Immortal Beloved

By chance—that is, while browsing online and ruminating over regrets—I discovered that the partner of one of my college years’ two beloveds, long ago lost to death in the form of AIDS, had himself recently died, succumbing to equally dreadful Alzheimer’s. Though it seems like only yesterday, we had, a decade ago, briefly exchanged e-mails about the shared object of our affections after I, then also browsing and ruminating, had discovered a photograph he had posted of the angelic-looking young man for whom I had fallen so hard at the tender age of twenty-one. Now, a decade later, I find both of them dead.

Unsurprisingly, our messages recounted our memories of Robb and, less so, touched upon our being two of the few who remembered him. At the time, I never considered that, one day, only he or I would be left of the pair of us to remember. However, nine years later, I did have enough foresight to dedicate Dracula/Harker in part to Robb Caramico, who, as Narcis, had me, as Count Dracula, write of ephemeral earthly memory and God’s eternal memory:

Later that evening, after Mr. Harker and I had put the dirtied and bloodied chapel to rights, I put an end to the awkward silence between us by handing him a candle and saying, “Come with me. There is something I want you to see.” Then lighting the way with my own feeble flame, I led him down rough-hewn granite steps, through a rusted wrought-iron gate, and into the chill, airless murk of the crypt. There, under the main vault’s low, arched ceiling, standing amidst the clustered, moldering sarcophagi, their recumbent effigies, like the mortal remains lying beneath them, slowly crumbling to dust, I said, “This is death as you have doubtless never seen it. Look upon it and think on how close it came to you today.”

Ignorant and naïve as only the young can be, Mr. Harker replied, “I’ve seen death before and have since come to terms with my own.”

“That was the recent dead, the memories of whom will live on for years yet.” Swiping my hand overtop the closest stone coffin and holding up its gray-powdered palm, I continued, “These are the long dead, of whom almost everything is lost—so much so that they might as well have never lived, loved, or been loved. Only scribblings and inscriptions remain in remembrance of those you see here, which is more than can be said for the overwhelming number of their predecessors and peers who faded into oblivion long ago.”

Peering into the gloom, Mr. Harker asked, “Isn’t that what God’s eternal memory is for: to save us all from the earthly inevitability of being forgotten forever?”

“You mean the selfsame God who damned and drowned His creation and forsook His only begotten Son? It is no blasphemy to say even I care more about the living and the dead than He.”

“I see that,” the young man said, standing before the vault’s only alcove with his arm outstretched to cast his light over its single sarcophagus.

The Englishman again having me at a loss for words, I hoped my silence would somehow serve to deny the obvious.

Kneeling to better read the coffin’s inscription, Mr. Harker, reasoning aloud to himself as much as refuting my unspoken lie, argued, “No woman would lay a grave blanket of pine branches in June.” Then he straightened up, faced me, and asked “Who was Narcis?”

Exercising my utmost self-control, I answered, “From what survives of his memory, he was much like you.”

“But he died over four hundred years ago….”

“And the world should not suffer the loss of his like again.”