Chapter III. Half-Eaten #2
Ariadne glanced at the great hall. There were no more than fifteen people around, and she could spot the humans easily by the dishes in front of them: four middle-aged men spoke to a male gul at a nearby table, two elderly ladies laughed with an equally ancient female, a couple shared a settee near the piano, another talked on the veranda, and someone smoked in front of the window, admiring the view.
“Can I order you food?” asked Quaint, and Ariadne turned to him, nodding.
“The menu is all vegetarian.” Augusto fetched a chair, sitting in front of Ariadne. “Or the humans find it suspicious.”
Ariadne watched the guls in silence. Like Quaint and Augusto, all of them were gracious and well-dressed, the opposite of her.
“Augusto,” she said after Quaint left. “Have you met Erik Yurkov?”
“Erik?” Augusto’s droopy brown eyes analyzed her reactions, as if he knew she was doing the same to him. Then, he looked at Quaint over his own shoulder, watching as the other man called one of the waiters to show his membership card. “It was about time Quaint asked about him.”
“Quaint didn’t ask,” replied Ariadne. “I did.”
Augusto smirked. “And where do you know Erik from?”
“I’m his student.” Ariadne touched one of the cloth napkins that had been rolled up to look like a blooming flower, crumpling it with her hand. “And I find it odd that he disappeared after coming here. Erik is no stranger to guls.”
“Another doctor? How interesting, how very interesting…” Augusto seemed to consider her for the first time. “I agree with you; it is odd. Do you know Genebra?”
“I do,” lied Ariadne.
“Genebra has a soft spot for Erik. Can’t say no to him. Can’t say no to anyone, in fact,” he said with a shrug. “She told me some time ago that he asked to stay in her house for a while. Then both disappear into thin air.”
“Did I miss anything?” Quaint returned, followed closely by a waiter who came carrying a drink and an entree.
“Told her my entire life,” joked Augusto.
“Well, I’ve been meaning to ask…”
“About Erik? She already did.”
“And? Do you know anything?”
“Not personally, but we could visit Genebra’s place later.” Augusto smiled behind his beard. “It’s five minutes from here.”
During lunch, Quaint and Augusto told her about all the people in the room.
They started with Lena and Friedrich, a couple of German guls that had moved to Rio Grande do Sul in the early twentieth century and had collaborated with the military regime.
Friedrich was rather ordinary, but the presence of Lena on the settee upset Ariadne, like an aged lioness waiting for prey.
Then, Ubirajara, the one by the window, with a long cream-colored dress that made him look like a 1940s movie star.
He sings when the choro band is not around, Quaint explained in a whisper.
Ubirajara waved lazily at them, holding a sharp cigarette holder between his fingers.
He’s harmless, said Augusto. Or so he says.
On the veranda, a sullen man reading the newspaper reclined on the alfresco sofa, and the woman by his side hugged his arm, looking at him adoringly.
Anzol is a translator from the Andes and Rosa is an heiress from Seville, said Augusto, adding that they had fled Spain as soon as Franco died.
He might be a vulture, but he has her under his thumb.
Ariadne frowned. A vulture? Guls who don’t hunt, explained Quaint.
They usually eat corpses from morgues, or the scraps of stronger guls.
There was also a child Quaint recalled only vaguely, a plump little boy with dark hair, running and playing in the garden.
For a human, he looked like he was seven or eight, but he wore a pair of antiquated shorts with a dress shirt, his fingers were full of tourmaline rings, and his growing deciduous fangs appeared whenever he laughed.
“Have you ever seen one of our children?” Augusto asked. “They’re getting scarcer by the day.”
“Only newborns. I’m aware he is older than me.”
“Age is relative.” Quaint observed the boy with a smile as he climbed the window to enter the great hall. “Yes, we develop slowly, but life passes as swiftly for him as it passes for a human child.”
“How much time do you feel has passed for you?” asked Ariadne.
“I know how much time has passed, but I don’t feel as old as you might see me. When I was a boy and made my first human friend, I told him we would see each other again very soon,” explained Quaint. “When we met again, I was already an adolescent, and he had a great-granddaughter my age.”
“Isn’t it bad? Living with us?” Ariadne tried the chocolate mousse after the waiter came a third time, toying with the spoon on her lower lip. “We die too fast.”
Augusto watched them talk with a strange look on his face.
“You learn how to process time differently. After this friendship, I started to pay attention, to nurture the moments I have with the humans I’m fond of.
When they die, I keep them with me.” Quaint traced the lines of the hairpin tattoo under the fabric of his shirt.
“Hibernating for a decade when I’m grieving also helps. ”
Ariadne wanted to ask more about the hibernation period, in which a gul could spend years in a lethargic state after a sizable meal, but a noise distracted her.
Someone stood up at the table full of businessmen to call a waiter, but she couldn’t see his face.
Quaint tensed up, and he exchanged a knowing glance with the other gul.
“You should go upstairs,” suggested Augusto. “Let them know you’re back. Sometimes, you learn a thing or two by acting friendly.”
“Not with him,” growled Quaint in a low voice.
“Not with him,” Augusto agreed. “I can take the little lady to Genebra’s house while you’re there.”
“Yes,” Ariadne agreed, clutching her purse under the table to feel the sedative. “You said he’s the first type, didn’t you?”
The harshness vanished from his face, and Quaint offered a warm smile. “First type for sure. I’ll meet you soon.”
Erik has done this many times before, she told herself when she stepped out of Cabaré with Augusto.
They walked past the guards toward the residential street, old mansion after old mansion save for a few apartments here and there.
He talked to guls, walked with guls—Ariadne glanced at Augusto, who whistled and kept his hands shoved inside his pockets—trusted guls.
“Do you have the keys?”
“No, but I know where she keeps them.” Augusto observed her from the corner of his eye as she took off her cardigan, revealing a pair of bare arms under the sleeveless dress.
If she could, she would still be hidden under the clothes, but the weather was too warm.
The man pointed at the prosthesis. “Erik’s work, I take it? ”
“Erik’s work.”
“The only thing that gives it away is a subtle line in the skin, but I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t seen it in the sunlight,” Augusto continued, seemingly unaware of her discomfort. “Quite the perfect job. When I kissed your hand, it felt warm.”
“Don’t tell Quaint, please.”
“Sore spot?”
Ariadne didn’t answer. There was no real reason to avoid telling Quaint; she felt no shame about having prosthetic limbs, nor did she remember how her original ones had felt. But, somehow, his knowing or not made her feel insecure, as if telling the truth could ruin the enchantment.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell him,” said Augusto. “How did it happen?”
Her fingers sank into the synthetic skin. Ariadne held his eyes for longer than she had to, trying to think of something to say. I don’t know was not the right answer, because she did, sometimes, but any explanation felt fake.
“It’s rude to ask.”
“Is it?” Augusto stopped in front of one of the buildings, greeting the doorman as if he lived there. “My apologies.”
Miss Genebra hasn’t come home in a while, said the doorman, holding the door of the elevator.
Oh, she’s taking care of her parents, answered Augusto with a smile.
She asked me to pick up a few things before she’s back.
When they reached the fourth floor, Augusto bent over to take the key from under a heavy Peruvian cactus pot and unlocked the apartment.
Despite the owner having been away for only a year, Genebra’s apartment seemed frozen in time for more than a century.
Even the wooden structure of the ceiling was old, as were the draped curtains, the gilded mirrors on the walls, the oil paintings, the Persian rugs on the floor.
Augusto grimaced at the state of the furniture, covered in thick gray dust, and at the moldy spots on the wallpaper.
“Saying she hasn’t been here in a while is an understatement.” Ariadne touched a vanity in what she assumed was Genebra’s bedroom. Some of the makeup on it was modern, as was the television in the living room and the air conditioner, but the rest was all from past decades.
“Some guls are stuck in time.” Augusto opened the windows, and the smell improved slightly.
“As a friend, Genebra is delightful. Very fun. Very kind. But—stuck in time. Mentally, I don’t think she ever left the twenties.
Well, the last twenties. I have lived plenty of those, myself, and now we’re living another. Have you met her many times? Genebra?”
“I haven’t, actually,” admitted Ariadne. “I lied to you.”
Augusto stopped checking the books on the nightstand, surprised. “Really.”
“I have my tricks.”
The man started to laugh, one hand on his round belly.
“Forgive me for laughing, Ariadne, but you two are so different!”
“Me and who?”
“You and Erik, of course! You and Quaint … you seem to have more in common.” Augusto walked around the four-poster, looking at the disheveled silk sheets.
“I always thought Erik was an odd fellow. I told Quaint, but what’s the use of telling him anything?
He’s soft in the heart. Always was. Especially with his humans. ”
“Why odd?”