Anno Dracula Dracula Cha Cha Cha (2 page)

Asa Vajda, Princess of Moldavia, is to be married to Vlad, Count Dracula, formerly Prince of Wallachia, Voivode of Transylvania and Prince Consort of Great Britain. The groom has been married previously to Elisabeta of Transylvania (1448–62), Princess Ilona Szilagy of Hungary (1466–76), Marguerite Chopin of Courtempierre (1709–11), Queen Victoria of Great Britain (1886–8) and Sari Gabòr of Hungary and California (1948–9). The bride, a distant connection of the groom’s mother, Princess Cneajna Musatina of Moldavia, is of the bloodline of Javutich. Since enforced exile from her homeland in 1938, she has resided in Monaco and Finland. The marriage will take place at the Palazzo Otranto, in Fregene, Italy, on the 31st of October this year.

1

DRACULA
CHA CHA CHA

A
litalia offered a special class for vampires, at the front of the aeroplane. The windows were shrouded against the sun with black curtains. It added to the cost. The warm could pay a supplement and share the space — none did on this flight — but Kate couldn’t be seated in the main cabin at the lower fare. The airline assumed the undead were all too wealthy to care, which was not in her case true.

The flight departed an overcast Heathrow Airport in mid-afternoon and was scheduled to arrive in Rome at sunset. In the air, she read well into
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
She didn’t take personally the motto, ‘don’t let the bloodsuckers grind you down,’ and identified more with Arthur Seaton than with the vampires who ran the bicycle factory where he worked. Alan Sillitoe was using a metaphor, not stirring up hatred against her kind. That said, England had pockets of real intolerance: she’d been caught in the Notting Hill blood riots last year, and was fed up with the crucifix-waving teddy boys who hounded her in the launderette.

She’d visited Venice in the 1920s and served in Sicily and the South during the Allied invasions, but never before been to Rome. Geneviève had offered to meet her at Fiumicino Airport, but Kate preferred to make her own way into the city. Geneviève was best off staying close to Charles. These were their last days. They deserved time together alone before Kate arrived to shoulder part of the burden and, incidentally and unavoidably, play gooseberry.

What was between Charles and Geneviève had always shut her out, even in 1888 when she was a warm girl and Geneviève was his first vampire. Kate loved him, of course, which made her silly and sad and would soon make her lost and alone. She was always last in line with Charles Beauregard: after Pamela, his wife; Penelope, his fiancée; Victoria, his queen; and, hardest to take because she’d be around forever, the sainted Geneviève Dieudonné.

Kate had to remind herself often that she liked Geneviève. It probably made things worse.

Toward the end of the flight, a snack was offered — a live white mouse. Not liking to feed in public, she declined. Looking up at the smartly uniformed hostess, she noticed a sky-blue scarf wound between her collar and her throat. Kate sensed the warm girl’s bites and wondered if she were required to offer her neck to Alitalia’s important vampire customers. More likely she had an undead boyfriend without much in the way of self-control.

‘May I have yours as well?’ asked another passenger, a thin-faced elder. ‘I am peckish.’

He already had one wriggling mouse in his left hand.

Kate shrugged, politely. He reached over the aisle into the hostess’s little cage.

‘Thank you, Signora,’ he said, claiming his prize.

The vampire opened his mouth like a python. Red membranes unfurled as his jaws unlocked, revealing double rows of fang-needles. He popped both treats into his maw and crunched out the tiny lives. He chewed the mice like gum, working the furry pulp into his cheek, sucking down juices in minute dribbles.

The elder wore full soup and fish: ruffled white shirt, black dickie bow, velvet morning coat, brocade waistcoat, Playboy Club signet ring, buckled boots, Patek Lioncourt wristwatch, black opera cape lined with red silk. He looked like a middle-European hawk: black patent-leather hair brushed back from a widow’s peak; white face, red eyes, scarlet lips.

‘Or is it Signorina?’ he asked around his mouthful.

‘Miss,’ she admitted. ‘Katharine Reed.’

The elder discreetly spat fur and bones into a paper napkin, which he folded into a small parcel and gave to the hostess for disposal.

Nodding a formal greeting, he introduced himself.

‘Count Gabor Kernassy, of the bloodline of Vlad Dracula, late of
il principe’s
Carpathian Guard.’

In his Italian exile, they called Dracula
‘il principe’,
the Prince. He was born to the title, which distinguished him from the numberless counts — like this one — who floated around in his wake. Sly reference to Machiavelli’s handbook for genial tyrants was also intended.

‘This is my “niece”,’ Count Kernassy gestured at the vampire woman in the window seat next to him, ‘Malenka.’

A glance suggested what species of niece Malenka was to the Count. She was dressed for an entrance, in a floor-length scarlet evening gown, cut to display an enormous outcrop of bosom. The neckline was more like a nipple-line, with a deep valley that almost reached her navel. Diamonds sparkled on the upper slopes of her breasts. Her growth of bright blonde hair was equally enormous, and her razor smile was a credit to either bloodline or Swedish dentistry. Her maroon eyes sparkled and dazzled with boredom, contempt and amusement.

Kate chided herself for unfairly detesting Malenka on sight. She had her down as a
nouveau,
one of those new-born vampiresses who attach themselves to convenient elders and try to pass among gentlefolk three hundred years their senior.

She waved tiny fingers at the woman. Malenka arched plucked eyebrows.

They were the only three vampires on the flight. Kate had an idea she might like the old rogue of a Count, who was on some level aware of the impression Malenka made. Kernassy paused sufficiently in a recitation of his part in several centuries’ of court intrigue to ask her what she did and why she was going to Rome. She avoided the latter question by answering the former.

‘I’m a journalist. For
The Manchester Guardian
and the
New Statesman.’

‘Journalisti,’
Malenka spat, the first word Kate had heard from her. ‘Ani-
malss!’

Malenka smiled as if she were fond of animals, and enjoyed killing and eating them.

‘My niece has been pursued by your press. She is highly visible.’

Kate didn’t pay much attention to the society pages but had an idea she’d seen photographs in the
Tatler
of Malenka looking gorgeously bored at a coffee bar in Soho, or supporting a mushroom-cloud hat at Ascot. It was part of her job to keep up with all manner of publications. Also, she liked to know what people were wearing these days.

‘Motion pictures are interested in her,’ continued the Count. ‘She photographs.’

Many vampires didn’t. Only a few, like Garbo, were film actors or models. Monsieur Erik, angel-voiced spectre of the Paris Opéra, not only would not photograph but could not be recorded for gramophone records.

‘So I imagine,’ Kate snipped.

‘Your accent? It is not English,’ observed Kernassy. ‘You are perhaps Canadian?’

‘I am perhaps Irish.’

‘They
loave
me in Ire-
land
,’ Malenka declared.

‘Malenka has performed a season at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. She was a very great success.’

Kate stopped herself from laughing at the image of Malenka as Molly Bloom.

‘Many Ire
-land
men
loave
me,’ Malenka announced.

‘I’m sure,’ Kate agreed. ‘I can see that.’

Kernassy shared a secret smile. He liked being seen as a rakish

‘uncle’ to this spectacular but brainless creature. Kate wondered if he’d found her warm and turned her, or inherited her from another exhausted father-in-darkness.

‘I do believe you will be much
loaved
in Rome,’ Kate ventured.

‘You hear that, Malenka?’ said the Count. ‘Our Miss Reed predicts formidable success for you.’

Malenka thrust out her breasts in a kind of seated bow, nodding sharply at unheard applause.

‘She is to be in a motion picture, in a leading role.’

‘I am…
Medusa
,’ she said, touching long fingernails to her snakeless tresses.

Kate could just about see the casting.

‘No,
mia cara,’
Kernassy chided. ‘You are
Medea.’

‘There is difference?’ Malenka looked to Kate for support.

‘One had adders in her hairdo and froze men to stone with a glance,’ Kate said. ‘The other helped Jason steal the Golden Fleece but got chucked and bashed their children to death.’

‘I think they change ending in script,’ Kernassy said. ‘The original is — how was it put to me? — “not box office”. And who would, as you say, “chuck” Malenka?’

‘Who care for box orifice?’ Malenka smiled. ‘They will just care for me.’

Count Kernassy shrugged. The pilot announced they were near their destination and asked that all seat-belts be refastened,
per favore.
Malenka had to be helped with the buckle. The belt lay loose in her lap. Trapped in the corseted gown, her waist was tiny.

‘You are in Rome for the wedding?’ the Count asked.

Kate was startled. She didn’t imagine anyone would think that, though the royal engagement had been thoroughly covered, even by the papers she worked for.

‘I might write something,’ she said, noncommittally.

Until now, she’d blocked the wedding from her mind. While she and Geneviève tended Charles’s deathbed, the creature they thought of as blighting their lives for the last seventy years would, amid unparalleled pomp, be taking another wife. There were political and emotional ramifications. In the end, if she could control her hatred, she might indeed write something about it.

‘We shall be at wedding,’ Malenka said. ‘Personal guests of
il principe.’

Kernassy’s eyebrows made Satanic V signs. Like many cloaked Carpathians, he seemed a cut-down imitation of his
principe.
Did Malenka intend to abandon him for a more distinguished uncle? If so, she’d have to best the Royal Fiancée. Kate gathered that Asa Vajda of Moldavia —
la principesa?
— was not the sort to be seen off by a gold-digger.

‘Perhaps you have other affairs?’ the Count remarked, with an elder’s insight.
‘Mamma Roma
has many eternal attractions, some dolorous, some joyful.’

Dolorous? Curious word.

The plane touched down smoothly and taxied to the terminal.

Kernassy courteously let Malenka and Kate leave the plane before him. Naturally, Malenka went first and posed at the top of the movable steps.

There were explosions and flares. Kate thought she was being greeted by a fusillade. It would not have been the first time. Cold bright light battered her. Dazzled, she covered her eyes. Flashes danced in her skull.

A small orchestra struck up a tune. Incongruously for a welcome, it was ‘Arrivederci Roma’.

Shouts came out of the darkness beyond the popping lights.
‘La bella Malenka…
Signorina… swinging, baby…
bene, bene…
va-va-voom!’

Kernassy helped Kate back into the cabin. She took off her glasses and rubbed her burning eyes. Kodak were marketing a new film for photographing vampires. The flashbulbs that went with it produced nuclear sunbursts.

‘Everywhere Malenka goes, there are paparazzi,’ explained the Count.

Questions were shouted in several languages: ‘Are you searching for love in Roma?’ — ‘What do you sleep in?’ — ‘Has your figure been surgically enhanced?’ — ‘What of the wedding?’ — ‘Do you favour the blood of Italian men?’

Malenka gave no answers, but outdazzled the flashguns with her smiles. She swivelled her torso to make a distinct silhouette, and bent forward to blow kisses, raising an animal roar of approval. Another battery of cameras went off.

Kate had attended press calls at London Airport. They weren’t much like this: ‘Will you attend any cricket matches, Mr Sinatra?’ — ‘How do you like our English weather, Miss Desmond?’ — ‘Would you mind awfully posing for a few snaps for our readers, Mrs Roosevelt?’

The aisles filled with baggage-laden passengers wanting to get out of the plane. The hostess explained they would have to wait.
La bella
celebrity took precedence.

Malenka descended the steps as if entering an embassy ball, generous hips swaying. Photographers lay on the tarmac to shoot her from below, wriggling on their backs like up-ended beetles. Kate let Malenka get out of the way and off to one side, surrounded by her press, before leaving the plane again.

The orchestra finished their welcoming goodbye to Rome and began to pack their instruments.

‘We are to be met by a woman from the House of Dracula,’ the Count told her. ‘She is to arrange transport into the city. You will come with us?’