"Appraisal" commentary
Sep. 3rd, 2023 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chthonic_cassandraAuthor's commentary for Appraisal, part 7 of Compromise. Commentary includes spoilers through part 12.
They took a train to Budapest. Tickets paid for in advance, the box of dark earth neatly tagged as luggage. Jonathan had thought through all the details of the trip a hundred times, gone over them as closely as he once had memorized the law code, as if he would be tested on them, but once they arrived at the station he found himself overwhelmed by all the lights, so much brighter than the candles and firelight to which he had grown accustomed. He found that he remembered, too, the feeling of walking through that particular station, standing at the ticket booth and dropping coins from his trembling hands as once he had done, human and feverish with the energy of his escape.
While this was not the most difficult story in the series to write either technically or emotionally, it is in many ways the most significant outlier from the others, and I wasn't sure that I could pull it off - or perhaps it's more that I wasn't sure that it would work. It's the first story in the series except for the titular one that takes us out of the setting of the castle, and the only one focusing almost exclusively on Dracula and Jonathan. In many ways it's more of a conventional post-Anne Rice vampire story than the rest of the series, drawing on tropes in which the others are uninterested.
There are a lot of direct references to the first story in this opening, starting with the first line, which is an exact mirror (Compromise begins: "They took a train into Romania"). I wanted to immediately establish that we are in a very different place than we were at the end of Keys, which I thought that Jonathan thinking through travel arrangements would accomplish.
Back then, he could think of nothing except his own survival and the horrors he was fleeing; he had not even the presence of mind to notice his fellow passengers, though in remembering he found himself imagining their reactions to him, how they must have edged away on the platform, avoided the seat beside him. Now on this new journey, he could see everything; his eyes, as if starved for unfamiliar sights, took in each detail. He was fascinated watching the travelers gather on the platform, men and women and the children they towed along with them, the ways that they spoke to one another, held their bags, adjusted their hats. He felt he could have stood for hours, just feeling them move around him.
One of the joys of Dracula Daily has been seeing little parts of the novel which frequently get overlooked getting attention and exploration; Jonathan's escape from Dracula's castle, which is largely left to the reader's imagination in the novel, is one of them. On that topic I'd recommend this lovely fic which shows feverish, escaping Jonathan through the eyes of strangers who assist him on his journey. There's wasn't room for a lot of reflection on that time in this story, but I liked the idea that it would be on Jonathan's mind as he makes this different trip that is not an escape (but might be part of an attempt at one...).
Then he felt Vlad’s hand on his back and Jonathan realized he had been forgetting to breathe. He started again, abruptly, flexing his palms as he tried to break out of the unnatural stillness into which he had thoughtlessly lapsed. He felt suddenly aware of how odd he must seem with his pallor and his white hair and his now old-fashioned suit; nearly as odd as the Count seemed, surely. It would be harder than he expected to pass for human.
Jonathan's using Dracula's first name! I don't know how many readers caught this (I know at least one did, who if she's reading this I hope knows how much I appreciate her), but it's the only the second time we get anyone using his first name in the series (the first was in dialogue by Jonathan to Mina in the first story). Here I mean for it to be slightly jarring, and to establish that stuff has changed in this relationship.
The concern about vampires "passing for human" is something that I first named in Adjust but gets more attention here and then again in Intransigence. It shows up in other vampire canons more robustly, but I do think it's hinted at in Dracula when we see the Count studying Jonathan in order to fit into British society. In Stoker's text that kind of "passing" has racialized, xenophobic undertones; in this story, with Jonathan and Dracula entering into Budapest together, I know that the implication is much more about queerness. I am not interested in using vampirism as a facile metaphor for queerness (like some texts we could all name...), but some of that is always there, and for this story in particular I knew I needed to contend with it.
Once on the train, he spent most of his time watching out the window. There were no humans to watch in their compartment, and he kept catching his gaze edging towards the dull carpeting, looking for a tea stain there. No point to that; no point, either, in imagining a woman’s body curled up on the seat opposite to his, skirts folded around her bound ankles, hands pillowed beneath her head. Instead, he followed the shifting landscape as it passed in the dark, and thought about how wide the world was. Sitting beside him, the Count read.
In Keys we saw Mina determinedly avoiding thinking about Jonathan; here we see that the memory of Mina haunts all the spaces Jonathan is moving through. The tea stain on the carpet and Mina lying on the train seat with her ankle bound are both from Compromise, of course.
When they arrived in the city, a carriage was waiting for them (arrangements which had been challenging to make by letter, Jonathan thought ruefully, but not impossible, not when you were willing to offer enough money for the driver’s pains). It took them to an old house, clearly long-untended, though the lock on the gate had been replaced recently; it gleamed bright silver, not dull rust. The Count let them inside, into a front room just as thick with dust as Jonathan had imagined. Sheets covered over all the furniture, and heavily curtains blanketed the windows. Spiders worked busily at the corners of the room, undisturbed by their entrance.
I drove myself crazy trying to figure out how Jonathan would actually arrange all this by letter and then I threw up my hands and decided to hand wave it.
The spiders are here, as they often are in my stories, just because I love them.
Jonathan set down the heavy box of earth, and went to the window, pushing aside the curtains and gazing at the street outside. Lamplight made a golden pool on the cobblestones. Into it, a couple stepped, arm in arm, dark heads bent together. A woman alone, in low-heeled shoes, a servant’s merino skirt visible underneath her coat and weariness in her lidded eyes.
Writing from Jonathan's pov for me always involves leaving many things hinted at and implied because his gaze is quite dissociative, and there are a lot of things he is concealing both from Dracula and himself. But in all these people he is seeing fractured reflections of himself and Mina.
“Jonathan. Come sit.”
He turned from the window with reluctance. Vlad was already seated himself, having divested of its white drape a chair which could perhaps have dated from before the French revolution. Jonathan sat across from him, working to bring his focus back as he settled his hands upon his knees.
“You must pace yourself,” Vlad told him, “this is much for you to take in.”
“I’d forgotten,” Jonathan said, “that there were so many people in all the world. And to see them together - couples, families….”
When I think about the amount of time that Jonathan has been in isolation leading up to these events (a timeline which I keep a little vague in this story) it is so dizzying. Of course being among people is overwhelming!
“It feeds you, being close to them. It is a hunger as true as that for the blood. But you can just as easily surfeit yourself in gorging upon it. You must maintain your own clarity. Return your focus to me, when you find yourself close to being lost in them.”
Something something Dracula speech about longing for the "whirl and rush of humanity" that I'm going to partially quote a few installments on from this one.
“It wasn’t like this, before, when you brought me with you -” Jonathan felt he could come no closer than this to speaking directly from his memory, but Vlad smiled.
He's referring to the trip they took together to abduct Mina which is the subject of the first story in the series. I wanted this to be clear, but I'm not sure how fair it is to expect readers to be holding the continuity this precisely.
“You were younger then, in your undeath, closer to your former humanity. And you had one particular human on which to focus. This will be a different effort. But I would not have brought you if I didn’t trust your capacity to mange it.”
Jonathan tilted his head back, taking in the room around him. “Until recently, it never occurred to me that you might own other property. I don’t know why; it was a foolish assumption to make. But you could have met me here, when you sent for a solicitor from London. It would have been much simpler. Why didn’t you?”
I think this is the first time in the series that I show Jonathan and Dracula having an actual direct conversation about anything, which was something about writing this story which I found sort of a relief.
Vlad laughed. “Jonathan, can you imagine what would have happened if I had welcomed you into this house? You would have been out the window and on your way to accost the nearest police officer before I could get in any reasonable English practice with you at all. I needed time. This place serves my needs, but it’s no foundation from which to act. And I had promised that the girls would share in your blood.”
Jonathan took a slow breath, almost feeling the contours of the crucifix between his fingers again. It would pass. He was here. That time was over.
Case in point here of Jonathan's dissociative reactions. Compare and contrast with how Mina, as characterized in this series, might respond to a similarly provocative statement by Dracula. Jonathan doesn't take the bait, doesn't get drawn into any kind of agonistic exchange, just breathes through the trigger.
He could feel the Count watching him, tracking each twitch of his fingers. When he saw that Jonathan had managed to settle himself, he spoke again. “But now, we are both hungry. Clean yourself, change your clothes. I’ll show you the city.”
Dracula then responds by giving Jonathan the psychological space to manage the reaction on his own, rather than directly intervening, which is again supposed to contrast with the way he manages Mina.
Notice also that we're back to calling him 'the Count' which will continue in the next section of the fic. The general pattern here is when Jonathan is thinking about Dracula within the castle, or in the context of his early victimization by him, he's using the title, but when interacting with him the context of Budapest excursion he uses the first name.
-
Jonathan had been practicing his German for years now. He was diligent about it, spending the long hours alone in his bedroom reading Goethe and Schiller as he had been instructed, and then enduring the Count’s correction of his grammar and pronunciation when they were together. He had always been a dedicated student, but this was far more effort than he had ever spent in school. He had gotten very good.
The original outline for this story was way more sprawling. It started chronologically in the castle in preparation for the Budapest trip and, in at least one of the versions I cycled through, carried on afterwards and gave us the events of some of the next installments from Jonathan's pov. This really didn't work.
For myself I've found, as a general rule, that if there's a way to more tightly contain a story or give it more of a formal structure, that's almost always the right choice; it's always going to overspill the bounds of that containment anyway, so better to start tighter than otherwise. So I decided that this one had to just about the Budapest trip, with the castle scenes leading up to it as flashbacks. This worked better for a number of reasons; it of course gave the story more shape, but it also helped me keep Jonathan's remote, dissociated tone for the castle flashbacks and the contrast with Mina's pov. It also helps me conceal the things I want to conceal.
More extended commentary on this belongs in a different story, but I'll point out that I deliberately contrast Jonathan practicing his German alone with Mina learning Romanian with the other wives in the previous story. Look out for mirrors/contrasts between this and Keys; they are all over and very intentional.
The work of the language had been an anchor to hold to when past and present blurred, as they had so often and sometimes did still. His bedroom for these past several years was the same one which he had been given as a human, and he was rarely permitted to leave it except to accompany the Count in the library. He tried to endure this dictate with dignity, but sometimes he still broke down and begged. The Count’s tone, when he denied him, was unsparing but without cruelty. “This is what you need,” he would tell Jonathan, “we both know that now.”
I'm quite vague about the timeline in this story, which is intentional, but we're looking at a significant time jump from Keys. Which, when you think about what Jonathan is describing here, is totally fucking horrific.
In the past two years, the Count had begun leaving Jonathan’s door unlocked, with the expectation that he remain within unless given express permission to do otherwise. Jonathan would sit alone on the bed, his hands clenched until the nails cut into the skin, trying to keep himself from running out the door. But he had managed; it had gotten easier with time, and he had been deemed ready for this journey.
-
They went together to a tailor, an expensive one with evening hours, to replace their conspicuously old-fashioned suits. The tailor seemed accustomed to serving eccentric aristocrats who had the money to back up their unusual requests; his deference was understated but unmistakable. Vlad spoke to the tailor in Hungarian; no one seemed bothered by Jonathan’s silence.
Vlad sat and watched as the tailor and his assistant measured Jonathan, the assistant clearly trying not to react to the chill of his skin just as Jonathan tried with the same effort not to react to the warmth of the assistant’s pulse. Jonathan felt the weight of Vlad’s gaze as he turned under the tailor’s tape measure, felt the tight weave of the fabrics against his skin.
This all-male space of the fancy tailor's shop is meant to markedly contrast with the sewing scenes between the women in Keys and Complicity. In those stories the making of clothing binds the women together within the household; here, by outsourcing that work to a context to which the wives don't have access, Dracula and Jonathan are cutting themselves off from the rest of the family in ways that are going to crucially come back to bite them (ha) in a few installments. (A very similar thing is going on with the language learning thread, since, I've said in previous commentaries, fiber arts & text/language are the two major image clusters of the story.)
Also the homoeroticism of the all-male space and of Jonathan being measured while Dracula watches but, you know, I'm confident that you all got that part.
Vlad did not have himself measured (“we can wear the same clothes,” he reminded Jonathan), but ordered multiples of everything in what felt to Jonathan like a dizzying display of wealth, a whole wardrobe to be shipped back through the Carpathians. He also took from the tailor’s shop an array of pamphlets on the newest fashion designs for women. The etchings on the pamphlets showed women with wide, draping bodices and narrow waists, hair gleaming and swept forward. They left the store with a new jacket on Jonathan’s back, briskly modified for his narrow frame, and he found himself unexpectedly pleased at the feeling of something new and clean on his skin.
There are a lot of fan theories about Dracula wearing Jonathan's clothes in the novel - shapeshifting or something supernatural is popular. I generally choose to believe that they simply are actually similar heights and builds, which makes Jonathan taller than I think a lot of fans imagine him. I also wanted to parallel the clothes sharing between the two of them and that between the wives which gets emphasized again right after this in Distance.
Dracula of course brings back the periodicals for Ecaterina and they will come in handy in Complicity. So he's thinking about the women even in his men-only vacation with Jonathan here.
The next night, they went to the theater. It was a production of Hamlet, in German, and Jonathan was delighted to find that his grasp of the language was strong enough to follow the play as it happened, though it felt strange to hear the familiar lines, which he had read so often aloud to himself first as a boy and then as a young man, declaimed in a language not his own. Before the performance began, a member of the company came out and and announced that the production was dedicated to the recently passed Sir Henry Irving, whose death was a loss to theater all the world over. To his surprise, Jonathan felt tears spark in his eyes. They did not stop as the lights were dimmed and the opening scene began.
In addition to being my sneaky Bram Stoker callout, the mention of Henry Irving's death here also situates us in time - Irving died in 1905. Depending on when you place the events of the novel, this gives us the rough length of the time jump.
A joy, then, to see the story unfold in front of him, the action studded through with Hamlet’s myriad soliloquies, the meditations on life and death and responsibility which Jonathan, as an orphaned adolescent with little certainty about how he would support himself, had found so evocative. They held new meanings for him now, Hamlet’s questions about sanity and madness, about sleep and nightmares, about the weight of killing and what lies beyond death. While he did not imagine himself a discerning judge, he felt persuaded by the actors; the strong-browed leading man who played the title role, the smooth-voiced insinuating older actor who played Claudius, and the actress playing Ophelia, who had olive skin and rich brown hair, and who Jonathan could not help finding very beautiful.
There is a ton to be said about the role of Shakespeare in the novel Dracula and what we can imagine Jonathan's relationship with it to be. We do know that he loved and memorized parts of Hamlet. I understand both Mina and Jonathan (and Dracula too, to be fair) as quite intellectual people and thoughtful, deeply feelingful readers; we don't get much of a chance to see that side of Jonathan in this series, but here I wanted to gesture towards it.
In the fourth act, when Ophelia emerged in a light gown, the brown har loose and disordered over her shoulders, Jonathan found the tears in his eyes almost grow into sobs. Vlad, sitting next to him, leaned his body towards him, rested his hand on the back of Jonathan’s neck. Jonathan quelled the tears. His eyes also caught movement, a few rows back and to his right; a young man, sitting alone, had noticed Vlad’s gesture. His eyes linked with Jonathan’s.
The fourth act is Ophelia's mad scene. Jonathan is thinking about Mina here, who he also believes is "going mad," and who he has seen in nightgown and with her hair down in many very distressing moments, beginning with the blood exchange and continuing through many scenes in the series.
After the play was over, the man waited outside the theater and touched Jonathan’s shoulder when he and Vlad emerged. “Pardon me,” he said, “but I noticed how moved you were by the performance. Are you in theater yourself?”
Jonathan froze for a moment, unsure whether or how to respond, until he saw Vlad’s infinitesimal nod of permission. “I am not,” he answered in German, “I am a solicitor.”
The man smiled at his accent, friendly but cautious. “You’re not Hungarian! Where are you visiting from? If you don’t mind my asking; I’m sorry for my forwardness.”
Jonathan could not help smiling back. “England, and I have no Hungarian myself, I’m afraid, only German.” He paused for a breath, uncertain how this interaction would go. “My name is Jonathan.”
The man smiled then outright, as if relieved that his greeting had been received as it was. “And I’m János - we have the same name, almost. And your…companion?” His voice was more tentative as he turned towards Vlad, and the meaning of the overture clicked for Jonathan.
János was very important for this story, but I struggled to write this scene in a way that was neither clichéd nor hokey; I think I came up with something that satisfies me, but when I reread it I still feel the instinct to fiddle with the text.
We all have our own headcanons about these characters' sexualities. My Jonathan has never before navigated the social aspects of being a self-aware queer man in fin de siécle Europe, and, despite being pretty interpersonally astute, isn't necessarily thinking about the fact that he and Dracula are going to be read as a gay couple by other queer people, or that sweet young Hungarian men might try to pick him up at the theatre. Dracula's relationship with his own sexuality is really fucking complicated, but he has been a queer man in a lot of different social and historical contexts.
The Count’s response was smooth. “Vlad. I am from Transylvania, but I lived near Budapest for some years. I wanted to bring Jonathan to see the city.”
The "some years" Dracula lived near Budapest were in the fifteenth century when he was the captive of Matthias Corvinus.
János nodded. “It’s a beautiful city, and I think there’s more culture here every year. And more openness, too, even for those of us who must be careful in how we live.” A pause, barely noticeable. “I am a writer, myself. I don’t know how long you are staying, but there’s a club here in the city - only if you’re interested, of course - “
This underground LGBTQ club in early twentieth century Budapest is a real thing, and I don't want to tell you how much research I did for one throwaway line.
Jonathan stood very still. He tried not to look at Vlad.
“You’re very kind. I have few friends in the city, now, and would welcome an introduction from one familiar here. We had no plans following the theater - if you know a place where we all might become better acquainted, Jonathan and I would be most pleased.”
János flushed. “I - of course, the club doesn’t meet tonight, but if you’d like - my own rooms aren’t far from here.”
Jonathan didn’t want to see Vlad’s smile, but he knew he had to speak himself. “Thank you,” he said, “we are most grateful for your invitation.”
-
Jonathan spent most of his time with the Count alone, but sometimes he brought Adriana to Jonathan’s room and had the two of them practice hypnotism on one another. They would alternate attempting to take control of one another’s minds as the Count sat nearby and gave instructions.
This scene is meant to be horrifying on its own merits but it's also really intense foreshadowing.
I don't hammer this in, but I mean to make it pretty clear throughout the series that Jonathan and Adriana both have the most innate talent for hypnotism, and Dracula is cultivating it in the both of them.
It was Jonathan’s turn, and he was trying to direct Adriana to do simple actions - to stand and sit and stand again, to go fetch a pen from his writing desk. She had been instructed to try and resist his control, which seemed to make her anxious, though it showed only in her how wide her dark, liquid eyes went in her oval face. Adria was older and stronger than he, and her resistance made her mind slippery, difficult for him to catch at with his own. But, after many tries, he did, and felt a grim satisfaction seeing her standing smoothly at his command, like an automaton.
“Good, Jonathan,” the Count said, and Jonathan felt a warmth at his sternum. “Now, give her something more difficult to do.”
As readers have noticed, Dracula never actually specifies that "something more difficult" means something sexualized and violent. But that's what's normalized within the castle, and it's what Jonathan does.
Jonathan could not let his focus waver, or his control would slip; he went with the first order that came to him, Undress, he told her to her mind. A waver, then, in the connection between them, but it steadied, and her movements still eerily even, she removed first her dress and then her shift. Jonathan felt a moment of shock at the contrast between Adria’s exposed body and his own, still fully clothed.
The implied power difference of one person naked (or partially so) and the other/s clothed recurs several times in the series, starting in Windows.
“Keep going,” the Count told him, “but now I want you to adjust the vector of your control; take only her will, but not her capacity for awareness or feeling about what is happening. We’ve practiced this before; you know how to do it.”
a) I wrote this but it still horrifies me b) In Collusion we see Jonathan able to tolerate feeding by making it so that his victims don't know what is happening and thus cannot suffer, which he feels to be a mercy. Dracula is now forcing him to do a type of hypnosis that takes that mercy (if mercy it is) away.
Jonathan hesitated, but it was true, he did; it was like adjusting his grip of a horse’s reins. He could feel the difference in Adria’s presence, though nothing changed on her face.
“Continue.”
Jonathan drew a breath, and then guided Adria’s hand, with its sharp nails, towards the soft flesh inside her arm; there, an edge of resistance, but he could hold his control steady, and not let himself be thrown by it. He felt alongside her as her nails broke the skin and dragged along it in long gashes. Pain twisted her mouth, but no sound came from her throat. He made her hold her nails there, in her own flesh, blood beading around them.
This was a difficult scene to write and it's hard to reread, but I'm pleased with the results. The scratching imagery will importantly return in Distance.
“Enough,” the Count said finally, and Jonathan released the reins of the hypnotism. Adria suddenly, belatedly, cried out, a brief, high sound. She turned towards the Count, who was behind her, and buried her face in his chest, holding her bleeding arm out to him as if in offering or in demonstration of the pain, Jonathan could not tell. He watched the Count take her wrist between his fingers and lick the blood from the cuts, then hold her for several long moments.
Another delicate dynamic to represent. I wanted readers to get a number of things from this brief glimpse of Adriana - that this type of violence is normalized for her, but that she's simultaneously not denying or dissociating from the impact of it on her; that despite Jonathan being the person who is directing enacting this violent/sexualized compulsion on her, she's very clear about Dracula as the emotional center of the scene; that it is very automatic for her to seek comfort from him when in distress and the type of comfort he gives her effectively meets her immediate emotional needs.
Also: I love writing Adriana and regret that this is one of the first times we really see her in the series (we get a little more of her in Distance and Complicity).
As he watched, Adriana composed herself, took up her clothes from the floor, and redressed. The Count sat back down. “Now,” he said, “I want you to switch roles.”
Very deliberate choice to not show the role-switched continuation of this scene, but to make it very clear that it happened.
-
János’ rooms were tight and chilled, crowded into the garret of a boarding house, but he kept them neat and free from dust and grime. He had more books than the room was meant to hold, but they were all neatly piled, alongside paper and pen and ink. Jonathan glanced at the titles, but couldn’t read most of them.
“I apologize,” János said, moving a chair, “that there aren’t more places to sit. I don’t host very much, I’m afraid. But I have a bottle of wine!” He sounded excited, as if he’d just remembered this. “And it’s good wine too - I have a cousin, you see, who works as the accountant for a vineyard and sometimes he -“
The poor man was babbling with anxiety. Well, there’s was no reason to draw this out longer than he had to. Jonathan stepped forward, placed a hand at the back of János’ skull, and kissed him.
It was the first time he had kissed a man other than Vlad; János’ mouth was warm, and he tasted of licorice. He made it a good kiss. When they separated, he could feel that János’ pulse had sped.
This paragraph is a little fanfic-y but you know what? That's just fine.
“I didn’t want to assume,” János said finally, “but I hoped - god, you’re beautiful, but - “ he glanced at Vlad. “You don’t mind? If you want to…”
Poor János, who thinks he was just incredibly lucky in picking up this weird but very hot English/Romanian couple.
Vlad sat down on the rickety chair János had brought over. “I’ll watch, if you have no objection. Perhaps join you both later. You’re younger than I; you have more stamina. My appetites can be assuaged in time.”
Was János blushing? Jonathan had forgotten so much about how human skin looked. “Of course I don’t mind.” He looked back to Jonathan. “May I?” Jonathan nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
Another kiss, and soon enough they were on János’ narrow bed, far in progress towards the removal of their clothes. Jonathan felt his teeth sharp in his mouth.
Then Vlad addressed him, in English. “Go slowly, Jonathan. Take his will but not his pain.”
János looked up, startled at Vlad’s cold tone and the unfamiliar words, but then Jonathan caught a hold of his mind. Human’s minds were so much easier to control; his, unguarded by arousal and surprise, came into his power easily. He tilted his head back, his body yielding under Jonathan’s, though as Jonathan bit down he could feel János’ muscles tense in startled anguish. But he could not scream, could not make a noise, not under the heavy weight of Jonathan’s hypnosis.
The blood was sweet and good after the fast on the train, but he stayed alert to Vlad, and drew away when he came to join him on the bed, let Vlad take his place. He watched as Vlad bit János on the throat close to where Jonathan himself had done, the bite marks interlocking like flowers on a chain. They alternated drinking from him as János lost consciousness and Jonathan, with relief, could relinquish the effort of his control. And then they drank again, bringing the man past unconsciousness and into death.
Afterwards, Jonathan felt weary, despite the energy of the blood filling him up. He found that he wanted nothing more than to sit beside the cooling body in the dim quiet of the garret room, the sounds of the city stealing in the window. But Vlad was there with him.
“I wonder how good his writing was,” Jonathan said finally.
This scene is a direct parallel to Mina sitting with the body of the woman she just killed in Keys. Both of them are at this point in the series countenancing their own role as perpetrators in new ways through the act of killing these people to whom they felt connected, and who they in different ways seeing themselves in. But of course the circumstances of the killings are very different. It's also important for Mina that she felt connected to this woman while knowing absolutely nothing about her, including her name, while Jonathan was able to make a more human connection with János.
“This was his fate,” Vlad said, with equanimity.
Remain very pleased with this word choice.
“Do you ever think about that, though,” Jonathan continued, the newness of everything making him bold, “what those we kill would have done with their lives? If we killed all the writers, we wouldn’t have any more books to read, or plays to watch.”
Vlad smiled. “And if I killed all the solicitors, then I would have no one to manage my affairs. But yet I’ve managed. And so shall the world, with us in it.”
While Dracula sort of brushes off this concern, we'll see in Tower that it actually sort of gets to him and is in fact something he thinks about more seriously. I also very much love "so shall the world, with us in it" as a line.
Jonathan had a sudden fantasy of János in the castle with them, writing whatever it was he wrote for all eternity. But that was not what had happened.
Parallel to Mina's fantasy of rescuing the woman in Keys. But Jonathan's fantasy is of János being transformed as he himself is, not of helping him escape.
“I wonder sometimes,” he said, the words tripping across his tongue as Hamlet instructed his players to speak, “what my life would be, if you had not interrupted its course. I might have been successful leading the Hawkins firm, or I might have failed at it, and be living in penury. I might have a child now, and Mina and I might fret over their troubles and quarrel over where they should go to school. I might own a house outside of London and plant rosebushes in the front garden.” He looked at János’ body, a sour sadness in his throat. “I might never have thought to go to bed with a man. Or maybe I would have, and felt guilt for it. I don’t know. I’ll never know.”
This paragraph is probably my favorite in the story. It's layered and sad and wistful and honest and strikes a lot of notes without closing them off. The rose bushes detail in particular makes me very upset.
Though, again, I didn't want to do a simple 'vampirism as analogy for queerness' thing or a 'Dracula as Jonathan's sexual awakening' thing, there are elements of that in Jonathan's experience, and it felt important that Jonathan acknowledge the complexity of that, especially after this encounter with János. Maybe this thing would have been part of his life without Dracula, and maybe it wouldn't have; there's no way for him to know for sure.
Vlad was silent, watching him.
“Do you ever wonder those things?” Jonathan asked him, “About yourself. Do you ever wonder what your life would be, if you had not become this?”
Vlad tilted his head. “If I had not become this, I would be long dead.” Then, as if relenting, “I was older than you were, when I became what we are. I had lived more of a life. I’ve taken all of you young - I believe it to be better that way, that your minds are more pliable, less shaped by preconceptions. But it means that you are with me through this time that would perhaps have been the span of your natural life, when you can feel the pull of those possibilities that shall not be. I’ve seen that to be the most difficult time, for each of you. You have some decades still to go in that span. But, with time, the pull of those possibilities will ease.”
What Dracula is of course not acknowledging is that Jonathan's relationship with those alternate possibilities might be different because Dracula also turned Jonathan's human wife. But, you know.
Jonathan thought about how the last decade had felt so long and short at once, the weeks and months unmarked by the rhythms of work and study and exam. The speed of hours spent in stillness, or the agonizing slowness of minutes spent in pain. He tried to imagine fifty years of that, a hundred, more. He still could not.
This passage (and this whole scene) should land differently in the context of Intransigence. We know that at this point Jonathan has with him the letter that he is going to use to attempt to actually end this life for himself.
“We’re done here,” Vlad said, “let’s go.”
-
He was being permitted to go to the library himself, at appointed and prearranged times; he was never to arrive too early or too late, not to extend or delay the moment of leaving his detested bedroom. Most of the time, the Count was waiting for him when he arrived, ready with the books and papers he wanted them to study together. Sometimes the Count was not quite there yet, and he could sit alone by the fire, relishing the sight of the open door.
One night, he came and Mina was still there, standing by the desk with the Count, their heads bent together. She was wearing a long emerald-colored dress with a square-cut neck, of a fashion he had never seen her in. She was speaking, animated, gesturing as she did; at the sound of his footsteps she stopped and froze.
This dress is loosely based on one that I do actually own.
Jonathan too stopped, fixed at the room’s doorway, unable to advance or to retreat. The Count looked up, and for a moment all three of them were silent.
“I apologize,” the Count said finally, perhaps to both of them, “I mistook the time. Mina, you may leave for today.”
This is a pretty significant mix-up on Dracula's part, given the care that has been taken to keep Mina and Jonathan separated, and I do mean his apology to read as genuine. This is one of the first times in the series that he apologizes, but it won't be the last.
She bent her head, “Thank you, my lord,” she told him.
While Jonathan has started using Dracula's first name, Mina has started calling him by the honorific.
Jonathan watched, and found he could not move, even though he was standing in her way. She neither met his gaze nor asked him to move, just slipped herself past him as she left. There was not enough space, and their hands brushed. He thoughts he felt her fingers twitch against him, for an instant only, and then she was gone.
I meant this to be devastating and romantic and awful and full of unbearable tension. I don't think I did so badly.
“Come inside, Jonathan,” the Count ordered, and he made himself move. As he reached the desk the Count was already taking out the books on property law he wished Jonathan to review with him, but Jonathan saw, still lying there, as bold as letters between two lovers, what it was he had been working on with Mina. He went still, and didn’t let himself react.
This is one of the most significant moments in the series where something is implied but not directly said and I remain totally obsessed with it and really proud of myself about it. Jonathan can't name the shorthand notes for the readers because it is too painful to tolerate and also because he cannot let Dracula see how it impacts him. So the reader is left (hopefully) knowing what they are from context (we just heard Mina in Keys offer to teach Dracula their shorthand as her great symbolic act of capitulation) but having to infer what seeing them means for Jonathan from the implications of his language ("bold as letters between two lovers" frames what's happening as a betrayal, an adultery, which for Jonathan it is, far more than the sex he knows is happening between the two of them).
Of course, seeing the shorthand notes will be absolutely crucial for Jonathan's arc in the rest of the series; this is the moment that will make him conclude that Mina is lost to him, that will make him fully give up hope. I had to set that up here knowing that I wouldn't able to directly come back to it until the payoff in Intransigence and have to hope that readers would hold the emotional continuity from here.
“Sit down,” the Count told him, spreading open a book with ink-stained fingers, seemingly unaware of what Jonathan had seen, “we have so much to do.”
The Count's ink-stained fingers of course also link him with Mina, whose ink-stained fingers were the sign of her betrayal of Dracula's commands back in Jackal/Collusion.
-
The next day, strong with the blood they both had drunk, Vlad and Jonathan went out in the early afternoon, long before the sun had set. They had official offices to visit, where they would test for the first time how well Jonathan could truly pass still as a human solicitor, whether what he had retained of his human manners would be enough to smooth the way to the next stage of Vlad’s plans. Jonathan felt an edge of nervousness, but mostly calm resolve; he had rehearsed these interactions many times, the way he would present the papers, confident but fumbling them just enough in his hands, the questions it would be right to ask as an English professional traveling for business. He was almost looking forward to it.
I hand waved the legal/business stuff because it didn't matter enough to spend the time on it especially in this very tight ending; we need to know that it's happening and it sets up that Dracula has a larger-scale plan in which Jonathan is involved, but we don't need the details.
Before their appointment, they stopped at a bookstore Vlad knew. The owner, with whom Vlad had apparently corresponded, brought out his new arrivals for him. While Vlad looked over The Golden Bowl, Jonathan watched out the window. A couple passed by, the woman holding the hand of a boy of perhaps five. Jonathan took note of the location of the post office across the street.
I realized in my research that The Golden Bowl was published at exactly the right time for them to find it on this trip. Then I reread it and got totally obsessed and it sort of took over the rest of the series. Sorry everyone.
This paragraph, like the rest of this story, is an example of me trying to use a very tight third person to both conceal and reveal information. The family with the five-year-old son makes Jonathan think about the family he could have had with Mina, which he has spoken about earlier in the story; for readers it might (though I'm not expecting anyone to actually have caught this) evoke Quincey Harker, the child the two of them did have in canon, who would be about this child's age at this point in the timeline. Jonathan notes the location of the post office but is not thinking about (or letting the reader know about) for what purpose he needs it. Everything else won't be clear until later.
-
Alone again in his bedroom with the moon out the window and the cries of the wolves sounding in the distance, Jonathan took out his diary for the first time in many years, and began to write a letter.
And there we go: Jonathan's very very long game. I love him, and I love all of you my readers, and I love writing this crazy, intense, emotional story. If you've been reading these commentaries, I hope you're getting something out of them! Feel free to let me know in comments.
They took a train to Budapest. Tickets paid for in advance, the box of dark earth neatly tagged as luggage. Jonathan had thought through all the details of the trip a hundred times, gone over them as closely as he once had memorized the law code, as if he would be tested on them, but once they arrived at the station he found himself overwhelmed by all the lights, so much brighter than the candles and firelight to which he had grown accustomed. He found that he remembered, too, the feeling of walking through that particular station, standing at the ticket booth and dropping coins from his trembling hands as once he had done, human and feverish with the energy of his escape.
While this was not the most difficult story in the series to write either technically or emotionally, it is in many ways the most significant outlier from the others, and I wasn't sure that I could pull it off - or perhaps it's more that I wasn't sure that it would work. It's the first story in the series except for the titular one that takes us out of the setting of the castle, and the only one focusing almost exclusively on Dracula and Jonathan. In many ways it's more of a conventional post-Anne Rice vampire story than the rest of the series, drawing on tropes in which the others are uninterested.
There are a lot of direct references to the first story in this opening, starting with the first line, which is an exact mirror (Compromise begins: "They took a train into Romania"). I wanted to immediately establish that we are in a very different place than we were at the end of Keys, which I thought that Jonathan thinking through travel arrangements would accomplish.
Back then, he could think of nothing except his own survival and the horrors he was fleeing; he had not even the presence of mind to notice his fellow passengers, though in remembering he found himself imagining their reactions to him, how they must have edged away on the platform, avoided the seat beside him. Now on this new journey, he could see everything; his eyes, as if starved for unfamiliar sights, took in each detail. He was fascinated watching the travelers gather on the platform, men and women and the children they towed along with them, the ways that they spoke to one another, held their bags, adjusted their hats. He felt he could have stood for hours, just feeling them move around him.
One of the joys of Dracula Daily has been seeing little parts of the novel which frequently get overlooked getting attention and exploration; Jonathan's escape from Dracula's castle, which is largely left to the reader's imagination in the novel, is one of them. On that topic I'd recommend this lovely fic which shows feverish, escaping Jonathan through the eyes of strangers who assist him on his journey. There's wasn't room for a lot of reflection on that time in this story, but I liked the idea that it would be on Jonathan's mind as he makes this different trip that is not an escape (but might be part of an attempt at one...).
Then he felt Vlad’s hand on his back and Jonathan realized he had been forgetting to breathe. He started again, abruptly, flexing his palms as he tried to break out of the unnatural stillness into which he had thoughtlessly lapsed. He felt suddenly aware of how odd he must seem with his pallor and his white hair and his now old-fashioned suit; nearly as odd as the Count seemed, surely. It would be harder than he expected to pass for human.
Jonathan's using Dracula's first name! I don't know how many readers caught this (I know at least one did, who if she's reading this I hope knows how much I appreciate her), but it's the only the second time we get anyone using his first name in the series (the first was in dialogue by Jonathan to Mina in the first story). Here I mean for it to be slightly jarring, and to establish that stuff has changed in this relationship.
The concern about vampires "passing for human" is something that I first named in Adjust but gets more attention here and then again in Intransigence. It shows up in other vampire canons more robustly, but I do think it's hinted at in Dracula when we see the Count studying Jonathan in order to fit into British society. In Stoker's text that kind of "passing" has racialized, xenophobic undertones; in this story, with Jonathan and Dracula entering into Budapest together, I know that the implication is much more about queerness. I am not interested in using vampirism as a facile metaphor for queerness (like some texts we could all name...), but some of that is always there, and for this story in particular I knew I needed to contend with it.
Once on the train, he spent most of his time watching out the window. There were no humans to watch in their compartment, and he kept catching his gaze edging towards the dull carpeting, looking for a tea stain there. No point to that; no point, either, in imagining a woman’s body curled up on the seat opposite to his, skirts folded around her bound ankles, hands pillowed beneath her head. Instead, he followed the shifting landscape as it passed in the dark, and thought about how wide the world was. Sitting beside him, the Count read.
In Keys we saw Mina determinedly avoiding thinking about Jonathan; here we see that the memory of Mina haunts all the spaces Jonathan is moving through. The tea stain on the carpet and Mina lying on the train seat with her ankle bound are both from Compromise, of course.
When they arrived in the city, a carriage was waiting for them (arrangements which had been challenging to make by letter, Jonathan thought ruefully, but not impossible, not when you were willing to offer enough money for the driver’s pains). It took them to an old house, clearly long-untended, though the lock on the gate had been replaced recently; it gleamed bright silver, not dull rust. The Count let them inside, into a front room just as thick with dust as Jonathan had imagined. Sheets covered over all the furniture, and heavily curtains blanketed the windows. Spiders worked busily at the corners of the room, undisturbed by their entrance.
I drove myself crazy trying to figure out how Jonathan would actually arrange all this by letter and then I threw up my hands and decided to hand wave it.
The spiders are here, as they often are in my stories, just because I love them.
Jonathan set down the heavy box of earth, and went to the window, pushing aside the curtains and gazing at the street outside. Lamplight made a golden pool on the cobblestones. Into it, a couple stepped, arm in arm, dark heads bent together. A woman alone, in low-heeled shoes, a servant’s merino skirt visible underneath her coat and weariness in her lidded eyes.
Writing from Jonathan's pov for me always involves leaving many things hinted at and implied because his gaze is quite dissociative, and there are a lot of things he is concealing both from Dracula and himself. But in all these people he is seeing fractured reflections of himself and Mina.
“Jonathan. Come sit.”
He turned from the window with reluctance. Vlad was already seated himself, having divested of its white drape a chair which could perhaps have dated from before the French revolution. Jonathan sat across from him, working to bring his focus back as he settled his hands upon his knees.
“You must pace yourself,” Vlad told him, “this is much for you to take in.”
“I’d forgotten,” Jonathan said, “that there were so many people in all the world. And to see them together - couples, families….”
When I think about the amount of time that Jonathan has been in isolation leading up to these events (a timeline which I keep a little vague in this story) it is so dizzying. Of course being among people is overwhelming!
“It feeds you, being close to them. It is a hunger as true as that for the blood. But you can just as easily surfeit yourself in gorging upon it. You must maintain your own clarity. Return your focus to me, when you find yourself close to being lost in them.”
Something something Dracula speech about longing for the "whirl and rush of humanity" that I'm going to partially quote a few installments on from this one.
“It wasn’t like this, before, when you brought me with you -” Jonathan felt he could come no closer than this to speaking directly from his memory, but Vlad smiled.
He's referring to the trip they took together to abduct Mina which is the subject of the first story in the series. I wanted this to be clear, but I'm not sure how fair it is to expect readers to be holding the continuity this precisely.
“You were younger then, in your undeath, closer to your former humanity. And you had one particular human on which to focus. This will be a different effort. But I would not have brought you if I didn’t trust your capacity to mange it.”
Jonathan tilted his head back, taking in the room around him. “Until recently, it never occurred to me that you might own other property. I don’t know why; it was a foolish assumption to make. But you could have met me here, when you sent for a solicitor from London. It would have been much simpler. Why didn’t you?”
I think this is the first time in the series that I show Jonathan and Dracula having an actual direct conversation about anything, which was something about writing this story which I found sort of a relief.
Vlad laughed. “Jonathan, can you imagine what would have happened if I had welcomed you into this house? You would have been out the window and on your way to accost the nearest police officer before I could get in any reasonable English practice with you at all. I needed time. This place serves my needs, but it’s no foundation from which to act. And I had promised that the girls would share in your blood.”
Jonathan took a slow breath, almost feeling the contours of the crucifix between his fingers again. It would pass. He was here. That time was over.
Case in point here of Jonathan's dissociative reactions. Compare and contrast with how Mina, as characterized in this series, might respond to a similarly provocative statement by Dracula. Jonathan doesn't take the bait, doesn't get drawn into any kind of agonistic exchange, just breathes through the trigger.
He could feel the Count watching him, tracking each twitch of his fingers. When he saw that Jonathan had managed to settle himself, he spoke again. “But now, we are both hungry. Clean yourself, change your clothes. I’ll show you the city.”
Dracula then responds by giving Jonathan the psychological space to manage the reaction on his own, rather than directly intervening, which is again supposed to contrast with the way he manages Mina.
Notice also that we're back to calling him 'the Count' which will continue in the next section of the fic. The general pattern here is when Jonathan is thinking about Dracula within the castle, or in the context of his early victimization by him, he's using the title, but when interacting with him the context of Budapest excursion he uses the first name.
-
Jonathan had been practicing his German for years now. He was diligent about it, spending the long hours alone in his bedroom reading Goethe and Schiller as he had been instructed, and then enduring the Count’s correction of his grammar and pronunciation when they were together. He had always been a dedicated student, but this was far more effort than he had ever spent in school. He had gotten very good.
The original outline for this story was way more sprawling. It started chronologically in the castle in preparation for the Budapest trip and, in at least one of the versions I cycled through, carried on afterwards and gave us the events of some of the next installments from Jonathan's pov. This really didn't work.
For myself I've found, as a general rule, that if there's a way to more tightly contain a story or give it more of a formal structure, that's almost always the right choice; it's always going to overspill the bounds of that containment anyway, so better to start tighter than otherwise. So I decided that this one had to just about the Budapest trip, with the castle scenes leading up to it as flashbacks. This worked better for a number of reasons; it of course gave the story more shape, but it also helped me keep Jonathan's remote, dissociated tone for the castle flashbacks and the contrast with Mina's pov. It also helps me conceal the things I want to conceal.
More extended commentary on this belongs in a different story, but I'll point out that I deliberately contrast Jonathan practicing his German alone with Mina learning Romanian with the other wives in the previous story. Look out for mirrors/contrasts between this and Keys; they are all over and very intentional.
The work of the language had been an anchor to hold to when past and present blurred, as they had so often and sometimes did still. His bedroom for these past several years was the same one which he had been given as a human, and he was rarely permitted to leave it except to accompany the Count in the library. He tried to endure this dictate with dignity, but sometimes he still broke down and begged. The Count’s tone, when he denied him, was unsparing but without cruelty. “This is what you need,” he would tell Jonathan, “we both know that now.”
I'm quite vague about the timeline in this story, which is intentional, but we're looking at a significant time jump from Keys. Which, when you think about what Jonathan is describing here, is totally fucking horrific.
In the past two years, the Count had begun leaving Jonathan’s door unlocked, with the expectation that he remain within unless given express permission to do otherwise. Jonathan would sit alone on the bed, his hands clenched until the nails cut into the skin, trying to keep himself from running out the door. But he had managed; it had gotten easier with time, and he had been deemed ready for this journey.
-
They went together to a tailor, an expensive one with evening hours, to replace their conspicuously old-fashioned suits. The tailor seemed accustomed to serving eccentric aristocrats who had the money to back up their unusual requests; his deference was understated but unmistakable. Vlad spoke to the tailor in Hungarian; no one seemed bothered by Jonathan’s silence.
Vlad sat and watched as the tailor and his assistant measured Jonathan, the assistant clearly trying not to react to the chill of his skin just as Jonathan tried with the same effort not to react to the warmth of the assistant’s pulse. Jonathan felt the weight of Vlad’s gaze as he turned under the tailor’s tape measure, felt the tight weave of the fabrics against his skin.
This all-male space of the fancy tailor's shop is meant to markedly contrast with the sewing scenes between the women in Keys and Complicity. In those stories the making of clothing binds the women together within the household; here, by outsourcing that work to a context to which the wives don't have access, Dracula and Jonathan are cutting themselves off from the rest of the family in ways that are going to crucially come back to bite them (ha) in a few installments. (A very similar thing is going on with the language learning thread, since, I've said in previous commentaries, fiber arts & text/language are the two major image clusters of the story.)
Also the homoeroticism of the all-male space and of Jonathan being measured while Dracula watches but, you know, I'm confident that you all got that part.
Vlad did not have himself measured (“we can wear the same clothes,” he reminded Jonathan), but ordered multiples of everything in what felt to Jonathan like a dizzying display of wealth, a whole wardrobe to be shipped back through the Carpathians. He also took from the tailor’s shop an array of pamphlets on the newest fashion designs for women. The etchings on the pamphlets showed women with wide, draping bodices and narrow waists, hair gleaming and swept forward. They left the store with a new jacket on Jonathan’s back, briskly modified for his narrow frame, and he found himself unexpectedly pleased at the feeling of something new and clean on his skin.
There are a lot of fan theories about Dracula wearing Jonathan's clothes in the novel - shapeshifting or something supernatural is popular. I generally choose to believe that they simply are actually similar heights and builds, which makes Jonathan taller than I think a lot of fans imagine him. I also wanted to parallel the clothes sharing between the two of them and that between the wives which gets emphasized again right after this in Distance.
Dracula of course brings back the periodicals for Ecaterina and they will come in handy in Complicity. So he's thinking about the women even in his men-only vacation with Jonathan here.
The next night, they went to the theater. It was a production of Hamlet, in German, and Jonathan was delighted to find that his grasp of the language was strong enough to follow the play as it happened, though it felt strange to hear the familiar lines, which he had read so often aloud to himself first as a boy and then as a young man, declaimed in a language not his own. Before the performance began, a member of the company came out and and announced that the production was dedicated to the recently passed Sir Henry Irving, whose death was a loss to theater all the world over. To his surprise, Jonathan felt tears spark in his eyes. They did not stop as the lights were dimmed and the opening scene began.
In addition to being my sneaky Bram Stoker callout, the mention of Henry Irving's death here also situates us in time - Irving died in 1905. Depending on when you place the events of the novel, this gives us the rough length of the time jump.
A joy, then, to see the story unfold in front of him, the action studded through with Hamlet’s myriad soliloquies, the meditations on life and death and responsibility which Jonathan, as an orphaned adolescent with little certainty about how he would support himself, had found so evocative. They held new meanings for him now, Hamlet’s questions about sanity and madness, about sleep and nightmares, about the weight of killing and what lies beyond death. While he did not imagine himself a discerning judge, he felt persuaded by the actors; the strong-browed leading man who played the title role, the smooth-voiced insinuating older actor who played Claudius, and the actress playing Ophelia, who had olive skin and rich brown hair, and who Jonathan could not help finding very beautiful.
There is a ton to be said about the role of Shakespeare in the novel Dracula and what we can imagine Jonathan's relationship with it to be. We do know that he loved and memorized parts of Hamlet. I understand both Mina and Jonathan (and Dracula too, to be fair) as quite intellectual people and thoughtful, deeply feelingful readers; we don't get much of a chance to see that side of Jonathan in this series, but here I wanted to gesture towards it.
In the fourth act, when Ophelia emerged in a light gown, the brown har loose and disordered over her shoulders, Jonathan found the tears in his eyes almost grow into sobs. Vlad, sitting next to him, leaned his body towards him, rested his hand on the back of Jonathan’s neck. Jonathan quelled the tears. His eyes also caught movement, a few rows back and to his right; a young man, sitting alone, had noticed Vlad’s gesture. His eyes linked with Jonathan’s.
The fourth act is Ophelia's mad scene. Jonathan is thinking about Mina here, who he also believes is "going mad," and who he has seen in nightgown and with her hair down in many very distressing moments, beginning with the blood exchange and continuing through many scenes in the series.
After the play was over, the man waited outside the theater and touched Jonathan’s shoulder when he and Vlad emerged. “Pardon me,” he said, “but I noticed how moved you were by the performance. Are you in theater yourself?”
Jonathan froze for a moment, unsure whether or how to respond, until he saw Vlad’s infinitesimal nod of permission. “I am not,” he answered in German, “I am a solicitor.”
The man smiled at his accent, friendly but cautious. “You’re not Hungarian! Where are you visiting from? If you don’t mind my asking; I’m sorry for my forwardness.”
Jonathan could not help smiling back. “England, and I have no Hungarian myself, I’m afraid, only German.” He paused for a breath, uncertain how this interaction would go. “My name is Jonathan.”
The man smiled then outright, as if relieved that his greeting had been received as it was. “And I’m János - we have the same name, almost. And your…companion?” His voice was more tentative as he turned towards Vlad, and the meaning of the overture clicked for Jonathan.
János was very important for this story, but I struggled to write this scene in a way that was neither clichéd nor hokey; I think I came up with something that satisfies me, but when I reread it I still feel the instinct to fiddle with the text.
We all have our own headcanons about these characters' sexualities. My Jonathan has never before navigated the social aspects of being a self-aware queer man in fin de siécle Europe, and, despite being pretty interpersonally astute, isn't necessarily thinking about the fact that he and Dracula are going to be read as a gay couple by other queer people, or that sweet young Hungarian men might try to pick him up at the theatre. Dracula's relationship with his own sexuality is really fucking complicated, but he has been a queer man in a lot of different social and historical contexts.
The Count’s response was smooth. “Vlad. I am from Transylvania, but I lived near Budapest for some years. I wanted to bring Jonathan to see the city.”
The "some years" Dracula lived near Budapest were in the fifteenth century when he was the captive of Matthias Corvinus.
János nodded. “It’s a beautiful city, and I think there’s more culture here every year. And more openness, too, even for those of us who must be careful in how we live.” A pause, barely noticeable. “I am a writer, myself. I don’t know how long you are staying, but there’s a club here in the city - only if you’re interested, of course - “
This underground LGBTQ club in early twentieth century Budapest is a real thing, and I don't want to tell you how much research I did for one throwaway line.
Jonathan stood very still. He tried not to look at Vlad.
“You’re very kind. I have few friends in the city, now, and would welcome an introduction from one familiar here. We had no plans following the theater - if you know a place where we all might become better acquainted, Jonathan and I would be most pleased.”
János flushed. “I - of course, the club doesn’t meet tonight, but if you’d like - my own rooms aren’t far from here.”
Jonathan didn’t want to see Vlad’s smile, but he knew he had to speak himself. “Thank you,” he said, “we are most grateful for your invitation.”
-
Jonathan spent most of his time with the Count alone, but sometimes he brought Adriana to Jonathan’s room and had the two of them practice hypnotism on one another. They would alternate attempting to take control of one another’s minds as the Count sat nearby and gave instructions.
This scene is meant to be horrifying on its own merits but it's also really intense foreshadowing.
I don't hammer this in, but I mean to make it pretty clear throughout the series that Jonathan and Adriana both have the most innate talent for hypnotism, and Dracula is cultivating it in the both of them.
It was Jonathan’s turn, and he was trying to direct Adriana to do simple actions - to stand and sit and stand again, to go fetch a pen from his writing desk. She had been instructed to try and resist his control, which seemed to make her anxious, though it showed only in her how wide her dark, liquid eyes went in her oval face. Adria was older and stronger than he, and her resistance made her mind slippery, difficult for him to catch at with his own. But, after many tries, he did, and felt a grim satisfaction seeing her standing smoothly at his command, like an automaton.
“Good, Jonathan,” the Count said, and Jonathan felt a warmth at his sternum. “Now, give her something more difficult to do.”
As readers have noticed, Dracula never actually specifies that "something more difficult" means something sexualized and violent. But that's what's normalized within the castle, and it's what Jonathan does.
Jonathan could not let his focus waver, or his control would slip; he went with the first order that came to him, Undress, he told her to her mind. A waver, then, in the connection between them, but it steadied, and her movements still eerily even, she removed first her dress and then her shift. Jonathan felt a moment of shock at the contrast between Adria’s exposed body and his own, still fully clothed.
The implied power difference of one person naked (or partially so) and the other/s clothed recurs several times in the series, starting in Windows.
“Keep going,” the Count told him, “but now I want you to adjust the vector of your control; take only her will, but not her capacity for awareness or feeling about what is happening. We’ve practiced this before; you know how to do it.”
a) I wrote this but it still horrifies me b) In Collusion we see Jonathan able to tolerate feeding by making it so that his victims don't know what is happening and thus cannot suffer, which he feels to be a mercy. Dracula is now forcing him to do a type of hypnosis that takes that mercy (if mercy it is) away.
Jonathan hesitated, but it was true, he did; it was like adjusting his grip of a horse’s reins. He could feel the difference in Adria’s presence, though nothing changed on her face.
“Continue.”
Jonathan drew a breath, and then guided Adria’s hand, with its sharp nails, towards the soft flesh inside her arm; there, an edge of resistance, but he could hold his control steady, and not let himself be thrown by it. He felt alongside her as her nails broke the skin and dragged along it in long gashes. Pain twisted her mouth, but no sound came from her throat. He made her hold her nails there, in her own flesh, blood beading around them.
This was a difficult scene to write and it's hard to reread, but I'm pleased with the results. The scratching imagery will importantly return in Distance.
“Enough,” the Count said finally, and Jonathan released the reins of the hypnotism. Adria suddenly, belatedly, cried out, a brief, high sound. She turned towards the Count, who was behind her, and buried her face in his chest, holding her bleeding arm out to him as if in offering or in demonstration of the pain, Jonathan could not tell. He watched the Count take her wrist between his fingers and lick the blood from the cuts, then hold her for several long moments.
Another delicate dynamic to represent. I wanted readers to get a number of things from this brief glimpse of Adriana - that this type of violence is normalized for her, but that she's simultaneously not denying or dissociating from the impact of it on her; that despite Jonathan being the person who is directing enacting this violent/sexualized compulsion on her, she's very clear about Dracula as the emotional center of the scene; that it is very automatic for her to seek comfort from him when in distress and the type of comfort he gives her effectively meets her immediate emotional needs.
Also: I love writing Adriana and regret that this is one of the first times we really see her in the series (we get a little more of her in Distance and Complicity).
As he watched, Adriana composed herself, took up her clothes from the floor, and redressed. The Count sat back down. “Now,” he said, “I want you to switch roles.”
Very deliberate choice to not show the role-switched continuation of this scene, but to make it very clear that it happened.
-
János’ rooms were tight and chilled, crowded into the garret of a boarding house, but he kept them neat and free from dust and grime. He had more books than the room was meant to hold, but they were all neatly piled, alongside paper and pen and ink. Jonathan glanced at the titles, but couldn’t read most of them.
“I apologize,” János said, moving a chair, “that there aren’t more places to sit. I don’t host very much, I’m afraid. But I have a bottle of wine!” He sounded excited, as if he’d just remembered this. “And it’s good wine too - I have a cousin, you see, who works as the accountant for a vineyard and sometimes he -“
The poor man was babbling with anxiety. Well, there’s was no reason to draw this out longer than he had to. Jonathan stepped forward, placed a hand at the back of János’ skull, and kissed him.
It was the first time he had kissed a man other than Vlad; János’ mouth was warm, and he tasted of licorice. He made it a good kiss. When they separated, he could feel that János’ pulse had sped.
This paragraph is a little fanfic-y but you know what? That's just fine.
“I didn’t want to assume,” János said finally, “but I hoped - god, you’re beautiful, but - “ he glanced at Vlad. “You don’t mind? If you want to…”
Poor János, who thinks he was just incredibly lucky in picking up this weird but very hot English/Romanian couple.
Vlad sat down on the rickety chair János had brought over. “I’ll watch, if you have no objection. Perhaps join you both later. You’re younger than I; you have more stamina. My appetites can be assuaged in time.”
Was János blushing? Jonathan had forgotten so much about how human skin looked. “Of course I don’t mind.” He looked back to Jonathan. “May I?” Jonathan nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
Another kiss, and soon enough they were on János’ narrow bed, far in progress towards the removal of their clothes. Jonathan felt his teeth sharp in his mouth.
Then Vlad addressed him, in English. “Go slowly, Jonathan. Take his will but not his pain.”
János looked up, startled at Vlad’s cold tone and the unfamiliar words, but then Jonathan caught a hold of his mind. Human’s minds were so much easier to control; his, unguarded by arousal and surprise, came into his power easily. He tilted his head back, his body yielding under Jonathan’s, though as Jonathan bit down he could feel János’ muscles tense in startled anguish. But he could not scream, could not make a noise, not under the heavy weight of Jonathan’s hypnosis.
The blood was sweet and good after the fast on the train, but he stayed alert to Vlad, and drew away when he came to join him on the bed, let Vlad take his place. He watched as Vlad bit János on the throat close to where Jonathan himself had done, the bite marks interlocking like flowers on a chain. They alternated drinking from him as János lost consciousness and Jonathan, with relief, could relinquish the effort of his control. And then they drank again, bringing the man past unconsciousness and into death.
Afterwards, Jonathan felt weary, despite the energy of the blood filling him up. He found that he wanted nothing more than to sit beside the cooling body in the dim quiet of the garret room, the sounds of the city stealing in the window. But Vlad was there with him.
“I wonder how good his writing was,” Jonathan said finally.
This scene is a direct parallel to Mina sitting with the body of the woman she just killed in Keys. Both of them are at this point in the series countenancing their own role as perpetrators in new ways through the act of killing these people to whom they felt connected, and who they in different ways seeing themselves in. But of course the circumstances of the killings are very different. It's also important for Mina that she felt connected to this woman while knowing absolutely nothing about her, including her name, while Jonathan was able to make a more human connection with János.
“This was his fate,” Vlad said, with equanimity.
Remain very pleased with this word choice.
“Do you ever think about that, though,” Jonathan continued, the newness of everything making him bold, “what those we kill would have done with their lives? If we killed all the writers, we wouldn’t have any more books to read, or plays to watch.”
Vlad smiled. “And if I killed all the solicitors, then I would have no one to manage my affairs. But yet I’ve managed. And so shall the world, with us in it.”
While Dracula sort of brushes off this concern, we'll see in Tower that it actually sort of gets to him and is in fact something he thinks about more seriously. I also very much love "so shall the world, with us in it" as a line.
Jonathan had a sudden fantasy of János in the castle with them, writing whatever it was he wrote for all eternity. But that was not what had happened.
Parallel to Mina's fantasy of rescuing the woman in Keys. But Jonathan's fantasy is of János being transformed as he himself is, not of helping him escape.
“I wonder sometimes,” he said, the words tripping across his tongue as Hamlet instructed his players to speak, “what my life would be, if you had not interrupted its course. I might have been successful leading the Hawkins firm, or I might have failed at it, and be living in penury. I might have a child now, and Mina and I might fret over their troubles and quarrel over where they should go to school. I might own a house outside of London and plant rosebushes in the front garden.” He looked at János’ body, a sour sadness in his throat. “I might never have thought to go to bed with a man. Or maybe I would have, and felt guilt for it. I don’t know. I’ll never know.”
This paragraph is probably my favorite in the story. It's layered and sad and wistful and honest and strikes a lot of notes without closing them off. The rose bushes detail in particular makes me very upset.
Though, again, I didn't want to do a simple 'vampirism as analogy for queerness' thing or a 'Dracula as Jonathan's sexual awakening' thing, there are elements of that in Jonathan's experience, and it felt important that Jonathan acknowledge the complexity of that, especially after this encounter with János. Maybe this thing would have been part of his life without Dracula, and maybe it wouldn't have; there's no way for him to know for sure.
Vlad was silent, watching him.
“Do you ever wonder those things?” Jonathan asked him, “About yourself. Do you ever wonder what your life would be, if you had not become this?”
Vlad tilted his head. “If I had not become this, I would be long dead.” Then, as if relenting, “I was older than you were, when I became what we are. I had lived more of a life. I’ve taken all of you young - I believe it to be better that way, that your minds are more pliable, less shaped by preconceptions. But it means that you are with me through this time that would perhaps have been the span of your natural life, when you can feel the pull of those possibilities that shall not be. I’ve seen that to be the most difficult time, for each of you. You have some decades still to go in that span. But, with time, the pull of those possibilities will ease.”
What Dracula is of course not acknowledging is that Jonathan's relationship with those alternate possibilities might be different because Dracula also turned Jonathan's human wife. But, you know.
Jonathan thought about how the last decade had felt so long and short at once, the weeks and months unmarked by the rhythms of work and study and exam. The speed of hours spent in stillness, or the agonizing slowness of minutes spent in pain. He tried to imagine fifty years of that, a hundred, more. He still could not.
This passage (and this whole scene) should land differently in the context of Intransigence. We know that at this point Jonathan has with him the letter that he is going to use to attempt to actually end this life for himself.
“We’re done here,” Vlad said, “let’s go.”
-
He was being permitted to go to the library himself, at appointed and prearranged times; he was never to arrive too early or too late, not to extend or delay the moment of leaving his detested bedroom. Most of the time, the Count was waiting for him when he arrived, ready with the books and papers he wanted them to study together. Sometimes the Count was not quite there yet, and he could sit alone by the fire, relishing the sight of the open door.
One night, he came and Mina was still there, standing by the desk with the Count, their heads bent together. She was wearing a long emerald-colored dress with a square-cut neck, of a fashion he had never seen her in. She was speaking, animated, gesturing as she did; at the sound of his footsteps she stopped and froze.
This dress is loosely based on one that I do actually own.
Jonathan too stopped, fixed at the room’s doorway, unable to advance or to retreat. The Count looked up, and for a moment all three of them were silent.
“I apologize,” the Count said finally, perhaps to both of them, “I mistook the time. Mina, you may leave for today.”
This is a pretty significant mix-up on Dracula's part, given the care that has been taken to keep Mina and Jonathan separated, and I do mean his apology to read as genuine. This is one of the first times in the series that he apologizes, but it won't be the last.
She bent her head, “Thank you, my lord,” she told him.
While Jonathan has started using Dracula's first name, Mina has started calling him by the honorific.
Jonathan watched, and found he could not move, even though he was standing in her way. She neither met his gaze nor asked him to move, just slipped herself past him as she left. There was not enough space, and their hands brushed. He thoughts he felt her fingers twitch against him, for an instant only, and then she was gone.
I meant this to be devastating and romantic and awful and full of unbearable tension. I don't think I did so badly.
“Come inside, Jonathan,” the Count ordered, and he made himself move. As he reached the desk the Count was already taking out the books on property law he wished Jonathan to review with him, but Jonathan saw, still lying there, as bold as letters between two lovers, what it was he had been working on with Mina. He went still, and didn’t let himself react.
This is one of the most significant moments in the series where something is implied but not directly said and I remain totally obsessed with it and really proud of myself about it. Jonathan can't name the shorthand notes for the readers because it is too painful to tolerate and also because he cannot let Dracula see how it impacts him. So the reader is left (hopefully) knowing what they are from context (we just heard Mina in Keys offer to teach Dracula their shorthand as her great symbolic act of capitulation) but having to infer what seeing them means for Jonathan from the implications of his language ("bold as letters between two lovers" frames what's happening as a betrayal, an adultery, which for Jonathan it is, far more than the sex he knows is happening between the two of them).
Of course, seeing the shorthand notes will be absolutely crucial for Jonathan's arc in the rest of the series; this is the moment that will make him conclude that Mina is lost to him, that will make him fully give up hope. I had to set that up here knowing that I wouldn't able to directly come back to it until the payoff in Intransigence and have to hope that readers would hold the emotional continuity from here.
“Sit down,” the Count told him, spreading open a book with ink-stained fingers, seemingly unaware of what Jonathan had seen, “we have so much to do.”
The Count's ink-stained fingers of course also link him with Mina, whose ink-stained fingers were the sign of her betrayal of Dracula's commands back in Jackal/Collusion.
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The next day, strong with the blood they both had drunk, Vlad and Jonathan went out in the early afternoon, long before the sun had set. They had official offices to visit, where they would test for the first time how well Jonathan could truly pass still as a human solicitor, whether what he had retained of his human manners would be enough to smooth the way to the next stage of Vlad’s plans. Jonathan felt an edge of nervousness, but mostly calm resolve; he had rehearsed these interactions many times, the way he would present the papers, confident but fumbling them just enough in his hands, the questions it would be right to ask as an English professional traveling for business. He was almost looking forward to it.
I hand waved the legal/business stuff because it didn't matter enough to spend the time on it especially in this very tight ending; we need to know that it's happening and it sets up that Dracula has a larger-scale plan in which Jonathan is involved, but we don't need the details.
Before their appointment, they stopped at a bookstore Vlad knew. The owner, with whom Vlad had apparently corresponded, brought out his new arrivals for him. While Vlad looked over The Golden Bowl, Jonathan watched out the window. A couple passed by, the woman holding the hand of a boy of perhaps five. Jonathan took note of the location of the post office across the street.
I realized in my research that The Golden Bowl was published at exactly the right time for them to find it on this trip. Then I reread it and got totally obsessed and it sort of took over the rest of the series. Sorry everyone.
This paragraph, like the rest of this story, is an example of me trying to use a very tight third person to both conceal and reveal information. The family with the five-year-old son makes Jonathan think about the family he could have had with Mina, which he has spoken about earlier in the story; for readers it might (though I'm not expecting anyone to actually have caught this) evoke Quincey Harker, the child the two of them did have in canon, who would be about this child's age at this point in the timeline. Jonathan notes the location of the post office but is not thinking about (or letting the reader know about) for what purpose he needs it. Everything else won't be clear until later.
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Alone again in his bedroom with the moon out the window and the cries of the wolves sounding in the distance, Jonathan took out his diary for the first time in many years, and began to write a letter.
And there we go: Jonathan's very very long game. I love him, and I love all of you my readers, and I love writing this crazy, intense, emotional story. If you've been reading these commentaries, I hope you're getting something out of them! Feel free to let me know in comments.
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Date: 2023-09-27 05:35 pm (UTC)Thank you so much for sharing this type of intimate, process-based look at writing-*through* the texts that in turn shape and create our selves. Transformative work has all these inherent layers of affect, response, and rebellion that it's often very rewarding to unpack