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There was a special concert on a cold night in December, in the year most people call 1934. Rachmaninoff played his own miraculous score on the piano, accompanied by the legendary Philadelphia Orchestra, led by that most esteemed conductor, Leopold Stokowski. I occupied my usual spot. Noble vampires need music. I myself play the oud, a classical grandfather to the Spanish Guitar. Not that I like to brag, but a certain composition of mine, penned when I was fifteen years old and a favorite in the Court of Baghdad... well, but that happened approximately two hundred and fifty years after my so called mortal 'death.'
I remember the dark red upholstery of the box... more like a maroon, actually, trimmed in gilt... the velvet draperies... the tiny sconces made to resemble gas light... a sumptuous jewel box filled with three thousand souls. Your enchanted friend was alone then. Your Jonathon also known as Tomas had not yet found his Sarah. She wasn't even born in nineteen thirty four. Remember, that was seventy six years before I'd even discovered her. So I put on my white tie and tails, called for my car and went. Sometimes I invited guests to joint me, a trusted 'familiar' (human assistants and helpers) and his partner perhaps, however that night, I was alone. It was my time to feed. Guests only complicate things.
After the rare and singular performance I retrieved my coat and scarf, put on my top hat, my white kid gloves and strolled out from Philadelphia's grand Academy of Music onto the wide Avenue of the Arts... Most would have assumed I was going to a post concert supper at the nearby Bellevue Stratford Hotel... the usual oysters, champagne, lobster Newburg kind of thing. Even a clandestine vampire can drink iced vodka and socialize... Clandestine vampires can do many things.... I pass the august hostlery and turn down a narrow cobbled street, of which Philadelphia has many. Such byways used to be for stables and servants' quarters. In the nineteen thirties they featured little bars, tailor shops, reweaving establishments, working class cafes. For twelve months, since the National Socialists were democratically voted into office in Germany, a few American sympathizers had started banding together in certain bars. They wore brown shirts, just like over there. They drank boch beer and sang songs. Some were plain old American patriotic songs, others were in German. Not everyone understood the language, but they followed along phonetically. Speakers would get up and talk about stripping the Jews of all they had, down to the last penny. The listeners would nod. They talked about making it illegal for Jews to work, or run small businesses in America, kicking their children out of American schools, denying them treatment in American hospitals and rooting out the Jewish graves in 'good American soil. Then a 'plant' in the crowd would yell --- And what else?!..... The speaker would mime sticking his head in a noose and hanging himself.... Men banged their heavy, glass mugs on the tables.
How do I know? Well, let's just say vampire hearing is a wonderful thing. I first noticed all this one night while passing a sour smelling gin joint on Pig Alley... a tiny place with a glossy black door and one, blacked out multi paned window. Nothing identified it as a bar. There was a little wooden sign hanging out from the old bricks, just a plain panel, also black and glossy, save for a carefully painted, yellow line representation of a Celtic Cross. The place near the Academy had a similar identification.... I waited for the speech to end and watched from the shadows as the patrons left. Then the speaker came out, belched loudly, hitched up his trousers, sighed and headed left... No one else was around. The street was dark. I could have confronted him, made him talk, drawn him out... but I just lacked patience that night... So I fell in behind, slipped my left arm 'round his chest. My right, kid gloved hand went to his windpipe. In a heartbeat he was mine. He tried to yell, but a strong, sharp pinch to the throat stopped that. Then he tried to kick. So I sublimated up from the sidewalk and tilted forward. His legs hung straight down. I was safe and continued my rise. His heart pounded. He began to spit up warm, putrid beer. He mumbled -- No. No. What the hell are you?... I whispered--- Judgement. ... The eighteen sixties loft buildings on that street were seven stories tall, so I rose up to the ramparts and froze. We could see the fat round moon low over the rooftops through a break in the taller surrounding towers. The hate monger gasped... his last vision of the natural world. Then I just let go..... How his arms and legs windmilled till his skull exploded on the cold cobbles below..
Then I returned to the Earth and went on to my vampire meal.
That tale comes later....
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thank you very much... and listen to the music in that video. you'll probably recognize it when it starts, plus its worth it.... arguably one of the most beautiful pieces ever written.
