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“How I'd detest the realm of grace,
Its tepid joys, hearts numb with rest,
Where naked light, eternal May
Prowls gardens beastless night and day”
Konstantin Balmont, “The Devil's Voice”
“I am here, Master”
The door knocker slips into his hand. His pursuers are far away.
“I am here once again, Master. Have you heard my vows?” he rasps out. His voice fails him.
Something rustles behind his back.
Renfield doesn’t turn around. Some part of him shivers, terrified that the liquid shadows will reach for him, that they will wrap themselves around his wrists and ankles, they will drag him back to the good doctor, to the cell, to the muting fleece.
“There he is”
This time he goes limp in their hands almost immediately. There is no point. No point, no man of fifty-nine can fight against four young, well-built orderlies.
Carefully, the doctor takes a step towards him. The moonlight dances at the tip of the syringe.
“Please. Please, doctor Seward”
He hates the voice he has adopted in this place, this pathetic, shapeless whimper, but it seems to work. The doctor hesitates. The doctor listens.
“One minute. One minute, please. He is in there. I know he is in there. I will not fight, I will not scream. Just one minute”
The doctor looks towards the dark shape of the chapel. He nods.
Seconds tick away with his heartbeat.
And then, finally, when Seward already stretches his arm out to touch Renfield’s shoulder, a light comes alive inside the chapel. It floats behind the window and then, slowly, the door creaks open.
The man stands before them, a lantern in his hand, looking from one face to the other. Finally, his eyes rest on Renfield. The man blinks in utter confusion.
The doctor reaches for his non-existent hat, then straightens his hair and stutters, his voice just a touch higher than necessary:
“Sir, we are horribly sorry. We will leave this instant”
“Who is he?” asks the man, pointing his lantern towards Renfield.
“One of our most troublesome patients. As you can see, tonight he has escaped, and…”
“Release him. I want to speak with him”
Seward tightens his lips.
“Sir, I do not think it would be entirely wise…” he says carefully. “You see, this man…”
This man pays no attention to him. He walks forward, motioning for the orderlies to step away, and, miraculously, they obey. He bends over Renfield, studying his face.
Renfield says nothing.
I am sorry, Master. I have to be sure, too, I have to... he thinks, prying open a hidden door inside his mind.
And it all bursts out, all the acrid, horrible, desperate things, the vows, the tears, the dull tiredness of his hospital life, the long searches through his ancient tomes, the uneven lines of flies on the pages of his notebooks, the sticky color of his doctor’s curiosity, everything, everything, everything.
For a moment Master pauses, his eyes closed, and then, slowly, he raises his eyelids. His voice rustles in Renfield’s mind, calm and sure:
Do everything I tell you. Say… No, better, let me speak for you. Do not resist. Do not argue. It is your freedom that is at stake.
“Yes, Master,” Renfield mutters, as Master turns back to face the doctor and his orderlies.
“Gentlemen, I believe there has been a serious mistake. I know this man. He is no lunatic in a mad fit.”
One of the orderlies scoffs and says something Renfield really wouldn’t say in the presence such as this. Master’s eyes narrow. He smiles, revealing his long canines, and the people fall silent.
“If you will allow me to explain, dear doctor?..”
“Seward. Doctor John Seward”
“Doctor John Seward. A few months ago I was in London in person, to arrange certain… matters regarding my new property that could not be solved otherwise. That was when I was invited to a dinner, hosted by one of my friends, which mister Renfield happened to attend as well. During this dinner I foolishly took it upon myself to entertain the guests with hypnosis, for this is the craft I have become quite skilled in, during my old life in my home country. Mister Renfield had courageously agreed to be my subject”
Renfield looks at him, completely lost in this lie. It sounds earnest, it sounds heartfelt, the kind of lie Renfield, in his terminal honesty, would never be able to craft on his own. And still a part of him waits for something, a twitch of a muscle, a wrong note, something that will make Seward leap and say, aha, sir, I knew you are an impostor, now let me lead my prisoner away in peace and deal with him in peace.
There is none of that. Seward listens to his Master with bated breath.
“Go on, sir”, he says at last. “Did something go wrong during the séance?”
“The séance started splendidly. I compelled him to do things, small things, like firing a pistol at an apple. Trifles, truly. It was, as I remember, early summer, the window was open and there was, I think, a moth flapping against one of the lamps. I convinced mister Renfield to catch it like so,” Master rubs his fingers together. “And then, spurred by the guests to give them the performance they craved so much, I made him chew it up and swallow it.”
Seward winces. He has seen his fair share of that.
“It was not a good deed. It was not a deed deserving of a gentleman,” Master says, swaying his head from side to side in a smooth, serpentine fashion. “But then, indeed, something had happened. A light, one of those new electric lights, had burst above us, thrusting poor mister Renfield out of his trance without proper precautions.”
He fans his fingers at the word «light». The jewels on them glisten like so many glass shards.
“I suppose this incident must have taken its root. For, you see, mister Renfield is a man of great susceptibility, a horribly sensitive man. You must have noticed it even now.”
Seward can’t do much but look away.
Master adjusts something at his collar, and his cape falls into the grass. Some orderly rushes to catch it, from mere force of habit. Master pays absolutely no attention to him.
“Now, I shall fix this horrible malfunction, the same way I have caused it. Mister Renfield. Look at me.”
He does. He does, and in his Master’s pupils he sees the red, faraway sparkles, like so many fires deep in his father’s mine.
His eyelids lower.
He feels the cold hands pass over his face, the movement of unlaced air.
“Where are you, my friend?”
He opens his mouth, but he isn’t the one to speak. It is still his Master’s voice surging through him, tinted by his flesh, the way light pours into a room through stained glass.
“Asleep. There is nothing around me, nothing at all.”
“You are lost. How long have you been wandering like this?”
“Forever”
“But now you are not alone, are you, my friend? You hear my voice, don’t you?”
“I do”
“You feel my hand, do you not?”
And, indeed, someone holds his hand in a firm grasp.
“I do”
“And with this hand I lead you out of the dark under the blessed moon”
He blinks. He looks around. Suddenly he’s very aware of the cold and of the crescent bathing everything in its pallid light, the people he really shouldn’t have known, for their own good.
“Gentlemen?” he asks. “What am I doing here? Why am I undressed?”
There are soft gasps. One of the orderlies crosses himself. Master does his best not to wince.
The doctor takes a step towards Renfield.
“Mister Renfield? Do you recognize me?”
Renfield frowns.
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure”
“I am doctor Seward? John Seward? You have been in my care for the last few months? You suffered a complete mental breakdown. You have become obsessed with life. You have consumed living insects. Don’t you remember?”
And he does, of course he does, he barely suppresses a chuckle. Master gently nudges him away and speaks.
“As you can see, hypnosis, interrupted unnaturally, can have the most disastrous consequences for the affected person, the same as sepsis spreads through the wound from an infected knife.”
There’s an expression on Seward’s face Renfield doesn’t want to understand. Master doesn’t seem to notice it, as he turns to Renfield.
“I do apologize for the indecency I have caused you,” Master says with a courtly bow. “I have wronged you most severely.”
I am sorry for not hearing your vows sooner. I was not at home.
The control of his body comes back to him in a pang of emptiness. Renfield suppresses a moan.
“I forgive,” he manages to rasp out, and he’s sure nobody but Master actually hears him.
“So, gentlemen, have I proven that this most respectable man is no lunatic, but a victim of my most grievous mistake? Isn’t that a reason to release him this very instant?”
Renfield’s heart skips a beat. The doctor stands there, biting his lips, lost in thought.
“I believe we should wait till the morning,” he says. “Such matters should not be settled at one past midnight.”
Master shakes his head.
“I hate the idea of my friend being kept in this place for any longer. You have already seen he’s a man of an easily influenced psyche. If he spends another night in this place of sorrow, who knows what effects it can cause to his mental stature, without the anesthesia of half-trance?”
Renfield touches his sleeve and looks at him, thinking:
Do not push him too far, dear Master. Do not, he is young, he is but a boy, he gets awfully stubborn when he’s compelled.
Reluctantly, Master seems to nod.
“As you wish,” he says. “I’ll come and check on you in the morning. As for now, gentlemen, I suppose I should compensate you somewhat, for it is my fault you had to rush here in the middle of the night, instead of getting some much needed rest.”
They refuse, they really try to, but none of them can resist the maddening scent of the freshly printed money.
Shortly after the door closes, Renfield catches sight of a great black shape against the moonlit sky. A giant bat circles them and flies off, somewhere to the west.
He smiles and allows himself to be led away.
***
He has almost forgotten what joy an evening cigar can bring to a man.
At the very least, I have never lowered myself to asking an orderly for a cigarette, Renfield thinks, savoring the taste, as he leans back in his armchair and looks around.
He used to live in this study. It probably still has his stashes of canned goods and hard crackers, gnawed on by mice. His desk is undisturbed: same unanswered letters, a freshly-printed book on freemasonry, some leathery tome with an etching of a gargoyle on its cover, all left from the times when he was, in the words of great Goethe, “chipping at jurisprudence and alchemy”.
What for, what for, laughs a small voice in the back of his mind. Every possible thing you have ever wanted was a train trip away. The magical potion you need to live flows freely over London’s streets, you only need to…
The only thing in the room that has changed is the mirror above the wash basin. It is different now, an old thing of brass Renfield has dug out of his attic, all leaves and satyrs.
“Silver is a finicky gentleman, my friend. Silver things do not take kindly to me. Brass, however, is a completely different business...”
Master stands before the mirror, combing his hair, washing the blood off his lips and beard. Renfield doesn’t know why, but there’s something fascinating in the visual rhythm of his head. A calculated symmetry, like every strand of his hair twists in exactly the same way, the kind of stylized perfection never found in nature.
Renfield is almost used to the sight of it. He’s almost used to those hours long past dawn, when Master shares his tales of abandoned castles and ravaged villages. But then there’s always a small movement: a shrug, or a wince, or a clunky mistranslated phrase from his native tongue that sends Renfield’s heart a-flutter.
The extraordinary pallor of his Master’s face is easily fixed with make-up. Soon, he will be done with kohl. He will straighten himself up, pat Renfield on the shoulder and say in a very Londoner fashion:
“Now, my friend, aren’t you famished?”
And then they shall go out and dine. The ancient nomads of Mongolia were wise to say that vampires are perfectly content with adding some bread and marrow to their diet. That is, as long as the blood isn’t scarce.
Master finishes his lips and wipes the corner of his mouth with a surprisingly lacey handkerchief. The initials in the corner are not his.
Renfield feels no jealousy. There’re oceans of women, waves of pale flesh night after night. Master can hardly remember their names. He doesn’t bother to visit their funerals.
Who was tonight’s conquest? Renfield thinks as he gets up, his hands full of letters from his estate: this house, another mansion in North London, a summer place in Whitby.
“The remaining boxes were delivered in accordance with your wishes. Each one was placed in the cellar. All the windows have been boarded up, the locks on the doors have been replaced, just in case. I have ensured that myself. The copies of the keys will be here in a day or two.”
Master’s reflection smiles at him.
“Excellent, mister Renfield. Thank you”
“You are most welcome”
What else can I do but welcome you every morning? Renfield thinks, folding the papers carefully.
“I’m begging your pardon?”
He clenches his fists. Rage rises in him, the familiar wild rage that had cost him so many canes in school and so many “talkings-to” in college.
“You’ve never done a day of begging in your life,” he whispers.
There’s a startled owlish blink.
Renfield looks away, he is permitted to look away, but still he feels a nudge at the back of his mind: “Talk, please talk, what was that about?” He takes a deep breath.
“I am a nobleman too, sir,” he says. “A scholar too. The last few years of my life I have been captive, not like you though, the worst, the most humiliating thing is, I was a prisoner to my own people. It is my people who made me beg for sugar and water. It is my people who kept me chained and ravaged my poor brain with sedatives. What little mistranslated knowledge I have can’t even fill this tiny room, and still they took it away from me!”
His eyes fill with tears but somehow he manages to continue:
“I feel even older now, the oldest I’ve felt in my life, so old and frail, like my skin may crumble away from my bones at any moment. I feel like I shall die soon, very soon indeed, and…”
“And?”
“And then I shall go to some other land, with its beastless gardens and eternal May, I shall taste His tepid joys… But in all that splendor, the one face I want to see, the dearest one, will not be near me.”
His cheeks are burning. He finally raises his head and looks his Master in the eye.
“My true crime, my biggest, most horrible crime isn’t the fear of my demise, it isn’t all the lives I held on my tongue…”
Slowly, without looking away, Renfield kneels before him.
“It is that I’m unwilling to pray to a dead Galilean in his cave,” his voice breaks. “I want to pray to life, to some higher and fuller life, to the marble stillness of you. Please, do not deny me that.”
Master tilts his head to the side.
“Don’t I allow you plenty of that?” he asks, his expression unreadable.
Renfield shakes his head.
“You told me of all those great things, the hidden wisdoms of the world, the Solomonarie, the battles long forgotten by the most avid historians. But what good is that, if this brain shall be dust in a quarter of a century?”
Suddenly fear prickles his heart. Not the thick, foggy warning his Master usually gives, but the ordinary, primal, human fear. Renfield covers his face with his hands, Renfield weeps.
“It is good, it is generous, forgive me, do forgive me for being ungrateful! I am still your serf, I am your dog.”
His fingers tremble. His hands fall onto his knees, obeying the command he didn’t even hear.
“Speak,” Master says. “Take your gratitude, mold it and bury it at that old asylum. Speak. I want to see the depths of your ungratefulness, the voracity of your despair. Speak.”
Renfield closes his eyes, searching for the right words.
“I hate being born in times of peace. You talk of your conquests and I hate that I can’t be one of those boyars piling the planks on the still-living enemy, that I cannot feast on top of their writhing forms. I hate that I can’t cast their skulls in gold and agate and make goblets of them to drink to your victory.”
Master watches him intently, and Renfield can make out, or imagines that he can make out, a hint of a smile in the corners of his mouth.
“Mine?”
“Ours!” Renfield screams. “Ours! Can’t you see that I would do that, not for you, but for my own pleasure as well? I know where you go every night, I read about the ones you feast upon and nothing, nothing in my soul stirs for them! I want to join you in your relishes, I want to be what the science and the city says I am, a beast, a tumor on their decency, the darkness among the dark, seducing their youths away! I do not want to be bisected, I do not want to be studied, I want to be feared.”
Master stands there quietly, listening to his ravings, and then, suddenly, turns back to the brass mirror. There, between the leaves and satyrs, his face steps out of the murk, and just for a moment it seems alien, an amalgamation of likenesses long claimed. He picks up the razor.
Renfield sits in his place, transfixed, unable to look away, as his Master shaves away the pointed beard, the heavy moustache, revealing a strange dotted scar. It marks the edges of his lips, it goes all the way down to his chin.
“Not a dagger, not an axe,” Master says. “Four rings. Four rings on the hand of my treacherous boyar. The one who kept me prisoner.”
Light dances on the razor. Renfield shudders. The razor lowers again, splitting the scar in one swift motion. The blood swells, but Master makes no attempt to wipe it away. The blood runs over his lips, down his chin, dripping onto his handsome coat.
Master kneels next to Renfield, and for a moment his face blots out everything, the room, the house, the almost full moon.
The blood fills Renfield's mouth, but there’s not a hint of iron prickling his palate. A cold, milky liquid coats his tongue, and somewhere in the back of it Renfield can still taste the decay, he can feel the fingers running through his hair.
And finally, finally, he is full.
***
“Thank you, young man,” says a gentleman, pressing a coin into his hand. His friend hesitates for a moment before adding something of his own – a round and smooth something, a marble, or a candy – and with that, they both disappear into the crowd. The paperboy glances at his palm.
He has never seen a coin like this (and, as any self-respecting London paperboy, he has seen plenty, from bagel-coins of China to the battered rubles of Russia). He can somewhat make out a king with leaves in his hair and sheep-like curls in his beard. The letters are smudged, but the coin is heavy in the way only solid gold can be. Next to the coin lies a beetle: a rare fat fellow, all fluffy black and emerald-green. Perfect for trading.
The paperboy stuffs both into his pocket and goes off, hollering at other passersby.
At the restaurant in the very end of the street the door creaks.
The waiter rushes to greet them. Two gentlemen, a plump bearded Londoner and another one, clean-shaven, with piercing dark eyes and an unidentifiable accent.
The table is waiting for them. They order a good steak (a lovely cut, cooked a bit bloodier than usual) with a thick marrowy sauce. Before the waiter goes away, he notices the dark-eyed gentleman unfold the morning newspaper. Quietly, but with great pathos, he reads out one obituary after another. His friend listens with a smile, his eyes closed, nodding along. A pin glistens on his tie: a bejeweled spider crawling over a grape leaf.
There is something familiar in this pin, this smile, but the waiter doesn’t pay it much mind. Funny old gents, but, again, what is the point of becoming an old gent if you aren’t being a bit odd about it?
He stands by the window for a little while, wiping a glass, looking at the night sky. The moon hangs over London, round and red like those waxy Dutch cheese wheels. The waiter dislikes it enormously. This kind of moon promises either sleepless nights or, worse, those strange, fanged, heavy dreams that leave him exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept at all. This moon makes him remember the whispers he hears every evening, the rumors about this new disease that strikes only young men and women. The effects are nothing but pallor and unusual weakness – some new type of anemia that’s yet to be studied. The doctors mostly agree it has something to do with water.
“Garcon!”
He flinches. There’s a sound of cutlery clicking against the glass (as if yelling loud enough to bring the whole establishment down wasn’t enough). A balding gentleman folds his arms at the dire lack of champagne at his table. With a sigh, the waiter pinches his pale cheeks into a smile and returns to the guests.
This evening, there’s plenty of them to go around.