On Vampirism
By Prosper Mérimée
Translated by Laura Nagle
Celestograph by August Strindberg
[excerpt]
In 1816, I had set out on foot for a journey around Vrgorac, and I was staying in the little town of Vrboska. My host was a Morlach who was quite rich by local standards: a most jovial man—and, not incidentally, a bit of a drunkard—by the name of Vuk Poglonović. His wife was young and still pretty, and his sixteen-year-old daughter was quite charming. I wanted to spend a few days at his home so I could sketch some ancient ruins in the area, but I found it impossible to rent a room from him in exchange for money; he insisted on having me as a guest. The price of my lodging, then, was a rather onerous display of gratitude, inasmuch as I had to hold my own with my friend Poglonović for as long as he wished to remain at the table. Anyone who has dined with a Morlach will understand what a trial that can be.
One evening, about an hour after the two ladies had left us, I was singing some local tunes to my host (as a ruse to avoid drinking any more), when we were interrupted by dreadful shrieks coming from the bedroom. Generally speaking, there is only one such room in the house, and it is shared by everyone. We ran, armed, to the bedroom, where a ghastly spectacle awaited us. The mother, pale and frenzied, was holding the body of her daughter. The girl, having fainted, was paler still than her mother and was laid out on the bale of straw that served as her bed. The mother cried out, “A vampire! A vampire! My poor daughter is dead!”
Together, we managed to help Chava come to. She told us that she had seen the window open and that a pale man wrapped in a shroud had thrown himself upon her and bitten her while attempting to strangle her. When she cried out, the specter fled and she fainted. However, she believed she recognized the vampire as a local man named Wiecznany, who had died more than a fortnight earlier. She had a small, red mark on her neck; I didn’t know whether it was a beauty spot or if she had been bitten by some insect while she was having her nightmare.
When I hazarded this conjecture, the father dismissed it abruptly. His daughter was crying and wringing her hands, repeating endlessly, “Alas! to die so young, to die unmarried!” The mother insulted me, calling me an infidel; she assured us that she, too, had seen the vampire with her own two eyes, and that she recognized him as Wiecznany. I resolved to keep quiet.
Every amulet in the house—and, indeed, in the village—was soon hung around Chava’s neck, as her father swore to go disinter Wiecznany the next day and to burn him in the presence of all his relatives. In this manner the whole night went by; there was no calming them.
At daybreak, the entire village was stirring: the men were armed with rifles and daggers; the women carried red-hot horseshoes; the children had sticks and stones. We made our way to the cemetery, as shouts and insults were hurled at the deceased. With great effort, I emerged from the raging throng and went to stand beside the grave.
The exhumation took a long time. Everyone wanted to have a share in the effort, and so people were getting in one another’s way; indeed, there would surely have been some accidents had the old men not given the order that only two men were to disinter the corpse itself. As soon as they removed the cloth that had covered the body, a frightfully high-pitched scream made my hair stand on end. The sound came from the woman beside me, who shouted, “It’s a vampire! The worms have not eaten him!” All at once, a hundred mouths repeated her words, even as the corpse’s head was being blown to pieces by twenty rifles shooting at point-blank range. Chava’s father and relatives continued to assail the body with heavy blows of their long knives. Women used linens to soak up the red liquid that gushed from the mutilated body so it could be rubbed on the victim’s neck.
Despite the riddled state of the corpse, several young men removed it from the grave and took the precaution of tying it securely to the trunk of a fir tree. With all the children following behind them, they dragged the body to a small orchard facing Poglonović’s house. There, a heap of firewood and straw had been prepared in advance. They set fire to it, then threw the corpse on the pile and began to dance around it, each of the men shouting louder than his neighbor, as they continuously fanned the flames. The stench that emerged therefrom soon forced me to leave their company and return to my lodgings.
The house was filled with people; the men were smoking pipes, and the women were talking all at once and peppering the victim with questions, as she, still terribly pale, barely managed to reply. Wrapped around her neck were scraps of fabric saturated with the revolting red liquid that they took to be blood, which made for a ghastly contrast with poor Chava’s bared shoulders and neck.
Alice Eis in The Vampire (1913)
Little by little the crowd dispersed, until I was the only remaining visitor in the household. The illness was prolonged. Chava dreaded nightfall and wanted someone to watch over her at all times. Her parents, fatigued by their daily work, could scarcely keep their eyes open, so I offered my services as an overnight companion, which they gratefully accepted. I knew that, from a Morlachian perspective, there was nothing improper about my proposal.
I shall never forget the nights I spent at that unfortunate girl’s bedside. She shuddered at every creak of the floor, at every whistle of the north wind, at the faintest of sounds. When she dozed off, she saw ghastly visions; all too often, she awoke with a start and screamed. Her imagination had been stricken by a dream, and now all the old busybodies in the countryside had managed to drive her mad with their frightening tales. She often said to me, as she felt her eyelids growing heavy, “Do not fall asleep, I beseech you. Hold a rosary in one hand and your dagger in the other; watch over me.” On other occasions, she would not sleep unless she could hold my arm between her hands, clutching so tightly that the outline of her fingers was visible on my arm long afterward.
Nothing could distract her from the dismal thoughts that hounded her. She was terribly afraid of death, and she believed herself lost and helpless, despite all our efforts to console her. Within a matter of days, she had grown shockingly thin; all the color had drained from her lips, and her large, dark eyes looked glassy. Truly, she was a dreadful sight to behold.
I attempted to influence her imagination by pretending to see matters as she did. Alas, having initially mocked her credulity, I was no longer entitled to her trust. I told her that I had learned white magic in my country and knew a very powerful spell against evil spirits; if she wished, I said, I would take the risk upon myself and utter the spell, out of love for her.
At first, her inherent goodness made her fear the consequences for my soul. Before long, however, her fear of death overpowered her concern for me, and she bade me try the spell. I had committed a few passages of Racine to memory; I recited the French verses aloud before the poor girl, who believed she was hearing the devil’s own tongue. Then, repeatedly rubbing her neck, I pretended to remove from it a small red agate that I had hidden between my fingers. I solemnly assured her that I had removed it from her neck and that she was saved. But she looked sadly at me and said, “You are lying; you had that stone in a little box. I saw you with it. You are no magician.” Thus my ruse had done more harm than good. From that moment on, her condition did not cease to decline.
The night before she died, she said to me, “If I die, it is my own fault. A boy from the village wanted to elope with me. I refused. I told him I would go with him only if he gave me a silver chain. He went to Makarska to buy one, and while he was away, the vampire came. But if I hadn’t been home,” she added, “perhaps he would have killed my mother. So it is for the best.” The next day she called for her father and made him promise to cut her throat and legs himself to keep her from becoming a vampire; she did not want anyone other than her father committing these useless atrocities upon her body. Then she kissed her mother and asked her to go bless a rosary at the tomb of a man considered holy by the people of the village, and bring it back to her afterward. I admired the sensitivity shown by that country girl in finding such a pretext to prevent her mother from witnessing her last moments. She asked me to remove an amulet from around her neck. “Keep it,” she said to me; “I hope it will be of more use to you than it was to me.” Then, with great piety, she received the sacraments. Two or three hours later, her breathing grew heavy and her eyes grew still. Suddenly she grasped her father’s arm and attempted to fling herself against his chest; and then she was dead. Her illness had lasted eleven days.
A few hours later, I left the village, vehemently cursing vampires, revenants, and all those who tell tales of such things.
Prosper Mérimée (1803–1870) was a French writer, archaeologist, and architectural historian. Best remembered for his novellas, including Carmen and Colomba, he was a major figure in the Romantic movement. “On Vampirism,” a faux travel narrative, is part of the framing device of Mérimée’s 1827 hoax, La Guzla.
Laura Nagle is a freelance translator and writer based in Indianapolis. She was named a 2020 Travel Fellow by the American Literary Translators Association and holds American Translators Association certification (French into English and Spanish into English). Twitter: @LauraLNagle | Website: www.LNLanguage.com