CAMAGÜEY.- Count Dracula is the protagonist in a novel by the Irish writer Bram Stoke, published in 1897, that collects the legends about vampires and ghosts in Transylvania, eastern region of Romania.
The main character was Dracula, a sort of living-dead that became a vampire to feed on human blood. The novel reached popularity in countless publications, and then the film industry used it for numerous films in charge to terrorize those who believed in supernatural events, giving credit to the Romanian vampire.
But see for yourself, few people can guess that in 1959 a follower of count Dracula that apparently had just arrived from Transylvania, showed up in our city. A vampire in the Cuban way, that in temper and figure terrorize a part of the population and slerted the authorities.
The first news arrived from La Caridad neighborhood, a shape with a long cloak and dressed in black, rushed over a lady near Cuba Street to suck her blood, she said, in the end there was no blood sucking because of the screaming of the girl. A few days later, another young woman (they were always young) was surprised in her bedroom by the satyr who could only give bite her a couple of times in a but cheek. This event identified this individual as a non very selective character, since according to the real story, vampires suck blood from the neck and not the but cheeks.
On August 6, Adelante published on the third page that: “Many people have come to say that they have seen him with their own eyes. But in the police station, no paper has recorded related to this mysterious subject, that so much blood, according to what is said, has sucked”.
The concrete reality was that in spite of the gossiping and the sidewalk talks, no one had been able to see the vampire or had true information about the character. The police did not have suspicions nor true information either; someone could have seen him down Cristo Street, and tomorrow across the city on Méndez Square. The only true thing wer the rumors around the presence of the sucker trying to climb up a wall or biting a distracted lady, thing that scared a lot of lonely women and by making Dracula responsible they had an evasive alibi for cheating on their couples, but in truth, nothing.
The situation was hard and inconvenient in Cuba. A Revolutionary Government was being organized, the agrarian reform was starting, the interventions, the stampede of the elite bourgeoisie, the hints of contra-revolution, anyways… and precisely in that environment of expectations and social changes, this native vampire showed up a day from no one knows where.
One day, finally, they gave the news that Dracula’s offspring was arrested. The press rushed to the First Police Station located on the then Lugareño Street, and numerous people gathered in the place to know the night traveler, but the authorities themselves were surprised because they had only arrested three alcoholic men that had disturbed the public peace and organized a crowded fight in the inn La Provechosa, of the market La Caridad, which led them straight to jail. Of course that, as the doctors checked, none of them drunk blood, they preferred homemade beverages like “chispa de tren” and “hueso de tigre”.
The interesting thing is that from that day on, the presence of the vampire on our dark areas disappeared and never again was mentioned. Who knows.
Translated by Elianna Diaz Mendieta