“I see.”
The two men stood deep in thought for a few moments more. “There are some beautiful things in it,” Thompson said awkwardly, feeling that he had been less than enthusiastic about the piece.
“Thank you, Mr. Thompson. I just thought I would warn you about this matter, as I note that you and she are becoming good friends. It was a long time ago, of course. But such memories run deep and I would not wish her to be hurt again.”
“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 makeup—she had obscured the tattoo marks, for which he was thankful, as he was conscious that the two of them were the center 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 coupé, 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 3:00 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 Ito 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 gray. 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 tires.
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 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, Mysteries of the Diogenes Club, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the d’Urbervilles, An English Ghost Story, The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School, and Angels of Music under his own name, and The Vampire Genevieve and Orgy of the Blood Parasites as “Jack Yeovil.”
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, Kim Newman’s Video Dungeon, and BFI Classics studies of Cat People, Doctor Who, and Quatermass and the Pit.
The author’s acclaimed series of vampire novels—Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Baron and Dracula Cha Cha Cha—has been reissued by Titan Books, along with the new volumes Johnny Alucard, Anno Dracula 1899 and Other Stories, Anno Dracula: One Thousand Monsters, and the collected edition of the comic Anno Dracula 1895: Seven Days in Mayhem with art by Paul McCaffrey.
Newman is a contributing editor to Empire magazine and has written and broadcast widely on a range of topics, scripting radio documentaries about Val Lewton and role-playing games, and TV programs about movie heroes and Sherlock Holmes. His short story “Week Woman” was adapted for the Canadian TV series The Hunger, he has written and directed a tiny short film entitled Missing Girl, and Brother Wolf’s production of his stage play Magic Circle premiered in the summer of 2016.
He has won the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Critics Award, the British Science Fiction Award, and the British Fantasy Award, but doesn’t like to boast about them.
Coppola’s Dracula
Kim Newman
“Coppola’s Dracula” takes place in the same world as Kim Newman’s ongoing “Anno Dracula” vampire series and features Kate Reed—a character created by Bram Stoker but deleted from Dracula—who has previously appeared in Anno Dracula and The Bloody Red Baron . . .
A treeline at dusk. Tall, straight, Carpathian pines. The red of sunset bleeds into the dark of night. Great flapping sounds. Huge, dark shapes flit languidly between the trees, sinister, dangerous. A vast batwing brushes the treetops. Jim Morrison’s voice wails in despair. “People Are Strange.”
Fire blossoms. Blue flame, pure as candlelight. Black trees are consumed . . .
Fade to a face, hanging upside down in the roiling fire.
HARKER’S VOICE: Wallachia . . . shit!
Jonathan Harker, a solicitor’s clerk, lies uneasy on his bed, upstairs in the inn at Bistritz, waiting. His eyes are empty. With great effort, he gets up and goes to the full-length mirror. He avoids his own gaze and takes a swig from a squat bottle of plum brandy. He wears only long drawers. Bite-marks, almost healed, scab his shoulders. His arms and chest are sinewy, but his belly is white and soft. He staggers into a program of isometric exercises, vigorously Christian, ineptly executed. Harker’s Voice: I could only think of the forests, the mountains . . . the inn was just a waiting room. Whenever I was in the forests, I could only think of home, of Exeter. Whenever I was home, I could only think of getting back to the mountains.
The blind crucifix above the mirror, hung with cloves of garlic, looks down on Harker. He misses his footing and falls on the bed, then gets up, reaches, and takes down the garlic. He bites into a clove as if it were an apple, and washes the pulp down with more brandy.
Harker’s Voice: All the time I stayed here in the inn, waiting for a commission, I was growing older, losing precious life. And all the time the Count sat on top of his mountain, leeching off the land, he grew younger, thirstier.
Harker scoops a locket from a bedside table and opens it to look at a portrait of his wife, Mina. Without malice or curiosity, he dangles the cameo in a candle flame. The face browns, the silver setting blackens.
Harker’s Voice: I was waiting for the call from Seward. Eventually, it came.
There is a knock on the door.
“It’s all right for you, Katharine Reed,” Francis whined as he picked over the unappetizing craft services table. “You’re dead, you don’t have to eat this shit.”
Kate showed teeth, hissing a little. She knew that despite her coke-bottle glasses and freckles, she could look unnervingly feral when she smiled. Francis didn’t shrink: deep down, the director thought of her as a special effect, not a real vampire.
In the makeshift canteen, deep in the production bunker, the Americans wittered nostalgia about McDonald’s. The Brits—the warm ones, anyway—rhapsodized about Pinewood breakfasts of kippers and fried bread. Romanian location catering was not what they were used to.
Francis finally found an apple less than half brown and took it away. His weight had dropped visibly since their first meeting, months ago in pre-production. Since he had come to Eastern Europe, the insurance doctor diagnosed him as suffering from malnutrition and put him on vitamin shots. Dracula was running true to form, sucking him dry.
A production this size was like a swarm of vampire bats—some large, many tiny—battening tenaciously onto the host, making insistent, never-ending demands. Kate had watched Francis—bespectacled, bearded and hyperacti
ve—lose substance under the draining siege, as he made and justified decisions, yielded the visions to be translated to celluloid, rewrote the script to suit locations or new casting. How could one man throw out so many ideas, only a fraction of which would be acted on? In his position, Kate’s mind would bleed empty in a week.
A big budget film shot in a backward country was an insane proposition, like taking a touring three-ring circus into a war zone. Who will survive, she thought, and what will be left of them?
The craft table for vampires was as poorly stocked as the one for the warm. Unhealthy rats in chickenwire cages. Kate watched one of the floor-effects men, a newborn with a padded waistcoat and a tool-belt, select a writhing specimen and bite off its head. He spat it on the concrete floor, face stretched into a mask of disgust.
“Ringworm,” he snarled. “The commie gits are trying to kill us off with diseased vermin.”
“I could murder a bacon sarnie,” the effects man’s mate sighed.
“I could murder a Romanian caterer,” said the newborn.
Kate decided to go thirsty. There were enough Yanks around to make coming by human blood in this traditionally superstitious backwater not a problem. Ninety years after Dracula spread vampirism to the Western world, America was still sparsely populated by the blood-drinking undead. For a lot of Americans, being bled by a genuine olde worlde creature of the night was something of a thrill.
That would wear off.
Outside the bunker, in a shrinking patch of natural sunlight between a stand of real pines and the skeletons of fake trees, Francis shouted at Harvey Keitel. The actor, cast as Jonathan Harker, was stoic, inexpressive, grumpy. He refused to be drawn into argument, invariably driving Francis to shrieking hysteria.
“I’m not Martin Fucking Scorsese, man,” he screamed. “I’m not going to slather on some lousy voice-over to compensate for what you’re not giving me. Without Harker, I don’t have a picture.”
Keitel made fists but his body language was casual. Francis had been riding his star hard all week. Scuttlebutt was that he had wanted Pacino or McQueen but neither wanted to spend three months behind the Iron Curtain.
In the Footsteps of Dracula Page 14
