Nocturnes (8 page)

Chapter Eight

H
e could not have said how he knew it, but as his plane cruised towards St. Louis, he was aware that a turning point was at hand. Something was going to happen there that would bring this matter out into the light.

When he arrived, he gathered the information he would need to become a vagrant for the night. There was an old warehouse section along the river that the city’s homeless called home. The abandoned buildings offered shelter from the inclement weather. And the police were a little more tolerant of them if they kept to this part of town. This is where Isaac would
go.

He contemplated buying a gun. But the very notion only served to remind him of how far in over his head he already was. The idea that he would be able to, first, discern the true threat from the host of homeless wanderers, and then to muster the intellectual commitment necessary to take someone out of this world for good…not to mention the terrible responsibility of becoming someone else’s judge, jury and executioner? No. He was trying very hard to keep everything in some sort of workable perspective. Introducing a loaded weapon into the proceedings would tilt the mindset dramatically, from objectivity to an almost passive-aggressive state in which everyone he would encounter would be an existential threat.

In his rationale, this was a kind of experiment, really…another project for a future article. It was still just beyond his comprehension that there was a blood-drinking killer stalking these southern cities…and one who seemed to know him. No, no. Keep the mind balanced. Let it deal with things familiar, focus on the ordinary aspects of it all. Just a little research, a little homework, a little silver crucifix in the trouser pocket, just in
case…

He spent the next four days in his hotel room, reading, drinking good wine, and preparing himself as best he could psychologically. More than a little prayer, and Mass on Sunday. Monday night found him dressed in his third-hand attire, standing on another dimly lit and littered street outside a warehouse that could not remember the last days of its usefulness. His taxi roared off with instructions to return in two
hours.

He wandered through several vast, high-ceilinged rooms, cathedral-like in the sooty darkness. His flashlight was clutched in his hand, but his eyes had adjusted and he wouldn’t use it unless circumstances dictated. It was nearly ten p.m., and many of the people he had seen were reclined or sleeping. But these buildings were so big, and spread out over such an area, that he felt entirely alone.

There wasn’t any plan to his movements. How could there be? Instead, he allowed his instincts to guide him once again. They had proven themselves in Biloxi. And maybe in Atlanta? There was another in a line of eerie thoughts. Had he somehow been drawn to Piedmont Park that night?

Had Lessa whispered into his subconscious that he should uncharacteristically leave the luxury of his hotel suite and take a random nocturnal stroll among Atlanta’s economic refugees? The thought was enough to make his head spin, but it was certainly a valid idea in light of everything that had occurred since. And he was incapable of abandoning it. This was all beginning to feel a little too predestined.

After nearly two hours of wandering and waiting, he gave up and returned to his hotel.

He repeated the scenario for the next three nights. Some of the locals had begun to regard him suspiciously. But in the end he was just another old man with insomnia. Restless with wasted time. Most of them could identify with that.

On the fourth night, he poked among the empty buildings on the easternmost edge of the warehouse complex. He had come to a point of ending and peered into the inky depths of an old river shed. He was even more anxious than usual. But each time he had started to leave, something equally anxious had stopped him from doing so.

He held a mental conversation with Lessa, attempting to bolster his fading resolve. For some reason, Lessa’s side of the conversation encouraged him to pursue this, and he wondered aloud why that would be the case. Why on Earth would he assume her position to be that one? Why wouldn’t she usher him hastily back to the comfort of his Boston home? He could almost hear her soft, certain words.

“There is no ‘safety,’ Isaac. Life is the most dangerous thing one can participate in. But you must trust in something beyond yourself if you would be free. And that ‘something’ is the greatest power in the universe. Love, my darling.
Love…”

Isaac was deeply absorbed in this line of thought when a finger tapped him lightly on the shoulder. He whirled and hit the light switch in one motion. The beam probed at the vacant darkness. He whirled again, stabbing with the light, willing it to discover the source of his sudden terror. A phantom voice ran up the notches of his spine…“You are looking in the wrong
place.”

Now he turned again, this time with an infinite slowness, back to the building’s interior. He was there, right in front of him. “Oh, God,” Isaac gasped audibly. The man’s lips were curled in a kind of smile, but his eyes were stone.

Before Isaac could draw another breath, the stranger placed the long nail of his right index finger onto the back of his own tongue and drew it sharply forward, leaving a crimson wake. Without pausing, he grabbed Isaac by the left wrist and inserted his bloody nail into the vein on the back of Isaac’s hand. There was no pain. There was, however, a sensation of luxurious surrender. Decades of worry and desire vanished like a sigh on the
wind.

The man reached into Isaac’s breast pocket and removed his wallet, glancing quickly at the driver’s license. “There isn’t enough light,” Isaac thought. “I can barely see his face…” But the man spoke calmly and in perfect control.

“Hear me well, Isaac Bloom. From this moment forward, you are mine. Your very thoughts will be revealed to me if I should inquire of them. You will obey me completely and without question. I tell you these things for your own information because in all other respects you will function as usual. I will determine your fate, but it won’t be tonight. There are too many questions to consider. Arrangements will be made for you to fly to New Orleans on tomorrow’s afternoon flight. When you arrive, you will check in to the Crescent Esplanade Hotel. At ten p.m. you will go, on foot, to the Blue Note bar on Conti St., and you will wait for me there. Now, go and find the taxi that has awaited you these past four nights, and return to your
hotel.”

Isaac stood and watched the man disappear back into the shadows. He walked the five blocks to his rendezvous point and waited for his ride. When the cab pulled to the curb, the driver turned and studied the old man closely.

“If you don’t mind my asking, mister, what have you been doing out there for the last couple of hours?”

“Just a little research project on the homeless.” Isaac brushed the question aside, already aware of his inability to mention the stranger in any manner.

“Well, Pops, I don’t know if this is a compliment or an insult, but you sure are dressed for the part. You’re natural. Hey! Did you know that you’re
bleeding?”

Isaac peered down at his hand for the first time. The blood had now clotted, but had left a dried trail that passed beneath his wedding band and ended at the tip of his finger.

“It’s just a scratch,” he responded automatically. “The hotel,
please.”

Back in his room, Isaac sat upright on the edge of the bed. His thoughts were entirely lucid. But, try as he might, he could not will himself to ask for help. At one point he had reached for the phone to call the police. As soon as he started to speak, however, he could hear his blood, his essence, singing out against it. It was the oddest sensation, to be able to think rationally, to know what needed to be done. But when he tried to rouse himself to action, he lost all concern. He was not afraid. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he was not afraid. But he was well aware that he was in grave
danger.

At four o’clock the next day he boarded the plane for a return trip to New
Orleans.

Chapter Nine

I
saac checked into the hotel as commanded. Definitely off the Quarter’s beaten path, it was a common affair that would have been given two very reluctant stars in Europe. He carried his own luggage up three flights of stairs. Roaches scurried for cover when he opened the door, but there wasn’t much. A stained and threadbare rug, two risky chairs bristling with springs, and a bed that sagged so badly he could have bathed in the middle of it. These were his forlorn welcome to his new (and final?) home. He had asked the desk man what his arrangements were, and how long he was paid up for. He was given a curious expression and a mumbled message that, if deciphered, would have been, “You pay by the night,
fool.”

At nine-fifteen he showered, dressed casually, and headed out for the Blue Note. Upon his arrival, he found that he was capable of ordering a brandy, and almost anything else that didn’t threaten his new-found acquaintance. Then he sat back to
wait.

The bar was poorly attended. There was no music, even though the jukebox near his table screamed with neon-promises of three for a dollar. A few strains of Bourbon Street jazz would occasionally poke their heads in out of curiosity, but quickly departed, leaving a monotonous silence.

He had consumed half a tumbler of brandy when he began to notice something else unusual about his thoughts. His recollections, to be precise, were much more vivid and detailed than they had been even recently. There was a sharp sense of “nowness” to them. He had been thinking of Lessa almost exclusively since arriving. It had been like stepping into the
past.

He didn’t know when the stranger would arrive. But he felt compelled to test this phenomenon of fresh-memory even further. He closed his eyes and conjured his most poignant moment with his wife. He could feel it rushing towards him…just as he had then. He could hear the steel rails singing the dirge of the death car beneath them. The long, mournful whistle, passing sadly from box to box, from heart to breaking heart. This was the ride to Auschwitz. These were his last hours with
Lessa.

The Nazis had rounded them up in the very early hours, allowing them one suitcase of their most valued possessions. Lessa insisted on leaving everything behind. “Let’s travel light,” she had smiled and squeezed his hand even as they were shoved onto the trucks.

It was another “relocation.” A safer place where they could work and live in peace until the tensions had subsided. A pleasant camp in the country. Everyone, by now, had heard the gamut of dark rumors. But, as there was no choice in boarding the trains, many chose to cling to the lies rather than slip from the secure arms of sanity. There would be time for madness
later.

Except for Isaac. He was embracing his madness now. With each passing moment, with each foot of the rails that the train devoured, he slipped farther away from his wife.

She held him in the darkness, trying to absorb his anguish. But the wailing and the tears around them were no comfort to the comfortless. Lessa pulled him into a crowded corner and pleaded with him to be strong.

“Dear God, Isaac. Please speak to me. Please, hold
me.”

But his eyes were vacant. He had pulled the plug on his thoughts and feelings. It was his only defense from what was happening right now. They sank to the floor together, and the train rocked them like children in a cradle. Isaac broke down and wept into the folds of her dress as remorse gnawed hungrily at his heart.

Lessa spoke again, urgency in her soft
voice.

“Isaac, there is something I’ve been meaning to tell you. Do you remember that day in the field, right after we were married, when we made love in the rain? And do you remember how we talked about one day going to the Greek Islands, how we would look at the beautiful pictures and drink Ouzo on the floor of your mother’s house? Well, darling, that day in the field, when you were inside of me…I went there. It was so lovely, Isaac, better than the pictures. The breeze was warm, and we walked in the sand, and we made love in the sea. Oh Isaac, I want us to go there now! You and me, far away from here. The others in this car won’t notice. Let us touch each other. Let us love each
other…”

Isaac raised his head slowly and looked into her pleading eyes. She amazed him. It was all there. She was still his wife, after all. He had drifted out upon the frightful currents of the midnight sea, but she was still tending the shore-fires for him, and was calling him back to her now. She asked him to go with her once before, and he had refused. He would not refuse her
again.

They rose together and pressed back into the corner. The sway of the car gave discretion to their movements. Their mouths opened to one another and his hands moved over her, feeling the slow curves of her breasts, the purifying fire between her legs, and she consumed him with it. Burning away the pain, the sorrow, leaving only white ashes in the embers of her forgiveness. He felt it now. The power coursed through their connected bodies like a thick chord. They were there, and they were laughing, swinging in a hammock, sharing a cool drink as the island music eclipsed the rail song. Then they were running in the sand, shedding their clothes like those two innocent children that they had always been. It was the sea. It was the sky. It was all. They arched against the current and they gasped against the sky. The seabirds cried out above them, and cried out again. And then, the long doppler of the whistle as the train slowed into the village of
Birkenau.

“Juden, raus!
Raus!”

The blinding lights of the Auschwitz platform drove like spikes into their car and pried the fearful from their huddled corners, drawing them all forward onto the dock. Under such nightmarish conditions one expected a madness, a chaos of confusion. But there was no confusion. The madness would not be tolerated…only allowed, when the Nazis allowed it. And they would allow it. The fabled German efficiency was very much in
evidence.

Two lines were formed. Two impersonal, forever-goodbye lines that somehow managed to progress as though a vital thing were happening…as though the business at hand was were quite necessary to some cosmic purpose. It was simple and thorough and without the slightest ceremony, this vocation, this commerce, this genocide.

Lessa clung to Isaac’s hand until the last possible moment, when it was savagely wrenched from her by a guard. Isaac was shoved up ahead of her into a separate line, too numb to speak, to cry out. He turned and looked back at her, and a lifetime of conversation passed through the pleas of a people, through the tearful implorings of the panicking crowd, and rang like church bells in their breaking hearts.

Lessa had held her tears for as long as she could, and now they fell freely upon her face. But her gaze remained fixed on her husband, strong and constant. His hands were shaking so badly that he was certain she could see them, and he thrust them into his pockets as he was pressed forward. It was a machine, Isaac suddenly realized. It was a machine with gears and levers and a terrible purpose. And his people were the
grist.

For a moment, shock overcame him and he found himself staring down at the concrete beneath his feet, wondering at the untold tears that had fallen there. This was beyond Hell, beyond the reaches of mercy. Nothing could save them. Nothing could even offer the slimmest hope of salvation. This was the boundary of midnight.

As the darkness descended upon him, he looked back once more, straining over the oceanic grief, and caught a final moment of her. She stretched her arms out toward him, and her words flew into his black surrender.

“Believe, Isaac! I believe in forever! This place has no power over love! I love you, Isaac, I
love…”

She was slapped harder than he had ever seen anyone hit in his life, and knocked to the ground. He moved in a blur and got to within five feet of the man who had suddenly taught him the meaning of hate when he was struck in the side of the head with the butt of a rifle. And as the darkness rose up to claim him, as the long, solitary night of his life was born there on the tear-washed concrete of Auschwitz, he knew that he was seeing his wife for the last time.

Isaac shook his head from side to side, still reeling from the blow. The recollection was so powerful that his skull felt shattered. He touched it, expecting to feel the flow of blood and the tapestry of torn skin. There were tears on his face. The murderer was seated across from
him.

The two of them sat there in silence as the minutes fell away. Isaac wiped at his eyes, wanting to face the killer with dignity. There was an instant transference of rage from the Nazi who had slapped Lessa to the man who sat now before him.

A waitress appeared at their table and the stranger ordered brandy, Isaac’s poison. He looked the man over carefully. One certainly could not judge the book from the cover. This was a well-groomed cat, one that was accustomed to the finer things. Just slightly gray, just slightly exotic, he was dressed for a European train, or a Jules Verne balloon, all linen and worsted wool. The watch was expensive, but not commercial. The look on the man’s face was one of vague amusement…and this stoked the fire of Isaac’s rage.

“I am Julian Germain. And I am quite curious, Mr. Bloom, to know where we have met.” He spoke the words as statement of fact and curious condescension at once. Isaac’s response issued forth like a spring flood.

“It was in Atlanta…Piedmont Park…last month. The night you killed the old woman with the doll.” Isaac gazed into the chalkboard blackness of Julian’s eyes. “Why was that
necessary?”

Julian seemed mildly surprised by the answer, and the ensuing
question.

“First of all,” he replied, “you will notice that your thoughts are your own, but that at my bidding you will reveal them to me. Therefore you may only ask questions until I tire of them. Or of you. Secondly, you very nearly perished that night. You are most fortunate to have survived to this point. One might say that you are blessed. As I watched you wandering the warehouses in St. Louis, I knew that you were seeking me…or something like me. I do recall you now.

“You were out of your element. There are no “visitors” of your age in that park after the sun has departed. At first I mistook you for one of them…one of the walking dead. But when you paused there on the path I sensed an odd contradiction. There is death in you, but there is something else…something. In any case, I haven’t killed anyone with the true life-light in a very long while. So I passed you by. But I would like to know why you were there. And more importantly, how you came to find me in Biloxi and St.
Louis.”

Isaac explained how he had experienced a sort of bonding with the old woman, and that after reading of her death in the obituaries, he had connected it with their encounter on the path.

“It was really just a strange series of coincidences that led me to you. Call it dumb, and very bad,
luck.”

“Hm,” Julian looked unimpressed. “I hardly believe in coincidence. Tell me then, what were you thinking about when I arrived? Was it the fear of dying that brought tears to your
eyes?”

Isaac shifted in his seat. He had no desire to divulge the details of his personal pain. But it was out of his hands.

“I was thinking of the last time I saw my wife.”

Julian could see that the response had been wrenched from him. He could sense a strength that he would not have guessed at in the dark warehouse in St. Louis. He wondered where it came
from.

“And when, and where, was that?” He asked without
emotion.

“1943.
Auschwitz.”

The stranger responded with the slightest wincing of the eyes. He reached across the table and took Isaac’s wrist, turned it over and gazed at the tattoo. Then he turned to the bar and motioned with a raised hand.

Moments later, a very old bottle of Cognac arrived. Julian poured generously into Isaac’s glass, then two fingers into his own. He stared at Isaac with a precise
observation.

“The Cognac is pre-phylloxera, very old. There is precious little of it left in this world. As the vines of Europe were being laid to waste by the grape-plague, it took the grafting of American vines (which, ironically, had caused the issue in the first place) to salvage the vineyards of the Old World. But we shall miss this old Cognac when it is gone.” He raised his glass to Isaac’s. “So let us enjoy the past. It becomes more precious with the disappointments of
time.”

Isaac raised the amber fluid to his nose and inhaled deeply. Oh yes. This was a rare treasure. And there was that odd sensation again. He could appreciate the artistry and the significance of the wine and want to linger over it. There was a certain implication there, but it flitted away from him. Julian wasn’t finished singing its praises.

“This brandy is older than you. Taken with loving care from the nurturing womb of the barrel and allowed to spill like a dreamy jinni into the bottle. As that transference was taking place, hundreds and thousands of young men from dozens of countries were crawling forward on their muddied bellies. Crawling wormlike over the decomposing bodies of their comrades, under the razor wire, around the mines, through the ooze and the slime and the rotting death of the First World War. The newspapers referred to it as ‘Trench Warfare.’ The soldiers referred to it as Hell.” With that, Julian took a mouthful of the amber liquid, inhaled over it, swallowed and exhaled slowly as Isaac’s brow furrowed in pain. “This century has been even more brutal than all before it. As man evolves technologically, to the point where
all
life now lives in the shadow of an existential threat, he regresses in his humanity. I have witnessed that regression for some six hundred
years.”

He arched his eyebrows and watched Isaac’s response with that same vague smile. Isaac swallowed hard. This man was obviously quite insane. But at the instant the thought entered his mind, it was swept effortlessly aside by a profound sense of the truth. Julian drank blood because he was a vampire.