The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life (55 page)

I looked at Monsieur des Esseintes. “You, of anyone, must know the ecstasy of a never-ending hunger for knowledge. Can’t you see what a sin it is to thwart the unbridled search for knowledge?”

It was a day of new emotions for the vampire, for my importunity appeared to have a slight effect upon the Gallic gentleman. His eyes moved slowly between the older vampire and myself. The search for knowledge was one thing that did have an effect upon des Esseintes’s alien emotions.

“Would it make you feel any better, Dottore,” said Lodovico, “if I told you that we are not altogether happy with our solution? You may comprehend a particle of what I am saying when I tell you that minds far greater than yours have considered the problem for centuries. We have wrestled endlessly with the very criticisms you yourself have mentioned, and we have made concessions. But in the end we have discovered no other solutions. We have a saying in Italian:
Il meglio è l’inimico del bene
.... Better is the enemy of good.”

With this last remark he abruptly rose and approached me. “Would you hand me the satchel within your coat?” he asked.

I drew back fearfully.

“
Piacere,
Dottore, surely you must know how powerless I am to do anything to destroy it by my own hand.”

“Then why do you want it?”

“I simply want to show you something. After that, you have my word that your work will be returned to you unharmed.”

At another time I would never have dreamed of obliging those words. But now, in those black and endless eyes I saw that the older vampire was speaking the truth. I reluctantly withdrew the satchel and handed it to him. He took the packing out and layed it aside until he finally held the sealed Petrie dish in his large hands. He turned it over once, admiring the brown smear of agar containing the virus.

“If released, this would wipe out most of the population of the world?”

“Yes,” I returned firmly, not shrinking from the gravity of the possibility.

“And you damn me, Dottore. You damn me because I tried so long to get this from you, to save you from your own stupidity?”

“Yes,” I returned again.

He continued calmly to inspect the two interlocking pieces of glass and then leveled one of his unpropitious eyes upon me. And then, in a single swift movement, he lifted Camille’s tiny hand and placed the dish within it.

For a brief second I stood frozen in terror as she lifted the closed dish to her mouth, ineffectively licking the glass, and then fondled it with both hands. She began to turn the lid.

I cried out, savagely pulling the sealed dish from her innocent hands. For a moment she looked a little surprised, but then her face resumed its composed and vacant stare. I looked at the Petrie dish in my hand and then back at the smoldering black eyes of the vampire. A grave and bitter expression filled his face.

“Executed well, Dottore. If you had not intervened she would have opened it.”

“It means nothing,” I said, both stunned and outraged by the display.

“Does it, Dottore?” he murmured, returning to his seat. “I still might ask you: What have I done that you have not done?”

I stood there for many long moments, numbed and vibrating with emotion. I knew that after several hours my mind would be brimming with questions and accusations, but for the moment I was deathly tired of arguing. I did not agree with the vampire, but I knew it was useless to continue. For the first time I started to accept that there were differences between the vampire and myself that would forever remain irresolvable.

I had only two questions remaining. “You mentioned that the time had come when you could no longer secretly influence the world. You said that I was the unwitting cause of this denouement. Is it because you have failed to trick me into destroying either myself or the virus?”

Lodovico sedately blinked his lids. “That was what we thought initially, Dottore. We thought that somehow, in some way, your virus was going to play a major role in world events, that that was your role in the scheme of things. That was where we made our fatal error.”

“Your fatal error?”

“We thought that it was your work. But it was not your work. It was your actions. You see, Dottore, as I have told you, there are forces at work in this universe, forces you have not even begun to suspect, let alone make your first infantile attempts to harness. Since the beginning of the Christian era we have had a hand in history and what has been allowed to evolve. But the times are changing. Things are beginning to grow too fast and in too many directions. You have, indeed, played one of the trump cards of destiny, but our failure with you is merely a sign of the times. A new world is forming, a world that may be dangerously beyond the control of either mortal or vampire. It is up to you, Dottore. We have failed.”

With that, and at some unseen signal, both of the older vampire prepared to leave.

“But what, what do you mean it was not my work, but my actions? What was the trump card of destiny?”

“The woman,” he said cryptically.

I shook my head, not understanding.

The Italian was obviously reluctant to speak further. “The woman in the garden at 24 Rue de la Glacière,” he finally conceded. He shook his head solemnly. “It will not mean anything to you now. Nothing will, but the name Marie Curie will have a more profound meaning for future generations than you can ever imagine.”

He continued to walk toward the door of the grand salon.

“But wait!” I repeated. “What is to happen to us?”

The older vampire slowly pivoted and once again turned the influence of his gaze upon us. His eyes passed from Ursula to Camille and finally to myself. “You are free to go,” he muttered simply.

I was dumbfounded. “You mean, with everything that we’ve been through, with everything we know about you, we are free just to walk out of here?”

“There is nothing you can do to harm me,” Lodovico returned. “Nothing you say will ever affect me. No one would ever believe you.”

He offered what, under other circumstances, might have been construed as a smile. But I knew the vampire well enough to know that it was a hollow action, that his thoughts were really a thousand miles away.

Niccolo led us back through the villa and out into the gardens. As he accompanied us I noticed that Ursula was not at all observant of his presence, but still furtively watched my affections for Camille. It dawned upon me that this was what she had been interested in all along. There was something about my feelings for my empty daughter that she did not understand, that she was burningly desirous of figuring out. In turn, I was baffled at why she possessed such a morbid and voyeuristic curiosity. Even after Niccolo had bid us farewell at the gates of the immense and secluded estate and we made our way back to some semblance of our civilization, she remained fixed upon my every movement and gesture toward the child.

The sun had set and behind us the ancient walls loomed ominously. After traversing the cypress-covered hills we came to a dirt road extending toward Massa Marittima, and a peasant farmer indolently riding in a wagon. He spoke a little English and offered us a ride. Once aboard the wagon I turned and looked behind us. In the far distance the Tyrrhenian was now a vast expanse of black, and the villa was only a mote of white in the moonlight. “Do you know who lives there?” I inquired.

“The
padrone
, Signore Giacomo D’Annunzio,” he replied without notice.

“Do you know who he is or what he does?”

In the bluish moonlight I saw the white eye of the grizzled farmer turn toward me wonderingly. And then he laughed, realizing that such a silly question could only be a joke. “Why, he owns the largest vineyard in Tuscany.” Intrepidly, I asked him if he knew anything about Signore Giacomo D’Annunzio or the
vampiro,
hoping to unleash a flood of superstitious gossip from the brain of this most rustic of creatures. He looked at me with a strange concern and I realized I had struck a nerve. But then I realized it was not village rumor that disturbed him, but me. He could not imagine why I would be asking such an absurd question. At length, he threw his head back in a relieved cackle and slapped my knee.

“You do not believe in the
vampiro
, do you,
Signore?
” He chuckled. He did not wait for my reply. He knew it could not be.