SLA 468S 2002. Student translations.

Link to original.

Uliana Pasicznyk. translator

Tale about the Little Vampire who fed on Human Liberty

Once there was found among the vampires one of their young who was so puny, tiny, and feeble that its parents worried greatly whether their long-awaited offspring would ever follow in their path and carry on the fame and honor of the vampire kind. For when the time came for this vampire child to try its wings, it became apparent that the little vampire was not only too weak sickly to attack people, but was hardly able to maintain its own balance. Its spine, arms, and legs were so soft and light that the lightest wind or even a common house draft sufficed for the vampire child to fall to the ground like an old rag doll, unable even to lift its head without someone's help. But what caused its parents the most travail was the terrible, inexplicable fact that even after their child lost its first teeth and the permanent ones that were to serve a lifetime grew in, these were more gelatinous scales filled with a grayish fluid than teeth. Such teeth couldn't scratch, let alone bite into, human skin.

The claws on the vampire child's hands were no better. Instead of being capable of assisting its jaws in doing vampire's work, these grew as tender cartilage, resembling rose petals. Looking at these made the parents suffer as if a poplar stake were being driven through their hearts.

But even this was not what caused the hapless parents the most anguish. Their greatest grief and dissappointment sprang from the fact that from birth the small vampire could not bear the sight of, let alone drink, the human blood that the soft-hearted parents initially brought their sickly child in a pigskin pouch. The very sight of even the freshest human blood caused the vampire child immediately to suffer terrible cramps that threatened to bring its life to an end. The tearful parents, gritting their teeth to take action lest they lose their only offspring, were forced to feed their child not healthful and nourishing human blood, but a porridge they cooked from dandelions and a juice they squeezed from daisy petals.

Finally the vampire parents, who, like all parents who love their child, had tried every means to remedy their great affliction, lost hope that their child would ever find its way to being a true vampire. With grieving and breaking hearts, they began to consider whether they should abandon their degenerate offspring to humans, so as not to disgrace the vampire race and clan absolutely.

But one very old vampire, who, already toothless, was living out his days in the chimney of a stable that had burned to the ground, and to whom the despairing parents had finally turned for some word of wisdom, persuaded them to wait a bit longer, and meanwhile to find some decisive and fearless man to be a nanny to their vampire child.

The parents decided that this was wise advice. Barely waiting until the first sign of dawn, they immediately set out among humans. But everyone to whom the vampire turned, no matter how respectfully they asked, resolutely and crossing themselves refused to undertake any such task.

Then somehow, in a woods, the vampires came across a man whom misfortune had dogged so long that he had outrun his fear of them. Without any needless hesitation, and for a small remuneration, the vampires talked the man into taking care of their only child, having promised him that he would be inviolable to all other vampires. The requirements were that the man carry the little vampire out on walks--for in several years it had grown not an inch, so even now its legs folded under it, ropelike--and that he cook for it porridge of dandelions and squeeze the juice of daisy petals--the only food that did not cause the child's cramps.

They came to terms, and the man began to care for the vampire child. Fate had not been kind to the man, and he rejoiced that now things had taken at least a somewhat better turn. At last, after long toil and much disappointment, the man had a roof over his head, even if it was among the vampires, and even ate normal human food, which the vampires brought to him, instead of roots and moldy husks [осушків] serendipitously found.

At first, truth to say, the man was wary of the little vampire, for he remembered that the acorn does not roll far from the oak. But, having satisfied himself that the child did not crave human blood, and that it was indeed puny and feeble, the man stopped being on guard. And because nothing much needed to be done for the child, for, having eaten, rather than play it usually sat quietly in a corner, the man relaxed completely. And having relaxed, he grew lazy and became careless.

So whereas before the man had fed the little vampire three times a day, now he decided that twice a day would suffice, all the more because the child never mentioned being hungry. Then, noticing that it did not cry, the man began to prepare its food just once day, a meal that seemed of no great interest to the child. And then somehow it happened that one fine day the man just forgot to feed the little vampire altogether. This was because that day the man had lunched especially well, for the little vampire's parents, believing that the man was conscientiously caring for their child, had earlier brought a basket loaded with foods and wine that the vampires had taken [напташили] from their victims. And since he who is sated never thinks of someone who is hungry, the man, who had eaten and drunk well, forgot about the vampire and was overtaken now by the urge to sleep.

Until then the man had taken care not to sleep in the presence of the small vampire. But now, deciding there was no danger in it, as things always seem to the satisfied person, and feeling his eyelids grow heavy, he made himself more comfortable, and fell asleep.

That is how the vampire child first saw how a human sleeps.

If the man had fed it, perhaps the vampire child would have paid no attention to this. As it was, it felt hunger, and it began to look around to see if a daisy petal might be lying about somewhere. Laboriously it made its way out from the corner and closer to the table, where there still lay remnants of the food it could not eat. Then it was struck by the discovery that a human sleeps totally differently than vampires do.

For when vampires slept there arose from them a heavy stench of blood, which made the child's extremities grow numb and took away his breath, making him feel sick. But here from the man who during the day, when he was active, let out a smell like a goat's, now, while he slept, there wafted a pleasant aroma that tickled the nostrils.

The vampire child, intrigued, came up close to the man, not yet realizing, naturally, that what smelled so sweet was man's liberty, which during sleep rises up from the flesh and floats above him in a soft, aromatic biscuit [корж].

And because the small vampire was hungry and had found nothing it could eat, it nipped off a shred of this aroma and, slowly consuming a bit of man's freedom, found in astonishment that nothing in the world tastes as sweet as this nourishment.

Furthermore, the more the small vampire ate of this new food, the more tasty he found it, as it lent him strength. The small vampire was so taken by this new food that he stopped himself only when the man heavily began to regain consciousness, as he grasped his chest with his hands, feeling a strange langor and indifference throughout his whole body, unlike any he had known before.

But the man did not realize what had happened, although he looked about on all sides. And how could he have realized anything, when even before the man sat up and rubbed his eyes the vampire child, to whom the new nourishment had brought previously unknown strength and agility, had quickly skitted back into the corner and in no way betrayed that it had just before been feasting on the man's liberty.

For at the very moment that the small vampire tasted man's liberty, there awakened in him not only strength, but intellect, and with it cunning and caution. As a result, the vampire child decided resolutely that from now on human freedom would be its only food. Occasionally, though, when the man remembered the existence of the vampire child, it pretended still to consume only the dandelion porridge and the daisy petal juice, while carefully making sure to feast, while the man slept, on its new, incomparable nourishment.

Thus before long the vampire child consumed all of the man's liberty, for a person without freedom never notices that he is a living corpse. And when the child satisfied itself that all this precious food had been eaten, it asked that its parents reward the man and let him go, and then hold an extravagant banquet, before it set off to go among humans. For the time had come to make its parents rejoice at the realization of their dreams.

And when at that banquet the vampire child proclaimed not only to its parents, but to all its vampire kind that from that day forward it would feed exclusively on human liberty, the vampires, wonderstruck, unanimously agreed that the small, puny vampire child was the most mighty and the most fearsome vampire of all.