Then Smerande came over to me, and made a sign to Gregoriska.

  Gregoriska obeyed and drew near. Then Smerande spoke to me in Moldavian.

  “My mother is ordering me to repeat to you word for word what she is about to say,” said Gregoriska.

  Then Smerande spoke again. When she had finished, he said:

  “These are my mother’s words. ‘Hedwige, you are weeping for my son – you loved him, did you not? I thank you for your tears and your love; henceforth you are as much my daughter as if Kostaki had been your husband; henceforth you have a fatherland, a mother and a family. Let us shed the burden of tears that we owe to the dead, and then let us both become worthy of the man who is no more… I his mother, and you his wife! Farewell! Return home! As for me, I will follow my son to his final dwelling place; on my return, I will shut myself away with my sorrow, and you will not see me until I have vanquished it. Do not worry, vanquish it I will, for I do not want it to kill me.’”

  My only reply to these words, translated by Gregoriska, was a groan.

  I went back up into my room. The cortège moved off. I saw it disappearing at the corner of the road. The monastery of Hango was only half a league from the castle, as the crow flies, but the obstacles on the ground forced the route to deviate and it was almost two hours’ journey by road.

  It was November. The days had become short and cold once more. At five o’clock, it was already night-time.

  At around seven, I saw torches coming back into view. It was the funeral cortège returning home. His body was resting in the tomb of his fathers. The last word had been said.

  I have told you of the strange obsession to which I had fallen prey ever since the fateful event that had plunged us all into mourning, and especially since I had seen the eyes which death had closed opening and staring at me. That evening, overwhelmed by the day’s emotions, I was even more melancholy. I listened to the different hours being struck on the castle clock, and I grew sadder as the swift march of time brought me ever closer to the instant at which Kostaki must have died.

  I heard it strike quarter to nine.

  Then I was seized by a strange sensation. A shuddering terror ran up and down my body, chilling it to the bone; then, together with this terror, something like an invincible slumber weighing down my senses; my chest felt constricted, and my eyes were veiled. I stretched out my arms and staggered backwards to fall onto my bed.

  However, my senses had not failed me so much as to prevent me hearing what sounded like a footstep approaching my door; then it seemed to me that my door was opening; then I heard and saw no more.

  What I did feel was a sharp pain in my neck. After that, I fell into a complete state of lethargy.

  At midnight, I reawoke; my lamp was still burning; I tried to get up, but I was so weak that I needed to make two more attempts. However I managed to overcome this weakness, and since, now that I was awake, I could feel the same pain in my neck that I had felt while asleep, I dragged myself over to the mirror, clinging to the wall for support, and looked at my reflection.

  Something like the prick of a pin had left a mark on the artery in my neck.

  I concluded that some insect must have bitten me during my sleep, and, as I was tottering with exhaustion, I climbed into bed and went off to sleep.

  The next day, I awoke as usual. As usual, I tried to get up as soon as my eyes were open, but I felt a weakness that I had experienced only once before in my life, the day after I had been bled.

  I went over to my mirror, and was struck by my pallor.

  The day went by, sad and gloomy. I had a strange sensation: wherever I was, I needed to keep still, since any change of place exhausted me.

  Night fell, and my lamp was brought; my women – or so I deduced from their gestures – offered to stay with me. I thanked them, but declined; they left.

  At the same hour as the previous night, I experienced the same symptoms. I tried to get up and called for help, but I could not even reach the door.

  I indistinctly heard the bell of the clock chiming quarter to nine; footsteps echoed, the door opened, but I could see and hear nothing; as on the previous night, I had staggered backwards to my bed and collapsed onto it.

  Just as on the previous night, I felt a sharp pain in the same place.

  Just as on the previous night, I awoke at midnight; but I awoke weaker and paler than on the previous night.

  The following day, the same obsessive pattern of events repeated itself.

  I had decided to go downstairs to Smerande, however weak I might feel, when one of my women came into my room and uttered Gregoriska’s name.

  Gregoriska was right behind her.

  I tried to stand up to greet him, but fell back into my chair.

  He uttered a cry on seeing me, and started to rush forwards towards me, but I still had enough strength to stretch my hand out to him.

  “What have you come here for?” I asked him.

  “Alas!” he said. “I was coming to bid you farewell! I was coming to tell you that I am leaving this world which is unbearable without your love and your presence; I was coming to tell you that I am retiring to the monastery of Hango.”

  “You may have been deprived of my presence, Gregoriska,” I replied, “but not of my love. Alas! I love you still, and it is my greatest sorrow that, henceforth, this love must be almost a crime.”

  “So I can hope that you will pray for me, Hedwige?”

  “Yes, but I will not be praying for long,” I added with a smile.

  “So what is wrong with you – and why are you so pale?”

  “What is wrong is… God is perhaps taking pity on me, and calling me to him!”

  Gregoriska came up to me, took my hand, which I did not have the strength to refuse him, and, gazing fixedly at me, said:

  “This pallor is unnatural, Hedwige – what is the cause behind it?”

  “If I were to tell you, Gregoriska, you would think I was mad.”

  “No, no, Hedwige, tell me, I beg you; we are here in a country like no other – and in a family like no other. Tell me, tell me all, I beg you.”

  I told him everything: the strange hallucination which overcame me at the hour at which Kostaki must have died; the terror, the numbness, the icy chill, the prostration that flung me onto my bed, the noise of footsteps I thought I could hear, the door that I thought I saw opening and finally the sharp pain followed by an ever-increasing pallor and weakness.

  I had thought that my story would appear to Gregoriska as the sign of an incipient madness, and I finished it with a certain timidity – but I saw that he was giving this tale his closest attention.

  When I had finished, he reflected for a moment.

  “So,” he said, “you go to sleep every evening at a quarter to nine?”

  “Yes, however hard I try to keep sleep at bay.”

  “So you think you can see your door opening?”

  “Yes, even though I keep it bolted.”

  “So you feel a sharp pain in your neck?”

  “Yes, even though my neck bears hardly any trace of a wound.”

  “Will you allow me to take a look?” he said.

  I bent my head sidewise.

  He examined the scar.

  “Hedwige,” he said after a while, “do you trust me?”

  “You know I trust you!” I replied.

  “Do you believe me when I give you my word?”

  “Every bit as much as I believe in the Holy Gospels.”

  “Well, Hedwige, on my word of honour, I swear to you that you have less than a week to live unless you consent to do what I tell you to do – this very day!”

  “And if I do consent?”

  “If you do consent, you will be saved, perhaps.”

  “Perhaps?”

  He did not reply.

  “Whatever happens, Gregoriska,” I replied, “I will do what you order me to do.”

  “Very well – listen!” he said. “And above all, do not panic. In your country, as in Hungary, and as in Romania, there is a tradition…”

  I shuddered, since I knew of the tradition he was referring to.

  “Ah,” he said, “you know what I’m talking about?”

  “Yes,” I replied, “I have seen – in Poland – people who succumbed to that dreadful fate.”

  “You mean vampires, don’t you?”

  “Yes – in my childhood, I watched as they dug up, from the cemetery of a village that belonged to my father, forty people who had died within the space of a fortnight without anyone being able to guess at the cause of their death. Seventeen showed every sign of vampirism – that is, they were found to be fresh, rosy-cheeked and looking as if they were still alive. The others were their victims.”

  “And what steps were taken to deliver the land from them?”

  “A stake was driven into their hearts, and they were buried.”

  “Yes, that’s how it’s usually done – but in our case, that’s not enough. To deliver you from the phantom, I must know first who it is, and, by Heaven, I am going to find out. Yes, and, if need be, I will fight him in face-to-face combat, whoever it may be.”

  “Ah, Gregoriska!” I cried fearfully.

  “I said ‘whoever it may be’, and I’ll say it again. But if we are to bring this venture to a successful conclusion, you will have to consent to all my demands.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Make yourself ready by seven o’clock. Go down into the chapel; go down by yourself; you must conquer your weakness, Hedwige – it is absolutely necessary. There we will receive the nuptial blessing. Consent to this, my beloved; if we are to defend you, it is necessary that, before God and men, I have the right to watch over you. We will come back up to your room, and then we shall see.”

  “Oh, Gregoriska!” I exclaimed. “If it’s him, he’ll kill you!”

  “Fear nothing, my beloved Hedwige. Just give me your consent.”

  “You know full well that I will do everything you want, Gregoriska.”

  “So – we will meet this evening.”

  “Yes, you must do everything you want to do, and I will give you as much support as I can. Now go.”

  He left. A quarter of an hour later, I saw a rider galloping away along the road to the monastery – it was him!

  Hardly had he vanished from my sight than I was on my knees, and praying in a way that nobody in your faithless countries prays any more, and I waited for seven o’clock, offering to God and the saints a burnt offering of my thoughts; only when seven o’clock chimed did I rise to my feet.

  I was as weak as a dying woman, and as pale as a dead one. I threw a great black veil over my head, and went down the stairs, clinging to the walls for support, to the chapel, meeting no one on the way.

  Gregoriska was waiting for me with Father Bazile, the superior of the Hango monastery. He was wearing a holy sword at his side, the relic of an old crusader who had captured Constantinople with Villehardouin and Baldwin of Flanders.*

  “Hedwige,” he said, striking his sword with his hand, “with God’s help, this is what will break the spell that is threatening your life. So approach resolutely; here is a holy man who, after receiving my confession, will hear us make our vows.”

  The ceremony began; never, perhaps, was there ever a ceremony so simple and solemn at once. No one assisted the priest; he himself placed the nuptial crowns on our heads. Both dressed in mourning attire, we walked round the altar with a candle in our hands; then the priest uttered the sacred words, and added:

  “Go now, my children, and may God give you the strength and the courage to fight against the enemy of the human race. You are armed with your innocence and with his justice; you will vanquish the demon. Go, and may you be blessed.”

  We kissed the holy books, and went out of the chapel.

  Then, for the first time, I leant on Gregoriska’s arm, and it seemed to me that, at the touch of that valiant arm, and as I drew close to that noble heart, life flooded back into my veins. I thought I was assured of victory, since Gregoriska was with me; we went back up into my room.

  Half-past eight chimed.

  “Hedwige,” said Gregoriska to me then, “we have no time to lose. Will you go to sleep as usual, so that it all happens while you are asleep? Or do you want to stay fully dressed and see it all?”

  “When I am with you, I fear nothing – I want to stay awake, I want to see it all.”

  Gregoriska drew from his breast a blessed palm frond still wet with holy water, and gave it to me.

  “So, take this palm frond,” he said, “lie on your bed, recite the prayers to the Virgin and wait fearlessly. God is with us. Above all, do not drop your palm frond; with that, you will command hell itself. Don’t call me, don’t cry out; pray, hope and wait.”

  I lay down on my bed; I crossed my hands on my breast, and folded to it my blessed palm frond.

  As for Gregoriska, he hid behind the dais I have mentioned, which stretched across the corner of my room.

  I counted the minutes, and Gregoriska was doubtless counting them too.

  Quarter to nine chimed.

  The echo of the striker was still vibrating when I felt the same numbness, the same terror, the same icy chill as before, but I raised the blessed palm frond to my lips, and this initial sensation faded away.

  Then I distinctly heard the noise of those slow and deliberate footsteps echoing on the stairs and coming up to my door.

  Then my door slowly opened, quite noiselessly, as if pushed open by a supernatural force, and then…

  At this point the voice of the woman narrating the story faltered and died in her throat.

  And then – she continued with an effort – I saw Kostaki, as pale as I had seen him on the litter; his long black hair, falling loosely to his shoulders, was dripping with blood; he was wearing his usual clothes, but his shirt was cut away at his breast and revealed a bleeding wound.

  Everything about him was dead and corpselike… his flesh, his clothes, his gait… only his eyes, those terrible eyes, were alive.

  At this sight, something strange happened – instead of feeling my terror increase, I sensed my courage grow. God was giving me fresh heart, no doubt, so that I could judge of my position and defend myself even against hell. At the first step the phantom took towards my bed, I boldly stared back into those leaden eyes, and held out the blessed palm frond.

  The spectre attempted to advance, but a greater power than his kept him rooted to the spot. He halted.

  “Oh!” he murmured. “She is not asleep – she knows everything.”

  He was speaking in Moldavian, and yet I could understand him as well as if those words had been uttered in a language that I spoke.

  So there we were, facing one another, the phantom and myself; I was quite unable to take my eyes from his, and then I saw, without having to turn my head in his direction, Gregoriska emerging from behind the wooden stalls, looking like the exterminating angel, holding his sword.

  With his left hand he made the sign of the cross and slowly advanced, his sword held out towards the phantom; the latter in turn, on seeing his brother, had drawn his sabre, uttering a terrible laugh; but hardly had the sabre touched the blessed steel of the sword than the phantom’s arm fell back inertly to his side.

  Kostaki heaved a sigh full of hostility and despair.

  “What do you want?” he asked his brother.

  “In the name of the living God,” said Gregoriska, “I adjure you to reply!”

  “Speak,” said the phantom, grinding his teeth.

  “Was it I who lay in wait for you?”

  “No.”

  “Was it I who attacked you?”

  “No.”

  “Was it I who struck you?”

  “No.”

  “You flung yourself on my sword – that’s all. So, in the eyes of God and men, I am guiltless of the crime of fratricide; so you have not been given any divine mission, but an infernal one; so you have left the tomb not as a holy shade, but as a cursed spectre, and you are going to return to your tomb.”

  “Yes – with her!” cried Kostaki, making a supreme effort to seize hold of me.

  “No, alone!” Gregoriska cried in turn. “This woman belongs to me.”

  And, as he uttered these words, he touched the open wound with the tip of his sacred sword.

  Kostaki howled as if a fiery blade had touched him, and, clasping his left hand to his breast, he took a step backwards.

  At the same time, with a corresponding movement, Gregoriska took a step forwards; then, as he kept his eyes on the eyes of the dead man, and his sword on the breast of his brother, a slow, terrible, solemn march began; something similar to the encounter between Don Giovanni and the Commendatore; the spectre recoiling before the sacred sword, yielding to the irresistible will of God’s champion; the latter following him step by step without uttering a word; both of them breathing heavily, both of them livid, the living man pushing the dead man back and forcing him to abandon this castle which had been his dwelling place in the past, and return to the tomb which would be his dwelling place for the future.

  Oh, it was a horrible sight, I can assure you!

  And yet, moved myself by a superior, invisible, unknown force, without realizing what I was doing, I rose to my feet and followed them.

  We descended the stairs, the only light coming from Kostaki’s burning eyes. In this way we crossed the gallery, and then the courtyard. In this way we crossed through the gate, still with this same deliberate tread: the spectre walking backwards, Gregoriska holding forth his hand, and myself following them.

  This phantasmatic journey lasted for an hour: the dead man needed to be taken back to his tomb; however, instead of following the usual route, Kostaki and Gregoriska cut across the terrain in a straight line, paying little heed to the obstacles – which indeed ceased to exist: under their feet the ground flattened out, the torrents dried up, the trees retreated, the rocks opened a path. The same miracle was performed for me as for them, but the sky seemed covered by a black crape, the moon and the stars had vanished, and the only thing I could see shining through the night were the vampire’s fiery eyes.