Anno Dracula (7 page)

For two weeks, Francis had been shooting the ‘Brides of Dracula’ sequence. The mountainside was as crowded as London’s Oxford Street, extras borrowed from the Romanian army salted with English faces recruited from youth hostels and student exchanges. Storaro was up on a dinosaur-necked camera crane, swooping through the skies, getting shots of rapt faces.

The three girls, two warm and one real vampire, had only showed up tonight, guaranteeing genuine crowd excitement in long-shot or blurry background rather than the flatly faked enthusiasm radiated for their own close-ups.

Kate was supposed to be available for the brides, but they didn’t need advice. It struck her as absurd that she should be asked to tell the actresses how to be alluring. The vampire Marlene, cast as the blonde bride, had been in films since the silent days and wandered about nearly naked, exposing herself to the winds. Her warm sisters needed to be swathed in furs between shots.

Marlene was one of those vampires who showed up on film and in mirrors; there were more of them around these days. One of those vampire mysteries no one had any real explanation for. Maybe evolution, an adaptation to the twentieth century? Hundreds of years before Kate turned, it was said no artist could paint a vampire’s likeness. That belief died out with the development of photography. Now, it seemed most vampires could be filmed.

In a shack-like temporary dressing room, the brides were transformed. Bunty, a sensible Englishwoman, was in charge of their make-up. The living girls, twins from Malta who had appeared in a
Playboy
layout, submitted to all-over pancake that gave their flesh an unhealthy shimmer and opened their mouths like dental patients as false canines were fitted. Their fangs were a hundred times more expensive if hardly more convincing than the joke shop set Kate had kept after the party.

Francis, with Ion in his wake carrying a script, dropped by to cast an eye over the brides. He asked Marlene to open her mouth and examined her dainty pointy teeth.

‘We thought we’d leave them as they are,’ said Bunty.

Francis shook his head.

‘They need to be bigger, more obvious.’

Bunty took a set of dagger-like eye-teeth from her kit and approached Marlene, who waved them away.

‘I’m sorry, dear,’ the make-up woman apologised.

Marlene laughed musically and hissed, making Francis jump. Her mouth opened wide like a cobra’s, and her fangs extended a full two inches.

Francis grinned.

‘Perfect.’

The vampire lady took a little curtsey.

Kate mingled with the crew, keeping out of camera-shot. She was used to the tedious pace of filmmaking. Everything took forever and there was rarely anything to see. Only Francis, almost thin now, was constantly on the move, popping up everywhere - with Ion, nick-named ‘son of Dracula’ by the crew, at his heels - to solve or be frustrated by any one of a thousand problems.

The stands erected for the extras, made by local labour in the months before shooting, kept collapsing. It seemed the construction people, whom she assumed also had the door contract at the Bucharest hotel, had substituted inferior wood, presumably pocketing the difference in lei, and the whole set was close to useless. Francis had taken to having his people work at night, after the Romanians contractually obliged to do the job had gone home, to shore up the shoddy work. It was, of course, ruinously expensive and amazingly inefficient.

The permits to film at Borgo Pass had still not come through. An associate producer was spending all her time at the Bucharest equivalent of the Circumlocution Office, trying to get the trilingual documentation out of the Ministry of Film. Francis would have to hire an entire local film crew and pay them to stand idle while his Hollywood people did the work. That was the expected harassment.

The official in the shiny suit, who had come to represent for everyone the forces hindering the production, stood on one side, eagerly watching the actresses. He didn’t permit himself a smile.

Kate assumed the man dutifully hated the whole idea of
Dracula
. He certainly did all he could to get in the way. He could only speak English when the time came to announce a fresh snag, conveniently forgetting the language if he was standing on the spot where Francis wanted camera track laid and he was being told politely to get out of the way.

‘Give me more teeth,’ Francis shouted through a bullhorn. The actresses responded.

‘All of you,’ the director addressed the extras, ‘look horny as hell.’

Ion repeated the instruction in three languages. In each one, the sentence expanded to a paragraph. Different segments of the crowd were enthused as each announcement clued them in.

Arcs, brighter and whiter than the sun, cast merciless, bleaching patches of light on the crowd, making faces into skulls. Kate was blinking, her eyes watering. She took off and cleaned her glasses.

Like everybody, she could do with a shower and a rest. And, in her case, a decent feed.

Rumours were circulating of other reasons they were being kept away from Borgo Pass. The twins, flying in a few days ago, had brought along copies of the
Guardian
and
Time
. They were passed around the whole company, offering precious news from home. She was surprised how little seemed to have happened while she was out of touch.

However, there was a tiny story in the
Guardian
about the Transylvania Movement. Apparently, Baron Meinster, a disciple of Dracula, was being sought by the Romanian authorities for terrorist outrages. The newspaper reported that he had picked up a band of vampire followers and was out in the forests somewhere, fighting bloody engagements with Ceauşescu’s men. The Baron favoured young get; he would find lost children and turn them. The average age of his army was fourteen. Kate knew the type: redeyed, lithe brats with sharp teeth and no compunctions about anything. Rumour had it that Meinster’s kids would descend on villages and murder entire populations, gorging themselves on blood, killing whole families, whole communities, down to the animals.

That explained the nervousness of some of the extras borrowed from the army. They expected to be sent into the woods to fight the devils. Few of them would come near Kate or any other vampire, so any gossip that filtered through was third-hand and had been translated into and out of several languages.

Quite a few civilian observers hung around, keeping an eye on everything, waving incomprehensible but official documentation at anyone who queried their presence. Shiny Suit knew all about them and was their unofficial boss. Ion kept well away from them. She must ask the lad if he knew anything of Meinster. It was a wonder he had not become one of Meinster’s Child Warriors. Maybe he had and was trying to get away from that. Growing up.

The crowd rioted on cue but the camera-crane jammed, dumping the operator out of his perch. Francis yelled at the grips to protect the equipment. Ion translated but not swiftly enough to get them into action.

The camera came loose and fell thirty feet, crunching onto rough stone, spilling film and fragments.

Francis looked at the mess, uncomprehending, a child so shocked by the breaking of a favourite toy that he can’t even throw a fit. Then, red fury exploded.

Kate wouldn’t want to be the one who told Francis that there might be fighting at Borgo Pass.

In the coach, late afternoon, Harker goes through the documents he has been given. He examines letters sealed with a red wax ‘D’, old scrolls gone to parchment, annotated maps, a writ of excommunication. There are pictures of Vlad, woodcuts of the Christian Prince in a forest of impaled infidels, portraits of a dead-looking old man with a white moustache, a blurry photograph of a murk-faced youth in an unsuitable straw hat.

HARKER’s Voice:
Vlad was one of the Chosen, favoured of God. But somewhere in those acres of slaughtered foemen, he found something that changed his mind, that changed his soul. He wrote letters to the Pope, recommending the rededication of the Vatican to the Devil. He had two cardinals, sent by Rome to reason with him, hot-collared — red-hot pokers slid through their back passages into their innards. He died, was buried, and came back...

Harker looks out of the coach at the violent sunset. Rainbows dance around the treetops.

Westenra cringes but Murray is fascinated.

MURRAY: It’s beautiful, the light...

Up ahead is a clearing. Coaches are gathered. A natural stone amphitheatre has been kitted out with limelights which fizz and flare.

Crowds of Englishmen take seats.

Harker is confused, but the others are excited.

MURRAY: A musical evening. Here, so far from Piccadilly...

The coach slows and stops. Westenra and Murray leap out to join the crowds.

Warily, Harker follows. He sits with Westenra and Murray. They pass a hipflask between them.

Harker takes a cautious pull, stings his throat.

Into the amphitheatre trundles a magnificent carriage, pulled by a single black stallion. The beast is twelve-hands high. The carriage is black as the night, with an embossed gold and scarlet crest on the door. A redeyed dragon entwines around a letter ‘D’.

The driver is a tall man, draped entirely in black, only his red eyes showing.

There is mild applause.

The driver leaps down from his seat, crouches like a big cat and stands taller than ever. His cloak swells with the night breeze.

Loud music comes from a small orchestra.

‘Take a Pair of Crimson Eyes’, by Gilbert and Sullivan.

The driver opens the carriage door.

A slim white limb, clad only in a transparent veil, snakes around the door. Tiny bells tinkle on a delicate ankle. The toenails are scarlet and curl like claws.

The audience whoops appreciation. Murray burbles babyish delight. Harker is wary.

The foot touches the carpet of pine needles and a woman swings out of the carriage, shroud-like dress fluttering around her slender form. She has a cloud of black hair and eyes that glow like hot coals.

She hisses, tasting the night, exposing needle-sharp eye-teeth. Writhing, she presses her snake-supple body to the air, as if sucking in the essences of all the men present.

MURRAY: The bloofer lady...

The other carriage door is kicked open and the first woman’s twin leaps out. She is less languid, more sinuous, more animal-like. She claws and rends the ground and climbs up the carriage wheel like a lizard, long red tongue darting. Her hair is wild, a tangle of twigs and leaves.

The audience, on their feet, applaud and whistle vigorously. Some of the men rip away their ties and burst their collar-studs, exposing their throats.

FIRST WOMAN: Kisses, sister, kisses for us all...

The hood of the carriage opens, folding back like an oyster to disclose a third woman, as fair as they are dark, as voluptuous as they are slender. She is sprawled in abandon on a plush mountain of red cushions. She writhes, crawling through pillows, her scent stinging the nostrils of the rapt audience.

The driver stands to one side as the three women dance. Some of the men are shirtless now, clawing at their own necks until the blood trickles.

The women are contorted with expectant pleasure, licking their ruby lips, fangs already moist, shrouds in casual disarray, exposing lovely limbs, swan-white pale skin, velvet-sheathed muscle.

Men crawl at their feet, piling atop each other, reaching out just to touch the ankles of these women, these monstrous, desirable creatures.

Murray is out of his seat, hypnotised, pulled towards the vampires, eyes mad. Harker tries to hold him back, but is wrenched forward in his wake, dragged like an anchor.

Murray steps over his fallen fellows, but trips and goes down under them.

Harker scrambles to his feet and finds himself among the women. Six hands entwine his face. Lips brush his cheek, razor-edged teeth drawing scarlet lines on his face and neck.

He tries to resist but is bedazzled.

A million points of light shine in the women’s eyes, on their teeth, on their earrings, necklaces, nose-stones, bracelets, veils, navel-jewels, lacquered nails. The lights close around Harker.