I had stayed late for a departmental meeting that ran considerably overtime, as they always do, so rush hour was long over, and the bus was less than half-full, moving nicely as the traffic on Shattuck thinned out. But the bicyclists were out in force tonight, fluttering and wobbling like butterflies on all sides without ever paying the least attention to traffic flow, let alone traffic lights, and the driver had to slow down or stop half a dozen times between University and Durant. We had just made the turn onto Durant when he abruptly let go with a sizzling blast of what I think was Amharic and hit the brakes with all his weight, so that the bus stopped dead, on a dime, and the woman in the wheelchair was hurled to the floor. She never made a sound.
To do people justice—I don’t always, being a history teacher—most of the passengers were gathered around her almost on the instant, asking whether she was hurt and what they should do to help. A couple of them had quickly gathered the two small grocery bags that had spilled from her lap and were awkwardly but carefully holding them for her. The bus driver was loudly urging everyone to stand back and give her air, and I remember an old woman who was all but drowning him out with her prayers to St. Martin de Porres, which doesn’t make sense, because he’s the patron of hairdressers, but there you are. I have got to ask someone about that.
The woman herself was the calmest of all of us. Tumbled onto her side, but already beginning to push herself into a sitting position, she said, “I am all right, I am not injured at all.” It was a low, clear voice, with a slight hint of a French accent, and an even slighter trace of amusement. “Please, I’m sorry to delay everyone, but my legs do not work,” which was indeed obvious from the boneless look of them as they sprawled out before her, with one bent across the other at the shin. “If someone could straighten them . . .” The driver did that, lifting her legs very gingerly, only gripping them at the ankles. “Thank you—I was such a fool not to be wearing my seatbelt. Now, if some strong young man could take me under my arms . . .”
I hadn’t noticed that I was one of only two men on the bus; the other, sitting all the way in the back, was plainly younger than I and just as plainly stoned on something that he’d certainly be riding to the end of the line. Everyone else aboard was female, and smaller than I—which is rare—including the driver. I said, “You’ll have to settle for an old gentleman with a bad back, but I’ll do what I can.”
Positioning myself behind her, I placed my hands as she directed, and pulled. You’re supposed to crouch, of course, and lift from your legs, rather than risking your back—as I know to my cost—but I didn’t have much choice, or much room to hunker down properly. I was able to raise her a little way, but not to any purpose, not even to the edge of the seat. She never complained, and no one laughed at me; and it shouldn’t have been embarrassing, but it was.
“All right,” I said. “Hold tight—here we go.” I bent further, managing a bit of a squat this time, got one arm under her knees, supporting her shoulders with the other, and, with the aid of a tidal surge of adrenaline, actually swept her up and set her down again in her wheelchair. A few passengers applauded, and I think I blushed, remembering the last time I had done such a thing with a woman. One’s legs may go first, as they say, but vanity definitely goes last.
“There,” I said. I snapped the seatbelt around her, and said, in a lower voice, “There you are, Melusine.”
She froze for a moment in the chair—and why shouldn’t she have? I surely had, feeling the ridged scales underneath those slacks. People were beginning to return to their seats, and the driver had already restarted the engine and was about to pull back into traffic. The woman and I stared at each other. I said, “Is Saturday still the day? That’s tomorrow.”
“I get off at Thirty-Ninth,” she said. “Don’t forget your book.”
I went dutifully back to my seat, and for the rest of the ride—all the way to the end of College, where it bends right and joins Broadway—I really did do my best with Rex Stewart’s essays on his life in jazz, because he was one of the surprising handful of musicians who could write well and without sentimentality about the old days. But all the time I kept the corner of one eye on her, and when she rang for the Thirty-Ninth Street stop, I stood up too. The driver came back and lifted a plate in the floor that became a ramp, and she rolled smoothly off and waited for me on the sidewalk. The bus pulled away.
“It’s still Saturday,” she said. “Samedi . . . Sabado . . . Sabato . . . Samstag. It has been Saturday for a thousand years. I have never known why.” She looked up at me, and now her eyes were black enough to give meaning to the Dark Ages that bore her. “How did you know me? My legs will not change until midnight.”
“But the tail is there now,” I said. “I could feel it under the human, coming. I was raised on the old legends—you and Bisclavret, the poor werewolf, were my favorite bedtime stories. What on earth are you doing in California?”
She shrugged. “Immortals always end up in California, sooner or later, quite often as bedtime stories. You would be amazed at whom I have seen in Palo Alto alone, never mind Berkeley.” The wheelchair’s electric motor caught silently, and she started along Broadway, as I walked beside her, carrying her grocery bags. There was a breeze up, and she pulled the blue scarf over her cat-colored hair.
I said, “There are German stories about you, but you begin in France.” She nodded without answering. “You married either Count Raymond of Poitou, or Guy de Lusignan, who fought in the Crusades—”
“Both. Raymond was far more handsome, but Guy . . . Guy was the better man, in the end.” I could barely hear the last words.
“Well, you certainly had more children with him. I always imagined you living in the forests near Lusignan, watching over your family, even after you left Guy—”
“Gone.” She spoke the word flatly, without drama or sentimentality, but it tolled tonelessly in her mouth. “The family—the castle itself—all, all gone. They marry, they migrate, they buy, they sell, they die . . . of my old blood, there are none left, no matter how their inheritors print my image on their stationery, carve it on their bed-and-breakfast signs. All gone but the one in Canada.”
“Canada? Quebec?”
She nodded.
“Then why are you here?”
The wheelchair turned abruptly down a side street, and I kept pace. With her head covered by the blue scarf, she looked about eleven years old; but it was with an adult’s dry humor that she answered me. “I may be immortal, but I have my limits. Too cold, and too northern—and what they do to my language makes me want to eat them to make them stop. No . . . at my age, your California is as far from home as I travel. Besides, he is young, thank my stars. Ah, here we are.”
We had arrived at one of the older apartment houses in this part of Oakland. Nineteen-twenties would have been my guess: it was tall—a good five stories—which is fairly rare; it had a genuine doorman just inside the lobby, which is very rare; and the kind of architectural features—cornices, dormers, fanlights, and even dentils, for God’s sake—that you don’t usually see on any place you can get to by public transit. The doorman hurried out to welcome Mrs. Lusignan, as he called her, pronouncing it perfectly, and I followed her in under his instantly disapproving eye.