Empire V (12 page)

THE GREAT FALL

The weather next day was beautiful but at the same time carried overtones of menace. A strong wind and a kind of bracing chill in the air were perhaps harbingers of autumn. The sun came out, then disappeared behind clouds, then reappeared again. I opened the window in the sitting room, fastened the casements back on the hooks attached to the walls and, on impulse, lit candles even though it was quite light. The draught of air coming into the room made the candle flames flicker, and this gave me much pleasure.

Mithra rang up towards evening to ask how things were going. I gave an account of Loki's lesson the previous day. It seemed to cheer Mithra up.

‘I told you this is a taboo subject among the older generation. Just as they never use the word “blood”. You understand this is not about faked orgasms, it's all about dissembling. Those spine-shattering methods Loki teaches should not be taken seriously though. A true gentleman would never kick a woman during sexual intercourse.'

‘What would a gentleman do?' I asked.

‘It's all according to personal taste. Personally, I put a pistol or a razor on the bedside table.'

I could not work out if Mithra was serious or not. In any case, what he said next caused me to forget about everything else.

‘I've rung you for a reason,' he said. ‘Today's the day for the Great Fall …'

A cold shiver ran through my whole body, starting in the region of the solar plexus and spreading rapidly to every single nerve ending. It was as though someone inside me had turned on an ice-cold shower.

‘What? Already? So soon?'

Mithra laughed.

‘First you can't wait for it to happen, now it's too soon … Anyhow, don't worry. There's nothing too terrifying about it.'

‘What do I have to do?'

‘Nothing at all. Just wait. A courier will come soon with a package for you, and the instructions will be inside.'

‘Could I give you a ring back when I've got it?' I asked. ‘In case I have any questions?'

‘You won't have any questions,' replied Mithra. ‘That is, unless you think them up specially. You won't need to ring me. I'll meet you.'

‘Where?'

‘You'll see,' said Mithra, and rang off.

I replaced the handset and sat on the sofa.

The one thing I knew for certain was that I wanted no part in any Great Fall. All I wanted was to sit quietly and calm down. I hoped that some great, ingenious idea would come into my mind and save me from my situation. I had no doubt that such an idea existed, and all I needed to take it in was a few minutes of concentration. I closed my eyes.

At that moment there was a ring at the door.

I got up and forced myself to make my doom-laden way to the door.

But no one was there – only a small, black casket lying on the floor. I picked it up, carried it into the living room and put it on the table. Then I went into the bathroom; for some reason I felt I ought to take another shower.

I washed myself thoroughly and combed my hair, anointing it with some gel. Then I went into the bedroom and dressed in my best outfit, an ensemble consisting of jacket, shirt and trousers I had bought complete off a mannequin in the LovemarX shop.

I had now exhausted all ploys to delay the moment of truth. Returning to the living room, I opened the casket.

Inside, on a red velvet lining, was a small dark glass vessel in the shape of a bat with folded wings. In the place of its head was a stopper shaped like a skull. There was also a sheet of paper on which was written:

Rama,

Please take a couple of minutes to commit to memory the salutation which by tradition the novice vampire is expected to pronounce. It is very simple: ‘Rama the Second reporting to Heartland!' I trust you will not find it too difficult.

You may ask: why Rama the Second? Again by tradition, on solemn ritual occasions a number is added to the vampire's name, taking the place of a surname. I, for instance, am Enlil the Seventh. This does not, of course, mean that there have been six Enlils before me, nor that there has been only one Rama before you. There have been many, many more. But for the sake of brevity we use only the final figure of the next number in the sequence. Enlil the Eleventh will become once more Enlil the First.

Keep calm and do not worry. All will be well.

Good luck!

Enlil

I studied the small flask. Presumably I would find further instructions in its contents. I vaguely remembered having heard something about the Heartland Theory as a semi-mythical geopolitical fetish interminably masticated at round-table brainstorming sessions in the editorial rooms of nationalist-orientated newspapers whenever it was felt necessary to justify to the sponsors where their money was being spent. I never did quite understand the meaning of the term. Most likely those participating in the brainstorming didn't either.

What could it mean in the present context? Some secret place, perhaps, connected with the heart? Presumably it was a metaphor. Well, there are all kinds of metaphors, I thought. You could find yourself locked in a room with some homeless bum and someone tells you, ‘You want to be a vampire? Go on then, slit his chest open and eat his heart …' Heartland might be something of the sort. And what would I do then?

I heard a harsh, peremptory voice coming from the room saying:

‘We'll know soon enough.'

It was my voice; I realised I must have spoken these words. And there was something else, something very strange. I knew myself to be shaking with fear, a mass of doubt, yet there were my hands firmly taking hold of the flask and withdrawing the crystal skull-shaped stopper. While part of me was still pleading for yet more time to begin the procedure, the Tongue had already assumed command.

The flask contained precisely one drop of liquid. I put it into my mouth and carefully rubbed it into my palate with my tongue.

Nothing.

I concluded that the preparation was going to take some time to produce its effect, and sat down on the sofa. Then I remembered the phrase Enlil Maratovich had asked me to memorise, and ran through it several times under my breath: ‘Rama the Second reporting to Heartland! Rama the Second reporting to Heartland!'

After a minute I was confident that whatever the circumstances I would never forget the words, and ceased to mutter them. At that point I heard the music.

Somewhere someone was playing Verdi's
Requiem
(by now I could often recognise pieces of classical music and never failed to amaze myself with my wide knowledge of works in the genre). Whoever it was must be listening to it on the floor above mine … or perhaps it was through the wall – it was hard to pinpoint exactly where the sound was coming from. It seemed to me that the music, rather than the wind, was fluttering the curtains.

I relaxed and began to listen.

Whether because of the majestic music, or the evening light flickering tremulously through the curtains, the impression grew on me that strange developments were taking place in the world outside. A thought came across my mind that it had assumed the features of a
dream kingdom
, and this was odd because I had never experienced a
dream kingdom
for myself, only read about them in fairy tales. I did not actually know what they were supposed to look like. Nevertheless, I sensed that the geometry of the antique furniture, the rhomboid figurations of the parquet floor and the tiled fireplace surround were all ideally configured to correspond to a dreamscape … perhaps I felt so because I was myself drifting towards sleep.

The last thing I needed just now was to crash out and miss the most important event of my life. Rousing myself, I began to pace up and down the room. Then it occurred to me that I might already be asleep and only dreaming that I was walking up and down the room.

That was the moment when I was seized by real fear. It occurred to me that the flask might have contained poison. Perhaps I had not gone to sleep but was dying, and everything I was experiencing was no more than the final firings of the synapses in my brain. The thought was unendurable. Surely, I thought, if I were asleep, the terror would jerk me into wakefulness? But at once I felt that my fear was much too feeble to be able to do that, thus proving that I must be, in fact, asleep.

Or dead.

For death, I knew, was simply sleep that sank second by second deeper and deeper, a sleep from which one was, on wakening, no longer where one had been before but somewhere else, in a different dimension. And who could tell how long the sleep, the dream, would last?

Could it be that my whole career as a vampire had so far been no more than death, which I was struggling to conceal from myself for as long as possible? And would the ‘great event' I was expecting prove to be the moment when I would ultimately be forced to face up to the truth and admit it to myself?

Try as I might, I could not rid my mind of the chilling supposition. On the contrary, I grew ever more convinced that I had hit upon the dreadful truth. I remembered reading that in every era vampires had been regarded as the living dead: by day they lay, cold and grey, in their graves, rising from them at night to heat their gelid bodies with a drink of warm blood … Was it possible that in order to become fully a vampire, one must die? And that single drop of clear liquid below the crystal skull had been the final passport to the new world?

I knew that if I were indeed dead, there was no limit to how extreme the terror could become. It could be with me for all eternity, for time is, after all, subjective. These final sparks of the brain's electrochemical activity could appear to my mind to be anything at all: there would be nothing to stop them lasting for many millions of years. Perhaps this was indeed how everything ended? The red and yellow glow of the sunset, the wind, the fireplace, the parquet – and eternal death … and people know nothing of this horror, because no one has returned to inform them.

‘
Libera me, Dómine, de morte ætérna
…' intoned the far-off voice.

Was I really hearing someone playing Verdi in the flat above mine? Or was my dying brain transforming into music the unbearable knowledge of my fate?

I knew that if I did not make the supreme effort to rouse myself from this sleep, I would fall for ever into the black well where it would no longer matter whether I was awake or dreaming, because the naked gleam of the horror now before me was deeper than sleep, deeper than dream, deeper than vigil, deeper than anything I could ever know. The most amazing part of it all was that the entrance to this trap lay in full view for everyone to see, the path to it plainly marked by the simplest and most commonplace chain of deduction. It was incredible how everyone without exception manages to avoid this mortal spiral of the mind, from which there is no escape.

This
, I thought,
is death for all eternity? This is what they are singing about … No, that cannot be. I will find my way out of it, no matter what the cost!

It was crucial to do something to combat the paralysis that was engulfing me. I tried to tear myself free from the nightmare integument with my hands, as if it was a physical substance.

Suddenly I became aware that they were not my hands. Where they had been I saw something like black rags covered in short, shiny fur like a mole's. My fingers were bunched together in dark, stumpy, calloused fists with disproportionately large, horny knuckles such as might belong to a fanatical karate freak. I tried to unclench them but failed, because something was preventing them from opening; it was as if the fingers were bound together with surgical tape. I redoubled my efforts, and suddenly my wrists did unfurl, but not into ordinary human palms with five fingers. They were now like two black umbrellas. I looked at my fingers and realised I no longer had any.

In their place were long bony extensions joined by a membrane of skin. The only recognisable remnant was the thumb, which now stuck out from the wing like the barrel of a gun on an aeroplane. It ended in a sharp, curved nail about the thickness of a bayonet. I turned towards the mirror, already knowing what I would see there.

My face had turned into a wrinkled muzzle, a fantastic amalgam of hog and bulldog with a split lower lip and nose, resembling a concertinae'd snout. I now possessed huge cone-shaped ears with a multitude of complicated folds and partitions inside them, and a low forehead overgrown with black fur. A long horn, sharply bent backwards, towered above my head. I was quite low in stature, with a shaggy, barrel-shaped torso and short, bowed legs. Most repellent of all were my eyes, which were small, cunning, pitiless and radiated a kind of knowing cynicism – like those of a corrupt cop from a Moscow market.

This snout I had seen before, in the photograph of the vampire bat
Desmodus rotundus
, except that the bat lacked the horn proboscis. All the same, I had definitely become a bat, albeit a very large one.

To be frank, I now bore a strong resemblance to a devil. But no sooner had the idea entered my head than I realised that I must have stopped short of full devildom because I was deriving no pleasure in the transformation. And then again, I thought, this too was probably irrelevant: it was quite possible that devils did not like being devils at all.

My outspread wings were getting caught up in the furniture, and I folded them. To accomplish this I had to make a considerable effort to clench what had formerly been my fingers. The wings, like two umbrellas, closed themselves up into black cylinders culminating in hard fist-like ferrules.

I tried to take a step forward, but found I was unable to. Walking was obviously a specialised form of motion. To shift my position I now had to support myself with my ferrule-fists on the floor and advance my soft rear paws to a new vantage point. I supposed this must be approximately how a gorilla moves.

I became aware that I had stopped thinking. My mind no longer generated random thoughts: it was as though the internal space where they had previously congregated had been vacuumed clean. All that remained was an acute, penetrating knowledge of what was taking place around me.