Anno Dracula (10 page)

A search was mounted for Shiny Suit, so that a definite time could be established for rescheduling of the attack scene. He had vanished into the mists, presumably to escape the American’s wrath.

Kate huddled under a tree and tried to puzzle out a local newspaper. She was brushing up her Romanian, while simultaneously coping with the euphemisms and lacunae of a non-free press. According to the paper, Meinster had been crushed weeks ago and was hiding in a ditch somewhere, certain to be beheaded within the hour.

She couldn’t help feeling the real story was in the next valley. As a newspaperwoman, she should be there, not waiting around for this stalled juggernaut to get back on track. Meinster’s kids frightened and fascinated her. She should know about them, try to understand. But American Zoetrope had first call on her and she didn’t have the heart to be another defector.

Marty Sheen joined her.

He was mostly recovered and understood what she had done for him, though he was still exploring the implications of their blood link. Just now, he was more anxious about working with Brando - due in next week -than his health.

There was still no scripted ending.

The day the cavalry - well, most of them - came back, faces drawn and downcast, uniforms muddied, eyes haunted, Shiny Suit was discovered with his neck broken, flopped half in a stream. He must have fallen in the dark, tumbling down the precipitous mountainside.

His face and neck were ripped, torn by the sharp thorns of the mountain bushes. He had bled dry into the water, and his staring face was white.

‘It is good that Georghiou is dead,’ Ion pronounced. ‘He upset the maestro.’

Kate hadn’t known the bureaucrat’s name.

Francis was frustrated at this fresh delay, but graciously let the corpse be removed and the proper authorities be notified before proceeding with the shoot.

A police inspector was escorted around by Ion, poking at a few broken bushes and examining Georghiou’s effects. Ion somehow persuaded the man to conclude the business speedily.

The boy was a miracle, everyone agreed.

* * *

‘Miss Reed,’ Ion interrupted.

Dressed as an American boy, with his hair cut by the make-up department, a light-meter hung around his neck, Ion was unrecognisable as the bedraggled orphan who had come to her hotel room in Bucharest.

Kate laid aside her journal and pen.

‘John Popp,’ Ion pronounced, tapping his chest. His J-sound was perfect. ‘John Popp, the American.’

She thought about it.

Ion - no, John - had sloughed off his nationality and all national characteristics like a snake shedding a skin. New-born as an American, pink-skinned and glowing, he would never be challenged.

‘Do you want to go to America?’

‘Oh yes, Miss Reed. America is a young country, full of life. Fresh blood. There, one can be anything one chooses. It is the only country for a vampire.’

Kate wasn’t sure whether to feel sorry for the vampire youth or for the American continent. One of them was sure to be disappointed.

‘John Popp,’ he repeated, pleased.

Was this how Dracula had been when he first thought of moving to Great Britain, then the liveliest country in the world just as America was now? The Count had practised his English pronunciation in conversations with Jonathan, and memorised railway timetables, relishing the exotic names of St Pancras, King’s Cross and Euston. Had he rolled his anglicised name - Count DeVille - around his mouth, pleased with himself?

Of course, Dracula saw himself as a conqueror, the rightful ruler of all lands he rode over. Ion-John was more like the Irish and Italian emigrants who poured through Ellis Island at the beginning of the century, certain America was the land of opportunity and that each potato-picker or barber could become a self-made plutocrat.

Envious of his conviction, affection stabbing her heart, wishing she could protect him always, Kate kissed him. He struggled awkwardly, a child hugged by an embarrassing auntie.

Mists pool around Borgo Pass. Black crags project from the white sea. The coach proceeds slowly. Everyone looks around, wary.

MURRAY: Remember that last phial of laudanum... I just downed it.

WESTENRA: Good show, man.

MURRAY: It’s like the Crystal Palace.

Harker sits by Swales, considering the ancient castle that dominates the view. Broken battlements are jagged against the boiling sky.

HARKER’s Voice:
Castle Dracula. The trail snaked through the forest, leading me directly to him. The Count. The countryside
was
Dracula. He had become one with the mountains, the trees, the stinking earth.

The coach halts. Murray pokes his head out of the window, and sighs in amazement.

SWALES: Borgo Pass, Harker. I’ll go no further.

Harker looks at Swales. There is no fear in the coachman’s face, but his eyes are slitted.

A sliver of dark bursts like a torpedo from the sea of mist. A sharpened stake impales Swales, bloody point projecting a foot or more from his chest.

Swales sputters hatred and takes a grip on Harker, trying to hug him, to pull him onto the sharp point sticking out of his sternum.

Harker struggles in silence, setting the heel of his hand against Swales’s head. He pushes and the dead man’s grip relaxes. Swales tumbles from his seat and rolls off the precipice, falling silently into the mists.

MURRAY: Good grief, man. That was extreme.

Rising over Borgo Pass was Castle Dracula. Half mossy black stone, half fresh orange timber.

Kate was impressed.

Though the permits had still not come through, Francis had ordered the crew to erect and dress the castle set. This was a long way from Bucharest and without Georghiou, the hand of Ceauşescu could not fall.

From some angles, the castle was an ancient fastness, a fit lair for the vampire King. But a few steps off the path and it was a shell, propped up by timbers. Painted board mingled with stone.

If Meinster’s kids were in the forests, they could look up at the mountain and take heart. This sham castle might be their rallying-point. She hummed ‘Paper Moon’, imagining vampires summoned back to these mountains to a castle that was not a castle and a king who was just an actor in greasepaint.

A grip, silhouetted in the gateway, used a gun-like device to wisp thick cobweb on the portcullis. Cages of imported vermin were stacked up, ready to be unloosed. Stakes, rigged up with bicycle seats that would support the impaled extras, stood on the mountainside.

It was a magnificent fake.

Francis, leaning on his staff, stood and admired the edifice thrown up on his orders. Ion-John was at his side, a faithful Renfield for once.

‘Orson Welles said it was the best train set a boy could have,’ Francis said. Ion probably didn’t know who Welles was. ‘But it broke him in the end.’

In her cardigan pocket, she found the joke shop fangs from the 100th Day of Shooting party. Soon, there would be a 200th Day party.

She snapped the teeth together like castanets, feeling almost giddy up here in the mists where the air was thin and the nights cold.

In her pleasant contralto, far more Irish-inflected than her speaking voice, she crooned, ‘It’s a Barnum and Bailey world, just as phoney as it can be, but it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me.’

On foot, Harker arrives at the gates of the castle. Westenra and Murray hang back a little way.

A silent crowd of gypsies parts to let the Englishmen through. Harker notices human and wolf teeth strung in necklaces, red eyes and feral fangs, withered bat-membranes curtaining under arms, furry bare feet hooked into the rock. These are the Szgany, the children of Dracula.

In the courtyard, an armadillo noses among freshly severed human heads. Harker is smitten by the stench of decay but tries to hide his distaste. Murray and Westenra groan and complain. They both hold out large crucifixes.

A rat-like figure scuttles out of the crowds.

RENFIELD: Are you English? I’m an Englishman. R.M. Renfield, at your service.

He shakes Harker’s hand, then hugs him. His eyes are jittery, mad.

RENFIELD: The Master has been waiting for you. I’m a lunatic, you know. Zoophagous. I eat flies. Spiders. Birds, when I can get them. It’s the blood. The blood is the life, as the book says. The Master understands. Dracula. He knows you’re coming. He knows everything. He’s a poet-warrior in the classical sense. He has the vision. You’ll see, you’ll learn. He’s lived through the centuries. His wisdom is beyond ours, beyond anything we can imagine. How can I make you understand? He’s promised me lives. Many lives. Some nights, he’ll creep up on you, while you’re shaving, and break your mirror. A foul bauble of man’s vanity. The blood of Attila flows in his veins. He is the Master.

RENFIELD plucks a crawling insect from Westenra’s coat and gobbles it down.

RENFIELD: I know what bothers you. The heads. The severed heads. It’s his way. It’s the only language they understand. He doesn’t love these things, but he knows he must do them. He knows the truth. Rats! He knows where the rats come from. Sometimes, he’ll say, ‘They fought the dogs and killed the cats and bit the babies in the cradles, and ate the cheeses out of the vats and licked the soup from the cooks’ own ladles.’

Harker ignores the prattle and walks across the courtyard. Scraps of mist waft under his boots.

A huge figure fills a doorway. Moonlight shines on his great, bald head. Heavy jowls glisten as a humourless smile discloses yellow eye-teeth the size of thumbs.

Harker halts.

A bass voice rumbles.

DRACULA: I... am... Dracula.