Carmilla

            After midnight on Saturday I went to bed but while carrying my phone to keep by my pillow as usual, I accidentally pressed something that caused a text that I’d received a week before to pop back into my attention. It was a message from my neighbour in the next building asking me to either move further away from the wall when I play guitar in the morning or else soundproof my apartment. My emotional reaction to her complaints and my arguments with her in my head kept me awake so that I ended up sleeping fitfully until it was time to get up at five. I dreamed several times of being a peaceful freedom fighter. 

            It was so cold when I got up that I kept the windows shut throughout yoga and song practice and I wore wool socks instead of the usual cotton ones.

            I uploaded “Baby Lou" by Serge Gainsbourg to my Christian's Translations blog. On this blog even more than on Christian's Blog the new blogger from Google just muddies everything up. While before I only had to re-italicize and reposition a few chords, now there are spaces between lines that I can’t fix without simply pasting the whole song into the HTML and positioning all the lines, chords, and italicizations from scratch. I probably would have finished posting the song that morning with the old Blogger. 

            Around midday I took my clothes and bedding to the laundromat and while everything was in the wash I took my usual Saturday trip to No Frills. I bought five bags of grapes, a pack of chicken drumsticks, a tin of dark coffee and two jars of salsa. I had time to go home, put the chicken in the fridge and leave everything else on the counter before going back to put my things in the dryer. While the clothes were tumbling I went to the liquor store to buy a six-pack of Creemore and then did most of my dishes before retrieving my laundry. 

            For lunch I had a toasted pretzel bun with cheddar and a glass of orange juice. 

            I finished reading Thomas Wharton’s Icefields. It has a lot of beautiful, poetically written passages but I think there’s also a lot of filler. For example there is name dropping of famous people such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Harry Lauder that seems to just serve to indicate that the world knew where Jasper, Alberta was in the early 20th Century. I’m reminded of a quote that my Canadian Short Story professor gave us from Alice Munro. Apparently she said that she’d never read a novel that wouldn’t have made a better short story. To a great extent I agree with her and whenever I read a novel I wonder if it could have been made more compact and more powerful. The thing is that people tend to buy novels more often because it’s comfortable to curl up with a longer story and watch it unfold. But I think there is a lot of superfluous stuff in Icefields. I’m also curious about the references to the two false ideas about the character Freya. One that she was a lesbian and the other that she was a vampire. I guess both of these could serve to create a certain mystery about Freya. Lesbians in the 19th Century were probably sexually mysterious to the general public and vampires are certainly mysterious. But then again it seems to me that when Freya tells Hal of the neighbour in Montreal that thought she was a vampire it might have been more realistic for him to ask, “What’s a vampire?” It is treated as if vampires were already part of modern culture, which they weren’t until a few decades later. Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a commercial failure until the films were made. More interestingly Dracula was inspired by Le Fanu’s novella Carmilla, about a lesbian vampire. 

            I read some more of Beowulf and I’m down to the last few pages. Beowulf defeats Grendel’s mother under the ocean, finds Grendel's body there, cuts off its head and brings it back tio the Danes. He is rewarded richly and then returns home again to the land of the Geats (which was basically what is now southern Sweden). Fifty years later when Beowulf is king, the Geats are threatened by a fire breathing dragon. Beowulf is dying after the battle. The language is very hard to read because of it’s old flattering style but also because it jumps into other past stories sometimes. 

            I heated up the last piece of ground beef that I’d cooked last week and had it on my last pretzel bun with chili sauce, dijon and relish and a beer while watching the count of Monte Cristo. 

            In this story the Duchess of Maastricht returns to flirt with the count. Meanwhile the count’s friend Rico is drugged and imprisoned. He is whipped for information that he does not divulge. The count pays a man named the ferret to reveal that Rico has been taken by Corsicans to the port of Roulon in southern France. Posing as sailors the count and Jacopo go there and check in to the Red Turtle Inn. Outside of his window the count can see the Island of Monte Cristo and he is certain that the duchess is behind why they’ve been lured there. The count decides to force her to show her hand by pretending to leave. As soon as they try to check out the innkeeper says he can find them work on a boat. But the count asks Jacopo to get captured and so he starts to leave and is knocked out. A man named Valpezzo comes to take the count to his friends. In a mansion on the cliffs the count is met by the duchess. The duchess tells the count that she wants him to help her rule Europe. She tells him she has a thousand Corsicans that have already infiltrated the ports of France and ten thousand more waiting to land. She declares that she has a new Napoleon for the French to rally behind, and leading the count to a door she introduces him to Napoleon Bonaparte, the grand nephew of the famous emperor. This Napoleon descendent tells the count he will achieve what his great uncle could not accomplish. Once alone again the duchess tells the count that her Napoleon lacks the brilliance of his grand uncle but she will provide the required intelligence. She points out the window to the Island of Monte Cristo and reminds the count that no one had heard of him until he had emerged from that island with the possession of great wealth. She says this goes hand in hand with the legend of the Italian Cardinal Spada who buried his treasure on the island before being murdered by the Borgias. She tells the count that with his millions they can rule Europe. He says he won’t give them to her but she says he will and takes him to the dungeon where his friends are being held. He sees that both of them have been beaten and he is told that they will be killed if he does not take them to the island to reveal where is treasure is hidden. The count takes the duchess, her men and the new Napoleon to the secret cave on the island. The others wait outside while he and the duchess go in. While they are inside the count reminds the duchess that she had referred to the young Napoleon as a puppet. She confirms that but tells the count not to say that in front of the poor young fool. What the duchess doesn’t realize is that the cave has peculiar qualities that carry sounds long distances. Napoleon hears the duchess referring to him as a puppet and a fool. Napoleon goes into the cave with a pistol and confronts her. Valpezzo disarms Napoleon but then he turns the pistol on the duchess and said he’s there for the treasure and not to support her crazy scheme. He demands the count lead him to the treasure. The count opens a secret passage to a chamber containing two large chests. He tells him they are unlocked but when Valpezzo opens them, inside them are Jacopo and Rico. Jacopo had allowed himself to be captured earlier while concealing lock picking tools. Valpezzo shouts for his men to attack and the usual final fight scene takes place but they are defeated. Napoleon says he will return to Corsica. The duchess asks the count where the treasure is and he tells her that it was long ago deposited in the Bank of France. She says she will go to South America and he kisses her hand while Jacopo and Rico smile. It seems unrealistic that everyone would be so chummy with their captor after being drugged, knocked out, imprisoned, tortured and had my life threatened by her.