Vlad

Chapter 8

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, Magdalena, was fine, sleeping over at the Alcayagas’. My wife, Asunción, 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. Such an 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, opaque, non-reflective lead table, unlikely to stimulate one’s appetite, especially if the meal — as this one — consisted 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 that my mother enjoyed: parsley, tarragon, of course, and others whose taste I did not recognize — but my mother had always used garlic as well.

So I asked, “You have any garlic?” expecting a withering look and sudden silence, followed by a swift change of subject.

“We use pork dust, Maître 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 directly over the devil, so he defended his action as follows: ‘What else could I do? She squatted over a bush, and the bush was me. .’ ”

I concealed my disgust well.

“Les entrées et les sorties, Maître Navarro. That’s what life comes down to: entrances and exits; it 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 one culture finds disgusting 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 chili, chicken, and chocolate. . And don’t you adore huitlacoche, common smut to the botanist, the fungus that grows on corn, which so disgusts the rest of the world that they would only feed it to their pigs? And speaking of pigs, how can the English stand their dishes cooked — or rather ruined — in lard, which is pig fat? Not to mention the North Americans, who so lack any sense of taste that eating newsprint would make them lick their chops in delight.”

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 wulfaz. 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.

The role of the butler was assumed by Borgo the hunch-back, and serving the dishes was a slow-moving maid, pointlessly urged on by the snapping fingers of Borgo, who wore for the occasion a little red-and-black-striped jacket and a bow tie, a costume generally only seen in old French movies. He thought that by wearing this old-fashioned uniform, he could, coquettishly, make up for his physical deformity. At least that’s what I understood from his satisfied and (sometimes) suggestive glances.

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

The servant 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 mockery.

“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 just said, “Telling the truth is unbearable to mortals.”

I let myself be a little rude and 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?”

A woman’s hands in black gloves offered me the platter of organ meat. I felt revulsion, but my manners required that I take a bit of liver from here and a bit of tripe from there. .

“Thank you.”

The woman who served me moved with a light rustling of skirts. I had not lifted my eyes, busy as I was choosing the least disgusting available meats. I smiled at my own discomfort. Who looks at a waiter’s face while he’s serving us, anyway? I saw her walk away, from behind, with the platter in hand.

“That’s why I love children,” Vlad said, not 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 asked, 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 yet?

“Yes,” Vlad said, resuming his discourse. “The abyss in God’s understanding 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. Ha, 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 children?” I muttered, 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 remnant of my wine on the lead table.

“I lost a son, you old bastard. .”

“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.

Just as I lost consciousness, I heard Count Vlad continue, “Didn’t the Unmentionable One say, ‘Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come unto me’?”