Dracula Book ©

Jonah West's Journal, September 4, 2004

There is, perhaps, no lovelier sight than Central Park in the Fall, in the very heart and gut of New York City, as those millions of leaves which offer wild refuge in the midst of cement torment decide to blush in shy flirtation, filling the sky with golds and browns and crimsons and a hundred other beautiful colors, and so there I found myself on a warm day of September, standing on top of Belvedere Castle, and beholding a marvelous playing of A Midsummer Night's Dream, a version in which Puck was being played by a midget rather than a child. New York City is not the cold, rude, unfeeling mass of granite that so many of my countrymen seem to think, having been relayed this impression only by their touristy friends who, in their bright, Hawaiian garb, tan shorts betraying pale, thick, cellulose legs, cameras, and maps, are veritably screaming out, “Please! Misuse me! I beg of you!”

But when the same travelers will take it upon themselves, as travelers are really supposed to do, to dress and act like the natives, or, at the very least, to act in a discreet manner, then they find a New York that is unlike the phantom city of which they had been taught. They find, rather, a bustling conglomeration of life and a robust, hearty manner, an attitude and forbearance ground by the whetstone of life amidst the millions, by the harsh, rough edges of walking and scrambling and fighting for taxis. But, they also find a series of communities, a true feeling of family among the neighborhoods, an attitude very willing to help, to guide the elderly across streets, and a true, pure love for the city.

These at least were my impressions upon my third day in the city, having been graciously invited to travel there from my small, humble town of Gainesville, Ohio, a town in northern Ohio that is as bland as the casseroles, as unseasoned and plain as the chicken, as weak and diluted as the light coffee. The people of my area of the Midwest are a working people, a people of men who consider themselves the most fortunate on earth to have secured a manual job at a factory, a people of women who nervously tend to their homes, cleaning the off-color, too-thick carpet, mixing together pre-fabricated, processed foods into a bowl and heating them, and calling it cooking. Of course, it is also a land of modest, humble values, of obligation to one's neighbor, of, if not an overly and gushing, friendly attitude such as one finds in the South, then at the very least a distant friendliness, an affection that is very real, but that need not be revealed daily, lest one grow soft. Mine is a land caressed by Summer but beaten harshly by Winter, of furnaces and brewer's-cote, of snow tires and basements and root cellars.

Having grown up in this environment, I naturally despised it, as young boys are wont to do, imaging all other places as magical lands of pleasure. I always hated the thick, manual, heavy-shouldered aura of the Midwest, and, having been blessed by Mother Nature and natural selection with a mind that, quite frankly, and without meaning to boast – for it was Sherlock Holmes who said that to deny one's abilities is just as much deception and lies as to boast – was greater than that of my countrymen. I felt like Socrates at his inquisition and trial, who decried the mediocrity of the world. Therefore I set myself very early in life to study and academics and scholarly pursuits. This met with much disapproval with my family and friends, who naturally wore the horse-blinders of small-town, willful ignorance, who were bent on forcing me into the factory life of the rest, a life which, had I succumbed to their pressure, would have offered me nothing but unfulfilled, tortuous days.

My parents, upon finding me deep in study, would encourage me to go outside and play the rough games of boyhood, and, while they showed me some mercy, and while I believed that my father secretly wished me to go to college and become the family's first real success – though he was too ashamed to mention that to the rest of the family – still the only time that I could study in peace was at night in my room, after my parents had gone to bed. By the time I was thirteen I could read Aristotle in Greek, Cicero in Latin, Goethe in German, and Voltaire in French. I knew calculus fairly well, and had read just about every great work of English literature. Not only this, but I knew the history of the world, of the ancient cultures and the modern, and could not only identify every country in the world on a map, but most cities as well. I knew Kant as well as I knew Boys' Life, Sartre as well as baseball.

One day my father pulled me aside privately, set me down, put his hand on my left shoulder, and spoke to me. “Son, I want you to listen to me carefully, and don't you dare tell anyone what I'm gonna say. Momma already knows. I never told you this, but I've been savin' money as hard as I could for most of my life. I ain't rich, but I've got a pretty good bank account. All of your life, Jonah, you've been different from the other boys. Now I ain't sayin' there's anything wrong with you. In fact, you will come to realize later in life that you are very special, boy, that you have brains that most people don't got. I've thought and thought about this, and I want you to know that, if you want to, I have enough money saved for you to go to college. I know you can get in, and it's your choice, but if you wanna go to college, I'd be real proud to send you.”

I broke out in tears, at which my father remanded me to be a man, but of course I told him I wanted nothing more than to be the first in the family to go to college. I was accepted at Ohio University and earned my degree, and then my Master's Degree, and then a doctorate in English. I wanted nothing more than to be a writer.

But, besides OU and Gainesville, and the occasional trip to Cincinnati or Dayton, we were not rich, and I had seen hardly anything of the country. As far as I knew, the entire world was like Ohio: one big, hilly farm. Of course I live in Cincinnati now. Now, as I shall relate shortly, I had tripped to the East for my research, but even the greatest cities of the east – and I spent my time in a very small town – were nothing to compare to New York City.

I need not relate, then, my great surprise and shock upon my arrival into New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, in a small hotel in a small New Jersey town made prematurely old and weathered by its proximity to the city. I had determined to stay one night in New Jersey, the reasons being twofold. First, I wanted to acclimate myself to the sight of the great skyline and buildings of New York, for even in Cleveland or Cincinnati, nothing can compare. I had never before seen such a packed, massive grandeur, a force that reminded me of the description of Jerusalem in the Psalms as a great city all compacted up together. I was, I must admit, rather nervous and frightened, having never seen such a Babylon. Second, I was to be greeted at my hotel in the city by a car and driver sent from Mr. Dragul, and I had been advised by a friend at home, a friend who had traveled extensively on business, who had warned me that a rich and powerful man such as Dragul, though certain to be graciously hospitable and to tend to my every need in a very old European manner, still was not a man to be taken for granted, and that it would seem most rude of me to enter the city on my own and refuse his offer of transportation. Thus, since I had arrived a day early, I determined to enter the city proper on the morrow, and to be swept by its glory, and by the carriage that Mr. Dragul would be sending.

Mr. Dragul was a wealthy man whose fortune had been acquired in real estate, a man who had come from a great family of old money in the East. Dragul was a legend in New York, and owned a good number of the great skyscrapers in Manhattan. He had somehow come into the acquaintance and clientèle of my good friend and mentor, Mr. Smith of Gainesville, a real estate man who knew the city of Cincinnati very well, and had himself amassed a modest fortune in dealings there. I had, with Smith's encouragement, pursued my dream of writing, and in a few years saw my first book published, a work entitled The Misfortunes of the Gauls, an historical fiction encompassing the conquering of Gaul by Caesar and the Romans. Though it was fiction, I had carefully done my research and thus crafted a novel of unusual historical detail. It had been on the bestseller list, and I had earned a good living by its royalties.

Mr. Dragul was desirous of acquiring land in some of the older parts of Cincinnati, the neighborhoods that had been built in the middle of the eighteenth century, in fact some of the oldest neighborhoods in America, save some of the old colonies, St. Augustine, and New Orleans. Specifically, he wanted to purchase his own residence there. Nothing in this was out of the ordinary, of course, but there were a few extraordinary facts about Mr. Dragul, facts which had inspired the novel that I am now working on, another historical fiction that follows the generations of Transylvanian royalty throughout the wars and the ages. This is where Mr. Dragul enters the picture.

I wanted to do exceptional research for this new novel, a fictional account of the histories of the Balkan and Slavic lands, and I knew of no better way to do so than to interview a man who claimed quite an unusual ancestry there, and then to travel there on my own. I had first met Dragul in Transylvania in fact, and though he did not necessarily remember me, as we met in the midst of a large party, still this gave me an inroad to meeting him in his own city.

Dragul claimed ancestry from Transylvania, and against all odds, claimed to be a descendant of the legendary Count Dracula. Now the reader will bear with me as I relay a bit of history. It has long since been taught and believed in popular circles that there was indeed no Count Dracula, but that he was merely Mr. Stoker's invention. The literary Dracula was, in fact, an adaptation of Vlad Dracul the Impaler of Wachallia, the strong ruler who fought for a unification of his empire, and dealt overly harshly with his enemies, creating legends of his demonic nature. Supposedly he impaled both enemies and countrymen who offended his strange and volatile temper, and caused them to languish alive on tall stakes. It is also reported that he drank the blood of his enemies, giving him the reputation of vampire. Finally, when Vlad was assassinated by a lower noble after his return from captivity, he was buried in an unspecified but general location. Some decades later, a grave in the area was excavated and found to be empty, furthering the vampire legend. However, another grave quite near was opened to unearth a skeleton wearing a crown, and this was likely Vlad. The idea that Dracula was actually a literary version of Vlad is not entirely true. Yes, Vlad did exist, and there is much history concerning him. He was a strange and enigmatic character. But there was also a real Count Dracula of Transylvania.

Using proceeds from my first novel, I had myself traveled to Transylvania to study and research the Dracula name. Far from being the dark, mysterious, terrifying land that Stoker described, I found Transylvania to be delightful. True, it was much different from Ohio, and one could feel the hundreds of years of history, of war and murder and suffering, but on the other hand, the people seem to have recovered quite nicely, for I found a population throughly modern and European. Not only were the people bright and friendly, but I was treated like a veritable king with my American currency. The narrow, cobblestone streets running through the dark, stone, walled Medieval cities were now planted with bright European traffic signs. The carriages and horses described by Stoker have been replaced by Citroëns and Toyotas and even Italian sportsters. The common people have experienced metamorphosis, from the dull, frightened, superstitious peasants of Jonathan Harker's, to normal European citizens, pursuing careers and worried about the stock market.

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