Part 5 (1/2)
And I, ever the emotional one, the weak one. stood at my father's yawning grave braced between those two rocks in the cloudy morning-I, with my raven hair so different from their golden waves, my hot tears mingling with the cold mist that began to fall. I am different from them all-Bram, Mama, Papa. An outsider, subject to emotions and pa.s.sions and a restless uncertainty that my calm, steady family cannot comprehend. Indeed, everyone in this city, this tiny kingdom is so industrious, so even-tempered, so conformist and concerned with the practical undertakings of life that I feel out of place.
To please Papa, I followed in his footsteps and became, like Bram, a physician. But my heart is in my poetry.
Gerda understands. She is dark-haired, like me, dark-eyed, and I cannot help thinking we are cast from the same mould. I knew the instant I first saw her, all those years ago: her long hair matted and tousled, her eyes wild as she sat on the floor of her cell, knees hugged to her bosom. Not a pretty woman, but a striking one. Small and fine-boned, thin, with hollows sculpted beneath her eyes, her cheeks, that shadows seek out.
A madwoman, they said, but my brother had seen something more, and I saw from the expression on his face as he peered through the bars at her that she had already captured his heart.
As she did mine that day.
As a boy, Bram constantly brought home stray and injured animals; his generosity is as deep and boundless as the ocean that surrounds us. As a man, he has not changed; but now his strays are of the two-legged variety, and just as needy. She was one of his charity cases, Gerda was, abandoned by her father to the sanitorium, deemed intractably mad.
I remember Bram turned to me that day and, with far more tenderness than his usual clinical air of a physician making his rounds, asked, There is hope for this one, don't you think?Yes, I said. There is definitely hope.
I gazed into her eyes: troubled, tormented, and restless, as.h.i.+ne with sensitivity and the skittishness of an untamed deer. I knew at once I had met a kindred soul. No-not met.
Recognised.
And in one swift instant, my heart was stolen. It has been lost now four years, though I spoke of it to no one; certainly not my kind-hearted brother, who within a matter of eighteen months had healed her, wooed her, wed her. I watched her bloom beneath Bram's protective aegis, beneath my family's. I watched them bear a son.
And I have watched her once more grow unhappy, restless. Bram is a loving husband and father; but beyond his stolid dependability, he possesses his own restless drive, one that he submerges utterly in work and study. He is absorbed in his world of medicine and law; and now that he has salvaged Gerda, he is ever in search of new helpless ones to redeem.
Less dedicated to my medical practise, I have been home when Bram has not. On those occasions when Bram was off studying some new madman, some exotic malady, I became Gerda's squire, a doting uncle to my little nephew, Jan; indeed, I think I know him better than his own father. I contained myself, bore my unrequited love in silence all these years- though I fancied at times she signalled her secret love for me with special smiles and looks, comments that, when weighed carefully, might have carried double meaning.
But I, dutiful brother, did not permit myself to believe; and if I believed, did not permit myself to acknowledge. Bram has always been loyal, kind, tolerant of my temperamental outbursts; when Papa first became ill, Bram filled the role of mentor and fatherly advisor.
How could I betray him? Surely my capricious heart would find another object of adoration in due time; I would be patient, and soon my obsession with her would dwindle.
But the more I was in her presence, the more my love grew. Many a time over the past four tormented years have I returned in memory to that moment I first saw her huddled in the sanitorium cell-ah, but it is I who am now the madman, strait-jacketed by my own emotions. And now, what I have long dreamt of, what I have long feared, has happened.
Two nights ago-the evening Papa died-I was sitting downstairs in the drawing-room, in Papa's favourite chair, mourning. It was late, past mid-night, and the others were all asleep or weeping in the privacy of their rooms; Mama was holding vigil over the body. I was too restless for bed, too distraught even to stir the coals or light the lamp. So I sat in near- darkness, staring at the glowing embers in the fireplace, when my eye caught something white and wraithlike crossing through the room.
It moved stealthily towards the mantel, and as it stepped between me and the fire, I recognised Gerda. She wore nothing but her dressing-gown; I can never forget how, that night, the fireglow limned the white silk, revealing the slope of a perfect breast beneath. She took a gla.s.s and poured from Papa's carafe of port, then turned, clearly bent on making a quick escape with her prize.
As she did so, she caught sight of me at last, letting go of her gla.s.s with a loud gasp.
Fortunately, at that same instant, I rose instinctively, managing with no small amount of fumbling to catch the gla.s.s. Wine sloshed onto the fine silk of her robe, onto me, perfuming the air with a sweet oaken fragrance, but the gla.s.s was saved. The act left me pressed against her; my first impulse was to immediately retreat and restore propriety, but to my surprise, I moved closer, closer, until I could feel the rapid beating of her heart, until the world receded and I could see nothing but her eyes, as free from sophistication and guile as a feral beast, needing to be soothed and tamed by a tender voice.
She did not pull away. I knew then I had not deluded myself; she loved me as I loved her, and for a long, frozen moment we stood poised on the verge of a kiss.
It was I who finally, reluctantly, backed away. She stared at me a second more, then fled upstairs with her half-empty gla.s.s.
I was torn between grief over Papa's death and joy that, at long last, I knew my love requited. That night I shook off guilt and swore that if she appeared to me again under the same circ.u.mstances, I would not back away.
This evening-after all the mourners had left, and Mama had closeted herself in her bedroom, and Bram had gone to make his customary late rounds of homebound patients-I sat waiting in Papa's chair again, watching as dusk fell over the grey November landscape, over the flat muddy street, the carriages, the rows of neat brick houses all the same, the windmills beyond, the invisible lurking sea. The chair brings me comfort, for it smells of Papa and his pipe; I found one of his silvered blond hairs on the seat, and his bag of tobacco on the end-table.
I poured myself a gla.s.s of his port from the mantel and thought I understood why Gerda had come to drink it: the taste and smell evoked him so-not the sick wasted creature he had become in those final terrible days, but the laughing great blond bear who had loved his children, his wife, his patients with a cheerful, tolerant, expansive love.
I drank until the twilight faded to full darkness, until the street emptied and the house grew altogether still save for the steady ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall. I drank until at last I heard soft footfall on the stairs, then rose and moved to the hearth to stir the fire.
When I turned, she was standing in the doorway, once again dressed in the dressing-gown of white silk; this time, her dark hair fell free onto her shoulders, her bosom, her waist. We studied each other a time like reluctant conspirators, and then she said: ”I heard a noise. I thought perhaps Abraham had returned.”
Emboldened by the port, I held her gaze. ”We both know he won't be back for some hours.”
My directness unnerved her; her eyelids fluttered as she averted her gaze. I thought her on the verge of bolting like a hunted animal, but some strange determination held her back.
She squared her frail shoulders and said, ”You look so like him, sitting there. Your father was a good man.”
I shook my head. ”I wish I were good like him. Like Bram.”
She stepped towards me, her voice raising with the intensity of her conviction. ”But you are!
You are good. Better than them all!”
”No. I am a dreadful man. Because what would bring me the greatest joy would only bring hurt to those I care for.”
Silence. Then softly, so softly I could scarce make out the words, she replied, ”Then I am dreadful, too, Stefan.”
Her expression became one of such profound un-happiness that I began to weep, my grief over Papa's death mixing with honest sorrow at our predicament.
She moved swiftly to me. We embraced, not so much with l.u.s.t as pure unhappiness, and she stroked my hair, murmuring, ”Hush, hush . . .” in the same gentle tone she uses to comfort her little son.
What happened next I am ashamed to relay. Whether it was the port, the grief, the very nearness of her that loosed the last of my inhibitions, I cannot say. But my lips found the soft white skin of her cheek, her throat, the sweet hollow above her collarbone; my pa.s.sion was kindled beyond all return, and I reached for her with the trembling desperation of a starving man grasping a crust of bread. Through some miracle, the white silk dressing-gown parted and fell away, revealing the sublime.
With swift desperate hunger, I took her, she standing pressed against the warm stone hearth. Or was it she who took me? She was a lioness, a G.o.ddess, full of fire and brazen need, reaching for me unashamed, sinking nails and teeth into my shoulder and gripping me with a fierceness that belied her frail body. Never was my spirit more exalted; never in a church, a chapel have I come closer to the numinous, the divine. It is the world that is mad, not I, to deem such ecstasy sin.
I was transported to the very gates of Heaven. How can this be evil, for two souls who so love each other to unite?
We coupled silently, violently; such was my excitement that I soon was spent. At once, she tore herself from me and hurried off into the darkness, leaving me to sink gasping to my knees upon the hearth.
Distraught at this abrupt abandonment, I struggled to rise, desiring to follow her, to profess my love and gain rea.s.surance from her; desiring only to be near her.
But before I could regain my balance, the front door slammed and I heard familiar footfall: Bram. I smoothed my dishevelled appearance and hid in the shadows, fighting to still my laboured breathing, praying that he would not enter the drawing-room.
My request was heard; he moved back towards the kitchen. I hurried upstairs and closeted myself in my room.
Were it not for the physical evidence that remains on my own body, I would have thought it all a drunken dream, the visitation of an incubus. But her dew, her scent lingers on me still (I cannot bring myself to wash it away), and my shoulder bears the stripes of her pa.s.sion.
What now? Morning will surely come and bring with it regret and fresh antic.i.p.ation. Shall I pretend it never happened and live in misery? Or shall I arrange to meet her again? Even now, the memory fills me with such fire that I imagine going to her door and finding Bram heavily asleep, and her restless, waiting for me. . . .
Abraham, my brother! How I have wronged you . . . and how I tremble with guilty delight at the thought of wronging you again!
I have found love at last. But my heart cannot understand the insanity of it all: Why must it be so difficult, so fraught with guilt? Why must my joy bring others such pain?
The Diary of Abraham Van Helsing 19 NOVEMBER 1871.
Death and the Devil, Lilli said, and she was right; the Devil has come, and murdered my heart.
Impossible for the day to grow more evil-so I foolishly thought-for it began in the cold grey morning with Papa's burial. It is hard to see a man who brought the world such good turn to dust, as we all shall. I try to take comfort in knowing that the results of his charitable deeds will outlive him by many years.