Suzie and the Monsters (11 page)

‘Two reasons. For one thing, you could figure all this out for yourself. You saw what happened last night. But let me ask you: What would happen next?’

‘They’d take you away, lock you up somewhere.’

‘For how long?’

‘Forever, or maybe they could figure out something you could could drink instead of blood.’

‘Maybe, but why would they bother? They could declare me non-human, strip me of any rights, keep me in my cell forever feeding me animal blood while the part of me that’s still human rots away. They could do medical experiments. Just think how amazing it would be to develop new medical treatments that can completely heal the human body, regrowing flesh and skin, leaving no scars. Imagine being able to offer people the chance to completely rejuvenate their bodies. Finally an effective way to tax the super-rich! Better yet, make it public — eternity for all!’

‘That would be a disaster.’

‘Promise me something, Cleo. If you think I deserve to die, then please just kill me. Don’t give me to the real monsters.’

Cleo nods, but adds, ‘I don’t want to kill you.’

‘I don’t want to die.’

‘What was the second reason?’

‘You’re probably thinking that you’ll never be able to sleep with me again, for fear that I’ll drink your blood, or worse.’ She doesn’t react, but there’s confirmation in her eyes. ‘Do you think that I would ever dare sleep with you again, knowing that you have the motive and the means to kill me, or worse?’

‘This is really fucked up.’

‘You have a choice. You can walk out of my life, or you can take a deep breath — and be my lover.’

She shakes her head slowly, denying the choice. ‘First, tell me what happened to your husband.’

‘We were in Venice in the early 1570s, arriving in 1571 when the armies of Europe were off fighting the Ottoman Empire which was invading Cyprus, culminating in the Battle of Lepanto. That was a grand victory for the Venetian navy. Church bells rang out across the whole city when the galley appeared in the bay with all the captured Turkish banners, decks piled high with trophies.

‘In those days, Venice was said to be a very liberal city, and certainly on the mainland women were expected to be as dull as dishwater. Good Catholic mothers, obedient to their husbands, well-behaved at all times. Venice wasn’t quite so strict, but I was expected to stay in the household most of the time, apart from occasional banquets where of course I couldn’t eat anything, which meant I was still very dependent on my husband. The only women with any real power were the courtesans, who were dazzling, beautiful creatures, educated and intelligent, always dancing and singing for the men. All the men, even husbands, my husband too.

‘I was getting very tired of my existence, moving from city to city, always being dependent on a husband who would spend the day in adventures. I didn’t really have anyone to talk to, and of course there weren’t any children to look after. And Venice was particularly cruel, in that I had to sit there calmly watching my husband dance and laugh with those bright butterflies, tall and elegant in their chopines. I would have had such fun as a courtesan. Instead I was kept hidden away. Each evening, my husband would bring home a woman or girl, usually a lower class prostitute, sometimes an African slave. We would feed them the food that had been made by our servants for us, and afterwards we would play with them, and feed from them, sending them away after, dizzy and confused.

‘And while I was getting tired of him, I sensed he was getting equally tired of me. What interest is there in a woman who stays at home when there is such entertainment to be found elsewhere? What excitement can there be in a woman who is utterly dependent on you? Worse, what if her blood no longer has that sweetness it had when you first met?

‘And then one day I knew, just knew. He had found someone else. I didn’t care about him sleeping with other women, but the idea that he had fallen in love with someone else was infuriating, for I did believe that he loved me. I was not the first woman ever to be trapped in a marriage of dependency and suffocation, but perhaps I was the first to be faced with an eternity of neglect and loneliness.

‘I didn’t show him my anger. It wasn’t a sudden thing, but rather a suspicion that coiled in the mind and grew into a certainty, and a building anger, both cold as ice and raging hot. I never chose to be a vampire, but since I was already damned for all eternity there was nothing to stop me taking revenge. I was so sick of him, sick of men in general and their cruel subjugation of women.

‘It was 1575, the same year that Anna Bijns died. I would have liked to meet her. She wrote a remarkable poem that I didn’t read until many years later. “Unyoked is best! Happy the woman without a man.” For Anna, chastity and childlessness were sacrifices worth making to be free of a man’s rule. Her words are full of the same rage that I felt in those days, that I still feel.’

Abruptly my rage is transformed into grief for all the suffering of women down the ages, not just the cruelty that I myself have witnessed, and I hold my face in my hands for a few minutes until the knots in my chest unravel and the tears stop flowing. Cleo is looking at me anxiously, and I give her an apologetic smile.

‘You know the story of Sweeney Todd?’ I say when I can trust myself to speak.

‘Sure. Was he real?’

‘Not as far as I know. But the idea of cutting people up for meat is an old one. In Venice even today there is a vaporetto stop called Riva di Biasio, named for Biagio Cargnio. In his restaurant he sold a special meat stew, and one day, in 1520, a customer discovered a child’s finger bone. Supposedly he’d been catching and killing children for twenty years. Sentenced to death, he was tortured, beheaded publicly, and his body cut into four parts. They were still talking about it fifty years later. This, I thought, would be a suitable end for my beloved.

‘One morning, my husband gone, I sent my servants to bring a priest and an officer of the city, telling them it was a matter of great urgency for Venice. They arrived within the hour, and in my best Venetian, which was rather broken even after four years in the city, I explained to them that my husband was consorting with the devil, that he forced me to watch him perform unnatural acts with the poor women he brought home every night, that he drank their blood. “You will know I tell the truth,” I told them, “for food, even a simple apple, is poisonous to him now, but if you cut him with a knife he will mend swiftly.”

‘The two gentlemen were very disturbed and they questioned the servants, who could only confirm that my husband brought a girl to our room each evening. They were soon convinced of my story, more quickly indeed than I had expected, but it seems I was very fortunate in my timing. The plague had come to Venice and people were frightened, all too ready to believe in evil magic. Even so, they needed evidence, so I told them to wait for the evening. My husband was sure to bring another girl home. If they waited an hour before breaking in to arrest him, they would see for themselves. “Be careful if you approach him,” I begged them. “His eyes bewitch!”

‘That evening my husband brought home an African woman, scarcely older than you and really quite pretty, and I could see he was excited. I was too, but for a different reason. The slave ate hungrily and in amazement, like she had never seen such food before. “She’s so fragile,” I said to my husband when she had finished. “She will frighten easily. Take her yourself first, and I will feed later when she has recovered.”

‘His desire for the slave was so great that he did not argue. He threw her onto the bed, stripped quickly to reveal his hungry cock, and pounced on top of her, quickly removing her dress and underwear so that he could feast his eyes on her dark, naked beauty. She didn’t look nervous or excited, just resigned, waiting for him to do to her what others no doubt had done many times, but she cried out in surprise when he lowered his mouth to her sex and breathed in its intense aroma. She tried to pull away, but I sat beside her and calmed her down, and when my husband’s tongue started caressing her lips she soon relaxed, and while he explored deeper and ever more insistently I kissed her large firm breasts and teased and pinched her engorged nipples. It wasn’t long before she was crying out with pleasure.

‘As soon as her long orgasm quieted, my husband moved up and plunged deep into her, pounding fast and deep until he too came, groaning his satisfaction. He looked into her eyes and stroked her long black hair tenderly until she was deep in a trance, then bent down and bit into her thigh, close to her ravaged pussy. “Take your time, my love,” I said to him as I stepped away, but it can’t have been much more than a minute later that the bedroom door burst open. Four city guardsmen rushed into the room, and I could see the priest and the officer in the hall beyond.

‘My husband leapt to his defence, blood dripping from his lips as well as from the wound in the slave’s thigh. It was so perfect I wanted to laugh, but instead I crouched in the corner pretending to cry, while the guards struggled with my husband. He was fast and strong and nearly escaped, but they were too many for him. They bound him tight with rope and blindfolded and gagged him before taking him away. No one thought to question me or the slave, who was still in a trance. On his way out, the officer ordered the servants to look after their lady.

‘I recovered swiftly once they were gone, and ordered the servants to bring clean bandages, which I wrapped carefully around the wounded thigh before waking her and sending her home. And as soon as the gossiping servants were all asleep, I dressed simply, in such a way that I might be mistaken at first glance for a boy, though that’s not something I’ve ever been able to pull off effectively, packed lightly, and fled into the night.

‘It’s funny in a way. I wasn’t around to see it, but the Venetians were very worried about vampires after that. Three years ago they found a woman’s skull in Venice, in one of the mass graves of plague victims from 1576, the year after I left. The skull had a rock forced into the mouth, which is something they used to do to bodies that might be vampires.’

Cleo can’t quite make eye contact. ‘You’re not making this very easy for me,’ she mutters.

‘No, I’m not. I want to hug you and kiss you and tell you that there’s nothing to worry about, that loving me will be a fairytale adventure, that we can be together until the end of time. But that’s a lie, an absurd fantasy. You should go, have a normal human life and not get messed around by my dark, twisted existence.’

‘If you’re such a monster, why is it that Alia loves you?’

‘That’s something you will have to ask her, but she has always known that I am a killer, and has long suspected the other, though she has never spoken about it until last night.’

‘You say you love me, but why? You hardly know me.’

‘I liked you from the start, when you let me use your lipstick. I liked your curiosity. I liked that you trusted me, however foolish that was. Most of all, I liked your courage. You were nuts to let those men take you away, and completely mad to walk into a strip club by yourself and wait there so long for me. I’ve given you many reasons to run far, far away from me, like any sane person would have done, like most people do, yet here you are. How could I not love you?’

‘Maybe this time next week you’ll have lost interest, found someone new.’

I sigh, and reach for her hands. ‘Cleo, you’re the first someone new I’ve met in the fifteen years since Alia and I split. I’ve told you more about myself today than I’ve told anyone in fifty years. I can’t predict what will happen next week, and I certainly can’t say how I’ll feel about you in ten, twenty years, but I do know that right now you’re the most precious thing in my life.’

‘I’m only eighteen,’ she whispers.

‘I’m not asking you to spend eternity with me,’ I say, part of me wanting to ask exactly that. ‘I’m not even asking you to marry me...’ I laugh. ‘It’s fantastic that that’s even possible! Do what normal couples do. Cinema. Salsa.’

‘Drink blood. Get shot.’ Cleo’s angry, and pulls her hands out of mine, but at least she’s looking at me again.

‘Well, I wouldn’t recommend either of those for you.’

‘You said this morning that they might be after me now, and I don’t understand anything. On any other day I’d be freaking out at the idea of people shooting at me, but finding out that vampires are real, and that my girlfriend is one, makes the idea of people trying to kill me seem rather ordinary.’

‘I will do everything possible to keep you safe, Cleo.’ She nods.

The wine is finished now. It’s getting dark outside. ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s get you home.’ She nods again.

When we pull up outside her house she hesitates before getting out. Neither of us has said much since leaving Gordon’s. ‘I need some time to think,’ she says.

‘Of course. It’s probably best if you stay away for a few days anyway. I’m not very safe to be around at the moment.’

Without warning, she leans over and kisses me, her soft lips trembling slightly against mine, and then she is gone, striding up the path back to her human life.

*

It’s dark but I’m not ready to go home. With Cleo’s departure I am suddenly alone with my thoughts and stirred-up memories. Around me millions of people are eating dinner and watching reality TV, and I have an intense need to escape. Listening to my iPhone, Sviatoslav Richter playing Schubert’s Sonata No. 19, I drive across the city, parking near the Lion Gate entrance to Kew Gardens. The gardens are closed, which is perfect for me. I climb over the wall and walk through the trees, staying clear of the roads and paths, past the pagoda and the Japanese gateway and into the conservation area.

It’s a shame that the bluebells aren’t flowering yet. I lie down in the long grass and lose myself in the music, which has progressed to Sonata No. 21. Beautiful music, intense, sometimes sad, sometimes like ice crystals in my heart. I try to let my soul escape from my body, imagine ghostly limbs floating out of the flesh that has imprisoned them for nearly half a millennium, imagine them finding my body here in the morning, cold, and at peace for the first time. The Andante Sostenuto begins, inexpressibly sad, bringing with it the memory of Catherine Deneuve playing Ravel’s Le Gibet in The Hunger, and I let the tears roll down my cheeks.