The Snow Vampire (2 page)

But what did that matter? For there was Hendrik, staring silently at the crowd, obviously uncomfortable with and within himself. Beautiful Hendrik, unhappy Hendrik! How imperceptible he was, how small his movements. But if one looked—if one really looked—everything could be seen in his eyes and his carriage. My Hendrik. How I loved him from that day, loved him because he needed it, and I, so young, had plenty of love to give. Warm, cool Hendrik. How I wish I’d known our happiness would be fleeting, our lives so incomplete. But when one is young and feels the first true pang of love, one never imagines the end will be so swift and so severe.

My father ushered everyone to our house, and though it was the finest in the village, Kateryna quickly made it clear that it was absolutely the filthiest, tiniest, and ugliest home she had ever seen.

“They don’t have electricity here, Poppa!” she whined. “We have electricity even in Balaton!”

My father looked nervous. My mother bit her lip. My grandmother muttered under her breath—a curse, I hoped. But Kateryna’s father only laughed.

“Ah, my darling, so we will have to rough it for a few days—you will like it here, no?” he said, laughing again, a short, booming retort, a sound that I recalled with alarming clarity the first time I heard a
Maschinengewehr
in battle,
rat tat
,
rat tat
,
rat tat
. As for Hendrik, he only smiled softly, a painful gesture, as if to simultaneously imply an apology and a desire to be somewhere—anywhere—other than here.

If the state of the house did not please Kateryna, then the sleeping arrangements proved even less to her liking.

“I am to share with her?” the proud city girl screamed when told she would sleep in my little sister’s bed. Poor Alona. I felt sorry she would have to share close quarters with such a harpy, but Alona’s shining face told everyone she did not mind. She did not see Kateryna for the spoiled, whining brat she was but rather as a beautiful, exotic creature to be worshipped and adored. I sighed. I felt sure that by breakfast tomorrow Kateryna would have made Alona her pet, running her to and fro on ridiculous errands only to prove Alona’s simple desire to please and obey. And Alona, as foolish as any girl of fourteen, would happily comply. I for one was ecstatic to share quarters with Hendrik. I could not quite articulate why—rather, that is to say, I had a hundred reasons to feel so. Here was a friend, perhaps an equal, someone I could talk to, someone who was not a boy from a village, like me. The things Hendrik had seen—the places he had been, the people he had met—I longed for him to share them all with me. In my imagination we were already fast friends, intimate companions. It was no wonder I could not wait for nightfall, for bedtime, when we could finally be alone.

Dinner that night was a goose cooked in the
paprikás
style and stuffed with foie gras, accompanied by fresh beans from our own garden, potatoes with smoked paprika, and Grandmamma’s famous
túrós csusza
. For dessert, my mother served strudel with apples, goat cheese, and poppy seeds. This was a holiday meal, and to be served such would be an honor for any family in the village, though of course Kateryna complained about the food sulkily, and her father, trying to buoy her spirits, laughingly rejoined her for not enjoying “the simple fare” that had been placed before them. My grandmother, who had spent the better part of two days preparing the meal, scowled, though for reasons unknown to me she uncharacteristically held her tongue.

It had become clear to me that both my parents and grandmother seemed as nervous about this visit as being near to Hendrik made me. Yet for the life of me I could not fathom what made them act this way, except of course the desire on their part to seem more worldly and less provincial than we may have appeared. Of course, five minutes of Kateryna’s snapping should have convinced anyone that this was not possible. Still, my eighteen-year-old self could see no ulterior motive for the visit other than the joining of one branch of a family to another or renewing relations that had long ago been lost to both distance and time.

I was anxious all through dinner, anxious to have Hendrik all alone, to myself. I did not have to wait long. Shortly after our repast Kateryna’s father declared himself and his whole family quite exhausted, and everyone retired to bed. Finally alone with Hendrik, I thought we might talk, but he answered any query in only a short, staccato reply, one word or two at most. When I asked of his life—of his work, his schooling, of what he did and did not do—he had little to say. When I asked of his travels—of Prague and Rome, magnificent Rome—he merely shrugged. When I asked of life in the city, his only reply was to shrug again and say, in a flat, dismissive tone, “You would not like it.” Then, before I could ask more, he feigned an exaggeratedly large yawn and slipped into bed with barely a “good sleep.”

I slipped in beside him and turned myself to face him. He turned his back to me, and soon I could detect the perfect, rhythmic breathing of a man pretending to sleep. It mattered not; if my heart was disappointed, its near-to-bursting pounding soon replaced any feelings of dejection with anxiety, happiness, and joy. I spent an hour staring at the outline Hendrik’s shoulder blades made against the thin silk of his white nightshirt. I imagined caressing the fabric, so cool and smooth and alien to me, and tracing these bony apertures of Hendrik’s, touching them ever so softly, ever so gently. It was not a desire I could have expressed out loud or given word or form to. It was nothing I knew in my head or in my thoughts at all. It was all instinct, a pure affair of the heart, and to my large and sincere embarrassment, my groin. Of course, a stiff prick was nothing new to me, but coming now, so close to the object of my fervent desire, was. Previously my turgid thoughts had turned on flashing images generated from the stories I read or photographs in a picture book or from my own imagination of life lived somewhere else. Now I found my heart’s desire mere inches from my mind and from my yearning. Turning, I faced away from Hendrik, flushed with feelings I could not comprehend and a hope that threatened to destroy me from within, if I did not act soon to let it out.

But Hendrik would prove as impenetrable the next day and the one after that. He was a cipher, a pile of mysteries in the form of a Sylvan youth. He had brought with him copious books to read and spent most of his time on a small window seat in our home, whiling away the hours with authors I had never heard of. Some of the books were in Hungarian, but others were in German and French and even English. English! I had been taking lessons in English for some years from a man in town who had lived in London for a time in his youth. In our small provincial school we had studied German, and father thought if I was to be a modern man of business, another language might be useful, and he approved of English much more than he did French—or, rather, he approved of the English much more than he did the French, whom Poppa often called a bunch of “preening, lethargic pigs.”

Smiling, I took this facet we had in common and tried to breach the silence between Hendrik and the rest of the world.

“I study too,” I said in my best imitation of the language, pointing to one of his books. But Hendrik said nothing to my overture. Instead, he looked at me, smiled a pained and dismissive smile, and then withdrew even further, balling his body together as if it were armor protecting him from every assault the outside world could muster.

Kateryna, however, was never as quiet as her brother.

“What is there to do here?” she whined one day. Father and Uncle Sandor—as we had been told to call Hendrik’s father—were out again, off to see to business at the mine, which really meant drinking vodka and talking news at the tavern. Hendrik was reading. Alona and I had taken Kateryna to view the falls outside of the village. For most people, the sight of the water cascading down the thickly forested mountain was one of great beauty and sacrament; for Kateryna, however, it was just another reminder of the privileges she had left behind. “This town is so dull,” she moaned. “What is there to do?” I rolled my eyes at what was swiftly becoming her favorite refrain.

Alona tried to be helpful. “Sometimes, I help Mamma and Grandmamma with the baking.”

To Alona, this was fun, to roll out dough and talk like a woman with the members of her family. But to Kateryna, this suggestion was met with horror.

“Kitchen work?” she gasped. “I have servants who do such chores for me.”

“We are unaccustomed to such finery,” I said pointedly, with as much sharpness as I dared allow my voice to reflect.

But if Kateryna noticed the tone in my voice, she clearly did not care. “That is obvious,” she sniffed, before stalking back toward the direction of our home.

Alona looked momentarily hurt, then trotted off after her, still resolute in her desire to please her older cousin. I sighed and began to follow when I noticed another figure at the falls. Hendrik. My heart skipped a beat, and my sullen manner instantly disappeared. I had not seen him outside the house before; perhaps his days of self-imposed incarceration were finally at an end. Happily but cautiously, as one approaches a wild deer, I went over to him.

“They are beautiful, no?” I said as casually as my quavering voice would allow.

“Yes,” he said with a sigh. He turned his back on the falls and on me and walked a few paces toward a large tree. He settled himself against the mossy bark, tugging his black wool coat closer to his lean body. Even now in summer, it can be cool up here in the mountains. But I felt flushed, warm; my own coat had been left behind.

“Have I done something wrong?” I suddenly blurted out. It was perhaps a rude question, but my addled mind could think of no other reason for Hendrik’s continued reticence in my presence except that I had somehow offended him. “For if I have,” I continued, “please tell me, so that I may repair any injury.”

Hendrik was surprised by my question. “No, of course not, Ferenc,” he said, the first time he ever used my name. “Why do you ask me this?”

I ignored his question. “But you are unhappy here, yes?” I asked instead. I did not know why I posed this question, as it was surely none of my concern. And yet I felt I had no more pressing concern in the wide world than Hendrik’s happiness.

Hendrik made a small frown before finally turning and looking at me. “As unhappy here as anywhere, and as happy as possible.”

It was an enigmatic reply, but I felt so relieved that he had finally looked on me that I did not much mind. “You speak in such riddles, as my grandmother sometimes does,” I said.

Hendrik gave me a small smile, perhaps the first honest emotion I had seen him express since his arrival. “Riddles? I am not sure of that. Questions, perhaps. Life is a series of unanswered questions. Questions that, by their nature, cannot be answered by man or by God.”

I laughed, delighted that we were speaking in this way, but when I saw him flinch, I was chastened I had done so. “I mean not to deride you,” I hastened to add. “Only you speak as a philosopher would.”

He was a year older than me. His dark hair fell over his face in small waves, tendrils of tenderness that begged for me to gently, with a touch so deft and soft, clear them from his visage. I wanted to do this badly, to see clearly his eyes, to gaze into them for myself and make them my own. I was taller than him, but here, standing before him, I felt suddenly small, helpless, and happy to be so. Finally he turned to look at me, a glance more than a stare, but a glance I eagerly returned. He spoke.

“Perhaps. Sometimes it is better to speak philosophically when one cannot speak plainly.”

“You can speak either way with me,” I said, mustering as much banter and boldness as I could. “I am only happy you are finally speaking to me at all.”

His face softened. How I longed to touch it! “I am sorry for that, Ferenc,” he said. “It is—it is just that I have had much on my mind since arriving here and… before.” His eyes looked into mine again. “I meant no offense,” he added.

“And there was none taken,” I replied, happy to give him this small gift. I smiled at him, and we stood there, his back on the tree, my eyes locked on his, not speaking, just enjoying the quiet presence of one another. I could see now there was a hole in Hendrik; that somehow, in some way, he had been broken. I resolved then to do what I could to fix him, to render him complete once more.

“Well,” he finally said, breaking the silence of the moment by speaking. “I have not seen much of the town yet. Perhaps you could show me the sights?”

“That should take all of five minutes,” I laughed.

He laughed too, the first time I heard his laugh. He laughed like his father, in short, gasping bursts, only higher in tone and sweetness, like the plinking of the short strings of a harp. “Perhaps you can find some way to make it last a bit longer,” he said, and I laughed one more time, a happy sound that echoed through the hills as we walked back toward town.

That afternoon, I showed him my world. The widow’s house where I attended school, the mine I would someday own, the back porches where I and the other village boys would steal jugs of hard
apfelsaft
every fall. And Hendrik absorbed every sight I showed him, took it all in, as rapt as if he were touring the grand vistas of Rome. Looking back, I cannot think of a time in my life I had ever felt more significant, as if to him, for those brief moments, I was the most important thing in all the wide world.

And as we walked, we talked. He finally spoke to me of his work with his father’s businesses, which he secretly loathed, and his studies, which he loved. He spoke of Budapest, of the wide boulevards and the opera house and ballet and the men and women all dressed up in their finest clothes. He spoke of the poverty, too, and of the government, and patiently answered my endless string of questions, sometimes thoughtfully, sometimes laughingly, but always with great and sincere earnestness. And I—I was his captivated audience, eager for every word that came off his tongue. The world, the mountains, Pilsden itself melted away, and in my mind we were suddenly in Budapest, he and I, two heady youths in black tie and tails, taking a motorcoach to a night of theater over paved roads and streets illuminated by artificial, electric lights.