Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea

by Caitlin R. Kiernan

  And so we come back to where we began.

  With no fanfare or overture, the darkness is split apart as the antique projector sputters reluctantly to life. The auditorium is filled with the noisy, familiar cadence of wheels and sprockets, the pressure roller and the take-up reel, as the film speeds along at twenty-four frames per second and the shutter tricks the eyes and brain into perceiving continuous motion instead of a blurred procession of still photographs. By design, it is all a lie, start to finish. It is all an illusion.

  There are no trailers for coming attractions. There might have been in the past, as there might have been cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, or newsreels extolling the evils of Communism and the virtues of soldiers who go away to die in foreign countries. Tonight, there’s only the feature presentation, and it begins with jarring abruptness, without so much as a title sequence or the name of the director. Possibly, a few feet of the opening reel were destroyed by the projectionist at the last theatre that screen the film, a disagreeable, ham-fisted man who drinks on the job and has been known to nod off in the booth. We can blame him, if we like. But it may also be there never were such niceties, and that this 35mm strip of acetate, celluloid, and polyester was always meant to begin just so.

  Likewise, the film’s score – which has been compared favorably to Wojciech Kilar’s score for Campion’s Portrait of a Lady – seems to begin not at any proper beginning. As cellos and violins compete with kettledrums in a whirl of syncopated rhythms, there is the distinct impression of having stumbled upon a thing already in progress. This may well be the director’s desired effect.

  EXT. ČACHTICE CASTLE HILL, LITTLE CARPATHIANS. SUNSET.

  WOMAN’S VOICE (fearfully):

  Katarína, is that you?

  (pause)

  Katarína? If it is you, say so.

  The camera lingers on this bleak spire of evergreens, brush, and sandstone, gray-white rock tinted pink as the sun sinks below the horizon and night claims the wild Hungarian countryside. There are sheer ravines, talus slopes, and wide ledges carpeted with mountain ash, fenugreek, tatra blush, orchids, and thick stands of feather reed grass. The music grows quieter now, drums diminishing, strings receding to a steady vibrato undercurrent as the score hushes itself, permitting the night to be heard. The soundtrack fills with the calls of nocturnal birds, chiefly tawny and long-eared owls, but also nightingales, swifts, and nightjars. From streams and hidden pools, there comes the chorus of frog song. Foxes cry out to one another. The scene is at once breathtaking and forbidding, and you lean forward in your seat, arrested by this austere beauty.

  WOMAN’S VOICE (angry):

  It is a poor jest, Katarína. It is a poor, poor jest, indeed, and I’ve no patience for your games tonight.

  GIRL’S VOICE (soft, not unkind):

  I’m not Katarína. Have you forgotten my name already?

  The camera’s eye doesn’t waver, even at the risk of this shot becoming monotonous. And we see that atop the rocky prominence stands the tumbledown ruins of Čachtice Castle, Csejte vára in the mother tongue. Here it has stood since the 1200’s, when Kazimir of Hunt-Poznan found himself in need of a sentry post on the troubled road to Moravia. And later, it was claimed by the Hungarian oligarch Máté Csák of Trencsén, the heroic Count Matthew. Then it went to Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, who spent much of his life in alchemical study, searching for the Philosopher’s Stone. And, finally, in 1575, the castle was presented as a wedding gift from Lord Chief Justice Ferenc Nádasdy to his fifteen-year old bride, Báthory Erzsébet, or Alžbeta, the Countess Elizabeth Báthory. The name (one or another of the lot) will doubtless ring a bell, though infamy has seen she’s better known to many as the Blood Countess.

  The cinematographer works more sleight of hand, and the jagged lineament of the ruins is restored to that of Csejte as it would have stood when the Countess was alive. A grand patchwork of Romanesque and Gothic architecture, its formidable walls and towers loom high above the drowsy village of Vrbové. The castle rises – no, it sprouts – the castle sprouts from the bluff in such a way as to seem almost a natural, integral part of the local geography, something in situ, carved by wind and rain rather than by the labors of man.

  The film jump cuts to an owl perched on a pine branch. The bird blinks – once, twice – spreads its wings, and takes to the air. The camera lets it go and doesn’t follow, preferring to remain with the now-vacant branch. Several seconds pass before the high-pitched scream of a rabbit reveals the reason for the owl’s departure.

  GIRL’S VOICE:

  Ever is it the small things that suffer. That’s what they say, you know? The Tigress of Csejte, she will have them all, because there is no end to her hunger.

  Another jump cut brings us to the castle gates, and the camera pans slowly across the masonry of curtain walls, parapets, and up the steep sides of a horseshoe-shaped watchtower. Jump cut again, and we are shown a room illuminated by the flickering light of candles. There is a noblewoman seated in an enormous and somewhat fanciful chair, upholstered with fine brocade, its oaken legs and arms ending with the paws of a lion, or a dragon.

  Or possibly a tigress.

  So, a woman seated in an enormous, bestial chair. She wears the “Spanish farthingale” and stiffened undergarments fashionable during this century. Her dress is made of the finest Florentine silk. Her waist is tightly cinched, her ample breasts flattened by the stays. Were she standing, her dress might remind us of an hourglass. Her head is framed with a wide ruff of starched lace, and her arms held properly within trumpet sleeves, more lace at the cuffs to ring her delicate hands. There is a wolf pelt across her lap, and another covers her bare feet. The candlelight is gracious, and she might pass for a woman of forty, though she’s more than a decade older. Her hair, which is the color of cracked acorn shells, has been meticulously braided and pulled back from her round face and high forehead. Her eyes seem dark as rubies.

  INT. COUNTESS BÁTHORY’S CHAMBER. NIGHT.

  COUNTESS (tersely):

  Why are you awake at this hour, child? You should be sleeping. Haven’t I given you a splendid bed?

  GIRL (seen dimly, in silhouette):

  I don’t like being in that room alone. I don’t like the shadows in that room. I try not to see them –

  COUNTESS (close up, her eyes fixed on the child):

  Oh, don’t be silly. A shadow has not yet harmed anyone.

  GIRL (almost whispering):

  Begging your pardon, My Lady, but these shadows mean to do me mischief. I hear them whisper, and they do. They are shadows cast by wicked spirits. They do not speak to you?

  COUNTESS (sighs, frowning):

  I don’t speak with shadows.

  GIRL (coyly):

  That isn’t what they say in the village.

  (pause)

  Do you truly know the Prayer of Ninety Cats?

  By now, it is likely that the theatre, which only a short time ago so filled your thoughts, has receded, fading almost entirely from your conscious mind. This is usually the way of theatres, if the films they offer have any merit at all. The building is the spectacle which precedes the spectacle it has been built to contain, not so different from the relationship of colorful wrapping paper and elaborately tied bows to the gifts hidden within. You’re greeted by a mock-grand façade and the blazing electric marquee, and are then admitted into the catchpenny splendor of the lobby. All these things make an impression, and set a mood, but all will fall by the wayside. Exiting the theatre after a film, you’ll hardly note a single detail. Your mind will be elsewhere, processing, reflecting, critiquing, amazed, or disappointed.

  Onscreen, the Countess’ candlelit bedchamber has been replaced by the haggard faces of peasant women, mothers and grandmothers, gazing up at the terrible edifice of Csejte. Over the years, so many among them have sent their daughters away to the castle, hearing that servants are cared for and well compensated. Over the years, none have returned. There are rumors of black ma
gic and butchery, and, from time to time, girls have simply vanished from Vrbové, and also from the nearby town of Čachtice, from whence the fortress took its name. The women cross themselves and look away.

  Dissolve to scenes of the daughters of landed aristocracy and the lesser gentry preparing their beautiful daughters for the gynaeceum of ecsedi Báthory Erzsébet, where they will be schooled in all the social graces, that they might make more desirable brides and find the best marriages possible. Carriages rattle along the narrow, precipitous road leading up to the castle, wheels and hooves trailing wakes of dust. Oblivious lambs driven to the slaughter, freely delivered by ambitious and unwitting mothers.

  Another dissolve, to winter in a soundstage forest, and the Countess walks between artificial sycamore maples, ash, linden, beech, and elderberry. The studio “greens men” have worked wonders, meticulously crafting this forest from plaster, burlap, epoxy, wire, Styrofoam, from lumber armatures and the limbs and leaves of actual trees. The snow is as phony as the trees, but no less convincing, a combination of SnowCel, SnowEx foam, and Powderfrost, dry-foam plastic snow spewed from machines; biodegradable, nontoxic polymers to simulate a gentle snowfall after a January blizzard. But the mockery is perfection. The Countess stalks through drifts so convincing that they may as well be real. Her furs drag behind her, and her boots leave deep tracks. Two huge wolves follow close behind, and when she stops, they come to her and she scratches their shaggy heads and pats their lean flanks and plants kisses behind their ears. A trained crow perches on a limb overhead, cawing, cawing, cawing, but neither the woman nor the wolves pay it any heed. The Countess speaks, and her breath fogs.

  COUNTESS (to wolves):

  You are my true children. Not Ursula or Pál or Miklós. And you are also my true inamoratos, my most beloved, not Ferenc, who was only ever a husband.

  If tabloid gossip and backlot hearsay is to be trusted, this scene has been considerably shortened and toned down from the original script. We do not see the Countess’ sexual congress with the wolves. It is only implied by her affections, her words, and by the lewd canticle of a voyeur crow. The scene is both stark and magnificent. It is a final still point before the coming tempest, before the horrors, a moment imbued with grace and menacing tranquility. The camera cuts to Herr Kramer in its counterfeit tree, and you’re watching its golden eyes watching the Countess and her wolves, and anything more is implied.

  INT. ČACHTICE CASTLE/DRESSING ROOM. MORNING.

  The Countess is seated before a looking glass held inside a carved wooden frame, motif of dryads and satyrs. We see the Countess as a reflection, and behind her, a servant girl. The servant is combing the Countess’ brown hair with an ivory comb. The Countess is no longer a young woman. There are lines at the edges of her mouth and beneath her eyes.

  COUNTESS (furrowing her brows):

  You’re pulling my hair again. How many times must I tell you to be careful. You’re not deaf, are you?

  SERVANT (almost whispering):

  No, My Lady.

  COUNTESS (icily):

  Then when I speak to you, you hear me perfectly well.

  SERVANT:

  Yes, My Lady.

  The ivory comb snags in the Countess’ hair, and she stands, spinning about to face the terrified servant girl. She snatches the comb from the girl’s hand. Strands of Elizabeth’s hair are caught between the teeth.

  COUNTESS (tone of disbelief):

  You wretched little beast. Look what you’ve done.

  The Countess slaps the servant with enough force to split her lip. Blood spatters the Countess’ hand as the servant falls to the floor. The Countess is entranced by the crimson beads speckling her pale skin.

  COUNTESS (whisper):

  You…filthy…wretch…

  FADE TO BLACK.

  FADE IN:

  INT. DREAM MIRROR.

  The Countess stands in a dim pool of light, before a towering mirror, a grotesque nightmare version of the one on her dressing table. The nymphs, satyrs, and dryads are life-size, and move, engaged in various and sundry acts of sexual abandon. This dark place is filled with sounds of desire, orgasm, drunken debauchery. In the mirror is a far younger Elizabeth Báthory. But, as we watch, as the Countess watches, this young woman rapidly ages, rushing through her twenties, thirties, her forties. The Countess screams, commanding the mirror cease these awful visions. The writhing creatures that form the frame laugh and mock her screams.

  FLASH CUT TO:

  EXT. SNOW-COVERED FIELD. DAYLIGHT.

  The Countess stands naked in the falling snow, her feet buried up to the ankles. The snowflakes turn red. The red snow becomes a red rain, and she’s drenched. The air is a red mist.

  FLASH CUT TO:

  INT. DREAM MIRROR.

  Nude and drenched in blood, the Countess gazes at her reflection, her face and body growing young before her eyes. The looking glass shatters.

  FADE TO BLACK.

  The Hungary of the film has more in common with the landscape of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm than with any Hungary that exists now or ever has existed. It is an archetypal vista, as much a myth as Stoker’s Transylvania and Sheridan Le Fanu’s Styria. A real place that has, inconveniently, never existed. Little or nothing is said of the political and religious turmoil of Elizabeth’s time, or of the war with the Ottoman Turks, aside from the death of the Countess’ husband at the hands of General Giorgio Basta. If you’re a stickler for accuracy, these omissions are unforgivable. But most of the men and women who sit in the theatre, entranced by the light flashed back from the screen, will never notice. People do not generally come to the movies hoping for recitations of dry history. Few will care that pivotal events in the film never occurred, because they are happening now, unfolding before the eyes of all who have paid the price of admission.

  INT. COUNTESS’ BEDCHAMBER. NIGHT.

  GIRL:

  If you have been taught the prayer, say the words aloud.

  COUNTESS:

  How would you ever know such things, child?

  GIRL (turning away):

  We have had some of the same tutors, you and I.

  The second reel begins with the arrival at Csejte of a woman named Anna Darvulia. In hushed tones, a servant (who dies an especially messy death farther along) refers to her as “the Witch of the Forest.” She becomes Elizabeth’s lover and teaches her sorcery and the Prayer of Ninety Cats to protect her from all harm. As Darvulia is depicted here, she may as well have inhabited a gingerbread cottage before she came to the Countess, a house of sugary confections where she regularly feasted on lost children. Indeed, shortly after her arrival, and following an admittedly gratuitous sex scene, the subject of cannibalism is introduced. A peasant girl named Júlia, stolen from her home, is brought to the Countess by two of her handmaids and partners in crime, Dorottya and Ilona. The girl is stripped naked and forced to kneel before Elizabeth while the handmaids burn the bare flesh of her back and shoulders with coins and needles that have been placed over an open flame. Darvulia watches on approvingly from the shadows.

  INT. KITCHEN. NIGHT.

  COUNTESS (smiling):

  You shouldn’t fret so about your dear mother and father. I know they’re poor, but I will see to it they’re compensated for the loss of their only daughter.

  JÚLIA (sobbing):

  There is never enough wood in winter, and never enough food. We have no shoes and wear rags.

  COUNTESS:

  And haven’t I liberated you from those rags?

  JÚLIA:

  They need me. Please, My Lady, send me home to them.

  The Countess glances over her shoulder to Darvulia, as if seeking approval/instruction. Darvulia nods once, then the Countess turns back to the sobbing girl.

  COUNTESS:

  Very well. I’ll make you a promise, Júlia. And I keep my promises. In the morning, I will send your mother and your father warm clothing and good shoes and enough firewood to see them through the s
nows. And, what’s more, I will send you back to them, as well.

  JÚLIA:

  You would do that?

  COUNTESS:

  Certainly, I will. I’ll not have any use for you after this evening, and I detest wastefulness.

  This scene has been cut from most prints. If you have any familiarity with the trials and tribulations of the film’s production, and with the censorship that followed, you’ll be surprised, and possibly pleased, to find it has not been excised from this copy. It may also strike you as relatively tame, compared to many less controversial, but far more graphic, portions of the film.

  COUNTESS:

  When we are finished here…

  (pause)

  When we’re finished, and my hunger is satisfied, I will speak with my butcher – a skilled man with a knife and cleaver – and he will see to it that your corpse is dressed in such a way that it can never be mistaken for anything but that of a sow. I’ll have the meat salted and smoked, then sent to them, as evidence of my generosity. They will have their daughter back, and, in the bargain, will not go hungry. Are they fond of sausage, Júlia? I’d think you would make a marvelous debreceni.