From Transylvania To Pennsylvania -

VAMPIRES ARE HOT. AT LAST I'M ON THE CUTTING EDGE of something. Not only did I buy "Tale of the Body Thief" in hardback, but I've seen "Love at First Bite" three times. And even though Tom Cruise wasn't my first choice, I will be first in line to see "Inter-view With a Vampire" when it opens in Pennsylvania. Sure, I know it's all poppycock. But I'm attracted to this Dracula stuff. Maybe it's because I have a real kinship with vampires. My maternal grandparents immigrated to the United States from the Transylvanian region of Romania. I don't mean to suggest that they told me bedtime stories about those wacky bloodsucking days in the Old Country. in fact, they never wanted to talk about the place at all, much less its infamous celebrities. Still, my sister and I hit the Saturday flicks, tuned in to black-and-white horror films on our 18-inch Muntz TV and invariably saw damsels shudder at a mention of Transylvania, the home of all vampires in those pre-Anne Rice days.

Every Sunday morning I went with my grandmother to the Romanian Club. Before the old women served the stuffed cabbage, they would dance with one another to records of wailing violins. "Come, draga [dear]," they'd call, "dance with us." They'd stretch out their arms to get me to dance with them. It was fun, except when we twirled and stopped suddenly to shift directions. My head would hit the walls of their girdled stomachs and it would hurt. The old women suffered from my clumsiness, too. I often stepped on their feet-those poor, swollen feet pushed into low-heeled pumps. It must have been painful because my klutziness always drew an "Ay, dracul " from my partner. The first time I heard it I didn't pay much attention. But after I saw Bela Lugosi's Dracula at the movies, even my youthful ears made the linguistic connection.

When I asked my grandmother what "dracul" meant, she laughed, tickled by the notion of a child uttering a naughty word (this was the '50s). She told me that it meant "damn it," and that I shouldn't say it. I found out later that the literal translation is "devil." I pursued the subject, but my grandmother brushed off my questions about vampires and garlic and wooden stakes as nonsense-Gypsy foolishness.

Years later my husband and I traveled to Romania where he was doing research for his dissertation on Romanian immigration. We visited Sebesel, my grandparents' village, and stayed with relatives. One evening, sitting around the wood stove, I asked my cousin about vampires. Surprisingly, he didn't brush me off or laugh. He smiled and the overhead light reflected on his metal-capped front tooth.

"Draga," he began, "there's really no such thing." I agreed but, fishing for stories about corpses with funny marks on their necks, I asked him what happened if someone died an unnatural death. "Sometimes you know that they just aren't dead." His voice lowered as if he were telling me secrets. "I remember, not long ago, a bad man was killed in a fight in our village. We buried him, but something wasn't right. We could feel his presence in the street, in the store, in the garden. A few of us gathered and knew what we had to do." He paused and looked at me, as if to say that this was serious and private. "We had to put him to rest. One early morning, when most of the village was still sleeping, we dug up his grave and finally gave him peace."

"We got a piece of wood," he continued slowly, "and we drove it through his heart." The wooden stake, my mind screamed. Instead I said, "How did you know to do that?" "We just knew," he answered. "It was the only thing we could do." "Did it work?" I asked. "Certainly," he said, as if I were asking whether a couple of aspirin could cure a headache. It wasn't as if caped figures with long incisors were roaming the countryside. Still, it was pretty spooky stuff

In the mid '70s, I picked up a new book about Dracula and Transylvania, linking the Bram Stoker character to a real tyrant, Vlad Tepes, who ruled Romania in the 15th century. It based the Dracula connection on Vlad's nasty habit of impaling his enemies on wooden poles. Buying into the direct lineage from Vlad to Dracula seems shaky scholarship, especially since the Balkans have a rich folklore of various, mysterious ways of dealing with death. But it makes good reading.

Ten years ago we returned to Romania to live for a year while my husband researched another Romanian project. We traveled through the forests of Transylvania with our two children. In an effort to bolster its economy, the Romanian Tourist Agency was promoting the Dracula legend with state-approved Transylvanian Tours. We didn't take the tours ourselves, but we did visit sites that the agency called "Dracula connections."

Castle Bran, near Brasov, was the keystone of the tours because "Vlad slept there." The agency's description of the castle would raise the eyebrows of any historian: "We don't know if Dracula was ever here, but if he was then this is the kind of place he would have lived in." It certainly looked the part. Built on top of a hill, it had turrets, huge wooden doors, winding staircases, dramatic views, even rats. The Devil take historical accuracy.

The state tours stopped after a few years; revolutions will do that. But Romanian free enterprise appears to be bringing them back. Recently, I noticed an ad in a travel magazine: DRACULA TOURS TO ROMANIA. Looks like the old bloodsucker is flying again.

It makes sense. The caped character is hot news in America. Thank you, Anne Rice, Francis Ford Coppola, Buffy and Tom Cruise for stirring the pot and indirectly making me part of the scene. My Transylvanian heritage could change my lifestyle, maybe even get me onto a TV talk show. Last week even I thought I might be getting carried away with my ancestral links. As I pushed my grocery cart down the aisle, lost in thought about what to have for dinner, a sign in the produce section caught my eye: THIS WEEK ONLY-BLOOD ORANGES. I couldn't resist and bought a dozen.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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