Notturno (7 page)

“I find that difficult to believe; that it was completely

eradicated.” Adin sat back down, straddling Donte in an

unseemly and erotically thrilling way.

“Believe it,” Donte said implacably. “I’m sure you can

understand now that we perceive things in a remarkably

different way.”

“Yes, but—”

“Please, Adin.” Donte took Adin’s hands off his face and

laced them with his own in his lap. “Please don’t underestimate

me. It would be the height of foolishness to see me as a man,

and I don’t believe you are a fool.”

“You look like a man.”

“Looks deceive.” The mist coming off the grass made

Donte’s hair curl up in the front, where it was longer. It gave

him a boyish, vulnerable air that made Adin ache to put his

hands in it.

“They do. That’s very true.” Adin gave Donte’s hands a

gentle squeeze.

“I am no longer capable of love, Adin.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” Donte asked. “Do you really understand what it

means? The book you bought with
money
, transported in
plastic
, looked at under a
microscope
, and joked about with your friends is all that is left of my soul.”

“Your soul.” Adin could almost feel the individual pistons

firing in the cars going down Santa Monica Boulevard as they

sat, their hands intertwined, experiencing everything at the same

time and nothing at all
together
. “Donte?”

“What?”

“Do the dead walk? Are there ghosts here I can’t see?”

Donte gave a small smile. “No, caro. I don’t think so,

although often I have wished they would walk with me if they

did. I think only the undead walk, the living with them, and

those that are in between, who are alive but do not know how

precious that is.” He pushed Adin back and got up off the cold

NOTTURNO
41

stone step. “Come, caro. It’s time you got back. I fear I’ve been

thoughtless; you’re cold.” He tugged at Adin’s hand, and they

began on the path again. Adin took time to experience the

richness of what he was feeling. The sensations surrounded him

like water, pressing in on him, even crushing him as he sank

deeper and deeper into Donte’s world. The cool, new familiarity

of Donte’s hand in his was vaguely reassuring. A piece of

tenderness in a place made up of nothing but sensation.

“Donte, in all this time… There’s never been anyone else?”

“Oh, caro. There have been many, many, many…and

none.” They walked back to the gate where Donte had left the

cab waiting for them and said good night to Michael. Adin’s

senses returned slowly to normal. He entered the cab and was

glad; even with his normal senses, the smoke clinging to the

driver’s clothing overcame him.

“Bonaventure Hotel,” Donte said, and the man started the

car, the sound of his radio talk show puncturing the silence in

back.

When they reached the hotel, Donte only went as far as the

elevators. He caught Adin’s hand again and tugged him closer.

“I don’t suppose—”

“No.” Adin cut him off. “Please don’t ask…not after—”

“I see,” said Donte. Adin, finding no one near the bank of

elevators they waited for, caught Donte to him and kissed him

hungrily. The bell chimed, signaling the elevator car had arrived

on the lobby floor. Donte broke off the kiss. “Do you at least

wish it could be different?”

“Is that a trick question?” Adin asked, stepping into the

glass car by himself. Before Donte could frame a reply, the

doors closed. He caught one last look of frustration in the

vampire’s beautiful, dark eyes, and then he was being lifted, up

to his room, his Bushmills, his bed, and his amazing literary

find, and he wished…

The doors opened on Adin’s floor, and he got out his key

card, then slid it in the mechanism and waited for the green

light. Walking into his room by himself seemed almost an

anticlimax; he’d at least expected an argument. He changed into

a pair of comfortable jeans and a T-shirt and rather petulantly

took
Notturno
out of the safe, deciding, in an uncharacteristically daring frame of mind, to read the damn thing right there in his

hotel room. He put on his white gloves, but as far as exercising

more care than that? He merely left his drink on a different

table. If the president of his university could see him, he’d be

fired on the spot. He would do the work on his laptop, but

somehow, having the manuscript open, its yellowed pages worn

with time and use, made Adin feel the connection to Donte

more strongly. Adin got out his Mac, a number of mechanical

pencils, and a yellow legal tablet, preparing to translate.

Page one comprised several small drawings of what Adin

thought must be the young Auselmo. He was striking, as

depicted by his lover, ethereally and angelically beautiful. He

had the round face and sensuous mouth characterized as the

ideal of the time, and the sketches made him look innocent and

vibrantly alive. In one of them, a shy smile touched his lips like

a caress, and his hair fell onto his forehead, spilling over one eye in what had to be the most unconsciously provocative pose. No

wonder Donte burned for him still. Adin resized the

corresponding page on his laptop so he could read it better, and

went to work.

^\

Today, I draw Auselmo, not as he is now, but as he was when I first
laid eyes on him, so lovely, like an angel fallen to earth to tease and mock
me with his beauty. Even though we have not been together this whole
month, I have held him in my heart and keep our vow, though Renata
burns me with her eyes. She is a fool, who will have wealth and sons by me,
or so I believe, and I have nothing more to give to her.

44 Z.A. Maxfield

Ah, Auselmo! I have your letters with me always. I have your love. I
need nothing more to fill my heart, yet I am greedy, for my body cries out for
yours. When the weather warms, beloved, my very life will thaw in your
arms, and you may catch me in the kitchen gardens, once again among the
herbs, where I promise to delight you until you can bear it no more.

^\

Adin stood and walked to the hotel window with his drink,

wondering if he’d ever been in love. If he had to wonder, the

answer was probably no. At the very least, he’d never felt the

kind of love and loyalty that Donte apparently still felt for

Auselmo. Adin had come out to his family when he was fifteen.

They hadn’t exactly held a parade for him, but they’d worked

hard to come to terms with his orientation and always showed

their respect for him. He’d had lovers even then, his own age

and older, and often enjoyed a no-strings-attached one-night

stand.

Adin was cool and distant with his lovers, unable to feel for

them everything they might have liked. He imagined he was

fundamentally unable to form a bond because he’d been

unwilling to commit. His friends teased him that he was elusive,

but he worried that he was more likely self-absorbed and

thoughtless. If nothing else, his inability to form deep and

lasting attachments had hurt people he’d cared about. At least

Donte had his one true love. Adin wanted to imagine it. He

wanted to know what it felt like, to hold a real
lover
in his arms.

Someone with whom he forged a connection, someone for

whom he would make the kind of sacrifices that he sensed

Donte had made for his Auselmo.

Adin shook his head a little. That kind of thinking, longing

for love for the first time in his life as the result of a brush with Donte Fedeltà, vampire, had to be an event in the Irony

Olympics. Of all the sophisticated academics, the handsome

athletes, the freshly scrubbed and earthy farmers and cowboys,

firefighters, policemen and politicians and diplomats. Out of all

the men he’d dated, Donte was the only one who made him feel

like what he could have was
not enough
.

NOTTURNO
45

He sighed, going back to the manuscript. Translating would

take the place of sleep for whatever remained of the night,

because he felt restless. Anxious and something else entirely.

Something he couldn’t quite define even given his ability with

language and his penchant for relentless introspection. He

stood on the precipice of something so new and huge it both

frightened him and held him on the sharpest edge of excitement

and arousal. When he looked into the abyss, he was very much

afraid that what he saw there might be love.

The next page in the journal depicted the two boys on

horseback, traveling somewhere in a retinue with a number of

pack animals and several older nobles, along with women and

children. Donte had drawn the two of them as if they were

separated from the rest, in their own world, looking shyly at

each other. He rendered himself as a young, nondescript

teenager with eyes that gazed hungrily at the angelic-looking

Auselmo, and how Adin wished he had some way to see what

Donte really was in those days. Just as he had played up the

perceived beauty of his lover, Donte must have given himself

an equally transformative makeover. Adin could find none of

the man in the boy, and yet surely, the way they looked at each

other, it had to be Niccolo in the drawing.

^\

I am in the snow today, my Auselmo, its whiteness and silence like the
death I feel when you are not within my reach. Today I have chosen to draw
the time when I returned home to take my place after my brothers died. Do
you recall? I know you must. We endured the ride and the endless
chattering of the women, playing word games and kissing with our eyes. I
remember seeing you riding your horse, the stubborn one I always called
Affligere for the way it chased you and stole your hats. We slipped away in
the night and clumsily tugged each other into spending.

The way you kissed me… There were more stars in the sky that

summer, Auselmo, because you placed them there for me every time you
smiled. The closer we got to San Sepolcro, and home, the sicker I felt in the
pit of my stomach. I knew then, as you know now, that our life together,
our pleasant idylls in the herb gardens of the monastery were over. My
family had a woman waiting for me, older, promised originally to my
46 Z.A. Maxfield

brother, who passed. I couldn’t bear to tell you, to see the stars in the sky
wink out one by one with your unhappiness. Forgive me, Auselmo.

That was when I noticed the guard, the dark one with the scar over his
eye, watching us. In return, I watched him, and one night got an eyeful of
the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. I’m sure I never told you, love, but I
paid him for information, and he let me watch him with his lover. The
things they did with their bodies both appalled and inflamed me, and I
knew—I thought I knew—that if I could have one night like that with
you, I would go to Renata and my family uncomplaining.

Was I ever that foolish? Please, my lover, never answer that, for you,
with your beauty and your innocence, could never have understood my dark
desire for you in those days.

^\

Auselmo, as I write this I am reading the entry in my journal from our
procession to my home in San Sepolcro. It has been much on my mind this
winter, although I cannot say why. Can you remember the impossible
madness of that? My heart never beats that it isn’t filled with thoughts of
you. I wrote…

“At last, I have had my wedding night! Auselmo and I slipped

away from the retinue and made our way to the soft earth together. I
believe Auselmo’s beautiful brown eyes have never been larger than
when I explained what I’d seen, and yet he held me to him and let me
love him as I wished, risking all for me. He cried when I took him; I
am such a foul thing sometimes.

Yet after, when I loved him with my mouth, he cried again and

said how much he loved me!”

And oh, how the night progressed from there. The promises I made to
you that night, with my words and my body, have been kept, my beloved.

And you…you give me more joy still, even in your absence, than I have
gotten from another thing in my life.

By dawn I was ready for Renata, thinking stupidly, Bring her to me,
this bitch who must bear my children. I have had my wedding night, and
my life will play out as it must from this moment on. And yet later, when
riding with you, Auselmo, I became aware that there would never be a time
when I did not curse the day I finally had you, for I would never give you up
NOTTURNO
47

completely. You knew that; I could see it in your eyes. And how unfair it is
of me to have taken from you the refuge of innocence…

Auselmo, my love, my lover, I pray that you are well where you are,
and that I will see you soon. Thoughts of your sweet countenance are the
only ones that I entertain willingly anymore. Please, please, be well, my love,
be happy and cling to thoughts of me.