Mozart’s Blood (33 page)

“No,” Ugo said. “The building is gutted. They lost all the sets, all the costumes, and the manager is nowhere to be found.”

She couldn't take it in. “How do you know that?”

“Hélène,” he said. “We need to get out of the city. There won't be enough food or water. There won't be anyplace safe to sleep. We have to go.”

It seemed to her the city was dying around her. People jammed the streets, hoping to gain passage on one of the ferries. Children, separated from their parents, wailed until kind strangers picked them up and held them. Charred and smashed bodies were stacked like firelogs at street corners, with an occasional weeping survivor lifting their heads, scanning their faces in dread. Hélène had seen a great deal of death, of course. But the magnitude of the losses in San Francisco was numbing even to her, who was already inured.

Though she didn't want to, she walked away with Ugo. His arm was around her back, and his steps were steady and purposeful. She went where he directed, feeling as if she had lost her own will. She was like one of those lost children, wandering aimlessly about, waiting for someone to choose a direction.

Ugo led her through the death and confusion to the Pacific Mail dock, where a paddle steamer was being loaded with patients and nurses from St. Mary's Hospital. Through some means of persuasion Hélène never understood, Ugo secured space on the
Medoc
for them, and within the hour they were steaming out into the safety of the bay, surrounded by one hundred seventy seriously ill patients and a handful of Sisters of Mercy in their black habits, their white coifs spattered with ash.

The decks were jammed with pallets. Some patients lay two to a bed. At one end of the steamer, the dead and dying had their own area. At the other end, the Sisters of Mercy were busy tending to those were ill, but who might survive. Ugo left Hélène in a sheltered corner and went to one of the nuns. She saw him bob his head, make a gesture, say something. In a short time he was carrying bedpans, spreading blankets, bringing bandages and medicines to the sisters and the two doctors they had with them.

Hélène, ashamed of her lassitude, rose and went to offer her own services, and she and Ugo worked side by side, in complement with the Sisters of Mercy, until the steamer reached Oakland. The sisters prayed ceaselessly, a comforting chant beneath the slap of the paddle wheel and the groans of the ill and injured. Hélène, with her hands full of noisome basins or fouled bandages, found herself praying with them, automatically reciting the beautiful old verse,
Hail Mary, full of grace…
as if she were still allowed to practice her faith.

When the steamer docked in Oakland in the early morning hours, they said farewell and prepared to disembark. One of the sisters reached out a hand to touch Hélène's forehead in blessing. Hélène, realizing at the last minute what she was about to do, jerked away. She feared that even the lightest touch of those sanctified fingers might burn her skin. The nursing sister dropped her hand. She said nothing, but only turned away, too weary even to be offended.

Hélène was exhausted beyond imagining, and she thought Ugo must be the same. Neither had slept for two nights. Hélène couldn't think, couldn't plan, could barely put one foot in front of the other.

Ugo, though, seemed to have deep resources of strength and energy. He helped her off the
Medoc
and walked with her to the Oakland train station. Though the station was crowded with refugees, he arranged something, and before the day was out, the two of them boarded a Southern Pacific train that would make connections to New York. As it chugged out of Oakland, Hélène collapsed onto a padded bench seat in a blissfully quiet compartment, listening to the soporific rhythm of the wheels against the rails. She gazed across at Ugo, this slender, capable man who had suddenly become part of her life. She had not given him permission to travel with her, nor had he asked for it. But it was clear he meant to stay at her side.

They were six hours into their journey when he brought out the flat, tabbed packet of fabric he had first shown her in the Palm Court of the Garden Hotel, when they were surrounded by people in evening clothes and waiters with trays of drinks.

Irrelevantly, she wondered what had become of the woman in pink satin. Was she, like the Palm Court, the hotel itself, now reduced to ash, nothing left of her but charred bones? Or perhaps she was one of the lucky ones and had made her escape from San Francisco. The pink satin woman would have won passage through wealth and privilege. Hélène had escaped only because of Ugo.

He grinned at her, looking more like a naughty boy than an ageless creature of secrets. “I think you're ready for this,” he said.

“Ready…for what?” she stammered.

He sat down beside her. He laid the packet on the little foldout table and began to untie the linen tabs. He smoothed back the panels of cloth, and she transferrred her gaze from his face to the equipment. The steel needles glittered in the light from the window. And the vials of brownish glass, empty before, now held something dark.

“What is it?” she asked, touching one of the vials. It was cold, and beads of condensation sparkled on its surface.

“Come, Hélène,” he said gently. “
Bella.
You must know.”

The vials mocked her, reminding her of her need, and her shame. “Where did you get it?” she asked in a hushed tone.

“You don't need to know.”

“But is it…is it…”

He touched her hand. “Yes, it is.
Sangue.
Now roll up your sleeve.”

The process seemed strange to her, a bizarre echo of that which had kept her alive for more than a century. She folded back the full sleeve of her shirtwaist and watched with a kind of stunned fascination as Ugo bound her upper arm with a strip of black silk. He touched the vein on the inside of her elbow with one finger. It swelled invitingly under the pressure as he tightened the binding. At the bite of the needle, she shuddered and closed her eyes. Just so had she pierced so many veins, veins beyond counting. Her only consolation, and a faint one, was that she no longer brought her victims to the point of death. That, at least, she had learned.

And in so doing had attracted the attention of the elders, and of this strange man.

When the
sangue
began to flow into her vein, her eyes flew open. It was cold at first, but it warmed quickly as it wound its way into her body, and then it was hot, and sweet. She felt a dizzying rush of energy that took her breath away.

Ugo murmured, “Yes. I thought you would feel that.”

“Did you know? Have you done this before?” she said faintly.

“No,
bella.
No.” Gently, as though he had practiced it a hundred times, he withdrew the needle and pressed a bit of clean cloth to the site.

“Then how could you have thought…”

He was deftly repacking his things, coiling the tubing, rolling the strip of black silk. “I am,” he said, with a self-deprecating lift of his shoulders, “a student of history. And the history of intravenous injections is a long one.”

“You must tell me where you got it. Especially now, of all times.”

He lifted his eyes from his task. They had gone hard, like coals, with no light reflected in them. “Don't ask me that,” he said. His accent was suddenly that of an American, the vowels flattened, the consonants dull. “I've told you. You don't need to know.”

“But, Ugo…”

“No. Don't.” He tied the tabs of his packet with a sharp tug and put the whole into an inner pocket. He stood up, taking three steps to the window, where the desert scenery jolted past. When he looked at her again, his face had resumed its mild, faintly amused expression. “A gift,” he said lightly. He flicked his fingers over the pocket. “My gift to you.
A caval donato non si guarda in bocca.
”

Hélène frowned, not liking the feeling of being dependent. But she felt so well—so strong and full of life—that she found it in herself to put her question away. She could press him another time, perhaps, if he were still here.

She lifted the bit of cotton from the tiny wound. A single drop of blood rose to the surface of her skin. She dabbed it away. There was no more, only a small red spot that began to fade even as she watched. In moments it was gone, leaving no evidence of what had just taken place.

She jumped to her feet, feeling too full of vitality to sit still. “Some of the other singers are on the train,” she said. “I'm going to find them.”

And he, with a limpid, white-toothed smile, said, “Have fun,
bella.
”

A year passed before she asked him again about the source of his supply. This time they were in the train station in Prague, and Ugo had a hand over the pocket where he kept what she now thought of as her packet. Fretfully, she said, “What's wrong? Is it there?”

“Of course. What's bothering you?”

“I don't know.” She tried to brush scattered flecks of ash and soot from the short jacket of her traveling suit. “I don't want to see her. I don't like her.”

He patted her arm. “I don't either. But we won't stay long.”

“And what if I…what if I need…”

He touched his pocket again. “It's here, Hélène. I told you.”

“But if you run out, what will I do?”

“I won't run out, silly girl.” He put his hand on her back and began to steer her through the crowds. It had been a long time since she had heard the Czech language, and it made her feel even more out of place to be unable to catch more than a word or two of the hundreds shouted and called around her.

As they waited for a hack to be free, Hélène asked him. “I can see it doesn't last long, Ugo. Tell me where you get it.”

He flashed her a look, and she remembered now how hard those limpid dark eyes could turn when he was angry. He said, in that same American accent she had heard on the train from Oakland, “I won't tell you. And I don't want the Countess entertaining the question.”

Hélène felt a chill in her belly that crept up to her breast. “Ugo,” she said breathlessly. “She doesn't know?”

His full lips pressed into a tight line. He shook his head.

“Then—what does she think? How does she think I—I manage?”

“She thinks you feed, of course. But that you kill.” His flat vowels made her nerves jump. “Don't tell her, Hélène. She won't like it.”

 

“Teresa.” The Countess Milosch rose from her seat in a vast, dim parlor. “You've changed.”

“It's Hélène.” Hélène came forward into the vague circle of light cast by three thick beeswax candles in old cut-glass holders. She glanced briefly about her. Everything in the room was old. The furniture spoke of other centuries. The carpet beneath her feet had gone hard as the cobblestones outside, as if the years had dessicated it, petrified its fibers into a fossil of itself. Even the air seemed to have been breathed too often and too long.

“Hélène. Hmm. I suppose it's useful, to change your name.” The Countess looked as Hélène remembered her, or more properly, as Teresa remembered her. Her sharp-featured face and sharp-boned shoulders looked as if they had been carved from stone.

“It's necessary,” Hélène said. “If I want to have a career.”

“You're having success in America, then.” The Countess's voice held no real interest.

“In some places,” Hélène answered.

Zdenka Milosch sat down again and let her head fall back against the sofa. “I don't like America,” she said.

Ugo waved Hélène to a chair and took one himself. “Why don't you like America, Countess?” he asked. His tone was conversational, as if this bizarre place were a normal home, as if this were a social meeting.

“Colonials,” she said sourly. “They're never civilized.”

“It's been a hundred-odd years since America was a colony,” Ugo said, smiling. “They might surprise you.”

The Countess didn't bother to answer.

Hélène gazed at her with mounting resentment. “Why am I here, Countess? I don't like being given orders.”

“Indeed.” The Countess lifted her head and fixed Hélène with her unfriendly gaze. “My brethren wished to meet you,” she said.

“The elders,” Ugo said quietly. He leaned back and crossed his legs, adjusting the careful pleat of his elegant flannels. “Hélène has a contract in New York in six weeks,” he said. “We can't stay long.”

One of the Countess's narrow brows rose. “We?” she said, her voice no more than a thread of sound.

Ugo laughed. “I am now the assistant to Mademoiselle Hélène Singher, up-and-coming French soprano, who made a miraculous escape from the disaster in San Francisco. I like it.” With an elegant gesture of his slim fingers, he said, “It keeps me off the streets, you know.”

“We must not be giving you enough work,” the Countess replied. Hélène blinked, surprised at the near humor of her remark.

Ugo shrugged. “I'm busy enough,” he said. “Your interests will be seen to in all the cities Hélène will visit.”

The Countess sat up a little straighter, in a rustle of bombazine. Her dress was fifty years out of date. Hélène wondered if she ever went out anymore. She fixed Hélène with her cold gaze. “Ugo has made it clear to you, I gather,” she said. “What it is we require.”

Hélène, her temper gathering, opened her mouth, but Ugo forestalled her. “You haven't heard of any exceptions, have you, Countess?” he drawled. “It's been a year.”

Again, Zdenka Milosch did not bother to reply. Her lips curled in her mirthless smile, never revealing her teeth. Hélène drew breath again, a retort rising to her lips, but Ugo found her foot with his and pressed down. Her gored skirt was cut in the new style, short enough to expose her soft-heeled boot. It appeared Ugo didn't care if he damaged the leather. His meaning was clear, and she subsided.