Camille — Part III

Pidge smiled as he talked in the back of the cab, which I knew meant bad news. It was that sort of apologetic smile. The "forgive me for what I am about to say to you" thing. He cleared his throat and looked out the window as he leveled his words with assiduous consideration. "We have reason to believe that she is a — well, how do I put this — a doppelgänger. I can't say for certain that she is the actual lady in the picture. But it appears she might be this Camille Monfort. It is no exact science. So whatever you intend to do, and whoever for, you must know its not enough to act upon."

"I traveled to Belém to find her. Before I came here. They said she died of cholera in 1896. Only her grave is empty. I saw it. You can call her what you want, but this is her."

"1896? Wait. You believe — she is a vampire?" Pidge chuckled scratching his beard. I wanted to punch him in the throat, but he was the closest thing to a friend I had.

"She's been following me! You said it yourself. Your paper says it. Now why do you think that is? Your facial recognition software practically puts her on top of me the entire time I've been in Paris."

"Christ, Jude," he groused. "Jude George, the vampire hunter. What's that pay?"

"Pull over! Driver! Pull over! I cannot talk to you when you're not willing to listen to logic."

"Logic?" Pidge shot back. "Listen to yourself!"

The cabbie flung the wheel and skipped a curb. I reached over and opened his door. "Go fuck yourself, Paul."

"Come on, Jude. You can't just kill people in a civilized world because you have some fantasy they are a vampire and you're some kind of vampire hunter. You're living in a different fucking reality! Hell, I thought you were a respectable hitman. That's bad enough."

"Civilized world? Are you serious, Pidge?" 

He slid out, but he stood there looking like an objecting cigarette rolled out of the pack. Again in that white suit, but this one wrinkled. Or maybe it was the same one from yesterday and he was just lazy. He smelled stale. Like day-old sweat and some sort of cheap vinaigrette. Maybe it was the olives. That jar of olives he eats at his desk. I don't know how I know he does, but I do. I've never seen his desk. He stood there on the curb bitching protestations that were muffled by the closed window. I flipped him off for good measure as the cab squalled away. 

It took a while to get there. It was no surprise to me that she lived in the Quartier de l'Opéra, given her background. It was the site of the most famous opera house in the world — the Opéra Garnier — and saturated with the finest French restaurants satisfying tourists with great efficacy via the proximity of both entertainment and cuisine. The cabbie seemed familiar with the direction and within ten minutes, despite the congestion of cars, we arrived at the address on Rue Lulli which was between Avenue de l'Opéra and Rue de Richilieu, both of which I had spent time on in years past, though I couldn't recall why. 

I thought her apartment would be some grand spectacle, but it was a rather austere first floor studio apartment in a 19th century building in the 2nd arrondissement. It was the sort of place tourists rent when they intend not to be home often. Not that it was shabby in anyway, but vampires are opulent creatures, even when deficient of the means to be so. Perhaps Camille was simply hoping to live a more clandestine lifestyle — hoping not to be found. Beside her building was a wonderful park, and the national library was nearby, as well as a dozen or more tourist attractions of considerable significance. The sorts of places tourists circle on their paper maps. Maybe she fed well there on cheap rent. 

The street was filled with beautiful and enchanting restaurants and heavy pedestrian traffic. People walking about looking up. Mouths watering at the aromic flavor of the air. I stood outside her building beneath the cool shade of the horse chestnut trees in a small but immaculate garden area with a modest fountain — a rather impotent sort of fountain that spurted water reluctantly as though suffering some sort of temperamental malady or from exhaustion. The garden was bordered by a beautiful black wrought-iron fence and there was an abundance of shade and a large area for dogs that was presently unoccupied other than an orange trespassing stray cat, hoping to catch a bird. 

The building was by no means sterile. Nothing in France seems ever to be. Not the way things are in Germany and other places. There is a great pride in and of everything, architecture included. It was cut with large thin windows that were dressed in dark blue velvet drapes. The building itself was white brick, but the window and the accents were gold and black and looked modestly royal. 

It was silly, really. She knew I was here. She knew I was coming, and I presumed my arrival would be most unwelcomed and combative. I dare guess she knew for what purpose I came if she knew that much already. She was surely a hedonist like all vampires, consumed by greed and an inexorable taste for death. So I bit my lip and fixed my suit and headed inside her building to her door. 

There was a concierge leaving as I approached. He gave me a strange smile and walked on without stopping to ask me if I needed anything, which is rather odd being they almost always ask you, if only for a tip. But it was of no real consequence. I wasn't going to shoot him unless I reasoned that he was a vampire and she had colonized the building which would be wise for protection sake, but unwise for the fact that it would draw attention and possibly a rivalry. Vampires are territorial, and the less there are, the more powerful those who remain are because of it. It wouldn't surprise me, however, if she had a lesbian lover. Lesbianism being common amongst the female of the breed. But who am I to judge or to say anything of anyone's bed habits when mine were exclusively that of whores and dirty women that I couldn't possibly get attached to.  

I decided to knock on the door rather than kicking it in. My Sicario Ruger in the holster at the ready. Then I noticed the doormat. 

"Fuck," I groaned. 

It read "Not all who wander are lost." Another euphemism. A credo. In English. She was taunting me. She was in my thoughts. I took a deep breath. This one was different. She wasn't like the others. She was the queen bee and she knew I was coming. She was the oldest one I was to retire, if it is honest to even call it that. I wasn't sure that she was related to any of the rest of them, but she might have been. I had killed families before, I knew. But it wasn't the killing part that was difficult. It was the cleaning up afterwards. The old Boy Scout motto served me well in that regard — Leave no trace. 

I knocked. I knocked again. The door opened with an ominous creak as though it hadn't been properly latched. The room was dark at first but there was light streaming in through a back window and a lamp that was on casting everything in a swirl of panoramic shadows. I reached into my suitcoat and put my hand on the grip of my gun and crept inside. 

"You needn't — that," a frail voice called from the shadows almost as soon as I entered. 

And there she was. Only she wasn't the beautiful woman from the picture. She looked like she was 90 years-old if she was a day and she sat in a rocker, gently rocking. It creaked as though to speak for her old bones. I entered the room cautious as to what trap might have been laid for me, but as I approached I could see there was no trap. No gambit or obvious ruse to foil. There was only Camille, terribly aged. I couldn't make sense of it. I didn't know how I could have been so deceived. She was old but still there was the semblance of beauty in her that could never be extinguished, apart from post mortem. 

"You came just in time, Jude. Or should I say George. George Jeudy. It is what you went by long ago. But your birth name suits you better. Jude George of Manhattan, Kansas. Please. Sit." 

And so I sat. 

"Hmm. Jude was a good boy. He played on the Kansas prarie so long ago. Moved to Philadelphia to become a doctor. Hmm. Traveled to London in 1888. Fell in love briefly with a young woman singer. Met a madman. Left unexpectedly. The woman singer left too, much for the same reason as Jude and moved to Belém. Jude went home to Philadelphia, then on to Chicago. Fell in love and married. Had a child. Spent the time watching her grow until she was 18 and it could not be hidden any longer as to why he didn't age. So Jude — Dr. Jude — left his wife and child for the War. Letter home says he was killed in duty. They mourned for a while, grieved, but it gave them something he could not — closure. But Jude was feeding on dead soldiers. All that blooooood. An embarassment of riches war is, isn't it? I was a nurse in the same war. A volunteer. Hmm."

Her voice was melodic but a scant over a whisper. I sat enthralled and listened. 

"You went home years later. Your wife remarried and died. Your daughter grew and married and had children and died. Everyone you loved died. You watched them age, from afar, but you didn't age. All because you kept drinking the blood. You couldn't stop. You are insatiable. A bohemian like me. But you wanted to stop because then you'd age with them. Then you would die, too. You didn't know, but you did know all at the same time. You don't recall any of it now because you have sharpened your mind well enough to dull it. You lobotomized yourself, for lack of a better term. There are no medical terms that pertain to us and what we do, are there doctor vampire? And now you're a vampire killing vampires because you can't kill yourself. You can't stop drinking. But I've stopped drinking and this is what becomes of us, Jude. We age. Then we die and all that sorrow dies with us. You needn't kill me, Jude. I am fading fast with every word."

I drew closer to her to get a better look, to make sure I wasn't being deceived by make-up or some elaborate costume. But I hesitated and stopped short. She sat there. Still. She did not flinch. The rocker stopped moving. Her eyes were fixed upon me in an unconsciously familiar way. How incredibly sad it was to see what I saw in the shadows of her eyes that I seemed able to travel through. To see as a soothsayer sees in tea leaves or in a bright crystal ball. How I missed her in such a way. To have lost her all those years ago in an event that was too painful for me to recall and that left me loveless, scarred, and forlorn. 

But I remembered as I sat there. I remembered London. In the spring of 1888. I went to study at Oxford and some absurd man burst into a seminar I attended in London, wildly claiming that he had discovered the fountain of youth. A few colleagues of mine ridiculed him for his unsightly appearance apart from his uncouth manner, and he was brutishly dragged out by police. He swore to prove it, and do so with ardent vengeance. I wasn't among those who laughed, but was among those whom he struck days later. And so was Camille, apparently, though I didn't know it. I wondered if we were the last two living vampires in the world there between our faint breaths. 

I fell in love with Camille Monfort when I heard her voice at the Aldwych Theatre a few nights before the madman entered without welcome into my life, irrevocably altering my existence. Surely I was not alone in respect to my admiration of Camille. Surely that crowded hall full of men and women suffered the same affliction as I. For who could feel otherwise looking at her — hearing her? But I was much more dedicated than they and I waited to meet her the night before I was bitten by the madman, who I mistakenly dismissed as a simple lunatic. It was when my life was mine and not a living death as it would soon become. It is strange, though, I consider now, that vampires refer to their life as death when they live as other people die. But it is simply that life is stolen from us, given in such abundance, cheapened by time, for no one truly lives who doesn't die. And now, sitting there, still lost in that distant memory, I knew what Camille meant in the note she had left in her grave. It is the same. In life as in death. 

Camille smiled at me in the memory. I had bought her a boquet of flowers and apologized for my unworthy appearance as I nervously combed my hair with my fingers, assuring her that I wasn't lacking sincere interest and unmatched devotion, which made her giggle. Perhaps those things hadn't been so humbly offered to her before. I told her she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen and I would do anything to hear her sing for the rest of my life — forever. 

"Forever is a long time," she replied. 

"Not long enough," I countered. I wasn't the impetuous type, but suddenly I was. I wasn't brave in respects to women, but I found fortitude and  courage in her beauty and my overwhelming desire to love her. 

Of course we didn't know then what would occur two days later. She allowed me to take her for a drink that night and an early dinner the next night before her performance in the same theatre. She gave me a ticket in a balcony box and on several occasions she looked up at me and smiled as she sung. I was in Heaven. Fast in love. I was the luckiest man in the world for such a love was unreservedly requited. But how dreadfully short-lived it would all be. I kissed her that night and asked her to join me for drinks, but she declined for she was having an early breakfast the next day with her mother. She said she couldn't wait to tell her mother about me. She agreed to meet me the next afternoon for tea. But as I walked to the hotel from the theatre that night, it was then that I was attacked by that inhuman beast. 

I wouldn't wake for tea. I was dreadfully ill. I slept for three days and when I woke up I was in a hospital. One of my colleagues discovered me in my grave state and said he felt as though a bat had bitten me and I fell rabid. My short-term memory was stolen from me by the illness and I forgot Camille. It was recommended I go home to America and rest. I was out of the woods, the doctors assured me, but Oxford and London had nothing more to offer me. And though they said I recovered, I hadn't. On the journey home, I fed upon two people. Both of the ship's crew. An unlucky porter and a boatswain who had the misfortune of asking me to share a smoke. I tossed them overboard afterwards. My God. How I had forgotten it all until now. But here again it was, presented to me by my host. 

Camille smiled at me in a sincere way. Her face kind with wrinkles and age. I pulled the gun from my shoulder holster and rested my elbows upon my knees, leaning forward in a state of utter abjection. The gun wasn't for her, but for myself. 

"You left me. I sought you that evening and when I couldn't find you, I was attacked in an alley and bitten as well. I too suffered the same sort of malady and when I was well enough again, I moved to Belém, not understanding what I was to become. What I had already become. A woman of strange appetites, you could say. I didn't learn of your fate until you sought me. I thought you had left me for some reason I could never understand all these years. 135 years of wondering what I had said wrong. What a surprise to learn that you are as you were so long ago when I knew you when. Unmolested by time. Still that charming young man who gave me the boquet of flowers."

"How is that you learned of me?" I asked. She seemed to be growing weak and it wouldn't surprise me if she died amid conversation. 

"I am all things. The jaguar in the tree that looks over my grave. The barking dog. I see all and I know all. I know of your daughter, who you named after me. The wife you never really loved, but loved well enough to marry. I researched you, Jude, and I have watched you since you were in Belém, and after you came to Paris. I've been close to you. And now here we are. There has always been something missing, hasn't there?"

I didn't answer. I didn't need to. Everything she said was the truth. No embellishments. No lies. I sat there with her, content to breathe the same air. To spend the last bit of time we had together. Then she fell into a deep sleep there in the rocker and I carried her to bed. She wasn't dead, but she was certainly waning. She was in her last few hours of life and her breaths were shallow and her heartbeat faint. For a while I crawled up and lied next to her. I suppose I had lost my ability to cry long ago, and my lack of tears and the emotionless expression I must have bore while holding her was expressive of a deeper state of sorrow than any outward expression that grief could convey. Tears beg of something I was no longer begging for. All my life ago, what a sorry fool I had been to forget my love and to live instead in an aimless sort of desolation.

May life forgive us for the times we didn't live it. 

I suppose I am too selfish a man to lie down and die. Or to let the love of my life slip through my fingers twice. I left her sleeping in bed for only a while as I roamed the particular haunts I knew would provide my nefarious sustenance. I contracted a hooker, a beautiful Belgian girl with fantasies of the Moulin Rouge, and I brought her back to Camille's apartment. She looked rather dejected and displeased by the humble abode, having thought I was going to bring her to some posh hotel with room service. But I fed on her and skimmed enough to give Camille a taste. Then I bandaged the woozy girl and hailed her a taxi. She wouldn't remember anything by morning. 

I gave Camille a drink in hopes that it would revive her. But it appeared that I was too late. Although she drank from the cup, there was no noticeable change in her appearance and she was too weak to open her eyes or voice any audible supplication or objection to my effort. Her breaths grew more shallow and all there was left for me to do was to hold her until she died. I owed her that. I owed myself that. So I crawled into bed and held her, knowing I would never drink again, but knowing I would suffer without her until death offered me reprieve from my heartache. 

The next morning I woke up to sunlight streaming through the pale pink filter of a muslin curtain that swayed in a merciful cool September breeze. I turned over to see Camille, but when I did she was not as I last saw her. She was as she was long ago, in the photograph. The most beautiful woman in all the world. It was as though she hadn't aged at all and the day before was all a terrible dream. She was wearing a white t-shirt and underwear and she was looking at me with her bright blue eyes as though she had been watching me sleep. We made love like animals and then we had our breakfast. 

"My mother said she thought you sounded wonderful," she smiled over tea at a nearby café that afternoon. A date postponed some 135 years by fate and misfortune. But a date that finally came.