The Wicked: A Love Story

The Book of Pamela Strauss

I TOLD NO ONE where I was going, or even that I was going. I had been surprised to find two tickets, one for the journey south and another for the journey back already sent me. I took a cab to the great station in the center of downtown Lassador. Traveling up there I realized what a parochial soul I was. In my growing up, I never left our village, and only once in my life had I seen all of Germany, this land I had such a strange connection to which, from so far away, had caused us so much trouble and might be causing trouble again. I had come, in a train, a much different one, almost thirty years ago to, again, a very different Germantown, and I had hardly left it save to go to college. But now, if I were to travel east to Wilmington, where once there were only woods and farms fields, there were whole burgeoning neighborhoods and townships, asphalt roads that took one quickly where once it had taken me hours to reach, and now the downtown and this great train station had also come to life.

The journey by train was the first long journey I’d taken since coming to America, and I traveled far better than I had then. I noticed, and how could I not, that Negroes were sent to the back cars, a petty indignity, because I could not see the actual difference between their cars and the one I sat in. I cannot idealize what I do not know, but it seems like they had what these white people I was among did not, a camaraderie, an irony mingled with joy about life, and an easiness in their expectations. It was beyond, I think, the way that Germans back in our part of town were with each other; beyond, I suppose, even the Jews. Perhaps it was because whatever small oppressed culture we were in we had the hope and ambiguity of being seen as white, the hope that the signs of our exclusion might be, for better or for worse, erased. Our culture was a precarious thing. My sisters spoke no German at all. They were a little embarrassed by old Friederich and perhaps even by me. They were white young women who would marry white young men. But when would it be thrown in their faces that they were, after all, German? There was a fragility in whiteness. One was never really safe. At least a Negro knew she or he was a Negro, and from what I saw, there was a peculiar rejoicing in this.

Then, again, there was the strange business of my riding in this fine car on a ticket bought by a man who, regardless if he wished to or not, could never sit where I was sitting now.

I know I thought these thoughts then, but not as much as I think them now, when I am old, and most of that business is in the past, though, I believe, not as much in the past as one would like to believe. But at the time I was, of course, filled with thoughts of my own trouble, the trouble of my brother and of Steiger, for Steiger, undeniably became ill, and almost mad at the same time his best friend suffered and I thought, if this Augustus Dunharrow could do something for both of them, relieve the madness in both boys, I would be eternally in his debt.

This is a mighty house. I have never see anything like it. I did see that Gone With the Wind movie, and it is the closest thing to which I can compare this house. But it is hidden, back among woods with hanging weeping trees, set among ponds and lakes and wild birds, the most beautiful place I have ever seen. Augustus Dunharrow is a man who has decided to live away from the greater world. I cannot blame him. The train that stopped in the nearest city led to a cab that took me into a village where an oxblood painted limousine arrived for me. I thought others would be afraid of what was to come, but I felt a marvelous tingling in me as if I were coming home, as if a veil, always put up before me, was, at last, being pulled away.

“He is waiting for you,” the driver had said, and he was black and beautiful and nothing like any servant I had ever seen, and then, as soon as I could say thank you, he was gone. Where Augustus was waiting the driver had not said, and I wondered, putting my bags down, if this was part of the test. I walked from the great foyer into an even greater living room, filled with light and air cool from large, turning ceiling fans. I did not call, but continued to walk through a house lined with oil paintings of noble looking people, black and white alike, and followed my intuition through this quiet house to the next room where a man in immaculate trousers and vest, silk white shirt, rose and said, “Pamela Strauss, welcome. I have been waiting for you.”

I bowed slightly to him, and this was the first man to whom I had ever inclined my head.

“You are Augustus.”

“I am,” he said, “and now, for the first time in a long time, you are home.”

“This is your home because the witch blood is in you,” Augustus said. “Where there is magic there is your home. I have no love for white people,” Augustus said, “and why would I? I wonder, if so many of them had not lost their magic, would they be as greedy as they are? Something was taken from them, something sucked out, and this wound, this lack, made them reach and reach. The white men who came here to this land, were fleeing. They were running from something and when they came here they kept running, and in running they ran off, in experiencing whatever violence they’d experienced, they dealt violence.”

“Then are you in sympathy with them?” I asked. “You cannot even ride anywhere but the back of their trains. And this is their country. No one denies that.”

“This is their nation,” Augustus said, “but not their country. The country is the land and the land can never be theirs. As long as they try to rule over it, the land will rise up and drive them out. She always does.

“But no, there is no sympathy. There is understanding. Understanding is a different thing. My life has been most out of sympathy with white men.”

“Then why am I here?”

“Are you a white man, Pamela Strauss?”

“Well, then, what do you know of the wolf?”

“You must tell what you know, first,” he said. “It is your heritage. Surely you must know a thing.”

“I do not even know my mother,” I said, and then realized, “That is a lie. Even after so many years, I lie about this and do not know why. My mother was a wolf. My father, in wolf form got me on her. He is the only human blood I have. I was taught by a… friend… a man, Hagano, one my father does not know, to transform into a wolf. My father could always do it. My brother is cursed into doing it. As far as I know, he is the only one of my blood who is cursed to become a wolf with no control at the rising of the moon, though… though it seems others suffer, go into madness, but do not transform.”

“This is strange,” Augustus said, “because I have heard of those in battle, especially in the North, where you ancestors came from, who could transform in the heat of battle, or who put on a skin and transformed until the skin was removed.”

“As in the story of Sinfioltli and Sigmund.”

“Exactly. But for such a variety in the nature of the change to exist in your family is strange. Perhaps your power is strong because your blood is undiluted.”

“I had wondered.”

“But what of Friederich and those before him?”

“I do not know.”

“Then you must ask. You must ask so that you know. And this Hagano, who is he?”

“He is… real. I know he is real. He is flesh and blood, but can come and go. He is, it seems, attached to me. He says he is always with me. He comes when he wishes, or when I call. He is, in that way, a ghost. But still, he is flesh and blood. I know it.”

“You all have been lovers,” Augustus said, plainly.

“Well, yes,” I said. “We have.”

“But who has he said he is?”

“He says he is the first of us, whatever that means. He has never said more, and I have even thought he was the first werewolf.”

“No,” Augustus shook his head.

“My Pamela, you must become serious about questioning him, for he seems to possess the elements of a family genius.”

I did not wish to repeat the words. I would only sound ignorant. He understood this and explained

“It seems to me that he is a family spirit, not the first werewolf, but the first Strauss.”

Jason felt as if he wasreading the book as well because most of it, Marabeth read outloud, furiously smoking and downing coffee.

“So this Hagano isn’t a ghost?”

“He is, but he isn’t,” Marabeth said. “He was inside of you, right? But he travels from place to place. He was inside of Pamela, but Friederich didn’t know him.”

“In the Bible,” Jason said, “I remember after Jesus comes back from the dead, he says he’s flesh and blood. He can eat and everything. But he can pass through walls too.”

“Yes,” Marabeth allowed. “I think I remember that. But Hagano isn’t the Savior of the world.”

“No,” Jason allowed. “No, but…. I don’t know. I’m just trying to reach for something. It seems like if you’re trying to figure out all of these different powers, then one that none of you has but him is immortality and…. the ability to be corporeal, and not to be. At will.”

“That is actually something I’d never thought of,” Marabeth said.

“Eat my flesh and drink my blood. The firstborn…”

“What?” Jason said up straighter.

“I’ve been a bad Christian, and I don’t know where my Bible is. Nevermind, let me see your phone.”

Jason handed it to Marabeth, fascinated by the sudden energy in her as she typed and scrolled and finally said, “Well here it is:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.”

Jason was only vaguely tempted to ask Marabeth is they were about to have a Bible study, and she said, “That’s the good thing about having a Baptist for an ex-husband. He didn’t live the Bible, but he knew it.”

“I feel like I know what you’re getting at, but—”

“Eat my body, drink my blood. I am in you and you in me. If Hagano is one of the family, the first of the family, then he is, in is way, the firstborn or our creation. He is body and blood in us, and that is too much like the story of Rosamunde. There is something, something deep here, and it is almost right before me. Almost in reach!”