The Story of the Vampire, L (Completed | Featured )

Part 4 - An Intimate Letter from Abroad

I have always taken Dasius's dictation. It started in the 1720s, when he began doing business overseas, importing fabrics in numerous quantity. We were at our richest then, and Laurent had decorated a slim townhouse in the fashionable district of the city. He had so many benefactors at that time. It was all sunlight and luxury then, gold leaf and reflective marble tables. We would go together to the ballet a lot, which was little more than a parade of whores at that time. Oh it was loftier than that, but let's not stand on ceremony. He went there to be seen, and I went because I wanted to press my face into the beautiful embroidery of the costumes and the soft skin of young women, whose bodies were so broken by the whole thing.

I have always fallen easily for women, with their quiet way of loving and their soft angles. While Laurent went with his counts and his marquesses, I stayed backstage with the ugly junior ballerinas and played children's games by lamplight. When things went south it happened fast, with the downfall of favorites at court and fortunes lost, but it remains that what letters Dasius sent in that period were all in my hand.

So in 1869, a few weeks after being shunned away from Laurent's room, Dasius found me sitting outside in the garden at night, and asked me if I would take down a letter.

For those few weeks, I had been idling myself around the house, wary of the unfamiliar neighborhood. Being fall, the garden was growing more and more skeletal, and the wind had begun to pick up in the evening, winter blowing in from the east. I said yes because I was tired of fighting. That is how things always are.

I had begun to regret returning to them, though I was still tired of wandering, and it made me melancholy. The joy of homecoming had been so brief.

"Will you tell me who you're writing to?" I asked, following him into the house and reaching up to shut the door behind me.

He said nothing.

"Shouldn't I know."

Without a response, he sat me down in his study at the hardwood desk. I drew my hands over the oxblood leather blotter while he got his fountain pen and a stiff sheet of paper. He set his seal down, and a small candle to heat wax when the time came.

"If you don't speak to me, I shall rail."

"I received a letter last week from a gentleman living in London. We should make our response," he said.

"Why don't you write it yourself?"

"I must preserve my hands."

"You're nuts. Who sent you a letter? It's not safe to give out our address. You've put us at risk."

He put down a glass inkwell and opened the lid, putting a pen syringe in my hand. I filled the syringe with black ink and deposited it in the nib well.

"You should try to write with the fountain pen. It won't blot. You won't be made a fool of," I said.

"I don't like newfangled things," he said, sounding honest.

"I know. I'm just goading you. Go on then. I'm ready."

I remember the entire thing. It went like this:

"Dear Sir.

"I am writing now to tell you that, with respect, your letters, as they are, are unwelcome. Now I will put it to you this way, one should not expect a letter of such troublesome portent to be delivered to the intendee, and any and all will be caught out by myself or other concerned parties. I found your missive both malicious and obscene, and all this reflects upon you terribly. If, as you wish, the object of our mutual interest were to receive such a letter, how can any reaction but panic be expected? This is unacceptable. With respect to these things and all others, I beg you keep your own peace. Upon receipt, any further correspondance will be burned, response unforthcoming. I am sorrowful that things are unwell with you, but disorder is the enemy of us all.

"With regards, D"

"Dasius, if you want to tell someone to fuck themselves, do it," I said.

"Read it back to me. You have manipulated my words in the past."

"Who wrote to you?" I demanded.

"No one."

I would have laughed at him if he hadn't been keeping young vampires in pieces in the vegetable cellar. Instead, I gestured at a crystal decanter of brandy he had on his desk.

"Have some if you wish. It's laced with laudanum. It will put you to sleep," he said.

He has never been able to sleep well, and I could see that he was nervous. He kept wringing his hands like a fallen woman in a play. After fanning the ink dry with my hand, I folded his letter carefully; drew my finger along the creases. I had tucked the paper in a crisp envelope, and he watched me pour wax on the loose end, unwilling to change his ways as ever, and I pressed his seal to it. An ornate D and picture of a carrion crow were left behind. He has had that seal since the middle 16th century, ever the dramatic kind. When it was dry I tapped the envelope on the desk and held it out to him.

"Address it," he ordered.

In the evening, I slipped into his room, low to the floor, and swiped the original letter. He is a creature of habit, more nervous about trying new things than that I would certainly find the original letter and read it. It was in his dressing gown pocket, where he could read it and read it again. Sorry thing, absolutely transparent.

Since I had slapped him, Laurent had been keeping to his room, covers drawn up, curled against the wall. He could stay in that position for weeks at a time, catatonic. Sometimes, I would go in and try to get him up, tugging on him or massaging his scalp, but he wouldn't move. There was no chance of being bothered.

I went into the back sitting room, which had become a junk room for successive occupants of the house. I wound myself over, under, and around abandoned objects -- dressers, mirrors, coat roacks, a sideboard, old clothes hanging up and on the floor, and sat underneath a moldering Singer sewing machine by the window, which was cloudy with disuse. The letter had been folded and unfolded so many times over the week that it threatened to fall apart in my hands. He hadn't lied about not receiving a letter, because it wasn't addressed to him. I ate it with my eyes, a very delicious letter, written in a stuttering, almost child-like hand with many mispellings and errors, in the sweet but blunt French of the 18th century poor. In essence, it went like this.

"My dear and sacred heart.

"I am here in London at the White Swan, which is in E-----. We are living above a public house, which even now is raucous as the sun begins to rise in the foggy city. My darling, my darling, forgive me. Please, whatever there is between us was never meant. Believe me, all I am is held between your lovely fingers. Allow me to return to you, and there shall be no hurt feeling between us at all. Let me kiss your sweet mouth and whisper in your ear about my love of you. None may part us. In the evening, I dream of the shell of your ear and the little invisible hairs on your thigh. In the dream I hear the shaking of your voice and your begging for the bite, and I taste the salt on your skin. Do you think me funny? as it was me who always begged. I am always laughing about it, that after all of these years, you are creeping in on me at night, as you did before. Sometimes I think that you are truly there with me, in my dreams. Is that so? Be my king in all things and we will put others away. Intimate friend, we should not be parted. It has been enough time. I'll be your Ampelos, and you Bacchus. Make of my blood wine and be drunk upon it. Put away your nurse and I will put away my lover. That's enough.

"Leis of Marseille, and of Love."

When I finished memorizing it, I went into the dark of Laurent's room and climbed his bed. When I softly read it by his ear, he passed through a vacant madness coming back to the world from his catatonia, muttering breathlessly, "Leis? Leis?" and I knew him for a liar. He was still in love with that poor, sick boy from 1740. He knew the cadence by heart. Jesus wept. I hadn't guessed.