28 June, 7:07 PM, “The Czernograd Gazette” newsroom
His mobile phone was ringing.
“Hello,” he picked it up. The incoming number was blocked.
“Mr Svoboda?” A woman’s voice, somewhat familiar.
“Yes, it’s him.”
“My name is Alicia.” Haltingly. She sounded different when not screeching at him through the gate. “I’m-“
“Yes, I know,” he said. No need for awkwardness. “I’m glad I didn’t have to shave the card up my ass.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that…”
“Please, don’t need to explain yourself. I was the uninvited guest, at the worst possible time.”
She exhaled loudly.
“I’m really sorry for… your loss,” he said, not quite sure how to phrase the sentiment. Wife, mistress, friend, housekeeper? Still unanswered.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice almost back to normal. He could still detect a faint trace of something else there. Fear, perhaps, or second thoughts? “Please, no one can know about this phonecall…”
“Of course.”
“I didn’t know who to turn to. Your visit turned out to be a bit… providential.”
That’s me, Igor thought, an angel of the Lord, to the rescue of damsels in distress. He almost chuckled at the thought, before remembering he was in the middle of a serious conversation.
“I understand how difficult this must be for you,” he lied. He didn’t really. “I’ll try not to be too intrusive. Why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind.”
There was a long pause and for a moment he feared that she has changed her mind and would now hang up.
“I was his…” she finally picked up the thread, “… I was a lot of things. His housekeeper. His… lover,” the words were not coming easy to her. “His… donor. You understand what I mean?”
The scarf around the neck. “Yes, I do.”
“He drank from me,” she said it anyway. “I guess I fulfilled all his basic needs. He did not have a family, of course. At his age none of them do anymore. But also no friends, not really. Only his job. He was a lonely man.”
As his kind tend to be, Igor thought. The price of immortality.
“And then this… out of the blue,” she continued.
“So you have no idea why he might have?-“
“I lie,” she said. “Well, not really… What I mean is… Over the past few months he was becoming increasingly withdrawn. Edgy. Like there was something on his mind, gnawing at him, but… I would have never ever expected him to…”
She fulfilled all his basic needs, of which a confidant clearly was not one. Blood, vagina, clean kitchen. But not a shoulder to lean on, not a keeper of his secrets.
“And you don’t know what it was, whatever made him change?”
“No. He would never share. He would never unburden himself. That’s how he was. Always carrying the load, alone.”
The load of centuries on his shoulders. And over the past few months something significant had been added to that weight. Igor hated clichés but could only think of a straw that broke the camel’s back. Except this sounded like a bit more than just a piece of a straw. “If you were to guess,” Igor said, “would you think it was something to do with his work? Or something else?” Like gambling problems. According to his employer. But not for publication.
“I wish I knew,” she sighed. “Work was his life, pretty much all of it. Particularly considering the nature of his work. Who he was working for… And then there was me. At least that’s what I would like to believe; that that’s all there was to his life. But I just don’t know anything for sure anymore, not after this, you know?” She sounded not just hurt but lost; very lost.
“Anything else suspicious or out of character?” Jake asked. “Before he died?”
“He sent me away. I didn’t live here, at his place, all the time. Though I spent a lot of time here. But I have a place of my own. I was going to come in… that night, but he called me in the morning and said that something had come up and he would be busy the evening, and maybe for a day or two after that. Anyway, he said he would call me when he was free again and I could come. And that was the last time… that we spoke…”
She started sobbing. Igor was never good at comforting people, particularly women, particularly over the phone. What do you say to someone who has unexpectedly lost… someone they loved? Possibly. He was trying to imagine what it would be like to love an undead. Or for that matter love, period; to care for someone else so deeply. It wasn’t something he ever experienced, and he didn’t quite know whether to consider himself cursed or blessed, a freak or a lucky man.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Please take it as slowly as you can. I’m just here to listen.”
“It’s OK,” she recovered. “I found out when the police called the next day. They got my number from his house. So I came over, and it was all trashed-“
“Excuse me?” Igor straightened up in his seat.
“The house. Everything was upside down, like a tornado had come through it…”
“You mean the police have?-“
“No, no,” she said. “The place was like that already when they turned at the house, after they identified... him... and knew his address. That’s what they told me.”
“So what you’re telling me that someone has gone through the house… what, destroying things?”
“Sort off. All the drawers were ripped out, cupboards open, documents, clothes strewn out. Pillows, furniture ripped. Pictures taken off the walls. In the kitchen, everything thrown out of containers.”
“Do you think that… he might have done it… before he?-“
“Why would he do that to his own house?” she said.
Why would he drive to the other side of the town and fall on a stake under some godforsaken bridge?
“What did the police say?” he asked. “Did they think that somebody was… looking for something? Or hated him so much as to want to destroy his place?”
“They didn’t really say anything. I don’t know what they thought, if they thought anything. And if they did, they didn’t… wouldn’t tell a… housekeeper.”
“You know that the official verdict will be suicide?” he said. “With no suspicious circumstances. And no other parties involved.”
“Yes, the police called me yesterday afternoon to tell me.”
“So there are no suspicious circumstances,” he said, “except his house got trashed the same night as he… took his life.”
She didn’t say anything for what seemed like a very long time.
“Alice?” he said.
“I’m scared, Mr Svoboda,” she finally said. “I’m really scared.”
“Of what, precisely?”
She snorted. “Nothing… precisely. Of being alone. Of not knowing what happened. Of not knowing whether I should be scared or not.”
“The black car outside,” he remembered.
“Been there already when they called me back. Among all the other police cars. Then they all drove away, but that car stayed.”
“Have you had any contact with the driver?”
“No,” she said. “He’s just sitting there all the time. Doesn’t get out.”
“Who do you think?-“
“Secret Service? I don’t know,” she sounded drained. She sighed again. “You were there... under the bridge... weren’t you, Mr Svoboda? You wrote the first story for “The Gazette”. I recognised your name… before I called you. What do you think happened?” She put the accent, and the onus, back on him.
He took a deep breath. “I know even less than you. Got called to do a story one morning, and then the story… became something else.” He paused. “Alice, did he… gamble?”
“Gamble?” she sounded thrown off. “Why?”
“Just something I’ve been hearing through the grapevine,” he said. “Gambling problems. Debts. Despair… Suicide.”
“I… I never noticed anything. He never spoke of gambling. But… I don’t know anything anymore. I thought I knew him, but…”
“You did,” he said. The reassurance sounded depressingly empty. “You knew him perhaps better than anyone else.”
“With exception of the Prince himself. Maybe.” Was that a hint of bitterness in her voice? “Do you think they will invite me to the funeral?” Before he had a chance to say anything she continued, “I think not. A lover. A feeder. How embarrassing. How dirty. But I will be there, no matter what they think. I loved… I love him.”
What was there to say to that? The raw emotion, the sheer tragedy. Great stuff and the magic ingredient of journalism. And yet, somehow, he felt it all dissolving into dust in his hands and slipping through his fingers.
“I have to go,” she said. “I have taken enough of your time-“
“Of course not,” he protested.
“-but I really needed to talk to someone. Who would understand, who would be interested. Even if for you it’s just a story.”
“If I said to you that now it is for me more than just a story, you probably wouldn’t believe me.” Even if it might have been starting to be the case. “Can I have your number, Alice? Just in case… something comes up?”
She hesitated. “I… OK, just in case.” She gave him her phone number and he took it down on his notepad.
“Thank you,” she said, “for listening.”
She hang up before he had a chance to say anything.
Photo by Katsiaryna Endruszkiewicz on Unsplash
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