Welcome back to Reading the Weird, in which we get girl cooties all over weird fiction, cosmic horror, and Lovecraftiana—from its historical roots through its most recent branches.
This week, we cover Tanith Lee’s “Nunc Dimittis,” first published in Charles L. Grant’s The Dodd, Mead Gallery of Horror in 1983. Spoilers ahead!
Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace—Luke 2:29: Now you release your servant, Master, according to your word in peace.
Vasyelu Gorin has served the Princess Darejan Draculas from the age of sixteen until now, when even her beauty dims with age. Vassu is much younger than she, but now he is dying. When he tells her so, her wonder is “almost childlike,” and she asks whether he is glad. He is, Vassu says, except that he’s troubled for her sake.
Darejan insists he mustn’t worry about her. He has more than earned his peace, and after all, she’s no longer the huntress she was when Vassu joined her. She doesn’t sleep, seldom hungers, never lusts or loves: These are the comforts of old age.
Nevertheless, Vassu intends to find his own replacement. The Princess says the world no longer requires such things, but he argues. “The world,” he says, “is as it has always been. Only our perceptions of it have grown more acute. Our knowledge less bearable.”
He leaves her in a room shielded from daylight, leaves the mansion’s private park, and walks into a rainy city much like a forest. Among the vague shapes swarming there, he’ll know the one who will be of use to her. His successor: necessary, desired, yet the object of his jealousy. It isn’t long before footsteps follow him into an alley. A warm hand falls on his neck. Its owner demands his wallet, but even dying, Vassu retains the strength to easily overcome the thief. He’s a young man, graceful even sprawled in debris, intelligent, somehow innocent. His name, such as he’ll reveal, is Snake. Told Vassu wants something of him, Snake says he’ll do almost anything for the right price, and Vassu knows him for what he himself once was: thief and a whore both.
After buying Snake an expensive dinner, Vassu leads him to the mansion and tells Snake he’s to meet the Princess Darejan Draculas—no, not Dracula, another branch of the family. She’s dressed for the introduction: red satin gown, silver crucifix around her neck. Snake proposes to accept the crucifix in exchange for “making the Princess happy.” He leans against her, strokes her throat, says she can even drink his blood if she likes. Her response is a laugh that drives Snake back, for its flame-intense power frightens him. She’s no hag greedy to “lick up [his] youth with [his] juices.” Could she wear a crucifix if she were? Snake switches to fawning for sympathy, then bolts from the mansion.
Darejan asks Vassu what he’d like done after—he leaves her. He rejoices that his death will pain her, but his jealousy waxes over how Snake ignites her long-dormant fire. The next afternoon, Snake returns and dines with the Princess. Outside the salon, Vassu can hear their laughter, and how Snake’s goes from “too eloquent, too beautiful, too unreal” to “ragged, boisterous,” genuine. Just before dawn, Darejan emerges shining, her eyes “full of a primal refinding.” Vassu leaves the sleeping Snake in the salon. A few hours later, he’s gone.
Buy the Book
The Dead Take the A Train
Snake walks the city. He assures himself he can humor this new “patroness” until it’s time to leave with whatever he can steal, but he’s uneasily aware of some “fate for which idea his vocabulary had no word.” At dusk, two men accost Snake. He’s upset someone badly. Snake breaks free, runs. He’s almost laughing when a thrown knife pierces his back. Gravely wounded, he slowly, torturously, crawls back to the vampire’s mansion. Finding him, Vassu remembers how he himself was beaten by aristocrats he’d robbed, how he crawled all the way to Darejan’s estate, how he’d known since first hearing her name in village tales that he’d one day serve her.
Vassu carries the dying Snake to Darejan and leaves them, for what’s to come is private. And so he doesn’t see her dose Snake with the unique elixir that is a vampire’s blood: one that heals all wounds, confers superhuman powers, and gifts the recipient with longevity.
When Vassu finally returns, Snake rests in Darejan’s embrace, gazing up at the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. And so she must be, reborn to youth and vitality, a “huntress once more…a bright phantom… gliding over the ballroom of the city…and all the worlds of land and soul between.”
Vassu’s jealousy has gone. To this death, he’ll “go willingly, everything achieved, in order. Knowing she was safe.” He watches the two enter the salon. He climbs the stairs, hearing “their silence, like that of new lovers.” Beyond the lamplight, he walks into darkness “without misgiving, tenderly.”
For, “how he had loved her.”
What’s Cyclopean: Snake’s eyes are the color of leopard pelts.
The Degenerate Dutch: Snake thinks of the rich aristocracy as willing to buy people: “their roots were firmly locked in an era when there had been slaves.” He’s not wrong, although in the Vampire’s case the slaves in question might have been Roman.
Libronomicon: The Vampire is reading a book from the library of Rodrigo Borgia. One suspects it isn’t safe for work (unless your work is corrupt poping).
Ruthanna’s Commentary
This is nearly gentle as vampire stories go—or at least, the ungentle bits are human. “Vampire” is capitalized throughout; the Princess is holy to Vassu, a source of moth-drawing light rather than a predator. When her predation is mentioned at all, she’s a “huntress,” like Artemis perhaps, and her lovers wake cold in the morning—but they wake. Not exactly a Carmilla, at least as her loving servant describes her.
If there’s immortal-spilled blood here, it’s in Lee’s lush prose, where everything remains fabulously textured even when the characters are jaded. The Vampire, teeth worn by age, is dynamic with the “savage luxuriance” of her “starved bones of her face.” Mugging becomes homoerotic, another intricate ritual allowing men to touch each other’s skin. Vassu mocks Snake for confusing “prey” and “pray,” but his mockery the way these concepts twine together in his thoughts about his mistress and the world.
I’ve previously mentioned my original introduction to Lovecraft through role-playing, but the bulk of my college games were in White Wolf’s old World of Darkness universe, most often Vampire: The Masquerade. Much of Lee’s take on vampirism—vampiric servants in particular—felt familiar, in the same way a habitual D&D player will find Lord of the Rings familiar on first read. Lee’s story is from 1983, and WoD launched in 1990; the bloodline of inspiration seems easy to trace. In addition to the practical mechanic of creating a long-lived and perfectly loyal servant by feeding them vampiric blood, the angst and vivid decadence also suit the game’s mood. Or at least the mood the designers intended; angst is fun to read about but we tended to play characters who enjoyed their immortality. I once made a list of the things I would like to learn and do, and was fairly confident that I could get through a few thousand years before running out.
The Princess and Vassu don’t whine. But they’re both past joy in everything they’ve done and learned. Their knowledge, they say, has become “less bearable.” Does long life inevitably provide too much knowledge of things man wasn’t meant to know, or simply too much opportunity to correlate the contents of one’s own mind? One could get mired in the world’s repeating patterns, the refusal of ordinary mortals to learn from history one recalls vividly.
Or just tired from trying to keep up. I love the way both Vassu and Princess are shown out of step through their clothing. Her dress, almost two centuries old, opens the story—but Vassu, too, walks the streets in garb that fails to “pay homage” to his surroundings. This phrasing delights me: one does, after all, show with one’s clothing whether offers respect or even acknowledgement to societal norms, to setting, to century. For someone as poised as the Princess, as immersed in the world of balls, this must once have been vital—but she and her servant no longer put that much effort into tracking the now.
Of course, for the Princess, this unbearable state, the “comfort” of being past love and lust, is only temporary. A new servant, young and untutored, restores the sharpness of her fangs and the eagerness of her mind. “Only she could continue,” says Vassu, “for only she could be eternally reborn.” Does she forget her past, then, or does it get a new shine when she has someone new to share with? She can’t forget too much, for she was able to teach young Vassu language and art and culture. So perhaps she borrows the youthful perspective of her servants, drinking it as she drinks the blood of her lovers. And as their vigor and joy wane, so too do hers.
Along with language and art, the Princess also teaches Vassu “profundity, mercy.” When she asks if he worries about damnation, he assures her that she has given him only blessing. Like Snake, he was the sort of person likely to invite a violent death, and yet he hasn’t killed so much as a moth for over a century. So she doesn’t only take from her servants, but give as well—again, as much deific as monstrous. A light that attracts moths—but somehow, for a century or two, keeps them fluttering before they burn.
Anne’s Commentary
The first time I read this story, I thought it was the most romantic thing ever, and I wept tears of blood. Okay, not of blood, just of salty water, but I was emo enough to wish they were blood, because how appropriate would that have been? As I remember it, I was in high school, prime emo time. No, it’s more embarrassing than that. “Nunc Dimittis” was first published in Charles L. Grant’s 1983 anthology, The Dodd, Mead Gallery of Horror, and I was not only out of high school by then but out of college and supposedly a responsible adult. Responsible adults don’t weep over the moribund minions of vampires. Except when they do, possibly with frequency.
I didn’t cry this time—nowadays that takes Samwise asking Frodo if he remembers strawberries, because there’re some things in this world worth fighting for, or something like that. Can vampires still eat strawberries, or any human foods? As folklore varies from culture to culture, its authorities differ on this and many aspects of vampirism. Authors of fiction can choose to follow traditional motifs, or adopt the canon of “foundational” fiction like Stoker’s Dracula, or create new rules as desired. Darejan orders a catered spread for her first meal with Snake; it’s unclear whether she eats or just observes his youthful appetite. And do vampires drink anything besides blood? Carmilla drinks chocolate for breakfast, which is so Carmilla. Still, if the blood is the life, would you really need or want more?
Darejan’s family, the Draculas, is only an offshoot of the Count’s, mind you—she differs from him in crucial ways. In Stoker’s novel, as in the folklore that inspired it, vampires don’t burst into flame when exposed to sunlight. Dracula often walks during the day; his powers, however, are reduced when the sun’s up. Carmilla, who precedes Dracula in weird fiction, has no problem taking daytime excursions. By the care Darejan takes to exclude “every drop of daylight” from her immediate surroundings, we might infer it’s deleterious to her, if not fatal. There’s no doubt she doesn’t share Dracula’s aversion to crosses, since her favorite ornament is a silver crucifix. It’s visual proof, as she chides Snake, that she’s not “such a fiend” (presumably, as other vampires.) And, as far as we know from the text, Darejan’s “lovers” wake up alive in the cold morning, nor does she aspire to spawn legions of new vampires. Does this make her a “good” vampire, comparatively a lesser monster?
The absence of corpses doesn’t mean Darejan never left any in her wake, or Vassu in her service. He hasn’t killed as much as a moth in a hundred years, but he’s served his Princess for longer than that.
To ask the core question, what’s Darejan’s existential status as a vampire? Has she ever been human or always a distinct species? Demonic? A compound creature? Is she alive or dead, a malignant ghost or a more discriminating zombie? “Naturally” immortal or reborn so? Lee tells us that “in common with all living things,” Darejan ages. There’s no mention that she was ever anything but a vampire, or that she had to be turned into one, nothing like the iconic “origin” stories that tell who “made” whom. Death’s a condition so alien to her that it inspires “childlike wonder” and envy. All the comforts of old age are hers except dying into eternal rest.
It’s the old immortality problem. Will it be forever bats and moonshine, or will it get boooooring, add another “o” for each century? It looks like Darejan only droops into ennui when she enters the geriatric phase of her life cycle and is denied the joys of sleep, hunger, lust and love, the exertions and thrills of the hunt. Give her a new object of interest, of “primal refinding,” and she starts cycling back to youth, beauty, intense power, and appalling life. Could it be part of the symbiosis between her and her servant that when he starts to age, so does she? When a compatible replacement’s found, as essentially vital and predatory as she in his human way, she’s instantly renewed.
In his blog Taliesin Meets the Vampires, Andrew M. Boylan reviews a televised version of “Nunc Dimittis,” summing it up as “Renfield’s Tale.” Renfield is THE iconic Vampire’s Servant, as his master Dracula is THE iconic Vampire. Manically insane, sometimes repulsive and sometimes oddly appealing, he’s arguably Stoker’s most vivid character despite his supporting role. Vassu is Lee’s protagonist, and like the domestic staff in your Upstairs, Downstairs or Downton Abbey, he deserves to share—or, in fact, dominate—center stage. He’s more fortunate than Renfield, who’s promised the immortal life he’s always craved, only to be discarded in a bloody heap after defying Dracula. Darejan’s gift of blood doesn’t render Vassu immortal, but in his extended time, he learns and experiences so much, and loves so deeply, that he can tell the Princess “In the life you gave me, I was blessed.” Snake, as much the rogue-by-necessity as Vassu was in his youth, bids fair to reap the same benefits.
On the subject of vampire servants, I’ve just finished Anna Burke’s new novel, In the Roses of Pieria. Her vampires have the usual ability to enthrall victims into doing their will or providing easy meals, but they can also strike up fascinating symbiotic relationships with humans—and other beings. If you like that sort of dynamic, plus dark academia and hot romance, check it out!
Next week, we find out what happens after you get away from the zombies in Chapters 13-14 of Max Gladstone’s Last Exit.
Ruthanna Emrys is the author of A Half-Built Garden and the Innsmouth Legacy series, including Winter Tide and Deep Roots. You can find some of her fiction, weird and otherwise, on Tor.com, most recently “The Word of Flesh and Soul.” Ruthanna is online on Twitter and Patreon and on Mastodon as [email protected], and offline in a mysterious manor house with her large, chaotic household—mostly mammalian—outside Washington DC.
Anne M. Pillsworth’s short story “The Madonna of the Abattoir” appears on Tor.com. Her young adult Mythos novel, Summoned, is available from Tor Teen along with sequel Fathomless. She lives in Edgewood, a Victorian trolley car suburb of Providence, Rhode Island, uncomfortably near Joseph Curwen’s underground laboratory.
