Camille — Part I

In 1892, Belém a town in Brazil became rich selling Amazonian rubber to the world, enriching the peasants overnight, who built mansions with materials from Europe, while their wives and daughters sent their clothes to the old continent to be washed, and imported mineral water from London for their luxurious baths. Champagne and liquor flowed generously and the lives of the impoverished were forever and irrevocably altered. Fortune, it seemed, favored Belém. 

Theatro da Paz was the center of cultural life in Brazil, and hosted frequent concerts by many European artists. Among them, one especially drew the attention of the public, the beautiful French opera singer, Camille Monfort, who provoked unspeakable desires in the rich lords of the region, and atrocious jealousy amongst their wives due to her unparalleled beauty and sophistication. At first, she only visited Belém, but soon she relocated, immediatley becoming the most beautiful resident. 

Camille also caused outrage for her behavior that was free from the social conventions of the time. Legend has it that she was often seen half-naked, dancing through the streets while she cooled off in the afternoon rain. Curiosity was also aroused by her solitary night walks, when locals saw her in her long black flowing dresses, under the full moon, on the banks of the Guajará River, walking towards the Igarapé das Almas.

Soon, around her, rumors arose and malicious comments were brought to life. Such was inevitable, by human nature, but no one can say for certain which of the rumors were true and which were not. It was said that she was the lover of Francisco Bolonha, the wealthiest man in Belém, and it was he who had brought her from Europe. They said that he bathed her with expensive champagne in the gold bathtub of her mansion that he gifted her, a magnificent three-story home with marble floors and granite pillars. There was a pool inside of that mansion that a few witnesses to the extravagance of her lifestyle claimed was painted red, or that it was filled with red wine, or blood. 

It was claimed that she had been attacked by vampirism in London, on a European tour, due to her pallor and sickly appearance, and that she had brought this great evil to Belém with her, having the mysterious urge to drink human blood. She was also accused of hypnotizing young women with her voice at her concerts, causing them to fall into a sleeplike trance and follow her to her mansion afterwards as though they were sleepwalking. The accounts of the sleepwalkers of Belém were many, and many young women and men disappeared into the night never to be seen again. This, curiously, coincided with reports of hysteria and fainting in the theater during her concerts, which were explained simply as an effect of the strong emotion that her music evoked in the ears and hearts of the public, and the sight of her overwhelming beauty, which was too much for anyone's eyes to consume.

It was also said that she had the power to communicate with the dead, and to materialize her spirits in dense ethereal mists of ectoplasmic materials expelled from her own body, in mediumistic seances. Without a doubt, they were the first manifestations in Brazil of what would later be called "spiritualism," practiced in mysterious cults in palaces in Belém, such as the Palacete Pinho. Her alleged affair with Francisco Bolonha came to an abrupt end when he was found lifeless in the Guajará River, murdered, all the blood drained from his decomposed corpse from a wound the newspapers would not disclose for the sake of decency. A prostitute was blamed and jailed for the crime, but while awaiting trial she somehow escaped and was never seen again. It appeared that Belém had inadvertently traded poverty and anonymity for wealth and wickedness, and although luxurious, the swelling underbelly of unsavory characters and criminals of certain means could not be ignored or repelled.  

That was until the end of 1896, when a terrible outbreak of cholera devastated the city of Belém, allegedly making Camille Monfort one of its unfortunate victims. She was buried in the Soledade Cemetery. Her grave is still there, covered with slime, moss and dry leaves, under a huge mango tree that makes it plunge into the darkness of the canopy of its shadow, only illuminated by a few rays of sun that are projected through the green leaves. It is a neoclassical mausoleum with a door closed by an old rusty padlock, from which a female bust in white marble can be seen on the wide lid of the abandoned tomb, and attached to the wall, a small framed image of a woman dressed in black.

On her tombstone there is the following inscription:

"Here lies

Camille Marie Monfort (1869 – 1896)

The voice that charmed the world."

It ought to read "the most beautiful woman in the world," for by all accounts, that is how she was commonly known by those that had seen her. Perhaps, it was only jealousy that gave life to such vile and viscous rumors. But, regardless, her headstone offers only a modest inscription, perhaps keeping with her love of privacy.  

There are those who say that her grave is empty, that her death and burial were nothing more than an act of subterfuge to cover up the guilt of vampirism, and that Camille Monfort still lives, in Europe today, at the age of 154, still the same beautiful woman, unphased by time. A woman that could charm any man with a look, and who could seduce anyone with her voice. 

I traveled to Belém because I had lived in Miami the past few years, mostly drunk and bored, and I couldn't imagine that someone so beautiful existed, yet, so terrible. Someone who murdered and plagued society for so long and who possibly still does somehwhere, if the fantastic accounts of her life are to be believed. 

I journaled my efforts in retiring vampires over the years, stamping the disease of vampirism out of the world entirely being my soul purpose to carry on at all in a world so miserable and dull, otherwise. So predictable, hypocritical, and abysmally mundane. I am a bounty hunter, but I am paid no bounty other than the self-satisfaction that comes from killing them. I have retired 26 vampires in all, most of no real account — scragglers, as I call them. Many of them were on meth. Nightcrawlers. Some might not have been vampires at all, but some were. But none were certainly of the caliber of Camille Monfort, and none that were ever described as being so beautiful or so treacherous as the fiction so often falsely lauds them. 

No one paid me to do so. It was merely an unacknowledged public service I was performing for the good of mankind. As a deer hunter hunts deer. There was no acclaim for doing what I did. And no one was grateful for no one could possibly know that I saved their life someday for they would not have had the misfortune to meet the vampire I already slayed. Their life was never in peril because I kept them from peril. Preventative action is difficult to appreciate. How many condoms go unthanked? How many x-ray machines or seatbelts? I needed no praise, however, and if I had it, I'd probably do something else. I was a solitary man, for the most part. I loved beautiful women and they were a definite weakness in my character. Beautiful women and booze. 

I made my money as an antiquities dealer. Good money. I owned a shop in Sleepy Hollow, New York, an apartment above it, and high-end clientele from all over the world came to me for various items of their fancy. Something to complete their collection of this or that. I would find it, buy it for one price and sell it to them for a standard markup of 50 percent or more depending upon worth, value and their expendable wealth in relation to their desire to own whatever it was. Often I dealt in unusual items, not always antiques, so travel was a large part of my business and a natural cover to my murderous hobby. 

I traveled to Belém to dig up Camille's grave while I was in Brazil to buy a tecpatl, which was a knife used by Aztec priests to open the chest of human sacrifice victims to extract the heart that was offered to the gods, in the hope that their bloody offerings would bring blessings — usually rain or sun. A heart doctor in Iowa collected such and was ready to pay handsomely for the brutal tool. I often wondered if he ever held the heart of a patient like those priests before God came to them with an offering of his own called western civilization. Murder is simply a part of the history of the world and man spends a great deal of time attempting to justify his own murderous deeds, while villifying those of others. And though thou shall not kill, thou do. We all kill, we are just blinded by cognitive dissonance and phony reasoning to negate the evilness of our act or the act committed on our behalf by a butcher or a president. History is full of murder and murderers, labeled as heroes and villains, their acts sepulchered in the dust of libraries. 

Belém is where I knew I must begin searching for Camille. My mind raced as the silver blade of my shovel descended further into the soft brown Earth that almost parted in agreement with my  peregrination. Then, at last, as I hit her coffin, a thick-laquered walnut sarcophagus which seemed ashamed of the dirt it bore, and relieved that I cleared it, there was a solemn and empty thud. I stood there for a moment and gathered myself, breathed deeply, wiped the sweat from my face from the damn terrible humidity, cracked open the lid with a crowbar, and inside there was nothing but an empty cocoon appropriatley lined with blood-red satin, absent one body, as I expected. I felt an insatiable sense of satisfaction overcome me as I stood there in her empty grave. The realization of purpose for at least one more crusade. The only thing in the coffin besides that red satin inlay was a note, presumably from Camille herself which read, in beautiful French caligraphy, "C'est le même. Dans la mort comme dans la vie," which translates to English as: It is the same. In death as in life. 

I put the note in my pocket and sealed the coffin. A dog barked nearby and stirred some sort of jaguar out of a tree which jumped closeby and snarled at me. I fell back into the hole on top of the closed coffin and my only choice was to wait until the jaguar was gone, but the dog persisted and its barking and howling grew louder and nearer so I hurriedly clawed my way out of the hole, despite the possible proximity of the jaguar, and ran the distance of the black iron fence to the brick pillar that I had scaled to get in, which I hurriedly scaled to get out. I had no time to replace the dirt so my trespass would be known, which would mean that Camille would know, wherever she was, and which would mean she would likely take precautions she might not normally take so far removed from her lavish life in the Amazon 154 years ago. 

"Fuck that jaguar," I cursed. "And fuck that fucking dog!" I decided to hide out in the weeds despite the danger, until the dog passed, to return to refill the hole of her grave. There was a chance the dog was leashed and was a caretaker's mutt, so I knew I was in danger of being discovered and possibly arrested. Grave robbery was not among my many past arrests, but trespassing certainly was. 

I couldn't afford for her to know. I would need all the advantage I could have over her if I was going to find and kill her. After an hour of dealing with spiders and snakes and various insects that would gladly give me malaria, I was able to complete the task and her secret remained, only myself the richer. And the only thing that I stole from her empty lie of a barren casket was that worthless letter. 

Once back at the hotel, I had a bath and then went for a drink and thought of Old Belém and what it must have been like under the shadows of night and the flickering gaslight of the street lamps. W

I wondered what her voice must have sounded like in the Theatro De Paz, where she performed. It was empty that night, but I was able to go inside and tour it and I sat for a while admiring the beautiful muraled ceiling and the ornate craftsmanship of the balconies and walls. The sconces and the pillars. The rich red tapestry and gold-laced curtains. I could practically hear her sing. I could almost see her ghost on stage. I was only 154 years or so too late. 

I took a walk to the places where she might have walked after a performance. There were several old bars that dated back to her time when the town became rich on the exportation of rubber. When bars and restaurants arose from the swampy stumps of dead trees and the importation of liquor and rich tourists bred a sudden and unconsumable wealth.

Old men were anxious to tell me the stories, some of Camille, but there wasn't a picture to be had of her because she insisted on no photographs, they claimed. Then they tried to sell me things when they learned I was an antiquity dealer, and even more when they learned I was an American, presuming I was the insatiable consumer so many American tourists before me were. Their English was horribly hindered by a lack of practice and drowned in the wine and liquor they so generously shared with me. I would ask them if they knew of the legend of vampirism in Belém, but I needed no further confirmation than what I got from Camille's empty grave, and it was more than likely that they'd tell me wild stories embellished by time and molested by liquor-induced imagination. I've heard it all before. 

The first thing I learned about vampires was that, for the most part, everything I've ever been told before was false. After a few kills, I began to separate fact from fiction. I would interview some of the ones I killed before they died. Those previously accepted notions of what vampires are are almost entirely fiction, created to stir emotion and to sell penny dreadfuls. The myths of vampirism are as old as the legends, so I will quickly dispell them, with the caveat that I am not omnipotent, and this is from my experience only. 

Vampires do not have an aversion to garlic. They don't shy away at the flash of a cross, or with the sprinkle of Holy Water. They don't burn in the sun, but they typically favor the night for it offers them more privacy and a safer place to hunt with plenty of undesirables about. So, generally, they are nocturnal by opportunistic necessity. They see their reflection in the mirror, like anyone. They breathe and have a heartbeat. Blood circulates through their veins, but not as it does in a normal human-being. Their blood pressure is considerably low, though I have never taken vitals on one to know for sure. And contrary to belief, they age. Slowly. But they do age. Perhaps the ratio is one year to a hundred years. I believe that I once calculated it, but lost my notes to a fire. 1.7 years to a hundred normal human years sounds right. No, they don't turn into bats, and their teeth are not pointy unless they file them (which some do). They drink the blood of humans. Not animals. They can live off "skimming," which most do, but which usually requires them to hold someone captive as no one would normally volunteer. They can and have been known to rob blood banks, though, in vampire culture that is lowbrow. They don't have to kill their victims, but they often do because of their voracious appetites. And they don't fucking sparkle. 

One day I will write a comprehensive book because I could go on and on. But I got distracted by an attractive prostitute who was sitting on a wine cask in one of the bars I wandered into. Her dark olive skin glistened with sweat and was vibrant against the contrast of her pillowy white blouse and perfect teeth. Her skirt and legs kept parting for me as though to entice me. But her eyes are what lured me in. Her magnificent beautiful large almond-like eyes that seemed flecked with gold dust in the nebulous glow of the faint light of a sole chandelier. And when she smiled, her eyes looked as though they were on fire and I knew that I was her prey.  

I ended up back at the hotel with her. We made love several times and I thought of the one picture of Camille that remains. The one I have that no one else in the world has, not even the town in which she helped make famous, where her name lives in great infamy or reverence, depending upon who you ask. Surely, there would have been other pictures taken that she would have destroyed. It was likely she refused pictures, as one of the drunk old men had said, but why not this one? Why did she agree to have her photo taken in this instance, but not in any other? And what was that in her hand? It appears to be a notebook of sorts. Like a paperback Moleskine. Perhaps she was also a poet or maybe it was a book of lyrics. Did she write her own songs? Were the rumors true of her power to influence and seduce? 

The prostitute, whose name I never got, distracted me from my personal inquiry rather directly and gathered my wandering mind and fed it back to me in long passionate kisses, and the alcohol, another indelible weakness of mine, diluted my passion for my hobby, at least for a while. I obsessed no more of Camille Monfort that night, though she was sure to return by morning.