Anno Dracula (11 page)

Francis had first envisioned Dracula as a stick-insect skeleton, dried up, hollow-eyed, brittle. When Brando arrived on set, weighing in at 250 pounds, he had to rethink the character as a blood-bloated leech, full to bursting with stolen life, overflowing his coffin.

For two days, Francis had been trying to get a usable reading of the line ‘I am Dracula.’ Kate, initially as thrilled as anyone else to see Brando at work, was bored rigid after numberless mumbled retakes.

The line was written in three-foot-tall black letters on a large piece of cardboard held up by two grips. The actor experimented with emphases, accents, pronunciations from ‘Dorragulya’ to ‘Jacoolier’. He read the line looking away from the camera and peering straight at the lens. He tried it with false fangs inside his mouth, sticking out of his mouth, shoved up his nostrils or thrown away altogether.

Once he came out with a bat tattooed on his bald head in black lipstick. After considering it for a while, Francis ordered the decal wiped off. You couldn’t say that the star wasn’t bringing ideas to the production.

For two hours now, Brando had been hanging upside-down in the archway, secured by a team of very tired technicians at the end of two guy-ropes. He thought it might be interesting if the Count were discovered like a sleeping bat.

Literally, he read his line upside-down.

Marty Sheen, over whose shoulder the shot was taken, had fallen asleep.

‘I am Dracula. I am Dracula. I am Dracula. I am Dracula. I am Dracula! I am Dracula?

‘Dracula am I. Am I Dracula? Dracula I am. I Dracula am. Am Dracula I?

‘I’m Dracula.

‘The name’s Dracula. Count Dracula.

‘Hey, I’m Dracula.

‘Me... Dracula. You... liquid lunch.’

He read the line as Stanley Kowalski, as Don Corleone, as Charlie Chan, as Jerry Lewis, as Laurence Olivier, as Robert Newton.

Francis patiently shot take after take.

Dennis Hopper hung around, awed, smoking grass. All the actors wanted to watch.

Brando’s face went scarlet. Upside-down, he had problems with the teeth. Relieved, the grips eased up on the ropes and the star dropped towards the ground. They slowed before his head cracked like an egg on the ground. Assistants helped him rearrange himself.

Francis thought about the scene.

‘Marlon, it seems to me that we could do worse than go back to the book.’

‘The book?’ Brando asked.

‘Remember, when we first discussed the role. We talked about how Stoker describes the Count.’

‘I don’t quite...’

‘You told me you knew the book.’

‘I never read it.’

‘You said...’

‘I lied.’

Harker, in chains, is confined in a dungeon. Rats crawl around his feet. Water flows all around.

A shadow passes.

Harker looks up. A grey bat-face hovers above, nostrils elaborately frilled, enormous teeth locked. DRACULA seems to fill the room, black cape stretched over his enormous belly and trunk-like limbs.

Dracula drops something into Harker’s lap. It is Westenra’s head, eyes white. Harker screams.

Dracula is gone.

An insectile clacking emerged from the Script Crypt, the walled-off space on the set where Francis had hidden himself away with his typewriter.

Millions of dollars poured away daily as the director tried to come up with an ending. In drafts Kate had seen - only a fraction of the attempts Francis had made - Harker killed Dracula, Dracula killed Harker, Dracula and Harker became allies, Dracula and Harker were both killed by Van Helsing (unworkable, because Robert Duvall was making another film on another continent), lightning destroyed the whole castle.

It was generally agreed that Dracula should die.

The Count perished through decapitation, purifying fire, running water, a stake through the heart, a hawthorn bush, a giant crucifix, silver bullets, the hand of God, the claws of the Devil, armed insurrection, suicide, a swarm of infernal bats, bubonic plague, dismemberment by axe, permanent transformation into a dog.

Brando suggested that he play Dracula as a Green Suitcase.

Francis was on medication.

‘Reed, what does he mean to you?’

She thought Francis meant Ion-John.

‘He’s just a kid, but he’s getting older fast. There’s something...’

‘Not John. Dracula.’

‘Oh, him.’

‘Yes, him. Dracula. Count Dracula. King of the Vampires.’

‘I never acknowledged that title.’

‘In the 1880s, you were against him?’

‘You could say that.’

‘But he gave you so much, eternal life?’

‘He wasn’t my father. Not directly.’

‘But he brought vampirism out of the darkness.’

‘He was a monster.’

‘Just a monster? In the end, just that?’

She thought hard.

‘No, there was more. He was more. He was... he
is,
you know... big. Huge, enormous. Like the elephant described by blind men. He had many aspects. But all were monstrous. He didn’t bring us out of the darkness. He was the darkness.’

‘John says he was a national hero.’

‘John wasn’t born then. Or turned.’

‘Guide me, Reed.’

‘I can’t write your ending for you.’

At the worst possible time, the policeman was back. There were questions about Shiny Suit. Irregularities revealed by the autopsy.

For some reason, Kate was questioned.

Through an interpreter, the policeman kept asking her about the dead official, what had their dealings been, whether Georghiou’s prejudice against her kind had affected her.

Then he asked her when she had last fed, and upon whom?

‘That’s private,’ she said.

She didn’t want to admit that she had been snacking on rats for months. She’d had no time to cultivate anyone warm. Her powers of fascination were thinning.

A scrap of cloth was produced and handed to her.

‘Do you recognise this?’ she was asked.

It was filthy, but she realised that she did.

‘Why, it’s my scarf. From Biba. I...’

It was snatched away from her. The policeman wrote down a note.

She tried to say something about Ion, but thought better of it. The translator told the policeman Kate had almost admitted to something.

She felt distinctly chilled.

She was asked to open her mouth, like a horse up for sale. The policeman peered at her sharp little teeth and tutted.

That was all for now.

‘How are monsters made?’

Kate was weary of questions. Francis, Marty, the police. Always questions.

Still, she was on the payroll as an advisor.

‘I’ve known too many monsters, Francis. Some were born, some were made all at once, some were eroded, some shaped themselves, some twisted by history.’

‘What about Dracula?’

‘He was the monster of monsters. All of the above.’

Francis laughed.

‘You’re thinking of Brando.’

‘After your movie, so will everybody else.’

He was pleased by the thought.

‘I guess they will.’

‘You’re bringing him back. Is that a good idea?’

‘It’s a bit late to raise that.’

‘Seriously, Francis. He’ll never be gone, never be forgotten. But your Dracula will be powerful. In the next valley, people are fighting over the tatters of the old, faded Dracula. What will your Technicolor, 70mm, Dolby stereo Dracula
mean
?’

‘Meanings are for the critics.’

Two Szgany gypsies throw Harker into the great hall of the castle. He sprawls on the straw-covered flagstones, emaciated and wild-eyed, close to madness.

Dracula sits on a throne which stretches wooden wings out behind him. Renfield worships at his feet, tongue applied to the Count’s black leather boot. Murray, a blissful smile on his face and scabs on his neck, stands to one side, with Dracula’s three vampire brides.

DRACULA: I bid you welcome. Come safely, go freely and leave some of the happiness you bring.

HARKER looks up.

HARKER: You... were a Prince.

DRACULA: I am a Prince still. Of Darkness.