Just ask Liatoukine.”

  “Tell me that he was lying, and I’ll believe you,” Ioan said, in a muffled voice.

  Liatoukine slowly offered his right hand to the dorobantz. “Look!” he said.

  Shining amid the opals, the emeralds and the diamonds was the humble ring of Byzantine copper that Ioan had given to his fiancée!

  “That isn’t Mariora’s ring,” he said. He remembered the last letter of the Greek inscription had borne a particular mark–a little cross that he had engraved there with his dagger. He examined the ring minutely, and let Boris’s hand fall back. The little cross was there!

  “Mariora!” he cried, in a heart-rending tone. He darted a mad glance at all the men surrounding him, and released a frightful burst of laughter. “Oh, Mariora!” he repeated. Reflexively, his hand sought that of Relia, to whom the sight of his great anguish seemed strange, since he was weeping like a child. He was no longer thinking of vengeance. Mariora was dead to him; henceforth, his life would be purposeless, loveless...

  And around the desolate pair, the Russians sniggered.

  The sound of raised voices had attracted a dozen Cossacks. Liatoukine pointed them towards the two Rumanians.

  “Twenty-five lashes with the knout for the little one,” he said. “Fifty for the big one.”

  The next day, there was a singular agitation in the Rumanian camp. The officers, who took great pains to disguise their anger, conversed in hushed voices, while the soldiers–less circumspect–muttered death-threats at the mere appearance of a Russian cap. The rumor was running around that a Russian Colonel had had two dorobantzi whipped.

  “The truth can sometimes be unbelievable.” This line of poetry is nowhere more applicable than in Russia.