Dracula in Istanbul

by Bram Stoker

  At that moment I was thinking about the coincidence of Şadan’s family cemetery and the children’s location both being in the Eyüp Sultan area. I went to Etfal Hospital with the doctor; I examined the children’s throat wounds closely. Both were weak from blood loss; their wounds were exactly the same as those upon Şadan. But it was obvious that the teeth or tools that created these wounds were smaller and sharper than those used upon Şadan. I cannot describe the tumult that was swirling in my mind at that moment. I can only say that I felt like a man who had been brought to the edge of a cliff, who was in constant fear of falling. Speaking little to each other, Doctor Resuhî Bey and I left the hospital. I followed him as though hypnotized. After walking a little further through the streets, we took an automobile to the pier. We crossed the Bosphorus to Eyüp Sultan. The dark of night fell over the waters of the “Golden Horn” and the hills of Okmeydanı. Rough, brown, earth-smelling darkness was creeping in from the deep corners of the Bosphorus, Kağıthane, and Silahtarağa valleys, and it filled my heart with an unknown, unexplainable dread. My God; have I been living inside the ring of some horrible truth? Or have I been dreaming? Was there anything in common between the fearful things that I was thinking and what I had been taught as truth and reality?

  It was even darker when we arrived in Eyüp Sultan. I walked with the professor in the same silence. Eventually we encountered the wall of one of the Eyüp cemeteries. The old professor climbed over this obstacle with surprising agility. I followed. Resuhî Bey walked with confidence through this deep and creeping darkness. Finally we stopped in front of an enclosed grave resembling a mausoleum. It was well-known that it had belonged to Şadan’s family for years. With the key in his hand, Resuhî Bey, who must have had nerves of steel, opened the old, cracked, unpainted door. We both entered; however, the doctor did not forget to draw the door to. Then he took a box of matches from his bag and lit the candle he had brought with him. It was not at all a pleasant scene. Before us were hundred-year-old graves, sarcophagi, and stones of different types and shapes such as flowers and turbans.

  The old doctor stood in front of a very thick marble coffin⁠—a woman’s. This belonged to one of Şadan’s great-grandmothers. In this family cemetery there were no separate graves for Şadan and her mother; the coffins were placed in one of the sarcophagi as had been the old tradition. We were standing in front of the sarcophagus containing Şadan’s coffin. Presently Doctor Resuhî Bey went over to a dark corner of the room; he bent down and picked up an iron bar which I understood he had hidden there earlier. Then he set a three-or-four-spans-wide piece of thick oak wood, which was also left amidst the sarcophagi, against the edge of the sarcophagus to serve as a slider. I was staring at him, confused. But it finally dawned upon me. I asked, trembling:

  “Teacher, what are you going to do?”

  “What am I going to do? I am going to open Şadan’s coffin to convince you!”

  At that moment he pushed on the end of the bar, which he had carefully wedged under the sarcophagus, and used it as a lever to slide the lid over to the thick plank of wood he had placed before. Şadan’s mahogany coffin was exposed. Seized with great heartache and fear, I wanted to stop the doctor. However, he persisted. After a minute, the lid of the coffin was open too. Holding the candle inside the coffin, the professor grasped me with his strong hands. I looked inside… but the coffin was completely empty!

  You can imagine the effect this had on me. However, the doctor did not appear surprised. I felt inclined to challenge him in spite of the suspicious facts laid before me. I said:

  “Yes, Resuhî Bey; I am satisfied that Şadan Hanım’s body is not in this coffin. But what does that prove or tell us? This only proves that her body is not here!”

  “Indeed, that is sound logic, but it is flimsy! Tell me, why is the body—Şadan Hanım’s body—not here?”

  “I do not know. Perhaps someone stole it; perhaps they sold it to an anatomical business!”

  I also felt the weakness of my conjecture. But there could not be another plausible explanation. In reply, professor Resuhî Bey sighed.

  “If only what you said were true,” he said. “However, the reality is otherwise; let us go, onto other evidence!”

  With my assistance he replaced the lids of the coffin and sarcophagus. He blew out the candle in his hand. We opened the door of the mausoleum and went outside. The professor locked the door, put the keys in his pocket, and then at his request we waited on either side of the cemetery.

  I was able to see the tree the professor was hiding behind from the cypress tree where I was concealed. This was simultaneously a monotonous and sober vigil. We had been in worse situations during the Struggle for Independence. But I could not recall a moment that oppressed my soul so much as this one. The hours elapsed; midnight had passed long ago. My body was numb; my nerves were at first excessively tense but eventually calmed completely. I was beginning to feel angry at my tutor and guilty for being so foolish. I do not know how many centuries passed in that state. On a whim, I turned around; I thought I saw a slim, white ghost moving near the trunks of the dark cypress trees. At the same time, a black shadow appeared behind the tree where Resuhî Bey was hiding and advanced upon that white phantom. This was evidently the doctor. However, I had to run around some of the headstones to get there myself. I stumbled over graves without tombstones or rocks. As I moved in that direction, following Resuhî Bey’s earlier instructions, somewhere far off a rooster crowed. And again I saw a fast-moving white specter; something like a shrouded corpse passed me, almost flying toward Şadan’s family grave. But since trees obstructed my view of the mausoleum, I could not quite see where this white figure entered. When Professor Resuhî Bey saw me, he held out before me the body of a small child and said in a somber voice:

  “Do you believe it now?”

  With an anger and obstinacy that I could not suppress at that moment, I said, “No!”

  Resuhî Bey asked, a little impatiently, “Is this not a child?”

  I replied in the same harsh tone. “Yes, this is a child… But where did he come from? And let us see if he has any wounds.” The professor appeared to be running out of patience. He struck a match; there was nothing resembling a wound on the child’s neck. When I said, triumphantly, “I was right, was I not?” the doctor merely replied, “Thank God we arrived in time!”

  We left the child near the Eyüp police station. As we quickly withdrew, we heard the police guard say, “Hey, what is that?”

  I write these lines at home. My head aches. I do not know what to say. But I shall try to sleep because Doctor Resuhî insists that we must do this thing again.

  27 September.—I met Doctor Resuhî Bey in Eyüp an hour before sunset. The doctor is a very stubborn man; although I have told him repeatedly how illegal and morally reprehensible what we have done is, he still compelled me to return to that same family mausoleum, in broad daylight no less, in indifference to my words. I thought it useless. Şadan’s body was not in the grave nor in the coffin. So what good was it to put ourselves in danger again?

  We entered the cemetery just before sunset. There is no need to prolong this account any further; this time, when I opened the coffin with the doctor, chills rushed through me. Şadan’s body lay in the coffin as lovely and vital as the day before her death! In fact, she was even more attractive and beautiful than I saw her before. I almost could not believe that she was dead. Her lips were fiery red. On her cheeks fluttered the pink of fresh roses. As I turned to the professor in fear and amazement, he said: “Are you convinced now?” and in a motion that sent cold shivers down my spine, he pulled back her lips and showed me her teeth.

  “You see, the teeth are even sharper!” Then he touched the canine tooth and the one below it and said: “And with these, you bite little children and drain their blood! My friend Afif, do you believe it now?”

  The feeling of disbelief and resistance to something that was against all the scientific evidence and understan
ding of the last century resurfaced in my mind.

  “What if,” I said, “someone came here at night and placed the body here?” The doctor laughed mirthlessly.

  “Who would do such a thing, and why? And consider the fact that it has been a week since Şadan’s death. How could she remain as fresh as a daisy?”

  I had no answer for this. But the professor did not notice my silence; he was opening her eyelids and examining her teeth as though he were working on a cadaver in the morgue. A moment later he turned back to me and, with that same decisive and nonchalant manner he adopted when he lectured me years ago, said:

  “I have considered every scientific possibility. I have studied and compared every known history, social event, belief, and legend. I have an ongoing interest in the historical and contemporary beliefs common among different nations. Thus, I consider myself knowledgeable on the subject. Now listen, we have in front of us a dual life—or to be precise, two different lives. Şadan was bitten by a thing the Rumelians called a “Vampire”—it is interesting that it means the same thing in both West and East—and called a ‘Cadı’[9] or ‘Hortlak’[10] in our language. What is it, Afif? Do not be impatient. Yes, you do not know the painful thing yet. But you shall learn soon enough. Although they become a vampire when they are bitten by a vampire, while in this trance-like state they do not receive all of the accursed attributes of that monster. For them, (I do not know if the doctor was drifting here into his famous Sufism beliefs again?) there is a chance of reaching God’s presence or, at least, to become the harmless dead and find eternal peace. For this reason I now must kill Şadan one more time; for the peace of humanity and to set Şadan’s soul free once and for all!”

  My hands were shaking; I was motionless and uncertain. The doctor sensed this and asked: “Do you believe now?” I put my hands against my temples, and as I pressed on them as though I were trying to crush my head, I said:

  “My tutor, my tutor! Do not press me! Perhaps, perhaps I will believe it; I am afraid I do… but how will you do what you have said?”

  The doctor assumed his scholarly air:

  “Afif, my son, you are a true Istanbulite. If you were a Rumelian or had dealt with the stories (folklore) of Trabzon and its surrounding areas, or even had spoken with people who came from the Rumeli and Skopje regions regarding these subjects, you would know the words ‘cadı’ and ‘hortlak.’ Or, at least, you would have some information regarding ‘humanity’s primitive history.’ And you would understand that there were societies known as ‘cadıcı’—note that the word ‘cadı’ is used incorrectly in this context—and ‘hortlakçı’ to fight against what had been generally been referred to by Rumelians as vampires.

  “Afif, my son, there is one thing I find strange: my father. He is from Of, a ‘wise man from Of,’ or a wise ‘hodja’[11] as it meant ten years ago; my mother is a genuine Istanbulite. As their son, I am a true Turk! My father was a marine major in Istanbul. From time to time our relatives would come to Istanbul from our hometown, my father’s village. During those nights, in the large room of our home in Kasımpaşa, I listened to their witch stories. These stories that my cousins told had witches knocking at the windows during raging storms, and everyone would tremble with fear. But do not think that I believed in them, for this was around the 1890s and there were young people who loved science and physics. These people were sent to Tripoli en masse, and I was one of them. However, my knowledge of my country’s history and my deep interest in all of humanity, in all of the higher sciences related to medicine, and in strange, unexplained phenomena led me into a particular research adventure. The fact that this belief exists with the same intensity and form in the eastern cities of Turkey, Caucasia, and particularly the Slavic regions suggests either some ethnographic conclusion or something even more significant. For in all of those countries, the same solution that I know to be correct was used against vampires and ghouls. Let me get to the point: I am a modern doctor now and I shall use this same solution. I will sever Şadan’s head from her body! I will fill her mouth with garlic flowers, drive a stake through her heart, and bury the body.”

  These words were said about the woman I loved, the delicate and fair body of the woman for whom I turned my whole life into a desert. My soul revolted against this thought. Doctor Resuhî Bey continued speaking as though he had forgotten all this:

  “Afif, my son, believing blindly in science is disrespectful to science itself. Science has not been fully explored. There are many things we do not yet know, but which we can see with our own eyes and discuss afterward. Now let us leave here at once.”

  We put everything back as it was, and the doctor and I sealed the grave carefully. Some time later we were on the road to the Eyüp pier. I was confused, exhausted, and did not know what to think or say. The doctor stopped suddenly and said:

  “Afif, I will not be returning with you. I must stay here with my bag. I shall return to the grave and take care of a few things before sunset. Oh, do not panic. I will not do what I have spoken of. I will do that in front of not only you, but also Turan Bey and Özdemir Bey, to show all of you the terrible truth. I am a man of faith, a religious man, Afif; like many people, I believe that those who have been bitten by vampires and turned into vampires or ghouls themselves will suffer eternally in desperation and tumult, and may bring about an endless catastrophe for both themselves and humanity. However, as I have said before, if the necessary action is taken against ghouls, these unfortunate but incredible things become ordinary corpses. And their souls will earn the eternal rest they deserve. I knew, Afif, that you are a little open-minded and very progressive, and that my words would make you angry; and they did. Unfortunately, they are the truth. And I will prove this to all three of you. What I shall do tonight is nothing but a special experiment, the taking of some measures to stop Şadan—not the angel, but the ‘thing’ that has had its blood drained and become a vampire—from leaving her coffin.”

  29 September, morning.—This morning in my room we held a very serious, thrilling, and painful council of war with Doctor Resuhî Bey, Turan, Özdemir, and myself. Doctor Resuhî Bey proceeded to discuss the situation. I forgot my own grief and excitement and began to worry about Turan’s condition and his wrath; I was almost trembling. Turan leapt from his seat a few times as though he wished to silence the doctor by strangling him. Özdemir and I also rose. However, the doctor was so sorrowfully, painfully, and terribly convincing that Turan sat down in surprise every time—sometimes patiently, sometimes with defeated rage. Finally Özdemir Bey rose, his face completely white, and said to Turan: “I myself have no doubts about the doctor’s words. I am moved by the respect and astonishment I feel toward this kind-hearted scholar.” Then he shook the professor’s large, brown hands. Finally, Turan also admitted defeat. He put his head between his hands. “Very well, Doctor,” he said, “let us go and see, for I am about to go mad!”

  CHAPTER XI

  FROM DOCTOR AFİF BEY’S DIARY—continued.

  At fifteen minutes before midnight, the four of us, led by Doctor Resuhî Bey, leapt over the low, dilapidated wall of the Eyüp cemetery. The sky was cloudy and the night was very dark. But the moon occasionally produced areas of illumination as it moved through scattered clouds, only to disappear again. We stood in front of the mausoleum door; the doctor opened it and looked back. When he saw all three of us hesitating to enter for various reasons, he entered the darkness alone and pulled us in. The three of us looked at each other as we walked, and my attention was on Turan. The doctor shut the door, lit a lantern, turned it toward the sarcophagus, and said:

  “Afif, we were here yesterday morning. Tell our friends: was Şadan Hanım’s body in the coffin?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “So look at it now!”

  Doctor Resuhî opened the lid of the sarcophagus with the help of a lever and the herculean strength of Özdemir, then opened the coffin lid. Not with triumph but with grief, he said to Turan:

  �
�Look!”

  Turan took hesitant steps. Then, by the light of the lantern I held at a distance, he looked into the coffin. His face became deathly pale. The coffin in front of him was completely empty!

  Among the frozen friends, it was the doctor who broke the silence: “Now, out!” We all exited the gloomy mausoleum into the dark cemetery. The clouds were still chasing each other in the sky and the moonlight penetrated from time to time. The professor was busy closing the door of the mausoleum, and he began to employ himself in a strange way. He took from his bag some items that looked like long sheets of paper, and he glued these to the keyhole, doorway, and any gaps in between with the help of something—probably a glue bottle. The sanest man among us, Özdemir Bey, asked: “What are you doing, Doctor?”

  The professor replied soberly: “I am preventing the re-entry of the vampire to this mausoleum. During the day I wrote verses from the Quran on these pages!” This surprise left all of us speechless. Had Doctor Resuhî Bey truly gone mad? Turan raised his hands in anger, but Özdemir held them back and calmed him. When this was over, we waited in the shadows of the trees that the doctor had appointed for us. I do not know how long we waited. But finally we heard the doctor’s whisper, deep but sharp as a whistle: “Look!” We all looked where he pointed. Yes, there, between the dark cypress trees and the start of the road now illuminated by moonlight stood a delicate, white shape, like a ghost. We could not see its face, for it was bent down over what appeared to be a very small child. But we could see the profile of a young, dark-haired woman with a white shroud torn at the top. A moment passed, and then we heard a shriek. It resembled the sound of a child having a nightmare. We all started forward. But the professor stopped us with a sharp gesture. At that moment the shrouded figure moved toward us. I felt the blood freeze in my veins. Simultaneously I heard Turan to my left utter a cry as though his lungs were about to collapse. The phantom in front of us was Şadan!