Post by Araziel Léon Vasilica on Oct 24, 2010 17:12:45 GMT -8
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Araziel Léon Vasilica
Gender: Homme
Age/DOB: December, 1810
Occupation: Café owner by day, various potentially illegal occupations by night
Race: Vampire
Appearance;
Araziel stands at just below six feet even with a lithe, slim figure. He moves with confidence but not arrogance; however just on observation alone, one can tell that he is very comfortable in his body and almost effortlessly graceful in his movements. His skin is of a mildly creamy peach graced just barely by the sun; nonetheless, due to his vampiric nature, he does not dwell under the sun’s rays for too long.
His hair is of a dark auburn hue, falling almost to chin length and usually mildly styled in some manner or another. His grey eyes are gentle but earnest, set into his pale visage beneath delicately arched (and groomed!) brows. Indeed, his ethnicity is extremely difficult to determine based upon his features and cannot really be categorized, but it is evident that he takes care of his appearance to the point that he has often been labeled as homosexual (though uh … he’d prefer metrosexual if that had to be debated …) Regardless, he does bear a striking resemblance to his father, Lucien. Though often difficult to immediately spot the similarity with their facial features (perhaps due to the age gap and radically different hairstyles), upon closer inspection, it turns out to be very, very evident.
Clothing-wise, Araziel is certainly the most modernized of the family, his mode of dress casual and comfortable, though still trendy. He favors the slim silhouettes of Shibuya men's fashions, and usually always has his favorite scarf with him.
At home, he's becoming more and more used to just wandering the house in pajama pants and a t-shirt.
Personality;
Upon first impression, Araziel comes off as extremely chipper! Upon second impression … yeah, still chipper. He’s a natural people person and yes, he loves to make it known! He’s prone to strike up a conversation with anyone and everyone, provided they’re willing (and sometimes he’ll still go ahead and coax the unwilling out of their shells). Despite this charisma, however, he’s not politician material by any stretch of the imagination; he has a certain genuine friendliness about him that, to some, can be a bit overbearing at times, especially when he’s had a cup or three of coffee …
Nonetheless, Araziel has a good heart, though the paths he takes to get there may sometimes be questionable; he’s the type who’s all for ‘the end justifies the means.’ It’s the little things that count, though, and he’s more concerned with getting to know an individual and their personal stories and lives rather than becoming involved in something on a larger scale. He shies away from large organizations (government definitely included) for these reasons.
He doesn’t vie for mischief for the sake of mischief, but he’s not above a silly joke now and again. On the flipside, this also means he doesn’t … really have a high regard for the law if he feels it’s in the way of ‘getting the right thing done,’ although he’s intentionally provoked peace officers before, which never ends well .
Sharp tongued, just because he’s prone to part with a wink and a smile doesn’t mean he’ll back down from a fight! A bit of a pitfall for him, Araziel can be very confrontational in the right (or wrong) situation, and when met with hostility, he won’t hesitate to hurl his own rather creative insults (many that involve seemingly anatomically-impossible threats). And neither will he hesitate to back them up with a sound fist to the face; he’s incredibly skilled in hand-to-hand combat, blending learned technique with seasoned experience.
Araziel never had formal schooling. Growing up, there was no such thing as public instituted primary education, and he didn’t have the means or need to attend higher education. As such, one might call his intelligence ‘people smart’ and ‘street smart’ rather than ‘booksmart.’ One won’t get very far debating philosophy and history with him, since he’s more apt to call that ‘a load of crap’ than anything.
Still, one should not mistake this lack of formal education for dullness or stupidity! Araziel is quite sharp (though he has his ditzy moments), and has a very solid grasp on how people work.
Ever since he was young, his passion was destined to lie in the culinary, and it still does today! You won’t find a better cup of coffee or a more aromatic blend of chai anywhere. With however many decades to hone his cooking skills, Araziel’s been around the globe and back, and picked up every little kitchen trick known to man. He probably truly believes that the best way to a man (or woman!)’s heart is through their stomach; anyone with Araziel as a roommate would never go hungry (or have a bored pallet) again!
Araziel’s a bit paranoid when it comes to finances, having lived most of his life wondering where the next meal and roof over his head would come from. Even after having fallen in with his ‘family’ (see history) and having obtained financial comfort, he’s still very frugal. He counts pennies and doesn’t spend unnecessarily for himself.
History;
“Okay as long as I don’t have to sign anything … you’re sure this ‘interview’ is totally anonymous, right?”
The interviewer, some wet-behind-the-ears journalism student, nodded earnestly. “Ready?” she asked, a fingertip hovering over the ‘record’ button of her phone’s recording app.
Araziel grinned, giving her a thumbs up from across the café table.
“Alright,” the student began as soon as she hit the button. “So Araziel – ”
“Just call me Azi, darlin’.”
“Right. Azi. Tell me a bit about your childhood.”
“Mkay. Well, I was born in Marseille, that big city in the south of France right by the Mediterranean. Y’know, the one that isn’t Paris.” He snorted. “I think … I think it was … eighteen-ten. I always forget … the only reference point I have is when Napoleon was exiled … I was like five.”
“That sounds about right,” the student agreed.
“Mhm. It was always sunny and warm, I remember. Anyway, my father, Léon, was a boulanger – a baker.”
“How about your mother?”
Azi laughed. “A frigid bitch.”
The student laughed awkwardly.
“No, seriously. Coldest woman you’d ever meet. I mean … she was pretty, I guess, but I can’t imagine there being any other reason father married her …” Araziel rolled his eyes. “En tout cas, it didn’t matter; Léon wasn’t even my biological father, since my mum Clarisse got around a bit.”
“Did he know?”
“I didn’t think he did, but he surprised me later. I was still closer to him than mum; shows that blood doesn’t matter.”
“So did you work at your father’s bakery when you were little?”
“Mhm. Had to. We lived in a room in the back of the boulangerie. Dirty, cramped little one-room house. I slept in the corner, on the floor. Luckily the winters in Marseille aren’t too cold or I would have frozen my toes off.” Despite his words, Azi was smiling. “I shared my pile of straw with my first puppy. Léon picked him off the street. Was a scrawny little thing, but fluffy as all hell.”
The student chuckled, endeared by Araziel’s warmth. “Were you always poor?”
“If by poor you mean lacking money, yeah. Funny how all of France lives off of bread, yet the ones who make the bread are at the bottom of the heap.” He scowled. “But we got by. And I’d like to think I was ‘wealthy’ in other ways.”
“How so?”
“Well, when you’re the riffraff on the street, you kinda’ band together with other little urchins. Like there was this kid my age, Christophe, whose family were poissoniers. Er, fishermen. We usually hung out at the dock, and he’d collect scraps from the market stands, then we’d huddle up in my house and whip up whatever dishes we could from the collection of miscellany.”
The student smiled. “You’ve always liked cooking, then? I mean, you own a café … “ She looked around the interior of the establishment, which was bright and cheerful, the sun pouring in through the ceiling-high glass windows.
“Of course! When all you’ve got every week is a handful of sou, you gotta’ make the best of it. It might not be fine dining, but you get creative when your resources are limited.” Araziel paused, thoughtful. “And I guess … I dunno, everyone has a calling in life. Sounds silly, but … when you’re compelled to pursue some sort of creative avenue, you have to assume it’s because you’re meant to. Why resist it?” Sighing, he rolled his eyes. “I guess that’s my fancy way of saying, yes, it’s my art.”
The student nodded, smiling still. “So did you ever go anywhere with it when you were little? Like, did you parents notice it, maybe?”
“Not really. Up until I was an adult, I lived and breathed baking thanks to the boulangerie, so it was kind of just my station in life. Nothing special. Not that I regret any of that; it built a … foundation for my skills, if nothing else.”
“Right. So once you grew up, did you take over the bakery? Or did you stay in Marseille even after you were older?”
“Well … that’s an interesting story.” Araziel laughed weakly. “And it involves a girl, of course.”
The student’s grin widened. “Do share.”
Araziel’s gaze averted for a moment, as if the memory still prodded at a tender spot. A distant smile did creep onto his features though. “Hah, well, don’t laugh – she was actually a prostitute. BUT before … don’t look at me like that, we never did anything!” he asserted, frowning at the student, who had burst into laughter.
“Sorry, it’s just … a funny way to start a story,” she giggled. “Go on, go on.”
“Yes, well, her name was Emeline. We were both … maybe … sixteen or seventeen? Yes, she was a prostitute but that wasn’t all that uncommon, especially in the area I lived in. We met because … she was on a street corner freezing her ass off, and God she was so skinny … the poor thing.” Araziel’s brow furrowed. “So I tricked her into coming home with me … pretended I was … y’know, picking her up. But then when we got back to the boulangerie, I just fixed her some fish stew and bread.”
The student grinned, waiting for more juicy details. “And …?”
“And … that’s it. That’s how we met. We talked for hours, well into the morning. I told her stories of what mischief Christophe and I had gotten into recently; she harped to me about the piggish nature of her clientele.
The student’s smile was warm. “So did anything come of it?”
“Well, you know. Over time, one thing led to another. We really liked each other, and ironically it was like … a very innocent sort of affection. Like your first love.” Araziel fidgeted; he evidently wasn’t very good at talking about this sort of thing. “I think the fact that we were so stupidly in love blinded us to the harsh reality – that it wouldn’t ever work.” He smiled grimly.
The student’s gaze fell. “What happened?”
Araziel bit his lip. “She was murdered. By a client. But what d’ya’ expect, with a job like that?” He forced a smile. “The police don’t have any time for filth like us. So … nobody did anything about it. I lost so much sleep over it. I mean, I couldn’t sleep after that, I just stayed up thinking about it. Every night. For weeks. Father thought I was ill. Mother knew what was wrong, but told me to get over it.”
“So … what did you do?”
“What I shouldn’t have done. I tracked the murderer down. He was some slippery bourgeoisie. The expired wannabe nobility type. Not too surprising, I found him in a brothel. I don’t even remember what happened.” Araziel buried his face in his hands, eyes squinted shut. “I just remember being so angry, so so angry in a way I’d never felt before. I knew then what people meant when they say they saw red. It was blinding. I don’t even remember how I killed him. Maybe with my bare hands. But I remember the taste of blood, and it was the most vile taste I’ve ever had, even ‘til today. And that’s coming from someone who lived off of black bread.” Araziel laughed a hollow laugh.
The student was silent, waiting for more.
Araziel sighed a shuddering sigh. “Then I remember being dragged away. The girls were screaming, there was angry yelling … several pairs of hands were carrying me out of there. I think I was in shock. When I came to, I was in a jail cell.”
“How long were you there?”
“A couple of years. Father was heartbroken, and that hurt. He was the only family I really loved. I mean, between him and my mother … not like there were a lot of options.” Araziel rolled his eyes. “He visited me every week though. I never got to tell him how much I appreciated it. I was too ashamed. And angry. I was so tired of Marseille. I get dropped in jail, but Emeline’s murderer would have gone free if I hadn’t found him, and probably gone back to stuffing his fat face with suckling pig. Meanwhile, honest hardworking people like my father worked themselves to the bone just to have enough bread and soup for supper.” Araziel stopped abruptly, sucking in a breath.
The student nodded slowly, looking distraught. “How did you get out of jail?”
“They reinvestigated the case. Emeline’s murderer was found to be guilty, so they let me off with a slap on the wrist. That, and it was too expensive to feed me.” Araziel snorted. “I suspected that my mother pulled some strings. But I didn’t wait to find out.”
“You left?”
“I just wanted to be away from there. So this guy in jail, who was my cell neighbor … he had this plan. China was just chock full of trade opportunity. But I guess at the time, England – leave it to them, selfish pricks – had exclusive trading rights with China. Buuuuut nobody would notice if some silver cargo slipped under the radar …”
“So you became a pirate?” the student laughed.
“Hahah, I prefer ‘smuggler.’ Though to be honest, we never actually got to do some smuggling. Shortly after I was out, I broke my new friend out of jail too, and we escaped onto a ship across the channel. From England, we boarded a ship bound for China. I didn’t look back.”
“Did you even make it to China?”
“That’s the fun part,” Araziel snorted. “The short answer is yes. The long answer is … we were attacked by pirates – oh the irony – right near Beijing. Almost everyone got killed in the ensuing fight. I was a goddamn coward and jumped right off the railing into the ocean. Swam for the shore like a drowning dog.”
“So you got away okay?”
“If by okay you mean I made it to shore and promptly got captured and put in jail by the locals, yeah, pretty much,” Araziel laughed.
“So … you basically went from one jail to another, half across the world,” the student pointed out, giggling as well.
“Yeeeeaaah. They thought I was one of the pirates. I guess that same ship that attacked us had already been ‘wanted’ for previous counts of smuggling, and for the western market too, so … it didn’t help that I was French.” Araziel sighed.
“How long were you there, then?”
“Not too long this time, luckily. Within a couple of weeks I was let off. Some fishermen had seen what had happened, and they were nice enough to vouch for my innocence.”
“Then what? Did you return home?”
“Well … as it happened, one of the fishermen who helped me out of jail needed a hand, and I needed a place to stay while I tried to earn some money. Buying passage home was going to be expensive, y’know, and sneaking onto a ship out of China wasn’t going to be as easy as sneaking in.”
“So you worked for him?”
“Mhm. For room and board. He spoke a tinyyyy bit of English, and I knew a tiny bit too from Christophe, so through him I was able to start learning Mandarin bit by bit. The spoken language was pretty easy to pick up; a lot less complex than French. Writing is a whole ‘nother story but at that point in my life I didn’t even know how to read French.”
“Wait … really?”
Araziel glowered. “Literacy was still a privilege at that time, y’know. I mean, I could record the numbers in my father’s ledger, and that was about all I needed.”
“Ah, gotcha’. Then, overall, how long did it take you to save enough money to return home?”
“ Well … a really long while. I was making the equivalent of a few sou a week, and even though my room and food were taken care of, I wasn’t much better off than I had been in Marseille. In a way, it was the same situation, just with a different language, people, background … yeah. But! I loved the food. And … eventually it became my reason for staying. You know. You spend enough time in a place, and for me at least, when home had never really felt like home … there wasn’t really a reason to go back. I kinda’ became the fisherman’s nominal son, anyway.”
“So … obviously you didn’t stay there for forever, since you’re here now.”
“Mhm. I was there for a while though. I knew the language enough by then, so I was able to nab a job at the teahouse. Was kind of like a pub or wineshop, I guess, but an inn at the same time. And the owner liked me being there. I guess I was kind of a novelty, being foreign. The guests liked to make fun of my accent.” He chuckled. “But then one day, there was a party of magistrates passing through. And … and … “ He trailed off again, blushing slightly.
The student smiled knowingly. “Another girl ?”
“Yeah … her name was Mei, and she was the daughter of the chief magistrate. I guess she was betrothed to some noble she had never met or whatever, and they were supposed to wait for him there, so that she could meet him for the first time.” He smiled to himself, the same grim smile as before, when he’d spoken of Emeline. “It was stupid. I mean, we had nothing in common, she was already taken, technically, and me … I dunno, I guess I was just lonely. I mean, I loved the food and the people and the newness of everything, but I had to admit that I was still a foreigner. No amount of learning the language and culture would make me one of them, and they knew that as much as I did. In a way, then, yeah, I was very much alone.”
The student’s gaze fell. “So what happened to Mei?”
“Well, the owner of the teashop made me prepare their rooms. I was assigned to look after them for the duration of their stay, so I decided on impulse to bake something special. I would have made some cookies or something but the ingredients available there weren’t the same, so I made these little steamed custard buns, and shaped and brushed them to look like peaches.” He laughed, blushing again. “It’s so silly, isn’t it?”
The student laughed. “It’s kinda’ cute.”
Araziel just looked down again, laughing too. “Oui, I guess so. Well, I left the treats on her nightstand. And I did that every day. They were always gone once I came to clean up, so I hoped she ate them. Then one night, while her party was out on the town, she caught me sneaking into the room to turn down the beds. I had the pastries so … she told me she knew it was me all along. Then she thanked me, and we sat and talked for a bit. She told me she didn’t want to have to marry her husband-to-be, but it was some kind of political move … figures.” He sighed.
The student was quiet, waiting for more.
“Then it was my turn to complain, and I went on about how I was tired and lonely and a bit homesick. I wanted to go home.” Araziel smiled a wry smile. “That’s when we started getting creative. Mei proposed the idea … she said she wanted to run away from China. She said that she wanted to go back to France with me. And honestly, that sounded like a perfectly good idea to me. A bit risky, but worth the effort.” He shrugged. “So from there, things started to look up. She saved all of her money from her father, and I was already saving mine for passage back.” He smiled to himself. “Meanwhile, we kept each other company. She was fascinated by my cooking. She said it was silly that I knew how to cook better than she! I told her that I didn’t find it silly at all, but I showed her some of my favorite recipes, or at least the ones I could sort of duplicate with the ingredients available. It was fun.”
The student was smiling, though hesitantly, anticipating a not-so-great end to the story.
“It was wonderful, to have a friend again. A real friend. And … I really did have it in my head that we could go back to France together. I guess I was still stupid.” He laughed wryly. “I think … I think we started to get a little careless, though. That, and … well, I mean, someone had to notice all the time we were spending together. I think her father finally got suspicious. He … he caught us together one night, when we thought they were supposed to be out. And that was the end of that. The teahouse owner tried to defend me, but the magistrate had way more influence, of course. He ran me out of the city, sent his men after me to ‘teach me a lesson.’ Obviously I wasn’t going to be allowed back any time soon.”
The student was frowning now, looking upon Araziel with sympathy.
“I ran out of the city but his men caught up to me. I blacked out after they beat me up … I don’t know what happened or how long I had been out, but I woke up somewhere totally different. I could even smell it. The air was so much cleaner, it was invigorating. As it turned out, I was in a monastery. “
The student’s brows raised, and she blinked curiously at Araziel. “Like … one of those temples from movies and stuff?”
Araziel laughed. “Almost. In hindsight, I guess if I were to split my life into chapters, that would have been the start of a new one.” He smiled to himself. “I woke up and this man in this old tunic and pants was standing over me. He seriously looked like something out of one of those European caricatures of Chinese scenes. Said his student found me in the woods and carried me up here. They took me in and nursed me back to health, essentially. And I’m eternally grateful for it, even today. But when I asked them how I could repay them, they didn’t want repayment.”
“So what did you do?”
“Well, I had had it in my head that I needed to get home, right? But that was before everything with Mei fell apart … and at that point I didn’t even know where I was or what I was doing anymore. I think the man – the founder of the monastery – knew that. So he told me to stay. He said I would learn a lot there, like his other students.”
“So you did?”
“Yeah. I mean … a monastic life? I hardly look the type, right? And it isn’t easy to drop everything and pursue that kind of path, but … for me, I had nothing to lose and everything to gain, really. So in a way I guess it was easy for me, if … that makes any sense at all.”
“It does,” the student nodded.
Araziel nodded too. “Yeah. Well, I ended up staying there a while. I lost track of the time … a few years, for sure. But I learned so much there. Way more than any university … minus the tuition.” He winked.
The student snorted and rolled her eyes.
“I guess the old name for ‘kung fu’ was ‘wushu.’ I still call it that … it just sounds better on the tongue, you know?”
“You learned kung fu? Like … all those super secretive mystical technique stuff?”
“There’s nothing mystical about any of it. That’s all film nonsense. The way they taught was straightforward and comprehensive, because that’s the best way to learn, obviously!”
The student laughed. “I guess you’re right.”
Araziel’s smile widened. “Mhm. And the best part was … I finally learned how to read and write. Isn’t that funny? I learned how to write in Mandarin before I even learned how to write in French. Which is silly, because I think written Mandarin is so much more complex …”
“I hear you,” the student giggled.
“Yeah. Well, at any rate, it became my new home, and the other students treated me like their own. It was wonderful. But … naturally, homesickness does pop up again. I guess I missed father. I had started to have dreams about him. I dreamt he was sad. And the compulsion to return and see how he was doing grew stronger and stronger.”
The student was quiet again.
“I think the master knew that. He came to me one day and told me that he had taught me all he could … that there was nothing else the monastery could give me, and that it was time to go home. I don’t know if he read my mind or something, or if he was just that intuitive. But either way, he gave me the money to buy passage back to France.”
“So you went back?”
“Mhm. It was kind of bittersweet, leaving the monastery.” His gaze grew distant for a moment. “Funny thing is, I tried returning to the place at a later time … in the past decade, actually. Could never find it again. Not a trace.”
The student raised a brow.
“In any case, before I left, I … kind of tried to find Mei again. It had been about ten years. And I did track her down, but she was married to that noble. They had children and everything. I knew it was foolish but … I still tried to talk to her. She recognized me, but that trail had since gone cold. I think she was sad with where she was now. But she was afraid to leave … she was rooted to her station. She told me to go and told me to be happy for the both of us.” Araziel sighed.
The student sighed too. “I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. Stuff just pans out however it wants to,” Araziel pointed out with a halfhearted shrug. “That was that. I boarded a ship later that week, and a few months later was back in Marseille. It’s so strange to return home after so long. I’d been gone almost as long as I’d lived in France, but even so, once you’re home it almost feels like you’d never left, y’know?”
The student nodded.
“It’s like it was a dream. Whatever the case, I went straight back to the boulangerie and … guess what? It was still there.” Araziel laughed. “Really like nothing had changed. And father … father was overjoyed to see me, and I to see him. But he looked like he’d aged about thirty years or more … he looked so frail now.”
“How about your mother?”
“Well, I quickly found out that mother had long since disappeared. Just upped and abandoned my poor father. Heh. Guess I shouldn’t have expected much else from her, and I guess I kinda’ did the same thing too but … either way. Father had a few helpers around the bakery now, but he’d developed a bad drinking habit. I told him I was there to stay though, and that seemed to take a lot off his shoulders.”
“Aww, that’s nice.”
Araziel shrugged. “I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed him. Or how much he’d missed me. He cheered up soon after I came back though, and it was almost like things were ‘normal’ again. I stayed with him and with the boulangerie until he passed a few years later.”
“He passed of old age?”
“Yeah. Which … I was grateful for, really. He deserved a peaceful death. It was funny though … in his last few days, he knew he was running out of time, and he told me, just out of the blue, that he’d known about me and Clarisse’s … well, our vampirism.”
“You didn’t know he knew?”
“We kept it a secret from him, always. But then after that, he told me that he also knew that I wasn’t his biological kid. I told him I didn’t care. He was still a better parent than Clarisse had been, and she was related to me.”
“That’s sweet.”
“Yeah. I still miss Léon.” Araziel smiled to himself.
The student smiled too, and was silent for a moment before pressing on. “So what happened after he was gone?”
“Well, I took over the boulangerie of course. Hung around a while to keep it going, and just ‘cause it reminded me of father. But y’know, memories grow sour, and at some point the pain of loss outweighed my wanting to be close to where he’d been so … I closed up the place one day and left.”
“Did you leave Marseille altogether?”
“Mhm. I haven’t been back since I left, actually … been meaning to go back some time soon but I’m not sure if I’m ready yet.” Araziel smiled.
The student nodded. “So … where did you end up?”
“I bounced around for a while, really. Ran the gamut of professions. I was a wine press in Champagne, a charcutier in Lyon, a sommelier in Paris, a patissier in Calais … the problem was that I couldn’t stay in one place for too long, which really sucks when you want to settle down. I mean, the locals are gonna get suspicious if after ten years you haven’t aged a bit.”
“Right, right. So how long did you stay in one place before moving?”
“Ten years,” Araziel repeated. “About. Max. It gets exhausting, but I guess it was also enriching at the same time. Still, would’ve been nice to have been able to hunker down. From what I hear of the rest of the Chevalerie, most of them just stayed under the radar. Hid out and kept to the shadows. I … can’t do that. I love to make friends. And I guess for me, it was different. They were born human and had their vampirism dropped on them. I was born a vampire from the start, so y’know, it was normal for me.”
“Gotcha’. So you kind of flitted from place to place for … how long? Up until today?”
“In a way. I definitely picked up a lot more culinary expertise, considering all the places I’d been. Eventually though, I wound up in the states. California, first. San Francisco, more precisely. I actually lived in Chinatown first, since I could speak Mandarin fluently and was a bit encultured. So the people there liked me since I could communicate between the different ethnic groups and stuff. After that though, I started working for Boudin … y’know, the famous bakery?”
“Oh yeah! The San Franciscan sourdough and such. With the little turtle and crab shaped loaves.”
“That’s the one,” Araziel agreed with a laugh. “I went around nailing loaves to people’s doors … that’s how we delivered bread back then. But then one day, the father was sick, and they needed an extra hand in the kitchens. So I volunteered, and then they learned that I actually knew that stuff better than they did! I became part of the family pretty quickly.” Grinning, he relaxed further into his seat. “Y’know how sourdough is made, right? With the ‘mother dough’ that you have to keep feeding cultures to in order to keep it ‘alive’?”
“I think I’ve heard of that on the Food Network,” the student laughed.
“Yeah. So, every time you want to make a new batch of sourdough, you get a little piece from the mother dough and that works as your base. But in order to keep the mother dough ‘alive,’ you maintain it with live cultures.”
“Alright, I’m following you.”
Araziel nodded. “So in the great 1906 earthquake in San Fran, the bakery collapsed. But the mother dough had been around for years and years … and it was part of the Boudin signature! So hell, I wasn’t going to let a destroyed building kill off the dough … I darted into the basement and saved it just in time.”
“Like a baby,” the student laughed.
“En effet! I’ll have you know that the dough they still use today is (supposedly) the same one from the very beginning. Imagine, if I hadn’t been there to save it …” Araziel trailed off, still grinning.
“Okay, mister hero. So what happened next?”
“Well, I had to leave them eventually, too. Ended up in New York in the twenties as a bartender at a speakeasy. Lots of glitzy clientele there. Kind of hit it off with this regular, but she dumped me for some rich guy as soon as she found out I was poor.” He shrugged. “Comes with the job, I guess.”
“You don’t seem to have a lot of luck with that …”
“No kidding. It’s fine though; I’ve never had to face that whole complication of ‘yeah I’ll still be young and hot when you die in seventy years.”
“Ouch,” the student winced, joking.
Araziel snorted. “I kid. Kinda’. At any rate, let’s see … you get to the world wars, and I wasn’t all patriotic or anything but I served as a field cook in both; in the second, I was with the forces françaises libres – that is, De Gaulle’s little band of misfits. Thing blossomed into a full resistance overnight, much to the dismay of the Vichy and the Nazis. I’d like to think I helped some of those young soldiers get by. A lot of them were downtrodden … just wanted everything to be over and to go home and have their families. Heh, I got that part, kind of. But living in wartime France … or anywhere, really – and to know that the world’s other most powerful nations are living on rations and that every one down to the most rudimentary civilian has to cut back to fund the war? It was pretty bleak. I guess in a way, I was glad that I didn’t have anyone I cared about to worry over.”
“Aww, that’s kind of sad.”
Araziel shrugged. “You make do with what you’ve got. Funny thing was, I ran into Edmond there and I didn’t even know we were kind of related.” He laughed. “The man was an exceptionally skilled soldier. I should have known something was up. Nobody takes down that many planes and then disappears without waiting for his medal of the Legion of Honor.”
The student nodded slowly. “So, after the war?”
“France was all up in hell over political this and political that. All that anti-Semitism with the Dreyfus affair, and then you’ve got your artists and poets crawling all over Paris … and the government couldn’t decide on what Republic it was anymore … pfeh. I decided to skip over into England then, but I didn’t end up staying long. Food was terrible. And boring. You’d think the British had never heard of salt, despite being … oh I don’t know … surrounded by a sea full of it!”
The student burst out laughing. “Well if not England, where to next?”
“Spain. Tapas are amazing. And the climate was pretty close to Marseille, so I was fine there. Then I drifted back to the states, and then eventually over to Japan in the late nineties. I realized I loved Beijing cuisine, so I figured why not look at the influence in Japanese cuisine? Guh, Southeast Asia has seriously perfected noodle soup as a full meal. I’m so addicted to ramen, and not that shitty ten-cents-a-package kind. That’s not ramen, that’s carbs and salt.”
The student snorted. “Well when you’re on a college budget …”
“Darling, I’m pretty sure I had less money than you do now. And I still ate pretty well.”
“Alright, point taken. So how long were you in Japan?”
“Well, the language was pretty easy to pick up, especially since I knew Mandarin already. So, as fate would have it, I … kinda’ got sucked into this little subculture. It was the money that attracted me, to be honest. I mean, c’mon, you get tired of living from paycheck to paycheck.”
“Yeah … what kinda’ culture? Nothing illegal … ?”
“Oh, no. Though my liver might object. I got into the host club culture. It almost reminded me of being back in China at the teahouse, where the locals thought I was a novelty? Kinda’ the same thing here. I mean, the Japanese were pretty wary of foreigners but I guess young people, not so much.”
“So explain the host club thing.”
“Right, well, it was like prostitution minus the sex.”
“Uh …”
“Hear me out. Basically, a bunch of us guys would gussy up and look all pretty for these poor attention-starved girls. They’d come in, pick a ‘host’ – that was us – and then basically sit down for an hour or three and drink with us, and we’d talk and play games and sing karaoke and whatever else to entertain them.”
“So wait … they pay you … to talk to them?”
“Essentially. It sounds so stupid right? But it was a business. Kind of like how casinos suck you in and get you addicted, even though your logical brain knows it’s a load of crap? They know how to do that to you. Like these host clubs do. These women were addicted, and would be shelling out hundreds of dollars a night! There was a flat rate per hour, usually, and drinks were extra. The most obvious downside is the drinking … I think the only reason I tolerated it was my weird physiology. If I were human, my liver would probably be dead and gone.” He laughed wryly.
“So you stayed because of the money?”
“Of course. In a night we could make hundreds. It was amazing. I’d make more in a night than I could in my other jobs in a month! ‘Course I’d be in the bathroom puking my guts out every hour but … hey. Nothing’s free. To top it off … well, it was kind of a way for me to get to kind of have a quasi relationship with some of these girls. I mean, it was all obviously fake and superficial … and maybe I liked that. Since, y’know, it’s been kinda’ established that I’m never going to be able to settle down. So this was kind of a harmless way of pretending.”
The student frowned. “That’s … that’s sad.”
“Oh it was. You lose your self-respect over time, working there. And for what? A buncha’ money. Heh, that’s when I figured out I didn’t really need it. I was just wasting it on drinks at other places, and on expensive clothes and accessories to help improve the ‘host’ image. But I was also addicted to the money. So it was a trap for a bit. I started to set some aside though, because in my head I knew I wanted to leave eventually, even if I didn’t know how.”
“So what compelled you to?”
“Well, two things. The first was one of my clients. We were kinda’ drunk one night and I went home with her. But surprise, next morning I find out she has a boyfriend. That’s the weird thing … a lot of the host club clientele usually had boyfriends. Guh. Anyway, obviously he got all pissy and I was like hell, I didn’t have anything to do with this. We got into a fight. Luckily he wasn’t hurt too badly … not permanently at least, but when it was over it was kind of a wakeup call. Like … what the hell am I doing here, creating all this stupid drama? For what? That’s when I knew it was time to leave.”
“So you left Japan entirely? Or just the area?”
“Well, on that same day, a stranger showed up at my door. He was young, like me, but I knew he was a vampire from the get go. The striking thing was, he looked familiar, but in a way I couldn’t place. As it turned out, he was actually my half-brother. We had a bit of a resemblance.”
“Through … ?”
“Through Luce. Lucien. The father. The kid’s name was Valeri. He said he’d been looking for me for years.”
“Oh?” the student asked. “How old was he?”
“Hm … I can’t remember. I think he was born during the Grande Guerre, he said. Anyway, he said he, like me, needed a friend and thought I would be a good place to start. I mean obviously we both suffered some similarities – the longevity, watching people pass us by …”
“So you traveled together afterwards?”
“Well … no. See the thing was … I learned through him that Lucien et al. were still alive. I was naturally curious – I’d never met Luce, after all – and it sounded like they had a proper family. So … I skipped back to France in haste. Didn’t even stop to learn from Valeri that … Valeri was actually estranged. Later, Valentina – Luce’s wife, and Valeri’s mother – told me that Valeri’s cousin Mirabelle had died during l’entre les deux guerres … er, the period between the two world wars. It was complicated … Lucien blamed himself, Valeri blamed him too and ran off … I don’t know the details. The bottom line was … by going and seeking Luce and the Chevalerie out, Valeri thought I’d betrayed him. I kinda’ feel shitty for that still, but … I didn’t know, and whatever animosity they have between them … well, that’s their business.”
“Alright. So that’s how you ended up with the Chevalerie?”
“Yep! I traced them back to Versailles. It turned out they were really nice people … kinda’ wacky, but I guess you have to be when you’re that old. And with the cash I’d saved up from my host clubbing, I was able to open my own café, finally! It was a huge transition.”
“So the story has a happy ending after all.”
“Ending?” Araziel laughed. “I ‘aint dying anytime soon, hun. This story’s still being written.”
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OOC;
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