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BLOODSPELL: CLARIMONDE EXPLAINS IT ALL
She’s not what I expected.
You say “elder vampire lady” to me and I’m picturing floor-length crimson ballgowns, nails and cheekbones you could cut yourself on, lips the only thing about her with any colour in it.
Clarimonde is five-five of boho chic; dress over jeans, big hat on the back of her chair, OG Doc Martens she's not been assed to lace up all the way. She does have long nails, but I’m pretty sure they’re fakes. There’s a tiny glass on the table in front of her, and it’s empty; can she keep it down?
She leans back to air-kiss Dominique, real old-school mwah-mwah lovely-to-see-you-babe; introduces herself in French, and smiles when I stutter my way through my je m’appelles and have to say in English, “but everyone except my mum calls me Tish.”
“Tish. My pleasure. So, why has Dominique brought you to see another old lady?”
Dominique glances at me — permission granted — and I explain there’s something I’m not getting from her and she thought hearing it in another voice would be good for me.
“I’ve lived a very boring life, my dear. Dominique has been around the world three times and left a trail of nonsense in her wake, what could I —“
“It’s the way you tell it,” says Dominique, rolling her eyes. “And of the two of us, who’s been on television?”
It’s Clarimonde’s turn to roll her eyes, and she does it with a little sniff that’s much more my idea of “elder vampire.”
“I was immortalised without my permission,” says Clarimonde. “You shouldn’t let poets lie to you, Tish; they tell you that you’ll live forever, they neglect to mention ‘as a petty pretty monster who leads innocent young men around by their dicks and away from God’. It could be worse; look what happened to poor Louis and his confessional. How many books of revision to his life story are there, now?”
“For real? The guy from —“
“Yes. The first at least is a true story. There’s a grain of truth at the bottom of all the stories. For instance; mine is truly the world’s oldest profession. I liked being called a ‘courtesan’, I wasn’t keen on ‘moll’, ‘whore’ has always been an insult…”
“What do you think of ‘sex worker’?” It’s out of my mouth before I know what I’m saying. Go for woke, I guess.
“Matter of fact, boring — but honest, which has its charms.” She smiles. “But — to stay on topic, because Dominique is making the face,” and she is, “let me forestall the inevitable question. Him too, and he was a piece of work.”
“The thing Clarimonde does so well,” Dominique explains from her end of the sofa, “is talk about men.”
“About a specific class of people,” says Clarimonde, and her pout looks like she wants to poke her tongue out of it. “Mostly men, who did awful things, frequently to women, and who happened to be like us. I’ve collected vampire stories ever since I was in one, and for the longest time they all had something in common. Take Dracula. Born in the fifteenth century. In the nineteenth, he re-emerges with a grand plan; he’ll move himself to what he’s been told is the greatest city on Earth and he’ll re-invent himself as a modern monster. What does he do when he gets there? Obsess over the first girl he gets his teeth into, and stalk his solicitor’s wife to punish the man for escaping, or whatever mad reason he had. Not just a monster but a failure. Why do you think that happens?”
“He’s got really poor impulse control?”
“And you said she didn’t get it.” Clarimonde laughs behind her hand, and for a second I can see her in costume-drama gear, peeking over a fan. “He’d been around too long. Once he’d been an empire-builder, and he remembered being that, but — did he really remember? Can the mind hold on to what it was five hundred years ago? Four hundred? When we cheat ourselves and say we were better people as little girls, from only ten or twenty years away?”
“I get it,” I say, practically talking over her. “I think. You’re saying he was trying to be who he thought he was, what history said he was. But really, he was… just a vampire.”
“And what a piece of work is a vampire?” she purrs, declaiming at her little glass. “Just a being who thirsts. A paragon of animals. Over time, we forget what else we were. Dominique brought you to me because I’m old. Because there are so few older. I’m a simple girl at heart; I take money and a little blood from people who have both to spare. It’s a simple rule, and it’s not a big plan, and it’s not much to hold on to.
“I keep my memories in stories. I don’t know if I’ve always looked this way, or if I saw that girl pretending to be me and made myself like her. Do you know Louis went back to his maker in the end? After everything he told, everything in that book, he went back on bended knee because he’d started to believe what was made up about him afterwards. He went back to a man he’d tried to kill and he thought he was in love. But he’s still alive, and he’s doing no harm to anyone but himself. And maybe one day I’ll wake up with a rosary in my hand and a pretty boy in my bed and I’ll hope to God he paid for it. That’s what happens when we live too long, Tish. We start believing what they say about us.”
You say “elder vampire lady” to me and I’m picturing floor-length crimson ballgowns, nails and cheekbones you could cut yourself on, lips the only thing about her with any colour in it.
Clarimonde is five-five of boho chic; dress over jeans, big hat on the back of her chair, OG Doc Martens she's not been assed to lace up all the way. She does have long nails, but I’m pretty sure they’re fakes. There’s a tiny glass on the table in front of her, and it’s empty; can she keep it down?
She leans back to air-kiss Dominique, real old-school mwah-mwah lovely-to-see-you-babe; introduces herself in French, and smiles when I stutter my way through my je m’appelles and have to say in English, “but everyone except my mum calls me Tish.”
“Tish. My pleasure. So, why has Dominique brought you to see another old lady?”
Dominique glances at me — permission granted — and I explain there’s something I’m not getting from her and she thought hearing it in another voice would be good for me.
“I’ve lived a very boring life, my dear. Dominique has been around the world three times and left a trail of nonsense in her wake, what could I —“
“It’s the way you tell it,” says Dominique, rolling her eyes. “And of the two of us, who’s been on television?”
It’s Clarimonde’s turn to roll her eyes, and she does it with a little sniff that’s much more my idea of “elder vampire.”
“I was immortalised without my permission,” says Clarimonde. “You shouldn’t let poets lie to you, Tish; they tell you that you’ll live forever, they neglect to mention ‘as a petty pretty monster who leads innocent young men around by their dicks and away from God’. It could be worse; look what happened to poor Louis and his confessional. How many books of revision to his life story are there, now?”
“For real? The guy from —“
“Yes. The first at least is a true story. There’s a grain of truth at the bottom of all the stories. For instance; mine is truly the world’s oldest profession. I liked being called a ‘courtesan’, I wasn’t keen on ‘moll’, ‘whore’ has always been an insult…”
“What do you think of ‘sex worker’?” It’s out of my mouth before I know what I’m saying. Go for woke, I guess.
“Matter of fact, boring — but honest, which has its charms.” She smiles. “But — to stay on topic, because Dominique is making the face,” and she is, “let me forestall the inevitable question. Him too, and he was a piece of work.”
“The thing Clarimonde does so well,” Dominique explains from her end of the sofa, “is talk about men.”
“About a specific class of people,” says Clarimonde, and her pout looks like she wants to poke her tongue out of it. “Mostly men, who did awful things, frequently to women, and who happened to be like us. I’ve collected vampire stories ever since I was in one, and for the longest time they all had something in common. Take Dracula. Born in the fifteenth century. In the nineteenth, he re-emerges with a grand plan; he’ll move himself to what he’s been told is the greatest city on Earth and he’ll re-invent himself as a modern monster. What does he do when he gets there? Obsess over the first girl he gets his teeth into, and stalk his solicitor’s wife to punish the man for escaping, or whatever mad reason he had. Not just a monster but a failure. Why do you think that happens?”
“He’s got really poor impulse control?”
“And you said she didn’t get it.” Clarimonde laughs behind her hand, and for a second I can see her in costume-drama gear, peeking over a fan. “He’d been around too long. Once he’d been an empire-builder, and he remembered being that, but — did he really remember? Can the mind hold on to what it was five hundred years ago? Four hundred? When we cheat ourselves and say we were better people as little girls, from only ten or twenty years away?”
“I get it,” I say, practically talking over her. “I think. You’re saying he was trying to be who he thought he was, what history said he was. But really, he was… just a vampire.”
“And what a piece of work is a vampire?” she purrs, declaiming at her little glass. “Just a being who thirsts. A paragon of animals. Over time, we forget what else we were. Dominique brought you to me because I’m old. Because there are so few older. I’m a simple girl at heart; I take money and a little blood from people who have both to spare. It’s a simple rule, and it’s not a big plan, and it’s not much to hold on to.
“I keep my memories in stories. I don’t know if I’ve always looked this way, or if I saw that girl pretending to be me and made myself like her. Do you know Louis went back to his maker in the end? After everything he told, everything in that book, he went back on bended knee because he’d started to believe what was made up about him afterwards. He went back to a man he’d tried to kill and he thought he was in love. But he’s still alive, and he’s doing no harm to anyone but himself. And maybe one day I’ll wake up with a rosary in my hand and a pretty boy in my bed and I’ll hope to God he paid for it. That’s what happens when we live too long, Tish. We start believing what they say about us.”
