by Marie Nizet
Mariora and Ioan were walking side by side in silence, fearful that words might disturb the gentle ecstasy that the spring morning had poured into their souls, when the advance sentinel of renewal suddenly released its dutiful signal, a joyful “cuckoo!”
Since the adventure of the Baniassa Woods, Mariora had sworn an implacable hatred for the avian omen that had never promised her anything but misfortune, but Ioan did not partake of his wife’s prejudice.
Well, ibita mea,” he said, teasing her gently, “what does the bird say?”
“It doesn’t say anything,” she replied, with all the seriousness in the world. “It’s neither to our right nor to our left–it’s over there, in front of us. Do you see it flying away?”
“And that signifies...?”
“Nothing–absolutely nothing. Don’t laugh,” she added. “That song reminds me of terrible moments, and that bird has always been the precursor, for me...of Liatoukine.”
“But, since Liatoukine is dead...”
A gesture from Mariora cut Ioan’s words short. “Let’s never speak of that man again, Ionitza,” she said.
Eleven o’clock was chiming as they arrived in Bucharest. The minister’s office did not open until noon. As they went along the Strada Mogosoi, Mariora, who felt obliged to erase the disagreeable impression the encounter with the cuckoo had made on her, suggested that they visit the Sarindar Church. A marriage was being celebrated there–a boyar marriage, at which there would be splendid ladies’ dresses, and officers’ uniforms making up the couple’s cortège, in the presence of the metropolitan Archbishop, who was officiating in person.
A good omen! Mariora thought, reassured. We’ll see Mitica again.
Dragging Ioan through he crowd of spectators who were filling the church, she got a position as close as she could to the catapeteasma–the icon-adorned door separating the nave from the bema. From where they were, neither Ioan nor Mariora could see the faces of the bride and groom. In any case, the bride’s beauty was of scant importance to Madame Isacescu, who only had eyes for the white satin dress, ornamented with lace and rivulets of jewels. The ex-dorobantz’s gaze never left the groom. That tall figure, that stiff stance and, above all, that uniform, were not unfamiliar to Isacescu.
“Where have I seen that man before?” he asked himself, waiting impatiently for the officer to turn around.
The ceremony was marked by a rather amusing incident. A political–one might almost say historic–person of note had been charged with holding the nuptial crown suspended above the bride’s head, as is the custom in Orthodox marriages. The bride was tall; the statesman was short. The latter, feeling that his gravity was compromised, was standing on tiptoe and making desperate efforts to maintain his balance, to his own embarrassment and the extreme joy of the jeering public, which no longer idolized him.
“Who’s getting married, then?” Mariora asked a woman of the people, who was chattering much more freely than the sanctity of the location should have permitted.
“Jesus Christ, little mother! You’re obviously not from the city, to ask me a question like that! No one’s talked about anything except this marriage for a month. I don’t suppose they adore one another like turtle-doves, but he has two million rubles, and the good graces of the Russian Emperor; she owns lots and lots of land...it goes on forever.”
“But who...?” Mariora persisted.
“I’m getting there, chicken. Prince Androcles Comanescu is marrying his daughter Epistimia to General Boris Liatoukine, so they say.”
“That’s not true!” Ioan retorted, forcefully. “Boris Liatoukine is dead!”
“Oh yes?” the old woman sniggered. “You’re soft in the head, my lad! Dead! The dead aren’t so hearty!”
The ceremony finished as the shrew pronounced these words, and the married couple, followed by their cortège, headed slowly towards the exit door, which was wide open.
Mariora fell unconscious into her husband’s arms.
Next to Epistimia, who was moving forwards haughtily and scornfully, marched Boris Liatoukine, in the grandiose uniform of a Russian general: Boris Liatoukine, who was said to have died at Gravitza on September 11, 1877, Saint Alexander’s Day!
Hardly having the strength to support Mariora, the motionless Ioan–his mouth agape, his eyebrows bristling and his eyes haggard–was the personification of Terror.
Captain Vampire’s clothing brushed against Ioan’s. The resurrected man’s eyes flared; his ironic smile became ferocious; he raised his gloveless right hand.
The little finger had been cut off at the third knuckle!
Then the cortège continued on its way; the church emptied little by little, and complete silence was re-established.
“I killed him, though!” murmured the paralyzed Ioan. “I’m sure that I killed him!”
Eight hours later, Domna Epistimia was dead, and the Isacescu family, abandoning Baniassa forever, moved to Craiova.
Epilogue
Ioan Isacescu became what one might appropriately call a prosperous landowner. The reasonably large sum amassed by his father permitted him to acquire 15 pogones of arable land in the vicinity of Craiova, which he cultivated himself. His wife’s wealth was invested advantageously, and all his tenants said that, if all its landlords acted as fairly as “the cripple,” Rumania would be one of the most delightful places in this wretched world.
Ioan, believing that “it is only to see that masters have eyes,” still traveled to Baniassa once a month. Mariora never thought of accompanying him. She had sworn to die without ever seeing Bucharest again. She made the sign of the cross at the merest clink of a Russian spur; the sight of a Cossack caused her to fall in a faint. Ioan had forbidden everyone to mention the name of Liatoukine in front of her. She had learned to cook mamaliga and to make cheese; she did not gossip with the neighbors, for which her husband praised her a great deal, and she had no more bitter words for Zamfira, who had brought her father to live with her in Craiova.
No news had ever been received of Mitica. Zamfira remained unmarried; her red ribbons faded to yellow. She brought up Mariora’s children.
Baba Sophia grumbled and stormed all day long; she was forgiven her continual nagging on account of her age.
Old Mozaïs was completely senile; he spent entire hours crouched on his doorstep, incessantly murmuring “Serban Yezidee! Serban Yezidee!” while shaking his head. Then he suddenly got up and grabbed his staff. “Where are you going, father?” his daughter asked him. “To Smyrna!” he replied, in a firm voice. He took a few steps outside, then came back to lie down in the dust, repeating his terrible refrain: “Serban Yezidee!”
Domna Agapia ended up marrying the 8,000 hectares of young Decebale Privighetoareano. Decebale shuttled back and forth between Bucharest and Paris, beat the Princess, debauched her chambermaids and bought diamonds for pretty ballerinas. Mademoiselle Comanescu wepts night and day; she became very thin, and when she threatened to return to her father, Decebale offered her his arm to take her to the railway station. She then became a permanently resident in Vienna, where luck reacquainted her with her blue-eyed dancer, Igor Moïleff, who carried an interesting wound very gracefully. He desired to console Madame Privighetoareano. The poor Princess was deeply perplexed; Decebale, willingly excusing his own peccadilloes, showed himself to be not at all indulgent of his wife’s.
The Comanescu Palace became the terrestrial paradise of priests, igumens 57 and Archimandrites, who always found a good meal, good lodgings and a cash donation there. Domna Rosanda threw herself wholeheartedly into devotion; the rosary replaced the fan between her fingers; she wore somber dresses, spoke through her nose and planned to build a church.
Androcles alone was happy. He had shed two tears over the graves of Aurelio and Epistimia. “We are all mortal!” he said, with an appropriate delicacy. Then he passed the back of his hand over his moist eyelids and returned to his business affairs. He constructed a sugar refinery in the Vlasca district, which formed a c
ounterpart to his wife’s church. In the Senate, he featured among the mute orators. His glory was at its apogee; the Order of the Rumania Star was conferred upon him, at the same time as the confectioner Capsa and the brewer Opler, two persons well-known in Bucharest.58
As for Boris Liatoukine, he paraded his insolence in the drawing-rooms of St Petersburg again. All the talk was of his strange adventure. The ladies bemoaned the fate of the unfortunate Princess Liatoukine–the third of that name–and not one aspired to succeed her. The superstitious old dowagers claimed that Prince Boris was well and truly slain at Gravitza; the Liatoukine whom the Tsar has elevated to the rank of General was, according to them, merely the Prince’s cadaver, temporarily reanimated by a breath of infernal life.
Some of Captain Vampire’s friends attempted to solve the mystery. Misfortune overtook them all.
Liatoukine challenged Bogomil Tchestakoff and struck him dead.
Stenka Sokolich, wrongly suspected of producing nihilist propaganda, was deported to Siberia.
Yuri Levine was stripped of his rank; he was rumored to have gone insane.
Afterword
Matei Cazacu’s argument for the possible influence of Le Capitaine Vampire on Bram Stoker’s Dracula cites several points of allegedly significant coincidence: its central character is a male aristocrat; he possesses hypnotic powers of subjection; and he attacks the fiancée of the hero, whose friend also has a fiancée. Cazacu also notes that Stoker’s brother had served as a physician in the Turkish army that fought in Bulgaria during the Russo-Turkish war, suggesting that this might have played a part in attracting Stoker’s attention to the novella.
Cazacu alleges that this pattern of coincidences is striking, but if one bears in mind that it mostly reproduces features already present in Polidori and Dumas–with whose works Stoker is far more likely to have been familiar–the coincidences become much more trivial. What is much more striking, in fact, is the collection of traits attributed to Boris Liatoukine that are not replicated in Dracula, and which contrast with much other vampire fiction.
It appears that the only victims who reputedly perish at Liatoukine’s hands–allegedly bearing “the mark of the vampire” on their necks, although they are rumored to have died of strangulation rather than exsanguination–are his three wives. (Stoker’s Dracula has three “brides” too, but Liatoukine’s have all been legitimately married to him in church, and none is resurrected from the dead.) Liatoukine’s other rumored seductions seem to be perfectly ordinary seductions, if they are to be counted as seductions at all; those of which we catch a glimpse are more like rapes. While Stoker’s Dracula–contrary to the supposition inherited by his successors–can operate in daylight if necessary, he definitely has a strong affinity for the night; Boris Liatoukine, on the other hand, seems perfectly comfortable by day and night alike–a necessary facility for an army Colonel on active service.
Given this, it is not at all obvious that, in Le Capitaine Vampire, what Marie Nizet understood by the word “vampire” had anything much in common with what Bram Stoker and his myriad imitators were to understand by it. We are now accustomed, largely thanks to Stoker, to thinking that the definite feature of vampirism is a taste for and dependency on human blood, but that is not at all obvious in the texts to which Nizet is most likely to have referred before writing her novel, where bitten throats are either absent or cited only as incidental features in accounts of malevolent sexual predation. Boris Liatoukine is certainly not dependent on human blood, shows no obvious attraction to it or appetite for it, and no firm evidence is presented in the novella that he ever drinks anyone’s blood at all. Indeed, his reputation as a vampire–particularly the anecdote that allegedly led to the acquisition of his nickname–seems to be solely dependent on his corpse-like appearance and his apparent ability to return from the dead. Even his possession of the power of the evil eye, and his supposed ability to be in two places at once, seem largely incidental.
If one allows for a certain understandable exaggeration in the stories told by his Russian acolytes, the only firm evidence presented in the story for Liatoukine’s ability to return from the dead is his reappearance in Bucharest after having been slain by Ioan Isacescu. Having done that, however, Isacescu immediately falls into a hallucinatory delirium precipitated by his bullet-wounds, and it is not inconceivable that his act of vengeance was an aspect of that hallucination rather than a real event; Liatoukine’s behavior, especially in making no attempt to defend himself, certainly seems sufficiently peculiar to belong to a dream–although his carelessness in the face of death has already been mentioned.
The fact that Liatoukine’s behavior seems equally odd on other occasions may indicate that there is something essentially hallucinatory about him, even though so many people are aware of his existence; it is not at all clear how the reader ought to construe the slightly paradoxical aspects of his behavior in respect of both Mariora and Relia. In the latter case, his behavior seems as much voyeuristic as directly threatening. The former incident is even more peculiar. Did Liatoukine really refrain from raping Mariora after playing the Big Bad Wolf to her Little Red Riding-Hood, as Mariora insists? If he did refrain, did he really do it for the reason she proffers? Did he ever intend to rape her, given that her retrospective account of her first meeting with him implies that what would actually have happened, had Relia not interrupted their tête-à-tête, is that she would have perished under the gaze of his remarkable eyes?
In a sense, the most puzzling aspect of Ioan Isacescu’s vendetta against Liatoukine is the manner in which it is compounded during their second encounter. How does Liatoukine know that Ioan is Mariora’s fiancé–how does he even know Mariora’s name–if her account of what happened in the woods is true? The reader can understand readily enough how Liatoukine’s acolytes are able pick up the cue he gives them and play the cruel game of “Oh, I know Mariora”–but how does he know, when he is challenged to confirm or deny their story, what impact the sight of the ring will have on the tormented dorobantz? Perhaps he knows these things because he is the Devil’s agent, and is thus privy to information irrecoverable by natural means–but exactly what sort of a game is he playing with Isacescu, and why? Why does he take the trouble to send the rusty dagger and thoroughly oxidized ring back to Isacescu and Mariora as a “wedding present?” Something is obviously not quite right here, and it seems quite possible that one component of that unrightness is that poor Isacescu is not quite right in the head. Is it possible that none of Isacescu’s confrontations with Liatoukine actually happened in the way the narrative voice says that they did?
The most probable solution to these conundrums is that the 19-year-old writer simply did not have full control of her materials, and could not make up her own mind exactly what had actually happened in her story or exactly what kind of monster Boris Liatoukine actually was. Whether that is so or not, though, the story certainly makes more sense if Liatoukine is considered to be the symbolic evil genius of the Russian army; effective in different ways in different places–including different places at the same time–and not a mere person at all. It is worth remembering that Liatoukine first appears in direct response to a formal curse uttered by Isacescu’s father against the Russian invaders, and also how Yuri Levine sums him up in the chapter that claims to explain what he is: “Liatoukine is everywhere...he has the gift of ubiquity, just like the good God.”
If Liatoukine is seen as a symbolic incarnation of the Russians’ guiding spirit, his conduct towards Isacescu becomes a materialization of the contemptuous attitude and voice of the Russian nation and army to the Rumanian nation and army, mocking the Rumanians’ conviction that they were cynically and cruelly used when they were ordered to lead the attack on Gravitza and bear the brunt of the defensive fire. Isacescu’s response would then be equally symbolic–and it is not at all surprising that the evil genius survives the act of revenge, going on to commit further mocking atrocities, within the Russian ranks as well as without.
It seems to me, in consequence of the sum of these observations and arguments, that it is unlikely that Bram Stoker ever read Le Captaine Vampire–and, more importantly, that even if he did, he did not take any substantial influence specifically therefrom. That does not mean, however, that Le Capitaine Vampire is not a significant work in the history of vampire fiction; it clearly is–but it owes that distinction to its own imaginative qualities, not to any influence it might have had. It is undoubtedly one of the finest literary works ever to have made use of the vampire motif, because rather than despite the fact that its usage was highly idiosyncratic and probably purely symbolic.
After making such a spectacular start as a writer of fiction, one might have expected Marie Nizet to build a solid literary career, but she did not. Cazacu records that she was “briefly” married to “a certain Mercier” but that she wrote nothing after the marriage, although she did not die until 1922. Cazacu also records, however, that her brother Henri made the actual pilgrimage that she could not, setting off for Rumania in 1883–at the age of 19–and working there as tutor for several years. His first book, published in that year, must have been completed before he left Brussels, and was a Naturalist account of life in that city, Bruxelles rigole; moeurs exotiques [The Brussels Gutter: Exotic Mores]. Like his sister, though, Henri found difficulty in extrapolating his literary career. Cazacu claims that his second novel, Les Béotiens [metaphorically, The Philistines] (1885), caused considerable offence among the members of the literary community pilloried therein.
Henri Nizet’s final novel, Suggestion (1891), anticipated George du Maurier’s Trilby (1894) in presenting an account of hypnotic domination, but incorporated a crucial homoerotic element that recalls Boris Liatoukine’s treatment of Relia Comanescu in Le Capitaine Vampire. Although the dominator in Henri’s novel is a Frenchman, Paul Lebarrois, his male victim, Séphorah, is a Rumanian; unsurprisingly, the metaphor of vampiric predation is elaborately deployed, as it was later to be in George Viereck’s similarly homoerotic account of psychic domination, The House of the Vampire (1907). If, as Cazacu blithely states, Suggestion really was an “autobiographical novel,” it may shed new light on the inspiration for the remarkable chapter in his sister’s novella describing Relia’s awful experience in the hands of the Russian officers.