Part 8 (2/2)
I caught hold of her and pulled her from him, covered her again with the bedclothes. ”Do you know this woman Zsuzsanna, sir? Were you her accomplice? And if so, what have you done with my child and brother?”
He did not reply but peered beyond us at the dark hallway, and suddenly I saw his eyes widen with fear. ”Your mother,” he demanded of me swiftly.
”I cannot wake her,” I said, with a small shake of my head.
Before I could interrogate him further, he swept past us-or rather glided by, with preternatural silence and speed. I heard not a single footstep in the hall, but within an instant he had returned, with Mama unconscious in his arms.
The sight of her calmed Gerda, who fell silent and allowed me to continue giving her small sips of the port, and to bathe her warm brow with a washcloth wrung with water from the basin.
We watched as, with infinite tenderness, the stranger lay Mama on the bed; with infinite tenderness knelt by her side and whispered, Mary. . . .
That sight, and the look of genuine love and relief on my mother's face when she woke to the sight of him, convinced me more than any other to trust him. I knew that this was the man she had written of in her diary.
”Arkady,” she said, and graced him with a smile. ”Thank G.o.d, you are still with us!” Yet the sad affection on her face soon turned to panic; she sat upright with a cry, and clutched his arms. ”Stefan!””Gone,” Arkady replied. ”Alive, but asleep; when he wakes, I will know more. There is no point in following until I know the direction he has been taken. For now, you must tell me what you can.”
My mother raised her hands to her eyes and groaned; for a moment, I thought she would weep, but she soon mastered herself and looked up at him steadily. ”Zsuzsanna. I was so exhausted this afternoon that I fell into a deep sleep despite all efforts to remain awake; and once there, I dreamt of Zsuzsanna's eyes, beautiful, brown, shot through with s.h.i.+mmering gold. Languour overcame me; I knew this meant that she was trying to enter the house, to steal Stefan from us. ... I struggled to resist it but was too tired to emerge. I was paralysed, unable to move, to speak, even to open my eyes.”
My poor mother let go a hoa.r.s.e sob. Arkady tried to gather her into his arms, but she pushed him away with a gesture that intimated she was undeserving of comfort. And again she raised her hands to her face and said, ”It is all my doing!”
No, I wanted to say, it is my fault. Had I returned home earlier, none of this could have happened.
But Arkady spoke first. Gently he caught my mother's wrists and lowered her hands. ”I deserve the blame more than any of you. I should have suspected my sister capable of such treachery.” And his visage blazed with such abrupt and dangerous white-hot wrath that my mother and I both recoiled from it. ”What a fool I was, to think us safe because Vlad was still in Transylvania, because Zsuzsa would never betray me! She must have made arrangements to come days ago, perhaps weeks. Perhaps she even knew of Stefan's whereabouts before I discovered them! No,” he said, shaking his head at Mama's faint protests, ”it is more my fault than anyone else's. Had I been more cautious, Vlad's agent would never have discovered my resting-place; he very nearly succeeded in trapping me there tonight. Thanks to my own mortal a.s.sistant, I was merely delayed. But long enough.
Long enough!”
He wheeled and gestured at Gerda, who now sat beside me on the floor, resting mutely with her head against my shoulder, her gaze turned inwards. ”She knows the rest of what has happened here; perhaps she can help us.”
”She is catatonic,” I said, stroking her hair as though I could smooth away whatever trauma had provoked the rebirth of her madness. To hear myself saying those words again broke my heart. I knew I had lost part of her heart to Stefan-but I had hope, then, that she might be convinced to return to me. Now she was utterly lost to us all. ”She has been like this before. She will speak to no one for some time. Days, perhaps longer.”
”She will speak to me,” Arkady said softly. And he crouched down in front of us and reached a hand towards her-slowly, tentatively, with the palm turned up, as one might approach a wild animal.
She cringed as he neared, and burrowed her face into my shoulder; when he put his hand lightly upon her shoulder, she jerked as though electrified and began to tremble. But then he said, softly-in the loveliest, most melodic and soothing voice I have ever heard anyone, male or female, use: ”Gerda. I mean you no harm. But for Stefan's sake, I must know exactly all that has happened.”
She glanced sideways at him, her eyes wide with terror, but the instant her gaze met his, her s.h.i.+vering ceased. To my amazement, she turned and faced him, and after a moment of staring deeply into his eyes, hers closed, and she began to speak, in the slow dreamy murmur of one entranced: ”She was here.””Who?” Arkady demanded sharply. ”The woman who looks like me?”
”Yes ...” my wife answered dully. ”In the afternoon. Bram was gone, and Mama and Stefan asleep. I was in the kitchen with little Jan, making the dinner for everyone, when she rang at the door.”
”I would not open it, of course. Before he left for hospital, Bram ordered me not to, especially after the man masquerading as a patient stole Stefan away. She asked for Doctor Stefan Van Helsing, saying that someone at the hospital had referred her to him for a complaint. I turned her away, explaining that they were not available and could see no one to-day. But the woman was dressed so prettily, and her face so kindly and so beautiful, that when she paused in mid-turn to glance back at little Jan, balanced upon my hip, she asked, 'Oh. And this is your little boy?”
”Her voice was so wistful that I could not be rude; and she was so very lovely-perhaps the loveliest woman I had ever seen-that I just wanted to continue looking at her. So I answered, 'Yes, this is our little angel. Only he is not so heavenly right now; he is tired and late for his nap.”
”Jan had been crying, so I had picked him up to comfort him; but at the sight of the pretty woman, he silenced at once and stared at her, his eyes growing rounder and rounder.
” 'How handsome he is!' the woman exclaimed with a dimpled smile. 'Such a beautiful child!
Is he Doctor Stefan's?”
”No, I explained, it was Stefan's nephew, that I was the other Doctor Van Helsing's- Abraham's-wife.
”How wonderful,' she said. 'And how lucky you are to have such a healthy, perfect son.' She began to turn away again, but I saw that her expression had grown unutterably sad, so much so that it touched my heart. I opened the door a crack and asked her what was the matter.
”She faced me then, her gaze intent and steady and so beautiful, I let go a breath. ”I cannot have children of my own,” she said. ” I have consulted physician after physician and was hoping your brother-in-law could help me.”
”I stood in the doorway, moved by her pathetic story, moved by her grace and charm as a man might be moved. I would have done anything she asked at that moment, no matter how injurious to myself or even my child; and so, when she inquired sweetly, 'Might I come inside?' I opened the door wide.
”She entered smiling, and I-I remember only that I had entered a state of bliss, wanting only to be in her presence, to follow her as a flower follows the sun. When she asked, 'May I?' and held her arms out to my shy son, he stretched out his own eagerly to her, and I let her take him as though it were simply natural to hand him to a total stranger.
”So she took him, and I watched with strange dreamy pleasure as she rocked and tickled and kissed him. When she kissed his lips, his cheeks, his forehead, I felt no alarm; not even when she leaned down to brush his tender little throat teasingly with her lips.
”No, I watched with antic.i.p.ation; with jealousy, even, for I longed for her lips to touch mine, longed to feel her caress against my skin. I might have pulled her to me and demanded such, but I was in such a languidly euphoric state that I did not want to move or speak. She held my little boy and began to sing to him softly, and I watched as he grew gla.s.sy-eyed and silent beneath this creature's gaze.”Then she laid him upon the kitchen table and turned to me as I stood, stunned by a strange mixture of fear and longing. She put her arms round my waist, and I felt myself grow sweetly limp, with the same melting sensation triggered by Stefan's kiss. Soon I lay on the floor, and she knelt beside me like a child at bedtime prayer and whispered in my ear, as though we were co-conspirators: 'He is so small, I dare not touch him, while I am so hungry! But I dare not go to Stefan so. . . .”
”While she spoke, she unfastened my collar, my blouse, then ran her palm-so bitter, bitter cold-admiringly over my skin before she bent forward and pressed her lips against the flesh above my collarbone. As I s.h.i.+vered, trapped between fear and antic.i.p.ation, she parted those lips, and I felt the sweep of her tongue as she tasted the flesh there.
”Then came the pain: cold, electric, piercing, as though small sharp daggers bit into my skin.
I cried out weakly and struggled, but as her tongue and mouth pulled hard against the wound, a sudden intoxicating warmth enveloped me, and I fell silent again. Indeed, the quieter I grew, the more pleasurable my trance became, until it eclipsed even the ecstasies of love. I felt myself floating away blissfully from my own body, and wanted it never to end.
”I remember the woman's voice: Shall I take you across, then? Across the great abyss?
”I knew she spoke of my death; and I wanted it. Yearned for it, as one yearns for physical release in the midst of pa.s.sion.
”No. No-yearned for it far more than that. But it was not to be. I remember her high, crystalline laughter as she said, No. You are more useful to me as a spy. I fell into velvet darkness a time and was disappointed when I woke and found myself alive.
”My memory fades then. ... I remember that when I opened my eyes again, I lay upon the floor in my own bedroom, watching a scene between myself and Stefan as though I were a disembodied observer. Nearby in the crib, sleeping silently-or else trapped in the same stupourous trance-was my litde boy.
”Yet I knew it was not me that I saw-but the beautiful woman, who had somehow taken on my appearance. When I concentrated, it seemed I could almost see her face beneath the illusory sh.e.l.l of my own.
”I lay in full view of them both, yet he did not see me, as she and Stefan argued tearfully, while I was unable to speak, to warn him, to do anything except watch them both.
”Stefan stood beside my bed, his arms grasping hers, his face gazing down into hers with the love he reserved for me as he told her he was leaving. Leaving forever, so that the rest of us would be exposed to no danger.
”She answered just as I would have: that she did not understand, could not understand, how any peril could be so great that it should tear us apart. She cried, and Stefan-he is so soft-hearted, so kind,” Gerda said, smiling sadly in a way that pierced me to the soul. I looked away, unable to meet the others' gazes as she continued, ”He could not bear her tears and cried with her. She begged to go with him, but he said no, it would be too dangerous; and besides, she belonged with her husband and child. He had intended to leave without saying anything to anyone-but then he feared they would misunderstand and endanger themselves trying to rescue him.
”So he wrote a letter for us all; but in the end, he could not leave without bidding her-me- good-bye. And I-” She hesitated. ”I mean, she. I thought perhaps the guilt had caused me to go mad again, to leave my body, so that I now observed myself. It was like watching a play in which I was the actress. She said she could not so easily let him go. She showered him with tears and pleas and kisses; he tried to turn away, tried to leave, saying that he had erred once and would not do so again. But in the end, her determined kisses were returned, and she fell into his arms.
”So I watched, unable to speak or move while this strange woman who looked so like me bedded my lover; perhaps it is what I deserve, after treating my good husband so wickedly.
That hour was the most bitter of my life, for I was forced to remain silent while another woman kissed my Stefan's face, as.h.i.+ne with tears, and he hers. His final caresses, his final words, were stolen from me, and I could not even weep. Surely she had entranced him so that he did not see her true appearance.
”No, I could only stare as he slowly, gravely undressed this strange and beautiful new Gerda, as though she were a bride on her wedding night. Could only listen to his murmurs that she had never before looked so lovely as she in turn undressed him.
”So they lay down together, and the woman pressed her gleaming white skin against his darker flesh in the twilight. Bodies writhing, they coupled with the same intensity and pa.s.sion as Stefan and I had that night-”
Here I closed my eyes, stricken at the directness of her confession, shamed for her and myself in the presence of my mother, of this stranger.
”And in the midst of their pa.s.sion, when Stefan released a hoa.r.s.e, whispered cry of ecstasy, that cry turned to one of horror. For the woman had resumed her true appearance, and my poor lover saw that he lay with another woman-beautiful, compelling, chillingly malignant.
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