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He made to move on, but the doctor still detained him.
‘You understand why I enquire. I am in charge of Mr Stoker’s health. The conjugal arrangements are not good in this household. As a result – as a direct result —’ He paused, and then went on in a whisper. ‘Mr Stoker has unfortunately contracted a vile disease from what the French call a fille de joie, a woman of the night. You understand?’
Not being fond of the doctor’s fussy little ways, Bodenland made no reply, but stood solid to hear him out.
Van Helsing tapped his temple.
‘His brain’s affected. Or he believes it affected. Which, in the case of brains, amounts to much the same thing. He believes – well, he believes that mankind has become the host for a species of parasite beings, vampires, who come from somewhere distant. I speak scientifically, you understand. From one of the planets, let’s say. He regards this as the secret of the universe, which of course he is about to reveal. You can never trust a man who thinks he knows the secret of the universe.’
‘I’m not so certain about that, doctor. The secret of the universe – provided there is such a thing – is open to enquiry by anyone, by any interested party, just like the secrets of the personality.’
‘What secrets of the personality?’
‘Like why you rub one index finger against the other when you talk … No, wait, doctor, I’m sorry. That was impertinent.’
The doctor had turned on his heel in vexation, but Bodenland charmed him back, to ask what treatment he was giving Stoker for his disease.
‘I treat his sores with mercury ointment. It is painful but efficacious.’
Bodenland scratched his chin.
‘You won’t have heard of penicillin yet awhile, but I could get a hold of some. And in a very few years Salvarsan will become available.’
‘You’re making no sense to me, sir.’
‘You know, Salvarsan? Let’s see, would you have heard of Dr Ehrlich’s “magic bullets” at this date?’
‘Oh.’ The doctor gave a chuckle and nodded. ‘I begin to get your drift. Bram Stoker makes his own magic bullets – to kill off his imaginary vampires, you understand.’
At that juncture, Stoker himself put his head round the dining-room door.
‘There you are. I thought you must have gone into the study. Mr Bodenland, perhaps you’d care to inspect my workshop? I generally spend an hour pottering in there after dinner.’
As they went down a side-passage, Stoker put an arm round Bodenland’s shoulders.
‘You don’t want to pay too much attention to what van Helsing says. He’s a good doctor but —’ He put a finger to his temple, in unconscious imitation of van Helsing’s gesture of a few minutes past. ‘In some respects he has a screw loose.’
On the door before them was a notice saying, Workshop, Keep Out.
‘My private den,’ said Stoker, proudly. As they entered, he drew from an inner pocket a leather case containing large cigars, and proffered it to Bodenland. The latter shook his head vigorously.
He studied Stoker as the ginger man went through the rigmarole of lighting his cigar. The head was large and well-shaped, the ginger hair without grey in it, though a bald patch showed to the rear of the skull. The features were good, although the skin, particularly where it showed above the collar, was coarse and mottled.
Feeling the eyes of his visitor on him, Stoker looked sideways through the smoke.
‘Here’s my den. I must be always doing. I can’t abide nothing to do.’
‘I too.’
‘Life’s too short.’
‘Agreed. I am always ambitious to make something of myself.’
‘That’s it – cut a dash at the least, I say. Needs courage.’
‘Courage, yes, I suppose so. Do you reckon yourself courageous?’
Stoker thought, squeezing his eyes closed. ‘Let’s put it this way. I’m a terrible coward who’s done a lot of brave things. I like cricket. You Yanks don’t play cricket?’
‘No. Business and invention – that’s my line. And a lot of other things. There are so many possibilities in the world.’
‘Do you long to be a hero?’
The question was unexpected. ‘It’s a strange thing to ask. My shrink certainly thinks I long to be a hero … One thing, I have a need for desolate places.’
Giving him a sceptical look, Stoker said, ‘Mm, there’s nothing more desolate than the stage of the Lyceum on a slow Monday night … What does your family think of you?’
The interrogation would have been irritating on other lips. But there was something in Stoker’s manner, sly, teasing, yet sympathetic, to which Bodenland responded warmly, so that he answered with frankness.
‘If they can’t love me they have got to respect me.’
‘I wish to be a hero to others, since I’ll never be one to myself.’ He clapped Bodenland on the shoulder. ‘We have temperamental affinities. I knew it the moment I set eyes on you, even if you come from the end of next century, as you claim. Now have a butcher’s hook at this, as the Cockneys say.’
The workshop was crammed with objects – a man’s version of the ladies’ drawing room. Curved cricket bats, old smooth-bore fowling-pieces, a mounted skeleton of a rat, stuffed animals, model steam engines, masks, theatrical prints, framed items of women’s underwear, a chart of the planets, and a neat array of tools, disposed on shelves above a small lathe. These Bodenland took in slowly as Stoker, full of enthusiasm, began to talk again, lighting a gas mantle as he did so.
‘My Christian belief is that there are dark forces ranged against civilization. As the story of the past unfolds, we see there were millions of years when the Earth was – shall I say unpoliced? Anything could roam at large, the most monstrous things. It’s only in these last two thousand years, since Jesus Christ, that mankind has been able to take over in an active role, keeping the monsters at bay.’ Foreseeing an interruption, he added, ‘They may be actual monsters, or they may materialize from the human brain. Only piety can confront them. We have to war with them continuously. If Jesus were alive today, do you know what I believe he would be?’
‘Er – the Pope?’
‘No, no, nothing like that. A Bengal Lancer.’
After a moment’s silence, Bodenland indicated the work-bench. ‘What are you making here?’
‘Ah, I wanted to show you this. This is part of my fight against the forces of night. Sometimes I wish I could turn the gun on myself. I know there’s evil in me – I’m aware of it. I must ask you about your relationships with the fair sex, so called, some time.’
He held out for examination a cigar-box full of carefully wrought silver bullets, each decorated with a Celtic motif running about the sign of the Cross. He exhibited them with evident pride in their workmanship. An ill feeling overcame Bodenland. The sickly light of the gas mantle seemed to flare yellow and mauve as the room swayed.
‘These are my own manufacture,’ said Stoker and then, catching sight of Bodenland’s face, ‘What’s the matter, old boy? Cigar smoke getting to you?’
Recovering his voice, Bodenland spoke. ‘Mr Stoker, you may be right about dark forces ranged against civilization, and I may have proof of it. What do you make of this?’
He brought forth from his jacket pocket the article he had retrieved from Clift’s ancient grave in the Escalante Desert. In his palm lay a silver bullet, its nose dented, but otherwise identical to the ones in Stoker’s cigar-box.
‘This was found,’ he said, unsteadily, ‘in a grave certified scientifically to be sixty-five point five million years old.’
Stoker was less impressed than Bodenland had expected. He stroked his beard and puffed at his cigar before saying, ‘There’s not that much time in the universe, my friend. Sixty-five point five million years? I have to say I think you’re talking nonsense. Lord Kelvin’s calculations have shown that, according to rigid mathematics, the entire limit of the time the sun is able to emit heat is not greater than twenty-five million years. Admittedly the computations are not exact.’
‘You speak of rigid mathematics. More flexible mathematical systems have been developed, giving us much new understanding of the universe. What once seemed certain has become less certain, more open to subjective interpretation.’
‘That doesn’t sound like progress to me.’
Bodenland considered deeply before speaking again. He then summoned tact to his argument. ‘The remarkable progress of science in your lifetime will be built on by succeeding generations, sir. I should remind you of what you undoubtedly know, that only three generations before yours, at the end of the eighteenth century, claims that the solar system was more than a mere six thousand years old were met with scorn.
‘Time has been expanding ever since. In light of later perspectives, sixty-five million years is no great length of time. We understand better than Lord Kelvin the source of the energies that power the sun.’
‘Possibly you Americans might be mistaken? Do you allow that?’
With a short laugh, Bodenland said, ‘Well, to some extent, certainly. This bullet, for instance, proves how little we have really been able to piece together the evolution of various forms of life in the distant past.’
Turning the bullet over in his palm, Stoker said, ‘I would swear it is one of my manufacture, of course. You’d better tell me about this extraordinary grave, and I’ll strive to take you at your word.’
‘It’s pretty astonishing – though no more so than that I should be here talking to you.’
He ran through the details of Clift’s discovery, explaining how the dating of the skeleton was arrived at.
During this account, Stoker remained impassive, listening and smoking. Only when Bodenland began to describe the coffin in which the skeleton was buried did he become excited. He demanded to know what the sign on the coffin looked like, and thrust a carpenter’s pencil and paper into Bodenland’s hand. Bodenland drew the two fangs with the wings above them.
‘That’s it! That’s it, sure enough – Lord Dracula’s sign,’ said Stoker in triumph. He seized Bodenland’s hand and shook it. ‘You’re a man after my own heart, so you are. At last someone who believes, who has proof! Listen, this house has drawn evil to it, and you brought more evil with this feller in my tool shed, but we can fight it together. We must fight it together. We’ll be heroes, the heroes we dreamed of —’
‘You’re a great man, Mr Stoker, but this battle’s not for me. I don’t belong here. I have to get back home. Though I certainly invite you to see the vehicle I use, parked down in your woodlands.’
‘Listen, stay another day.’ He grabbed Bodenland’s arm lest he escape at that very minute, and breathed smoke like an Irish dragon. ‘Just one more day, because tomorrow’s a special one. Come on, we’ll join that old fool van Helsing and have a glass or two of port and talk filth – if the wife’s not about. Tomorrow, that great actor whom I serve as manager, Henry Irving, bless his cotton socks, is to receive a knighthood from Her Majesty Queen Victoria at Windsor Palace. It’s the first time any actor has been so honoured. Now what do you think of that? Come along too – it’ll do your republican Yankee heart good to witness such a deed. After that you can high-tail it back to Utah or wherever you want. What do you say?’
Bodenland could not help being affected by the enthusiasm of the man.
‘Very well. It’s a deal.’
‘Excellent, excellent. Let’s go and toast ourselves in some port. And I want to hear more about your adventures.’
8 (#ulink_f9913cdc-d5ec-5748-ad02-75e78a381525)
Lethargy was a deep snow drift, chill yet at the same time warm, comforting, inviting you down into even more luxurious depths of helplessness, down, to a place before birth, after death.
Mina saw her own death like the snow drift. When she opened her eyes, there were long muslin curtains billowing in the draught from the window. She was too weak to rise. She saw the curtains as her life – the gauzy life that was to be, after the consummation of death.
Dreamily, she recalled remote times, remembered the name of Joe, her Joe. But now there was another lover, the dream lover of legend. He was come again, he was in the chamber, advancing towards the bed.
She tried to rouse herself, to lift her head from the pillow. Her hair spilled about her but there was no strength in her neck. He was bending over her, elegant, powerful, distilling an aroma she drew in through her nostrils like a narcotic. When he opened his red mouth, she found strength enough to open her legs, but his attention was on the flesh of her throat. She felt the lechery of it, breathed deeper, swooned, fidgeted with desire to experience again the bite of those fangs, that sweet evacuation of life.
He in his black garb was something different. The insanity of his fantasy spilled over through their linked alleyways of blood. She saw, felt, lived the secret world of the Undead to which she would soon belong.
It was being transferred, his bridal gift to her —
The great sweltering herbivorous beast dashed from the river bank, sounding alarm to other hadrosaurs grazing nearby. It was a mottled green in coloration, yellow and white on the tender belly, with an elaborate headcomb. It balanced its ponderous body on graceful legs, and gave its melancholy call as it ran. Mina heard herself scream, saw her companions scatter, and white birds sail up in alarm from the Cretaceous marshes.
She took evasive action, running from side to side, yet still hearing the hot breath of pursuit.
‘What’s your name, and where’s Joe gone?’
‘You must forget Joe. You now have an immortal lover.’
Indeed, she heard his footsteps close. Thud thud thud. Screaming, she ran into a gingko grove, thinking to evade the heavier predator that way. Behind her, too near her tail, the wretched sound of branches being snapped like teeth breaking from a bottom jaw.
‘Where did you come from? Tell me who you are, so I can know you.’
‘Beyond your imagining lies the ancient burial site in a once-green land. It was destroyed. Remote ancestors there have been disturbed in their rest.’
‘What’s this to me? Why can I not breathe?’
‘The Living have desecrated those graves, causing a crisis among us, the Undead. You might say a religious crisis.’
She heard the ghost of something too desiccated to call a laugh. It came again, from the sky. It brought a new alarm. For she had left the carnivore behind. She had been driven from the family. Now there was a new threat. As a shadow fell over her, she looked up, craning her neck, her throat. A pteranodon was swooping down upon her, wings closed to speed its dive.
‘Why don’t you take me? Why delay so long? Will I be immortal in your embrace?’
‘You will be immortal in my embrace.’
‘It’s all I ever dream of …’
And as she looked up at those fangs, she fell and sprawled among ferns and it unfolded its spectacular wings —
And with the last of her strength she threw back the bedclothes to expose herself utterly —
And it closed its jaws about her neck —
And as his mouth tasted her flesh and the current flowed —
And as she fought with death —
And Mina began to writhe and moan and come at last —
Through —
‘Yes, Mr Bodenland, that was when we were staying with the duke. And later we were so proud, because the Prince of Wales came backstage and shook Bram’s hand.’
‘It was during the run of The Corsican Brothers.’
‘Edward. HRH. He’s such a dear – and rather a one for the ladies, I’m given to understand.’ Florence Stoker fanned her cheeks with her hand at the thought of it.
‘HRH works hard, and so I suppose he feels entitled to play hard. Do you work hard when you’re – at home?’
‘Some would say, too hard. But a man’s work is one way in which he establishes his identity.’
She sighed. ‘Perhaps that is why we poor ladies have no identity to speak of.’ And she shot a glance at her husband.
Bodenland would have preferred to be alone to think over the implications of the day’s events. He listened with only half an ear to Mrs Stoker’s chatter. They were at the port and cigars stage, sitting about the log fire, under the Bronzino painting, with van Helsing saying little.
Stoker jumped up suddenly, to give his impression of Henry Irving as Mephistopheles.
