William Vollmann - Last Stories and Other Stories

“The men around me are dead…”— Altered from Webb, p. 143.

“I prefer cats…”— Altered from Webb, p. 25.

“femininity triumphing over a city”— Webb, p. 11 (Leonor is describing her relief of Amazons trampling men).

The “woman not unlike Giovanna, but with still longer, richer hair”— After Museo Revoltella Trieste, p. 125 ( Streghe Amauri, 1947).

Descriptions of mummies, Sekhmet, Hathor, etcetera— Based on visits to the Museo Egizio di Torino in 2009 and 2012.

THE TRENCH GHOST

Description of the trenches at Redipuglia— After a visit there in May 2012.

“I am not this.”— This simple yet profound point is indebted to I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, trans. from the Marathi taperecordings [ sic ] by Maurice Frydman, rev. & ed. Sudhakar S. Dikshit (Durham, NC: Acorn Press, 1973), p. 59: “To know what you are you must first investigate and know what you are not.”

Description of the pillboxes at Tungesnes (on the coast west of Stavanger)— After a visit there in September 2011.

“Find what is it that never sleeps and never wakes, and whose pale reflection is our sense of ‘I.’” — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, p. 12.

“the pinnacle of military deployment approaches the formless.” — Ralph D. Sawyer, with Mei-Chün Sawyer, comp. and trans., The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China (San Francisco: Westview, 1993), p. 335 (“Questions and Replies between T’ang T’ai-tsung and Li Wei-king” [written in Tang or Sung period], quoting Sun-tzu).

“It is the body that is in danger, not you.” — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, p. 412.

THE FAITHFUL WIFE

A few details of daily life in preindustrial Bohemia are indebted to information in Sylvia Welner and Kevin Welner, eds., Small Doses of Arsenic: A Bohemian Woman’s Story of Survival (New York: Hamilton Books / The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2005), pp. 4–23, 33–35. [The letter-writer’s surname is not given; she is simply introduced as Tonca, writing to her son Jaroslav. Her childhood recollections take place in the early twentieth century; I have assumed that the early-nineteenth-century existence of Michael and Milena’s family was no richer than hers.]

Return of female Romanian vampires; tale of Alexander of Pyrgos— Summers, The Vampire in Europe, pp. 310, 232.

The Bohemian custom of masking oneself on the way home from a funeral— Ibid., p. 287.

The seventh Mansion of the Moon, called Alarzach — Francis Barrett, A Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer: A Complete System of Occult Philosophy (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1975 pbk. repr. of 1975 ed.; orig. pub. 1801), Book I, p. 154.

The tale of Merit— Her grave-goods and her husband’s are on display (“the tomb of Kha”) at the Museo Egizio di Torino.

“I have found a woman more bitter than death…”— Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger, The Malleus Maleficarum, trans. Rev. Montague R. Summers (New York: Dover, 1971 repr. of 1948 rev. ed; orig. Latin ed. ca. 1484), p. 47. (Sentence originally began with “And I have found…”).

The vampire who first chuckles, then whinnies like a horse— Pëtr Bogatyrëv, Vampires in the Carpathians: Magical Acts, Rites, and Beliefs in Subcarpathian Rus’, trans. Stephen Reynolds and Patricia A. Krafcik, w/ bio. intro. by Svetlana P. Sorokina (New York: East European Monographs, dist. Columbia University Press, 1998; orig. French ed. 1929), p. 132.

The Dark Man by the water (“he torments people when he finds them by the waterside”)— Ibid., p. 133.

The eleventh Mansion of the Moon, called Azobra— Barrett, p. 155.

“Some say that vampires have two hearts.”— Information from Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally, The Complete Dracula: Two Books in One! Combining “Dracula, a Biography of Vlad the Impaler,” and the bestseller “In Search of Dracula” (Acton, MA: Copley, 1985), p. 95.

Some of the later descriptions of Milena floating in her bath are inspired by Bonnard paintings.

DOROTEJA

What is done with cristallium etcetera— Dr. G. Storms, Anglo-Saxon Magic (The Hague: Martinius Nijhoff, Centrale Drukkerij N.V., Nijimegen, 1948), p. 235 (The Holy Drink against elf-tricks). Since I have moved this spell to Bohemia, I changed elves to goblins.

“This is my help against the evil late birth…” — Ibid., pp. 196, 199 (Against Miscarriage; original reads “this as my help…”).

Rite of washing in silver-water on New Year’s Day— Bogatyrëv, p. 42.

Churchgoing of dead souls on Holy Saturday— Ibid., p. 68.

The dead woman who returned to bite her husband’s finger— Ibid., p. 120.

THE JUDGE’S PROMISE

Epigraph: “And finally let the Judge come in…”— The Malleus Maleficarum, p. 231.

The incident in Neinstade (which supposedly took place in 1603)— Elaborated after Summers, The Vampire in Europe, p. 201.

“the ill-fated Bohemian rectangle” — Phrase quoted in Joseph Wechsberg, Prague, the Mystical City (New York: Macmillan, 1971), p. 1.

Police work of Frederick the Great and the Police President of Berlin (both actually in the early nineteenth century)— Clive Emsley, Policing and Its Context 1750–1870 (New York: Schocken Books, 1983), pp. 99–100.

Location of the Golem’s corpse and Dr. Faustus’s residence— Wechsberg, pp. 5, 38.

Travails of Bohemian linen-weavers— Jaroslav Pánek, Oldrich Tuma et al., A History of the Czech Lands (Charles University in Prague: Karolinum Press, 2009), p. 292.

Description of the second medallion of the sun— Information from Shah, pp. 46–47.

“And though it was sore grief to us to hear such things of you, inspector…”— Tweaked a trifle from The Malleus Maleficarum, pp. 255–56 (formula uttered to a penitent relapsed heretic).

Characteristics of various demons— Shah, pp. 86–88.

Definition of Abnahaya— Barrett, p. 156.

The witch’s purpose in digging up a dead man’s head— Ibid., p. 108.

“The Romanians say that a vampire can go up into the sky…”— Information from Summers, The Vampire in Europe, p. 306.

The myth of a secret tunnel from Prague’s Jewish Ghetto to Jerusalem— Wechsberg, p. 29.

The witch-events of Saint John’s Day— Bogatyrëv, p. 76.

“this sort of creature does not give anything for nothing.” — Shah, p. 80 ( Grimorium Verum, oldest known version 1517).

JUNE EIGHTEENTH

Epigraph: “So long as there is an Emperor…”— Joan Haslip, The Crown of Mexico: Maximilian and His Empress Carlota (New York: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston, 1972 repr. of 1971 English ed.), p. 367.

Various information on Maximilian’s life and career was obtained from Haslip, and Jasper Ridley, Maximilian and Juárez (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1992).

Maximilian’s aspirations: a castle and garden by the sea— Haslip, p. 113. Some of my descriptions of Miramar are a trifle anachronistic, since the place was merely a “bungalow” when he and Charlotte lived there (Ridley, p. 185).

“Owing to some radical defect in the Mexican character…” — R. Lockwood Tower, ed., A Carolinian Goes to War: The Civil War Narrative of Arthur Middleton Manigault (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992 pbk. repr. of 1983 ed.; orig. ms. prob. bef. 1868), p. 322 (Appendix II: The Mexican War Service of Arthur Middleton Manigault).

Maximilian’s china blue eyes and beautiful teeth— Information from J. J. Kendall, Late Captain H.M. 44th and 6th Regiments, and subsequently in the Service of His late Majesty, the Emperor of Mexico, Mexico Under Maximilian (London: T. Cautley Newby, 1871), p. 157. According to a German observer, however, the Emperor’s “chief defect is his ugly teeth, which he shows too much as he speaks” (Haslip, p. 235).