In the western tower, Harker meets with a blonde vampire girl who tries
to seduce him.
When the light vanished I lost sight of her, but I could feel her coming closer and bending over me. I turned feeble, unable to move –
Lightning struck again, and I saw her face right next to mine; she stared straight into my eyes, her lips parted. I saw the necklace around her neck, which was bare right down to her bosom. I could see how she sank down on her knees by the bench on which I sat. Then unbroken blackness surrounded me once more and I seemed to be tumbling, deep, down, somewhere, into semi-unconsciousness. The flowery fragrance had half numbed me, but I could still feel her soft feminine arms wrap around me; her breath on my face and her lips pressing to my throat –
The first rendez-vous is only the start of a whole series of
intimate encounters.
I leaned back in the chair and looked at her. A ray of light revealed the ruby heart on her chest and it seemed to me as though blood ran from it. Was I asleep? At first I only saw the beam in her eyes, but then I clearly saw that her bosom was bloody, and I remember how horrified I was. What happened next I only recall as if from a dream in which truth and fantasy merge. She sank down on my knee, and I felt her soft body in my arms as she wrapped hers around me so tightly that I could hardly breathe. I can still feel how she pressed her lips to my neck with a long, quivering kiss. It was as if I melted and lost all awareness, as if time and space dissolved. But then I woke up in pain and she whispered to me impetuously, “Take away the cross − the cross, I cannot stand it − take it away.”
From a chapter omitted from the 1901 Hardcover edition,
demonstrating Harker's
emotional dependency.
Whether I am awake or sleeping, she haunts me – this strange creature. She scares me, and yet she attracts my thoughts, harder and harder. I don’t understand how I have changed − how I have become crazed and obsessed.
I have seen her again, although I have sworn a solemn oath – more than once! – that I would never do so again. But what’s the use of that? Without the least forewarning, she shows up here.
When I sit here and write in my journal − only about the things I have experienced − she suddenly stands behind me, like the other day, when I put down my pen and left my diary. I hear nothing and don’t notice anything until I feel an electric shock run through my every nerve, urging me to look up, and then − − −
One example: I sat writing in the library after the Count had bid me goodnight. Suddenly, while writing those last lines on the previous page, I felt the urge to go up to the top floor − to the tower room next to the portrait gallery. Something drew me there against my will. I fought against it with all my might and continued to write, but it felt as though some voice were whispering in my ear, incessantly, “Why do you not come up? I thought you would visit us. I have so much to talk about with you. You will come. Remember that you are expected.”
I didn’t go up there – there I will not go again while I’m still in control of myself − but although I have considered myself tougher than most other people, I am so weak. I can control my body, but my inner man I cannot.
Physically I was not there, but something in my inner man obeyed her and called her to me. I continued to write, but then I suddenly sensed her presence. The pen dropped from my hand − I looked back and saw that she stood behind the chair, gazing at me with those eyes that are like radiant beams, cutting through bone and marrow. − − −
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