Reconciliation Day

by Christopher Fowler

  “I’m on my way,” I said, sitting up and rubbing my eyes. The car park was a white rectangle fenced in by tall black firs. “Are we going to meet up tonight?”

  “Sure, but you know I don’t have the information you want.”

  Oh, yeah, I was going to mention that. I may have shared a little too much information with Mikaela in a drunken late-night phone call. I couldn’t remember exactly what I’d told her, so I had to be careful.

  “I have some leads of my own.” I tried to sound as if it was no big deal. I wasn’t about to explain what was in the envelope in my glove box.

  “You know what you’re seeking doesn’t exist,” she said. “The American copyright loophole was closed and the playscript in the British Library was never—”

  “Don’t lecture me, Mikaela. I have a pretty good idea where everything is.”

  “But you don’t know where the edition is or if it even exists, do you?” She let the question hang in the air, probing for an answer.

  “You know who I thought would be great in a new Dracula role?” I said, quickly changing the subject, “Benedict Cumberbatch. He looks like Henry Irving, don’t you think?” It seemed likely that the great Shakespearian actor had been the original inspiration for Stoker’s vampire, and Cumberbatch was virtually his reincarnation.

  “I can see the resemblance,” said Mikaela. “Whereabouts are you?”

  “I’m about seventy kilometers southeast of Bran. I think. It’s kind of hard to tell. There are no signs and there’s a lot of snow coming down.”

  “It’s worse up in the mountains. Call me when you get near the castle. It’ll be shut by the time you get here but we can have dinner.”

  I agreed and hung up, reset my GPS and swung back onto the road, followed by a pack of howling feral dogs.

  From the Journal of Jonathan Harker, August 30th, 1893

  I have the feeling that I am not alone.

  I know there are servants, four I think; a raw-looking woman who cooks and cleans, her silent husband the groom, an addle-pated under-servant born without wits who is only fit for washing and sweeping (he might be the son of the cook; there is a resemblance) and an unsmiling German butler whom I take to be the count’s manservant.

  But there is someone else here. I sense his presence late at night, when the fire has banked down to an amber glow and the library is at its gloomiest. I can feel him standing silently beyond the windows (an impossibility since they overlook a sheer drop of several hundred feet). When I turn to catch a glimpse of this imagined figure it is gone. Last night the feeling came again. I had just finished cataloguing the top shelves of the library’s west wall and was setting the iron ladders back in their place when I became aware of someone staring at my back. A sensation of panic seized me as the hairs stood on my neck, prickling as though charged with electricity, but I forced myself to continue with my task, finally turning in the natural course of my duty and raising my gaze to where I felt this mysterious stranger to be standing.

  Of course there was nothing corporeal to see—yet this time the feeling persisted. I made my way across the great room, passing the glowing red escarpment of the fire, until I reached the bank of mullioned windows set in the room’s north side. Through the rain that was ticking against the glass I looked out on the most forsaken landscape imaginable, black pines and black rock. I could still feel him somewhere outside the windows, yet how was this possible? I am a man who prides himself on his sensitivity, and fancied that this baleful presence belonged to none other than my host. The count was not due to return for a while yet, having extended his trip to conclude certain pressing business affairs.

  This presents me with a new problem, for I am told that winter settles suddenly in the mountains, and is slow to release the province from its numbing grip. Once the blizzards begin the roads will become inundated, making it impossible for me to leave the castle until the end of next spring, a full seven months away. Despite the count’s relayed requests that I should write home providing departure dates, I wonder if they will materialise. If not, I would truly be a prisoner here.

  With that thought weighing heavily on my mind I returned to my armchair beside the fire, fought down the urge to panic, opened a book and once more began to read.

  I must have dozed, for I can only think that what I saw next was a hallucination resulting from a poorly digested piece of mutton. The count was standing in the corner of the library, still dressed in his heavy-weather oilskin. He appeared agitated and ill-at-ease, as if conducting an argument with himself on some point. At length he reached a decision and approached me, gliding across the room like a tall-ship in still seas. Flowing behind him was a rippling wave of fur, as hundreds of rats poured over the chairs and tables in a fanned brown shadow. The rodents watched me with eyes like ebony beads. They cascaded over the count’s shoes and formed a great circle around my chair, as if awaiting a signal. But the signal did not come, so they fell upon one another, the strongest tearing into the soft fat bellies of the weakest, and the library carpet turned scarlet as the chamber filled with screams.

  I awoke to find my shirt as wet as if it had been dropped into a lake. The book I had been reading lay on the floor at my feet, its spine split. My collar was open, and the silver crucifix I always wear at my neck was hanging on the arm of the chair, its clasp broken beyond repair. I resolved to eat earlier from that night on.

  I couldn’t have made the journey to the castle more atmospheric if I’d been travelling by stage-coach. Driving through the Carpathian Mountains in a snowstorm was a cool if exhausting experience. With the black firs rising all around me, I passed through endless tiny villages, usually trapped behind black-hatted woodcutters on carthorses.

  The arrival at the castle itself was kind of a let-down, as the area proved more suburban than anything in the surrounding region of Brasov. At my first sight of the building I was like, Is that it? It was certainly a lot smaller than I’d imagined, and those photographs showing its pointed circular turrets against a background of steep cliffs must have been taken from a very narrow perspective, because it was surrounded by ugly modern houses and what appeared to be a funfair with a boating lake.

  Yet when I drew closer I began to appreciate its melancholy grandeur. It was stark and unadorned and imperious.

  Mikaela was staying in a three star lodge called the Hotel Extravagance, so I checked in there too. It had a yellow plastic fascia and a life-sized model of a fat chef in an apron holding up a pig’s head. We’re academics, not movie stars; this was the kind of place we usually got to stay in. The receptionist was a smiling, pretty girl of about twenty who cheerfully admitted that she had been on duty for twenty-four hours. It was the standard length of a shift in these parts, she said. It made me hate kvetchy Manhattan restaurant staff even more.

  “You do know it doesn’t exist, right?” said Mikaela, smiling with secret knowledge. She raised a glass of palină to me. Between us stood a terrifying steeple of pink sausages and pork parts, surrounded by hard-to-identify vegetables in gravy. The palină was a local fruit brandy invented in the Middle Ages, and tasted like it, but the local red wine proved sensational.

  “Everyone said the manuscript was lost,” I reminded her.

  “But the missing parts aren’t in the official version, which is why it never reached its reserve at the Christie’s auction. It just wasn’t that collectable, Carter. Stoker was never a great writer, you know that. His prose is purple and really not very interesting.”

  “I get that.” I stabbed another sausage onto my plate. “Everybody said the same thing about the Pre-Raphaelites but look how their stock jumped. And Dracula will become more valued in time. You know what makes the difference? Movies. There have been nearly three hundred films made from that one book so far, almost as many as from all of Sherlock Holmes.”

  “But you have to face the fact that it just doesn’t have the sa
me cachet.”

  “All it will take is one more hit movie. How many rich, dumb collectors now think that Disney’s live-action Alice in Wonderland characters are from the book? They’re not interested in the Tenniel art but they’ll pay insane amounts for studio memorabilia.”

  I needed to play down my own obsession. The last thing I wanted was Mikaela figuring out what I was up to. I’d read the contents of the bookseller’s envelope and as I suspected, it wasn’t enough to get me there without help. I’d need Mikaela but she had to make the offer unwittingly.

  “It was the wrong time for the sale of the annotated manuscript,” she said, spearing asparagus. “That’s why it was withdrawn. You’re right; its value is higher now.”

  “I still believe the blue edition is out there somewhere. If it’s anywhere, it has to be here. I’d just like to see it once.”

  The blue edition—okay, what happened was this. In May 1897 Constable published the first edition bound in yellow cloth. It wasn’t a success. However, an export edition was discussed. It was also to be in English but printed differently, with more widely spaced paragraphs and a blue cloth cover. Stoker approved this second limited run even though the advance was almost nothing, sent off a copy of his manuscript and waited for the paperwork to arrive.

  It never came.

  The theory is that the company in charge of printing it for the European market, Karnstein-Saxon, had questions about the manuscript Stoker sent them because it was different from the one they’d read in the yellow edition. It was longer—a liability for the export version—and had a different ending. There’s a sole piece of correspondence from Stoker, photocopied once but now lost, admitting that he had mistakenly sent them the earlier version complete with the chapter in the library and the immolation at the end. He told them they could edit it for length if they wanted. It was obvious he just wanted the money.

  But I was sure they ran off at least one copy without any cuts.

  Why did I know this? Because of a little number stuck at the bottom of a page. A copy of the book was placed in a sale catalogue printed in 1905 in Brasov, Transylvania, that totaled 556 pages, not 529 pages. The book was described as having eight woodcuts (which wouldn’t fully account for the higher page tally), and a blue cover. It was bought by the priest of a town called Viscria. On the receipt for the copy he had written his reason for the purchase; to form the center of a display showing how Transylvania’s fame had reached the world outside. The priest hadn’t died until 1979—just before the “official” manuscript failed to meet its reserve. So why would the town have gotten rid of their copy? Did they even know it was different? They’d have hung onto it, hoping it would rise in value. That’s what I was counting on.

  No other copy of the so-called blue edition had ever surfaced, and the early manuscript was lost. To me, that made it virtually priceless. I’ve always been an obsessive completist—I can’t collect something without making sure I’ve got it all, and this was my Holy Grail. And I guess it was why I’d ended up alone. No woman was prepared to come second in my life.

  “What do you know about a town called Viscria?” I asked Mikaela as casually as I could.

  From the Journal of Jonathan Harker, September 22nd, 1893

  The weather has begun to worsen, and there is still no sign of the count. As the days grow shorter a forlorn darkness descends upon the castle. The skies are troubled, the clouds heavier now, ebbing to the west with their bellies full of rain. The library occupies my waking hours. It is like an origami model of Chinese paper, ever unfolding into new configurations. Just when I think I have its measure, new delights and degradations present themselves. Yesterday I started on a further set of shelves housing nautical chart-books and maps, and while reaching across the ladder to pull one stubborn tome free, I triggered the opening of a mahogany flap built in the rear of the shelf that folded down to reveal a further hundred volumes!

  I cleared a space and set these books in stacks according to their coordinated bindings, and only once they all stood free of their secret home did I start to examine them.

  I find that delicacy escapes me at this point; they were lexicons of erotica, frankly and indecently illustrated, outlining practices above, below and altogether beyond the boundaries of human nature, described in such an overt and lascivious manner that I was forced to return them to their hiding place before the servant brought me my nightly brandy, for no gentleman would wish such volumes to fall into the hands of servants.

  After he had left the room I took time to examine the single edition I had left out. It was much like the others, designed more to arouse the senses than to provide practical advice concerning the physical side of matrimonial duty. The room grew hot about me as I turned the pages, and I was forced to move back from the fireplace. The drawings were shameless, representing actions one would scarcely countenance in the darkest woods, here presented in brightest light. More shocking still was the discovery that the book was English, produced in London, presumably for foreign purchasers.

  While I was examining this in detail I began to sense the presence once more, and this time I became aware of a scent, a sweet perfume akin to Atar of Roses, a scented water my own dear Mina would often dab at her swan-pale neck. The perfume, filled as it was with memories of home, quite overpowered me and I grew faint, for I fancied I saw a lady—no, a woman—standing on the staircase nearest the windows.

  She was tall and handsome rather than beautiful, with a knowing look, her auburn hair swept down across a dress of sheer green gossamer, with emerald jewels at her throat, and nothing at all on her feet. She stood with her left side turned to me, so that I could not help but notice the exaggerated posture of her bosom. It was as though she intended to incite my admiration. The effect was indecent, but nothing to the effect produced when she turned to face me directly, for the front panel of her dress was cut away below her waist to reveal—well, her entire personal female anatomy, the triangle of blackness shocking against her white stomach. Stupefied by such brazenness, wondering if she was perhaps ill, I found myself unable to move as she approached.

  Upon reaching my chair she slid the outstretched fingers of her right hand inside my shirt, shearing off several of the buttons with her sharp nails. I was acutely aware that the naked part of her was very close to me. Then, reaching inside the high waistband of my trousers, she grasped at the very root of my reluctantly extended manhood and brought it forward, bursting through the garment’s fly buttons as if they afforded no protection. When I saw that she intended to lower her lips to this heated core of my being, every fibre of my body strained to resist her brazen advances.

  Here, though, my mind clouds with indistinct but disagreeable impressions. A distant cry of anger is heard, the woman retreats in fear and fury, and I awake, ashamed to discover my desire discharged and my clothing in considerable disarray, the victim of some delirious carphology.

  We didn’t get drunk. Mikaela’s too much of a lady and after a few shots of palină I figured I wouldn’t be much of a gentleman. So the next morning we breakfasted early and went to Castle Bran. Around its base were dozens of wooden huts selling all kinds of cool trash; Dracula fridge magnets, keyrings, woolen hats, fur waistcoats, a snow-globe containing a castle that swirled with bats when you shook it, T-shirts printed with Christopher Lee’s face, the whole schmear. Mamas in shell-suits were waddling around the stands buying vampire teddy bears while feral dogs cruised around the takeout stands, hoping to catch pieces of sausage falling from buns. But I figured hey, all this stuff didn’t matter. Shouldn’t castles always have peasant huts around their foundations?

  Mikaela gave me a little historical background. In 1920 Bran became a royal residence and the favorite home of Queen Marie. The castle was inherited by her daughter, who ran a hospital there in World War II. It was seized by the Communists, who expelled the royal family in 1948. Cut to 2005, when the Romanian government passed a
special law allowing restitution claims on properties illegally expropriated. A year later the castle was given to Dominic von Habsburg, the son and heir of Princess Ileana. In 2007, the retrocession of the castle was declared illegal because it supposedly broke the Romanian law on property and succession.

  This argument between royals and the government went back and forth. In 2009, the castle administration was transferred again to Archduke Dominic and his sisters. The Habsburgs opened it to the public as a private museum to help safeguard the economic base in the region. Now it was up for private sale, so who knew if it would be safeguarded or closed down for good? It seemed like everything else around here—undervalued and underappreciated. Every town, gallery, beach and beauty spot in France and Italy has been seen to death by cruise-ship tourists. There was no international tourism here, although I’d been told that a few visitors arrived in summer. All of which made me think that the blue edition was gathering dust in a closet somewhere in Viscria. But to get there I had to humor Mikaela, partly because she spoke the language, mostly because she was a familiar face in the area. So we went around Bran and I tried to concentrate while she told me scandalous and entirely unsubstantiated stories

  about the castle’s long-lost library.

  The interior of Bran was lacking in grandeur, and none of the mismatched fixtures were original. The bookshelves were all empty. The walls had been painted white, which destroyed the atmosphere—still, it wasn’t a film set, just the inspiration for a novel. Re-reading the book on my journey I still found the prose flat and earnest, but the sense of dread accumulating in the tale excited me (HG Wells is the same, not stylistically distinguished but Kipps and The War of the Worlds always get to me). There were some details I’d forgotten—Jonathan Harker realizes the castle has no staff when he spies Dracula making the beds! The blue edition was supposed to be different in that respect too. Stoker cut the staff for the yellow edition. There was also supposed to be some erotic content the English publisher wouldn’t have touched; Stoker had apparently gotten himself a little over-excited and European.