POSTSCRIPT

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I’ve been to Transylvania twice. The first time was in 1987 on a personal trip for sightseeing purposes, and the second time was in 1996 for the production of a documentary program for NHK (Japanese public television). Between the first and second visit lay nine long years. And that’s just another name for change.

The first time I visited Romania’s capital, Bucharest, all the buildings and everyone’s clothes were the same color, with the occasional garment in red seeming to glow in contrast. Needless to say, there must’ve been other colors as well, but that’s the only one I can recall now. The president in that time was Ceausescu—the very same person who, along with his wife, was later executed by a firing squad of his own soldiers. Growing tired of steak and salad and carbonated drinks, I went to a Chinese restaurant I’d learned about from a guidebook. They didn’t take our order there, but rather pointed to just two of the countless items on the menu while informing us that this was all they had. On seeing a long line of people, I was curious as to what was going on and went over for a closer look, where I saw a small vehicle selling sherbet. I believe each person’s serving was smaller than the yolk of a fried egg.

On my second visit, a shifty-looking guy was out in front of Bucharest Station distributing little handbills, which turned out to be promoting a nude show. People’s clothing had become colorful, and there was even a Japanese restaurant. Only the poster prominently displayed in the shop’s window stated in large print that the menu consisted of curry and spaghetti. This was the state even after substantial changes to the administration, and apparently there was no organized crime in Romania. There was no business—no money to be made. I was to learn this all too well through a certain incident the first day I was in Bulgaria.

I felt the passage of time most markedly when I once again visited the mountain stronghold of Dracula/Vlad Tepes, which looms at the top of a Transylvanian mountain. This is the same fortress that Tepes’s wife is shown throwing herself from when she receives false news of his death from the Turkish army in the opening of Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. Now it’s known as Poienari Castle. Although there was equipment for illumination and a hut there when I first visited, they had already been abandoned and anyone could come or go as they pleased. But on my second trip, what should I find right in front of the bridge to cross over to the castle but some old guy from the nearby village reading a newspaper and making people buy tickets. And yet, there was no sign that any improvements had been made to the castle or grounds, and even the guideposts that had been set in the ground had disappeared. So the service had gotten worse and now they charged you for it—neither Castle Dracula nor Transylvania could buck the tides of international commerce.

Furthermore, the place where Dracula first appears before Englishman Jonathan Harker in the guise of a coachman—the accursed Borgo Pass—is the complete opposite of the way the book describes it. With a clear view for three hundred sixty degrees, naked men and women enjoy sunbathing in the woods there, while further in is what can only be taken as the beacon of commercialism in this country—the towering Dracula Hotel.

And yet, these things aside, the land and sky of Transylvania certainly evoke Stoker’s work. Lightning that races right across the ground, forests dark and deep, the remains of ancient castles, decrepit churches and homes, and women who come down the road before dawn with lit lanterns in hand in a ceremony to call back the dead. No doubt all of these things still live and breathe somewhere in the pages of Pale Fallen Angel.

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Hideyuki Kikuchi

April 15, 2008

while watching Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)