Chapter 4: An Explanation

My last statement, the ‘I am a vampire’ demands additional clarification. I am neither one of Bram Stoker’s vile creatures whose lust for blood outweighed all other passions, nor am I descended of the Anne Rice caricatures of a separate ‘race’ arising from some long ago evil creature from Egypt. May such creatures exist? I suppose so, but neither fiction fits into my experience, so I am skeptical.

For one thing, I abhor the term ‘vampire’ itself; at least as it refers to me. But, alas, it is so widely used that I will accept it to provide a common term for descriptive purposes.

The question arises: if I did not become a ‘vampire’ according to the methods of legend — a bite from another already so infected — then how?

In my case, I was a 16-year-old boy attending the University of Paris in the late 14th century.

At the time one might study at the University from 14-, or even 12-years of age and depending upon your studies, stay there until you were 23- or 24-years old. By that age, one would expect you to be a ‘maître’ or in English a ‘Master’. Either that, or you were a wealthy profligate studying ad infinitum to avoid going into the real world. In my case, I was to complete the ‘ratio studiorum’ established by the Jesuits, followed by taking the curriculum of law.

In any case, if by chance you have ever read the book ‘A Distant Mirror’ by the historian, Barbara Tuchman, then you would know that the 14th century was one of great intellectual advances, of learning and art.

It was also a time of repeated plagues sweeping across Europe, that could kill anywhere from one-quarter to one-third of the entire population. The Black Death was the most famous, and it came three times that century!

So it was that at 16-years of age, I contracted one of the terrible fevers that carried away many of my contemporaries. Most who got it died, others recovered and went on as before. I, on the other hand, became ill but my sickness seemed to linger on as I gradually became more and more frail, unable to keep enough food down to recover.

Then a physician of rare insight concluded that perhaps I had a lack of blood (which in its own way was true) and began to feed me the red liquor of life. No, not human blood, but raw pig’s blood. It was not difficult to obtain at that time; it is still used today to make ‘black’, or ‘blood’ sausage or pudding.

I suddenly began to recover. So long as a major part of my diet continued to be blood, I grew stronger. Within a short time, I was once again out of my bed and able to attend to my tutor and wander the streets of Paris.

It was only then that I lost my soul. One day when the hunger overtook me, I encountered a man who had just lost his hand; it was torn off when his cart started to roll backwards and his hand was caught in the spokes. I quickly looked around and except for me, he was alone on the street.

To my eternal shame, as his blood shot forth from his arteries, I knew he was going to die and I grabbed the now open wound where his hand had been and sucked the blood into my open mouth as he bled out and died.

The fresh, warm blood of a human was so much more pleasing to my palette than the stale animal blood that I had become accustomed to that, from that time onward, I sought it out. It became more and more a substitute for any other nourishment.

I will not satisfy your lust for tales of the macabre by relating my early exploits, but let it suffice to say that in the Paris of that time, amongst the poor, it was what we call today a ‘target rich environment.’ I was young, lacking in judgment (but pardon me, I repeat myself), and without self-discipline (I fear I am doubly redundant!).

Like a wolf, I preyed upon the weak and the outcasts, the lonely and helpless. Most were already seeking death. I was not frenzied, nor too greedy, but nevertheless eventually tales of a dark and evil being spread throughout the district and I feared for both my life and my soul.

Eventually, my self-loathing led me to confess my sins to a priest.

I confessed as honestly as I could, but rather than finding forgiveness, the Priest condemned me and drove me from the chapel.

“You are a spawn of the devil! Your soul is forfeit! Your kind cannot be forgiven or redeemed. Get thee away from me! Return to Hell, Satan!” he screamed as I ran into the night, waving a crucifix after me like a weapon as I fled the wrath of this priest and of God.

How could this damnation of my soul be true? I never asked to become evil and wicked. And just what was my infirmity? What had caused it?

Knowing what I do as a physician today (I have been through medical training on four different occasions, the last being in the late 1990’s), I suspect that there was a unique confluence of circumstances that made me into this kind of abominable being. It was the combination of being exposed to some virus, or perhaps a prion — a fragment of virus — that was mutated by my immune system and in turn changed my basic nature.

Both the virus and my body’s response must have been extraordinarily rare, for I personally know of no other cases similar to mine (although there have been several others who I suspected could also be of the same nature.) Upon reflection, I assume that there must have been others, for the rumors and legends of vampires exist around the globe, and have since the times of ancient Kamet.

How do I differ from the popular beliefs regarding my ‘kind’? Again, I can only speak from my own experience, which may not be identical to others.

I do not believe that I’m immortal and I will bleed if cut, but I age very slowly. From the time of my conversion until the late 1680s, when I met my eternal love Aurora, I have gone from the appearance of a 16- or 17-year-old youth, to that of a man in the robustness of his mid-20s. In the subsequent three-and-a-quarter centuries, I aged to where today I look as if I were a man in his early 30s.

Again, as a physician I suspect, whatever the biological mechanism, that unlike most people, the cells in my body can continue to reproduce — replacing worn out cells with new cells — far longer. Normal human cells can reproduce themselves 40 to 60 times before they lose the ability. (If you are interested look up the ‘Hayflict limit’ or ‘telomeres’ for an explanation.) I believe that for some reason my cells have continued to reproduce past the normal expected limit.

I have also avoided testing my mortality over the centuries by doing my best to avoid conflict, or if drawn into the fray (as I was in both WWI and WWII) finding a task that I could perform in safety if compelled to for my military service. It would always be a skill that kept me as far from the unrestrained violence as possible. For example, my extended studies of mathematics (necessary for many of my interests) resulted in my working on military codes and ciphers far from the shells and bullets of the battlefield.

It goes without saying that wars provided me with substantial sources of sustenance without endangering myself.

Daylight neither burns me, nor causes me great discomfort, although in very bright sun my eyes are affected. That may just be a personal sensitivity and not as result of my affliction. I don’t sleep through the daylight hours in a dirt-filled coffin. Oh! Just the thought of such horrors appalls me!