Jamie: “So all that stuff about mirrors, that’s bullshit?”
Natasha: “Yep.”
Jamie: “And garlic?”
Natasha: “That too.”
Jamie: (laughing) “Crucifixes? Daylight?”
Natasha: “Yep.”
Jamie: “But why?”
Natasha: “To fit in and not be bothered. ‘Oh, that Miklos casts a reflection in a mirror; he can’t be a vampire’. ‘Oh, that’s alright then’. And if you’re Miklos you can go on about your life not bothered, just like everyone else.”
Jamie: “So none of all that Dracula stuff is true?”
Natasha: “Well the bit about the stake through the heart is, but you don’t exactly test if your acquaintance is really a blood sucker by trying to kill him, do you?”
Jamie: (holds his head in his hands, laughing) “Thanks a lot, Nat; you’ve just destroyed all my childhood fantasies. You gonna tell me next that Santa Claus doesn’t really exist?
MTV “Real World: Ruthenia”, Episode 3
29 June, 7:00 AM, Czernograd, the Niski district
He did not sleep well at all. A cynic might say a result of an unfamiliar experience: spending the night in a strange apartment, in a strange bed – his own. There was no alcohol or any other legal or illegal substances circulating through his bloodstream and plucking at his synapses like harp strings to produce beautiful, strange melodies. His apartment was on the top floor of a tenement on the edge of the Niski district, not too far from the river, but far enough from the undercurrents of the night life to dampen the city din. Only darkness and the breeze smelling of water seeped in through an open window; silence but for an occasional faint roar of a car accelerating somewhere in the distance.
So it was just him, the red ember of a lit-up cigarette, the metronomic tick-tock of a wall clock, and the ghost of Mathias Maciar. Did vampires have ghosts? He has never thought about it. It didn’t matter, really. While Maciar’s several hundred years old body was slowly decomposing at the city morgue, the nature finally catching up on her long-overdue duty, it didn’t really matter if the undead’s unquiet essence was drifting somewhere around the streets of Czernograd or whether it got extinguished with his final, ear-piercing scream of pain. No, Maciar was still here, in this room, sitting on the swivel chair, standing by the window, pacing impatiently inside his head, his lips unmoving, his gaze steady and inscrutable.
There was no story, said Lis. Or rather the story was evolving, from a difficult birth under the bridge to its premature but inevitable demise a few days from now, as the last of the mourners will have drifted away from the mound of fresh earth in the good section of the Mogilev cemetery, leaving the wreaths to wither and rot, and grave diggers to finish their work out of sight.
A staking. The unexpected royal angle. A suicide. Personal tragedy. A cautionary tale. The closure.
Then there is another story. A faithful and good servant of the highest, distracted and worried for months. His closest human companion sent away, then the last journey taken to the other side of the town. His house turned upside down; the last act of destruction by a troubled man before turning the same destructive impulse onto himself – or something else? A scared Black Widow. A black car on guard day and night outside the house.
No, this is not really a story, just wisps of smoke, questions without answers, answers without questions. Lis would not run it. Lis’s higher-ups would not run it. Hell, Igor would not run it himself. Even if he could, even if the story, or whatever was left of it, has not been taken off his hands.
And yet…
Igor dialed Goldstyn’s number. It rang four or five times before he picked up.
“You’re lucky I even want to talk to you.” Hurt? Or disappointed? Or both?
“Give me a break,” Igor said. “I didn’t even tell my editor until it was official. Nothing personal, Goldie.”
“And now you again want something from me. Will I get a quote this time?”
“Sure, if you can tell me something interesting,” Jake lied.
“Shoot then.” Igor didn’t think Goldstyn believed him anyway. Regardless…
“The unofficial official story from the Palace, as I understand, is that Mathias Maciar committed suicide out of shame and depression over gambling debts he had been accumulating at an unsustainable rate. Comments?”
“Difficult to say,” said Goldstyn. “Haven’t heard any murmurs, but gambling addiction is not exactly something that people readily know about, particularly if the person concerned was by nature very private and rather, how shall I say it, withdrawn from society.”
“In other words, you’ve got nothing for me?”
“Not fair. You just don’t want to give me a nice quote in your story. Ask me about his public role, not his private life; I’m not a gossip columnist.”
“OK,” Igor said, “anything over the past few months that might have made Mr Maciar even more withdrawn than he usually was, and a bit distracted and edgy?”
“Well, he had been working for the Prince,” Goldstyn said. “I imagine the princely make-over must not have been easy. Preparing the heir apparent for an imminent ascension… a tad stressful, perhaps.”
“Stressful enough to kill oneself?” Jake asked.
“I thought it was gambling.”
“So I’m told.”
“But you don’t believe the official story and are fishing around for other dirt,” Victor said. “Ain’t that right?”
“It doesn’t really matter. Anyway, if you suddenly acquire any brilliant insights or hear something interesting, you have my number.”
“And if you suddenly remember about that party you are going to take me to, you have my number, too.”
Touche. There was always another party in the wings.
His next phonecall was to Natasha at the graphic design section of “The Gazette” and it involved two favours. The first one was for Natasha to crop and enlarge Maciar out of the either of the two publicly available photos of him and email it to Igor. The second one was to keep the request on the quiet.
He had a question for Alicia. She probably wouldn’t be able to answer it, but he needed to ask – and he should have asked when he had the opportunity yesterday: among all the destruction wreaked inside Maciar’s house, did she notice anything missing? It was a needle in a haystack problem, but either Maciar himself went on a rage-fueled spree to destroy his home or someone else has put in a lot of energy and little subtlety into trying to find something.
Igor dialed the number she gave him last night. After four rings the message bank kicked in. “Hello, this is Alicia. I’m not able to take you message right now, so-“
He hang up.
Half an hour later Natasha emailed him the photo. It showed Maciar’s head and chest on a 12 by 6, cut out of the group photo at a public reception. He sent it to the colour printer and stood guard over it while the machine warmed up and then spewed out the A4 page he was waiting for. He took out scissors from his top drawer, cut off the excess white margins and folded the finished product into his wallet.
His phone went off. It was a blocked number. People have been taking this whole privacy thing far too far, he thought. Stalkers in particular. Then he remembered that he had blocked the display of his own number too.
“Hello,” he answered. For a second, he was hoping that it might be Alicia, calling him back.
“Who is this?” A man’s voice instead.
“Who wants to know?” Igor said.
“Who is this?” the man said again, as if he has not heard Igor at all.
“Let me explain something to you,” Igor said. “You called me first; therefore, it’s the only polite thing to do that you introduce yourself…”
A click and the sound of disconnection.
Igor sighed. Fucking timewasters. Where have all the manners gone? he though. You hypocrite, the also thought.
It was time to go and see a few people and ask a few questions. The day was still young, but he has not even started working on any of the stories he was supposed to be covering. Worse, he had no intention. Here is to every non self-respecting journalist’s last resort: ripping off press releases almost verbatim, five minutes before the deadline.
Photo by Evelyn Bertrand on Unsplash
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