Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea (54 page)

You sit in your seat and breathe the musty theatre smells, the smells which may as well be ghosts as they are surely remnants of long ago moments come and gone. Your full bladder has been all but forgotten. Likewise, the muttering, laughing man and woman seated somewhere behind you. There is room for nothing now but the illusion of moving pictures splashed across the screen. Your eyes and your ears translate the interplay of light and sound into story. The old theatre is a temple, holy in its way, and you’ve come to worship, to find epiphany in truths captured by a camera’s lens. There’s no need of plaster saints and liturgies. No need of the intermediary services of a priest. Your god – and the analogy has occurred to you on many occasions – is speaking to you directly, calling down from that wide silk-and-silver window and from Dolby speakers mounted high on the walls. Your god speaks in many voices, and its angels are an orchestra, and every frame is a page of scripture. This mass is rapidly winding down towards benediction.

The gypsy girl climbs into the Countess’ lap, her small brown body nestling in the voluminous folds of Elizabeth’s dress. The Countess puts her arms around the child, and holds her close. The girl rests her head on the Countess’ breast.

CLOSE UP.

The Countess’ hand reaching into a fold of her dress, withdrawing a small silver dagger. The handle is black and polished wood, maybe jet or mahogany. There are occult symbols etched deeply into the metal, all down the length of the blade.

The gypsy girl smiles and begins her song.

The Countess clamps a hand over the girl’s mouth, and plunges the silver dagger into her throat. The girl’s eyes go very wide, as blood spurts from the wound. She falls backwards to the floor, and writhes there for a moment. The Countess gets to her feet, triumph in her eyes.

The girl’s eyes flash red-gold, and she hisses loudly, then begins to crawl across the floor towards the balcony. She pulls the knife from her throat and flings it away. It clatters loudly against the floor. The girl’s teeth are stained with blood.

The Countess doesn’t reply, but begins to recite the Prayer of Ninety Cats. As she does, the girl stands, almost as if she hasn’t been wounded. She backs away, stepping through the balcony doors, out into snow and brilliant moonlight. The child climbs onto the balustrade, and it seems for a moment she might grow wings and fly away into the Carpathian night.

The girl turns her back on the Countess, gazing down at the snowy courtyard below.

INT./EXT. NIGHT.

As the Countess moves towards the balcony, the gypsy girl steps off the balustrade and tumbles to the courtyard below. The Countess cries out in horror and rushes out onto the balcony

EXT. NIGHT.

The broken body of the girl on the snow-covered flagstones of the courtyard. Blood still oozes from the wound in her throat, but also from her open mouth and her nostrils. Her eyes are open. Her blood steams in the cold air. A large crow lands near her body. The camera pans upwards, and we see the Countess gazing down in horror at the broken body of the dead girl. In the distance, wolves begin to howl.

EXT. BALCONY. NIGHT.

The Countess is sitting now, her back pressed to the stone columns of the balustrade. She’s sobbing, her hands tearing at her hair. She is the very portrait here of loss and madness.

FADE UP TO WHITE.

EXT. CSEJTE. MORNING.

A small cemetery near the castle’s chapel. Heavy snow covers everything. The dwarf Ujváry János has managed to hack a shallow grave into the frozen earth. The Countess watches as the gypsy girl’s small body, wrapped in a makeshift burial shroud, is lowered into the hole. The Countess turns and hurries away across the bailey, and János begins filling the grave in again. Shovelful after shovelful of dirt and frost and snow falls on the body, and slowly it disappears from view. Perched on a nearby headstone, an owl watches. It blinks, and rotates its head and neck 180 degrees, so it appears to be watching the burial upside down.

In a week, you’ll write your review of the film, the review you’re being paid to write, and you’ll note that the genus and species of owl watching János as he buries the dead girl is
Bubo virginianus,
the Great Horned Owl. You’ll also note the bird is native to North America, and not naturally found in Europe, but that to fret over these sorts of inaccuracies is, at best, pedantic. At worst, you’ll write, it means that one has entirely missed the point and would have been better off staying at home and not wasting the price of a movie ticket.

This is not the life of Erzsébet Báthory.

No one has ever lived this exact life.

Beyond the establishing shot of the ruins at the beginning of the film, the castle is not Csejte. Likewise, the forest that surrounds it is the forest that this story requires it to be, and whether or not it’s an accurate depiction of the forests of the Piešťany region of Slovakia is irrelevant.

The Countess may or may not have been Anna Darvulia’s lover. Erzsébet Báthory may have been a lesbian. Or she may not. Anna Darvulia may or may not have existed.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Erzsébet was repeatedly visited in the dead of night by a strange gypsy child.

Or that the Countess’ fixation with blood began when she struck a servant who’d accidentally pulled her hair.

Or that Erzsébet was ever led naked through those inaccurate forests while lustful wolves sniffed at her sex.

Pedantry and nitpicking is fatal to all fairy tales. You will write that there are people who would argue a wolf lacks the lung capacity to blow down a house of straw and that any beanstalk tall enough to reach the clouds would collapse under its own weight. They are, you’ll say, the same lot who’d dismiss Shakespeare for mixing Greek and Celtic mythology, or on the grounds that there was never a prince of Verona named Escalus. “The facts are neither here nor there,” you will write. “We have entered a realm where facts may not even exist.” You’ll be paid a pittance for the review, which virtually no one will read.

There will be one letter to the editor, complaining that your review was “too defensive” and that you are “an apologist for shoddy, prurient filmmaking.” You’ll remember this letter (though not the name of its author), many years after the paltry check has been spent.

The facts are neither here nor there.

Sitting in your theatre seat, these words have not yet happened, the words you’ll write. At best, they’re thoughts at the outermost edges of conception. Sitting here, there is nothing but the film, another’s fever dreams you have been permitted to share. And you are keenly aware how little remains of the fifth reel, that the fever will break very soon.

EXT. FOREST. NIGHT.

MEDIUM SHOT.

Anna Darvulia sits before a small campfire, her horse’s reins tied to a tree behind her. A hare is roasting on a spit above the fire. There’s a sudden gust of wind, and, briefly, the flames burn a ghostly blue. She narrows her eyes, trying to see something beyond the firelight.

The fire flares blue again, and Darvulia lowers her head, no longer gazing into the darkness.

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. ČACHTICE CASTLE HILL. NIGHT.

The full moon shines down on Csejte. The castle is dark. There’s no light in any of its windows.

CUT TO:

The gypsy girl’s unmarked grave. But much of the earth that filled the hole now lies heaped about the edges, as if someone has hastily exhumed the corpse. Or as if the dead girl might have dug her way out. The ground is white with snow and frost, and sparkles beneath the moon.

CUT TO:

EXT. BALCONY OUTSIDE COUNTESS’ BEDCHAMBER. NIGHT.

The owl that watched Ujváry János bury the girl is perched on the stone balustrade. The doors to the balcony have been left standing open. Draperies billow in the freezing wind.

CLOSE UP:

Owl’s round face. It blinks several times, and the bird’s eyes flash an iridescent red-gold.

The Countess sits in her bedchamber, in that enormous chair with its six savage feet. A wolf pelt lies draped across her lap, emptied of its wolf. Like a dragon, the Countess breathes steam. She holds a wooden cross in her shaking hands.

“Tell the cats to come to me,” she says, uttering the prayer hardly above a whisper. There is no need to raise her voice; all gods and angels must surely have good ears. “And hasten them,” she continues, “to bite the hearts of my enemies and all who would do me harm. Let them rip to pieces and bite again and again the heart of my foes. And guard Erzsébet from all evil.
O Quam Misericors est Deus, Pius et Justus.
”

Elizabeth was raised a Calvinist, and her devout mother, Anna, saw that she attended a fine Protestant school in Erdöd. She was taught mathematics and learned to write and speak Greek, German, Slovak, and Latin. She learned Latin prayers against the demons and the night.

“
O Quam Misericors est Deus. Justus et Paciens,
” she whispers, though she’s shivering so badly that her teeth have begun to chatter and the words no longer come easily. They fall from her lips like stones. Or rotten fruit. Or lies. She cringes in her chair, and gazes intently towards the billowing, diaphanous drapes and the night and balcony beyond them. A shadow slips into the room, moving across the floor like spilled oil. The drapes part as if they have a will all their own (they were pulled to the sides with hooks and nylon fishing line, you’ve read), and the gypsy girl steps into the room. She is entirely nude, and her tawny body and black hair are caked with the earth of her abandoned grave. There are feathers caught in her hair, and a few drift from her shoulders to lie on the floor at her feet. She is bathed in moonlight, as cliché as that may sound. She has the iridescent eyes of an owl. The girl’s face is the very picture of sorrow.

“Why did you bury me, Mother?”

“You were dead…”

The girl takes a step nearer the Countess. “I was so cold down there. You cannot ever imagine anything even half so cold as the dead lands.”

The Countess clutches her wood cross. She is shaking, near tears. “You cannot be here. I said the prayers Anna taught me.”

The girl has moved very near the chair now. She is close enough that she could reach out and stroke Elizabeth’s pale cheek, if she wished to do so.

“The cats aren’t coming, Mother. Her prayer was no more than any other prayer. Just pretty words against that which has never had cause to fear pretty words.”

“The cats aren’t coming,” the Countess whispers, and the cross slips from her fingers.

The gypsy child reaches out and strokes Elizabeth’s pale cheek. The girl’s short nails are broken and caked with dirt. “It doesn’t matter, Mother, because I’m here. What need have you of cats, when your daughter has come to keep you safe?”