Woody Allen - Getting Even

“What’s doing, Ernest?” I asked him. He waxed eloquent on death and adventure as only he could, and when I awoke he had pitched camp and sat around a great fire fixing us all fine derma appetizers. I kidded him about his new beard and we laughed and sipped cognac and then we put on some boxing gloves and he broke my nose.

That year I went to Paris a second time to talk with a thin, nervous European composer with aquiline profile and remarkably quick eyes who would someday be Igor Stravinsky and then, later, his best friend. I stayed at the home of Man and Sting Ray and Salvador Dali joined us for dinner several tunes and Dali decided to have a one-man show which he did and it was a huge success, as one man showed up and it was a gay and fine French winter.

I remember one night Scott Fitzgerald and his wife returned home from their New Year’s Eve party. It was April. They had consumed nothing but champagne for the past three months, and one previous week, in full evening dress, had driven their limousine off a ninety-foot cliff into the ocean on a dare. There was something real about the Fitzgeralds; their values were basic. They were such modest people, and when Grant Wood later convinced them to pose for his “American Gothic” I remember how flattered they were. All through their sittings, Zelda told me, Scott kept dropping the pitchfork.

I became increasingly friendly with Scott in the next few years, and most of our friends believed that he based the protagonist of his latest novel on me and that I had based my life on his previous novel and I finally wound up getting sued by a fictional character.

Scott was having a big discipline problem and, while we all adored Zelda, we agreed that she had an adverse effect on his work, reducing his output from one novel a year to an occasional seafood recipe and a series of commas.

Finally, in 1929, we all went to Spain together, where Hemingway introduced me to Manolete who was sensitive almost to the point of being effeminate. He wore tight toreador pants or sometimes pedal pushers. Manolete was a great, great artist. Had he not become a bullfighter, his grace was such that he could have been a world-famous accountant.

We had great fun in Spain that year and we travelled and wrote and Hemingway took me tuna fishing and I caught four cans and we laughed and Alice Toklas asked me if I was in love with Gertrude Stein because I had dedicated a book of poems to her even though they were T. S. Eliot’s and I said, yes, I loved her, but it could never work because she was far too intelligent for me and Alice Toklas agreed and then we put on some boxing gloves and Gertrude Stein broke my nose.

Somewhere in Transylvania, Dracula the monster lies sleeping in his coffin, waiting for night to fall. As exposure to the sun’s rays would surely cause him to perish, he stays protected in the satin-lined chamber bearing his family name in silver. Then the moment of darkness comes, and through some miraculous instinct the fiend emerges from the safety of his hiding place and, assuming the hideous forms of the bat or the wolf, he prowls the countryside, drinking the blood of his victims. Finally, before the first rays of his archenemy, the sun, announce a new day, he hurries back to the safety of his hidden coffin and sleeps, as the cycle begins anew.

Now he starts to stir. The fluttering of his eyelids is a response to some age-old, unexplainable instinct that the sun is nearly down and his time is near. Tonight, he is particularly hungry and as he lies there, fully awake now, in red-lined Inverness cape and tails, waiting to feel with uncanny perception the precise moment of darkness before opening the lid and emerging, he decides who this evening’s victims will be. The baker and his wife, he thinks to himself. Succulent, available, and unsuspecting. The thought of the unwary couple whose trust he has carefully cultivated excites his blood lust to a fever pitch, and he can barely hold back these last seconds before climbing out of the coffin to seek his prey.

Suddenly he knows the sun is down. Like an angel of hell, he rises swiftly, and changing into a bat, flies pell-mell to the cottage of his tantalizing victims.

“Why, Count Dracula, what a nice surprise,” the baker’s wife says, opening the door to admit him. (He has once again assumed human form, as he enters their home, charmingly concealing his rapacious goal.)

“What brings you here so early?” the baker asks.

“Our dinner date,” the Count answers. “I hope I haven’t made an error. You did invite me for tonight, didn’t you?”

“Yes, tonight, but that’s not for seven hours.”

“Pardon me?” Dracula queries, looking around the room puzzled.

“Or did you come by to watch the eclipse with us?”

“Eclipse?”

“Yes. Today’s the total eclipse.”

“What?”

“A few moments of darkness from noon until two minutes after. Look out the window.”

“Uh-oh-I’m in big trouble.”

“Eh?”

“And now if you’ll excuse me…”

“What, Count Dracula?”

“Must be going-aha-oh, god…” Frantically he fumbles for the door knob.

“Going? You just came.”

“Yes-but-I think I blew it very badly…”

“Count Dracula, you’re pale.”

“Am I? I need a little fresh air. It was nice seeing you…”

“Come. Sit down. We’ll have a drink.”

“Drink? No, I must run. Er-you’re stepping on my cape.”

“Sure. Relax. Some wine.”

“Wine? Oh no, gave it up-liver and all that, you know. And now I really must buzz off. I just remembered, I left the lights on at my castle-bills’ll be enormous…”

“Please,” the baker says, his arm around the Count in firm friendship. “You’re not intruding. Don’t be so polite. So you’re early.”

“Really, I’d like to stay but there’s a meeting of old Roumanian Counts across town and I’m responsible for the cold cuts.”

“Rush, rush, rush. It’s a wonder you don’t get a heart attack.”

“Yes, right-and now-“

“I’m making Chicken Pilaf tonight,” the baker’s wife chimes in. “I hope you like it.”

“Wonderful, wonderful,” the Count says, with a smile, as he pushes her aside into some laundry. Then, opening a closet door by mistake, he walks in. “Christ, where’s the goddamn front door?”

“Ach,” laughs the baker’s wife, “such a funny man, the Count.”

“I knew you’d like that,” Dracula says, forcing a chuckle, “now get out of my way.” At last he opens the front door but time has run out on him.

“Oh, look, mama,” says the baker, “the eclipse must be over. The sun is coming out again.”

“Right,” says Dracula, slamming the front door. “I’ve decided to stay. Pull down the window shades quickly- quickly ! Let’s move it!”

“What window shades?” asks the baker.

“There are none, right? Figures. You got a basement in this joint?”

“No,” says the wife affably, “I’m always telling Jarslov to build one but he never listens. That’s some Jarslov, my husband.”

“I’m all choked up. Where’s the closet?”

“You did that one already, Count Dracula. Unt mama and I laughed at it.”

“Ach-such a funny man, the Count.”

“Look, I’ll be in the closet. Knock at seven-thirty.” And with that, the Count steps inside the closet and slams the door.

“Hee-hee-he is so funny, Jarslov.”

“Oh, Count. Come out of the closet. Stop being a big silly.” From inside the closet comes the muffled voice of Dracula.

“Can’t-please-take my word for it. Just let me stay here. I’m fine. Really.”

“Count Dracula, stop the fooling. We’re already helpless with laughter.”