Chapter 52
“Where can we sleep?” Barley said doubtfully. We were in our hotel room in Perpignan, a double room we’d gotten by telling the elderly clerk, too, that we were brother and sister. He’d given it to us without a murmur, although he’d looked dubiously from one of us to the other. We couldn’t afford separate rooms, and we both knew it. “Well?” Barley said, a little impatiently. We looked at the bed. There was no other place, not even a rug on the bare and polished floor. Finally Barley made a decision-for himself, at least. While I stood frozen to the spot, he went into the bathroom with some clothes and a toothbrush, emerging a few minutes later in cotton pajamas as pale as his hair.
Something about this picture, and his failure at nonchalance, made me laugh aloud, even while my cheeks burned, and then he began to laugh, too. We both laughed until the tears rent our faces-Barley bent double, crossing his arms over his skinny middle, and I clutching the depressing old armoire. In hysterical laughter, we relinquished all the tension of the trip, my fears, Barley’s disapproval, my father’s anguished letters, our arguments. Years later, I learned the termfou rire -a crazy fit of laughter-and that was my first one, there in that French hotel. My firstfou rire was followed by other firsts, as we stumbled toward each other. Barley grabbed my shoulders with as little elegance as I had held onto the armoire a moment before, but his kiss was angelically graceful, his youthful experience pressing softly into my utter lack of it. Like our laughter, it left me winded.
All my previous knowledge of lovemaking was drawn from polite movies and confusing books, and I was mostly unable to proceed. Barley, however, proceeded for me, and I followed gratefully, if clumsily. By the time we found ourselves lying on the stale, neat bed, I had already learned something of the negotiation between lovers and their clothing. Each garment seemed to me a momentous decision, Barley’s pajama shirt first of all; its removal revealed an alabaster torso and surprisingly muscled shoulders. The shedding of my blouse and ugly white brassiere was as much my decision as his. He told me that he loved the color of my skin, because it was completely different from his, and it was true that my arm had never looked so olive as when it lay against the snow of Barley’s. He drew the flat of his hand across me, and across my remaining clothes, and for the first time I did the same to him, discovering the alien contours of the male body; I seemed to be feeling my way shyly over the craters of the moon. My heart knocked inside me with such force that I worried he would be able to feel it striking his breast.
In fact, there was so much to do, to take care of, that we didn’t remove any more clothing, and a great deal of time seemed to pass before Barley curled himself around me with a strangled sigh, murmuring, “You’re just a kid,” and put one arm possessively over my shoulders and neck.
When he said this, I suddenly knew that he, too, was just a kid-an honorable kid. I think I loved him more in that moment than at any other.
Chapter 53
“The borrowed apartment where Turgut had left Mr. Erozan was perhaps a ten-minute walk from his own-or a ten-minute run, because we all but ran, even Helen in her heeled pumps hurrying along with us. Turgut muttered (and swore, I guessed) under his breath. He had brought with him a little black bag, which I thought might contain medical supplies in case the doctor did not come, or didn’t come in time. At last we found ourselves climbing the wooden stairway in an old house. We tore up the stairs after Turgut and he threw open a door at the top.
“The house had apparently been divided into dingy little apartments; in this one a bed, chairs, and a table furnished the main room, and a single lamp lit it. Turgut’s friend lay on the floor with a blanket over him, and from beside him a stammering man of about thirty rose to greet us. The man was almost hysterical with fright and contrition; he kept wringing his hands and telling Turgut something over and over. Turgut pushed him aside and he and Selim knelt by Mr. Erozan. The poor victim’s face was ashen, his eyes were closed, and his breath came in rattling gasps. There was an ugly tear in his neck, larger than when we’d last seen it, but the more horrible because it was strangely clean, if ragged, with only a fringe of blood at the edges. It occurred to me that such a deep wound ought to bleed copiously, and the realization sent a thrill of nausea to my stomach. I put my arm around Helen and we stood staring, unable to look away.
“Turgut was examining the wound without touching it and now he glanced up at us. ‘A few minutes ago, this damnable man went for a strange doctor without consulting me, but the doctor was out. That, at least, is fortunate, because we do not want a doctor here now. But he left Erozan alone just at sunset.’ He spoke with Aksoy, who got up suddenly and-with a force I would not have predicted-struck the hapless watchman and sent him from the room. The man backed away and then we heard his terrified descent down the stairwell. Selim locked the door behind him and looked out the window to the street, as if to satisfy himself that the fellow wouldn’t be returning. Then he knelt by Turgut and they conferred in low voices.
“After a moment, Turgut reached into the bag he had brought with him. I saw him draw from it an object already familiar to me: it was a vampire-hunting kit similar to the one he had given me in his study more than a week earlier, except that this one was in a finer box, ornamented with Arabic writing and what looked like mother-of-pearl inlay. He opened it and took stock of the instruments inside. Then he looked up at us again. ‘Professors,’ he said quietly, ‘my friend has been bitten by the vampire at least three times, and he is dying. If he dies naturally in this condition, he will soon become undead.’ He wiped his forehead with a big hand. ‘This is a terrible moment now, and I must ask you to leave the room. Madam, you must not see this.’
“‘Please, let us do whatever will help you,’ I began hesitantly, but Helen stepped forward.
“‘Let me stay,’ she told Turgut in a low voice. ‘I want to know how it is done.’ For a moment, I wondered why she craved this knowledge and found myself remembering-surreal thought-that she was, after all, an anthropologist. He glared at her, then seemed to acquiesce without words, and bent again to his friend. I hoped, still, that what I had already guessed was wrong, but Turgut was murmuring something in his friend’s ear. He took Mr. Erozan’s hand and stroked it.
“Then-and this was perhaps the worst of all the awful things that followed-Turgut pressed his friend’s hand to his own heart and broke out in a keening wail, words that seemed to come to us from the depths of a history not only too ancient but too alien for me to distinguish their syllables, a howl of grief akin to the muezzin’s call to prayer, which we had heard from the minarets in the city-except that Turgut’s wail sounded more like a summons to hell-a string of horror-stricken notes that seemed to arise from the memory of a thousand Ottoman camps, a million Turkish soldiers. I saw the fluttering banners, the splashes of blood on the legs of their horses, the spear and the crescent, the glitter of sunlight on scimitars and chain mail, the beautiful and mutilated young heads, faces, bodies; heard the screams of men crossing into the hand of Allah and the cries of their faraway mothers and fathers; smelled the reek of burning houses and fresh gore, the sulfur of cannon fire, the conflagrations of tent and bridge and horseflesh.
“Most strangely, I heard in the midst of this roar a cry I could understand at will: ‘Kaziklu Bey!The Impaler!’ In the heart of the chaos I seemed to see a figure different from the rest, a dark-clad, cloaked man on horseback wheeling among the bright colors, his face drawn up in a snarl of concentration and his sword harvesting Ottoman heads, which rolled heavily in their pointed helmets.