Reading Dracula

by
Bob Ortolano
 

Each year, at the beginning of October, I find my dog-eared paperback copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and read it again. It has become an annual ritual of the season. Like the crisp air, darkening skies, and turning leaves, it is an essential part of welcoming the changes to the natural world around me. It is dark. It is frightening. And it is delicious. Like sweet dark chocolate, or that cask-aged bourbon that is only available once a year. It is one of those books that you can pick up, read a paragraph, put down, and feel better for it. The language, the pacing, and the chivalrous atmosphere belong to another age, yet touches something deep. Its words are a kind of musical piece, starting sparely and building to crescendos of anxiety and faith. It has given rise to an entire industry of vampirism, but you would be hard pressed to find a handful of people who have actually read it. They know the story (from film, television, even radio) but they have never read the words. It’s time.

    The tale begins with the journal entries of one Jonathan Harker, a young man beginning his career in the legal trade. He is to meet a new client, a Transylvanian Count who has recently purchased land in London. Jonathan’s job is to travel to the Count’s castle, secure the paperwork and familiarize his client with his new property. The opening chapters are simple, as Jonathan describes the strange land where he is traveling and the exotic new dishes he samples along his journey.

    Both the land and the food have names that start the imagination running. Names like “Buda-Pesth” or “Carpathians” refer to the mountain range Jonathan passes over. Just try to say Carpathian without being dramatic. The name demands a theatric, dark, forbidding tone. And how about the “Borgo Pass?” Sound inviting? I don’t think so. And the food Jonathan encounters, such as “Paprika Hendl” which he describes as “chicken done up some way with red pepper.” Or how about “eggplant stuffed with forcemeat?” I don’t know what forcemeat is, but it sure sounds spooky. Let’s face it, everything in this early chapter sounds spooky; the food, the land, the time of day events occur, the looks of pity Jonathan receives from those he meets once they learn of his destination. Gloom pervades each line, and while Jonathan may not get it, we sure do.

    Obviously, it is now unfeasible when revisiting the novel to not know what awaits our young soon-to-be barrister. The story has been retold and reinterpreted hundreds of times over. It’s been borrowed from, stolen from, and copied. But this is the real deal. Part of its magic lies in the fact that after countless readings, I find myself going on the journey as if for the first time. It’s a horror show ride so good you want to get back in line as soon as you’re done with your first time around.

    It begins with a carriage ride (two actually), and the reader, like Jonathan, is a willing, helpless passenger. You anticipate Jonathan’s destination, and when he finally does arrive, after all those interesting meals, and pitying looks, the doors of Castle Dracula swing open and the real ride begins.

    “Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will.” A graceful salutation. 

    “Welcome to my house. Come Freely. Go Safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring.”

    It sounds like one of those sayings you see tacked up to the wall of the local Irish pub. It’s all very comforting. The Count is saying all the right things to a newly arrived foreign traveler, a weary one at that. Jonathan hears these words just as we would when entering a stranger’s house where we have been invited. He has just traveled hundreds of miles, he is tired, he is hungry and he wants a warm fire. He is not really paying attention to his host’s greeting. We might not either. But Stoker does. He has chosen his words with care, as the unfolding story attests.

   As you read this book, you sometimes forget that each and every chapter is a character’s diary entry. There is no third person narrating events. You are getting the story from a distinct point of view each time. Sometimes you get your information from a newspaper. The Paul Mall Gazette reports on a wolf that escapes from the London zoo. The Daily Telegraph tells the strange story of the Demeter (another great name) a ship that arrives in port with no living soul on board, and the captain slashed to the steering wheel. (This particular portion of the novel stands by itself, a sort of mini-horror story within the larger one.) Yet the whole thing holds together marvelously well, and later you may have a hard time remembering that it wasn’t a straight narrative in the common sense of the word. That he uses journal entries, writer’s words, to convey the story is another of Stoker’s tributes to his craft. As each writes, each character confesses their innermost thoughts and (mostly) fears to the pages of their respective diaries. The reader is looking over their shoulders, reading along. Everything the reader learns as the story unfolds – the death of Lucy, Jonathan’s escape from the castle, the madman Renfield’s agony, the realization of the horror they are up against, the subsequent search for the Count’s coffins concealed around the city - is “reported” to the reader. It’s really not a bad compliment to the written word as well as I think a very entertaining technique. It invites you to think that if these people did not keep diaries, we would never know of this story. But the story would have happened anyway, whether we read about it or not. It gives the whole adventure an additional layer of credibility (or at least  creepiness).

   A word about atmosphere: when Francis Ford Coppola made a film version of the story, I was interested to learn he filmed the entire movie on a sound stage. There were no exterior shots. Even the chase after the Count’s coffin, at the end, with the team in pursuit on horseback was shot internally. While I did not realize it when watching the film for the first time, one of the overwhelming reactions I had to it was a sense of claustrophobia, and it made the film more effecting. It works for obvious reasons. The novel’s characters (the good guys anyway) are trapped in a nightmare they cannot comprehend, or escape. They are faced with unimaginable horror (the scenes of Dracula slithering down the walls of the castle headfirst, or of the Count giving his female undead a sack to feast on, that moves and whimpers with the cries of a frightened child, are as unsettling as they come), and are tasked to overcome it. They are terrified, but there is no way out. Their whole world (and ours of course) has come down to this singular dilemma. Nothing else matters, and the only way out, their only salvation, is to persevere and to be victorious. Only then can they be allowed to wake up and return to normal life, whatever that is, after having lived through this adventure. They are in the dream we all know well, the one that terrifies and doesn’t let you go, the one you know you absolutely need to wake up from, and can’t.

    They do persevere of course, and they do it with the support of each other. The language the characters use, the solidity of purpose and morality with which they express themselves is another joy of this reading experience. Listen to some of the words as Mina demands of her compatriots that should it become necessary to save her from becoming undead, they must pledge to kill her in order to save her soul.

    “Were death, or the fear of death, the only thing that stood in the way I would not shrink to die here, now, amidst the friends that love me. But death is not all.”

    She goes on to ask, “What will each of you give? Your lives I know. That is easy for brave men. Your lives are God’s, and you can give them back to Him; but what will you give me?”

    There’s a real beauty in this language, as alien as it may seem to us today. We are capable of such feelings of course. But could we articulate them as well? She prods them to promise they will kill her if need be.

   Quincey Morris is the first to respond, “I’m only a rough fellow, who hasn’t, perhaps, lived as a man should to win such a distinction, but I swear to you by all that I hold sacred and dear that, should the time ever come, I shall not flinch from the duty you have set us.”

   And her response: “My true friend.”

   It is always amazing to me on how many levels this book works; how many emotions it touches upon. Remember, we are in the midst of a classic horror novel. All the trappings of the genre (some invented by Stoker himself within these pages) are here. And on top of that we have their examples of nobility and strength that read effectively, even out of context. You want to be one in their small group, sharing this loyalty, this devotion, this quest. At the same time, their closeness and camaraderie adds to the overall sense of isolation. This group of heroes is alone in their fight. The reader feels the loneliness as well.

   Besides all I have mentioned – language, atmosphere, narrative technique – there is also the fact that the story is as thrilling as any you will find. The action takes place as time is running out for our protagonists. Dracula’s plan, the whole reason he bought Carfax Abbey (yet another good name) in London is to transplant himself to a freshly populated feeding ground. The crowded streets of the capital city will provide that for him. He  scatters coffins around the city, lined with soil from his homeland, so that he will be able to feed and then find sanctuary in various locales. With each feeding he will grow stronger and younger, and enlist another life into his army of undead. Van Helsing and crew find the coffins and make them unusable to the Count (holy water, the blessed sacrament, etc.), but the Count himself is heading back to his homeland where he will be safe.

   Mina is dying (mortally anyway), so the Count must be destroyed to save her life. Each hour becomes important. In the final sequences, the race against the clock is even more immediate. As the group converges on the Count’s coffin, being escorted back to his castle by a band of gypsies, nightfall is upon them. If they don’t catch the wagon carrying Dracula by the time the sun sets, his full power will confront them. This strange tale started with a coach ride through the mountains, and it ends with one as well.

   The action in these final pages comes swiftly, and again I find myself reading it all as if for the first time. Quincey and Jonathan take on the gypsy band and Quincey is mortally wounded. But they reach the wagon carrying the Count’s coffin and overturn it. The lid falls away, revealing Dracula himself, eyes open now, anticipating the coming sunset and his return to strength.

   Mina writes, “He was deathly pale, just like a waxen image, and the red eyes glared with a horrible vindictive look which I knew too well.”

   The sun sinks. Dracula’s eyes register triumph. Has he won? Well, you know the answer to that one. Almost, but not quite.

   Quincey and Jonathan attack. Jonathan’s “great knife” shears the Count’s throat, and Quincey’s bowie knife plunges into his heart.

   Mina continues, “It was like a miracle; but before our very eyes, and almost in the drawing of a breath, the whole body crumbled into dust and passed from our sight.”

   She reports Quincey’s last words. “I am only too happy to have been of service,” he says. “Oh God! It was worth for this to die.”

   Whew. It’s as if we had been awakened from a slumber, a drugged state of overpowering misery and futility that permeated this tale. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the pace of the story had accelerated as it proceeded, until this final frenzied last scene jerked us awake. The nightmare, the dream we could not awaken from, is over. Every time I reach the end of the last chapter, as the dying red sun bathes this stalwart band in its light, I imagine the air is fresh and cold. Stoker doesn’t mention the air, or rather Mina doesn’t, but you just know its clean brisk air. The ending prompts that kind of relief. I am awake and I can breathe again. The world is safe.

   And then after a while, I pick up that same slightly more dog-eared paperback and get right back on board for another go around. The ride is that good. 

   Read it.

~In Memory of Ray Cayer~