Vlad

I

T

y he steps for finding our client a home

were duly undertaken. My wife,

Asuncion, located an available house

matching the client's specifications in

the mountainous neighborhood of Lomas Heights.

I drew up the contracts for the transactions and

presented them to our firm's founder, Don Eloy

Zurinaga, who in turn—and contrary to his usual

practice—took charge of ordering the furniture

for the house in a style that was the opposite of

his own antiquated taste. The Lomas mansion

evoked a modern monastery, all right angles and

views without clutter. Large empty spaces—floors,

walls, ceilings—and comfortable, svelte chairs and

couches in black leather. Opaque tables of leaden

metal. Not one painting, photo or even a mirror.

The house was built for light, in keeping with the

principles of Scandinavian design, designed though

for environments where great openings were

required to let in even a little light but out of place

in the sunny reality of Mexico. No wonder such

a great Mexican architect as Ricardo Legorreta

builds into his houses protective shade to allow for

the cool inner light of color. But I digress: My boss's

client had exiled natural light from this glass pal­

ace. He had walled himself in as though in one of

his mythical Central European castles of which Don

Eloy had spoken. (continued on page 116)

uii ouoif i m ma mm m no mm m m ontii

Vlad

(continued from page 74)

Coincidentally, the day that Zurinaga ordered the windows blocked, a veil of clouds had left the house in shadows, and the sparseness of the furnishings was revealed as a necessary deprivation to allow a person, without tripping over and bumping into everything, to walk around in the dark. A strange detail caught my attention because it seemed to compen­sate for such simplicity: There were a great number of drains running along the walls of the ground floor, as though our client expected a flood any day now.

A tunnel was dug from the back of the house to the steep gully, in accord with the resident's instructions, the latter's slope stripped bare, harvested of its ancient wil­lows and Montezuma cypresses.

"In whose name should I make out the contracts, sir?" I asked Don Eloy Zurinaga.

"In my name," he said, "as proxy."

"The power-of-attorney document seems to be missing."

"Then draft it, Navarro."

"Fine, but I'll still need the name of the legal tenant."

The lawyer Eloy Zurinaga—so forthright but so cold, so courteous but so distant— for the first time since I met him hesitated. But no sooner had he lowered his head involuntarily than he collected himself, cleared his throat, tightened his grip on the armchair and in a calm voice said, "Vladimir Radu. Count Vladimir Radu."

"All my friends call me Vlad," said our cli­ent, smiling, one night a month later when, already settled into the house in Lomas, he had summoned me for our first meeting.

"I hope you can excuse my eccen­tric schedule," he went on, courteously extending a hand, inviting me to sit down on a black leather sofa. "In wartime one is forced to live by night and to pretend that nothing is happening in one's own dwelling, Monsieur Navarro. That it is uninhabited, that everyone has fled. One must not attract attention."

He paused reflectively. "I under­stand that you speak French, Monsieur Navarro."

"Yes, my mother was a Parisian."

"Excellent. We will understand each other all the better."

"But as you say, one must not attract attention...."

"You're right. You may call mesenor if you like."

"Mexicans find the monsieur pretentious and annoying."

"I see your point."

What did he see? Count Vlad was dressed more like a bohemian, an actor or an artist, than like an aristocrat. He wore all black: black turtleneck shirt, black pants and black moccasins without socks. His ankles were extremely thin, as was his whole body, but his head was enormous, extra large but

strangely undefined, as though a hawk had disguised itself as a raven, so beneath his artificially placid features, one could make out a deeper face that Count Vlad some­how managed to obscure.

His mahogany-colored hairpiece slid sideways, so he constantly had to adjust it. His overflowing ranchero-style mus­tache—drooping, rural, shapeless, obviously glued on his upper lip—con­cealed our client's mouth, depriving him of those expressions of joy, anger, mockery, affection, that the corners of our mouths betray. But if the mustache was a disguise, the black sunglasses were the true mask. They completely covered his gaze; they did not leave the slight­est opening for the light; they wrapped mercilessly around his tiny, childish and scarred ears, which gave the impression that Count Vlad had been the victim of several botched face-lifts.

He moved his hands with disagreeable elegance, he closed them with sudden strength and he didn't attempt to conceal the strange abnormality of his long, glassy nails, as transparent as his windows before he'd had his house sealed.

"Thank you for agreeing to meet with me," he said with a deep, manly and melodic voice.

I nodded to offer him my service.

"Can I get you something to drink?" he added right away.

"Perhaps a little red wine," I accepted out of politeness, "if you'll be joining me."

"I never drink," said the count with a the­atrical pause, "wine." As he sat on a black leather ottoman, he asked, "Do you ever get nostalgic for your ancestral home?"

"I never knew it. The Zapatistas burned down the haciendas, and now they're fancy hotels, or paradoxes, as the Spaniards call them."

He continued as if he were not pay­ing attention to me: "I must tell you that, above all, I feel the need for my ancestral home. But the land has become impov­erished, there have been too many wars and there are no resources left to survive there. Zurinaga told me a lot about you, Navarro. Haven't you ever lamented the misfortune of old families, made to endure and to maintain tradition?"

"No," I said, allowing the hint of a smile to help shape my words, "not really."

"There are some types of families that become lethargic," he went on as though he hadn't heard me, "and they settle all too easily for what they refer to as modern life. Life, Navarro! Does this brief passage, this instant between the womb and the tomb, even deserve to be called life?"

"You're making me nostalgic," I said, in an effort to be amusing, "for the good old days of feudalism."

He tilted his head to one side and adjusted his toupee. "Where does our inexplicable sadness come from? It must have a reason, a cause, a source. Do you know? We are an exhausted people: so much internecine war-fere, so much blood spilt for nothing.... Such

sorrow! Everything contains the seed of its own ruin. In things, that ruin is called decay. In people, it is called death."

My client's digressions made conver­sation difficult to follow. There was little opportunity for small talk with the count, and metaphysical statements about life and death have never been my specialty. As though to illustrate his morbid point, quick-witted Vlad (as in "Call me Vlad" and "All my friends call me Vlad") walked over to the piano, where he played Chopin's sad­dest prelude, providing a bizarre type of entertainment. I was amused by the way his wig and glued-on mustache stumbled with the movements of his performance. But I couldn't laugh when I looked at those hands with their long, translucent finger­nails caressing the keys without breaking.

I had no desire that his eccentric char­acter and the melancholy music hypnotize me. When I lowered my head, I noticed something else exceedingly strange. Even the marble floor was flecked with count­less drains, distributed throughout the living room.

Outside it began to rain. I heard drops hitting the covered windows. Nervous, I sat up and granted myself permission to stroll through the house while listening to the count playing piano. I meandered from the living room to the dining room, which had once overlooked the ravine. Here too the windows were blocked off. In their place, a long painted mural of a landscape—using the technique of trompe l'oeil to trick a viewer into seeing a three-dimensional real­ity—stretched across the length of the wall. An ancient castle arose in the middle of the desolate landscape, where birds of prey cir­cled a dry forest and wasteland occupied by wolves. On the castle's terrace, minutely depicted, a woman and a little girl stood, terrified and imploring.

I had thought there wouldn't be any paintings in this house.

I shook my head to shoo away that image.

I took the liberty to interrupt Count Vlad.

"Count, sir, I just need you to sign these documents. If you don't mind, could you do it now? It's getting late, and I'm expected for dinner."

I held out the papers and a pen to the tenant. He sat up, adjusting his ridicu­lous wig.

"How fortunate!" he said. "You have a family."

"Yes," I stammered. "My wife was the one who found this house for you."

"Ah! I hope she'll come visit me one of these days."

"She is very busy, you know, with her business."

"But I'm sure that she knew this house before I did, Mr. Navarro. She walked through these hallways. She stood in this living room."

"Of course, yes, of course...."

"Tell her she left her scent behind."

"Say again?"

"Yes, tell—is her name Asunci6n?

Asuncion, that's what my friend Zurinaga told me she's called. Like the Feast of the Asuncion? The Assumption? Tell Asuncion that her scent still lingers, suspended in the air of this house."

"Why not? Your gallantry "

"Tell your wife that I am breathing her

scent "

"Yes, I will. How gallant," I said. "Now, if you'll please excuse me, good night. And enjoy your stay."

"I have a 10-year-old daughter. You do too, don't you?"

"Yes, Count, that's right."

"I hope that they'll meet and like each other. Bring her around, so she can play with Minea."

"Minea?"

"My daughter, Mr. Navarro. Let Borgo know."

"Borgo?"

"My servant."

Vlad snapped his fingers with the sound of a rattle and a Castanet. His glass finger­nails shone. Then a small, twisted man appeared, a small hunchback with the most beautiful face I have ever seen on a man. He was a sculptural vision, one of those ideal profiles from ancient Greece, like Cellini's Perseus. Borgo's was a face of perfect sym­metry brutally set above a deformed body, both disparate aspects united by his long mane of feminine, honey-colored curls. His expression was sad, ironic and coarse.

"At your service, monsieur," said the ser­vant in French, with a distant accent.

I hurried my good-byes, trying not to be rude but without success: "I believe every­thing is in order. I suppose we won't be seeing each other again. Enjoy your stay. Thank you...I mean, good night." I regretted, in an instant, having offended my client.

I could not parse, beyond so many layers of disguise, his look of disdain, scorn and glee. I could superimpose onto Count Vlad any expression I chose. Borgo the servant, on the contrary, had nothing to hide, and I admit that his transparency frightened me more than the truculence of the count, who bade me good-

bye as though I had not said a word.

"Don't forget. Tell your wife—Asuncion, right?—that the little girl is always welcome."

Borgo brought a candle near his master's face and added, "We could play together, the three of us."

He cackled and slammed the door in my face.

On a storm-filled night like this, the bound­ary between dream and life becomes porous. Asuncion sleeps beside me after a round of intense sex that I urged—all but imposed— aware that I needed to compensate for the mournful mood of my visit with the count.

When I try to convey my love life with Asuncion, discretion restrains my descrip­tions. But tonight, as if my will—to say nothing of my words—did not belong to me, I surrendered to such intense erotic pleasure that, as the afterglow fades, I find myself wondering if I've forgotten anything.

The tried-and-false question that a man puts to a woman—"Was it good for you?"— becomes very soon senseless. She will always say yes, first with words and later with a nod, but if after a while we insist on an answer, the yes will be tinged with irritation. I now ask myself the same question. Did I satisfy her? Did I give her all the pleasure she deserves? I know that I was satisfied, sure, but to be so self­ish as to consider only my own pleasure would degrade me and would degrade my wife. I believe a man obtains only as much pleasure as he gives to a woman. Asuncion, I wonder, does the pleasure that satisfies me also fulfill you? Because I cannot ask her, I must deduce the answer, take the temperature of her skin, detect the rhythm of her moans, gauge the force of her orgasms. I must contemplate her, take reckless pleasure in rediscovering her sex, the depth of the occluded spring of her navel, the maypoles that are her erect nipples in the midst of the sweet, pillowy, maternal softness of her breasts, her long neck out of a Modigliani, her face covered by the bend of her arm, the suggestive angle of her open legs, her pale thighs, her ugly feet, the delicious

quivering of her rear end. And I notice the

contrast between her long, black, lustrous,

straight hair and the wild tangle of her short

hair covering the grimace of her sex, the hair

crouched like a panther, indomitable like a bat,

that forces me to penetrate her if only to save

myself from her, to lose myself in her in order

to conceal the wild jungle that grows between

Asuncion's legs, ascending over the mound

of Venus and then climbing the ivy along the

womb, longing to graze the belly button, that

fountain of life

I got out of bed, on that night, with the feeling I forgot to say or do something.

I kissed her again, as if expecting that, from our joined lips, the truth of who we are and what we want would be given voice.

I watched her sleep for a long time that early morning.

Then, extending my hand under the bed, I felt around for my slippers.

I always left them there, but now I couldn't find them.

I stretched my arm farther under the bed. I patted around, then retracted my hand in horror.

I, my hand, had touched another hand, a hand under the bed.

The cold hand had long, smooth and glassy fingernails.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

I sat up on the edge of the bed and put my feet to the carpet.

I steeled myself so I might begin my daily routine.

Then I felt that frozen hand grab me tight by the ankle, dig the glass fingernails into the soles of my feet. I heard a whisper in a deep voice:

"Sleep. Sleep. It's still too early. Go back to bed. There is no rush. Sleep, sleep."

Then I had the feeling that someone had left the room.

In my dream someone was in my bed­room, but then that someone walked out of it. From then on, the bedroom was no longer mine.

I woke with a start. I looked at the clock with disbelief. It was noon. I touched my temples. I rubbed my eyes. I was overcome by a feeling of guilt. I was late for work. I had failed in my duty. I hadn't even called in with an excuse.

I grabbed the phone and instead called Asuncion at her office.

I asked about our daughter, Magdalena. Asuncion told me that today was a holiday at the Catholic school. "The Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, her ascent to heaven just as she was in life. Not a legal holi­day. And since it's the same day as Chepina's birthday—you remember Chepina, Josefina Alcayaga, the daughter of Alcayaga the engi­neer and his wife, Maria de Lourdes?—there's a party for the kids, and I took Magdalena there early. While I was there, I collected the engineer's invoices for the tunnel he built at your client's house, the count."

I made the connection and announced, "Asuncion. If today is the Feast of the Assumption, then it's your saint's day."

"Well, you and I don't follow the religious calendar...."

"Sorry, love."

"Yves, sorry for what?"

"I didn't congratulate you in time."

"Don't be silly. Think about last night's celebration. I was sure that that was your way of celebrating with me. And it was. And I thank you."

I listened to her quiet laugh.

"Okay, darling. Everything's in order," Asuncion concluded. "I'll pick up Magda this afternoon, and we'll see each other at dinner. And if you want, later we can cele­brate the Assumption of the Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary, again."

I had barely hung up when the phone rang. It was Zurinaga.

"You were on the phone for a long time, Navarro," he said impatiently, not in keep­ing with his habitual courtesy. "I've been trying to reach you for hours."

"Ten minutes at the most, sir," I replied firmly and without further explanation.

"Forgive me, Yves," he said, returning to his normal tone. "But it's urgent. You must go to Count Vlad's tonight."

"Why doesn't he call me himself?" I said, letting him know that being an errand boy was in keeping with neither Don Eloy Zurinaga's character nor my own.

"They still haven't installed his phone."

"And how did he get in touch with you?" I asked, now a bit annoyed.

"He sent his servant."

"Borgo?" I asked.

Without saying a word, Zurinaga hung up the phone.

The hunchback opened the door and brought his face much too close to mine, staring with an insolent look. When he rec­ognized me, he gave a fawning bow.

"Come in, Licenciado Navarro. My mas­ter is expecting you."

I entered and searched in vain for the count in the large living room.

"Waiting where?"

"Go on upstairs to the bedroom."

I climbed a semicircular staircase that had no banister. On the upper floor, all the doors to what I reckoned were bedrooms were shut, except for one. I approached that one and entered a room with a wide bed. By that time it was already nine o'clock at night, but I noticed that the bed was still covered with black satin and had not been turned down for the master's evening retirement.

There were no mirrors in the room, but below where a mirror might have gone stood a vanity with all sorts of cosmetics and a row of wig stands. While he combed his wig and applied his makeup, it seemed, the count would have to imagine himself. A light steam billowed from an open bathroom door. I hesitated for a moment; I felt as though I was invading my client's privacy. But he said from within, "Come in, Mr. Navarro, come on in. Don't be shy."

In the bathroom, steam emanating from the shower filled the air. Count Vlad washed himself behind a dripping lacquer door. I looked away. Still, curiosity got the better of me. Through the fog, I noticed the bathroom lacked mirrors. The bath­room also lacked the usual tools of hygiene: shaving brush, comb, razor, toothbrush, toothpaste. Instead, as in the rest of the

house, there were drains in every corner.

Vlad opened the door and emerged from the shower, showing himself naked before my discomfited gaze.

He had shed his wig and his mustache.

His body was as white as plaster.

He did not have a single hair anywhere— not on his head, not on his chin, not on his chest, not in his armpits, not around his gen­itals and not on his legs.

He was totally smooth, like an egg.

Or a skeleton.

He looked as though he had been flayed.

But his face was still wrinkled like a pale lemon, and his gaze remained hidden by those dark glasses that were almost like a mask.

"Ah, Mr. Navarro," he said with a wide

red smile. "At last we see each other as we

really are "

At the edges of his affable smile, now with­out the fake-mustache disguise, two sharp canines glinted, yellow like the lemon color suggested by the pallor of his face.

"Excuse my indiscretion. Please, hand me my robe. It's hanging over there," the count said as he pointed to the distance. "Let's go downstairs," he said hastily, "for dinner."

"Pardon me. I have dinner plans with my family."

"Your wife?"

"Yes. That's right."

"Your daughter?"

I nodded. He let out a cartoonish laugh.

"It's nine p.m.," he deadpanned. "Do you know where your children are?"

I thought of Magdalena, who had gone to Chepina's birthday party and who should be back home by now while I remained like an idiot in the bedroom of a naked, hairless, grotesque man who was asking me at nine p.m. if I knew where my children were.

"May I call home?" I asked, a bit confused.

I had taken the precaution of bringing my cell phone. I took it out of my pants pocket and speed-dialed my house. I brought my hand up to my head. There was no answer. I heard my own voice tell me to "leave a mes­sage." Something kept me from speaking, a feeling of increased uselessness, of a lack of freedom, of being dragged against my will down a slope like the one that plunged behind this house into the domain of pure randomness, the realm without free will.

"She must be at the Alcayagas' house," I muttered to reassure myself.

"The Alcayagas? You mean the kind engi­neer who designed and built the tunnel behind this house?"

"Yes," I said in my muddle, "that's him."

"Yves—is it all right if I call you by your first name?"

I nodded without thinking.

"Yves, my robe, please. Do you want me to catch pneumonia? There, in the armoire, the one on the left."

I approached the closet like a sleepwalker. I opened the door to find there was only a single garment in the closet, an old, heavy bro­cade robe, a bit threadbare, its collar made of wolf fur. It was a long robe that reached down to the ankles, worthy of a czar from a Russian opera and embroidered in antique golds.

I took the garment and tossed it over Count Vlad's shoulders.

"Yves," the count said, "don't forget to close the armoire door."

I looked back at the closet (a word obviously unknown to Vlad Radu), and only then did I see, stuck with thumbtacks to the inside of the door, a photograph of my wife, Asuncion, with our daughter, Magdalena, sitting on her lap.

"Vlad. Call me Vlad. All my friends call me Vlad."

I have no idea what possessed me that night, but against my better judgment, I stayed for dinner with Vlad. At best I can rational­ize why I didn't return home. There was nothing to worry about. My daughter was fine, sleeping over at the Alcayagas'. My wife was simply running late; she would come for me right here at Count Vlad's, and I would drive her home. In any case I called my wife's cell phone and, when she didn't answer, left the usual message.

I didn't mention having discovered the photograph. That acknowledgment would give this suspect individual the upper hand. The only defenses I had against him were to keep calm, to ask for no explanations and to never seem surprised. What else could a good lawyer do? Zurinaga must have given pictures of me, of my family, to the exiled Balkan nobleman so that he could see with whom he would be dealing in this faraway and exotic country, Mexico.

That explanation calmed my nerves.

The count and I sat at either end of a strange, nonreflective lead table, unlikely to stimulate one's appetite, especially if the meal consisted—as this one did—only of animal organs. Livers, kidneys, testicles, stomachs and slack skins were all smoth­ered in sauces of onions and herbs that I recognized thanks to the old French recipes my mother enjoyed: parsley, tarragon, of course, and others whose taste I did not rec­ognize. But my mother always used garlic.

So I asked, "You have any garlic?"

"We use pork dust, Maitre Navarro. From an old recipe that Saint Eutychius prescribed to expel a demon that a nun had swallowed up without noticing."

Vlad seemed amused by my look of skepticism.

"According to a well-known legend in my country," Count Vlad continued, "the unsus­pecting nun sat herself above the devil, so he defended his action: 'What else could I do? She crouched over a bush, and the bush was me.'"

I concealed my disgust well.

"Les entrees el les sorties, Maitre Navarro.

That's what life comes down to: 'Entrances and exits' sounds better in this barbaric tongue. From the front and from the rear. What goes in must come out. What comes out must go in. The habits of hunger vary. What is disgusting to one culture is a delicacy to another. Imagine what the French think of Mexicans eating ants and grasshoppers and worms. But don't the French gourmets themselves savor frogs and snails? Show me an Englishman who appreciates mole poblano; his stomach turns at the thought of that mix­ture of chilies, chicken and chocolate."

He laughed in that characteristic way of his, forcibly lowering his upper lip as if he wanted to hide his intentions.

"You have to be like the wolf, Mr. Navarro. We can observe such wisdom in the old Latin lupus, my Teutonic urulfaz. We find natural and eternal wisdom in wolves—harmless in the summer and in the fall, when they are sated—who only hunt when they're hun­gry, in the winter and in the spring! When they are hungry."

He made a commanding gesture with his pale hand, intensified by its glazed nails.

"I am deeply grateful to you for accept­ing my invitation, Mattre Navarro. I usually eat alone and, croyez-moi, that gives me very sad thoughts."

Borgo poured me some red wine but offered none to his master. I shot Vlad a quizzical look as I raised my glass to pro­pose a toast.

"I told you..." the count said, staring at me with good-natured sarcasm.

"Yes, you don't drink wine," I said, trying to keep things light and friendly. "Do you drink alone?"

Following his habit of ignoring what had just been said and then continuing on some other subject, Vlad said, "Telling the truth is unbearable to mortals."

I pressed him for an answer. "It was a sim­ple question. Do you drink alone?"

"Telling the truth is unbearable to mortals."

"I don't know about that. I'm mortal and I'm a lawyer. That sounds like one of those syllogisms they teach us at school. All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal."

"Children don't lie," he went on, ignoring me. "And they can be immortal."

"Say what?"

"That's why I love children," Vlad said without touching his food but inviting me to eat with a gesture of his hand and those long, glassy fingernails. "You know, a child is like a small, unfinished god."

"An unfinished god?" I said, surprised. "Wouldn't that be a better definition of the devil?"

"No, the devil is a fallen angel."

I took a gulp of wine to steel myself for a long, unwelcome exchange of abstract ideas with my host. Why hadn't my wife come to my rescue?

"Yes," Vlad resumed his discourse. "God's abyss is his awareness that he is still unfin­ished. But if God were finished, his creation would end with him. The world cannot be the simple legacy of a dead god. A retired god, collecting a pension. Imagine the world as a circle of corpses, a heap of ashes. No, the world must be the endless work of an unfinished god."

"What does any of that have to do with kids?" I asked, realizing as I spoke that I was a little tongue-tied.

"I believe that children are the unfinished part of God. God needs the secret life force of children in order to continue to exist."

"I, ah..." I muttered with a voice now faint.

"You don't want to sentence children to old age, do you, Mr. Navarro?"

I protested with a helpless gesture, slam­ming my hand down, spilling the remains of my glass on the lead table.

"To abandon a child to old age," the count repeated impassively, "to old age. And to death."

Borgo picked up my glass. My head fell to the metal table.

While I was still conscious, I heard Count Vlad continue, "Didn't the Unmentionable One say, 'Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto me?"

I didn't know where I was. This displaced

feeling was one I'd experienced before on long trips. I didn't recognize the bed or the large room in which I found myself. When I checked my watch, it was 12 o'clock. But was it noon or midnight? I didn't know that either.

I was still dressed in the same clothes as at that execrable dinner. So what happened? The count and his servant had drugged me. My head was a maelstrom, and the profusion of drains in the count's house made my body feel like a liquid that was losing its shape, flowing away, spilling into the ravine.

The ravine.

Sometimes one word, just one word, gives us an answer, restores our reason or inspires our action. And more than any­thing, I needed to think and to act: I walked out of the bedroom on the top floor of the house and opened the doors to the other bedrooms, one after the other, taking note of each room's perfect order, the perfectly made beds, and in each one discovering no sign that anyone had spent the night there. Unless, I reasoned—and was grateful that my lost logic had returned from its long noctur­nal exile—unless everyone had gone out and the industrious Borgo had made the beds.

One bedroom caught my attention. I was drawn to it by a distant melody, which I recognized as the French lullaby "Frere Jacques."

Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques Dormez-votts? Dormez-vous? Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines! Ding-dang-dong. Ding-dang-dong.

I walked into the room and approached a chest of drawers. A small music box played the song, while a little shepherdess, dressed in the style of the 18th century, holding a hooked staff and with a lamb next to her, turned in circles.

Here everything was pink: the curtains, the backs of the chairs, the nightdress carefully laid out next to the pink pillow. The short, girl's nightie trailed ribbons from its embroi­dered hem. There was a pair of pink slippers too. No mirrors. A perfect but unoccupied room. It was a room that was waiting for someone. And all of a sudden I noticed there were half a dozen dolls reclining against the pillows. They were all blonde and all dressed in pink. But none of them had legs.

I left the room refusing to allow myself any thoughts about it and went downstairs to silent sitting rooms. I entered the kitchen, messy and nasty smelling, clouded by the steam com­ing offheaps of entrails strewn across the floor and from the remains of a huge, indescribable animal I could not identify, drawn and quar­tered on the tiled table. Beheaded.

The blood of the beast was still running to the drains on the kitchen's floor.

I covered my mouth and nose in fear. Taking small steps backward, half fearing the animal would come back from the dead to attack me, I bumped up against some kind of leather curtain that gave way when I leaned against it. I drew the curtain aside. It was the entrance to the tunnel.

I recalled Vlad's insistence on having a pas­sage connecting the house with the ravine. It was too late to turn back. I entered, groping at the dark space between the walls. I moved with extreme caution, unsure of what I was

doing, looking for the way out, some guiding light in the dark tunnel, with no luck.

I reached for my cigarette lighter. I lit it and saw what I feared, what I should have known I would see. Unadulterated horror. The heart of the mystery.

Coffins and more coffins; there were at least a dozen coffins lined up along the tun­nel's length.

I had a strong impulse to run from that awful scene, but my will to know, my foolish and detestable curiosity—an occupational hazard among investigative lawyers—drove me along on this reckless mission even as I opened one coffin after another, unable to find anything but dirt inside each one, until I opened the coffin in which my client, Count Vlad Radu, lay in perfect peace, dressed in his turtleneck shirt, his pants and his black moccasins, with his glass-fingernailed hands crossed over his chest and his bald head resting on a small silk pillow as red as the cushioned interior of the box.

I stared at him intensely, unable to wake him and demand an explanation, paralyzed by the horror of this encounter, hypnotized by my situation, having Vlad before me, prostrate, at my mercy, but in the end, I was ignorant of the possible acts that I could perform, subject as I was to the legend of the vampire, to the defenses proclaimed by superstition and sci­ence, inextricably joined in this case. The garlic necklace, the cross, the stake.

The intense cold in the tunnel drew fog from my open mouth, but it also cleared my head and allowed me to observe closely certain phenomena: Vlad's ears—too small and sur­rounded by scars, which I attributed to a series of facial surgeries—had grown overnight. I saw them struggle to spread out like the wings of a sinister bat. What did this damned being do—trim his ears every evening before going out into the world to disguise his mimicry of a nocturnal chiropteran?

A drop of some nasty liquid splattered on my head. I lifted my gaze. Bats hung upside down, holding on to the tunnel's rock ceil­ing by their claws.

An unbearable stench emerged from the corners of Vlad's coffin, where bat guano— vampire shit—had collected....

Vampire shit. Count Vlad's ears. The pha­lanx of blind rats hanging over my head. These were insignificant next to the most sinister detail.

Vlad's eyes.

Vlad's eyes without his dark, ever-present sunglasses.

Two empty sockets.

Two eyes without eyes.

Two lagoons incarnate with crimson shores and depths of black blood.

His black sunglasses were his real eyes. They allowed him to see.

I don't know what affected me the most when I quickly shut the lid of the coffin in which Count Vlad slept.

I don't know if it was the horror itself.

I do not know if it was the surprise, the lack of tools to destroy him right then and there, my threatened, empty hands.

/ opened the door to find

there was only a single

garment in the closet, an

old, heavy brocade robe,

a bit threadbare, its collar

made of wolf fur.

From Vlad by Carlos Fuentes, available from Dalkey Archive Press in July.