Firetale (7 page)

A
fter the war, the estate was all that
remained of the once thriving business of Jerome Bernardius. The
slaves were freed by Lazarus or escaped. Eventually, Lazarus sold
the house for a pittance and went to New Orleans. He saw the city
as a place where he could start a career unrelated to the
plantation business, perhaps a career as a journalist, or, if he
was lucky, as a writer. But Lazarus never had the chance to use the
money from the sale of the house. Immediately upon arrival,
Bernardius was careless enough to venture into a dark alley, where
he was hit on the head with a baton and stabbed in the back. He
came to his senses at night, as his body was loaded onto the
stretcher of a police carriage. He was scared, he felt giddy, but
otherwise he was unhurt. The police clearly took Lazarus for a dead
man and did not expect the corpse to come to life. When he did,
they figured he was a tramp, filled to the eyeballs with alcohol,
so they let him go to the four winds. Bernardius lingered in New
Orleans for two weeks, with no money or shoes, in a vain attempt to
restore his father’s old connections. Barefoot and disheveled,
smelling of sewage, he was not allowed to set foot in the noble
houses. Exhausted, Lazarus trusted in God, hoping He would send him
salvation from misery and suffering. But in the end, he was stabbed
again, this time, right in the heart.

When Lazarus Bernardius came to
life, the first thing he saw was light.
It was so bright and blinding that he
had to squint. He tried to cover his eyes with his hands, but he
could not move. Lazarus blinked, trying to clear the tears from his
eyes. When his vision cleared, he saw that the light was not a
supernatural phenomenon proclaiming that his earthly sorrows were
finished and Heaven waited. The light came from a lamp on a white
ceiling. The feeling of weightlessness that had filled his body
when Lazarus woke up began to fade. He felt a sense of his own body
weight. He also felt tingling in his fingers and toes and warmth in
his chest. Suddenly, the feelings that had been coming on
gradually, hit him like a wave, flooding into his consciousness.
The heat in his chest turned into a fire, as if a torch was burning
in the very heart of him. For a moment, Lazarus thought he heard a
devilish laugh. He put his hand to his chest and heard a melodious
clink.

“
Oh, you finally woke up, Mr.
Bernardius,” a voice said. Lazarus turned his head to the right and
saw a strange metal table on thin legs, on which lay something
formless, covered with a white sheet.

“
I’m here, Mr. Bernardius,” the
voice said. Bernardius turned his head to the left and saw the man
who was talking to him. He was tall, had blond hair, and was
dressed in a black coat over a white suit. Curly hair fell over the
stranger’s quaint face, a face that could be described as
beautiful, except for its sharp features, which were slightly
longer than they should have been. Bernardius, who had not yet
recovered himself, strained his eyes to have a better look at the
stranger. The face of the man curved a bit to the left, like a half
moon, and one eye was twice as big as the other. His mouth, splayed
from ear to ear, was full of small triangular teeth. Lazarus shook
his head and the face of a man again became normal.

“
Where am I?” asked
Lazarus.

“
You are in a waiting mortuary,”
said the stranger. The man was holding an apple, which he cut into
pieces with a small knife and ate. The fruit seemed weird to
Lazarus, but, because of his shock and poor health, he considered
this a hallucination and did not look closely.

“
Waiting mortuary?” Lazarus
looked around and saw tables on which lay bodies covered with
sheets. For a moment he felt sick. His memories returned. “I was
attacked. I was stabbed in the chest.” With his memories came
renewed energy. He sat up abruptly on the table, pushing away the
sheet, under which he was uncovered. The bell rang
again.

“
What is it?” he asked the
stranger. The man silently pointed to a knife on a string tied to
Lazarus’s hand. It was strapped around the bell on a stand next to
the table on which Bernardius lay. Lazarus looked at his chest.
There was a just small scar right above his heart, a trace of the
wound.

“
I’m alive! I am alive by the
grace of the Lord,” Lazarus said. He was so excited by this fact
that for a moment he forgot his manners, which normally were very
important to him. “Pardon my look, sir.” Mr. Bernardius sat up and
dangled his legs from the bed, covering his private parts with the
sheet. “However, this might be habitual to you, because you work
here.” Only when the words slipped out did Lazarus realize his
stupidity. The strange gentleman was too well dressed for a man
whose job was to watch and see if someone in the morgue rose from
the dead.

“
No, Mr. Bernardius, I don’t
think that God has something to do with the fact that you continue
to breathe, and no, I don’t work here,” the stranger replied. A
perpetual smirk seemed to be attached to the face of the stranger.
“To be honest, I never heard of anyone in the waiting mortuary
watching corpses. As far as I know, the bell has never rung in
places like this.” The stranger continued to eat his
apple.

“
Then who are you?” The mocking
tone of the black-and-white-clad man bewildered Lazarus. What was
this strange man doing in this place? Was it possible that he was
one of those rich perverts who paid the guards in the morgue to let
them take a closer look at a dead body, still warm or already
touched by corruption? As if reading Bernardius’s thoughts, the man
raised his eyebrows emphatically, and Lazarus’s face flushed with
shame.

“
Mr. Bernardius …”

“
How do you know my name?”
Lazarus interrupted the stranger.

“
I have my sources,” the blond
stranger said in a low voice. But noticing Bernardius’s frightened
look, he hastened to dispel the mystery. “The tag on your foot.
Your name is written on it.”

Lazarus checked
it
, feeling
stupid. The tag was tied around the big toe of his right
foot.

“
Mr. Bernardius, I’m here on
behalf of a gentleman who wants to offer you a job,” said the
stranger, slicing off a piece of the apple. Lazarus looked closer
at the apple. It was red, almost black, and in some places it was
covered with dark spots of rot. Lazarus winced.

“
You’re a friend of my father?”
he asked.

“
No. Look, Mr. Bernardius, I
realize you are lost. Not many have found themselves in this place.
No one, to be honest. So you probably have many questions. The man
I work for can answer all of them. And he wants to invite you to
work for him. The decision will be yours. But, in any case, if you
want to learn how you got here and why you were attacked twice in
one week, you’d better come with me.”

“
Come with you?
When?”

“
The person who wants to talk to
you does not usually have a lot of time. We have to go
today.”

“
But my stuff. I’ve been living
for two weeks like a vagabond, without changing my
clothes.”

“
Nothing to worry about,” the
stranger said. He pulled a bundle out from somewhere behind him and
threw it on the table next to Lazarus. “Here is your suit. Shall we
go?”

“
Yes, I agree,” Lazarus said. He
was confused, but he reasoned that if the stranger wanted to harm
him, a more convenient location than the morgue was hard to
imagine.

“
Fine,” said the stranger. He
pulled the apple open with his fingers and pulled out a worm. He
held it up to the light, as if admiring it, and then he put it in
his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. He licked his fingers and smiled
at Lazarus.

“
What are you waiting for, Mr.
Bernardius? Get dressed.”

Lazarus Bernardius
was accustomed to
living simply. After the death of his father, who wasn’t shy about
showing how wealthy he was, and after the affairs of the cotton
plantation had gone awry, Lazarus and his mother, humble and pious
people, led a very unpretentious life.

The carriage of the
black-and-white gentleman, whose name Lazarus
hadn
’t asked,
took them to the door of a pompous-looking building in the Greek
Revival style. The building was huge, and its opulence made it
clear that commoners were not allowed to enter. Obviously, anything
hiding behind its heavy doors was available only to the richest
citizens.

“
We are at St. Charles Avenue?”
asked Lazarus. He tried to look around. When Mr. Bernardius and the
black-and-white stranger had left the waiting mortuary, it was
early evening. It had taken some time to get here, but the street
was already dead-of-night dark, and Lazarus could barely see the
houses around the mansion.

“
Come on.” Lazarus’s companion
ignored the question and gently took him by the arm, leading him up
steps to the entrance of the building.

The inside of the house struck Mr.
Bernardius even more than the outside. A room with an incredibly
high ceiling was filled with tables at which people, old and very
rich, were dining. The suit the stranger had given Lazarus in the
morgue at first seemed too snazzy. It may have been unwise to
appear on the streets wearing it, but in this place to dress
differently would be unacceptable. Ladies were bedecked with
jewels, and their companions wore suits that would have cost an
entire library of the Bernardius estate.

“
What is this place?” Lazarus
asked the black-and-white stranger.

“
A restaurant,” came the
reply.

“
What’s it called? It must be
famous throughout the city!”

The stranger pointed to a gilded sign
above the entrance. It depicted tongues of flame, with twisted
horns above them and flaunting hooves underneath.

“
It serves only meat?” asked
Bernardius.

“
It serves anything you can
afford to order,” the black-and-white stranger said with a smile.
“We have to go, Mr. Bernardius.”

The stranger led Lazarus between
tables. The waiters seemed not to notice
the two guests, nor did the other
diners. Bernardius was turning his head left and right, stunned by
the wealthy and snobby restaurant. He saw golden bas-reliefs, high
marble columns holding up the ceiling, and a bright, almost
fluorescent, light pouring down.

Lazarus saw a man sitting at the
central table, watch
ing them. The black-and-white-clad gentleman went toward
him.

“
Mr. Bernardius, I’m glad you
agreed to meet with me,” the man at the table said. He smiled at
Lazarus but didn’t extend his hand for a handshake. He turned to
the black-and-white-clad stranger. “Mr. Star, thank you for taking
the trouble to deliver Mr. Bernardius here.” The man from the
morgue nodded without saying a word and walked away.

“
Please, sit down, Mr.
Bernardius,” said the man at the table. He was dressed much simpler
than the other people in the room. He had a broad face, which could
be taken for the face of a commoner, except for his clever and
mocking eyes. The stranger was smiling, but Lazarus felt
uncomfortable. It seemed to him that those eyes saw right through
him. The stranger’s hair, long, heavy, and black, was drawn back
into a simple ponytail.

“
Who are you?” asked Lazarus,
ashamed of the weakness of his own voice. “You know my name, but I
do not know yours.”

“
Say, my name is Louie Louis,”
said the long-haired man. His voice suggested mockery, even more so
than Mr. Star’s. In their behavior and in their ridiculous names
was something similar. Bernardius wondered if they might be
siblings. Star looked younger, although it was difficult to
determine either of their ages. Lazarus guessed that Star was about
thirty, Louis in his forties.

“
Are you French?” asked
Lazarus.

“
No, Mr. Bernardius. Although, in
some sense, we do share a common blood with you. However, let’s not
get ahead of ourselves. You look tired. I heard about your
misadventures in New Orleans. You should recuperate before we
continue.” A moment later, three waiters arrived and began to serve
dishes.

“
I beg your pardon, Mr.
Bernardius. To avoid you having to spend time studying the menu, I
chose for you in advance. I assure you that I ordered only the best
of what they serve here.”

“
Do you own this
place?”

“
I own many things, Mr.
Bernardius. In the meantime, please eat.”

Lazarus did not argue with
Louis. The dishes were luxurious, and Mr. Bernardius had
been
hungry
for almost two weeks. Keeping up with the dishes on the table was
not easy. When he finished, the waiters quickly cleared the table,
leaving Bernardius alone with Louie Louis.

“
Mr. Bernardius, as you know,
you’re here because I want to offer you a job,” Louis
began.

“
Yes, Mr. Louis. And this, I must
confess, confuses me. As far as I can tell, you know more about me
than I can imagine. And you must know that my only job in life I
haven’t managed very well. My father’s business has
folded.”

“
I know, Mr. Bernardius. But the
work that I want to offer you doesn’t involve money. You won’t have
to clutter your mind with figures, you won’t have to worry about
costs and profits. You have special talents that make you a unique
candidate for this position.” There was no mockery in Louis’s
voice.