This Thing of Darkness, page 14
“You are very pale today, my dear,” commented Bela, escorting her to her seat. “I trust you are not unwell?”
You should talk, she thought, her own sense of irony returning like an old friend. “I have been working long hours,” she said, which was not a lie.
“You could be the heroine of one of my pictures,” he said with a charming smile, “a pale, sad innocent threatened by a monster.”
“Would I be dead or alive?”
“Does it matter?” he chuckled, enjoying the banter. “The audience would fall in love with you and want to protect you from the wicked Lord of the Undead.” He stood up so abruptly that Evi jumped, her nerves still unsettled by her days of isolation. “But I had almost forgotten! I had intended to surprise you when you arrived.” He swept to the door. “Wait here.”
Evi put down her bag and stood up as she waited for Bela to reappear, which he quickly did, wafting into her presence wrapped in a vast cape. He drew the cape up over his mouth in a ham horror gesture Evi recognised from the film Dracula. It was no good; she felt her shoulders shaking, and the giggle had escaped her mouth before she could swallow it.
Bela dropped his hands to his sides and looked at her, a wounded vampire repelled from his intended victim by the shrill sound of ridicule. “Audiences were scared half to death by my performance in my films, you know.”
Evi shrugged, startled by the effect her reaction was having. She wished now that she had pretended to be terrified. “Oh, I shouldn’t like to meet you on a dark night, I assure you.” She floundered for something else to say. “Is that the actual cape?”
“Yes, indeed. The cape that made me Dracula.” He raised his head again, his pride restored by her feigned curiosity. “Come closer.”
Evi struggled with nervous laughter again. She was sure Bela had taken on his old role again as soon as he had donned the cape. His voice sounded more gravelly, and her mad imagination made his face seem paler and more sunken, the teeth—aided by prosthetics of some kind—a little sharper and more pointed at the front. She reached out to touch the edge of the cape, more in mockery than anything else, and he backed away from her immediately. “I’m sorry,” she said, slipping her hand behind her back. “Have I offended you?”
“You have never worn that before,” he said quietly, pointing in the direction of her neck.
Evi’s fingers went to the discreet Miraculous Medal she had put on that morning. It had been buried at the bottom of her jewellery box, along with her engagement ring and wedding band, since she had received the news of Christy’s death, but something had compelled her to put it on that day as she battled an irrational fear of going outside. “My husband gave it to me when we were married,” she said. “It was his mother’s. She put it around his neck when he went away to war because she wanted to protect him. He gave it to me.”
Bela’s face was flint; Evi could not quite tell whether he was angry or simply displeased. The object was unmistakably Catholic, and putting up with anti-Catholic abuse had felt like a rite of initiation when she had converted to marry Christy. “You should not put your faith in such trinkets,” he said coldly. “It’s a piece of metal.”
“Yes,” answered Evi, feeling her temper stirring. Christy would have been halfway to giving him a punch on the nose by now. “But there’s so much more to it than that. It has a mother’s love in it, and a husband’s. It is hard for a man to go away to fight and leave his wife behind, and this was especially true at a time when my work took me into dangerous places, when so many civilians were being killed in air raids. . .” Evi trailed off and sat down in her chair. She could not bring herself to cover the medallion—it would have felt like an admission of defeat—but she shifted her position so that he could no longer see it. “So you became Dracula,” she said brightly, but she felt sickened by him.
Bela relaxed immediately, but he did not sit down; the gravity of the part he was reenacting demanded that he remain on his feet. “Before I even had the role, I knew it was mine. Why, they even gave me a home that looked like a Gothic castle! I could stand on the battlements to survey the City of Angels below.”
“Los Angeles.”
“City of fallen angels. I seemed to be the only one who saw them.” Evi glanced at him in confusion. “Of course, you think I speak in metaphor,” he continued, “but would that it were so. There were legions of them, walking the streets, guarding the boundaries of the city, controlling all who entered as well as those who tried to leave. I had been summoned to the city by the Darkness.”
Evi could feel a migraine coming on. “You were not initially cast as Dracula, were you? I read in your own account that the first choice was Chaney.”
Bela directed a smile at the corner of the room. “Indeed, Chaney, the star of London after Midnight. The biggest horror star in Hollywood, and the lead in no fewer than ten of Browning’s films. But I knew he would never play it; it was my destiny to play that role, and Chaney was in the way.” Bela looked sideways at Evi. “You have no idea who Chaney was, have you?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“He was the greatest of the great, Evi, a formidable rival if he had not tried to flee the forces of Darkness. I know you think me mad, but if you only saw his films, his every bit part was a mad flight from the dark forces that ensnared us all. He chose to run. He failed.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was cast in the role, there was much pre-production publicity, and I sat back and laughed,” said Bela. Evi soundlessly moved her chair as far away from him as possible, until her shoulder touched the opposite wall. “Chaney as Dracula was a ridiculous proposition. He was a man who could pull faces and wear makeup to make himself look sinister, but he was no Lord of the Undead—merely a man living in fear of the shadow he had created.”
Evi felt herself fidgeting. She knew what must have happened, but Bela’s slow, lingering descriptions were too distasteful, and she struggled to keep scribbling her shorthand symbols. “How did you get the role?” she asked curtly.
Bela raised a hand in mild annoyance, as though she were heckling him from the stalls. “The way was opened. The chosen director, Leni, died suddenly from”—he paused—“blood poisoning. . . opening the way for Browning to step into the dead man’s shoes. Then what do you suppose happened next?”
“Chaney died too?” answered Evi coldly. She could not remember what she had read, but it was so obviously the way the narrative was moving; and she was determined not to give Bela the luxury of enjoying the moment.
“All in good time, my dear,” answered Bela, looking alarmingly like Dracula descending the stairs to murder Renfield. “I had to bide my time like you. I worked on a few pictures here and there. Wild Company, as the title states, was an interesting diversion. The aptly named Such Men Are Dangerous was next. They will never know how right they were to cast me in that one. Renegades was a chore, but it passed the time. Viennese Nights was a musical, cheerful and bright, my first appearance in the new Technicolor light.”
“What happened to Chaney?”
Bela closed his eyes. “You know, you would not be so impatient if you had seen what a great rival this man was. He was such a very great actor. He was a man like me, haunted by his childhood years spent in circuses and freak shows, and by something far darker than that.” He turned abruptly to Evi. “You know I went to watch him on set shortly before the disaster struck him? I had to see for myself what he was like, and I was not at all disappointed. He was playing a ventriloquist at a fairground, so movingly I might have shed a tear if I still could. And all the time, the stagehands were whispering their concerns. Chaney was not at all well, they said. And he was so soon to embark upon the role of Dracula.”
“You must have been delighted,” Evi chimed in, like the voice of conscience.
“My feelings had nothing to do with it; I was destined for that role, remember? And so it happened. I woke up one morning, after weeks of agonising, to the news that Chaney had died. A ‘throat cancer’—something lodged in his throat, anyway. It hardly mattered how it had happened. The telegram arrived, and that morning I was in discussions with Browning about the role.”
Evi stopped writing and put away her pens and papers, closing the bag with an aggressive click. She was not going to sit and listen to this self-indulgence; she already knew about Bela’s meeting with Browning from a book Hugo had lent her before they had argued. She could picture it all without the help of an elderly man trapped in the dreams of his cinematic successes. She knew he had played the part well, waiting on the upstairs landing until the doorbell rang and his servant ushered Browning in.
Bela had counted to three before appearing at the top of the stairs to greet him, striking a suitably dramatic pose. But Bela had been Dracula before and knew the plots and individual scenes better than the director. Browning looked up at the shadowy figure slowly descending the stairs and relaxed visibly, quietly measuring up the man before him for the role that so badly needed to be filled.
Both men knew that this was a screen test in all but name, and Bela played to his audience with every ounce of strength he possessed. “Good morning, my friend,” Bela greeted him, standing before Browning in precisely the place in the hall where the late morning light threw the most shadow. “Welcome to my home,” he said gravely, extending a hand of friendship to the anxious Browning, who was still reeling with the shock of losing Chaney so soon after the death of Leni. “I hope this will be a fruitful meeting for us both.”
In Browning’s state of near panic, Bela’s calm, dignified presence was all the director needed to see to be convinced that this little-known Hungarian exile could rescue the picture. “You know why I am here, no doubt,” said Browning, when the two men had sat down and Bela’s servant had poured coffee and withdrawn. “I would like to offer you the role of Dracula. You will be aware of the desperate predicament we are in, and if filming is to commence at all. . .”
Bela leant forward with the smile of a physician reassuring a nervous patient. “It is the very least I can do to help an old friend,” he said gently, “and indeed, my beloved Universal Studios. My friend, you look terrible.”
Browning nodded. “I must admit, my nerves are in pieces,” he answered, reaching into his jacket pocket. Bela took out a beautiful silver cigarette case from his own pocket and opened it in front of Browning. He took a cigarette gratefully and let Bela strike a light for him. “There are wild rumours everywhere,” he said, taking short, shallow puffs. “Hardly surprising, I suppose, with two men dead like that so suddenly, but there are people claiming a curse on the production.”
Bela gave a good-natured laugh, cursing himself for managing to sound villainous when he had meant to keep the tone light. “My dear man, people say all kinds of crazy things. You must pay no heed.”
Browning played with the cigarette between his fingers. “You don’t believe there could be any truth to it, then?”
Count Dracula, as he was so soon to become, leant forward and touched Browning’s trembling wrist. “There now, my dear Browning, you must think nothing of it. A mere coincidence, that is all. A terrible coincidence, but the picture will be a great success, and no one else will get hurt.”
The two men drank coffee, the servant appearing just once to take away the empty pot and bring back a fresh one. The coffee was mixed with all Bela’s sympathy and reassurance, so convincingly so, that before long they were talking through the prosaic reality of pre-production. They talked amid the swirls of tobacco smoke and Bela’s barely supressed excitement.
Through the kaleidoscope lens of many years, Bela once again mislaid the weeks of rehearsals and preparations, those tedious hours of waiting. In his memory, he stepped directly from that room and walked alone down the narrow corridor that led to the set.
The lovely Helen was Mina, with Manners as Harker, and then there was Frye as Dracula’s little friend Renfield. Bela stood before them, the Lord of the Undead, savouring the audible hush from the assembled cast and crew.
Bela stared ahead, in character every second, whilst inside he laughed at the thought that they all looked as though they had seen a ghost, not the nobleman from Transylvania in all his grandeur. Even Browning, sitting as director and therefore lord of all he surveyed, was lost for words—Bela took this as a silent genuflection to the real power behind this production. The force that in due course would touch them all, changing them all forever.
An old acquaintance from Bela’s Berlin days was the cinematographer—Freund, an inevitable choice, connected to Bela by the horrors of German cinema, who could bring the fear of Bram Stoker’s story into every shot, every camera angle, every exposure, every set design. Both men knew why they had been thrown together. They had both learnt their trade in Berlin; they both knew their place in the grander scheme of things. As Freund had helped unleash the Expressionist beasts across Germany, Bela was helping unleash a new beast across America and beyond. As the production moved inexorably towards release and the adulation of the critics, Bela and Freund became the closest of confederates, locked into a pact with Darkness.
Evi would not allow herself to become mesmerised by this tale of posturing actors. “It was a film,” she said, the cut-glass vowels shattering the momentary silence. “Were you all in a pact with the devil? The extras too? Did someone make you all sign a contract in your own blood before you started?”
Bela turned to look at her. He so rarely looked at her directly that Evi found herself shuddering involuntarily at the sight of those cold, dark eyes trying so hard to pierce her. “You are a brave woman to mock the powers of Darkness,” he said quietly. “Brave. . . or foolish.”
“Deride and conquer, as my husband used to say,” she answered. “What greater insult is there to the powerful than a healthy dose of ridicule?”
Bela continued to stare at her. “You are quite right, of course, though it is hard to see the purpose of insulting the powerful if one wishes to survive. In answer to your question,” he added, “if a question indeed it was, we did no such thing. Those of us who had been drawn that way needed to sign no such bond, and the others would not have done so. There was a division, one might say, between those who were doing a job and those who were responding to something more elemental. The cast were a mixture of those who were acting and those who knew this was more than just acting. Helen was the beautiful Mina. She was a woman reluctant to play the part. I sensed that even back then. She had some inkling of the evil she was embracing, I am quite sure.”
“But it was just a—”
“If you think it all so preposterous, take the time to look at our scenes together. There was a certain tension between us that was more than theatrical. Then there was Manners, who played the part of Jonathan Harker with such seriousness that, like his character, he fought the Darkness at every turn. Rarely did we speak to each other. I’m fairly sure he thought me the personification of evil by the end of it.”
“Artist rivalries are scarcely new. . .”
“Evangeline, he loathed us all, me and Freund and Browning. No sooner was the shoot completed when he left Hollywood altogether, denouncing it as a false place.”
Brilliant man, thought Evi. “I see,” she said.
“He was perceptive beyond his understanding,” continued Bela, “but also helpless. He may have understood what we were all playing with but could do nothing about it. And then there was Frye, the pathetic little Renfield. He was drawn to the Darkness, just like his character. The spell the film cast had repercussions for all of us, but at the time, all Hollywood seemed to lie at our feet.”
“What happened to Browning?”
That question silenced him, if only for a moment. Evi was aware of her own pulsing headache and the yawning quiet from her subject. Bela never found it very easy to talk about other people, but her journalist’s instinct told her it was more than self-obsession that made him struggle to find the words. “Oh, Browning. Poor man.”
“What happened to him?”
“It was all going so well, you see,” said Bela, as though that answered the question. “So effortlessly, as though some unknown force was at work behind the façade of the movie set. But Mephistopheles must have his wages, you see. That hidden force at work is never without a cost, and in the end”—he paused slightly—“someone must pay.”
“Bela, what happened to Browning?”
“He fell into a deep depression. He became more and more depressed with each passing day. Whilst I became more and more exultant, he slipped into misery. Perhaps he felt almost redundant, the acting all unfolded so perfectly. It was as if his place had been usurped in a mysterious way, something he could not fully comprehend.”
Evi tried to come up with a retort, but no words emerged.
“It must have felt all too strangely perfect for him. His own professional insecurities rose to the surface; Freund and I found ourselves reassuring him daily of his importance to the making of the film.” Bela looked back at Evi. “Stop writing, please. Just for a moment, I want you to stop writing and merely listen.”
“Why?”
“Please just do as I ask.” Evi found it impossible to refuse and put down her pen very deliberately so that he would notice. “Thank you. You see, looking back, I realise that it was at this point that he began to suspect that something was not right, something unusual. He began to drink too much; he missed his old friend, the poor Chaney. He raved about a curse, but no one wanted to listen.”
“He was grieving,” Evi began. “I know the feeling. He was grieving for his friend, and everything became too much to bear.”
“He could just let the cameras roll, Evangeline. As the shoot progressed, Browning would simply sit, transfixed, oblivious at times to what was happening before him. As we moved through the movie’s dark passages, he would rip the pages from the script like a man caught up in something beyond his powers of comprehension. London after Midnight may have been his first foray into the vampire genre, but it was clear that this picture was something different.”
