4. When Priam Visited Achilles
It takes the Leech a week this time -- but he's back. "You're predictable," she greets him.
"I'm curious," he corrects.
"Why?" she asks. She's more curious herself than she wants to let on, and he knows it, damn him. At least his smile is gentle, not vicious.
"I want to understand," he says. "How can I, unless I listen to what you have to say?"
For a moment, the very earth shifts. For a moment, she feels overwhelmed -- can't speak. Finally, she says, "Did you know -- after the Battle of the Little Big Horn, the Sioux pierced Custer's eardrums. Whites thought they were defiling the body. They weren't. They did it so he could learn to listen in his next life."
"I'm listening," he says. "Even if it's difficult."
She stares at the surface of her coffee. There are little waves in it. She doesn't know why until she realizes her fingers on the handle are shaking. "Why do you care?"
"Because you helped us."
She'd thought he might say because what had been done to her people had been wrong, or he'd give some other philosophical, romanticized reason. But no. His reasons are personal. She trusts that.
So she talks. He listens. They spend almost 90 minutes there. This time, she leaves with a reading list. Homer's Iliad -- "I always thought a non-Christian, non-Western audience would understand it better" -- Machiavelli's The Prince, and Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling.
It takes her more than a week to get through them; it's not easy going. They meet again. This time she asks, "Aren't you married? Isn't your wife worried?"
He laughs and buys her a sandwich and another coffee. "You could be my great-great-great -- maybe even my great-great-great-great -- granddaughter. So no. She's not."
She lets it slide. Whether she wants to or not, she's come to think of him as an Elder even if his face is that of a college boy. His mind, however . . . and even more to the point, his experience, his ability to listen and care . . . these are not a boy's. She doesn't think of him as her age.
"So how were the books?" he asks now as she begins to eat.
"Homer's bloody," she says around her bite. "Machiavelli's ruthless. Kierkegaard . . . well, he's hard."
"You can handle it." It's not encouragement; it's a statement.
"I needed a fucking dictionary."
"And I'm sure you have one."
She does, in fact. His certainty annoys her.
"You're plenty clever," he adds, and she suddenly realizes that his accent has become more pronounced the more time she's spent with him. He isn't hiding so much of himself. She doesn't think he's the type to lie, but he also doesn't always reveal everything. "What did you think of Kierkegaard's central thesis?"
"That sounds like an essay question."
"If it were an essay question, I'd have asked what his central thesis was. I asked what you thought of it."
She sips coffee, then says, "I think he thinks nothing's either-or, which seems sorta self-evident to me. Of course nothing's either-or. If life was that easy to figure out, we'd all have the same answer."
He grins. It's fierce. "Exactly. There is no black and white. Or red and white. Nietzche -- he's another philosopher -- "
"I know who Nietzche is."
"Nietzche said, 'There are no facts, only interpretations.' Even with science -- we went from a Copernican universe to Galileo to Newton to Einstein and now to Hawking. What is 'true' changes as our own perspectives change. Anyway, Kierkegaard rejected rationalism. He said, 'The fact that truth is objectively a paradox shows in its turn that subjectivity is the truth.' That's one of his greatest contributions to later existential thought -- that truth is subjective."
Leah has been eating while he talks and resists smiling at his enthusiasm. He is usually calm, but now she can feel his passion for the topic infect her despite the twenty-five-cent words. She says, "Can you put all that in plain English?"
"It means we each determine what's true based on our own personal experience. What else have we got to judge by? So what's true for me isn't necessarily true for you."
"Well, of course not. Why would it be?"
One sandy brow goes up. "Some would disagree. Thomas Merton, for instance, jumping off Thomas Aquinas who wrote much earlier, and who was bouncing off of Aristotle in turn, believed in an epistemology of ontological truth proceeding from the First Cause, which he considered to be infinite in nature. In other words, God. But he had problems discovering that truth -- "
"Whoa! Time-out!" Leah says, setting down her sandwich to make a T-shape with her hands. "English, Jasper. Put it in English!"
"Ah -- you just used my name." She wrinkles her nose, but doesn't reply. "In 'English,'" he continues, "it means that some people think there's an ultimate truth to be found, and for some of those, it's revealed religious truth. Certain ideas and values are just 'true,' and any notion of relative truth -- or situational ethics, either -- is not only wrong, but dangerous . . . a slippery slope, I've heard it called. Stealing is stealing, murder is murder, obscenity is obscenity, etc. There's no wiggle room. I once saw a bumper sticker that read, 'God said it, I believe it, that settles it.'"
"That's stupid," she snaps. It is perhaps more emphatic than she'd intended but she doesn't like being told what to think. "I mean, what if the Creator says something different to me? How does that person know he's right and I'm wrong? Maybe I'm right and he's wrong."
Jasper nods. "Many a war or a persecution has begun over just such quarrels. The difficulty is that human beings are herd animals, and in order to live together peacefully in community, certain common 'truths' must be agreed upon. That's how civil law comes to be in the first place -- it reduces conflict between neighbors. Over time, and for a whole host of reasons, some of those civil laws can grow into absolute law, or apodictic law, which requires an authority beyond the community to dictate it in order to justify the claim to absolutism. The Ten Commandments are apodictic law, for instance."
She doesn't reply to that immediately, and isn't really thinking about what he said anyway, although it's a rather startling idea. Had he really just implied that human beings create the Creator in their own image? Then again, what would God mean to a vampire? "You're having fun, aren't you?"
"Having fun?"
"You think all of this is fun."
"It is fun. Trying to understand people -- why they think and act the way they do -- is fun."
She takes another bite and chews. He watches and waits. "Why did you give me Machiavelli to read, if you think so much of Kierkegaard?" she asks finally. "I don't think Kiekegaard would approve of Machiavelli."
"I doubt he did. Why do you think that is?"
She puzzles over it, having expected him to tell her, not ask her. "Uh, because Machiavelli is interested in results, not in how you get there, whether it's ethical or not?"
He nods. "Mahatma Ghandi said, 'There can be no good end if there are no good means.' Now there's nothing wrong with pragmatism. Everyone should read Machiavelli. But the ends don't justify the means." Suddenly, his expression is bitter. "They never justify the means."
And that fast, it's not about books or his 'programs of truth' anymore. "You say that like you know it personally. What have you seen?"
He glances around. As usual, nobody sits near them, whether in instinctive avoidance of him or instinctive avoidance of her. "Let's walk," he says.
She takes a final two bites of her sandwich and they leave together to pace down the pavement of Fork's main drag. In quiet tones audible only to her sensitive hearing, he tells her his story. She never imagined that being a vampire was so complicated. She'd pity him except, well, she's not supposed to. But what did "suppose" ever have to do with reality? His tale is one of war and death and horror, and she understands why he's a quiet man, and why he reminds her of her father sometimes. Her father had fought in Vietnam, one of those Indians recruited for the jungles and sent home with scars on his soul. "War's ugly," he'd said, and anybody who thought otherwise hadn't lived through one, or lived with somebody who'd lived through one. Long, long after returning from the jungles, he'd wake in the night to walk the beach, letting the surf drown out the memories of mortar shells exploding and men's dying screams. Someone -- maybe Jake, maybe Bella -- had told her that vampires had nearly eidetic memories. How much worse must Jasper's flashbacks be? But he'd left it all, in the end. He'd walked away.
"A man," she says when he's finished, "is what his dreams and the Creator make him."
"I think so too," he agrees.
"You believe in the Creator? I thought you didn't even have a soul."
He ignores the insult, recognizing it as half-hearted, said more out of habit than conviction. "I believe in something." He appears thoughtful; she's intrigued. "I can't believe anymore in the myths I grew up with, however: Genesis, Adam and Eve, Noah's ark, Jonah and the whale . . . We never questioned then, of course. You didn't. The preacher preached and you listened -- like that bumper sticker I quoted to you. The Bible was the Bible, the Word of God, absolutely true. But since . . . well, as you've no doubt gathered, I no longer believe in absolute truth."
He is silent. She lets him think. Their feet crunch on random gravel littering the sidewalk. The day is overcast as usual. They have no shadows. Finally, he says, "Kierkegaard was thirty years older than I am. He was born in 1813, I was born in 1843, but he was already questioning what he'd been taught when he was 28. I was starting my career leading vampire armies at that age." He snorts. "A good soldier doesn't question his orders. I was a good soldier."
"When did you start to question your accepted truth?" she asks him.
His smile is rueful. "When I was more than three times that age. If you live forever, a day's but a moment, and a year's but a day." He glances at her. "I was with Maria, my creator, for four-score years before I came to question her way of life. You know that I have some influence over the emotions of others -- but they also influence me. A child learns what he lives, and so does a newborn vampire. All I knew of my undead life was hate and vengeance and reward. And before I was a vampire, I was a rising officer in an ugly, bloody combat."
He looks off down the street. "I was handsome and clever and tall. I charmed everybody I met, even the slaves on our cattle ranch."
"You had slaves on a cattle ranch? I thought only plantations had slaves?"
"It was the South. My grandfather owned a plantation in Alabama. In 1825, Mexico started offering land grants to settlers. My father, who was the younger son, struck out for Texas in 1834 at 18, along with 100 head of cattle and 15 slaves. He settled near Houston. That was two years before Texas independence. Seven years later, he had 300 acres, 342 head of cattle, and he'd met a girl. They married in '41; I came along two years later. Texas wouldn't even be a state for another 3 years. Technically, I'm not a U.S. citizen. I was born in the Republic of Texas."
"And a cowboy? You were a cowboy?"
"Well, I was a rancher's son, but yeah, I reckon you could say I was a cowboy."
She throws her head back and laughs. "We're the cowboys and Indians!"
It makes him smile. "A cowboy and an Indian, anyway." He pauses, then continues with his explanation. "Everybody loved me from the day I was born. Now, of course, I understand why, but then, I simply believed I was special, and life with Maria after my change did little to alter that view. For eighty years, I was her darling -- pampered, indulged." He shakes his head.
"Your parents must have been devastated when they thought you'd died."
"I reckon so."
"You don't know?"
"The rules of vampire life are strict. When you're changed, you die to who you were before. I haven't been Jasper Whitlock since a winter's night in early 1863. Maria encouraged me to forget, so I did."
"But you just told me how and when your father moved to Texas -- all of that."
His smile is bitter. "Because I looked it up. I can't even recall my own mother's face now. What I know about my family, I know from county records. I remember a few things, but not much, and most of that I know because Maria told me."
She wraps her arms around her body. The matter-of-factness of his tone devastates her. To be so rootless -- without a family, without a people . . . that, for an Indian, would be hell. "I can't imagine not having a family.'"
"But I do have a family. Alice is my family, and the Cullens. They took me in and I belong with them now. It just takes my kind a while to adjust. We're like cats." His grin is quick and fierce. "We don't like our routine messed with."
"No wonder you don't get along with my kind. Cats and dogs. Vampires and werewolves."
They don't speak again for a full block, and they're nearing the outskirts of town. Jasper is comfortable with silence, unlike some white men. Finally, she stops and looks at him. Since her growth spurt, he is not so much taller than she is. "So you explained why Machiavelli and why Kierkegaard, but you didn't explain the Iliad."
"I thought that one might be obvious."
"Gee, thanks. I'm too dumb to get the obvious."
His smile is faint. "You're anything but 'dumb,' Leah Clearwater. But think about it. How does the Iliad end?"
"The old dude had to go to Achilles' tent to get his son's body back because Achilles was acting like a spoiled brat."
"Achilles had his honor insulted, then lost his dearest friend and foster brother. What would you do to a vampire who killed Seth?"
"Rip him apart."
"Just so. Hector killed Patroclus, and Achilles knew only grief and vengeance. Until the end. Do you remember what changes his mind at the end?"
She starts to shake her head, but more because she has to think about it. "The old dude -- what's his name -- "
"Priam."
"Yeah, him -- he tells Achilles to think about his own dad."
"Exactly. Vengeance and loss makes us inhuman. Love . . . love and compassion grant us our humanity back." His gold eyes are distant. "Once, I was Achilles."
"What? You think I'm Priam to come groveling?"
"No," he says, and smiles. "After all, which of us sought out the other?"
She blinks. "But you just said you were Achilles."
"Once, I was. Once, Priam was a young man, too."
"Oh, so now I'm Achilles." She isn't sure she likes that comparison any better. "Seth's still alive, you know -- unless you plan to kill him."
His smile just widens. "Metaphors aren't exact, Leah. But you've experienced loss, haven't you? And because of my kind? We are the cowboys and the Indians. The Trojans and the Achaeans. Cats and dogs. But all that's myth, isn't it? In the end, Achilles was a son and Priam was a father, and that's what really mattered. We aren't our labels. Like I said before -- labels negate."
He holds out a hand to her. "Hello, ma'am. My name is Jasper."
She stares at the hand, then raises her own to grasp it. She doesn't notice -- as much -- that it's hard and cold. "Hello, Jasper. My name is Leah."