The Vampire Tapestry (2 page)

“No more scullions cranking the spit,” he remarked over the rotisserie. “You come originally from East Africa, Mrs. de Groot? Things must have been very different there.”

“Yes. I left a long time ago.”

“Surely not so very long,” he said, and his eyes flicked over her from head to foot. Why, the man was flirting!

Relaxing in the warmth of his interest, she said, “Are you from elsewhere also?”

He frosted up at once. “Why do you ask?”

“Excuse me, I thought I heard just the trace of an accent.”

“My family were Europeans. We spoke German at home. May I sit down?” His big hands, capable and strong-looking, graced the back of a chair. He smiled briefly. “Would you mind sharing your coffee with an institutional fortune hunter? That is my job—persuading rich men and the guardians of foundations to spend a little of their money in support of work that offers no immediate result. I don’t enjoy dealing with these shortsighted men.”

“Everyone says you do it well.” Katje filled a cup for him.

“It takes up my time,” he said. “It wearies me.” His large and brilliant eyes, in sockets darkened with fatigue, had a withdrawn, pensive aspect. How old was he, Katje wondered. Suddenly he gazed at her and said, “Didn’t I see you over by the labs the other morning? There was mist on my windshield; I couldn’t be sure...”

She told him about Jackson’s friend’s umbrella, thinking,
Now he’ll explain, this is what he came to
say.
But he added nothing, and she found herself hesitant to ask about the student in the parking lot. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Dr. Weyland?”

“I don’t mean to keep you from your work. Would you come over sometime and do a session for me in the sleep lab?”

Just as Miss Donelly had said. Katje shook her head.

“All information goes on tapes under coded ID numbers, Mrs. de Groot. Your privacy would be strictly guarded.”

His persistence made her uncomfortable. “I’d rather not.”

“Excuse me, then. It’s been a pleasure talking with you,” he said, rising. “If you find a reason to change your mind, my extension is one-sixty-three.”

She found herself obscurely relieved at his abrupt departure.

She picked up his coffee cup. It was full. She realized that she had not seen him take so much as a sip.

* * *

She was close to tears, but Uncle Jan made her strip down the gun again—her first gun, her own gun—and then the lion coughed, and she saw with the wide gaze of fear his golden form crouched, tail lashing, in the thornbrush. She threw up her gun and fired, and the dust boiled up from the thrashings of the wounded cat.

Then Scotty’s patient voice said, “Do it again,” and she was tearing down the rifle once more by lamplight at the worn wooden table, while her mother sewed with angry stabs of the needle and spoke words Katje didn’t bother to listen to. She knew the gist by heart: “If only Jan had children of his own!

Sons, to take out hunting with Scotty. Because he has no sons, he takes Katje shooting instead so he can show how tough Boer youngsters are, even the girls. For whites to kill for sport, as Jan and Scotty do, is to go backward into the barbaric past of Africa. Now the farm is producing, there is no need to sell hides to get cash for coffee, salt, and tobacco. And to train a
girl
to go stalking and killing animals like scarcely more than an animal herself!”

“Again,” said Scotty, and the lion coughed.

Katje woke. She was sitting in front of the TV, blinking at the sharp, knowing face of the talk-show host. The sound had gone off again, and she had dozed.

She didn’t often dream, hardly ever of her African childhood—her mother, Uncle Jan, Scotty the neighboring farmer whom Uncle had begun by calling a damned
rooinek
and ended treating like a brother. Miss Donelly’s request for a lecture about Africa must have stirred up that long-ago girlhood spent prowling for game in a landscape of yellow grass.

The slim youngster she had been then, brown-skinned and nearly white-haired from the sun, seemed far distant. A large-framed woman now, Katje worked to avoid growing stout as her mother had. In the gray New England climate her hair had dulled to the color of old brass, paling now toward gray. Yet she could still catch sight of her child-self in the mirror—the stubborn set of her firm, round jaw and the determined squint of her eyes. She had not, she reflected with satisfaction, allowed the world to change her much.

* * *

Miss Donelly came in for some coffee the next afternoon. As Katje brought a tray to her in the long living room, a student rushed past calling, “Is it too late to hand in my paper, Miss Donelly?”

“For God’s sake, Mickey!” Miss Donelly burst out. “Where did you get that?”

Across the chest of the girl’s T-shirt where her coat gapped open were emblazoned the wordsSLEEP

WITH WEYLAND HE’S A DREAM . She grinned. “Some hustler is selling them right outside the co-op. Better hurry if you want one—Security’s already been sent for.” She put a sheaf of dog-eared pages down on the table beside Miss Donelly’s chair, added, “Thanks, Miss Donelly,” and clattered away again on her high-heeled clogs.

Miss Donelly laughed and said to Katje, “Well, I never, as my grandma used to say. That man certainly does juice this place up.”

“Young people have no respect for anything,” Katje grumbled. “What will Dr. Weyland say, seeing his name used like that? He should have her expelled.”

“Him? He wouldn’t bother. Wacker will throw fits, though. Not that Weyland won’t notice—he notices everything—but he doesn’t waste his super-valuable time on nonsense.” Miss Donelly ran a finger over the blistered paint on the windowsill by her chair. “Pity we can’t use some of the loot Weyland brings in to fix up this old place. But I guess we can’t complain; without Weyland, Cayslin would be just another expensive backwater school for the not-so-bright children of the upper middle class. And it isn’t all roses even for him. This T-shirt thing will start a whole new round of backbiting among his colleagues, you watch. This kind of stuff brings out the jungle beast in even the mildest academics.”

Katje snorted. She didn’t think much of academic infighting.

“I know we must seem pretty tame to you,” Miss Donelly said wryly, “but there are some real ambushes and even killings here, in terms of careers. It’s not the cushy life it sometimes seems, and not so secure either. Even for you, Mrs. de Groot. There are people who don’t like your politics—”

“I never talk politics.” That was the first thing Henrik had demanded of her here. She had acquiesced like a good wife; not that she was ashamed of her political beliefs. She had loved and married Henrik not because of but in spite of his radical politics.

“From your silence they assume you’re some kind of reactionary racist,” Miss Donelly said. “Also because you’re a Boer and you don’t carry on your husband’s crusade. Then there are the ones who’re embarrassed to see the wife of a former instructor working at the Club—”

“It’s work I can do,” Katje said stiffly. “I asked for the job.”

Miss Donelly frowned. “Sure—but everybody knows the college should have done better by you, and besides you were supposed to have a staff of people here to help out. And some of the faculty are a little scared of you; they’d rather have a giggly cocktail waitress or a downtrodden mouse of a working student. You need to be aware of these things, Mrs. de Groot.

“And also of the fact that you have plenty of partisans too. Even Wacker knows you give this place tone and dignity, and you lived a real life in the world, whatever your values, which is more than most of our faculty have ever done.” Blushing, she lifted her cup and drank.

She was as soft as everyone around here
, Katje thought,
but she had a good heart
.

* * *

Many of the staff had already left for vacation during intersession, now that new scheduling had freed everyone from doing mini-courses between semesters. The last cocktail hour at the Club was thinly attended. Katje moved among the drinkers unobtrusively gathering up loaded ashtrays, used glasses, crumpled paper napkins. A few people who had known Henrik greeted her as she passed. There were two major topics of conversation: the bio student who had been raped last night leaving the library, and the Weyland T-shirt, or, rather, Weyland himself.

They said he was a disgrace, encouraging commercial exploitation of his name; he was probably getting a cut of the profits. No he wasn’t, didn’t need to, he had a hefty income, no dependents, and no appetites except for study and work. And driving his beautiful Mercedes-Benz, don’t forget that. No doubt that was where he was this evening—not off on a holiday or drinking cheap Club booze, but roaring around the countryside in his beloved car.

Better a ride in the country than burying himself in the library as usual. It was unhealthy for him to push so hard; just look at him, so haggard and preoccupied, so lean and lonely-looking. The man deserved a prize for his solitary-bachelor-hopelessly-hooked-on-the-pursuit-of-knowledge act. It was no act—what other behavior did people expect of a great scholar? There’d be another fine book out of him someday, a credit to Cayslin. Look at that latest paper of his, “Dreams and Drama: The Mini-Theatre of the Mind.” Brilliant!

Brilliant speculation, maybe, like all his work, plus an intriguing historical viewpoint, but where was his hard research? He was no scientist; he was a mountebank running on drive, imagination, a commanding presence, and a lucky success with his first book. Why, even his background was foggy. (But don’t ever suggest to Dean Wacker that there was anything odd about Weyland’s credentials. Wacker would eat you alive to protect the goose that laid the golden eggs.)

How many students were in the sleep project now? More than were in his classes. They called his course in ethnography “The Ancient Mind at Work.” The girls found his formality charming. No, he wasn’t formal, he was too stiff-necked and old-fashioned, and he’d never make a first-rate contribution to anthropology. He’d simply appropriated poor Milnes’s beautiful adaptation of the Richman-Steinmolle Recording System to the documentation of dreams, adding some fancy terminology about cultural symbols to bring the project into his own field of cultural anthropology. And Weyland thought he knew all about computers too—no wonder he ran his assistants ragged.

Here was Peterson leaving him because of some brouhaha over a computer run. Charming, yes, but Weyland could also be a sarcastic bastard. Sure, he was temperamental—the great are often quarrelsome, nothing new in that. Remember how he treated young Denton over that scratch Denton put on the Mercedes’ fender? Gave him a tongue-lashing that could warp steel, and when Denton threw a punch Weyland grabbed him by the shoulder and just about flung him across the street. Denton was bruised for a month, looked as if he’d been on the bottom of a football pile-up. Weyland’s a tiger when he’s roused up, and he’s unbelievably strong for a man his age.

He’s a damned bully, and Denton should have gotten a medal for trying to get him off the roads. Have you seen Weyland drive? Roars along just barely in control of that great big machine...Weyland himself wasn’t present. Of course not, Weyland was a supercilious son-of-a-bitch; Weyland was an introverted scholar absorbed in great work; Weyland had a secret sorrow too painful to share; Weyland was a charlatan; Weyland was a genius working himself to death to keep alive the Cayslin Center for the Study of Man.

Dean Wacker brooded by the huge empty fireplace. Several times he said in a carrying voice that he had talked with Weyland and that the students involved in the T-shirt scandal would face disciplinary action. Miss Donelly came in late with a woman from Economics. They talked heatedly in the window bay, and the other two women in the room drifted over to join them. Katje followed.

“...from off campus, but that’s what they always say,” one of them snapped. Miss Donelly caught Katje’s eye, smiled a strained smile, and plunged back into the discussion. They were talking about the rape. Katje wasn’t interested. A woman who used her sense and carried herself with self-respect didn’t get raped, but saying so to these intellectual women wasted breath.

They didn’t understand real life. Katje went back toward the kitchen. Buildings and Grounds had sent Nettie Ledyard over from the student cafeteria to help out. She was rinsing glasses and squinting at them through the smoke of her cigarette. She wore a T-shirt bearing a bulbous fish shape across the front and the wordsSAVE OUR WHALES . These “environmental” messages vexed Katje; only naïve, citified people could think of wild animals as pets. The shirt undoubtedly belonged to one of Nettie’s long-haired, bleeding-heart boyfriends. Nettie herself smoked too much to pretend to an environmental conscience. She was no hypocrite, at least. But she should come properly dressed to do a job at the Club, just in case a professor came wandering back here for more ice or whatever.

“I’ll be helping you with the Club inventory during intersession,” Nettie said. “Good thing, too. You’ll be spending a lot of time over here until school starts again, and the campus is really emptying out. Now there’s this sex maniac cruising the place—though what I could do but run like hell and scream my head off, I can’t tell you.

“Listen, what’s this about Jackson sending you on errands for him?” she added irritably. She flicked ash off her bosom, which was pushed high like a shelf by her too-tight brassiere. “His pal Maurice can pick up his own umbrella, he’s no cripple. Having you wandering around out there alone at some godforsaken hour—”

“Neither of us knew about the rapist,” Katje said, wiping out the last of the ashtrays.

“Just don’t let Jackson take advantage of you, that’s all.”

Katje grunted. She had been raised not to let herself be taken advantage of by blacks. Later, helping to dig out a fur hat from under the coat pile in the foyer, she heard someone saying, “...walk off with the credit; cold-bloodedly living off other people’s academic substance, so to speak.”

Into her mind came the image of Dr. Weyland’s tall figure moving without a break in stride past the stricken student.