Vlad

Chapter 12

While seated at the wheel of my parked BMW, I read Zurinaga’s manuscript. Then I drove off. All possible feelings of disgust, astonishment, doubt, rebelliousness, and uncertainty had to be quarantined.

I drove robotically from the Roma neighborhood to the Chapultepec aqueduct within the backlit shadow of the eighteenth-century castle, and up on Paseo de la Reforma (formerly Paseo de la Emperatriz) on my way to Bosques de las Lomas. I was grateful that my habits allowed me to drive on autopilot, because I found myself lost in thought, given over to musings that were unusual for me, but that now seemed to focus my experience of these last few hours and seemed to arise spontaneously as the evening lights came on like blinking cat eyes along the route.

I was seized by an intense feeling of melancholy. Is the greatest moment of love, I wondered, a moment of sadness, uncertainty, and loss? Or rather, do we feel love at its most intense when it is right in front of our faces and thus less prone to be sacrificed to the foolishness of jealousy, of routine, of disrespect, or of negligence? I pictured my wife, Asunción, and recalling in an instant our entire relationship, our lives together, I said to myself that pleasure astonishes us: How is it possible, Asunción, that one’s immortal soul can fuse with another’s in a kiss and thus lose sight of the whole wide world?

I spoke to my beloved in this way because I didn’t know what awaited me at the vampire’s house. I repeated hopeful words to myself in the spirit of exorcism: love is always generous; it never loses heart because it is spurred on by a desire for total, infinite possession, and as this is not possible, we convert dissatisfaction into the spur of desire, and we embellish it, Asunción, with sadness, anxiety, and a celebration of the finite itself.

As if I foresaw what awaited me, Asunción, I let out a sob and said to myself:

“This is the greatest moment of our love.”

Dusk had fallen when I arrived at Count Vlad’s house. Borgo opened the door, and once again blocked my way. I was on the verge of striking the hunchback when he let me pass.

“The girl is out back,” he said, “in the garden.”

“What garden?” I asked, anxious and angry.

“What you call the ravine. The trees. .” the servant indicated by pointing a slow finger.

Not betraying my panic, I walked through Vlad’s mansion from the front door to the back to reach what Borgo called the garden but was instead a ravine with, as I recalled, a few dying willows grasping the slope of the land. Behind the house, I noticed, with astonishment, that all the trees had been chopped down and carved into stakes. Between two of these sharp poles hung a child’s swing.

That’s where I saw my daughter, Magdalena.

I ran to kiss her, unconcerned about everything around us.

“My girl, my little girl, my love,” I cried. I kissed her, I hugged her, I caressed her curly hair and her burning cheeks, and I felt the fullness of the embrace that only a father and a daughter know how to share.

She moved away, smiling.

“Look, Daddy. This is my friend Minea.”

I turned to see this other girl, the one called Minea, who took my Magdalena by the hand and drew her away from me. My little girl was dressed in her navy-blue school uniform with a white collar and a red bowtie.

The other girl was dressed all in pink, like the dolls that I had seen that morning in the pink bedroom. She wore a pink dress attached to a loose-fitting, frilly skirt with cloth roses sewn at the waist, pink stockings, and black patent-leather shoes. She had voluminous golden ring-lets and tresses of corkscrew curls, with a huge pink bow crowning her head.

She was from another time. But she was identical to my daughter (who was also, as I mentioned, thanks to the influence of her mother, not exactly a modern girl).

The same height, the same face. Only their attire was different.

“What are you doing, Magda?” I said, suppressing my amazement.

“Look,” she said, pointing at the stakes in the gully.

I saw nothing out of the ordinary.

“The squirrels, Daddy.”

Yes, there were squirrels running up and down the trunks, scurrying nervously, and pausing to watch us, as though we were intruders, before they resumed their race.

“They’re adorable, sweetheart. We have lots of them in the garden behind our house, you remember?”

Magdalena giggled, covering her mouth with a hand. She lifted the skirt of her school uniform while Minea did the same with her own skirt. Minea stuck her hand into the front of her own panties and took out a squirming squirrel, which she held tightly in her hands.

“Daddy, I bet you didn’t know that squirrels’ teeth grow inside until they pierce the top of their heads. .”

My daughter took the squirrel that Minea offered to her and, lifting the skirt of her school uniform, she put the squirrel down her own panties, over her genitals.

I felt consumed by my horror. I had kept my gaze low, looking down at the girls without noticing Borgo’s watchful proximity.

The servant approached my daughter and caressed her neck. I was revolted. Borgo laughed.

“Not to worry, Monsieur Navarro. My master doesn’t allow me more than this. Il se réserve les petits choux bien pour lui. .”

He spoke like a cook caressing a hen before cutting off its head. He let go of Magda, showing his empty hands in a plea for peace. In the slowly falling night of the plateau, it was becoming hard to make out what I was seeing in front of me.

“On the other hand, since Minea is part of the household. .”

The lewd servant lifted the other girl’s skirt and pulled up her pink ruffled dress until her face was covered, exposing her naked chest with its prepubescent nipples. Kneeling in front of Minea, he sucked on them.

“Oh, Monsieur Navarro!” he said, interrupting his filthy performance. “What shapely, budding nipples! What bliss!”

He moved his face away, and I saw that, on Minea’s chest, the nipples had now disappeared.

I searched for my daughter’s gaze, trying to divert her attention from these ghastly sights.

I don’t know if I betrayed my disgust.

Magda’s eyes seemed to say to me, “I hate you. You’re embarrassing me. Leave me alone. I’m playing with my friend.”

Go back to Vlad’s house. Soon it will be too late.

Zurinaga’s words resonated in that murky evening just beginning out there on the Mexican plateau, where hot days yield, in a split second, to cold nights.