Marschner’s opera was not really to her liking. For one thing, she found the German language completely without appeal. As a friend had once said, “It always sounds as if they’re on the verge of coughing something up.” For another, the libretto was ridiculous. “Not that most of them aren’t,” Jane remarked to Jasper. “But this one is particularly melodramatic. You see, Lord Ruthven is a vampire. One night—I don’t know why—the Vampire Master comes to him and informs him that unless he is able to kill three virgins before the clock strikes one the next morning, he’ll die. If he can kill three of them, he gets to live another year.”
Jane took another drink of wine. “Of course there is no such thing as a Vampire Master,” she continued. “And the rest is equally silly. Something about a cave and moonlight and Ruthven pretending to be his own brother. It all ends badly for him and he goes to hell.”
Jasper yawned.
“My sentiments exactly,” Jane agreed. “Still, I can’t help feeling a bit sentimental toward it.”
In the spring of 1828 she had been dead for nearly eleven years and the novelty had not yet worn off. For reasons she could not now recall she was in Leipzig. Hearing that a new opera about a vampire had recently premiered, she was curious to see it. When she found out that the opera was based on Dr. John Polidori’s novel The Vampyre, she was even more intrigued. It was Polidori, after all, who had vacationed with Byron at the villa on Lake Geneva the summer Jane was turned.
“I suppose I thought I might understand him better or some such foolish notion,” Jane informed Jasper. “Byron, that is. I hadn’t quite given up hope that he might yet love me.”
The opera had devastated her. Sitting in the darkness of the balcony she had watched with mounting terror as the young woman, Janthe, fell under the spell of the handsome vampire and became his first victim. Several times she had to stop herself from crying out to the girl to run. But just as Jane had been entranced by Byron’s beauty, Janthe fell prey to Ruthven’s charms. During the soprano’s final lines Jane had wept uncontrollably, and at the intermission she had fled into the night.
She had returned to the opera a week later, determined to see it through to the end. This time as she watched Lord Ruthven seduce and destroy first Janthe and then Emily, her sorrow was replaced with anger. At the finale, when Ruthven’s evil plan to marry the chaste and virtuous Malwina and thus secure his immortality was thwarted by Malwina’s true love, Edgar, Jane applauded fiercely, not only for the fine performances but for the triumph of good over evil.
For years she had hated Byron and often thought about what she would say or do should she see him again. Then, when he’d first appeared in her bookshop, she had immediately felt the draw of him as if no time at all had passed. He was still dashing, and his wit had grown even sharper over the centuries. She had even succumbed to his charms once again and spent a night with him.
They had since come to terms with each other, and although Jane knew they could never again be lovers, there were still moments when she thought she was meant to be with him. She wouldn’t have to explain anything to him, or worry about him growing old.
“And I wouldn’t have to become Jewish,” she told Jasper.
But she wasn’t in love with Byron. Now she was in love with Walter, and she and Byron were merely friends. Besides, Byron was always falling in love with other men, which made it considerably more difficult to imagine spending an eternity with him.
Jane pushed thoughts of Byron and vampires and Leipzig from her mind and turned back to the computer screen. She had decided to play Der Vampyr out of some hope that it might inspire her. She had a vague idea that she wanted to write about longing and loss, and she thought perhaps listening to Marschner’s opera would put her in the mood.
It had not. At the top of the page of the open word-processing document was “Chapter 3.” Beneath that was precisely one sentence. And it’s not even a good one, Jane thought miserably.
Her new book had been due on her editor’s desk at the first of the year. Six months later—despite assuring Kelly that she was almost finished—she had barely begun it. Every day she sat down at the computer determined to write a chapter, and every day the hours passed with excruciating slowness as she did everything but write. After several months of this she had reduced her daily goal from a chapter to a page, and a few months after that from a page to a paragraph. Now she would be content with a sentence or two.
She should, she knew, be ecstatically enthusiastic about writing this novel. Constance was a huge success. Her bank account was full. The letters and emails from fans were gratifying. There was the movie to look forward to. And the reviews had been wonderful.
Well, most of them had been wonderful. There was one that continued to gnaw at Jane’s confidence. And like most stinging reviews, this one irked her because it mirrored her own fears about her novel’s flaws.
Instinctively she directed the mouse’s cursor to her Favorites folder and clicked on the link to Failures of Mimicry. The blog’s front page filled her browser window. Its tagline, “In which we prosecute crimes of literary identity theft,” leered at her in mocking accusation. She blushed.
She glanced at the latest entry. “Faux Faulkner: Peter Nesbitt’s Yucknapatawpha County,” she read. Much to her annoyance she found herself laughing at the play on Faulkner’s celebrated fictional setting. She did not, however, read the accompanying text. Instead, she went to the blog’s listing of earlier entries. For a moment she considered looking at “The Last Brontësaurus: Is Mary McTennant’s Ice Age upon Her?” Then she selected “Austenish: Jane Fairfax’s Constance Has an Identity Crisis.”
She had read the review so many times that she had memorized it. Still, there was something about seeing it in its original form that made revisiting it even more painful. As she read the words Jane mouthed them silently. She flew through the opening paragraphs quickly, slowing when she reached the heart of the post.
Jane Fairfax’s Constance is not the worst of the recent novels to unabashedly borrow from Austen, but it is arguably the most disappointing, for it contains a hint of its inspiration’s charm and wit but smothers it in a heavy sauce that leaves a bitter taste in the reader’s mouth. Where Austen is light and gay, Fairfax is dark and broody. Her characters are interesting, to be sure, but they seem intent on unhappiness. Constance is predisposed to sulkiness, and even when she finds love with Charles she seems restless and unfulfilled. One can almost imagine her happier with the brutish Jonathan, who at least exhibits some amount of passion, however twisted it might be. Ultimately one is left with the impression this is the novel Austen might have written following a blow to the heart. Or possibly the head.
Jane shut the window and leaned back in her chair. Not for the first time since stumbling across the site (damn Google and its ability to ferret out every last mention of her and her book) she considered writing the author a note. But she knew that would end poorly. Kelly had told her—and she’d soon found that he was quite right—not to read everything written about her. Unlike the past, when critics were allowed to criticize because they knew something about books and writing, the invention of the Internet made it possible for anyone with an opinion to share it. This was not, as far as Jane was concerned, a good thing.
She had to admit, however, that despite her relentlessly snarky tone the blog’s author was not stupid. Her name was Wen Bao, and if her biography was to be believed, she was thirty-three and lived in Fargo, North Dakota. What she did there was unclear, but Jane liked to imagine that she worked some dreary minimum-wage job simply in order to afford the books about which she wrote. As an ear piercer in a mall, perhaps, or a gift shop clerk at the Roger Maris Museum.