The Vampire Sextette

by Edited by Marvin Kaye

  "Mademoiselle Dieudonné," intoned the voice on her answering machine, halfway between a growl and a purr, "this is Orson Welles."

  The voice was deeper even than in the 1930s, when he was a radio star. Geneviève had been in America over Halloween, 1938, when Welles and the Mercury Theatre of the Air broadcast their you-are-there dramatisation of H. G. Wells's "The Flowering of the Strange Orchid" and convinced half the Eastern seaboard that the country was disappearing under a writhing plague of vampire blossoms. She remembered also the rhetorical whisper of "who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?," followed by the triumphant declaration "the Shadow knows!" and the low chuckle which rose by terrifying lurches to a fiendish, maniacal shriek of insane laughter.

  When she had first met the man himself, in Rome in 1959, the voice hadn't disappointed. Now, even on cheap tape and through the tinny, tiny amplifier, it was a call to the soul. Even hawking brandy or frozen peas, the voice was a powerful instrument That Welles had to compete with Welles imitators for gigs as a commercial pitchman was one of the tragedies of the modern age. Then again, she suspected he drew a deal of sly enjoyment from his long-running role as a ruined titan. As an actor, his greatest role was always himself. Even leaving a message on a machine, he invested phrases with the weight—a quality he had more than a sufficiency of—of a Shakespearean deathbed speech.

  "There is a small matter upon which I should like your opinion, in your capacities as a private detective and a member of the undead community. If you would call on me, I should be most grateful."

  She thought about it. Welles was as famous for being broke as for living well. It was quite likely he wouldn't even come through with her modest rate of a hundred dollars a day, let alone expenses. And gifts of rare wine or Cuban cigars weren't much use to her, though she supposed she could redeem them for cash.

  Still, she was mildly bored with finding lost children or bail jumpers. And no one ever accused Welles of being boring. He had left the message while she was resting through the hours of the day. This was the first of the ten or so days between the Gregorian 1980s and the Julian 1980s. She could afford to give a flawed genius—his own expression—that much time.

  She would do it.

  In leaving a message, Welles had given her a pause to think. She heard heavy breaths as he let the tape run on, his big man's lungs working. Then, confident that he had won her over, he cut in with address details, somewhere in Beverly Hills.

  "I do so look forward to seeing you again. Until then, remember… the weed of crime bears bitter fruit!"

  It was one of his old radio catchphrases.

  He did the laugh, the King laugh, the Shadow laugh. It properly chilled her bones, but made her giggle, too.

  She discovered Orson Welles at the centre of attention, on the cracked bottom of a drained pool behind a rented bungalow. Three nude vampire girls waved objects—a luminous skull, a Macbethian blooded dagger, a fully articulated monster-bat puppet—at him, darting swiftly about his bulky figure, nipping at his head with their Halloween props. The former boy wonder was on his knees, enormous Russian shirt open to the waist, enormous (and putty) nose glistening under the lights, enormous spade-beard flecked with red syrup. A man with a handheld camera, the sort of thing she'd seen used to make home movies, circled the odd quartet, not minding if the vampires got between him and his director-star.

  A few other people were around the pool, holding up lights. No sound equipment, though: this was being shot silent. Geneviève hung back, by the bungalow, keeping out of the way of the work. She had been on film sets before, at Cinecittà and in Hollywood, and knew this crew would be deemed skeletal for a student short. If anyone else was directing, she'd have supposed he was shooting makeup tests or a rehearsal. But with Welles, she knew that this was the real film. It might end up with the dialogue out of sync, but it would be extraordinary.

  Welles was rumbling through a soliloquy.

  It took her a moment to realise what the undead girls were doing, then she had to swallow astonished laughter. They were nude not for the titillation of an eventual audience, for they wouldn't be seen. Nonreflecting nosferatu would be completely invisible when the footage was processed. The girls were naked because clothes would show up on film, though some elders—Dracula had been one—so violated the laws of optics that they robbed any costume they wore of its reflection also, sucking even that into their black hearts. In the final film, Welles would seem to be persecuted by malignly animated objects—the skull, the dagger, and the bat Now he tore at his garments and hair like Lear, careful to leave his nose alone, and called out to the angry heavens. The girls flitted, slender and deathly white, not feeling the cold, faces blank, hands busy.

  This was the cheapest special effect imaginable.

  Welles fell forward on his face, lay still for a couple of beats, and hefted himself upright, out of character, calling "cut." His nose was mashed.

  A dark woman with a clipboard emerged from shadows to confer with the master. She wore a white fur coat and a matching hat. The vampire girls put the props down and stood back, nakedness unnoticed by the crew members. One took a cloak-like robe from a chair and settled it over her slim shoulders. She climbed out of the pool.

  Geneviève had not announced herself. The vampire girl fixed her eye. She radiated a sense of being fed up with the supposed glamour of show business.

  "Turning was supposed to help my career," she said. "I was going to stay pretty forever and be a star. Instead, I lost my image. I had good credits. I was up for the last season of Charlie's Angels. I'd have been the blonde."

  "There's always the theatre," Geneviève suggested.

  "That's not being a star," the girl said.

  She was obviously a newborn, impatient with an eternity she didn't yet understand. She wanted all her presents now, and no nonsense about paying dues or waiting her turn. She had cropped blonde hair; very pale, almost translucent skin stretched over bird-delicate bones; and a tight, hard, cute little face, with sharp angles and glinting teeth, small reddish eyes. Her upper arm was marked by parallel claw marks, not yet healed, like sergeant's stripes. Geneviève stored away the detail.

  "Who's that up there, Nico?" shouted one of the other girls.

  Nico? Not the famous one, Geneviève supposed.

  "Who?" the girl asked, out loud. "Famous?"

  Nico—indeed, not the famous one—had picked the thought out of Geneviève's mind. That was a common elder talent, but unusual in a newborn. If she lasted, this girl might do well. She'd have to pick a new name though, to avoid confusion with the singer of "All Tomorrow's Parties."

  "Another one of us," the starlet said to the girl in the pool. "An invisible."

  "I'm not here for a part," Geneviève explained. "I'm here to see Mr. Welles."

  Nico looked at her askew. Why would a vampire who wasn't an actress be here? Tumblers worked in the newborn's mind. It worked both ways: Nico could pick words up, but she also sent them out. The girls in the pool were named Mink and Vampi (please!), and often hung with Nico.

  "You're old, aren't you?"

  Geneviève nodded. Nico's transparent face showed eagerness.

  "Does it come back? Your face in the mirror?"

  "Mine hasn't."

  Her face fell, a long way. She was a loss to the profession.

  Her feelings were all on the surface, projected to the back stalls.

  "Different bloodlines have different qualities," Geneviève said, trying to be encouraging.

  "So I heard."

  Nico wasn't interested in faint hopes. She wanted instant cures.

  "Is that Mademoiselle Dieudonné?" roared the familiar voice.

  "Yes, Orson, it's me," she said.

  Nico reacted, calculating. She was thinking that Geneviève might be an important person.

  "Then that's a wrap for the evening. Thank you, people. Submit your expenses to Oja, and be back here tomorrow night, at midnight sharp. You were all stupendous."

/>   Oja was the woman with the clipboard: Oja Kodar, Welles's companion and collaborator. She was from Yugoslavia, another refugee washed up on this California shore.

  Welles seemed to float out of the swimming pool, easily hauling his enormous girth up the ladder by the strength of his own meaty arms. She was surprised at how light he was on his feet.

  He pulled off his putty nose and hugged her.

  "Geneviève, Geneviève, you are welcome."

  The rest of the crew came up, one by one, carrying bits of equipment.

  "I thought I'd get Van Helsing's mad scene in the can," explained Welles.

  "Neat trick with the girls."

  The twinkle in his eye was almost Santa Clausian. He gestured hypnotically.

  "Elementary movie magic," he said. "Georges Méliès could have managed it in 1897."

  "Has it ever been done before? I don't recall seeing a film with the device."

  "As a matter of fact, I think it's an invention of my own. There are still tricks to be teased out of the cinema. Even after so many years—a single breath for you, my dear—the talkies are not quite perfected. My little vampires may have careers as puppeteers, animators. You'd never see their hands. I should shoot a short film, for children."

  "You've been working on this for a long time?"

  "I had the idea at about seven o'clock this evening," he said with a modest chuckle. "This is Hollywood, my dear, and you can get anything with a phone call. I got my vampires by ordering out, like pizza."

  Geneviève guessed the invisible girls were hookers, a traditional career option for those who couldn't make a showing in the movies. Some studio execs paid good money to be roughed up by girls they'd pass over with contempt at cattle calls. And vampires, properly trained, could venture into areas of pain and pleasure a warm girl would find uncomfortable, unappetising, or unhealthy.

  She noticed Nico had latched on to a young, male assistant and was alternately flirting with him and wheedling at him for some favour. Welles was right: she could have a career as a puppet mistress.

  "Come through into the house, Geneviève," said Welles. "We must talk."

  The crew and the girls bundled together. Oja, as production manager, arranged for them to pool up in several cars and be returned to their homes or—in the case of Nico, Mink, and Vampi—to a new club where there were hours to be spent before the dawn. Gary, the cameraman, wanted to get the film to the lab and hurried off on his own to an all-night facility. Many movie people kept vampire hours without being undead.

  There was an after buzz in the air. Geneviève wondered if it was genius, or had some of the crew been sniffing drac to keep going. She had heard it was better than speed. She assumed she would be immune to it; even as a blood drinker—like all of her kind, she had turned by drinking vampire blood—she found the idea of dosing her system with another vampire's powdered blood, diluted with the devil knew what, disgusting.

  Welles went ahead of her, into the nondescript bungalow, turning on lights as he went. She looked back for a moment at the cast-off nose by the pool.

  Van Helsing's mad scene?

  She knew the subject of Welles's current project. He had mentioned to her that he had always wanted to make Dracula. Now, it seemed, he was acting on the impulse. It shouldn't have, but it frightened her a little. She was in two minds about how often that story should be told.

  Orson Welles arrived in Hollywood in 1939, having negotiated a two-picture deal as producer-director-writer-actor with George Schaefer of RKO Pictures. Drawing on an entourage of colleagues from the New York theatre and radio, he established Mercury Productions as a filmmaking entity. Before embarking on Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Welles developed other properties: Nicholas Blake's just-published anti-Fascist thriller The Smiler with a Knife (1939), Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902) and Stoker's Dracula (1897). Like the Conrad, Dracula was a novel Welles had already done for the Mercury Theatre on the Air radio series (July 11,1938). A script was prepared (by Welles, Herman Mankiewicz and, uncredited, John Houseman), sets were designed, the film cast, and "tests"—the extent of which have never been revealed—shot, but the project was dropped.

  The reasons for the abandonment of Count Dracula remain obscure. It has been speculated that RKO was nervous about Welles's stated intention to film most of the story with a first-person camera, adopting the viewpoints of the various characters as Stoker does in his might-have-been fictional history. Houseman, in his memoir Run-Through (1972), alleges that Welles's enthusiasm for this device was at least partly due to the fact that it would keep the fearless vampire slayers—Harker, Van Helsing, Quincey, Holmwood—mostly off screen, while Dracula, object of their attention, would always be in view. Houseman, long estranged from Welles at the time of writing, needlessly adds that Welles would have played Dracula. He toyed with the idea of playing Harker as well, before deciding William Alland could do it if kept to the shadows and occasionally dubbed by Welles. The rapidly changing political situation in Europe, already forcing the Roosevelt administration to reassess its policies about vampirism and the very real Count Dracula, may have prompted certain factions to bring pressure to bear on RKO that such a film was "inadvisable" for 1940.

  In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, published in This Is Orson Welles (1992) but held well before Francis Ford Coppola's controversial Dracula (1979), Welles said: "Dracula would make a marvellous movie. In fact, nobody has ever made it; they've never paid any attention to the book, which is the most hair-raising, marvellous book in the world. It's told by four people, and must be done with four narrations, as we did on the radio. There's one scene in London where he throws a heavy bag into the corner of a cellar and it's full of screaming babies! They can go that far out now."

  Jonathan Gates, "Welles's Lost Draculas."

  Video Watchdog No. 23 May-July 1994

  Welles did not so much live in the bungalow as occupy it. She recognised the signs of high-end, temporary tenancy. Pieces of extremely valuable antique furniture, imported from Spain, stood among ugly, functional, modern sticks that had come with the let. The den, largest space in the building, was made aesthetically bearable by a hanging she put at sixteenth century, nailed up over the open fireplace like a curtain. The tapestry depicted a knight trotting in full armour through forest greenery, with black-faced, red-eyed-and-tongued devils peeping from behind tall, straight trees. The piece was marred by a bad burn that had caught at one corner and spread evil fingers upwards. All around were stacks of books, square-bound antique volumes and bright modern paperbacks, and rickety towers of film cans.

  Geneviève wondered why Welles would have cases of good sherry and boxes of potato chips stacked together in a corner, then realised he must have been partly paid in goods for his commercial work. He offered her sherry, and she surprised him by accepting.

  "I do sometimes drink wine, Orson. Dracula wasn't speaking for us all."

  He arched an eyebrow and made a flourish of pouring sherry into a paper cup.

  "My glassware hasn't arrived from Madrid," he apologised.

  She sipped the stuff, which she couldn't really taste, and sat on a straight-backed gothic chair. It gave her a memory flash, of hours spent in churches when she was a warm girl. She wanted to fidget.

  Welles plopped himself down with a Falstaffian rumble and strain on a low couch that had a velvet curtain draped over it. He was broad enough in the beam to make it seem like a throne.

  Oja joined them and silently hovered. Her hair was covered by a bright head scarf.

  A pause.

  Welles grinned expansively. Geneviève realised he was protracting the moment, relishing a role. She even knew who he was doing, Sydney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon. The ambiguous mastermind enjoying himself by matching wits with the perplexed private eye. If Hollywood ever remade Falcon, which would be a sacrilege, Welles would be in the ring for Gutman. Too many of his acting jobs were like that, replacing another big personality in an
inferior retread of something already got right.

  "I'll be wondering why you asked me here tonight," she prompted.

  "Yes," he said, amused.

  "It'll be a long story."

  "I'm rather afraid so."

  "There are hours before dawn."

  "Indeed."

  Welles was comfortable now. She understood he had been switching off from the shoot, coming down not only from his on-screen character but from his position as backyard God.

  "You know I've been playing with Dracula for years? I wanted to make it at RKO in '40, did a script, designed sets, cast everybody. Then it was dropped."

  She nodded.

  "We even shot some scenes. I'd love to steal in some night and rescue the footage from the vaults. Maybe for use in the current project. But the studio has the rights. Imagine if paintings belonged to whoever mixed the paints and wove the canvas. I'll have to abase myself, as usual. The children who inherited RKO after Hughes ran it aground barely know who I am, but they'll enjoy the spectacle of my contrition, my pleading, my total dejection. I may even get my way in the end."

  "Hasn't Dracula been made? I understand that Francis—"

  "I haven't seen that. It doesn't matter to me or the world. I didn't do the first stage productions of Macbeth or Caesar, merely the best. The same goes for the Stoker. A marvellous piece, you know."

  "Funnily enough, I have read it," she put in.

  "Of course you have."

  "And I met Dracula."

  Welles raised his eyes, as if that were news to him. Was this all about picking her brain? She had spent all of fifteen minutes in the Royal Presence, nearly a hundred years ago, but was quizzed about that (admittedly dramatic) occasion more than the entire rest of her five hundred and sixty-five years. She'd seen the Count again, after his true death—as had Welles, she remembered—and been at his last funeral, seen his ashes scattered. She supposed she had wanted to be sure he was really finally dead.