Romaniac

Kenneth Robinson

Dracula A Biography of Vlad the Impaler 1431-1476 Radu Florescu and Raymond T. McNally (Robert Hale £3.50).

This biography of the real-life Dracula, known as Vlad the Impaler, was written by "an indirect descendant." You can't help feeling that only a very indirect descendant would admit to knowing so little. Among the things Radu Florescu doesn't know is whether or not Dracula himself built the chapel that nobody is sure he was buried in. Mr Florescu'sco-author doesn't know either. And between them they also don't know what the nearby palace looked like, or if it was linked to the chapel by an underground passage. Nor do they know if the palace's battlements were joined up to the city wall.

Some of the things the authors don't know are illustrated. There is an almost discernible picture of a castle dining-room which, they say, Dracula may have eaten in, though they can't be definite about it, And a very nice photograph shows yet another castle where they don't know for certain that he lived as a young man.

Something else the authors don't know is Dracula's exact height. But they do reproduce a portrait of him. This, they say, may or may not have been painted by a German artist whose name escapes them; and even if it was they can't be sure that it was done when Dracula was in prison. The authors do try to be helpful. The portrait, they believe, could give a clue to Dracula's height. He was not, they feel, very tall — judging by " a pronounced bulge below the

chest." They can't mean 9 No, of course not. Anyway, they seem more confident when they describe Dracula's other features. It appears that he had swollen temples, distended nostrils, bushy black eyebrows, a bull's neck and wide shoulders. "The overall impression,"

say the authors, "is that of a sensitive man with a keen and lively intelligence."

That description sets him apart from the Dracula of fiction. Here was no vampire of the movies, but a sensitive and intelligent man — three times Prince of Wallachia, in fifteenth century Romania. So sensitive and intelligent that he spent his life destroying not only Turks, which he was expected to do, but also his own people, who were often quite surprised — especially when he had them impaled alive on stakes. "We presume," say the authors, "that Dracula's religion had little bearing on his personal behaviour." Funnily enough they are not trying to be funny. They have a flair for understatement. When, for instance, they refer to Dracula's special way of impaling adulterous women, the authors suggest that "from such incidents one might conclude that Dracula's mind was narrowly censorious." Well, yes, the women themselves might easily have supposed he was trying to say something meaningful.

Then there is the story about the man who objected to eating his supper between impaled victims. Dracula had him spiked on a higher stake than the others, saying. "You live up there yonder, where the stench cannot reach you." This, the authors explain, was a "cynical remark." It certainly wasn't very nice in the circumstances.

The authors can't help feeling that on many occasions Dracula's butchery seemed irration al. At other times, they say, he knew exactly why he was impaling people — or cutting off their heads, noses, ears and limbs — and arranging for them to be blinded, strangled, hanged, burned, boiled, skinned, roasted, branded or eaten. Apart from the Turks, he didn't care for rich land-owners, poverty stricken peasants (he burned a lot of these to avoid the embarrassment of having to look at them) or people of easy virtue. The authors say they don't want to give a Freudian analysis of Dracula's way of punishing the sinful. But they do suspect that he might have been seeking a substitute for his own inadequacy. Something in their tone makes you feel they don't altogether approve of Dracula's "Calvinism." With his strict attitude, they say, "he cheated human nature out of minor frailties — such as immorality."

Anyone who can describe immorality as a minor frailty either has a good sense of humour or none at all. The authors are, in fact, rather solemn. How else could they say that Dracula's castle was "inaccessible" and then show a close-up picture by a photographer who managed to get there? And how could they keep straight faces when they wrote about one

of Dracula's homes being destroyed several times and restored twice? And what about the description of Dracula's unfortunate contem

porary who suddenly sprouted hair all over his body, sired two children and had — (surprise, surprise!) — "a melancholic wife?" Didn't this make the authors smile as they wrote it?

A lot of the facts in this book hover between tragedy and absurdity, offering plenty of material for a black film-comedy. Even in Romanian literature Dracula has graduated from a hero to a buffoon. Before long somebody will realise that medieval Romanian violence could be just as useful, commercially, as Kung Fu. The authors themselves are sure that this will happen. Certainly there would be no subtlety here to get in the way of a violent screen-play. Although Dracula is described as a wily politician, there is no evidence that he ever used any tactics other than terrorism.

It's a relief to escape from Dracula's funny little ways to the chapter about his influence on horror literature. Not that most of us need to know what a vampire is called in Russian, German or modern Greek. Or why bats were depicted as gods in the frescoes of Nepalese monasteries. In fact the one thing I really would like to know the authors don't tell me.

What exactly is an "indirect descendant" of Dracula?

Kenneth Robinson is well-known as a broadcaster on radio and television