by Stoker, Bram
Among today’s authors, James Ellroy (Blood’s a Rover and The Cold Six Thousand) is a master of the fast-paced novel; he’s developed what has been dubbed a “telegramatic” style. Ellroy frequently omits conjunctions and any other word that might connect his rapid-fire, ultrashort sentences and phrases.
James Lee Burke (The Light of the World and Creole Belle), the creator of Dave Robicheaux, former New Orleans police detective and one of the most memorable characters in today’s mystery fiction, alternates between the fast pace and the slower, more contemplative pace. When Dave Robicheaux has it out with the bad guy, the action scenes are as slam-bang and direct as anything found in a Mickey Spillane novel. But when Dave is ruminating about matters spiritual, or remembering the past, the prose is near elegiac in tone and speed.
One of the reasons so many of the writers popular during Stoker’s time are no longer read is that their pacing is not just slow, it’s glacial. Too slow is soporific. It’s not the way we’re wired now.
What is the right pace for your story? Time now to introduce a rule more important than any I’ve thus shared. This is the Prime Rule of Pragmatism: If it works, it’s right. And how do you find out which pace is right? You try out slow and you try out fast, and somewhere between the two of them, you’ll likely find the pace at which your story wants to be revealed. Discerning that point takes practice.
The phrases about madness are reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”: “True! nervous—very, very nervous I had been and am! But why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?”
Stoker valued a number of American authors, among them Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, whom Stoker met, and none other than Edgar Allan Poe. Prior to his beginning work on Dracula, Stoker made notes on staging “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
The tone and use of the “soon-to-be unreliable narrator” might well have been an allusion to Poe’s work.
It is said that “There are no atheists in foxholes”—nor it seems in Dracula’s castle! “Conversion through terror” is a known psychological/spiritual phenomenon, and Stoker is writing about the real feelings of real people.
What Hamlet actually says is, “My tables!,—Meet it is I set it down. That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.” Stoker would have known the lines. How many times had he seen Henry Irving as Hamlet? Did he simply recall them incorrectly? Or is he ever so subtly poking fun at Harker, who perhaps thinks himself well educated? A well-educated Englishman quotes The Bard, don’t you know, but Harker’s not at the top of his form at the moment.
Are you bothered that Harker, who just a few paragraphs earlier was fearful for his life and sanity, is now relaxing and taking pleasure in “disobeying” a guy who crawls down walls upside down? It doesn’t ring true. I’m afraid Harker is taking his beauty rest not because he would, but because he is ordered by Stoker to do so. The event seems contrived.
If it ever seems that events occur because an author says they must, the necessary suspension of disbelief a reader should have snaps.
Yet this reminds us that in certain ways, writing a novel gives you license that shorter dramatic forms don’t provide. If the reader has been knocked out of the story-dream by an author’s blunder, there are still so many words—so much “time in story”—with which to haul the reader back into the fabric of the dream and keep her there.
Stoker knows the power of the simple sentence: Here we get four words that make us think, Uh-oh, Dracula’s got him—which proves not to be the case. Stokercraft! He can give us a plot zig when we expect a zag or vice versa, while doing so in a way that makes us accept the “surprise moment” as nonetheless an event true to the narrative’s logic.
Three women! You didn’t see that coming, did you? This could be another classical allusion: Greek mythology. These femme fatales (the accent on fatales) are analogous to the Greek sirens, usually three in number, who lure, seduce, and destroy. This bit of Greek mythology also informs Charles Frazier’s National Book Award–winning Cold Mountain and the hit comedy film O Brother Where Are Thou?
Here we see that Harker is Victorian but also libidinal. Does a novel need a sexual element? Maybe. You decide. J.N. Williamson used to cite what he termed the “First Rule” of Writing: Your Writing Must Be Interesting—And That Means You Must Be Interested In What You Write About!
And so he asked rhetorically, “Is sex ‘of interest?’”
Is Fifty Shades of Grey a bestseller?
“Delightful anticipation” is a phrase you find in erotic books—okay, we’re talking porn—in the Victorian era, the under-the-counter newsstand pulp “All Spicy Stories” of the 1920s, and beyond. Of course, aiming for a Victorian mainstream audience, and not wishing to be censored, Stoker could not write realistically or graphically about sex. A man of his time, he likely would not have been comfortable doing so, giving the reader a fleshy ABC of what goes where. But he did feel free to give us sensuality.
Enter, the Count. Stoker again shows himself the master of dramatic timing. And Dracula is displeased. A particularly striking phrase here is about how the lines (of his face) were hard like drawn wires. That’s a perfect simile. It gives us an exactness of expression without being labored in any way that might cause us to focus on the craft of the phrase instead of the story.
What is revealed by the “fair” girl’s comment? Powerful though Dracula has shown himself to be, these girls (or whatever they may be) are not wholly submissive to him. He is taunted here, and taunted with of all things his lack of humanity because he cannot … love.
Think about Dracula’s response. It comes in a “soft whisper.” Stoker shows Dracula stung by the comment and adds to the richness of the vampire’s character by having him attest that he can love and has loved. We readers can have our moments of sympathy for him, thanks to Stoker’s in-depth characterization.
The term “Splatterpunk” was coined in the mid-1980s to describe a movement within the horror genre marked by extremely visual, sensory-rich, over-the-top, graphic depictions of violence and gore. A splatterpunk rendition of this scene would have shown a baby falling out of the bag, the crack of bone hitting the floor, and then an in-your-face treatment as the three girls … well, you can imagine. To my way of thinking, what Stoker gives us is far more effective. Sometimes less is indeed more.
Stoker does not fall into the overexplaining trap. Modern readers know Dracula to be a vampire and these girls at the least vampiric—but Harker does not know this. What he does know is that he is trapped in a castle, that Dracula can climb down walls upside down, that three ladies want to have their way with him (although he’s not certain of which way that might be)—and that they have just been given a baby and it’s not likely they’ll use the kid to practice mothering skills.
Harker faints.
What will Dracula do?
The three girls?
It’s a … cliff-hanger!
Chapter 4
JONATHAN HARKER’S JOURNAL CONTINUED
I awoke in my own bed. If it be that I had not dreamt, the Count must have carried me here. I tried to satisfy myself on the subject, but could not arrive at any unquestionable result. To be sure, there were certain small evidences, such as that my clothes were folded and laid by in a manner which was not my habit. My watch was still unwound, and I am rigorously accustomed to wind it the last thing before going to bed, and many such details. But these things are no proof, for they may have been evidences that my mind was not as usual, and, for some cause or another, I had certainly been much upset. I must watch for proof. Of one thing I am glad. If it was that the Count carried me here and undressed me, he must have been hurried in his task, for my pockets are intact. I am sure this diary would have been a mystery to him which he would not have brooked. He would have taken or destroyed it. As
I look round this room, although it has been to me so full of fear, it is now a sort of sanctuary, for nothing can be more dreadful than those awful women, who were, who are, waiting to suck my blood.
18 MAY.—I have been down to look at that room again in daylight, for I must know the truth. When I got to the doorway at the top of the stairs I found it closed. It had been so forcibly driven against the jamb that part of the woodwork was splintered. I could see that the bolt of the lock had not been shot, but the door is fastened from the inside. I fear it was no dream, and must act on this surmise.
19 MAY.—I am surely in the toils. Last night the Count asked me in the suavest tones to write three letters, one saying that my work here was nearly done, and that I should start for home within a few days, another that I was starting on the next morning from the time of the letter, and the third that I had left the castle and arrived at Bistritz. I would fain have rebelled, but felt that in the present state of things it would be madness to quarrel openly with the Count whilst I am so absolutely in his power. And to refuse would be to excite his suspicion and to arouse his anger. He knows that I know too much, and that I must not live, lest I be dangerous to him. My only chance is to prolong my opportunities. Something may occur which will give me a chance to escape. I saw in his eyes something of that gathering wrath which was manifest when he hurled that fair woman from him. He explained to me that posts were few and uncertain, and that my writing now would ensure ease of mind to my friends. And he assured me with so much impressiveness that he would countermand the later letters, which would be held over at Bistritz until due time in case chance would admit of my prolonging my stay, that to oppose him would have been to create new suspicion. I therefore pretended to fall in with his views, and asked him what dates I should put on the letters.
He calculated a minute, and then said, “The first should be June 12, the second June 19, and the third June 29.”
I know now the span of my life. God help me!
28 MAY.—There is a chance of escape, or at any rate of being able to send word home. A band of Szgany have come to the castle, and are encamped in the courtyard. These are gipsies. I have notes of them in my book. They are peculiar to this part of the world, though allied to the ordinary gipsies all the world over. There are thousands of them in Hungary and Transylvania, who are almost outside all law. They attach themselves as a rule to some great noble or boyar, and call themselves by his name. They are fearless and without religion, save superstition, and they talk only their own varieties of the Romany tongue.
I shall write some letters home, and shall try to get them to have them posted. I have already spoken to them through my window to begin acquaintanceship. They took their hats off and made obeisance and many signs, which however, I could not understand any more than I could their spoken language …
I have written the letters. Mina’s is in shorthand, and I simply ask Mr. Hawkins to communicate with her. To her I have explained my situation, but without the horrors which I may only surmise. It would shock and frighten her to death were I to expose my heart to her. Should the letters not carry, then the Count shall not yet know my secret or the extent of my knowledge …
I have given the letters. I threw them through the bars of my window with a gold piece, and made what signs I could to have them posted. The man who took them pressed them to his heart and bowed, and then put them in his cap. I could do no more. I stole back to the study, and began to read. As the Count did not come in, I have written here …
The Count has come. He sat down beside me, and said in his smoothest voice as he opened two letters:—
“The Szgany has given me these, of which, though I know not whence they come, I shall, of course, take care. See!”—He must have looked at it.—“One is from you, and to my friend Peter Hawkins. The other,”—here he caught sight of the strange symbols as he opened the envelope, and the dark look came into his face, and his eyes blazed wickedly,—“The other is a vile thing, an outrage upon friendship and hospitality! It is not signed. Well! So it cannot matter to us.” And he calmly held letter and envelope in the flame of the lamp till they were consumed.
Then he went on, “The letter to Hawkins, that I shall, of course send on, since it is yours. Your letters are sacred to me. Your pardon, my friend, that unknowingly I did break the seal. Will you not cover it again?” He held out the letter to me, and with a courteous bow handed me a clean envelope. I could only redirect it and hand it to him in silence. When he went out of the room I could hear the key turn softly. A minute later I went over and tried it, and the door was locked.
When, an hour or two after, the Count came quietly into the room, his coming awakened me, for I had gone to sleep on the sofa. He was very courteous and very cheery in his manner, and seeing that I had been sleeping, he said, “So, my friend, you are tired? Get to bed. There is the surest rest. I may not have the pleasure of talk tonight, since there are many labours to me, but you will sleep, I pray.” I passed to my room and went to bed, and, strange to say, slept without dreaming. Despair has its own calms.
31 MAY.—This morning when I woke I thought I would provide myself with some papers and envelopes from my bag and keep them in my pocket, so that I might write in case I should get an opportunity, but again a surprise, again a shock!
Every scrap of paper was gone, and with it all my notes, my memoranda, relating to railways and travel, my letter of credit, in fact all that might be useful to me were I once outside the castle. I sat and pondered awhile, and then some thought occurred to me, and I made search of my portmanteau and in the wardrobe where I had placed my clothes.
The suit in which I had travelled was gone, and also my overcoat and rug. I could find no trace of them anywhere. This looked like some new scheme of villainy …
17 JUNE.—This morning, as I was sitting on the edge of my bed cudgelling my brains, I heard without a crackling of whips and pounding and scraping of horses’ feet up the rocky path beyond the courtyard. With joy I hurried to the window, and saw drive into the yard two great leiter-wagons, each drawn by eight sturdy horses, and at the head of each pair a Slovak, with his wide hat, great nail-studded belt, dirty sheepskin, and high boots. They had also their long staves in hand. I ran to the door, intending to descend and try and join them through the main hall, as I thought that way might be opened for them. Again a shock, my door was fastened on the outside.
Then I ran to the window and cried to them. They looked up at me stupidly and pointed, but just then the “hetman” of the Szgany came out, and seeing them pointing to my window, said something, at which they laughed. Henceforth no effort of mine, no piteous cry or agonized entreaty, would make them even look at me. They resolutely turned away. The leiter-wagons contained great, square boxes, with handles of thick rope. These were evidently empty by the ease with which the Slovaks handled them, and by their resonance as they were roughly moved. When they were all unloaded and packed in a great heap in one corner of the yard, the Slovaks were given some money by the Szgany, and spitting on it for luck, lazily went each to his horse’s head. Shortly afterwards, I heard the cracking of their whips die away in the distance.
24 JUNE—Last night the Count left me early, and locked himself into his own room. As soon as I dared I ran up the winding stair, and looked out of the window, which opened South. I thought I would watch for the Count, for there is something going on. The Szgany are quartered somewhere in the castle and are doing work of some kind. I know it, for now and then, I hear a far-away muffled sound as of mattock and spade, and, whatever it is, it must be the end of some ruthless villainy.
I had been at the window somewhat less than half an hour, when I saw something coming out of the Count’s window. I drew back and watched carefully, and saw the whole man emerge. It was a new shock to me to find that he had on the suit of clothes which I had worn whilst travelling here, and slung over his shoulder the terrible bag which I had seen the women take away. There could be no doubt as to his quest, and in
my garb, too! This, then, is his new scheme of evil, that he will allow others to see me, as they think, so that he may both leave evidence that I have been seen in the towns or villages posting my own letters, and that any wickedness which he may do shall by the local people be attributed to me.
It makes me rage to think that this can go on, and whilst I am shut up here, a veritable prisoner, but without that protection of the law which is even a criminal’s right and consolation.
I thought I would watch for the Count’s return, and for a long time sat doggedly at the window. Then I began to notice that there were some quaint little specks floating in the rays of the moonlight. They were like the tiniest grains of dust, and they whirled round and gathered in clusters in a nebulous sort of way. I watched them with a sense of soothing, and a sort of calm stole over me. I leaned back in the embrasure in a more comfortable position, so that I could enjoy more fully the aerial gambolling.
Something made me start up, a low, piteous howling of dogs somewhere far below in the valley, which was hidden from my sight. Louder it seemed to ring in my ears, and the floating moats of dust to take new shapes to the sound as they danced in the moonlight. I felt myself struggling to awake to some call of my instincts. Nay, my very soul was struggling, and my half-remembered sensibilities were striving to answer the call. I was becoming hypnotised! Quicker and quicker danced the dust. The moonbeams seemed to quiver as they went by me into the mass of gloom beyond. More and more they gathered till they seemed to take dim phantom shapes. And then I started, broad awake and in full possession of my senses, and ran screaming from the place. The phantom shapes, which were becoming gradually materialised from the moonbeams, were those three ghostly women to whom I was doomed. I fled, and felt somewhat safer in my own room, where there was no moonlight, and where the lamp was burning brightly.
