The Mammoth Book of Dracula (29 page)

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 stake, 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 Szekely, 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. Afoul 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.

~ * ~

Francis had first envisioned Dracula as a stick-insect skeleton, dried up, hollow-eyed, brittle. When Brando arrived on set, weighing in at 250 pounds, he had to rethink the character as a blood-bloated leech, full to bursting with stolen life, overflowing his coffin.

For two days, Francis had been trying to get a usable reading of the line, “I am Dracula.” Kate, initially as thrilled as anyone else to see Brando at work, was bored rigid by numberless mumbled retakes.

The line was written in three-foot tall black letters on a large piece of cardboard held up by two grips. The actor experimented with emphases, accents, pronunciations from “Dorragulya” to “Jacoolier”. He read the line looking away from the camera and peering straight at the lens. He tried it with false fangs inside his mouth, sticking out of his mouth, shoved up his nostrils or thrown away altogether.

Once he came out with a bat tattooed on his bald head in black lipstick. After considering it for a while, Francis ordered the decal wiped off. You couldn’t say that the star wasn’t bringing ideas to the production.

For two hours now, Brando had been hanging upside down in the archway, secured by a team of very tired technicians at the end of two guy-ropes. He thought it might be interesting if the Count were discovered like a sleeping bat.

Literally, he read his line upside down.

Marty Sheen, over whose shoulder the shot was taken, had fallen asleep.

“I am Dracula. I am Dracula. I am Dracula. I am Dracula. I am Dracula! I am Dracula?

“Dracula am I. Am I Dracula? Dracula I am. I Dracula am. Am Dracula I?

“I’m Dracula.

“The name’s Dracula. Count Dracula.

“Hey, I’m Dracula.

“Me ... Dracula. You ... liquid lunch.”

He read the line as Stanley Kowalski, as Don Corleone, as Charlie Chan, as Jerry Lewis, as Laurence Olivier, as Robert Newton.

Francis patiently shot take after take.

Dennis Hopper hung around, awed, smoking grass. All the actors wanted to watch.

Brando’s face went scarlet. Upside down, he had problems with the teeth. Relieved, the grips eased up on the ropes and the star dropped towards the ground. They slowed before his head cracked like an egg on the ground. Assistants helped him rearrange himself.

Francis thought about the scene.

“Marlon, it seems to me that we could do worse than go back to the book.”

“The book?” Brando asked.

“Remember, when we first discussed the role. We talked about how Stoker describes the Count.”

“I don’t quite ...”

“You told me you knew the book.”

“I never read it.”

“You said ...”

“I lied.”

~ * ~

Harker, in chains, is confined in a dungeon. Rats crawl around his feet. Water flows all around.

A shadow passes.

Harker looks up. A gray bat-face hovers above, nostrils elaborately frilled, enormous teeth locked. Dracula seems to fill the room, black cape stretched over his enormous belly and trunk-like limbs.

Dracula drops something into Harker’s lap. It is Westenra’s head, eyes white.

Harker screams.

Dracula is gone.

~ * ~

An insectile clacking emerged from the Script Crypt, the walled-off space on the set where Francis had hidden himself away with his typewriter.

Millions of dollars poured away daily as the director tried to come up with an ending. In drafts Kate had seen—only a fraction of the attempts Francis had made—Harker killed Dracula, Dracula killed Harker, Dracula and Harker became allies, Dracula and Harker were both killed by Van Helsing (unworkable, because Robert Duvall was making another film on another continent), lightning destroyed the whole castle.

It was generally agreed that Dracula should die.

The Count perished through decapitation, purifying fire, running water, a stake through the heart, a hawthorn bush, a giant crucifix, silver bullets, the hand of God, the claws of the Devil, armed insurrection, suicide, a swarm of infernal bats, bubonic plague, dismemberment by axe, permanent transformation into a dog.

Brando suggested that he play Dracula as a Green Suitcase.

Francis was on medication.

~ * ~

“Reed, what does he mean to you?”

She thought Francis meant Ion-John.

“He’s just a kid, but he’s getting older fast. There’s something ...”

“Not John. Dracula.”

“Oh, him.”

“Yes, him. Dracula. Count Dracula. King of the Vampires.”

“I never acknowledged that title.”

“In the 1880s, you were against him?”

“You could say that.”

“But he gave you so much, eternal life?”

“He wasn’t my father. Not directly.”

“But he brought vampirism out of the darkness.”

“He was a monster.”

“Just a monster? In the end, just that?”

She thought hard.

“No, there was more. He was more. He was ... he
is,
you know ... big. Huge, enormous. Like the elephant described by blind men. He had many aspects. But all were monstrous. He didn’t bring us out of the darkness. He was the darkness.”

“John says he was a national hero.”

“John wasn’t born then. Or turned.”

“Guide me, Reed.”

“I can’t write your ending for you.”

~ * ~

At the worst possible time, the policeman was back. There were questions about Shiny Suit. Irregularities revealed by the autopsy.

For some reason, Kate was questioned.

Through an interpreter, the policemen kept asking her about the dead official, what had their dealings been, whether Georghiou’s prejudice against her kind had affected her.

Then he asked her when she had last fed, and upon whom?

“That’s private,” she said.

She didn’t want to admit that she had been snacking on rats for months. She had had no time to cultivate anyone warm. Her powers of fascination were thinning.

A scrap of cloth was produced and handed to her.

“Do you recognize this?” she was asked.

It was filthy, but she realized that she did.

“Why, it’s my scarf. From Biba. I...”

It was snatched away from her. The policeman wrote down a note.

She tried to say something about Ion, but thought better of it. The translator told the policeman Kate had almost admitted to something.

She felt distinctly chilled.

She was asked to open her mouth, like a horse up for sale. The policeman peered at her sharp little teeth and tutted.

That was all for now.

~ * ~

“How are monsters made?”

Kate was weary of questions. Francis, Marty, the police. Always questions.

Still, she was on the payroll as an adviser.

“I’ve known too many monsters, Francis. Some were born, some were made all at once, some were eroded, some shaped themselves, some twisted by history.”

“What about Dracula?”

“He was the monster of monsters. All of the above.”

Francis laughed.

“You’re thinking of Brando.”

“After your movie, so will everybody else.”

He was pleased by the thought.

“I guess they will.”

“You’re bringing him back. Is that a good idea?”

“It’s a bit late to raise that.”

“Seriously, Francis. He’ll never be gone, never be forgotten. But your Dracula will be powerful. In the next valley, people are fighting over the tatters of the old, faded Dracula. What will your Technicolor, 70 mm, Dolby stereo Dracula
mean?”

“Meanings are for the critics.”

~ * ~

Two Szekelys throw Harker into the great hall of the castle. He sprawls on the straw-covered flagstones, emaciated and wild-eyed, close to madness.

Dracula sits on a throne which stretches wooden wings out behind him. Renfield worships at his feet, tongue applied to the Count’s black leather boot. Murray, a blissful smile on his face and scabs on his neck, stands to one side, with Dracula’s three vampire brides.

Dracula:
I
bid you welcome. Come safely, go freely and leave some of the happiness you bring.

Harker looks up.

Harker:
You ... were a Prince.