The Third Antichrist (16 page)

Alexi was beginning to lose his temper. He and Calque rarely saw eye to eye on matters pertaining to Sabir, and their argument over the Wedding of the Dead was only the visible tip of the iceberg. ‘Legal, you say? What is legal? Who is to say what is legal? It is a matter of each person’s opinion. You
payos
always tell us what you think is legal. Then you make it impossible for us to vote unless we have a fixed address. Then you act as if you are turned upside down in surprise when we choose to ignore your laws.’

‘The law is the law, Alexi.’

‘No it’s not. If Damo wants this thing to bring him restfulness, then we will give it to him. When he recovers from his illness of the heart, and we find him a nice Gypsy girl, it won’t stop him from being able to marry her – if he can afford to pay her bride price, that is, and if her father is stupid enough to accept him as a son-in-law. But Damo is rich, and the sight of money makes even the wisest father blind.’ Alexi’s anger had clearly transmogrified into cupidity. ‘This is why I intend to ask him for a further loan. You must help me with this, Captain. He is the baby’s
kirvo
, you know. Which is like a godfather to you
payos
. With the baby coming in the New Year, there will be many expenses. Damo understands his responsibilities in this matter. I am sure he does. Doesn’t he?’

Calque hunched his shoulders towards his ears and grunted. It was pointless arguing with Alexi. The man had about as much interest in rational discussion as a Rottweiler.

Now, with the dubious advantage of hindsight, Calque was forced to admit that Yola’s idea about the Wedding of the Dead had been an inspired one. It appeared to have achieved the near impossible – it had jogged Sabir out of his self-destructive spiral of melancholy. He was clearly not back to his normal state of – at least according to Calque’s jaundiced view of the matter – irritating whimsicality. But neither was he teetering on the edge of suicide anymore. Instead, his mood had transformed into what Calque could only construe as a condition of mercurial gloom.

Calque now accepted that he had underestimated Sabir’s resilience, and also the effect his renewed companionship with the Gypsies would have on him. He had based his view of Sabir only on what he had seen of him in the few fervid weeks they had been on the run in the US and Mexico. This had been a mistake. As far as his emotional life was concerned, Sabir had been living on the edge for years. Or at least ever since his mother’s suicide. He was salted to it. Like a South African buffalo to a tsetse fly.

But to measure against this, Calque had witnessed for himself how quickly things could turn bad – how swiftly Sabir could be brought down by the tenor of his own thoughts. It was for this reason that Calque had insisted, at the last possible moment, on accompanying Sabir on his journey to Romania.

Had he been wrong? Should he have remained in France to investigate the state of the Corpus Maleficus after its debacle in the Yucatan and the Gypsy camp at Samois?

Only time, and the decisions made by the Countess back at that godforsaken chamber of hers in the Domaine de Seyème, would tell.

25

Over the course of the past few months, Sabir’s cycle of disrupted sleep had followed a roughly predictable pattern. First would come the hyper-realist dreams, in which he was back in the cesspit again, deep in the cellar below the Gypsy safe-house in the French Camargue. In these dreams he was up to his neck in raw sewage, his head bent backwards to protect his mouth, his forehead pressed against the lid of the cesspit, which Achor Bale was sliding shut across his face. Prone to claustrophobia at the best of times, the prospect of suffocation in conditions of utter darkness had been enough to curdle Sabir’s soul and turn him into a gibbering, mewling, wreck.

Then would come the dreams of dreams, in which Sabir’s unconscious mind revisited the hallucinations he had experienced whilst sealed inside the cesspit. Hallucinations in which his arms and legs were torn off, his torso shredded, his intestines, spleen, bowels, and bladder dragged out of his body like offal from a butchered horse. Later in the dream a snake would approach him – a thick uncoiling python of a snake, with the scales of a fish, and staring eyes, and a hinged skull like that of an anaconda. The snake would lunge forward and swallow Sabir’s head, forcing it down the entire length of its body with convulsive movements of its myosin-fuelled muscles, like a reverse birth. During this process, Sabir would witness himself becoming the snake – his head transforming into its head, his skin into its skin. It was at this point in the dream that he would normally awake, his body drenched in sweat, his eyes bulging from his face.

But since the events in Mexico that had culminated in Lamia’s death, six days before, this was no longer the case. Now both snake and dream continued on with their cycle of transformation even whilst Sabir had, to all intents and purposes, regained consciousness. In this semi-lucid state, the vision became even deeper and more intense, with the snake extending its transformation by growing a second, bicephalous head, which in no way resembled Sabir’s own.

This was why Sabir pretended to be dozing all the time he was in the car with the others – why every time someone turned round to check on him he snapped his eyes shut and mimicked sleep. Because he ultimately feared that if he did not, whoever looked him in the face would discern the nightmare that lurked behind his eyes, and that – once outed – the chimera would resolve itself inside his psyche and steal his identity. That he would go mad, in other words, just as his mother had gone mad. And that this madness would end, like hers, in suicide.

26

‘This is it. This is to be your house.’

Alexi’s cousin Gabor was pointing out a blue-washed Saxon house on the outskirts of the village of Brara. None of the windows had glass. Part of the roof had fallen in, affording a curious view of the sky when one looked in through the gaping doorway. But in front of the house there was a cobbled courtyard, and behind the house a small orchard, with apple, plum, cherry, and pear trees in varying stages of dilapidation, but still salvageable, Calque decided, come the spring, with a bit of expedient pruning. A small river ran beneath a bridge adjacent to the property, and the water looked clean and inviting – as if it might contain a few trout, and maybe even a grayling or two.

Inside the house the floorboards were rotten, and the plaster was coming down from the walls in strips and clutches. Calque couldn’t understand why, but the house raised his spirits. It was itself. What you saw was what you got. ‘Who owns this?’

Gabor shrugged. ‘Nobody. Everybody. The Saxons who used to live here went back to Germany years ago. It was they who maintained the houses and the church and the village hall. Now there are only a few old ones left, and they are too frail to maintain anything. So the house belongs to anyone who lives in it. If you want it, you take it.’

‘We’ll take it.’

Calque cast a sideways glance at Sabir staring out over the fields. He seemed entirely uninterested in the house. Heck, thought Calque – he seemed entirely uninterested in the fields.

Calque shook his head. Sabir hadn’t spoken more than three words to him in the past couple of days. For one crazy moment, Calque was tempted to shout out ‘How’s married life treating you, then?’ That would break the deadlock if anything would. Sabir would probably come over and beat the crap out of him. Well, at least it would be a response of sorts.

Alexi and Yola were already pitching their makeshift tent in the orchard.

Calque turned his attention to them. At least they answered when spoken to. ‘Look. Why don’t you two take the house? You’d be more comfortable there. Sabir and I can manage in the tent.’

‘Are you crazy? Yola and I don’t live in houses. We prefer to live out here, and use the house for storage. You two
payos
can live in the house. That way the whole village will think you’re Bulgarian.’

‘Bulgarian? Why would they thing we are Bulgarian?’

‘You know. Lifting of the shirt. Bicyclists. Bulgarians.’

Calque gave a gloomy shake of the head. Alexi usually telegraphed his jokes from at least two valleys away. And this was no exception. ‘Don’t tell me that’s illegal here?’

‘No. No. Not really illegal. They just ride you out of the village on a rail. Then they tar and feather you. Then they tie you to a telegraph pole with duct tape and piss all over you.’

Gabor and Dalca yelped in delight. Alexi hammered gleefully at his tent peg. Even Yola threw back her head and laughed.

Calque didn’t really mind being made fun of. It meant that the Gypsies had, to a certain extent at least, accepted him. That they no longer viewed him solely as an ex-policeman, but also as a human being in his own right. It had been the same while he was in the force – like any small community, he supposed. If they ribbed you, you were okay. If they ignored you, you were dead in the water. ‘Very funny, Alexi. Thanks for the testimonial.’

When the joshing had quieted down, and the evening meal had been eaten, and everyone, including Sabir, had dispersed either to bed or to the local bar, it dawned on Calque that by agreeing to come to Romania, he had committed himself to a course of action whose eventual outcome was never in doubt. Whose possible effects were not even worth quantifying.

As he stared into the remnants of the fire, he recognized, for the very first time, that he had hitched his chariot to a runaway horse. And that he had not the remotest idea whether or not he was up to the ride.

Albescu, Moldova
6 January 1993

27

‘Did you know our country is named after a dog?’

Antanasia stared at her brother. ‘A dog?’ She never knew these days whether Dracul was in his Second Coming mode or being his usual self. There were times when he actively believed himself to be the reincarnation of the risen Christ, and others when he treated the whole thing like an extended joke to which only he knew the punchline.

‘Yes. Prince Drago
ş
was hunting an aurochs.’

‘An aurochs?’

‘A two-metre tall cow. Weighing a thousand kilograms. Like that nun of mine who swings the incense. They died out in the seventeenth century. The cattle, that is. Not the nuns. The nuns still hang on, unfortunately.’

Antanasia felt her stomach tighten. She was scared of her brother. But it was a curious fear. If she had to define it, she would say that she both loved and feared him at the same time. It was an animal need. Without him, she would be bereft. With him, she was terrified.