During the last week of April, Andrej went through a personality shift like Anne-Marie had never seen. He became quiet, withdrawn, sitting for hours every night on the balcony looking east over the river, never leaving the apartment. She tried to tease him out of it with jokes, but he either didn’t hear, or pretended not to. She hesitated to try to talk to him about it and tried to leave him to himself as much as possible. If he was still human, she would have checked to see if he was ill. The shift in his demeanor was so dramatic that by the fifth day she was becoming worried and decided it was time to say something.
It was nearly sundown when she walked out onto the balcony, standing quietly looking down on the Vltava. The river was already in shadow, dark and murky from where she stood. The evening traffic going by on the street below was light, making it quieter than usual. Andrej said nothing and took no notice of her, remaining unmoving in his chair. She wondered for a moment if he was asleep, but that was silly. She glanced down at him to see if his eyes were open. Behind the dark glasses he always wore outdoors it was impossible to tell, so she stood and waited, afraid to break the silence if he still didn’t want to talk.
“You’re worried about me,” he said, without moving.
She started a little. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you. I was just wondering if you need anything.” She stopped talking for a minute, knowing how much he hated idle chatter. “Ok, yes, I’ve been a little concerned,” she admitted.
“Don’t be. I’m fine, and there’s nothing you need to do.” He became quiet again. Several minutes passed with neither of them speaking again. Anne-Marie sat down in another chair, wanting to just spend some time with another person, human or not.
“It’s May Eve, did you know?” he asked.
She shook her head, not comprehending. “What’s May Eve?”
He didn’t answer right away, deciding whether it was too much to explain, then said, “One of the two nights a year when the veil between the worlds of living and dead becomes thin. It’s said the dead can cross over on those nights.”
“Ok, you’re scaring me. What are you talking about?”
He became quiet again, not in the mood for giving a dissertation. He took a breath, still not looking at her and said, “Why don’t you go to the symphony? They’re playing that Rachmaninov piece you like.” Andrej’s love of classical music had been gradually rubbing off on Anne-Marie since she’d started working for him. She had a good ear and he often thought she might even have been a creditable musician, had she had the opportunity.
“Will you come with me? I don’t like to go alone,” she said.
“No, not tonight. Go to your symphony. We’ll talk tomorrow, I promise.”
She knew that was her cue to leave. She got up and went back inside. There was nothing else to do so she dressed and went off as directed to the symphony.
At last the sun sank below the horizon. Achingly slowly, Andrej rose and went back inside the apartment but paused before heading to his room to change clothes. He had come back to Prague for a reason; now it was almost more than he could face. He had avoided this night for nearly three hundred years. His legs didn’t want to move, but he forced himself to keep walking. He went into the bathroom which was devoid of mirrors and reflective surfaces. He didn’t like to be reminded of his ‘condition.’ Leaning over the sink basin he turned on the tap, letting the cold water run. He caught the water in his cupped hands and splashed it over his face, letting it drip off in place of the tears he no longer had. There was a sense of dread as he dressed, pulling on his favorite leather coat like psychological armor. The silence in the apartment made it feel as if the whole world was holding its breath. When he was ready he walked outside into the darkening streets, oblivious to the people swirling around him, and turned up the street to a café where he got a strong cup of coffee. The deepening blue of the sky was punctuated by more and more bright dots of starlight, like a crowd of friends shining through, encouraging him. He imagined each of them to be someone he’d once known, watching over him. He used to like looking at the stars, he recalled. Downing the last of his coffee he rose and left the café before he could change his mind. A flower vendor’s cart down the block stopped him, and impulsively he bought a bouquet of calla lilies. He smelled them, and stroked the soft white spathe, remembering a woman’s laugh of delight the last time he had purchased lilies. As he walked away he rounded the corner, out of sight of passersby.
He reached the old Ďáblická cemetery and entered at the northeastern edge, making his way to the oldest plots in the back. Some of the worn headstones leaned a bit, settling into the earth with the resident they announced. He walked to the center of a row, and up to a small black marble obelisk marker. The writing in old Czech was becoming hard to decipher, but he knew what it said. He had had it erected there, long after her death, but had never visited the grave. Over the years he had tried hard not to think about this. In the early days after his conversion it was easier: He had been young, selfish, angry. At least on the surface. Deep down, the part of him that no one was allowed to see was none of those things. He had seen himself as a complete failure, an utter disappointment, although the girl he had loved had never said anything to him to make him feel that way, or believe she thought he was. He stood looking down at the grave. He had never been able to talk to her about what he was feeling, and so he thought she never understood. All she had known was that one day he wasn’t there anymore, and she never heard from him again. He had come back to the old neighborhood to see her many years later, when she was an old woman, gray-haired, with grandchildren around her, but of course he couldn’t approach her. Fifty years after her death, he had had the little monument erected at her grave. He thought by then no one who had known her would ever come around and see it, and there would be no questions. It was a small gesture, too little, too late; a belated apology.
He stood there now as the minutes ticked slowly by. There was some noise from the distant roadway, but other than that all he could hear was a slight breeze stirring the branches of the trees. The darkness was almost complete; little light made its way to this corner of the cemetery on that moonless night. He knelt on the ground in front of the grave and tenderly laid the lilies down on it, just before midnight. If ever he would be able to contact her spirit, this was going to be the time. He began tracing out the sigil on the ground with a blend of herbs and salts, then lit candles at each of the four cardinal points around the grave. When that was done, he stood in the center of the candle circle, and with the knife he carried, he sliced across his palm, letting the blood fall on the grave. As the blood trickled out of his palm, he used his left hand to strike a match, and dropped it to the ground where it landed on the dried herbs, igniting them. The entire sigil erupted in flames around him. He stood silently, concentrating on the last image he had in his mind of her, just before he was converted, when she was still young and so beautiful. As the sigil burned down he heard the unmistakable sound of horse hooves slowly clopping along, getting closer. He looked to his left and saw a rider on horseback begin to form out of the darkness, coming towards him. The rider was dressed in a black outfit, like leather armor. He was armed with a sword and a mace which hung from the horse’s saddle. The enormous black horse stamped and pawed the ground, tossing its head as if impatient, not wanting to stand still. The long free-flowing mane of black hair matched the long black hair of the rider. When he spoke, his voice had the deep resonance of a distant thunderstorm. “Why did you summon me?”
“Dark saint, Murmur, I need your assistance.”
An archduke in Hell, commander of legions of fallen angels, Murmur was one of the few who had the power to summon the dead. “Who would you have me bring back?”
Andrej turned to look at the headstone of Sara’s grave, then back to the rider.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I need to see her one last time. I have to tell her what happened.”
“Why now? After all this time?”
“I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, but I wasn’t ready to face her.”
Murmur dismounted and walked to the grave. He looked briefly at the name carved into the marker, then turned back to Andrej. The entire cemetery had fallen completely silent when Murmur had arrived. There was no longer the sound of traffic from the nearby roads and even the breeze had died away, as if this small section of Prague had been removed from the world and now existed in another time or place. Andrej had met this particular demon only once before, but once encountered Murmur was never forgotten. Andrej was tall, but Murmur dwarfed him, standing a good foot taller, and broader. His face was hard to see in the dark, but his eyes glowed with a cold, blue light.
“It’s not like you to disturb the dead.”
Andrej knew these challenges were meant to test his commitment to the deed. While Murmur had the power to summon the dead, he had to be convinced that the person was completely sure of their own motives for doing so. And he was then free to expect a favor in return at his convenience.
“No, it isn’t. But this,” he said, “is long overdue.”
Murmur nodded solemnly, apparently satisfied with the answer. He turned back to face the grave marker again, and in a voice that sounded like a rushing wind, swirling around the circle in which he and Andrej stood, he called her name, “Sara Helena Ruzicka.” The sound repeated as if echoing across a vast space.
Gradually a mist started to form just in front of the obelisk. It was faint, small, but glowed ever so slightly, and something in it reached out to Andrej. He stood still, hoping it would assume her shape, something recognizable. As he watched, he felt a gnawing inside, a feeling he couldn’t place at first. It had been so long he nearly didn’t recognize fear. The glowing mist grew larger until it seemed to him to be about her height, but there was nothing recognizable in it. All the fear and self-loathing he had been carrying lifted as he looked at this faint apparition. He had feared facing an angry spirit, feeling her pain at his abandonment, his unexplained disappearance. The mist moved towards him as he stood there, unflinching. Whatever it was going to do to him he was going to accept it. He had felt for so long that he had earned her wrath for deserting her that he didn’t even bother to brace himself as the mist started to grow and moved to envelop him. He stood still, letting it come. He felt no anger, none of the hate or vengefulness he had expected. He had hoped to be able to speak to her, tell her what happened, why he never came back. If this truly was Sara’s spirit, he felt no malice, just peace. And something else that threw him off guard more than anything else: a sense of love.
“Sara,” he said softly, “I came to tell you I’m sorry, that I did love you. I left so I wouldn’t hurt you, after what I became. I don’t ask you to forgive me, I don’t deserve it. I just wanted you to know.”
He knelt again in the grass with the candles burning, casting a soft glow on the scene. The mist still contained him, but it grew warm, as if embracing him. He knew it was her even if she wasn’t able to manifest fully or speak to him. He remained as he was, and would have sat there all night, but the mist began to fade away, leaving him in the dark cemetery alone. She was gone. There was no way to make up for having left her, but despite whatever she might have felt in life, in death she was at peace. Perhaps she had had a good life, with a loving family around her. Crossing the veil she reached out to give him some peace as well, filling him with a warmth he hadn’t felt since he was alive.
As the spirit of Sara faded, Andrej looked around for Murmur, but he too was gone. In a moment a brisk wind swept through, scattering the ashes and obliterating the sigil he had drawn, and extinguishing the candles. The lilies, however, were unmoved. They remained as he had placed them, just in front of the grave marker. His hand had stopped bleeding, indeed the cut was nearly healed. His sense of relief in knowing Sara’s spirit was at rest didn’t entirely erase the guilt he had carried for centuries. She had been a gentle person in life, and was a gentle spirit in death. Perhaps someday he would be as forgiving of himself as she had been. He lay down on top of her grave, not yet ready to leave the one place on earth where he felt some peace. The stars shifted overhead through the night, and as much as he wished her back, there was no more sign of her presence. She had released him, and she was gone. Still he stayed, rising to leave only as the eastern sky began to lighten. He lingered for another minute, then finally turned and left.
Chapter 5