‘Um. I’ll wait for Jacob in the morning,’ many of them said.
‘I’m an actress. I’ve got good memory viruses too.’
They might give their heads the slightest of angry shakes. They were angry with Jacob for deserting them, leaving them to this stranger. Milena was embarrassed. She was embarrassed by all this weight of life that was going on without her. The rooms were often full of people lounging together on beds, drinking, talking, playing chess on little resin boards.
Milena went to Cilia’s room and it was full of the Vampires, twenty of them, thirty of them, packed in, talking, agreeing, disagreeing, laughing.
‘What are you doing?’ Cilia asked, rising to her feet.
‘I’m helping Jacob out.’
And Milena explained, breathless. Milena the Postperson, someone called her, smiling. How does he know my name? Milena thought. I don’t know his.
‘Anybody got any messages?’ she asked. ‘I’ll take them.’ She knew then why Jacob always asked. It was nice to be needed.
In the evening she and Jacob hid behind the costumes as Rolfa sang.
‘Can you remember? Can you remember it?’ she asked him, whispering, desperate.
Jacob smiled and nodded, and put a finger to his lips.
It became routine, for a time.
Milena and Rolfa would have lunch together every day. Sometimes they ate in the Zoo cafe. Rolfa would always cringe just before going in. She had to duck to get through the doors, but it was more than that. She did not belong. She looked huge on the narrow benches, ridiculous bunched up under the tiny tables, her knees pressing up under them, dragging them with her when she stood up. Her fur hung into the soup, the cups were too small for her to drink from. Watching Rolfa eat was a fascinating spectacle. For Milena, it was like being in the mead hall with Beowulf. Rolfa’s appetite and manners were of a previous historical era. She munched and belched and slurped and splattered, looking rather forlorn and helpless, as if there was nothing she could do about it. She would have two or three helpings of chips, which she shovelled into her mouth with thick and greasy fingers. She had to stick her long pink tongue down into cups and lap and lick to get anything out of them. She had to lap to drink anything — her tongue got in the way if she tried to sip like a human being. She leant over her soup bowl like a lion over a stream, glancing furtively about her.
Rolfa ate in an agony of embarrassment. Quiet, folded in on herself, a tight false smile and staring, darting eyes. She licked her plates to get the gravy hoping no one would notice. People stared. They chuckled in disbelief when she came back from the buffet with a third helping of stew or lasagne. The place was steamy, with sunlight pouring through windows. When she wasn’t eating, she had to pant, moisture dripping off her long pink tongue.
‘Does she eat the plates as well?’ Milena once heard someone behind them murmur.
Milena didn’t care. She was in love. She kept trying to smell Rolfa. The scent of Rolfa was pungent and a bit doggy, full of lanolin. Milena would haul it into her nostrils, savouring it along with the aromas of the food. She would ask to sample Rolfa’s fish pie.
‘Oooh, fish pie! Oh, please,’ she would say. She hated fish pie. What she wanted was the taste of Rolfa on the fork.
I can’t believe I’m doing this, she thought, sucking on the cutlery as if it were a lollipop.
She found herself wondering if she could lick Rolfa’s plate without anyone noticing. She gave herself a very bad fright indeed when she stole from the cafe a spoon that Rolfa had used. She reached for it and something drew tight and stopped her, but the pull of Rolfa was stronger, and she touched it. It was still warm from Rolfa’s hand. Something taut like wire seemed to snap with a twang, and Milena picked the spoon up and slipped it into her pocket.
This is ridiculous, she thought. What am I going to do with it? Keep it unwashed by my kitchen sink? That was exactly what she did with it.
Milena would deliberately walk into Rolfa to bury her face in her fur. She kept crowding into Rolfa, to feel the inhuman heat of her, to feel the tickle of the fur. Rolfa was highly charged with static. Milena would sometimes get a jolt of electricity from her. When she came near the little hairs on Milena’s arm would stand up.
Rolfa began to get a bit annoyed with being walked into. ‘We’ll have to get you a bigger pavement,’ she said, mystified.
Once Milena elbowed Rolfa into a rank of bicycles. Five or six of them fell over like dominoes in a row, and Rolfa’s fur got caught up between a chain and a chain wheel.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Milena, and knelt to free her. She held the fur and gripped the calf and it was vast, fleshy and warm like someone’s stomach. She fumbled with the chain, which was organically lubricated. Milena’s hands, her nose and most of Rolfa’s lower leg were smeared with thick moss-green.
‘May I enquire, Little One? What are you doing?’
I’m hugging you, thought Milena. Do something.
‘Little… Little One. I’ll do it.’ Rolfa eased her back, gently.
‘Sorry. Sorry,’ said Milena and hopped backwards. Oh God, how embarrassing. What was she doing? Oh Rolfa, Rolfa, please notice, please say something, please do something. I can’t say it!
Rolfa began to take her to the opera. They went to the first night of Falstaff. The Vampires showed up in en masse as the original 1890 London audience. The men wore tails and the women wore bustles. Someone played George Bernard Shaw.
Rolfa seemed delighted. All through the opera she rocked with laughter, throwing herself back and forth in her seat. The whole row rolled with her weight. Milena was entranced by the staging and the lights. She loved the rumble of the great old stage as it began to rotate, and an inn was replaced with a house by the river. She was less moved by the music.
As they stood up at the end, Milena asked. ‘Why weren’t there any arias?’
‘Tuh!’ shuddered Rolfa. ‘Every line in Verdi is an aria!’ Milena thought that was hyperbole, simply a way to emphasise how much Rolfa had enjoyed the performance. It did not occur to her that it might be the literal truth.
The Vampires crowded around Cilia. She had played one of the Merry Wives and she had been delicious. She had made the scheming against old John Falstaff seem light and happy. She had worn the old costumes and had made the old stage moves. ‘Cilia! Cilia!’ said a young man, hopping up and down, forgetting his Vampire role. ‘You were as good as the original.’
‘You were better,’ whispered Milena, as she kissed Cilia on the cheek. Love seemed to spill over everywhere.
Milena and Rolfa walked home along the river, and the alcohol lights were the colour of a low moon in a smoky sky.
‘Oh dear,’ sighed Rolfa. ‘They really shouldn’t try to perform music. No one should. They only ever end up performing part of it. Never the whole.’
‘But people want to hear it, don’t they?’
‘More like the musicians want to play it,’ said Rolfa. ‘They haven’t learned that they can’t. It’s an impossibility. Like trying to tell the whole truth.’
They reached the steps of the Shell. ‘Goodnight,’ said Rolfa. She began to walk backwards. The river glittered behind her, and with each step, she whispered, ‘Good night. Good night. Good night.’ Then she put a finger to her lips for silence.
Milena went to bed alone.
The nights were the worst. Milena would be feverish with love, unsettled, as if Rolfa were in the bed next to her, as if the miles that separated them were nothing, as if she could reach out and feel the warmth and the fur. It was like holding a ghost.