34.

29 June, 10:00 PM, Czernograd, the Wolski district

He glanced at his watch. It was now just past 10 and over an hour into the night. The streets here were not as crowded as those around the Old Market Square and along the river must have been at this time of the evening, but they were never quite out of sight of others, loud, alcohol-fueled conversations and bursts of laughter bouncing off walls, only occasionally drowned by a passing car. It was supposed to be the start of the high tourist season, but most people seemed local. The global slump must have depressed the tourist market. That and, as he reminded himself, he was lucky enough to be experiencing Czernograd not many tourists get to see.

She led him through a labyrinth of narrow streets, away from the city’s main thoroughfares. The further they got away from the Old Town, fewer and fewer neon signs invited passers-by into smaller and smaller buildings. Jake had no idea where they were going; his unreliable sense of direction told him north. There was one in four chances it was right.

Their only constant companion now was small talk. Jake found himself looking back several times, but he could not see anyone following them. More likely it was too dark to spot anyone who was any good good at it.

Marina led him through a half-opened gate into a dark courtyard. A single bare light bulb somewhere on the far wall made one wonder why anyone bothered, but she knew where they were going. There was a solid looking and uninviting iron door to the left, and when she rapped her knuckles on it three times a visor slid open and she passed through what looked like a business card. After a moment, the door opened inwards with a deep moan of the hinges, and they were let into a narrow corridor dimly illuminated with a red glow. The doorman wordlessly handed Marina back her card. He was half a head taller than Jake, and a good foot wider, dark suit, dark shirt and dark tie, no neck, shaved head, goatee. As he pushed the door closed with a metallic thud that echoed down the corridor, his watchful seen-it-all eyes quickly looked them both up and down. Bouncers were the same the world over.

“Abandon all hope ye who enter here,” Jake said.

“Oh, showing off, aren’t we?” Marina took him under an arm, and they started walking towards the music.

“I did go to college, you know,” said Jake, mock wounded. “Before I sold my soul.”

“Well, we’ve come to the right place then,” she smiled. The corridor turned left and gave way to a descending stairway.

“In my beautiful borough of Manhattan there would be two gentlemen like that standing in front, plus a girl with a guest list pinned to a board, and a velvet rope to keep the queue out. This looks more like a BDSM club.”

“A what?” she asked.

“Never mind.” A number was drifting up the stairway like warm air, a haunting, exotic lament, sang against waves of tender strings, but with an electronic polish and a pulsating beat behind it.

The stairway ended, giving way to a large open area with a low ceiling supported by numerous columns spaced throughout. The still sparse light was casting a red glow over what looked like a rather ordinary lounge bar with a gothic-meets-burlesque décor.

The place looked quite full, but there were still a few seats left. Couple and small groups lounged on plush red sofas around squat coffee tables. Black and smart, if not showy, dominated among the patrons. A few heads briefly turned as they descended the staircase. Marina was right, he wasn’t dressed to go out, particularly around here. She most certainly was.

“What is this place?” he found himself whispering, as if anyone else could hear him above the music and the hum of conversations.

“This is a place – one of them, at least – where our creatures of the night like to congregate,” she said. “And where they receive adoration.”

“You mean?-“

“Let’s sit down,” she said, “otherwise some might think you’re looking for some action.”

“That I am most certainly not,” he said and followed her towards the back of the room where she has spotted an empty couch.

A waiter – late teens, hair slicked back, pale and wan – appeared very quickly after they claimed the seats to clean up the table and take their orders. Marina, as always, did the talking, and Jake got the impression that it was not the first time the two of them came across each other. If you are a tourist guide you get to know people in hospitality industry. All sorts of tourists, all sorts of hospitality.

“I’m guessing,” said Jake, “that if you are of a certain... inclination-“ he almost used the word species but didn’t, unsure if it was polite or not “-you can come here and order things not on the menu anywhere else.”

“Indeed,” she leaned back and stretched out on the couch, taking in the room. “We are a modern, normal country, you know, and in a modern, normal country you can’t just attack people and drain them of blood, as one might have done in centuries past. It can actually get you in trouble; two years the first time; easily ten to fifteen for a repeat offender, particularly if the judge is tough, and most of them are in these circumstances...”

“I guess even ten to fifteen is a bit different for someone who’s supposed be immortal.”

“Still,” she shrugged, “vampires, like homosexuals, don’t have the easiest of times in prisons. In any case, if you’re undead now you only have two viable alternatives: a blood bank or a voluntary donation. And believe me, there’s always an oversupply of the latter.”

“Including here tonight,” Jake said, casting a slow look over the panorama of night goers, drinking and chatting in the red glow, trying to guess which ones among them were... different.

“Absolutely,” she said. “For everyone who’s ever been repulsed, there’s always been someone who’s been attracted. There is a certain allure to it, almost erotic, many would say... Maybe less and less so among our people since we’ve had to live with it for centuries. But suddenly, as of twenty years ago, the whole world is a vampire’s oyster. And the best thing is that you don’t have to go anywhere; the world comes to you. It’s like home delivery.”

“Many people here tourists?” Jake asked. The waiter brought him his a scotch and a cocktail for Marina and then disappeared with a palest of smiles.

“Oh yes,” she nodded, taking her first sip. “You wouldn’t believe how many Twilight Mums we get here all the time. Read the book, experience the real thing,” she chuckled. “So what that he doesn’t exactly look like Robert Pattinson? Just close your eyes and think of the Forks, Washington state. Or New Orleans, if you’re a more of an Anne Rice fan.”

“God, it sounds like some tawdry sex tourism,” Jake laughed too, “like those bored, well-off, middle aged women going to the Caribbean or Africa and hooking up with nubile young men.”

“There’s men, too, you know,” she scolded him. “But no, this place is more... classy, I guess. For the more discerning visitors, and certainly the more discerning vamps.”

Jake swung the last of the scotch and rattled the ice cubes around the empty tumbler. “I can’t believe, you know... that I’m here, that we’re talking about it... that it’s all... real.”

“Hey, I did promise you that I would show you the Czernograd that not many tourists get to see, didn’t I?”

“I get the feeling that it’s not your first time around here,” he said.

“I think what you are really trying to ask is whether I have ever allowed a vampire to feed off me,” Marina’s gaze locked in with his, as if she was daring him.

“No.” Yes, it did cross his mind over the last few minutes. Several times. He didn’t recall seeing any fresh bite marks or old scars on her neck, and there were none still as he glanced quickly at her, but was that really the only place from where they could take blood? What did he, a simple boy from Manhattan, know about vampires, apart from watching a few Hollywood movies, which were probably bullshit anyway?

“In any case, none of my business,” he added.

“I haven’t,” she said, still pinning him down with her eyes. “Would you think less of me if I did?”

“I…” How the fuck am I supposed to answer that? Jake thought. Would you think less of me if I had a child out of wedlock with a forest demon? Would you think less of me if I told you I pull the wings off garden fairies? Until the last few days none of such questions and judgments were even part of his moral universe. “I have no idea, and haven’t even thought about it,” he decided in the end to be honest. “It’s all new to me.”

“Well, it’s your grandfather’s land,” she said. “Now, it’s all part of your world, like it or not.” She raised her cocktail glass in a mock toast.

No wonder grandfather left, Jake thought with a wry smile on the inside; maybe he too just could not face similar dilemmas.

In the background, the music slowly morphed from something still recognisable as a haunting lament from the eastern fault lines of the Christendom to a faster, more rhythmic, more wistful call of the near Orient.

Jake turned around to follow Marina’s gaze. In the middle of the room, up on a little elevated stage he hasn’t noticed before, a veiled but otherwise half-naked woman was writhing in a restless trance, half-way between a belly-dance and a rave. The conversations went down a tone as many others also started watching the performance.

“She’s auctioning herself,” Marina whispered behind him. “To the highest bidder.”

“I thought that the problem was the oversupply rather than scarcity,” Jake murmured without turning back.

“There’s an oversupply of middle-aged and overweight housewives from Kansas City and Frankfurt. The blood thing is just like sex.” Her voice was low and seductive like crashing waves. “Quality is always at a premium.”

Another woman walked up to the stage from somewhere in the lounge and stood for a little while looking up to the veiled dancer. Then she leaped up to join her and started gyrating to the pulse of the music. Unlike most other patrons she wore all red, and not much of it. It matched her short red hair which flew around like tresses as her head swirled around from side to side. In any other nightclub, Jake thought, this performance would elicit catcalls, roars of approval and loud encouragement from the boozed-up audience. Here it was greeted not exactly with indifference but a calm detachment of over-familiarity and cold calculation. Even when the redhead started running her hands up and down the first dancer’s bare sides, and then lifted her veil to kiss her, as they both continued to sinuously sway to the beat, the gathered – for Jake couldn’t really call them revelers – remained contemplatively aloof.

“Is the other one also auctioning herself?” Jake asked.

“What do you think?”

“That it’s not all that different to what happens where I come from,” he said.

“Except the end is different, isn’t it?” she said.

He turned around to face her again.

“Do you want to see it?” she asked.

“You mean-“

“Yes.” Her nostrils flared and it seemed to him like there was even more colour in her cheeks.

“Do they do it… here?”

“Here, there… everywhere,” she said. “Some of them take whomever they in the end choose to their own places. Others to the hotel. But most of them do it here. It’s safer that way.”

“For the-“ he almost said ‘victims’, “-chosen ones?”

“No, the vamps,” she said. “You see, to stay on the right side of the law everything has to be strictly voluntary. People who want to donate sign release forms. It’s much easier to keep everything under control in a licensed venue like this.”

He laughed and shook his head. Good God, it’s almost as if I hadn’t left home, he thought. I bet they have their own equivalent of date rape here, too.

“There’s a number of rooms discretely attached to this club,” she said. “So, are you game, Mr innocent American tourist?”

“Oh, what the hell,” he shrugged. His parents’ was the last generation that held the childish appreciation of circuses and sideshows with their fire-eaters, sword-swallowers and bearded ladies. His own, or at least that part of it born to the same circumstances and gone to the same schools and colleges, instead grew up on “Jackass” and went down to Tijuana and down the Baja during the spring break to watch women do things illegal north of the border. Hell, he’s seen some weird enough shit at supposedly ordinary run-of-the-mill parties on the Upper East Side, once illicit substances started to circulate and work their magic. This couldn’t be any more bizarre. Or could it?

“Won’t they mind?” he asked. He knew from past experience that a mere sight of blood wouldn’t discomfort him, but it’s all about the context, isn’t it?

“Some do, some don’t,” she said. “Depends who you know, who you ask, and how nicely.”

“But you wouldn’t-“ he suddenly tensed.

“Oh no,” she laughed and leaned over and put her hand on his knee, “I wouldn’t have to ask that nicely. But it’s so cute that you care.”

He hated the word ‘cute’. He associated it with his aunt and trust fund princesses talking about their Chihuahuas and boyfriends, interchangeably. But before he had the time to cringe or protest, she was one her feet. “You wait here,” she said quickly. “Don’t move and don’t make an eye contact with anyone... Just joking,” she brushed his shoulder with her hand and was gone.

While she was away, the waiter appeared again to take their empty glasses. He gestured, suggesting another round, but Jake declined, shaking his head. Being a voyeur was one thing, being a voyeur while sipping on a beverage seemed just that one step beyond the boundaries of propriety. Might as well bring a digital camcorder and a bowl of chips. Not that he was an expert on the etiquette of...

“C’mon, let’s go,” he twitched when she tapped him on the shoulder. She noticed that. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna bite you.”

“Touché,” he murmured getting up.

“His name is Romeo. No, really...” she saw the expression on his face. “It doesn’t really matter anyway, because you won’t talk, and he won’t talk. We just stay in the background.”

“What about the... other party,” Jake said. “Won’t she – or he – have any problems with us-“

“What she thinks doesn’t matter,” Marina shrugged. “That’s how it is. Who knows, she might even get off on having a live audience.”

Instead of an exclusively undead one, Jake thought. Yep, just like a BDSM club. He thought about mentioning that again but resisted the urge to explain the acronyms to Marina. English literature was enough of a language education.

“Do you know... Romeo?” he asked instead, as she led him along the walls to the other side of the room.

“Yeah, I know Romeo,” she said, walking ahead of him, so he couldn’t see her face. “I know lots of people. It’s a small town.”

To the right of where the staircase descended into the room they turned into a narrow corridor, again barely lit by dim, red light bulbs widely spaced out along its length. It was difficult to guess what colour the walls were but the carpet they walked on was dark and plush and filled with twisted, fluid patterns.

Jake counted four doors on the right side of the corridor before they stopped. Marina did not knock but pressed on the door handle and pushed the door ajar enough for both of them to squeeze inside the room.

It was even darker here, the only illumination from a half a dozen candle stumps, dripping wax off an elaborate brass candelabra on the bedside table. The candles doubled up in a mirror behind them, yet the overall effect was somehow to make the room seem even smaller and denser like a black hole that sucks in all the light. He and Marina stood next to the door and deep in the shadow, Jake flattening himself against the wall, as if hoping to stay unnoticed by becoming one with the masonry. For a quick moment he thought back to the inside of the Gypsy wagon, darker still, and with a bed, too, but whereas the other place felt hot and stifling, this one was cold and sparse, like the flickering candlelight.

Then there was Romeo and his friend, and not an ancient Gypsy matriarch.

The vampire was laying on a king size bed, half-propped up against the head of the bed on a pile of large pillows, the same deep purple colour as the velvet sheets. He was stripped down to black slacks, his left bare foot dangling over the edge of the bed, the other leg bent and drawn towards him. He was not quite handsome, but not quite ordinary either, late twenties or early thirties, with a well sculpted physique and tanned body that contrasted with his shoulder length blonde hair and blue eyes that stared ahead, clouded and unseeing, seemingly oblivious to his guests as well as to a woman writhing on top of him.

She was slim, verging on too slim, somewhat pale and dark haired. Jake couldn’t see her face, as her back was turned towards them. Her clothes lay discarded at the foot of the bed on top of his, and she was down to black lace underwear and suspenders with stockings. A tattooed snake was sliding up over her left shoulder blade, and she, like a snake, was slowly and sensuously sliding over his, kissing and licking his belly and chest. Jake thought that it was her who looked like the predator and he a victim, lifeless and subdued, hypnotised into submission like a rodent by a cobra.

So this is it, Jake thought. As if I had accidentally walked into somebody’s bedroom late into a Manhattan penthouse party. Except that here be blood.

And then Romeo has slowly roused himself. Still largely motionless underneath the woman and his eyes still unfocused on anything in particular, his hands began to leisurely explore the body of his donor-to-be, caressing her arms, her naked back, her small breasts.

Here comes the foreplay, vampire style, thought Jake. Somehow he couldn’t quite take it all seriously for what it appeared to be. It seemed no more real or imbedded with meaning than a movie scene or a live performance by experimental artists.

Then Marina’s hand momentarily brushed against his and Jake wondered whether it was by accident.

He didn’t have much time to ponder because Romeo stirred and with one fluid movement, like an animal that had thus followed the instinct a thousand times before, he flipped the woman from the top of him onto her back and leaned over her, his muscular torso dominating the space above her like a rock precipice hanging over the gorge. How quickly the roles reverse.

With his eyes closed, his mouth started to meander over the woman’s face, neck and chest, a blind man feeling his way over a new, yet at the same time familiar territory. His weight supported on his left arm and elbow, his right hand began to caress her flat stomach that was visibly rising with each deep breath she took. Romeo was facing Jake and Marina, yet he chose to continue to ignore them. If the woman was ever aware of someone else’s presence, she too was by now oblivious to everything but the immortal, her face turned sideways, also towards them, but with eyes closed and mouth half open, head thrown back, exposing the long pale neck.

Romeo’s tongue darted out of his mouth and slowly ran over her skin from her collarbone to her ear, as if tasting his pray. She shuddered, and then shuddered again when his hand, up to know caressing circles over her stomach, now slid inside her panties. Her body arched and a soft moan escaped through her parted lips.

Then two things happened very quickly, and Jake wasn’t sure later which one came first. Marina’s hand reached out to him, her fingers entwining themselves with his, gripping him tightly, and Romeo pulled his head back and then with a lightning ferocity brought his mouth back to the woman’s neck.

Jake heard a gasp, and he couldn’t tell if it was the woman, or Marina, or both. All he knew was that Marina’s grasp on his hand tightened even more and the woman’s body stiffened, frozen in an arch of white flesh, like an alabaster bridge, the only movement now from Romeo’s hand, still stuck between her legs, and his mouth voraciously gnawing on her neck.

Then Jake saw a small trickle of darkish liquid escape from under Romeo’s lips and flow, taken in by the force of gravity, down her neck and onto her left shoulder, before sinking into the sheet. Here be blood, finally.

He realised he was neither aroused nor repulsed by what he saw. Even know, with the life gushing out of the woman’s neck artery and down Romeo’s greedy throat and spilling onto her skin, the whole thing still somehow did not feel quite real to Jake. He could feel the warmth of Marina’s body as she drew herself up against his arm, and he wondered why it was her, the local, the native, his guide to the underworld who has seen it all before, that the spectacle stirred some primordial tremors and not him, the sophisticated rube from the normal world out there. Was it the computer games and CNN that desensitised him, or would the shock come later, delayed? Or worse, would it be boredom instead?

He felt around behind him and to the side with his left hand and found the door handle. He pulled it down and then pulled the door ajar. Without a word he slid sideways through the gap, dragging her behind him.

She seemed flushed, even in the dim red glow of the corridor, and slightly out of breath. Her grip on him was still tight and her hand felt burning, so unlike the cold air in the room they’d just left behind.

They stood silent for a while, not quite looking at each other, waiting for the other to make the first move.

“I’m sorry,” she went in first. “I... didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, or... Just thought it something you might... should... see. It’s part of who we are.”

“Not you,” Jake said.

“No,” she raised her head and looked him straight in the eyes, “but of this land. Your grandfather came from a country of old towns and little villages, where Ruthenes and Poles and Ukrainians and Jews have lived side by side for centuries; a country where trees talked to you, men changed into animals, and others drank blood of human beings.”

“No wonder he got out,” Jake said, “and never spoke a word about it.”

“You don’t know why he left,” she seemed wounded by his words.

“Neither do you,” he said. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

“As I said, I’m sorry-“ she started.

“No need to apologize,” he squeezed her hand. “I just thought that I’ve seen enough and the fair Romeo deserved some privacy with his Juliet... to finish the feast. And whatever else they might want to do.”

“You Americans can be such prudes,” she said, cracking a weak smile. The tension seemed to slowly drain from her body and her grip softened.

“Hey, we invented pornography,” Jake said.

“Actually, it was probably ancient Greeks and Romans.”

“Well, we turned into a multi-billion-dollar industry,” he laughed. “Anyway, thanks for the cultural experience RiG style. If you ever come to New York, I’ll return the favour and take you to a Broadway production.”

“Well, I haven’t finished with you yet,” she said. “The night is still young, and there’s more to see in Czernograd.”

Jesus, he thought, I hope she won’t try to top this for shock value.

“Are you in?” she tugged at his hand.

“Sure,” he said. It could only get saner, he decided. Surely.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash