by Dacre Stoker
I am rambling again.
Bram.
Let me tell you about Bram.
He has grown into a fine young man!
There is not a time he walks down the street and does not turn the head of a lady. He is tall and strong, a star athlete, by all accounts, at Trinity College—rugby, racewalking, rowing, gymnastics. I do not believe there is a sport he cannot master. He has had not a hint of illness since he was a child, since you . . . you . . . What did you do that night?
What did you do to my brother?
Is he still my brother?
He does not speak of it.
Not a word.
From the moment we returned to the castle tower with Pa through today, it is as if none of the events of those days took place.
Uncle Edward healed him.
Uncle Edward and his leeches.
That is what he tells anyone who asks; Ma and everyone else back up this story.
We know differently, though, do we not?
You and I?
If you had not come into our lives, would I have Bram today?
Is he even my Bram? My brother?
* * *
• • •
I have seen you, you know.
Just recently in Paris. I was on the Champs-Élysées, and I saw you standing beneath the awning of a small patisserie. Your hair was styled differently, but even from across the street I knew it was you. I tried to cross over to you, but the crowd was so thick at that time of day I lost you amongst the rushing Parisians.
Did you see me?
Did you run from me?
If I showed one of my drawings to the people in that crowd, would they have recognized you and pointed in the direction in which you had gone? Or would they have simply shaken their heads and continued on their way? I bet the latter.
Where have you been? Where did you go? Where are you as I write this today?
* * *
• • •
Thornley is teaching medicine now! Everyone says he will go far, and I know he never intended anything else. He graduated from Queen’s College in Galway and studied at the Royal College of Surgeons. He has been a surgeon at Dublin City Hospital, teaches at Richmond Hospital, and spends much of his time at Swift’s Hospital for Lunatics, a particular fascination for him. He stays busy—too busy. A far cry from delivering live packages to you during the night.
Dick is following fast on his heels, eager to study medicine after Rathmines School. I suppose he is still Baby Richard to you, considering he was only two years old when last you saw him.
Thomas has action in his bones. He has his sights set on joining the Bengal Civil Service the moment he graduates from Trinity next year, can you imagine? Pa says he will have a lot more studying to do before he sits for the Civil Service exam, but Tom is not thinking about that. You would not know him, of course. He was nothing but a wee lad when you ran off into the night and abandoned us. And Margaret and George had not even been born yet!
It was all so long ago, and yet it seems like the night before last. I cannot imagine where you went, what you have been doing.
* * *
• • •
Was that you in Paris? Perhaps I must admit to myself it was not. After all, you looked as if you had not aged a day. Better, actually, than that last time I saw you. Perhaps you found Ponce de León’s precious fountain and drank from its waters? Girls should not keep such secrets but should share them with each other, do you not think? You always had the most beautiful skin, rivaling that of the purest ivory.
There I go again!
Blabbering on and on.
* * *
• • •
I know you want to hear about Bram. He was always your favorite, was he not? It is okay, you can tell me; I would not take offense. Of all my siblings, he has my heart as well. He has always been Ma’s pet, but probably not Pa’s. If Pa has a soft spot, it will be for Thornley and Dick, doctor and doctor-to-be—following in the footsteps of all the other Stoker doctors. Bram tries to please him, and he seems to be following Pa’s wishes, but he and Pa do have their differences and have not seen eye to eye recently.
Pa encouraged Bram to sit for the Civil Service exam, which he did. His score was second highest, so he got one of the five open jobs in Petty Sessions at Dublin Castle. He began in the Fines and Penalties Office, and he hates it so!
He claims the boredom is so thick in Petty Sessions it can be seen floating through the air in an attempt to escape the castle, a cloud of gray and muck. He came home yesterday and claimed to have stepped in some boredom on his way out, catching it before it could slip beneath the threshold and get lost in the streets of Dublin.
You and I know Bram would rather be at the theater day and night, rubbing elbows with the actors and stagehands. He would be happy to sit in the cheap seats and watch the same show over and over again.
Of course, Pa is sure the stage is populated by “ne’er-do-wells,” and as much as he enjoys a highbrow performance, he thinks theater work is not acceptable—he remembers the old burlesque shows and assumes Bram would get in with a bad crowd. No son of his will work in the theater!
So many men are out of work—is not Bram fortunate to have a path laid out for him at Dublin Castle? With his education, there will be regular promotions and raises. And let none of us forget, Pa started at Dublin Castle at only sixteen, and he had to work and save for almost thirty years so that he could afford to marry and provide for Ma. And isn’t Bram thankful? He should be thrilled to follow in his father’s footsteps!
Those conversations make Bram long for his sickbed again.
* * *
• • •
Oh, my Bram.
You would be proud.
Pa will not hear of him working in a theater, but Bram has found another way to be involved. He writes reviews of performances in the Evening Mail. Ironically, an unpaid position, but of course Bram takes it very seriously. He works much faster than the other clerks so he has time to write reviews and keep up his journals on the castle’s clock, with his boss none the wiser.
This seems to keep Bram’s literary urges at bay for now.
Bram and Pa sometimes even attend theater together! Bram has turned Pa into his sounding board, analyzing every nuance ad nauseam. Of course, Pa thinks Bram will be satisfied to go on that way, but I do not think it will be enough. As soon as Pa relents, or if he turns his back, we will see Bram run for the stage.
* * *
• • •
You clearly know something about acting, don’t you?
How much of what we witnessed was really you and how much was left to acting?
Is your name Ellen Crone or is that just a stage name conjured up by you to suit the play? One you shed the moment the final curtain fell?
Did you love us at all?
So many questions and no means to ask them.
Well, I have much to do today. I have caught you up. This useless letter, never to be posted, but complete nonetheless.
As you can see, we do not need you. We never needed you.
But I would still like to talk to you.
Where are you?
Affectionately yours,
Matilda
THE JOURNAL of BRAM STOKER
8 August 1868, 5:31 p.m.—I felt the need to put pen to paper simply to record the oddity of what I just witnessed. My flatmate, the illustrious William B. Delany, thinking he was alone, stood silently in the corner of the common room of our flat, located at 11 Lower Leeson Street, and plucked a plump black fly off the fireplace mantel and dropped it in a glass jar, trapping it inside with a cork-rimmed lid. While on the face of it this is odd behavior, I will be first to admit to doing the same at one point in my life, but I find it important to reveal I was probably eight or nine years old at the time and had
seen my brother Thornley ensnaring hapless insects the year prior, and would be party to Thomas harvesting such in the years after. It is not so much the act of trapping a fly I found strange; it is the fact that a grown man, at the ripe old age of twenty-two, would partake in such behavior that seemed more than a little peculiar to me.
Delany was turned at an angle and did not see me enter the room. I can’t help but wonder if he would continue upon his quest to trap this flying pest if he knew I was watching; I am inclined to believe the answer to that question is yes. The image of determination on his face, the utter focus with which he acted, told me it was a bad day to be a fly on our mantel.
So, capture the fly he did.
I would like to say this was the extent of the oddity I decided to commit to paper, but, alas, would that really be enough? What really grabbed me as I witnessed this endeavor was that the plump little fly was not alone in that jar; he had company.
An embarrassment of riches, when it came to company.
The jar, being about five inches tall and three inches wide, appeared to be full of flies. How many, you ask? So many that there was little room to spare.
* * *
• • •
MEMO FOR STORY: “I once knew a little boy who put so many flies in a bottle that they had not room to die!”
* * *
• • •
I DARED APPROACH just a little closer, and his eyes were so fixed on his prize he still did not notice me. He watched his latest captive as it climbed over the fallen soldiers who had been deposited on this baleful battlefield before it. A couple of times, it tried to rise up out of the jar only to bounce off the lid or the glass walls and land on its many legs, then regroup and try again.
With my closer vantage point, I was aghast to discover at least a third of the other flies were still living, some moving slower than others but alive nonetheless. Most either could no longer take to air or had surrendered to their fates.
“Willy? What have you got there?” I said the words softly; I did not wish to startle the boy but startle him I did, and he fumbled with the jar for a moment before it escaped his grasp. I dove and snatched it midair mere inches before it would shatter on the wooden floor.
“Give me that,” Willy said.
I rose to my feet and held the jar up to the light. “I don’t believe we’re permitted to own pets here. Did you ask our landlord before bringing these little guys home?”
“I’m writing a paper on Francesco Redi. I need them for an experiment.”
I returned the jar to him and felt the immediate need to wash my hands. “What kind of experiment?”
Willy rolled his eyes. Those of us of lesser intelligence tended to insult his self-assessed superior intellect with silly questions. “Redi is often considered the founder of modern parasitology. Prior to a paper he published in 1668, it was believed maggots generated spontaneously. He proved they actually came from the eggs of flies. For my paper, I plan to document the life cycle from fly to egg to maggot.”
“By capturing flies in a jar?”
Again, the rude rolling of the eyes. “A living experiment. I purchased a slab of cagmag beef from the butcher and set it out on the porch yesterday, but someone—or something—absconded with it.”
“I would bet on the something over the someone,” I retorted. “There are a number of dogs wandering these streets; any one of them would be grateful for such a hearty meal.”
“Mind you, this specimen was so scrappy the old Trinity cooks would not even feed it to the students. I had placed the beef in a wooden crate with lateral slats running half an inch apart. Nothing should have been able to reach inside. Nothing but flies. But this morning I found the beef gone yet the crate inviolate. I can only imagine how a dog got it out.”
“You still haven’t explained the need for a jar of flies,” I said.
Delany gave the jar a little shake. “The beef was expensive, and I don’t have the funds to replace it. Then I got to thinking: If enough flies died in a jar, would they lay eggs that would in turn become maggots in order to devour the bodies of the dead?”
I felt that slight pain behind my left temple that always seemed to surface when I got too wrapped up in a conversation with Willy. “So you wish to perpetuate insect cannibalism?”
Willy’s face lit up like that of a child with his nose pressed to the window of a candy shop. “Yes! Fascinating, don’t you think?”
“How long does it take for a fly to lay an egg which then can evolve into a maggot?”
Willy peered into the jar. One of the flies hung upside down from the lid, nervously jerking about in circles. “There may already be eggs. It takes about four days for an egg to hatch and go from the larva stage to an actual fly. I’m hoping to capture a complete cycle.”
I thought about this for a moment. “I see a flaw in your plan. A fly in the ointment, as it were.”
Willy frowned. “Flaw? Of course not; my plan is sound.”
“Have you stopped to wonder what is killing all the flies?” I tapped on the lid of the jar. “You failed to punch holes in the lid for air. How can they devour their brethren when they cannot even breathe?”
Willy tilted his head, contemplating this revelation. “No, there is enough air. They’re fine.” His eyes began to track another fly on the windowsill, and he crossed the room. I took advantage of this development as an opportunity to take my leave before I lost another ten minutes of my life to his nonsense. I found our other flatmate, Herbert Wilson, sitting on the front porch. Herbert was a rather large boy—at least two inches taller than me, and I’m a rather tall fellow in my own right.
Herbert grabbed my shoulder and pulled me to the side. “Is he still filling that jar?”
“Very keenly so, yes,” I told him.
Herbert let out a soft chuckle and pointed to a crate next to the stoop. “Last night, after he put a perfectly good slice of beef in that box, I took it out and hid it in the hanging corner cupboard. Tonight, I’m going to put it back in his box.”
“Good-bye, Herbert,” I said, pushing past him.
“Don’t you want to see what happens?”
“Not particularly, no. I’m due at my parents’ house.”
Herbert said, “Maybe I’ll put it under his bed! It will take days before he pinpoints the odor.”
“Please don’t.” I shared a room with Willy, and any meat left to rot under concealment would surely become my problem as quickly as it would become his.
“Say hello to Matilda for me!” he called out from behind me.
I thrust a hand in the air, waving him off, and ran down the street at a fast clip.
* * *
• • •
MA AND PA had moved the family from the coast to Dublin proper in the summer of 1858, ten years ago now. Pa was getting older, and the long walk to Dublin Castle each day began to take a toll on his tired body. The house at 43 Harcourt Street was a stone’s throw from his work.
The afternoon sun began to drop as I hurried along, descending in the distance behind the buildings and hills of Parliament House. The streets were a-bustle with activity as shopkeepers packed up their wares with the dying sun and toted them inside. As I turned the corner at the Royal College of Surgeons, I waved to Mr. Barrowcliff, feeding pigeons at St. Stephen’s Green. One could set a watch by his regularity, for he stood there every day come rain or shine. He was so punctual, in fact, that if you were to arrive before him, you could witness the pigeons gathering in wait at the shore of the lake near the small falls.
I reached Harcourt Street and slowed my pace to a walk long enough to smooth out my hair before crossing the threshold of my parents’ home.
I discovered Ma in the kitchen with my little sister, Margaret, preparing dinner. Margaret beamed at the sight of me. “Look who has come home to put food in his belly!”
&n
bsp; Ma had turned fifty this year, and even though her dark tresses had conceded the battle to gray, I still saw the fiery woman who read to me as a child. Margaret, thirteen years younger than me but with the mind of a thirty-year-old, seemed to have grown taller every time I saw her.
Ma nodded at me, then pulled a golden brown apple pie from the oven and placed it on the table. “I bet you are surviving on stale bread and ale at that boardinghouse. You look like you dropped half a stone since you last brought your starving self home. Sometimes I wonder if you love me at all or just the cooking.”
“It is strictly the cooking, Ma. My survival instincts draw me homeward.” The scent of the pie engulfed me, my stomach gurgling loud enough for all to hear; we burst out laughing. “Where is everyone?”
“George and Richard are still at school. Thomas is in the parlor with your Pa, having a rather heated discussion about his continuing desire to run off to India and fight in the aftermath of someone else’s war. Matilda is upstairs in her room.”