— 8 —
By the time her grandfather returned, Costin had gone to a rehearsal, and Ruksana had the previous night’s stew reheated. Before she could even tell him about Costin, he pointed at her and said, “What did you do?”
“Costin, he —”
“He painted your hair?” He flicked at the white tuft with his finger. “That’s not … That reallyis your hair.”
“I know. It happened this morning sometime. I’m not sure I know why — maybe a nightmare I had.” She thought of the leaking glacial fluid, but that had fallen on her cheek. She’d been wearing a helmet.
Her grandfather brooded as if the hair meant something that he couldn’t quite recall. He pressed a knuckle against his nose, but whatever he was thinking, he didn’t voice it, and finally sighed, defeated, and went on as if it was nothing. “But he was here, your Costin.”
She imagined that he could smell what they’d gotten up to even under the spicy aroma of the stew. “This morning. He came by to invite me to the symphony. You’re invited, too.”
“When?”
“Two nights.”
“Ah. That’s too bad. I cannot that evening.”
She looked at him critically and he turned aside as if something in the other room had suddenly caught his interest. “Why, you have a date, don’t you?”
He broke into a secret smile. “I have a life, you know. Like Costin, I didn’t sit here and brood all the time you were away. Not that I think Costin is also dating a forty-seven year old widow.”
“Forty-seven. You’re robbing the cradle.”
He looked at her, about to object, but then replied, “Yes, I am, and I’m enjoying the hell out of it.” Then he waved the matter aside. “But let me tell you what I heard at university today. And it was on the radio. Talk of vampires. Not pretend ones. Real live vampires.”
“Isn’t that a contradiction, bunicul?”
He considered what he’d said and chuckled. “Once it might have been. This is something else. This is something exciting.”
“One of the people on my team was talking about this. She lived in New York, and it worried her to go home. She made it sound like gang violence, not like something supernatural.”
“But it is supernatural, you see? The supernatural merging into the natural.”
She formulated a rebuttal about belief in the supernatural, but then stopped herself. He was holding onto his excitement with the pure zeal of a small boy. She didn’t want to attack that.
Her mother had been the practical one who dismissed grandfather’s flights of fantasy — his tales of Baba Yaga, of goblins, witches, and werewolves. It seemed to fall along sexual lines. The men in the family wallowed in the fantastic, the women were the practical, level-headed ones. Which wasn’t to say that scientists didn’t dream, too; only that it wasn’t huts on chicken legs that populated their dreams.
Thus, while she suspected anything in the media to be at best a hyperbolic account, she let it go. As grandfather had so often said, folklore and fact could be mirror images, once you established how the distortions disguised the commentary or the cautionary warning about real dangers. She believed him, although for her, the two really did not mix any better than reality and religion.
— 9 —
Two nights later, she ate a small dinner alone and then left early to get to the Ateneul Roman on time. She wanted to drive there, and needed to retrieve her small, dark blue Dacia Logan from storage parking. Her grandfather did not drive, and while she could have ridden the trolleys, she hoped to stop at university and collect her departmental mail on the way home after the performance.
The concert was wonderful, which was hardly a surprise. The George Enescu Philharmonic always delivered a grand program. Their rendition of Dukas was both sinister and comic, the Sibelius rich and emotional as his work always was. But it was the S˛ostakovici that most affected her. Marica, the handsome cello soloist, drew a full range of passion from the instrument as it conversed with and cajoled the orchestra. In the fourth movement she sat with eyes closed as the music painted a world behind her eyelids, whisked her on a mad, unstoppable run through a forest. Where the imagery came from, she didn’t know, but it was so precise, so certainly a forest around her; it was all she could do to make herself sit still as it swept her along. This was unusual from something that wasn’t program music — that didn’t claim to be telling a story from the beginning.
She wasn’t the only one affected, as witnessed by the standing ovation for Marica, the director, Valentin Raymond, and the whole of the orchestra.
Afterwards she joined Costin and five others in a celebration. They might have been classically trained musicians, but they drank and partied like rock stars, and some had their groupies, too. With the exception of Toma, who was a new boyfriend of Aurelia, the second violinist, Ruksana knew them all, as they knew about her situation. So the first round were all “Welcome home” toasts. Aurelia asked if Antarctica was colder than Bucureşti. She explained that along the coast it could be almost temperate, because it was summer there in February. Bogdan, a percussionist, announced, “Then, I am going to winter in Antarctica next year!”
Costin commented, “And if you wear this tuxedo, you can mate with a penguin.”
Irina, a clarinetist, said, “He had better hope it’s blind.”
That sent them into a flurry of teases and insults until, in a lull, one of the older members, Sebastian, who played oboe and had crazy, thick eyebrows, asked “Did any of you hear about the vampires in America?”
“Isn’t that one of their political parties?” Aurelia offered.
“Or a church. Over there they invent a new one every fifteen minutes,” said Toma. He was short with black hair.
“Hardly new,” replied Bogdan. “We Orthodox have been drinking blood for centuries in our rituals.”
“Always ahead of the curve, are you, Bogdan?” asked Costin.
Bogdan wrapped a massive arm around Irina. “And what is wrong with that? Who wants to be behind it?”
“Maybe you should join these vampires.”
“If they exist.” Irina stepped out from under his arm, then added, “Of course, if he’s joining up, we can be almost sure they don’t.”
Aurelia turned to Ruksana. “Your grandfather’s a folklorist, isn’t he? I’ve read one of his books even. What does he think of this?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “But he heard the same report as Sebastian. He mentioned it as I was leaving for the concert.”
Toma, who sported a burnt orange scarf and had nervous eyes, tossed the end of it over his shoulder for perhaps the third time. “Then there really was a report — there are vampires?”
Everyone looked at Sebastian. He shrugged. “I didn’t create them.” He tossed back his drink, and indicated to a waiter that he would have another. “Take it up with Vlad the Impaler.”
“That’s right,” said Bogdan. “We’ve had the vampir much longer than the Americans. We own the franchise.”
Irina shook her head. Aurelia leaned over to her and said loudly, “You can come stay with me tonight.”
Toma gaped. Ruksana, seeing it, said, “Better have protection, Irina.”
“Ooh. A condom or a stake?” asked Costin.
Irina replied, “Both.”
“You’re all terrible,” said Aurelia.
“How many of us have you tried?”
It was Sebastian who said it, so unexpected that Bogdan choked on his ale and the table erupted with howls of laughter.
— 10 —
Ruksana decided to go home. She would have stayed with Costin, but he was happily energized for a late night, and she could feel herself already flagging. She wanted to get to the university and home before the sun came up — which made her laugh, as it sounded exactly like a vampire’s complaint … at least, the old world version of a vampire. And a vampire would have loved the supermoon.
Costin insisted on walking her to her car, which she’d parked on a small side street, and along the way, she caught glimpses of the orange moon between buildings. He didn’t seem to notice, but by then he had downed various beers and was weaving slightly as he walked beside her; not so drunk that she had to hold him up, but on his way.
“I’m more worried about you getting lost on the way back to the club,” she told him as he held the car door for her to get in.
He laughed and pounded his chest like King Kong. “I’m not in any danger from anything except love!” He was about to say more, but she put her finger on his lips, then replaced it with her own lips. When she pulled away, he said, “You go home and sleep now, young lady, because tomorrow I intend to ravish you again.” Then he leaned in, kissed her and shut the door. He stood in the cold, his breath a ribbon, until she started the car and put it in gear. In her mirror he waved furiously until she’d turned the corner. She decided then and there that she loved him beyond words.
The university was at the other end of the city center. She drove down the Bulevardul Nicolae Balescu and finally got a good look at the huge moon. Its light felt warm in the chilly interior of her car.
The university was all but deserted. She parked nearly on the sidewalk in front of the Old Building. What was unique about the University of Bucures¸ti was that it had no single campus. Its buildings were spread all over the city. No one was about, and she entered and went straight up to the central office.
Her small mailbox was full, in fact stuffed. Journals, notices about events that had already occurred, like the Christmas party, and books that she had requested had been crammed into the pigeonhole with her name on it. An overflow basket bearing her name sat on the counter beneath it, and that was full, too.
She sorted through most of it, tossing aside the obviously irrelevant, dead mail. The rest she carried or stuffed into her shoulder bag. She could read it more carefully at home, tomorrow.