The Delicate Dependency: A Novel of the Vampire Life (12 page)

“And is your father working on discovering a cure?” Niccolo asked.

“Ultimately,” she returned. “Of course, finding a cure is Father’s long-range goal, but at the moment he is more interested in
influenzae
’s ability to undergo such radical mutations. Father’s reasoning is that if he can discover what causes these antigenic mutations to occur naturally, perhaps he can find a way to stop them.”

“And what does cause them to occur?”

“No one knows.”

Niccolo regarded her piercingly as if he knew she were lying, and for the first time I saw Ursula’s nerve falter for a brief moment. “Your father does not know what causes them?” he asked with a rise in his voice. Ursula looked at me entreatingly, and I nodded in consent.

“Well...” she said falteringly. “I will tell you a secret. Father doesn’t know what causes the natural antigenic mutations to occur every ten to twelve years, but he has discovered a synthetic way to cause
Haemophilus influenzae
to mutate in the laboratory.”

“And what good is that?” he asked.

“Not very much good at all,” she replied. “In the test animals he’s caused the disease to mutate dozens, even hundreds of times, each time hoping to glean some clue to its cure from its kaleidoscopic mutations. Usually, however, he just ends up with another typical strain of
Haemophilus influenzae
.”

“Usually?” he prodded.

Ursula once again glanced in my direction, and I nodded with hesitant approval. I was very covetous of my scientific discoveries because of the unscrupulously competitive world of academia, but I couldn’t fathom that Niccolo would have any reason or motive to steal any information.

“Well, since you are so curious I’ll tell you another secret,” she said as she walked toward the glass cubicle containing the brown rabbit. “In one of the tests Father performed not too long ago, he created a rather unusual strain of
influenzae.
After he injected it into the blood of a test animal he discovered that, unlike all the previous strains, the organism did not begin to generate antibodies. Thus it had no chance of ever surviving the disease. The virus raged in its system unchallenged, and within two days the animal was dead. He infected another animal, and the same thing happened, and another—”

“And this little rabbit in the glass cage,” Niccolo interrupted. “He has injected it, also, hasn’t he?”

“Why, yes,” Ursula replied, obviously a little surprised by his remark. “How did you know?”

“His heart beats so very fast,” he returned sadly, and pressed his hands against the glass.

“Can you see it beating in its fur?” she asked skeptically.

“I can hear it. I can hear it beating like waves pounding against a rock, only very rapidly.”

She regarded him quizzically. Then her voice became very cold and hard. “He’ll be dead within a day or so. You see, in medical terminology the strain of
influenzae
Father injected him with totally lacks antigenicity. In other words, the body is completely incapable of combating it and consequently it will always prove fatal.” Niccolo shuddered as he stepped back from the glass. “And what will your father do with—”

“With
Camillus influenzae
,” she filled in. “Study it. Look at it from every angle in hopes of discovering some new information from our lethal little friend. He’s already published several papers hinting at his discoveries that have caused quite a stir in the medical world, and soon he’s going to publish his complete findings. After all, in another ten to twelve years it will mutate on its own and be lost to science forever.”

I was touched by Ursula’s words, but I did not find it easy listening to someone boast about my findings. I made an excuse to leave for a moment and passed through the door. It was after I was in the hall that I heard Niccolo say something that caused me to pause.

“Your father is very blind.”

I heard Ursula turn abruptly as if to rush to my defense, but Niccolo apparently quieted her with a gesture. “Your father is an honorable man,” he continued, “but the world is filled with dishonorable men. Your father does not see in
Camillus influenzae
what a weapon of destruction it could become if it fell into the wrong hands.”

“You’re just upset because you think you’re very noble and aristocratic and view death, even in the name of science, as unnecessary and distasteful,” she retorted.

“That isn’t true,” he countered. “I am more familiar than you might suspect with the necessity of death.” With this last remark I grew alarmed and rushed back into the room. Both of them looked at me briefly, wondering why I had been gone only a moment, and then Niccolo once again turned sedately toward Ursula. “What I find distasteful is that you are so dispassionate when death is a necessity. What this tells me about you,
signorina,
is that you are very unhappy with the world, and you don’t know how to deal with this unhappiness.” Ursula straightened. “You—”

“Hush,” he said and quieted her with a finger. “You needn’t argue, for it is all too clear that it is true. And you needn’t be ashamed, for I, also, am not at all happy with the prejudices and ignorances of the world. But at least I would never treat death so casually There are better ways to deal with one’s unhappiness.”

“And what is your way?” she snapped.

“Me,” Niccolo returned with a humble shrug of his shoulders. “Because I’ve realized that I cannot change this world, I lose myself in my senses. Of course, there are other ways, like your father’s—to lose one’s self in one’s work. To lose one’s self in one’s work and one’s senses are, perhaps, the two most common solutions to the reality of the world. I simply find that my senses give me more solace.”

“What do you mean—?” Ursula began once again. The sudden change in Niccolo’s expression made her realize he was not paying any attention. Instead, he was tilting his head back contemplatively, as if listening to something far away. “What is that?” he questioned as he knitted his brow.

“What is what?” Ursula returned. We both listened very carefully. I could hear nothing.

“
Squisito!
” he cried as he quickly left the room and Ursula and I followed. As we passed the study we became aware of a distant tinkle of music, and we finally realized what Niccolo had been hearing. When we reached the drawing room I pushed the massive walnut doors aside, and there in the darkness was the familiar silhouette seated at the gilt and rosewood pianoforte.

“It is my other daughter, Camille,” I whispered.

“You are blind?” Niccolo stated immediately. She tilted her head in our direction and the silhouette of her tresses tumbled over her tiny shoulder. “No, no... please continue to play,” he implored and turned to me. “She is blind and mentally distant, is she not?” he asked in a hush.

“Why, yes,” I gasped in surprise. “How could you tell?”

“That she is blind is obvious—the way she holds her head, the fact that she plays with such facility in a darkened room. That she is mentally distant is more subtle, but nonetheless apparent. When we entered the room her playing remained unaffected. The playing of any normal pianist would have undergone minute changes due to the fact that they would have been distracted to a very slight degree by the realization of our mere presence. The pressure they applied to the keys would have changed more, or their tempo would have increased by a tiny fraction. But Camille’s playing did not change until I spoke, and this could only be explained by two things. Either she is deaf, but what deaf person at such a tender age can play the piano? Or she was not distracted when we entered the room because her thoughts are not in this world.”

“You are extremely perceptive,” I complimented. “Camille is both blind and mentally distant, as you put it.”

“Is it as a result of her mother’s death by
influenzae
?” he inquired.

“Why, yes!” I gasped again. “How did you know that?”

“Really, Dottore,” he returned, “you must think I am very simple not to be able to figure all of this out. It is so obvious—you name your daughter Camille, and your deadly strain of
influenzae, Camillus;
you are so prepossessed with discovering a cure to the disease–-Do you think the personal vendetta is so difficult to discern?”

“Yes, I do,” I answered. “I think you are an abnormally clever young man.”

He smiled slightly. “There are others more clever than I. One thing that I do not know is, how did you teach Camille to play the piano so beautifully?”

“You ask the only question that I cannot answer,” I replied. “You see, no one taught Camille how to play the piano. As far as I can discern she has always known how to play. All she has to do is to hear a composition once and she has total recall and can play it back perfectly.”

Camille lifted her tiny fairy hands and brought them crashing down in deep sonorous chords as Niccolo let out a gasp of amazement. “
La bellezza dei lampi e dell’ arcobaleno,
” he murmured with passionate admiration as he turned his fiery gaze toward Ursula. “‘
What do you mean?
’ you ask me,
signorina,
what does it mean to be blissful and abandoned and completely immersed in one’s own senses? That is what it means,” he finished, thrusting a finger toward Camille.

Of all of the members of the household I think Niccolo got along best with little Camille. He revealed a voracious interest in both her ability and her condition and asked me many questions about her. In answer to his numerous inquiries I explained to him that Camille was not without medical precedent. There were many examples of idiots savants throughout history. Usually, they are human calculators, or individuals who can do complex mathematical calculations in their heads. For example, a little boy who can scarcely talk and who has been raised as an animal because he is subject to strange convulsions might be able to tell you instantaneously that 1729 is the lowest number that can be expressed in two ways as the sum of two cubes: 12
³
+ 1
³
and 10
³
+ 9
³
. A little girl who never learned to recognize her own mother and father might be able to multiply two twelve-digit numbers faster than the hand could write the solution on a blackboard.

Another variation of human calculators are date calculators. Without batting an eye they can instantaneously tell you that June 17, 1257 fell on a Sunday, and September 29, 412 B.C. was a Saturday. Date calculators have been found to have a correct knowledge of what day of the week a particular day falls on extending beyond seven thousand years, even though, to the best of my knowledge, the longest perpetual calendar that has currently been calculated only extends to about twenty-four hundred years. And yet you ask them what a leap year is and they say they’re not sure, or you ask them how they compute the dates and they say they don’t know, the answer is just inside their heads.

I informed Niccolo that one of the most interesting idiots savants I encountered in my reading was an American slave boy in the 1850s known as Blind Tom. Like Camille, although Blind Tom was mentally retarded and completely incapable of learning on any other level, he could mimic any piano piece played to him. His owner, a man named Colonel Bethune, realized that the boy was a potentially lucrative phenomenon and began touring with the unusual virtuoso, consequently making a fortune in numerous concert tours both in the States and in Europe. Blind Tom became world famous and played for numerous world leaders, including the American President, James Buchanan, in 1860. At the height of Blind Tom’s career it was estimated that he had committed over five thousand compositions to memory, including works by Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bach, Chopin, Verdi, Rossini, Donizetti, Gounod, Meyerbeer, and countless others— although his vocabulary and verbal capacity were limited to a little over a hundred words, and he was described as behaving “more like an ape than a human.”

As for Camille, she made no explicit acknowledgment of Niccolo’s increasingly frequent presence in the drawing room, but she did add a strange and hauntingly beautiful melody to her musical repertoire. Niccolo seemed to recognize that this was his theme, and a peculiar and silent understanding formed between the two. The odd thing was that the melody was completely unfamiliar to me and as far as I could determine she had composed it herself. If this was the case, it was the first time I became aware that Camille’s talents included original musical work.

As for how Niccolo was getting along with Ursula, this was another story entirely. As the days passed, the interactions between her and Niccolo grew more and more like a snake biting its own tail, a constant repartee. The more negatively he reacted to her character, the more chiding she became. The more chiding she became, the more calmly he accepted it. His solicitude only kindled her outrage, whereupon he would once again calmly point out her faults—that is, her propensity for becoming outraged so easily—and the circle began again. More than once Ursula would storm out of the room in seething and frustrated silence, leaving Niccolo sitting and flicking lint off of his evening jacket with cool disdain. Nevertheless, at the heart of every battle was a fiery game of chess or a fervent discussion of Renaissance art. I didn’t doubt for a moment that each was enjoying their dislike for the other immensely.

It was nearing the end of Niccolo’s second week with us that I found out a most interesting bit of information. I was making my normal rounds at Redgewood when I became aware of the familiar form of Cletus. He was in his laboratory coat and came hobbling out of the receiving ward. He looked at me sharply, and then, to my surprise, he boldly approached. I was astonished. Something rather heavy had to be weighing on his mind to inspire such audacity.

He stopped directly before me and we stared into each other’s eyes with territorial steadiness. If he was nervous he was artfully concealing it. He gracefully lit a Laurens Egyptian cigarette. “Weil, well,” he said, “have you heard the news?”

I bristled.

“Chiswick,” he said simply.

For a brief second the name took me by surprise, but then I remembered. “You mean they found Dr. Chiswick?”