The Mammoth Book of Dracula (21 page)

“I understand.”

Then Karolides came forward and put his hand on Thompson’s shoulder in what was becoming a familiar gesture.

“What I really wanted to tell you was that Ravenna would like to take you to a very entertaining little restaurant in town.”

He glanced at his watch.

“Shall we say an hour’s time? In the lobby downstairs?”

~ * ~

VII

The tzigane orchestra was low and pleasing and the food excellent, even if Thompson found the bizarre decor a little garish. But he had no time for the blurred background to their meal, as he was concentrating entirely on the girl.

She looked extremely beautiful in a dark low-cut gown with just a simple gold pendant around her neck. He noticed that somehow—perhaps with a type of white make-up—she had obscured the tattoo marks, for which he was thankful, as he was conscious that the two of them were the centre of attention.

“You look wonderful,” was all he could manage as they waited for the dessert to be brought to the table.

And it was true. The recent transfusion she had undergone had worked a remarkable transformation in her. Her eyes were sparkling, her cheeks flushed, her whole manner animated and vivacious. The melancholy had gone from her expression and she smiled frequently, exposing the beautiful white teeth.

“This is all due to you, Mr Thompson,” she said in a low voice.

Thompson shrugged deprecatingly. Ravenna smiled again.

“Your blood now runs in my veins. That means a great deal in our country.”

Thompson felt uneasiness, not for the first time.

“It was the least I could do,” he stammered. “What would the alternative have been?”

“Ah!”

She drew in her breath with a long, hissing sigh.

“That does not bear thinking about.”

She cast her eyes down toward the snow-white tablecloth.

“Tonight you will get your reward.”

Again a great flash of unease passed through Thompson. He pretended to have misheard. And he was so unused to the ways of women that he was afraid he might misinterpret the meaning.

“I already have that in the joy of your company.”

They had finished the dessert and were on coffee and cognac when Thompson found the manager at his side, deferential and suave.

“Mr Karolides’s guests,” he said to Thompson, but looking across at Ravenna. Thompson felt a flicker of amusement; perhaps Karolides owned the restaurant too? They drove back to the Magnolia in the big coupe, the warm Mediterranean air ruffling the girl’s dark hair. The pair rode up in the lift in silence. He saw her to the door of her own suite, next to her father’s, No. 46.

“Will you not come in for a nightcap?”

The invitation could not be refused; it was more of a command than a question, and she had already opened the door and switched on the light. He followed her in to find a replica of Karolides’s suite next door. He glanced at a gold-framed photograph of Ravenna and a young man of striking beauty, with clear-minted features and bronze curls. The girl intercepted his glance.

“None of these things will ever come back and all we can do is cry and beat our wings against the encroaching darkness.”

An oppressive silence had descended on the room and Thompson answered hurriedly, “That is the poetess in you speaking again.”

She brightened.

“Oh, yes. I heard you had been reading my work.”

“I hope you don’t mind.”

She shook her head.

“You certainly have esoteric tastes,” Thompson went on. “Chiromancy, witchcraft and all those things.”

“I find them fascinating. Can I offer you a goblet of our very special wine?”

Thompson assented and went to sit on a rococo divan so huge that it took up one third of the room’s length. She handed him the gold-rimmed crystal goblet and they drank a silent toast. The time passed in a hazy dream. Thompson awoke to find himself sprawled on the divan. The room was in darkness, with only a pale light shining through the blinds. Ravenna’s cool, nude body was beside him. She helped him to undress. Then they made love fiercely for what seemed like hours. It was past three a.m. before he let himself out into the corridor. He sought his room, showered and fell on to the bed. He had never felt so happy in his life.

~ * ~

VIII

Next morning he was down early, but Ravenna was earlier still. There was no one else in the dining room except for a solitary waiter, who stood yawning in the far corner near the coffee percolator. The couple’s hands met beneath the tablecloth.

“Did you sleep well?”

Thompson laughed.

“Fragmentarily,” he conceded. “I hope we didn’t wake your father in the next suite.”

It was the girl’s turn to express amusement.

“Do you not recall what I told you on the raft? That he would laugh if he heard you say that.”

Thompson was bewildered.

“I don’t understand.”

Ravenna gave him a level glance.

“He is not my father. He is my husband!”

“Your husband!”

Thompson felt a great wave of shock and nausea well up inside him. He felt betrayed and looked around the room like some animal at bay. She put a cool hand on his own as though he were a child who needed to be soothed.

“I had such great hopes ...” he began wildly.

“Do not abandon them,” she said softly.

Thompson half-got to his feet, caught the waiter’s surprised glance across the room and sat down again hurriedly.

“What am I to say to him?” he said bitterly. “This betrayal...”

She laughed again.

“You do not understand us. He and I do not have proprietary rights in one another.”

“What do you mean?”

“She means just what she says.”

A shadow had fallen across the tablecloth and Karolides’s tall figure was behind him. He gently pressed the Englishman back into his seat. He sat down opposite, his hypnotic eyes boring into Thompson’s own.

“Let me explain, Mr Thompson. We had to get your help to save Ravenna. Let that be agreed between us. It is true we deceived you but that was for a good cause. And nothing has changed in the relationship.”

Anger was stirring in Thompson now.

“But how can you condone such a thing!”

Ravenna looked at him pleadingly but Thompson ignored her.

“Just listen,” Karolides went on in such a very low, even tone that Thompson lapsed into silence.

“In our philosophy of
agape,
women are not property to be bought and sold. I thought all that old sense of morality and fidelity had long since disappeared. Ravenna and I enjoy an open marriage. Beautiful women have a duty to spread their charms about in as wide a sphere as possible, so long as they are not doing harm to others. Think nothing of it.”

All manner of resentful thoughts were boiling in Thompson’s brain, but he remained silent beneath Karolides’s imperious gaze. The Greek went on in an even lower voice.

“Do not look so shocked, my dear Mr Thompson. It means nothing to us. Women are not mere possessions as in many Anglo-Saxon societies. They have minds and bodies that belong to themselves only. A beautiful woman has a duty to share her charms with others and give them joy also.”

Thompson noticed his napkin had dropped to the floor. To cover his confusion and anger he bent down to pick it up. As he straightened, he saw a small stain on the underside of the cuff of Karolides’s white jacket.

“There’s a spot of blood there,” he mumbled.

His host glanced at it casually.

“Oh, yes,” he said awkwardly. “I cut myself shaving. Thank you.”

He dipped his handkerchief in his water glass and rubbed the stain away. Thompson did not miss the strange glance that passed between husband and wife.

Karolides resumed his monologue as though nothing had happened.

“Such beauty should be shared, is it not? Not hidden away for one man’s selfish delectation. Let us be friends again.”

He returned Ravenna’s smile good-naturedly.

“You will see it our way, in time ... Come, let us commence our breakfast.”

But Thompson staggered from the room, disgusted to his soul. His anguish was indescribable—his brain on fire and chaotic thoughts inhabiting his fevered imagination as he walked like a drunken man along the Corniche, not knowing or caring where he was going. It was only the blare of motor horns that warned him of his danger, and he ran across the road to the promenade and sought the beach.

Dusk found him there, staring sightlessly out at a sea which had grown cold and turned a gun-metal grey. It was there that Ravenna and Karolides found him, after a long search, and sat with him for a while. When it was dark they took his insensible form, placed it in the back of the car, and the Greek drove swiftly to Professor Kogon’s clinic, Ravenna cradling her lover’s head as the miles slipped by beneath the whirring tyres.

When Thompson woke he was in a white bed with metal trolleys alongside and a bright light beating from the ceiling. He vaguely made out the anxious faces of Karolides and Ravenna. He could remember nothing of the intervening hours. His thoughts were jumbled; like dreams, hallucinatory and chaotic with images that made no sense. As a medical student he had read in a textbook that ants used greenfly as milch cows. In a brief interval of sanity he realized that he had been Ravenna’s milch cow. He mumbled something unintelligible before relapsing into unconsciousness. When he was again aware of his surroundings he saw that Professor Kogon had a serious face as he conversed with Karolides in low, urgent tones.

“He is dying,” the Professor was saying. “I cannot understand it. He is almost completely drained of blood. And as you know, his type is so rare that we are unable to give him a transfusion.”

He shook his head despairingly. Ravenna looked radiant. Thompson thought she had never looked so beautiful or desirable. His consciousness was fading but he could just see that Ravenna and Karolides were giving him welcoming smiles as he went down to
Eternal Life.

<>

~ * ~

KIM NEWMAN

Coppola’s Dracula

KIM NEWMAN is a novelist, critic and broadcaster. His books include
The Night Mayor, Bad Dreams, Jago, The Quorum, The Original Dr Shade and Other Stories, Famous Monsters, Seven Stars, Unforgivable Stories, Dead Travel Fast, Life’s Lottery, Back in the USSA
(with Eugene Byrne),
Where the Bodies Are Buried, Doctor Who: Time and Relative, The Man From the Diogenes Club, Secret Files of the Diogenes Club
and
Mysteries of the Diogenes Club
under his own name, and
The Vampire Genevieve
and
Orgy of the Blood Parasites
as “Jack Yeovil”. Forthcoming is the author’s “Professor Moriarty” fix-up novel,
The Hound of the D’urbervilles.

His non-fiction books include
Ghastly Beyond Belief
(with Neil Gaiman),
Horror: 100 Best Books
and
Horror: Another 100 Best Books
(both with Stephen Jones),
Wild West Movies, The BFI Companion to Horror, Millennium Movies, Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen since the 1960s
and BFI Classics studies of
Cat People
and
Doctor Who.

The author’s acclaimed series of vampire novels—
Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Baron
and
Dracula Cha Cha Cha—
is being reissued by Titan Books, along with the previously unpublished collection of novellas,
Johnny Alucard
(which will include the story that follows).

Newman is a contributing editor to
Sight & Sound
and
Empire
magazines and has written and broadcast widely on a range of topics, scripting radio documentaries about Val Lewton and role-playing games and TV programmes about movie heroes and Sherlock Holmes. His short story “Week Woman” was adapted for the Canadian TV series
The Hunger,
and he has written and directed a tiny short film entitled
Missing Girl.