The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life (29 page)

With this des Esseintes suddenly jumped up from his pillows and announced, “Let’s go look at the orchids!” Lady Dunaway and I looked at each other.

“Is that all you’re going to say?” I gasped.

“Aren’t you going to tell us more?” Lady Dunaway exclaimed.

“Perhaps, Hespeth
—mon petit chou.
But right now my state of mind demands more resplendent surroundings.” Once again, “Hespeth—my little dear” and I looked at each other. It was difficult to imagine more resplendent surroundings than the turquoise-and-gilt sitting room. Des Esseintes looked at my empty glass and filled it. I looked at this, my fourth goblet of Crème de Cassis, and felt a momentary horror. I was very drunk. The horror passed quickly, for I was once again drawn to the codeine luminescence of the room. Everything now seemed to glow with a subdued and yet powerful light, like the drone of a distant turbine—the black-lacquered dados, the satin outline of the pillows. Amid this, the thin gentleman seemed even more charged, eyes glazed as a dervish, and yet imperturbably placid. He moved gracefully across the room, and once again I became acutely aware of how completely alien his movement and gestures were. There was a striking absence of any human gesticulation. No stroking of the brow. No nervous play of hands. As it was, he held his long hands limply, but in a manner unlike any gentleman or dandy I had ever seen. He was not unlike a praying mantis. I flushed at experiencing such a bizarre perception. I looked again at the deep purple liquid, wondering if I had been drugged.

“No, you weren’t,” des Esseintes anticipated, apparently “sensing the quiver.”

He hit a secret button, and one of the painted panels hissed out of sight revealing two narrow, mist-covered glass doors. He flung them wide and we were enveloped in a gush of humid air. It was warm and ponderously fragrant, and at last I realized the source of the strange scents that had bombarded me when I had first entered the house of des Esseintes. Inside was a greenhouse, a large and lush greenhouse, overflowing with orchids. They covered trellises and cedar arbors, and climbed to the very top of the enclosure. Everywhere one looked one was confronted with the living, fleshy wall. Orchids of every possible shape and color. Some were heavy and full; others, unimaginably fragile. They were illuminated by a series of torches situated around the perimeter of the transparent enclosure. Through the glass towered the walls of the bleak and mammoth house, and beyond, the obsidian night. Against this infinite blackness and imbued with the light of the fires, the orchids were overwhelmingly beautiful. Impossibly, it was even more resplendent than the peacock sitting room.

Des Esseintes crackled, raised to a euphoria by the environment, the muggy, sweet-scented air, the almost suffocating beauty.

As I took in the details of the greenhouse I grew even more astonished by the variety of the flowers. At first they hit one’s senses in a single mass explosion, like a field of tulips, or a rolling meadow of white crosses on the graves of anonymous soldiers. Then a multitude of differences began to reveal themselves in the masses. The orchids started to take on the identity of other creatures and objects. Here I fancied a cluster of red-hot pokers; there, a flock of flying blue swans. Indeed, the experience was disconcerting. My imagination suddenly suggested these were more than orchids, that they were telepathically reflecting some unconscious part of me. The hidden images I saw in the blossoms became stranger. Here, the head of a monstrous and deformed child popped in and out, there an obscene and hunchbacked dwarf bulging with lavender veins. In my altered state the foliage shone with a kind of glassy, jadelike radiance.

I was so preoccupied with the orchids I was a little stunned when the details of the greenhouse itself suddenly loomed into my consciousness. It was as if the greenhouse also had a presence, was jealous of my fascination with the flowers. I was compelled to examine it as well. For the first time I noticed there were many doors surrounding its perimeter. It was alive with the hiss of steam. It might
have
been a salon of the Grand Palais were it not in such a state of dilapidation. All of the glass panels were intact, but waxy with grime and condensation. The paint on the intricate white framework was peeling and rust-stained. It was like the conservatory of an abandoned old home, overgrown with gnarled figs and mosses. A hollow in a deep, dark forest. The matted hiding place of a deer.

I found it strange that a man, or vampire, of des Esseintes’s wealth would allow such a garden to sink to overgrown ruin.

Suddenly I spotted the white face of a stoop-shouldered humanlike form standing behind one of the arbors. Like everything else, I expected it to fade into the camouflage of the flowers. I was quite surprised when it remained real. This confusion flickered through me for but a few milliseconds before the world rearranged itself and I saw that it was only Ilga.

Des Esseintes turned abruptly in my direction. “You just affected the quiver, Monsieur le Docteur. Is there some reason for your uneasiness?”

“I think cautiousness is, perhaps, a better word, Monsieur des Esseintes,” I said in defense.

“Step forward, Ilga,” des Esseintes beckoned. Hands clasped quietly behind hex; she obeyed. He turned once again toward me. “You know, orchids are most curious flowers. Do you know anything about orchids? You should, considering the orchid mania that is now sweeping England. Orchids can be found all over the world, from the steamy treetops of the Venezuelan jungles to the misty valleys of the Himalayas.” He tinned to the shadow woman. “How many varieties of orchids are there, Ilga?”

“As of May there were 16,235 varieties occurring naturally, and an estimated 32,000 hybrids,” she averred.

He smiled at us. “So you can see, with so large a population it should come as no surprise that orchids can be found that mimic virtually everything in our life— butterflies and miniature men, lizards and doves. I come in here frequently to meditate upon the orchids. One can see anything in them. Do you agree, Hespeth?”

She shrugged in oblivious wonder and gazed around at the flowers. Something about her expression told me she was not experiencing what I was experiencing.

“And you, Monsieur le Docteur?”

“Whatever you say, Monsieur des Esseintes. My mind is still bothered by something else.”

“What is that?”

“Who were the Unknown Men? What else did you learn of Lodovico?”

“Oh, yes... Lodovico. You must be patient, Monsieur le Docteur. You do not realize how much time I waited before I knew more than just the magic of his name. It was in my hundred-ninety-second year that I gained my first direct knowledge of Lodovico. I remember the date distinctly because it was the same year a tremor of excitement swept through the vampire cloisters and monasteries. It was announced that many things were transpiring. ‘An Unknown Man was in the Baghdad Caliphate,’ and a vampire named Gerbert, a monk of St. Gerard d’Aurillac, had been named master of the schools at Rheims. This was quite an achievement. The human members of the Church did not know there were vampire in their midst, but they did know certain of their members were party to secret societies. They were constantly on watch to keep any individuals who trafficked with the hidden forces of alchemy from power. If Gerbert had been named master of the schools at Rheims, it either meant he had succeeded in concealing his identity, or, unbeknownst to us, there was another of our kind even higher up in the hierarchy of power. In any case, it was at this time that I became aware of the fact that I was beginning to walk differently. It was a moonlit night as I strolled beside a placid little lake. There was a line of us out collecting plant life, and in our reflections I noticed we each possessed a most subtle and abnormal gait. I mentioned this to the
abbés
and they were very excited I had noticed this distinction between mortal and vampire. They encouraged me to study it, but would say no more. At length, word came from an ancient set of lips that Lodovico was pleased. Pleased that I had noticed I walked differently? At my own minute changes? Lodovico? That elusive and almost mythic figure taking an interest in what I considered my most obscure discovery? I pleaded with the
abbés
to tell me why he found this so commendable, but they steadfastly refused.”

“Did they tell you any other secrets?” I asked.

“What other secrets?”

“The secret of transference and Jechiele’s lamp?”

He remained impassive, but for some reason I suspected the question bothered him.

“No,” he finally confessed. “I was no longer ignorant of the things you mention.”

“And you still did not share them with the mortal world? Why?” I demanded. “Why did you allow mankind to remain in the Dark Ages? Why did you hide the hypodermic needle while millions died of the plague?”

“Always the virologist,” he said distantly. “So dedicated. So removed. There were many reasons; some you would not understand. I will give you one. What do you think the age that ultimately perpetrated the Inquisition would have used the hypodermic needle for? Deforming unborn children? Injecting boiling oil beneath the skin? One thing is certain. They would not have used it in medicine. As one of the most ‘learned’ humans of the time, the twelfth-century ‘scholar’ St. Bernard of Clairvaux, put it, ‘... to buy drugs, to consult physicians, to take medicines befits not religion and is contrary to purity.’ He turned and suddenly scrutinized a yellow blossom. “Oh, an aphid!” he gasped, lifting the small white speck from the flower. Instead of crushing it beneath his slender fingers he dropped it into the bloom itself to be drowned by the nectar.

A wave of both wonder and repulsion swept through me. Such a sense of power poured out of the ancient gentleman. He seemed filled with such tranquility. And yet, while discussing the gravest of matters, he could become preoccupied with an aphid. All the fury I had first felt upon discovering Niccolo’s healing agent came back. The alcohol pounded dizzily in my temples. I could take it no longer.

“You’re unholy,” I said. “You say you have a reverence for life, but you coolly allowed millions to die.”

Lady Dunaway’s eyes widened in shock at my outburst, as des Esseintes’s shoulders tightened. He turned upon me in a manner suggestive of a blind and utter rage. I shrunk back, expecting to see blood-reddened eyes and bared fangs. But once again I was jolted to see the all-encompassing serenity of his expression.

“I must remind you one more time: Please do not judge me harshly if I do not seem bereft. As I’ve explained, I’m very different from you. I experience my emotions in ways you can never hope to equal. I also don’t display them as readily and unconsciously as you do. You may perceive me as cold and insidious on the surface, but, believe me, you haven’t the faintest inkling of what’s going on in this narrow skull.

“I also must set you straight on another matter, Monsieur le Docteur. You seem to be under the opinion that we, the vampire, the illuminati, kept all of our knowledge from the mortal world, and this is not true. We only kept those discoveries that we deemed dangerous. There are many other things for which you owe us more of a debt than you can possibly imagine. Let me give you an example. Keep in mind it is but one example. One example out of more than I could begin to convey.

“This vampire named Gerbert that I have mentioned did not strive to become master of the schools at Rheims for mere egotistical achievement. He had higher intentions for his appointment. Through the normal human channels of the Church we heard more and more about the fame of this Gerbert. Letters from the Pope himself announced that Gerbert had become abbot of Bobbio. He was moving in high circles of power then. He was the confidant and adviser of Emperor Otto II of Germany. At this point something happened, of which even I am not sure. The Church trembled. Something had cast Gerbert’s ‘nature’ into doubt. The mortals seemed to realize intuitively they had been fooled. There were accusations of alchemy and darker things, but it was too late. Otto II died, and at the age of sixteen Otto III became the boy King of Germany. The vampire’s influence on the boy was profound, and in the year A. D. 999, the youngster monarch named Gerbert Pope.”

I gave a start. “A vampire Pope!”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Who cares?”

I drew back, slightly embarrassed. Once again I became aware of the unnatural presence of the orchids. I almost fancied they were chuckling, like a bunch of peeping fairies. I knew this couldn’t be. I knew it had to be the effects of the alcohol, but my uneasiness increased.

“In any case, Monsieur le Docteur, your own books and records relate how strange this Gerbert d’Aurillac was. Everything I tell you can be found in your own accounts of history. As for my story, this Gerbert, or Pope Sylvester II, as he then became called, made the world quite different for both mortal and vampire. In the year A. D. 1000 he crowned Stephen I King of Hungary and persuaded him to organize the Magyars according to the lines of German feudalism. With the countryside freed of those barbarians, vampire were able to travel from cloister to cloister with greater safety. With the assistance of Sylvester’s puppet king we flocked to Hungary, built many monasteries and villages, and even shared some techniques of agriculture with the mortal population. So you can see we did not keep all of our knowledge from the populace. It was we who transformed Hungary from barbarism to civilization. It is ironic that in the eighteenth century Hungary paid us back by instigating the greatest vampire hunt the world has known.

“Now, don’t raise any eyebrows. As I say, everything I tell you can be found in your own chronicles. Sylvester II traveled to Spain to visit some very learned Hindu alchemists—vampire, of course—living in exile there, and brought back many wonders. One of the wonders he brought back was an automaton, a bronze head that would answer YES or NO to questions put to it concerning politics and Christianity. Sylvester II also brought back something else.”

Des Esseintes released a rope and caused a basket of orchids to lower swiftly in front of us. The blossoms were full, not unlike irises, and bloodred. “These are known as
Miltonia liberte
,” he announced. “If you look closely you will notice that each bloom has a carefully formed Arabic numeral on its lip, printed in white.”