“The Philosophical Vampire”

“I’ve been reading,” he tells me.

“In which language?”

I’m teasing, but he takes me seriously. “English, mostly, though some theories are better understood in the philosopher’s native tongue.”

“You’ve been reading philosophy?”

He nods, cheeks flushed and eyes animated as if he’s just fed—which he probably has, it being near midnight and past my bedtime. He’s usually very respectful of my schedule, but he also knows that I will put the world on hold for him. Whatever he’s been reading—and he has all the time in existence to do so—it’s excited him.

“I wish I had known these things when I was young,” he says. “I may not have done anything differently, but I would have suffered less.”

I want to laugh at him, he’s both earnest and contradictory. He’s about to pop with enthusiasm and it’s so unlike him that I’m rendered practically speechless. I can barely manage the simplest questions.

“What ‘things’?”

“Nothing in stone, obviously. It’s all conjecture except that a great deal of it makes sense. That’s why you accept so many of these concepts as truth, isn’t it?”

“Let’s leave my beliefs out of it,” I suggest. “What do you think?”

“It’s what I used to think that matters,” he replies. “I have always owned my soul. Even after I was transformed, I knew I was, at my core, unchanged. That was the great dilemma, reconciling my immortal essence with my immortal flesh.” He taps his chest for emphasis. “This is not meant to last forever. The appetites and impulses that sustained me in mortality were amplified a thousandfold when I was turned, binding me to the senses as surely as to the earth. The juxtaposition cost me dearly at the time. I believed myself condemned to wander this world, alone at best or among my own kind at worst. The desire to love and be loved unconditionally is mortal, the ability purely spiritual, and when one’s spirit is irrevocably tied to the physical, such love becomes impossible to obtain.”

He stops, I think, to collect his stampeding thoughts, then I realize he’s waiting for me to catch up.

I prompt him. “Except…?”

“I was going to say ‘except with a mortal’,” he admits. “It’s ridiculously easy to become attached to someone who will inevitably die. You believe their affection is infinite when in fact it is not and can never be, given the finite nature of the flesh. That’s why Génie and I could never endure for any length of time. Our capacity for love is limited by our physical state, so no matter how deeply we wish to love, that depth is always matched by the opposite. That’s what drives us apart.”

“Contrast,” I murmur.

“Indeed.”

“Do you regret it?”

“Of course I do. I loved Génie. That is why she made me immortal, and that was her mistake. At least I understood that much, else I’d have made the same error. Immortal flesh is paradoxically bound by the physical rules of mortality. But look—” He produces an e-reader and my hand shoots out before I can stop it.

“Are you kidding me? An e-reader?”

He looks exasperated. “Darling, if I had hard copies of every book I’ve read, entire city blocks would be stacked floor to ceiling. This is for convenience.” He pushes my hand back across the table and continues. “If you look at the documented evidence, stories and scientific discoveries et cetera, then this state is one of many.” He’s thumbing the e-reader as he talks, the screen scrolling titles in a dizzying blur. “Multiple dimensions, parallel dimensions, alternate universes, past lives, future lives, multi-sensory astral planes—there is a limitless number of conditions in which one’s consciousness can exist. My fate, however, is to live in this form indefinitely.”

This time, his pause is for breath.

“How does knowing this stuff change things for you?” I ask, bewildered by his fervor when he’s clearly stuck in time. “Why aren’t you enraged?”

“Because I like what I am,” he answers. “I like my life. I love this century, the light and speed and glamour of it all. I also know that I am not truly immortal in this form, that I must eventually perish, but my essence will continue. For that, I can wait. I never accepted that my soul is damned for actions taken to survive. Who blames a tiger for being a tiger? And I never truly accepted what they call the god made in man’s image. Heaven and hell are a state of mind, aren’t they, a willful reality created by one’s perception. No, this new ancient philosophy suits me well.”

He’s lost me. I understand what he’s been reading, but I don’t understand his enthusiasm for it when he’s trapped like a fly in the amber and anyone he loves will move on. Mind you, he’s always been a hedonist; the five-sense existence works for him, especially since he’s not tortured by religious beliefs. He’s also more adaptable than many of his fellows, embracing change rather than being driven to madness or despair by it.

“She will come again,” he says, brightly.

He means the one sure love of his life, the woman who begged him to make her immortal so they wouldn’t be parted. Agonizing as it was, he was savvy enough to refuse, to let her go.

To let her die.

“Eternal love isn’t possible in this state,” I say.

“Of course not, but I am not truly eternal in this state, either. None of us is.”

“Then the vampires who lament their tragic circumstance, or who believe redemption is possible by feeding solely on animals or immoral humans, are wasting their time.”

“They are certainly wasting their experience,” he asserts. “Tigers, as I say, and what tiger cares for the moral purity of his dinner? Not that I condone merciless slaughter, but please, cease to suffer so mightily when there is more to be gained in pleasure than in misery.”

“Listen to you, the philosophical vampire.”

He gives me a look of mystified affection, as if he still can’t fathom why he bothers. “I am simply saying that there is hope for me.”

I smile at him. “How endearingly human of you, Jules.”

He smiles back. “You needn’t be insulting.”

I wonder as he goes on his way if he might also be onto something. I have known Julian for half of my life and a fraction of his. He has trusted me with much of his history, but hardly all of it; there is always a story to tell if he feels so inclined and I sense that one is on the horizon. He’s going somewhere with all this and I think—I hope—that when he’s ready, he will invite me to go along with him.