[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.” Katje explained that a group of women from the staff cafeteria went bowlingtogether each Friday night and had promised to come by and pick her up.“I’ll wait with you just in case,” Miss Donelly said.“You know, Wild Man Williams is a twerp, but he was right: Weyland’s vampire would be a time traveler.He could only go forward, of course, never backhand only by long, unpredictable leaps-this time, say, into our age of what we like to think of as technological marvels; maybe next time into an age of interstellar travel.Who knows, he might get to taste Martian blood, if there are Martians, and if they have blood.“Frankly, I wouldn’t have thought Weyland could come up withanything so imaginative as that-the vampire as a sort of flying saber-toothed tiger prowling the pavements, a truly endangered species.That’s nextterm’s T-shirt: SAVE THE VAMPIRE.”Miss Donelly might banter, but she would never believe.It was all ajoke to her, a clever mental game invented by Dr.Weyland for hisaudience.No point consulting her.Miss Donelly added ruefully, “You’ve got to hand it to the man.He’sgot a tremendous stage presence, and he sure knows how to turn on thecharm when he feels like it.Nothing too smooth, mind you, just enoughunbending, enough slightly caustic graciousness, to set susceptible hearts a-beating.You could almost forget what a ruthless, self-centered bastard he can be.Did you notice that most of the comments came from women?Is that your lift?”It was.While the women in the station wagon shuffled themselvesaround to make room, Katje stood with her hand on the door and watchedDr.Weyland emerge from the building with admiring students at eitherhand.He loomed above them, his hair silver under the lamp-light.For over civilized people to experience the approach of such a predator as sexually attractive was not strange.She remembered Scotty saying once that thegreat cats were all beautiful, and maybe beauty helped them to capturetheir prey.He turned his head, and she thought for a moment that he was lookingat her as she got into the station wagon.What could she do that wouldn’t arouse total disbelief and a suspicionthat she herself was crazy? She couldn’t think amid the tired, satisfied ramblings of her bowling friends, and she declined to stay up socializing with them.They didn’t press her.She was not one of their regular group.Sitting alone at home, Katje had a cup of hot milk to calm herself forsleep.To her perplexity, her mind kept wandering from thoughts of Dr.Weyland to memories of drinking cocoa at night with Henrik and the African students he used to bring to dinner.They had been native boys to her,dressed up in suits and talking politics like white men, flashing photographs of black babies playing with toy trucks and walkie-talkie sets.Sometimes they had gone to see documentary films of an Africa full of cities and traffic and black professionals exhorting, explaining, running things, as thesestudents expected to do in their turn when they went home.She thought about home now.She recalled clearly all those indicatorsof irrevocable change in Africa, and she saw suddenly that the old life there had gone.She would return to an Africa largely as foreign to her asAmerica had been at first.Reluctantly, she admitted one of her feelings when listening to Dr.Weyland talk had been an unwilling empathy with him: if he was a one-way time traveler, so was she.As the vampire could not return to simpler times, so Katje saw herselfcut off from the life of raw vigor, the rivers of game, the smoky village air, all viewed from the lofty heights of white privilege.One did not have to sleep half a century to lose one’s world these days; one had only to grow older.Next morning she found Dr.Weyland leaning, hands in pockets,against one of the columns flanking the entrance to the club.She stopped some yards from him, her purse hanging heavily on her arm.The hour wasearly, the campus deserted-looking.Stand still, she thought; show no fear.He looked at her.“I saw you after the lecture last night, and earlier in the week, outside the lab one evening.You must know better than towander alone at night; the campus empty, no one around-anything mighthappen.If you are curious, Mrs.de Groot, come do a session for me.All your questions will be answered.Come over tonight.I could stop by here for you in my car on the way back to the lab after dinner.There is noproblem with scheduling, and I would welcome your company.I sit aloneover there these nights hoping some impoverished youngster, unable toafford a trip home at intersession, will be moved by an uncontrollable itch for travel to come to my lab and earn his fare.”She felt fear knocking heavily in her body.She shook her head, no.“My work would interest you, I think,” he went on, watching her.“Youare an alert, fine-looking woman; they waste your qualities here.Couldn’t the college find you something better than to be a housekeeper for themafter your husband died? You might consider coming over regularly to help me with some clerical chores until I get a new assistant.I pay well.”Astonished out of her fear at the offer of work in the vampire’s lair,she found her voice: “I am a country woman, Dr.Weyland, a daughter offarmers.I have no proper education.We never read books at home,except the Bible.My husband didn’t want me to work.I have spent my time in this country learning English and cooking and how to shop for the right things.I have no skills, no knowledge but the little that I remember of the crops and weather and customs of another country- and even that isprobably out of date.I would be no use in work like yours.”Hunched in his coat with the collar upturned, looking at her slightlyaskance, his tousled hair gleaming with the damp, he had the aspect of an old hawk, intent but aloof.He broke the pose, yawned behind hislarge-knuckled hand, and straightened up.“As you like.Here comes your friend Nellie.”“Nettie,” Katje corrected, suddenly outraged: he’d drunk Nettie’sblood; the least he could do was remember her name properly.But he wasvanishing over the lawn toward the lab.Nettie came panting up.“Who was that? Did he try to attack you?”“It was Dr.Weyland,” Katje said.She hoped Nettie didn’t notice hertrembling, which Katje tried to conceal.Nettie laughed.“What is this, a secret romance?”Miss Donelly came into the kitchen toward the end of the luncheon forthe departing Emeritus.She plumped herself down between Nettie andKatje, who were taking a break and preparing dessert, respectively.Katje spooned whipped cream carefully into each glass dish of fruit.Miss Donelly said, “In case I get too smashed to say this later, thanks.On the budget I gave you, you did just great.The Department will put on something official with Beef Wellington and trimmings, over at Borchard’s, but it was really important for some of us lowly types to give Sylvia our own alcoholic farewell feast, which we couldn’t have done without your help.”Nettie nodded and stubbed out her cigarette.“Our pleasure,” Katje said, preoccupied.Dr.Weyland had come forher, would come back again; he was hers to deal with, but how? She nolonger thought of sharing her fear, not with Nettie with her money worries or with Miss Donelly, whose eyes were just now faintly swimmy-looking withdrink.Weyland the vampire was not for a committee to deal with.Only fools left it to committees to handle life and death [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.” Katje explained that a group of women from the staff cafeteria went bowlingtogether each Friday night and had promised to come by and pick her up.“I’ll wait with you just in case,” Miss Donelly said.“You know, Wild Man Williams is a twerp, but he was right: Weyland’s vampire would be a time traveler.He could only go forward, of course, never backhand only by long, unpredictable leaps-this time, say, into our age of what we like to think of as technological marvels; maybe next time into an age of interstellar travel.Who knows, he might get to taste Martian blood, if there are Martians, and if they have blood.“Frankly, I wouldn’t have thought Weyland could come up withanything so imaginative as that-the vampire as a sort of flying saber-toothed tiger prowling the pavements, a truly endangered species.That’s nextterm’s T-shirt: SAVE THE VAMPIRE.”Miss Donelly might banter, but she would never believe.It was all ajoke to her, a clever mental game invented by Dr.Weyland for hisaudience.No point consulting her.Miss Donelly added ruefully, “You’ve got to hand it to the man.He’sgot a tremendous stage presence, and he sure knows how to turn on thecharm when he feels like it.Nothing too smooth, mind you, just enoughunbending, enough slightly caustic graciousness, to set susceptible hearts a-beating.You could almost forget what a ruthless, self-centered bastard he can be.Did you notice that most of the comments came from women?Is that your lift?”It was.While the women in the station wagon shuffled themselvesaround to make room, Katje stood with her hand on the door and watchedDr.Weyland emerge from the building with admiring students at eitherhand.He loomed above them, his hair silver under the lamp-light.For over civilized people to experience the approach of such a predator as sexually attractive was not strange.She remembered Scotty saying once that thegreat cats were all beautiful, and maybe beauty helped them to capturetheir prey.He turned his head, and she thought for a moment that he was lookingat her as she got into the station wagon.What could she do that wouldn’t arouse total disbelief and a suspicionthat she herself was crazy? She couldn’t think amid the tired, satisfied ramblings of her bowling friends, and she declined to stay up socializing with them.They didn’t press her.She was not one of their regular group.Sitting alone at home, Katje had a cup of hot milk to calm herself forsleep.To her perplexity, her mind kept wandering from thoughts of Dr.Weyland to memories of drinking cocoa at night with Henrik and the African students he used to bring to dinner.They had been native boys to her,dressed up in suits and talking politics like white men, flashing photographs of black babies playing with toy trucks and walkie-talkie sets.Sometimes they had gone to see documentary films of an Africa full of cities and traffic and black professionals exhorting, explaining, running things, as thesestudents expected to do in their turn when they went home.She thought about home now.She recalled clearly all those indicatorsof irrevocable change in Africa, and she saw suddenly that the old life there had gone.She would return to an Africa largely as foreign to her asAmerica had been at first.Reluctantly, she admitted one of her feelings when listening to Dr.Weyland talk had been an unwilling empathy with him: if he was a one-way time traveler, so was she.As the vampire could not return to simpler times, so Katje saw herselfcut off from the life of raw vigor, the rivers of game, the smoky village air, all viewed from the lofty heights of white privilege.One did not have to sleep half a century to lose one’s world these days; one had only to grow older.Next morning she found Dr.Weyland leaning, hands in pockets,against one of the columns flanking the entrance to the club.She stopped some yards from him, her purse hanging heavily on her arm.The hour wasearly, the campus deserted-looking.Stand still, she thought; show no fear.He looked at her.“I saw you after the lecture last night, and earlier in the week, outside the lab one evening.You must know better than towander alone at night; the campus empty, no one around-anything mighthappen.If you are curious, Mrs.de Groot, come do a session for me.All your questions will be answered.Come over tonight.I could stop by here for you in my car on the way back to the lab after dinner.There is noproblem with scheduling, and I would welcome your company.I sit aloneover there these nights hoping some impoverished youngster, unable toafford a trip home at intersession, will be moved by an uncontrollable itch for travel to come to my lab and earn his fare.”She felt fear knocking heavily in her body.She shook her head, no.“My work would interest you, I think,” he went on, watching her.“Youare an alert, fine-looking woman; they waste your qualities here.Couldn’t the college find you something better than to be a housekeeper for themafter your husband died? You might consider coming over regularly to help me with some clerical chores until I get a new assistant.I pay well.”Astonished out of her fear at the offer of work in the vampire’s lair,she found her voice: “I am a country woman, Dr.Weyland, a daughter offarmers.I have no proper education.We never read books at home,except the Bible.My husband didn’t want me to work.I have spent my time in this country learning English and cooking and how to shop for the right things.I have no skills, no knowledge but the little that I remember of the crops and weather and customs of another country- and even that isprobably out of date.I would be no use in work like yours.”Hunched in his coat with the collar upturned, looking at her slightlyaskance, his tousled hair gleaming with the damp, he had the aspect of an old hawk, intent but aloof.He broke the pose, yawned behind hislarge-knuckled hand, and straightened up.“As you like.Here comes your friend Nellie.”“Nettie,” Katje corrected, suddenly outraged: he’d drunk Nettie’sblood; the least he could do was remember her name properly.But he wasvanishing over the lawn toward the lab.Nettie came panting up.“Who was that? Did he try to attack you?”“It was Dr.Weyland,” Katje said.She hoped Nettie didn’t notice hertrembling, which Katje tried to conceal.Nettie laughed.“What is this, a secret romance?”Miss Donelly came into the kitchen toward the end of the luncheon forthe departing Emeritus.She plumped herself down between Nettie andKatje, who were taking a break and preparing dessert, respectively.Katje spooned whipped cream carefully into each glass dish of fruit.Miss Donelly said, “In case I get too smashed to say this later, thanks.On the budget I gave you, you did just great.The Department will put on something official with Beef Wellington and trimmings, over at Borchard’s, but it was really important for some of us lowly types to give Sylvia our own alcoholic farewell feast, which we couldn’t have done without your help.”Nettie nodded and stubbed out her cigarette.“Our pleasure,” Katje said, preoccupied.Dr.Weyland had come forher, would come back again; he was hers to deal with, but how? She nolonger thought of sharing her fear, not with Nettie with her money worries or with Miss Donelly, whose eyes were just now faintly swimmy-looking withdrink.Weyland the vampire was not for a committee to deal with.Only fools left it to committees to handle life and death [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]