Anti Vampire Center

Always giving the correct importance to the Vampire's actions

Granting respect to the Vampire means first of all giving importance to his actions, noticing them personally and making him notice them. That will create the conditions to put him in front of the mirror where he will encounter his Nothingness. This is an extremely delicate operation, as we have said, which can only be accomplished by resorting to a measured mix of courage, intelligence and love for oneself, for others, and for the just things in life.

In the short story The Building Manager, Massimo, after having been repeatedly humiliated both by the manager (who does not greet him on principle) and the caretaker (who only withholds his greeting when his boss is present), finally finds the courage to give the correct importance to their stupid, rude behavior, without renouncing either his own self-respect nor respect for that strange pair of Vampires. Of the two of them, the caretaker will prove to be the worst, because he has chosen to sacrifice his familiarity with Massimo to the presumed pleasure that someone in a position of "power" experiences by humiliating him. The building manager, on the other hand, will learn a lesson and will emerge from the vampiric scheme of not-greeting having acquired some manners. An acquisition that perhaps he would have made much sooner had someone made him face the mirror of his rudeness, rather than going along with his worst tendencies.

Massimo let go of the doorknob and the door closed by itself. He thought of Ale. "Do not forsake me, oh my Darling", he began to hum in his head. High noon. In fact, it was almost noon. And he was alone, like sheriff Kane. "I love you", he said, in a low voice. And he seemed to hear Ale's voice whispering "I love you" in his ear. He turned toward the two of them and approached with slow, measured steps. They heard him coming but neither deigned to pay him any attention. Massimo had expected this. He stared at the back of the impudent building manager's neck. Then he spoke:
"Excuse me, sir...", he began with affected humility, "Don't you ever respond to greetings, or is there something personal you have against me?"
The entire universe seemed to plunge into silence. A silence that was primordial, magma like, pre-existing the spoken word. The caretaker was the first to react. He looked at him with his mouth open and his eyes popping out of their sockets, as though Massimo had just overturned a sacred chalice full of hosts and had begun to trample them savagely.
The building manager, on the other hand, had finally stopped staring at his papers and very slowly turned his head until he was able to look at Massimo. The glasses on his nose and the eyes still squinting a little from having been focused on his reading gave him a half ecstatic, half foolish look. Semi-reclined on the bench as he was, he looked like a drunken Roman glutton sitting back on a triclinium and guzzling quail eggs.
"What did he say?", he asked the caretaker with a voice that was hoarse and muffled as a result of that absurd position.
The caretaker remained silent and watched him. So intent was he on awaiting his orders that he wasn't even able to answer his lord and master.
"I asked you", Massimo intervened: "Don't you ever respond to greetings, or is there something personal you have against me?"
As the caretaker put his head in his hands, the building manager was overcome by a kind of tremor that went through his entire body. Still shivering a little, he opened his mouth wide in an extraordinary yawn, then recomposed himself in a more graceful position, sitting straight up on the bench. He seemed to awake from a dream and his face instantly took on an expression of human concern.
"I'm very sorry", he said unexpectedly. "I'm always distracted when I'm working. No, of course not, nothing personal. Why should there be? You're a very fine person. You and your wife. When I speak of you, I always speak of you with enthusiasm, to everybody. 'Our journalist', I call you. I always read your articles. I even saw you on television once, and I said to my wife: 'There he is, the gentleman from the ground floor, our journalist. I'm sorry, really".
The building manager got up, went toward Massimo and held out his hand which Massimo clasped warmly. As the two shook hands, the caretaker looked at Massimo with a delighted smile, as if to say: "Welcome aboard, my friend. You see? By being patient, in the end you've been given a little human dignity". Massimo ignored him.
Without looking at the caretaker, Massimo walked to the front door, opened it and went out, as the building manager repeated behind him: "Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning..."

Massimo again (but at a different period in his life, and in another story) takes on the task of neutralizing none other than Samuel Serrandi, the merciless Vampire of the story of the same name. As a framework to his miserable deception, the latter, in their first encounter, had used his entire repertory of lies (from his trips to his exaggerated way of life up to and including his "two degrees, almost three"), but in the second encounter he not only pays a price for all the lies of the first meeting, but sees Massimo refute blow by blow every new attempt on his part to invent absurd stories.

[...] The day after, at four o’clock, Serrandi rang the bell gently. "Is that you, Dr. Serranda?"
"Dr. Samuel Serrandi. You may open with confidence."
[...] "You, Dr. Serramenti, have a degree in Law, don’t you?"
"Serrandi. Yes, I do in Jurisprudence. And in Languages, too."
"With whom did you get your degree in Law?"
"Well, in Jurisprudence. Wait, but you know I don’t remember it? Ah yes, with one whose name was Rossi. A fellow… I don’t tell you… Think that once…"
"When I said with whom I meant what specialization."
"What specialization, you tell me. Specialization … the classical one of Jurisprudence… It’s obvious."
"And what is the classical one of Jurisprudence?"
"…Law…"
"What Law?"
"Law… of precedure…"
"Law of precedence? But what are you saying?"
Serrandi’s big face had become purple. He began with a little cough and to clear his throat. Then he pretended he had heard his cellular phone ring and begging pardon in hoarse voice went to the corridor, where suddenly he improvised a telephone conversation in a loud voice with a ghost. When he came back he was all cheerful again and began to talk about a certain customer of his, a famous English heart surgeon, who had invited him to have tea at five. And since the English do not allow delays, especially for tea, it was better to hurry up.
"What’s your heart surgeon’s name?"
"Oh, he isn’t my heart surgeon at all. Let’s hope we’ll never need him. He’s one of my customers. Not me one of his customers," he said in smarting tone. But his smile deadened on his lips when Massimo repeated to him: "What’s his name?"
"Well… his name… Smith. Professor Smith, from London."
"Make me understand, you get your degree with a certain Rossi, your best customer’s name is Smith. I bet that you know Professor O’Hara from Dublin and Dr. Popov from Moscow as well, don’t you?"
Serrandi did not even go as far as understand the quip, but with the expression of one who, seething hatred, is obliged to smile to the severe grandfather that is about to hand the Christmas box, he sat down again. Then he seemed to have a sudden idea, darted a grim glance at Massimo and started to draw out the already signed copy of the contract.
"And in Languages? What language did you graduate in?"
Serrandi’s eyes became red from anger and his mouth assumed a cruel wrinkle. He did not resist and burst out, this time, even though in his quip there was a trace of patient good nature.
"Excuse me, but what do you want from me?"
"Me nothing. It was not I to tell you about my journeys, my gastronomic preferences and my degrees. And now that at last, overcome the embarrass of the first moments, I show interest in the topics dearest to you, do you even take it amiss?"
"No, for Heaven’s sake. That would be the last straw. I’m only a bit in a hurry…"
"I won’t let you waste time, I assure you. I was just asking what language you graduated in."
"I have studied a little all languages. You know, when one is inclined. And then, having to travel…"
"I was asking for that of the thesis, probably the quadrennial language. Or did you do a little of all of them quadrennial?"
"All, all. Look, I devoted myself as never before in my life. I even came down with a nervous breakdown. Well, now it’s high time to go," he concluded in a trembling voice. Two large beads of sweat fell on his light wool azure jacket, one after the other.

[...]"You see, Mr. Saracinesca…"
"Serrandi!" he said yelling and with his eyes out of their orbits, "… And knock it off making fun of my surname. Here we aren’t at the cinema and you aren’t Totò! Serrandi, if you haven’t got it yet. Better, Dr. Serrandi, if you don’t mind!"
"Come on: "Doctor"… but you knock it off. And now in what are you graduating, in Philosophy?"
"Why? Why?? What do you mean? Hey? You, what do you want from me? Do you know that the Champyon Editions and the Sisthematic Multimedial don’t even consider the curricula of candidates with a diploma? Yes: Philosophy. And so?"
"Don’t take it amiss. I’m convinced of what you affirm. Also because I have no doubt at all that the Champyon Editions and the Sisthematic Multimedial, supposing they exist, accept only graduates specializing in Law of Precedence and in Languages-Mixture. By the way, what will the thesis in Philosophy be about? On the moneyaids of Leibniz?"
Serrandi sprang up like a fury, put the contract back into the bag crumpling it all, closed the bag and headed for the front door soundly striding away. Then he yelled: "See you again in court!" and slammed the door noisily. Massimo sat silently for some minutes. Then he stood up and went to the corridor towards the front door, but immediately noticed Serrandi sunk into one of the small armchairs in the porch, seemingly to grips with some attack.
"I thought you had gone out," said Massimo with an inexpressive tone.
Serrandi, with a very weak voice, answered him: "Water. Please, a glass of water."
"Would you prefer some tea? As a matter of fact it seems that you skipped the ritual of five o’clock tea with the British heart surgeon."

[...] Massimo threw his papers on the table, rubbed his hands, clapped them loudly, and in a conclusive tone said: "[...] I won’t pay you."
"Sure, you’ll pay me. Or I’ll sue on this very day."
"This too will happen today. And this is true, your suing isn’t," said Massimo calmly handing him the other paper, the one he had held tight before, along with the check. It was a photocopy of the registered letter of withdrawal from the contract no. 6646 drawn up the day before, ‘according to and due to paragraph 6 Legislative Decree no.50 of January 15, 1992’…"
Serrandi gnashed his teeth as an angry dog and brandished a big fist that looked like the hammer of a Nordic god. His face was purple and the thick head of blond hair seemed ruffle up visibly like the mane of an infuriated lion.
"If you lay your hands on me I only need to scream out to my neighbor. He is a Police commissioner, but he may be interested in your computer publishing programs. Who knows. You never know. If you still won’t break my face."
Serrandi was broken.

In the short story The Mask, Ale is tormented by the ghost of her mother, who continues to apply her scheme of emotional vampirism from the afterlife. Thanks to a frightening psychological effort, Ale breaks the spell by finally weighing her mother's words about the man she loves, and by including in her final answer - perfect because it is true - the meaning of her own liberation from her mother's blackmail.

The bell rang.
"Why have you never loved him, Mum?", said Ale with her voice quivering.
"Because he is a tepid. A coward. A dead. And you aren’t."
The bell rang a second time.
"It’s not true. He is alive. And also Aurora is alive. And also I…"
"You are like me. Not like him."
Ale, who was sobbing by now, repeated:
"Why don’t you love him? Why?"
The bell rang again.
"The thing I’ll never be able to understand is why you chose him. Why him?"
"Mum…"
"Why? Answer me, my daughter. Why?", the mother pressed her, suddenly assuming an imploring tone.
"…Mum…", whispered Ale again, and instinctively strengthened her hand towards her in the gesture of taking off a mask.
"Why?", repeated the mother withdrawing, while her figure, now astonished was breaking up slowly.
The bell was ringing madly, and Massimo, who feared his child’s health, had started to call Ale in a loud voice.
"…Why…", started Ale without succeeding in continuing the sentence…
Then, while the darkness was spreading in the kitchen and her mother’s voice remained only a rhythmical and feeble echo, in the mumbling of the crying she succeeded in saying:
"…he loves me".