Post by khayman on Sept 19, 2006 12:11:33 GMT 1
Sonoma compound. Late evening.
I walked out on the terrace and took a deep breath of the cool night air. A few nights ago, Mekare lay down on her favorite broad stone bench in one of the chambers, and had stayed like that since; laying on her side, her knees slightly bent, one of her arms stretched out at an odd angle, the huge motionless green eyes thoughtful and almost serene as they watched something only she could see. I felt like going there and sitting down beside her; saying nothing, maybe thinking about nothing, either; just enjoying the very fact of us being together, and the presence of this silent and mysterious being who knew more about me than anyone else. I knew she would never have anything against my coming and staying with her. But it seemed somehow very wrong to disturb her rest. She heard and saw everything that was happening; and she would notice any trace of sadness in me, however small, and it would upset her. And there had been plenty of sadness in me lately.
In a peculiar way, while Maharet was more sympathetic and openly warm, it was Mekare who felt others’ emotions most deeply. To her, they acquired a devastating sharpness she could not escape; she lived through the feelings of her fellow creatures as if they were her own, never able to separate herself from them, as if the barrier between her and those she saw and met did not exist. This hurt her – in a way that could not be comprehended unless one had experienced the same, and from everything she had told and made clear to me, I had only a very vague understanding of it. I really could not say I knew anything more than that. But even what little I did know was enough to be frightening.
No. It was really not right to make her upset just because I happened to have the blues again. Besides, it felt almost like a sacrilege of some kind to intrude upon the most intimate and secret world that she was absorbed in now. When the time came, she would rise on her own, and be among others again; she did not need anyone stumbling in and dragging her out of her dreams by force.
Maharet was away, probably arranging an exhibition of Mekare’s paintings and tapestry work that was to be held in a few weeks’ time. Mekare did not seem to like this idea very much – or, which was most likely, she simply did not care about it enough. But Maharet had insisted, with her characteristic unobtrusive gentleness, saying that her work really deserved being seen and that it would make everyone happy if it was exhibited, and finally, Mekare had agreed to it.
Mekare was a stunning artist. I did not know she was gifted in this way when we had first met; there had been so many things we did not know about one another. But somehow, when we met again after all those centuries and centuries and centuries, and I spent some time with Mekare, it did not surprise me to see her weaving brilliant tapestries with fantastical, impossible images, or covering the walls of her chamber with fresco-like paintings. I only felt happy that she was doing it, that she had enough drive and did not feel as distant from the world as I sometimes feared she was.
Something in her drawings and paintings looked similar to Hieronymus Bosch, except that the images were much gentler, each of them flowing into the others and merging with them so naturally that one didn’t seem to notice. And not all of them were that terrifying and ugly. Some were; but others had an eerie, entrancing, unreal beauty, and yet others seemed just cryptic and bewildering.
Flowers with the longest, most slender golden stamens appeared out of stones which had eyes with an evil glint, and what looked like contorted mossy mouths; tiny golden serpents crawled out of a huge lily-like crimson flower, and down along its thick stem; juicy bright green leaves unfurled, huge black eyes with gold splashing somewhere in their depth suddenly opening on their surface; within the cracks of the bark of an old, enormous, crooked, completely dry tree, droplets of orange-golden juice hardened and finally became tiny golden beetles; a bird flew in the sky which had only a huge round eye for a body, and two wings, and nothing more than that; strange faces appeared in the milky soft mist, faces that one felt were so familiar, yet could not recognize. Funny small gnomes with hunched backs and kind large eyes, and elves with transparent wings crawled along the sides of the drawing, turning into fantastic flowers and plants with their stems entangled, as if they were performing some incredible dance. The whole sheet seemed to be breathing, teeming with some alien and beautiful life nobody could understand.
One became enchanted with that strange world when one saw it. It made one feel suddenly dizzy, and as if one were being drawn into it, made to become part of it even against one’s will. It made one almost uneasy sometimes.
One of her paintings hung in a chamber of the compound which I lived in from time to time, and to which I could always come back after my wanderings all over the world.
A man walked across a large frozen lake, early in the evening it seemed, when the sun had only just sunk, and gentle light still lay on the surface of the ice. The precariously thin crust of it glowed with gold, but beneath it lapped water that seemed black. This made for an odd contrast, and enhanced the eerie beauty of the scene. A soft shining mist hung over the lake. Long slender stems grew all around from the ice itself; they bore bright yellow blossoms that looked like little stars. Their pointed petals appeared to be moving, contracting and then stretching out again, as if the flowers were living beings with minds of their own. The man had a bunch of these flowering plants in his arms, and seemed to have just bent to pick another one. And right behind him, where his feet had stepped just a moment ago, began a menacing crack in the ice, which became bigger and branched out into more and more tiny ones with each new inch. The dark water washed over the surface of the ice where it was lapping at its sharp broken edges.
The man had long, wavy black hair.
She had it right. More right than anyone I had ever known. But this was only part of the truth, I think. For all I knew, I was sincerely happy, as well as sad about those things that can't be brought back now, and that still haunt me even after all that time; and I preferred to hold out my happiness in front of me like a shield, so that I could keep the sadness at bay.
Except that sometimes nothing seemed to work. The way it was now. Yet again, I felt like wandering the city, just for the sake of doing it; walking and walking without end, simply to see the new sights unfolding before me, and think about nothing in particular. This was always a good and pleasurable thing. If I was brimming with exuberance, it gave me something to channel the excess energy into; if I was upset, the things I saw around me drew my attention, and helped prevent the sadness from surfacing and overwhelming me. Mingling with mortals made me feel at peace, because it seemed I was not alone, and more part of their world now that I was amongst them, - just another face out of many in the crowd. And the bustle of the big city always made me more lively and cheerful.
I felt such love for mortals. They were so different from me, - so tender and rosy and warm, and they lived only such a brief time. Alien beings, but it was precisely this alienness that made them so adorable. I wished I could be like them. And I, I was this odd sort of creature, starkly white and hard as stone, that had existed throughout countless centuries without changing, - or rather, who was outside of time altogether, and so would not yield to it. I was something that should not have been there. This awareness of my strangeness, of how much of an unnatural thing I am made me want to try to love human beings more, even from the other side of the enormous gulf that separated them from me. I longed for some connection to them, and their world. And besides, they were just thoroughly sweet and likeable.
And to think that I had once been like them. Only it was so long ago that it felt like a dream now; so dim and hazy. Sometimes I felt uncertain whether it could have ever been like that. But I just *knew* that it was really true, and that was about all.
I often thought how much I wanted to have a companion, a mortal or a young blood drinker. There were Mekare and Maharet, of course. But this was different. They were the creatures who were most definitely closest to me, of anyone I had ever known. I would be overflowing with gratitude throughout the times when I would stay with them. Every moment we spent together had an intensity to it, a sense of immense significance; I knew each of those moments was something precious and essential, without which I would not have been me, and my life would not have been what it had come to be, either. And I knew I would not be able to face being separated from them again.
But their presence also brought pain. It brought the memories of that terrible time when we had met, and of the all harm I had caused them. It brought guilt. Sometimes the awareness of what I had done to them was so overwhelming that I did not know what to do with myself, where to avert my eyes – looking them in the face seemed unthinkable. I felt like asking….how could you have ever forgiven me? why do you love me? why would anyone?.. At such times, it was very difficult. I could not imagine how they could bear the very presence of someone who had hurt them this much, and thought I was not worthy of them even just looking at me. Maharet would feel it, and persuade me gently to leave.
And sometimes I did not want the intensity itself.
Perhaps what Maharet said once was right, and I was a man who had had enough. For all eternity. A lot like our Brat Prince, only that it showed in a different way. I longed for simplicity, and wanted only to have all the warmth that had been bottled up inside me to become unleashed. I wished to have somebody to love and to care for, in the most direct manner, whenever and in whichever way I could; perhaps if it were a mortal, a fragile and now foreign creature I could protect and shower with affection, it would have been best.
The complexity and emotional charge of my relationship with Mekare and Maharet was what made it special, something that had shaped who I am, and probably the most precious thing I had ever had; but sometimes I felt it was not what I wanted. I longed for someone with whom I could start from scratch, and have a relationship much less sophisticated, and not as tense.
Apart from this, I did not really want much more. I had come to be a creature content to sleep on the ground, or on the bare floor in a room that had no furniture, and to drift through time enjoying small things. But I did not feel bad about that; perhaps this was what how I was meant to become. And I could not imagine myself being any other way.
I was not the same after I had injured and violated two people I loved most, and then the tongue of one was cut off and the eyes of the other torn out right before me; after I dragged those bodies into the pit – bodies of victims I had found and brought there myself, and the white, nightmarishly transformed faces of those I had respected and served as best as I could bending over me, and those hard icy hands grabbing me and forcing me onto the floor and the sharp teeth piercing my neck. It was enough to put me off holding some sort of status again, or following the rules that one normally adehered to in ordinary life without even noticing. Forever. All the more so that none of this was ultimately of any use for beings like us. I only wanted to be free. And to forget the pain.
I took a small notebook and wrote a note to Maharet, - or to Mekare, if she should wake, - that I had gone out to the city for a while. I stuck it to the wall. Notes. Why did it have to happen so that we could not hear one another’s thoughts? Those centuries when I kept searching and could not find them, and they searched for one another, also with no success. And then finally, when I had no hope left, I descended into that old Egyptian crypt and lay down, and the brown earth beneath me smelled of peace, and I saw the fingers of my hand before me for nights and nights and nights until I no longer realized what it was….
Don’t.
Don’t think about this.
I jumped over the terrace, landing softly on the grass below, and went towards the city. Soon, I was walking along the streets, just admiring the stars above and feeling the cool wind brush my face. The city lights were scattered in the distance like so many tiny eyes, shining and blinking at me; there was, as always, the noise of the traffic and the people passing by in spite of the late hour; and loud music blaring out of the open doors of nightclubs, which made the pavement seem to throb beneath my feet. All of it made me feel somehow at home.
I went into a small and especially cozy-looking tavern. The small rectangular tables standing along the walls were surrounded with wooden benches that had tall backs, and formed niches which were very pleasant to sit in. Several lamps shone in the distance through the clouds of milky blue cigarette smoke, which were slowly drifting upwards and shifting in the still air; the dim golden light made the browns and yellows of the wooden furnishings glow. How I loved places like these. They made me feel warm inside. It was especially delightful somehow to see them so filled with mortals that it was hard to find a place to sit, to hear their carefree chatter and laughter echoing everywhere. And the thoughts, of course – a neverending din which I heard even when I did not wish to, and which made the place seem much more noisy than it could ever be for a mortal. But it was exactly this noise that was comforting.
There was an open fireplace in one of the corners which cast a cheerful light around it, and threw quivering shadows onto the floor. I went to it and stretched my hands over the iron grating, enjoying the exquisite warmth and wondering at the peculiar howling sound the flames were making, and at the crackling of the wood, which I could hear distinctly in a way a mortal would not be able to, so that it felt like a whole symphony of dry exploding sound.
It was hard to resist the temptation of just putting my hands right into the flames. That would have been so delightful; in an odd way, the scalding heat was still there, but it did not hurt anymore. It was much like cleansing oneself, washing one’s hands in light. I had actually done that once, in Athens, after I had risen from underground the last time. I walked into a taberna and, seeing that there was an open hearth, stuck my hands into the fire, knowing instinctively that it could not burn me. When I got over the near-rapturous sensation it had produced, I realized that the people around me were gaping and had eyes that weree just one step short of square. A waitress was standing stock-still right next to me and staring fixedly at my hands, apparently unable to take her eyes off them, or even to move. It was not at all surprising, really. I had had to play around with their minds a little to make them forget what they had seen. I smiled. It was really hard to keep a straight face when remembering these things.
It was almost strange how drawn we were towards fire and sunlight. The very things that could destroy us, if we were young enough. Warmth and light always lifted our spirits with miraculous ease, and made our existence much more bearable. A common tactic of Satanic covens in the Middle Ages, apart from starving their adepts, was to deprive them of access to fire, except for very special occasions; one quickly went mad from that. Seeing the sunset was an event; and I had a feeling that immortals cherished that sight more than a lot of mortals did, even though every child of the millennia had seen many more sunsets than any mortal on Earth. Was it that you began to value something only when you lost it? I often wondered about those modern youths who called themselves “Goths”, dressed in black and sometimes proclaimed themselves vampires. How was it possible to say one did not like the sun, and avoid its light on purpose, wondrous blessing that it was? Especially when one could bask in it all day long, if one only wished! There was something very amusing about it all that made me smile. But at the same time, it was a little sad.
Finally, I moved away from the hearth and found myself a dully lit corner, with only a little cone-shaped lamp that stood on the table.
Kagor, I told the waitress when she approached me. Strong balsamic kagor, if you have it. After a while, she brought me a glass of the wine, such a rich red that it appeared almost black until one looked through it at a light.
I still remembered what the wine had tasted back t h e n. How long ago it had been?..
Kagor was the brand that seemed to come closest to what that wine had been like, of all I had come across. The same strength and pure, fragrant sweetness. And to think, wine had been a luxury; only few could afford drinking it, and even they usually did it on special occasions. It was beer that had been the drink of choice for rich and poor alike, not even so much a drink as an essential part of the diet.
I raised the glass against the light of a lamp, and marveled at the brilliant red shine that was refracting within the nearly black bordeau depth. Just like a fluid, living gemstone. I do not know how long I sat like this, holding the glass on my hand, and turning it this way and that from time to time; I could spend hours spellbound, completely lost in the sight of a candle, a flower, or some other simple yet beautiful thing that had drawn my attention.
I brought the wine to my lips and tasted it, savoring the sensation of burning sweetness and the spicy, pungent taste of the many medicinal herbs used to make it. Of course, I could not drink it, but I still felt the taste. It did not associate itself with a beverage anymore, or with anything one was supposed to take in; but it was very pleasant, in the same way as the scent of perfume could be.
From where I sat, I could see many human beings sitting at the tables, talking to each other, eating. Couples hugged one another, chattering away about the things they loved. At the table on the other side of the corridor, a young man and woman were sitting; I saw the man talking, and the woman listening keenly, her eyes sparkling in response. Then the man produced something out of his pocket, shielding it with his palm with an air of secret. It was a small black velvet-covered box. The man opened it slowly, and revealed an elegant golden ring with a diamond that shone like a little star. I heard the woman cry out excitedly, “yes, yes!”, saw her jump off her seat, round the table and throw her arms around her fiancé.
How happy I felt for them. It was good at least to see someone else have something I myself did not have. I felt my face break into the widest smile. If only I could have been in the place of this man.
I looked down onto my hands, and my eyes fell upon the massive, broad golden ring that Maharet had given me in those first nights after Akasha’s demise. And all the sweetness and significance suddenly came flooding back. I really did not have a right to complain, did I? I was blessed to have the friends that I have. What more could I want. But the faint sadness lingered on in some remote corner of my being, and did not go away.
After a while, I got up, leaving a handful of bills on the table which I had not counted, and went out into the night.
I finally came to a large park near a modern hospital building. It was a beautiful park overlooking a large and serene man made lake. The moonlight gave a soft silvery glow to the gentle waves that lapped at the concrete banks. I sat back on a park bench overlooking the lake, easily extending my arms along its long back and taking in the simple scenery. The tranquility of it was beautiful. Yet at the same time, I felt the sadness slowly come to the surface again.
Sometimes the sadness itself is bliss. You sink into it as you would into the waters of that lake of Mekare’s painting, which are dark, and deep, yet at the same time more serene than anything you had ever known; you go down, and down, and down, and you do not want to swim back to the surface again. It would take an enormous effort. And why should you really do it? And then, finally, you lie on the very bottom, surrounded by silence and soothing coolness, and watch the silvery midnight sun so far above you, sparkling and breaking into a myriad shiny fragments in the dark undulating depth.
In it, you do not desire anything, did not move for any action. It was comforting more than anything else, the cool stillness encasing you from all sides and making you feel as if you were made of lead. But if someone’s hand stretched out to you, you felt it was the greatest blessing, and grasped it so that it could pull you out. And, instinctively, you would normally search for something to contain that sadness and not let it overwhelm you, knowing that once you started to sink in it, you would go deeper and deeper and would not be able to stop.
I had already surrendered myself to it, so it did not really matter. Gazing at the ethereal silvery light playing on the surface of the water, I drifted.
I walked out on the terrace and took a deep breath of the cool night air. A few nights ago, Mekare lay down on her favorite broad stone bench in one of the chambers, and had stayed like that since; laying on her side, her knees slightly bent, one of her arms stretched out at an odd angle, the huge motionless green eyes thoughtful and almost serene as they watched something only she could see. I felt like going there and sitting down beside her; saying nothing, maybe thinking about nothing, either; just enjoying the very fact of us being together, and the presence of this silent and mysterious being who knew more about me than anyone else. I knew she would never have anything against my coming and staying with her. But it seemed somehow very wrong to disturb her rest. She heard and saw everything that was happening; and she would notice any trace of sadness in me, however small, and it would upset her. And there had been plenty of sadness in me lately.
In a peculiar way, while Maharet was more sympathetic and openly warm, it was Mekare who felt others’ emotions most deeply. To her, they acquired a devastating sharpness she could not escape; she lived through the feelings of her fellow creatures as if they were her own, never able to separate herself from them, as if the barrier between her and those she saw and met did not exist. This hurt her – in a way that could not be comprehended unless one had experienced the same, and from everything she had told and made clear to me, I had only a very vague understanding of it. I really could not say I knew anything more than that. But even what little I did know was enough to be frightening.
No. It was really not right to make her upset just because I happened to have the blues again. Besides, it felt almost like a sacrilege of some kind to intrude upon the most intimate and secret world that she was absorbed in now. When the time came, she would rise on her own, and be among others again; she did not need anyone stumbling in and dragging her out of her dreams by force.
Maharet was away, probably arranging an exhibition of Mekare’s paintings and tapestry work that was to be held in a few weeks’ time. Mekare did not seem to like this idea very much – or, which was most likely, she simply did not care about it enough. But Maharet had insisted, with her characteristic unobtrusive gentleness, saying that her work really deserved being seen and that it would make everyone happy if it was exhibited, and finally, Mekare had agreed to it.
Mekare was a stunning artist. I did not know she was gifted in this way when we had first met; there had been so many things we did not know about one another. But somehow, when we met again after all those centuries and centuries and centuries, and I spent some time with Mekare, it did not surprise me to see her weaving brilliant tapestries with fantastical, impossible images, or covering the walls of her chamber with fresco-like paintings. I only felt happy that she was doing it, that she had enough drive and did not feel as distant from the world as I sometimes feared she was.
Something in her drawings and paintings looked similar to Hieronymus Bosch, except that the images were much gentler, each of them flowing into the others and merging with them so naturally that one didn’t seem to notice. And not all of them were that terrifying and ugly. Some were; but others had an eerie, entrancing, unreal beauty, and yet others seemed just cryptic and bewildering.
Flowers with the longest, most slender golden stamens appeared out of stones which had eyes with an evil glint, and what looked like contorted mossy mouths; tiny golden serpents crawled out of a huge lily-like crimson flower, and down along its thick stem; juicy bright green leaves unfurled, huge black eyes with gold splashing somewhere in their depth suddenly opening on their surface; within the cracks of the bark of an old, enormous, crooked, completely dry tree, droplets of orange-golden juice hardened and finally became tiny golden beetles; a bird flew in the sky which had only a huge round eye for a body, and two wings, and nothing more than that; strange faces appeared in the milky soft mist, faces that one felt were so familiar, yet could not recognize. Funny small gnomes with hunched backs and kind large eyes, and elves with transparent wings crawled along the sides of the drawing, turning into fantastic flowers and plants with their stems entangled, as if they were performing some incredible dance. The whole sheet seemed to be breathing, teeming with some alien and beautiful life nobody could understand.
One became enchanted with that strange world when one saw it. It made one feel suddenly dizzy, and as if one were being drawn into it, made to become part of it even against one’s will. It made one almost uneasy sometimes.
One of her paintings hung in a chamber of the compound which I lived in from time to time, and to which I could always come back after my wanderings all over the world.
A man walked across a large frozen lake, early in the evening it seemed, when the sun had only just sunk, and gentle light still lay on the surface of the ice. The precariously thin crust of it glowed with gold, but beneath it lapped water that seemed black. This made for an odd contrast, and enhanced the eerie beauty of the scene. A soft shining mist hung over the lake. Long slender stems grew all around from the ice itself; they bore bright yellow blossoms that looked like little stars. Their pointed petals appeared to be moving, contracting and then stretching out again, as if the flowers were living beings with minds of their own. The man had a bunch of these flowering plants in his arms, and seemed to have just bent to pick another one. And right behind him, where his feet had stepped just a moment ago, began a menacing crack in the ice, which became bigger and branched out into more and more tiny ones with each new inch. The dark water washed over the surface of the ice where it was lapping at its sharp broken edges.
The man had long, wavy black hair.
She had it right. More right than anyone I had ever known. But this was only part of the truth, I think. For all I knew, I was sincerely happy, as well as sad about those things that can't be brought back now, and that still haunt me even after all that time; and I preferred to hold out my happiness in front of me like a shield, so that I could keep the sadness at bay.
Except that sometimes nothing seemed to work. The way it was now. Yet again, I felt like wandering the city, just for the sake of doing it; walking and walking without end, simply to see the new sights unfolding before me, and think about nothing in particular. This was always a good and pleasurable thing. If I was brimming with exuberance, it gave me something to channel the excess energy into; if I was upset, the things I saw around me drew my attention, and helped prevent the sadness from surfacing and overwhelming me. Mingling with mortals made me feel at peace, because it seemed I was not alone, and more part of their world now that I was amongst them, - just another face out of many in the crowd. And the bustle of the big city always made me more lively and cheerful.
I felt such love for mortals. They were so different from me, - so tender and rosy and warm, and they lived only such a brief time. Alien beings, but it was precisely this alienness that made them so adorable. I wished I could be like them. And I, I was this odd sort of creature, starkly white and hard as stone, that had existed throughout countless centuries without changing, - or rather, who was outside of time altogether, and so would not yield to it. I was something that should not have been there. This awareness of my strangeness, of how much of an unnatural thing I am made me want to try to love human beings more, even from the other side of the enormous gulf that separated them from me. I longed for some connection to them, and their world. And besides, they were just thoroughly sweet and likeable.
And to think that I had once been like them. Only it was so long ago that it felt like a dream now; so dim and hazy. Sometimes I felt uncertain whether it could have ever been like that. But I just *knew* that it was really true, and that was about all.
I often thought how much I wanted to have a companion, a mortal or a young blood drinker. There were Mekare and Maharet, of course. But this was different. They were the creatures who were most definitely closest to me, of anyone I had ever known. I would be overflowing with gratitude throughout the times when I would stay with them. Every moment we spent together had an intensity to it, a sense of immense significance; I knew each of those moments was something precious and essential, without which I would not have been me, and my life would not have been what it had come to be, either. And I knew I would not be able to face being separated from them again.
But their presence also brought pain. It brought the memories of that terrible time when we had met, and of the all harm I had caused them. It brought guilt. Sometimes the awareness of what I had done to them was so overwhelming that I did not know what to do with myself, where to avert my eyes – looking them in the face seemed unthinkable. I felt like asking….how could you have ever forgiven me? why do you love me? why would anyone?.. At such times, it was very difficult. I could not imagine how they could bear the very presence of someone who had hurt them this much, and thought I was not worthy of them even just looking at me. Maharet would feel it, and persuade me gently to leave.
And sometimes I did not want the intensity itself.
Perhaps what Maharet said once was right, and I was a man who had had enough. For all eternity. A lot like our Brat Prince, only that it showed in a different way. I longed for simplicity, and wanted only to have all the warmth that had been bottled up inside me to become unleashed. I wished to have somebody to love and to care for, in the most direct manner, whenever and in whichever way I could; perhaps if it were a mortal, a fragile and now foreign creature I could protect and shower with affection, it would have been best.
The complexity and emotional charge of my relationship with Mekare and Maharet was what made it special, something that had shaped who I am, and probably the most precious thing I had ever had; but sometimes I felt it was not what I wanted. I longed for someone with whom I could start from scratch, and have a relationship much less sophisticated, and not as tense.
Apart from this, I did not really want much more. I had come to be a creature content to sleep on the ground, or on the bare floor in a room that had no furniture, and to drift through time enjoying small things. But I did not feel bad about that; perhaps this was what how I was meant to become. And I could not imagine myself being any other way.
I was not the same after I had injured and violated two people I loved most, and then the tongue of one was cut off and the eyes of the other torn out right before me; after I dragged those bodies into the pit – bodies of victims I had found and brought there myself, and the white, nightmarishly transformed faces of those I had respected and served as best as I could bending over me, and those hard icy hands grabbing me and forcing me onto the floor and the sharp teeth piercing my neck. It was enough to put me off holding some sort of status again, or following the rules that one normally adehered to in ordinary life without even noticing. Forever. All the more so that none of this was ultimately of any use for beings like us. I only wanted to be free. And to forget the pain.
I took a small notebook and wrote a note to Maharet, - or to Mekare, if she should wake, - that I had gone out to the city for a while. I stuck it to the wall. Notes. Why did it have to happen so that we could not hear one another’s thoughts? Those centuries when I kept searching and could not find them, and they searched for one another, also with no success. And then finally, when I had no hope left, I descended into that old Egyptian crypt and lay down, and the brown earth beneath me smelled of peace, and I saw the fingers of my hand before me for nights and nights and nights until I no longer realized what it was….
Don’t.
Don’t think about this.
I jumped over the terrace, landing softly on the grass below, and went towards the city. Soon, I was walking along the streets, just admiring the stars above and feeling the cool wind brush my face. The city lights were scattered in the distance like so many tiny eyes, shining and blinking at me; there was, as always, the noise of the traffic and the people passing by in spite of the late hour; and loud music blaring out of the open doors of nightclubs, which made the pavement seem to throb beneath my feet. All of it made me feel somehow at home.
I went into a small and especially cozy-looking tavern. The small rectangular tables standing along the walls were surrounded with wooden benches that had tall backs, and formed niches which were very pleasant to sit in. Several lamps shone in the distance through the clouds of milky blue cigarette smoke, which were slowly drifting upwards and shifting in the still air; the dim golden light made the browns and yellows of the wooden furnishings glow. How I loved places like these. They made me feel warm inside. It was especially delightful somehow to see them so filled with mortals that it was hard to find a place to sit, to hear their carefree chatter and laughter echoing everywhere. And the thoughts, of course – a neverending din which I heard even when I did not wish to, and which made the place seem much more noisy than it could ever be for a mortal. But it was exactly this noise that was comforting.
There was an open fireplace in one of the corners which cast a cheerful light around it, and threw quivering shadows onto the floor. I went to it and stretched my hands over the iron grating, enjoying the exquisite warmth and wondering at the peculiar howling sound the flames were making, and at the crackling of the wood, which I could hear distinctly in a way a mortal would not be able to, so that it felt like a whole symphony of dry exploding sound.
It was hard to resist the temptation of just putting my hands right into the flames. That would have been so delightful; in an odd way, the scalding heat was still there, but it did not hurt anymore. It was much like cleansing oneself, washing one’s hands in light. I had actually done that once, in Athens, after I had risen from underground the last time. I walked into a taberna and, seeing that there was an open hearth, stuck my hands into the fire, knowing instinctively that it could not burn me. When I got over the near-rapturous sensation it had produced, I realized that the people around me were gaping and had eyes that weree just one step short of square. A waitress was standing stock-still right next to me and staring fixedly at my hands, apparently unable to take her eyes off them, or even to move. It was not at all surprising, really. I had had to play around with their minds a little to make them forget what they had seen. I smiled. It was really hard to keep a straight face when remembering these things.
It was almost strange how drawn we were towards fire and sunlight. The very things that could destroy us, if we were young enough. Warmth and light always lifted our spirits with miraculous ease, and made our existence much more bearable. A common tactic of Satanic covens in the Middle Ages, apart from starving their adepts, was to deprive them of access to fire, except for very special occasions; one quickly went mad from that. Seeing the sunset was an event; and I had a feeling that immortals cherished that sight more than a lot of mortals did, even though every child of the millennia had seen many more sunsets than any mortal on Earth. Was it that you began to value something only when you lost it? I often wondered about those modern youths who called themselves “Goths”, dressed in black and sometimes proclaimed themselves vampires. How was it possible to say one did not like the sun, and avoid its light on purpose, wondrous blessing that it was? Especially when one could bask in it all day long, if one only wished! There was something very amusing about it all that made me smile. But at the same time, it was a little sad.
Finally, I moved away from the hearth and found myself a dully lit corner, with only a little cone-shaped lamp that stood on the table.
Kagor, I told the waitress when she approached me. Strong balsamic kagor, if you have it. After a while, she brought me a glass of the wine, such a rich red that it appeared almost black until one looked through it at a light.
I still remembered what the wine had tasted back t h e n. How long ago it had been?..
Kagor was the brand that seemed to come closest to what that wine had been like, of all I had come across. The same strength and pure, fragrant sweetness. And to think, wine had been a luxury; only few could afford drinking it, and even they usually did it on special occasions. It was beer that had been the drink of choice for rich and poor alike, not even so much a drink as an essential part of the diet.
I raised the glass against the light of a lamp, and marveled at the brilliant red shine that was refracting within the nearly black bordeau depth. Just like a fluid, living gemstone. I do not know how long I sat like this, holding the glass on my hand, and turning it this way and that from time to time; I could spend hours spellbound, completely lost in the sight of a candle, a flower, or some other simple yet beautiful thing that had drawn my attention.
I brought the wine to my lips and tasted it, savoring the sensation of burning sweetness and the spicy, pungent taste of the many medicinal herbs used to make it. Of course, I could not drink it, but I still felt the taste. It did not associate itself with a beverage anymore, or with anything one was supposed to take in; but it was very pleasant, in the same way as the scent of perfume could be.
From where I sat, I could see many human beings sitting at the tables, talking to each other, eating. Couples hugged one another, chattering away about the things they loved. At the table on the other side of the corridor, a young man and woman were sitting; I saw the man talking, and the woman listening keenly, her eyes sparkling in response. Then the man produced something out of his pocket, shielding it with his palm with an air of secret. It was a small black velvet-covered box. The man opened it slowly, and revealed an elegant golden ring with a diamond that shone like a little star. I heard the woman cry out excitedly, “yes, yes!”, saw her jump off her seat, round the table and throw her arms around her fiancé.
How happy I felt for them. It was good at least to see someone else have something I myself did not have. I felt my face break into the widest smile. If only I could have been in the place of this man.
I looked down onto my hands, and my eyes fell upon the massive, broad golden ring that Maharet had given me in those first nights after Akasha’s demise. And all the sweetness and significance suddenly came flooding back. I really did not have a right to complain, did I? I was blessed to have the friends that I have. What more could I want. But the faint sadness lingered on in some remote corner of my being, and did not go away.
After a while, I got up, leaving a handful of bills on the table which I had not counted, and went out into the night.
I finally came to a large park near a modern hospital building. It was a beautiful park overlooking a large and serene man made lake. The moonlight gave a soft silvery glow to the gentle waves that lapped at the concrete banks. I sat back on a park bench overlooking the lake, easily extending my arms along its long back and taking in the simple scenery. The tranquility of it was beautiful. Yet at the same time, I felt the sadness slowly come to the surface again.
Sometimes the sadness itself is bliss. You sink into it as you would into the waters of that lake of Mekare’s painting, which are dark, and deep, yet at the same time more serene than anything you had ever known; you go down, and down, and down, and you do not want to swim back to the surface again. It would take an enormous effort. And why should you really do it? And then, finally, you lie on the very bottom, surrounded by silence and soothing coolness, and watch the silvery midnight sun so far above you, sparkling and breaking into a myriad shiny fragments in the dark undulating depth.
In it, you do not desire anything, did not move for any action. It was comforting more than anything else, the cool stillness encasing you from all sides and making you feel as if you were made of lead. But if someone’s hand stretched out to you, you felt it was the greatest blessing, and grasped it so that it could pull you out. And, instinctively, you would normally search for something to contain that sadness and not let it overwhelm you, knowing that once you started to sink in it, you would go deeper and deeper and would not be able to stop.
I had already surrendered myself to it, so it did not really matter. Gazing at the ethereal silvery light playing on the surface of the water, I drifted.