Ch.13 pt 2, Matteo - 2013, An Unexpected Visitor

At midnight, at our house in Denmark, the doorbell rang, and I knew that it was a vampire because the dogs refused to bark. I was not frightened. I know many vampires. On my way out of Mini's study, I passed the crate where our malamutes had retreated, and bent to pat them. Sorrel, Minky, and Bear. They made no sound at all, a mass of fur and adrenaline, and so I knew the visitor was old.


I am not afraid to die. I have been in the presence of Death many times. I have kissed the hem of his robe and lain at his feet hoping for mercy. Take pity on vampires, Master Death, we only wish to die! I have conversed with him intimately, these four hundred years. If it were Death at the door, I might look on him pleasantly as a friend. As I approached, I heard Sorrel following, but he avoided my hand and I smelled the fear running through his body. "If you pee on my floor I will scold you," I told him, as the great hulking thing padded along behind me, my good favorite, who takes it upon himself to protect me when our Mini is away. Doing his best, Sorrel quailed behind me as I unlocked and opened the front door.


On the doorstep, in the dark, a tall figure with brown hair tied back into a man-bun. A little modern. Unusual. I took Sorrel's collar in my hand to give the dog back a little dignity. "Hello," I said to the old one, "Matteo. Come inside. The dog doesn't bite the dead."


"I'm looking for Miriam," he said, in a voice surprisingly unmeasured, without the cultured delicacy I had come to expect from Mini's associates. 


"He's not here. He's in America, but he puts me in charge when he's not around."


"You can let go of the dog. It's frightened."


I noticed then the slim box under his arm. "That's a manuscript? He's had you doing writing? Come inside. I'll fix you a warm compress," I said. 


As he stepped into the light to follow me inside, I noted his cheekbones, his few facial birth marks, his slightly crooked nose. His eyes had the telltale almond shape of the old Italians. His jaw, while strong, canted up in just such a way, accenting his ears and the length of his neck. Here was one whose beauty he did not mind much, and very different from the others I knew, who had been selected for dissimilar features. I noticed a clip taken out of his right ear, a little notch in the cartilage. His hand, which he offered to me to shake, was thicker than the long sylph-like ones I had often encountered among Mini's friends. The knuckles were large. This was a hand that had known hard work in its life. It felt good to touch such a hand. I traced the popped-up vein on his arm with my eye, because it wasn't harming anyone.


"A Roman? One of Laurent's brothers," I said, as he followed me into the study.


"A good eye. They call me 'Iovita'."


"Matteo. Mini's progeny."


"Attractive word," he said. "Your dog is fat."


"Have you come to murder me?" I asked.


"Not this time."


"Well, a boy can dream."


"I can kill your dog if it'll make you feel better," he said.


"Leave me my one comfort," I snapped playfully, and he laughed.


"That's what they all say, isn't it? Nice to see at least one of us is not dead serious all of the time." He leaned against Mini's desk and set his manuscript box down on the blotter. "I can't stay long."


"Oh sit a minute. Enjoy a compress and chat with me. I have to be polite with everybody else."


"We just met. I could be testing you."


"I failed. Sit down on the goddamned couch and be a friend. I like your work jeans. Been painting?"


"I hate your cut off shorts. Been hooking?" he asked, and took a seat in my favorite chair. 


Sorrel had decided there was nothing to be afraid of, and settled his entire eight stone four at Iovita's feet. "It pays the bills. Do you know Miriam well?" I asked him, heading into the kitchen to heat a compress in the microwave.


"Not at all," he said. "We have never met. Do you?"


"I've only known him my entire life, since I was four."


"Lover?" he asked, as I passed him the compress. He draped it around his neck and winked at me in thanks. 


"Sure. Call it whatever you want."


"Consort."


"No."


He laughed again, and I folded my legs beneath myself, sitting down on the couch comfortably. 


"It's funny Mini's had you writing if I've never heard of you. Usually I hear gossip about most people Laurent knew. Do you watch TV?" I asked him, gesturing at the dark screen against the far wall.


"Please," he said, smiling. 


"It does whine a bit, the TV, a high pitched noise, but you get used to it after awhile." I switched it on and flipped away from the test pattern into cable.


"That mosquito whine? I know it. Don't worry about it. I'm not as sensitive to high-pitched noises as some of the others."


"Your accent, what is it?" I asked.


"Yorkshire."


"No," I said.


"California?" he asked.


"Something else."


"Calais."


"Calais," I repeated. "That's it. I know that accent. The English wool traders of my childhood."


"From that area?" he asked, palpating the compress, warming his fingers.


"More or less. Further south but we followed the wool route. Mini's from outside Rouen. I lived there a few months out of a year."


"Merchant class."


"Sure," I said. "You?"


"A little lower. Labor. Worked for a pittance. You know it already."


"The notch in your ear."


"Right," he said. "The notch. But that's all that. So I serve. That's what this is," he gestured at the manuscript. "You give the master a job, he's too tired, baby you better step up. I wasn't doing anything."


"Sure," I said, hearing in his tone that there was more to it, and knowing he knew I heard it and didn't care. He had not been a slave for centuries. He was his own man, it was clear. "Look I'm being forward, I know. But do you want to go to bed?"


"Give it a minute, baby. I'm getting warmed up. Let's have this talk show and head back after."


"Mais non," I said quietly, snapping soundlessly at Sorrel to join me on the couch. 


"You and your lover, you don't mind it?"


"What is there to mind?"


"I always felt that way, myself."


The dog stood drowsily, sleepy from the warmth of the floor and shaky on his legs. He dipped his big wolf's head as he turned his body, to smell if there was something in my hand for him to eat. Seeing nothing, he clambered in slow motion onto the couch and settled his warm body against mine, heavy in a good way. He smelled of hair and of musk, and of dirt, and of dog, sighing as he settled. I stroked his course fur and laid my head against his ruff. 


"That's a good dog there," Iovita said.


"A brave one. The others are too servile to do as he does."


"Yes. Brave enough to be foolish in the name of that servility he labors beneath."


"If I am understanding you, then I agree."


"Are we alone?" he asked.


"Yes. For the first time in a long while, there are none here but myself and the dogs."


"You house the disturbed here? Is that why Miriam is called 'Doctor'?"


"Yes we serve the dead. We house them, or we help them die."


"I see," he said.


For some time, we watched television. After awhile, sensing that all was aright, I heard the padding of heavy paws, and Minky and Bear emerged, seeking their master in Sorrel, and settled on the carpet. Their desire to be near to him had overpowered their fear. Sorrel made no acknowledgement of them, sighing a hot, wet breath occasionally.


After the program concluded, I stood up quietly, and Iovita, seeing this, set aside the compress. The chair was big enough for two, and so that when I sat astride his thighs I could press my cheek to his warm'ed neck and whisper in his ear.


Kissing me, he asked, "Is there anything in your blood, pet?"


"Valium," I whispered.


"Only that?" he asked.


"What have you heard?" I asked.


"I have heard that you shot heroin with my brother when he was alive."


"I no longer do it. People talk," I whispered.


"That is all I need to know," he said.


"I cannot sleep without a little something anymore. A little something, or a little blood drunk from my body. My head is fury."


"All right, pet," he said.


Up close, I found that he didn't smell of anything. I could smell only the cotton of his shirt and the places he had been. Upon us there are layers of places, and us part of the world only as we may reflect it. "Iovita," I whispered, against his neck.


"Yes," he said.


"Will you hold me after, a little? It has been so many years that blood has been in my life, and yet still after its letting, I fear that I will die. Do you have a horror of the body? Do you not mind?" 


"Matteo, I will not abandon you. It is a gift you give me, and I do not mind whatever you are or what you look like. Are you afraid to die?"


"Did they train you to say things like that? To say what people want to hear? I am not afraid to be dead, but I fear a long dying," I said, lonely for Mini.


"They did train tact but I do not say it as empty words. What do we have if we do not have compassion? You have lived a long life, and many places, and many memories. So have we all."


"Sometimes I feel that we can be very cruel to each other. So I'm comforted."


He lifted me up as if I were no more substantial than a veil of silk, and put me to bed gently. The dogs, though certainly afraid he was killing me, cowered. I slept for the first time in many days.


On Mini's desk, the box of paper waited, and when Mini returned some hours later and found it, he looked as if he had been struck by lightning. 


"Did you see him?" he asked me, out of breath with shock.


"He stayed the evening," I said.


"Matteo," he said, unable to close his mouth or alter his tone, "you must tell me everything he said."


"Were you with Leechtin?" I asked him, and he smiled.


"Can a person be with that man? I don't think he is ever truly seeing anyone for what they are."


I pushed my fingers into my Mini's red hair and tried to smell the musk of sheeptraders, of Rouen, of the sea. And of course, to me, the memory of living is so strong that I could swear I smelled it, Mini, who brought me to this life, and who I love.


It is not hard for me to imagine a life without him, for there are so many of us now who have lost everything, their foundation, their reason to live, he who could remember them alive and for whom they could overcome their many fears. It is natural to die. It is far more fearful to continue to live.

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