Stoker's Manuscript (2 page)

D
ouglas Carli headed my due diligence list of contacts. A venture capitalist who worked on Michigan Avenue downtown, he once told me he could secure verbal commitments on six million dollars with a few phone calls if a guy had a good business plan. Sixty million would take a couple days. He worked in the DiPietro Building, and his corner office faced the lake. Whenever I called on him the family portrait seemed to have grown by one, and with each greeting he inquired about my marital status. My response always defended the idea of no rings, no manacles, but in truth I always saw intimacy as something reserved for the screen or the page. Doug’s wife said novenas on my behalf that I might meet a respectable woman. Catholics have novenas for everything.

About ten years ago I received a call from Doug inquiring about a first edition of Michener’s
Alaska
. Not only a first edition—it had to be autographed as well. He was one of my first online customers. Fortune winked my way because I had three
Alaska
s in my collection, one international edition from April 1989 and two Ballantine editions from July 1989. One of the latter was autographed. Regarding authenticity, I told him he had two options: the one included in the price of the book that came from me, or the formal Association-stamped certificate that costs four hundred dollars, payable regardless of outcome.

The Association convenes right there in Chicago and has templates of thousands of original signatures. Being a member, I had walked in, looked at Michener’s signature against the book’s, and seen two flaws. First, the second
e
of his last name looked like it was written over a disturbance. Considering he did not sign the jacket, I held the page the way he would have during signing and felt an irregularity on the inside jacket where the pen likely would have hit a bump. Secondly, the
r
looked like it was written over, normally a flaw that would guarantee an appraiser’s rejection. But under closer scrutiny, I could see the ink was distributed and absorbed simultaneously at signing. See, ink does not lie on top of paper, but rather is absorbed into the fibers depending on which chemicals were used to make the paper. I can tell if ink was applied later to worn paper, as it absorbs differently.

This I relayed to Doug, that I could be reasonably assured it was authentic, but it would not stand the test of certification. He was thrilled to receive it and pay under a thousand dollars. I delivered it to his office, and he showed the jubilant simplicity of a birthday boy, hugging his treasure and showing it to his staff. Thereafter he offered financial advice gratis. Though I had not leaned on him that way before, on this deal I felt shaky flying solo. So I dropped in on Doug with a gift, a first edition
Thinner
, by Stephen King before he wrote under his own name.

Doug was a man of stern demeanor, but easily disarmed by simple gifts. As he thumbed carefully through his new book, I walked to his wall and looked at his latest photo, another family shot, this time gathered in front of some sort of museum.

“Another charity you support?” I asked.

“Yeah, the main charity,” he said with a laugh. “My family.”

“I meant . . .” I pointed at the building. “A museum?”

Doug smiled and nodded. “That’s my house.”

I laughed out of embarrassment, but in truth hoped he thought I was joking. This was the stark contrast between his life’s station and mine—where he sat at the captain’s table, I belonged in steerage.

He pointed to my ring finger. “The novenas working yet?”

I opened my mouth to tell him I was raised by nuns in a Catholic orphanage, a saltpeter experience if ever there was one, but something stopped me. I did not want all future encounters to be underpinned with pity. Instead I said, “My brother says prayers to counter your wife’s. So yes,
his
are working.”

“Behind every man, you know . . .”

“Is a shadow,” I said, “and mine’s quiet.”

He held up his gift, smiling. “Thank you.”

“Actually an exchange,” I said. “The easy kind—just to bleed a little knowledge out of your brain.”

“Oh, good,” he said, and put his reading glasses on. “Name it.”

“How do I verify legitimacy of a Swiss account?”

He pushed his reading glasses up his nose. It seemed to be part of his thought process. “Due diligence on a buyer?”

I nodded affirmatively. “Big transaction on a museum piece.”

“Got a name?”

“Just the agent. Buyer’s demanding anonymity.”

“The agent’s name might point to the buyer. I deal with Zurich bankers every week . . . Make the call for you?”

I hesitated.

“Look, it’s big money, and you’re out there walking the moors on this one, right?”

Again I nodded.

“Did the guy say his confidentiality extended to the buyer or to the agent and buyer?”

“Just the buyer.”

“So what’s the agent’s name?”

“Ardelean.”

Again he pushed his glasses up his nose. “Romanian.”

“Arthur.”

“You know, I get a call every six months or so to JV deals there. Seems they’re sitting on serious untapped oil and natural gas in the southern region.”

“The Wallachian Plain,” I said.

He nodded.

“But you’ve taken flyers. How come?”

“Communist residue. When the Iron Curtain fell, the people hugged and celebrated the fact that they were free. But free to do what? Unless you were taken out and shot, you likely continued doing what you were doing the week before. And so the red tape lingers.”

These things I knew. Nothing changed overnight. “A country led by professors instead of doers.”

“Let’s just say their political cycles are shorter than the time it takes from drill to tap, and nothing’s done in that country on the free market.”

I nodded. “The agent gave me the bank contact information.”

“Then the banker will be a personal banker. He’ll be formal, let you know only what you need to know to complete your transaction. Expect him to speak English, French, and German at a minimum, maybe Dutch, plus the client’s native tongue.”

“I’ll make the call in the morning.”

“Get me the routing number and I’ll verify it’s that bank.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I said.

He pointed his nose down and squinted over his reading glasses. “You don’t leave things like this to chance. You wanna do big deals, you don’t leave the small stuff on the table. That’s why it’s called due diligence.”

Perhaps I had told him too much.

I
am nocturnal by nature, and at two
A.M.
placed my call to a Mr. Gunther Dietz at the bank in Zurich. He was, as Doug predicted, formal and awaiting my call. With a flat voice and Germanic accent, he vouchsafed that the amount in question would be honored and invited no further questions.

Promptly thereafter I pinged one of my best customers, Mara Sadov, with an e-mail and arranged for a meeting later that day. Sometimes a collector for her own volumes, more often on behalf of others, Mara fancied herself a vampire expert. Apparently others did as well, enough to provide her a living out of dispensing knowledge about the mythical creatures. Her website boasted Gypsy lineage and offered advice on vamp lifestyle and accessories, including books. It claimed she frequently spoke at vampire conventions. (I didn’t know there was such a thing.)

A couple months back, when I was asked to authenticate Stoker’s manuscript at the Rosenbach for auction, she offered to prep me on what I could expect to find. As with any big project, my authentication work includes not just examination of documents but the study of their place in history, from the authors’ background to intended audience. I also consider historical dates and other events in order to spot potential anachronisms. I had a long list of research items for Mara to clarify.

I try to schedule my research as close to examination date as possible, then prepare a list of notes to study the day before, but the buyer’s call had just accelerated my schedule. At that point I needed Mara to condense what I would have had to sift through the Internet researching, as well as fill me in on the details that I would not find on the Web.

Once before I had visited her modest woodsy cabin in lower Wisconsin not far from Lake Geneva. The April weather suggested an early summer, warm enough to lure out some greenery and attach a few bugs to my windshield. I drove a Ford Mustang, circa carburetor production era, with a 289. I think. (I’m not a gearhead. I just like the look of the car.) I pulled into her dirt drive and rode the dual ruts’ crown to the rear of her parked Jeep.

Mara met me at the door. She had the countenance of the tenth Solomonari: aquiline features, puckered mouth, and abbreviated reading glasses that lent her a wizened appearance. A paranoiac by nature, Mara questioned the source of all inquiries, including my own.
Dispense
might adequately describe what she did with her knowledge, as she looked over her glasses at you and pursed her lips as if sipping a straw. “Why?” she would say, pronouncing it
vie
, always a cautionary preamble to her responses.

In my opinion, Mara took herself far too seriously, like a costumed theme park employee always in character. For example, when she greeted you she stood inside her doorway, but did not invite you to enter, waiting to see if you would see yourself in. According to convention, vampires do not cross thresholds without an invitation, and this was her way of checking vamp credentials. Yes, it seemed that even mass murderers, however fabled, had a code of conduct.

I stepped past her, inside her house, and Mara followed, satisfied.

“Good to see you, Mr. Joseph,” she said. It had been decades since she lived in Eastern Europe, but she had the voice, with
z
substituting
s
.

“Always a pleasure.”

To enter her house was to prepare for an invasion of the senses, notably scents. Of course the garlic prevailed, lots of it, and rose petals in every room. There were crucifixes everywhere. She also had an extensive thousand-volume library of everything vampire.

“So you wish to enter the world of the undead,” she said.

“Actually, I’m trying to get my usual due diligence done on the Stoker manuscript—when and where he wrote it, for example, and the events around the first and second editions.”

“To immerse in this is to invite the undead into your life.” Mara lifted an eyebrow over her reading glasses in that way the fortune teller asks if you really wish to know of your days ahead.

“Well, we all have to earn a living somehow, Miss Mara.”

“By the time you understand my warning,” she said, “it will be too late, and they
will
be in your life.”

“It’s just a manuscript.”

“It is an invitation.”
Eet eez an invee-tation.

“I plan to inspect the documents and, if authentic, deliver them personally.”

“Deliver . . . personally?” Her voice amplified. “That changes things.”

“I am contractually bound to keep the buyer anonymous.”

“Old money, Europe.” Her eyes squinted. “Balkans, the corridor of war.”

I shrugged, nodded.

Her fingers looked like spinning wheel spokes, and she pointed one at me. “You will need to know certain things.”

“Such as?”

“How to survive.”

“Well, in the meantime, what I’m looking for is the original manuscript: the prologue, all twenty-seven chapters, and the epilogue.”

“Before I tell you these things,” she said after another long pause, “promise you will heed my warnings.”
Vornings.

As she took herself completely seriously, I had no choice but to answer in the affirmative. “Sure. But I’m not clear what you mean.”

“Listen,” she said. “Just listen, my young friend. To survive, you need to know the world you’re entering.”

I nodded, but she saw me trying not to chuckle. It was her turn to shrug. “It’s your soul.” She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and spun toward a stack of books on a shelf. “Here.” She handed me a biography of Bram Stoker. “First you need to understand the author and his work, then the story, then the villain.” She waved the back of her hand my direction. “Keep it.”

“I’ll read it on the way to Philadelphia.”

“The problem”—she pronounced it the same way as Mr. Ardelean,
proh-BLEM
—“is how this man who was busy running a large theater—”

I interrupted, “A man who never wrote anything else of note.”

“Yes.”
Jyezz.
She nodded. “So, how could such a man come up with the most successful horror genre piece in history?”

“Indeed.”

“Some speculate that he had help.”

“Dictated or edited?” I asked.

“I think that is part of your coming journey.”

I said, “Archibald Constable and Company published the manuscript in 1897.”

“But you should find notes dating back to 1890.”

I nodded, made a note. That meant it coincided with the administrations of Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, and William McKinley. I had authenticated some personal correspondence sent by William McKinley to his invalid wife, Ida, on his trip to Buffalo, a trip from which he never returned. In doing so I’d learned that the 1890s were a time of great invention. The decade started with the third of the great European migrations to America and served as the transition to the modern technological era.

Mara leaned toward me. “But Constable’s London facility burned right after the first printing, a complete loss,
all
first editions gone. The publishing house almost went under, and it took Stoker a couple of years to get it out of the courts and published. Fortunately, the original typed manuscript was returned to Stoker’s widow. I trust you will find that in the museum.”

“Along with his handwritten notes.”

“Yes,” she said. “
Their
notes.”

“Tell me about the missing chapters.”

“The first edition had a prologue, where the character Jonathan Harker journeys from Munich and ends up in the wrong cemetery on
Walpurgisnacht
.” When I failed to react, she shook her head as if I should know the severity of his error. “Then the epilogue was left out, and Stoker shortened the ending to have the count slain and turned to dust.”

“Any idea of the last chapter’s content?”

“I’ve seen a copy of the outline—the family put that part on museum display—and it was supposed to have a long battle scene, dramatic death, and much detail of the count’s burial.”

“Why shorten a glorious battle scene?”

“Perhaps another part of your journey, Mr. Joseph. You’ll just have to come tell me afterward.” When she smiled, it looked more like a challenge.

“Where was the count supposed to be buried?”

“Rumor has him in several places,” she said. “Perhaps they are all correct.” Another smile. “Come,” she said, “let us break.”

She made tea and we moved to her porch outside. The day was abuzz with the season’s first visiting insects, and while butterflies negotiated the afternoon breezes, we sat on rocking chairs facing the woods.

“I understand Stoker did not invent vampires.” I knew of the 1819 tale by Polidori entitled
The Vampyre
, the author being Lord Byron’s doctor.

Mara turned her head my direction and stared over her glasses. Her black hair came to precise points in front of her earlobes, and her pursed lips foretold of a nunlike correction. “No one
invented
vampires. They have always been with us, in every era of written history. You may find Stoker’s source material. From Kali in India to the Loogaroo in the Caribbean, every continent has its vampires. Stoker just happened to mass publish in the modern era.”

“The Un-Dead.”

“
The Un-Dead
, yes. His intended title until Constable changed it.” Mara stopped and pointed at my arm, where a mosquito landed. “Ahh,” she said, motioning for me not to swat it. “Observe.”

“You females sticking together?” I knew only female mosquitoes bite for blood. This one seemed to be deciding whether or not to bite.

“To understand the mosquito is to marvel at the creature. Right now she is probing your skin. She has two sets of blades that work like electric carving knives to cut through and insert her fascicle. Her tiny gland will inject you with a fluid that desensitizes and prevents clotting until she is finished.”

I noticed the insect swell with blood and turn red, and felt its intrusion.

“She has sensors that tell her when to release. Afterward, she’ll separate the water from the blood and excrete the blood proteins to nourish her eggs. They’ll be in water somewhere in a tiny little boat-shaped vessel.”

When the insect finished, it labored to flight and bobbed in the air before heading to the porch railing, where it appeared to stop and rest.

“Little vampires.”

“Yes,” she said, intoning that I was starting to catch on. “Vampire teeth are more than simply long canines.” She leaned and reached into her handbag and produced a book, unpublished, bound like a journal. She opened to her intended page before turning the journal my direction, displaying a hand-drawn sketch of a creature opening its mouth like a python. I recognized her handwritten notes beside the drawing.

“Ah,” I said. “So the lower jaw unhinges from the jawbone.”

“Mm-hmm. And this is how they hunger.” She turned the page, and another sketch showed the canine teeth. “The empty stomach collapses like a drained hot water bottle, signaling the brain that it is empty. This cycle takes about twenty-one days.”

“Time to eat again.”

“Almost,” she said. “It takes several more days before the moon’s gravitational pull lifts the fluids in the brain and releases the chemical signal to eat, among other things.”

“Like high tide,” I said. “Full moon.”

“Sometimes a day or two prior. Don’t be out those nights.”

I nodded, continuing to indulge her. “You said ‘among other things.’ What are the other things?”

“Pure adrenaline.”

“To give it strength, speed?”

“Yes, to prey.” She pointed to another sketch, a drawing with two arrows pointing toward the upper lips. “Two prominent glands above the teeth along the jawline, barely detectable under facial hair. Causes the canines to protrude slightly.”

“Fascicles. Like the mosquito.”

She nodded. “Small knives rubbing together to slice into your neck. Once inside, the probe finds the artery, while the gland produces an anticoagulant to allow free flow to the stomach. Takes only seconds. Once the stomach lining stretches, it sends a signal to the gland to start producing a coagulant to close up.”

“So the victim gets a little vamp fluid in exchange.”

“Most unfortunate for the victim, I assure you,” she said in that schoolmarm voice. “The vampire must leave right away and rest a few hours to begin his digestive process. He has a semiporous stomach that separates the fluids from blood proteins.”

“Again, like the mosquito. So then he, or she, will excrete the blood proteins to—”

“No.” She shook her head. “He has no orifices.”

“Through the skin, then?”

She nodded and wrinkled her nose.

“Thus a smell,” I said.

“Like a decaying animal.”

I pointed to a braid of garlic she had hanging on the porch. “What’s with the garlic?”

“It is more than just an aromatic,” she said. “What happens to you when you slice an onion?”

“You mean the tears?”

“Yes. Just a few floating particles get on his skin or in his nostrils,” Mara said, motioning with her fingers toward her nose. “It’s like pepper spray.”

I nodded. “What about the flying?”