THE IRON VIRGIN

There was once, in Nuremberg a famous automaton called "The Iron Virgin". Countess Bathory acquired a replica for the torture chamber of her Csejthe castle. This metallic lady was the size and color of a real female figure. Naked, bejeweled, made up like a pretty woman with blond hair that fell to the floor, she was equipped with a mechanism which allowed her lips to open in a smile and her eyes to move.

The countess, seated on her throne, watches.

To set the "Virgin" in motion, one need only touch certain precious stones in her necklace. She responds immediately with horrible mechanical sounds and very slowly raises her white arms to close them in a perfect embrace upon whatever may be near her - in this case a girl. The automaton holds her tight and now no one can disentangle the body in the flesh from the iron body, both equally beautiful. Suddenly the painted breasts of the iron lady open and five daggers emerge, piercing the live companion who has long hair like her clockwork lover.

With the sacrifice now consummated, the observer touches yet another stone in the necklace: the arms fall, the smile closes like the eyes, and the murderss again becomes the petrified "Virgin" in her coffin.

BLOOD BATHS

Si te vas a bañar, Juanilla,
dime a cuáles baños vas.
-Song of Upsala

The rumor ran about that from the moment of Darvulia's arrival, the countess, to keep her beauty, used to bathe in baths of blood. And it was true that Darvulia, like any good sorceress, believed in the restorative properties of "human fluids." She extolled the qualities of young girls' blood - virgins if possible - as the means to defeat the devil of decrepitude, and the countess accepted this prescription as if it were merely a matter of taking sitz baths. Dorkó would thus pitilessly cut open veins and arteries in the torture chamber. The blood was collected in vats and when the donors were finally exsanguinated, Dorkó would spill the warm, red liquid over the pale body of the countess who sat erect, so silent, so patiently waiting.

Despite her timeless beauty, time did inflict crude signs of its passage on Erzebet. Around 1610, Darvulia mysteriously disappeared and Erzsebet, now close to fifty, complained to her new sorceressa bout the inefficacy of the blood baths. If the truth be told, more than complain she threatened to kill her if those destested signs of advancing age were not arrested. The sorceress reached the conclusion that the problem lay in the use of peasant blood. She pronounced - or predicted - that a change of tone, from red to blue, would soon chase away shamefaced old age. Thus they went searching for daughters of the lesser artistocracy. To attract them to the dsolate castle, Erzsebet's henchmen would announce that the countess suffered for the lack of good company. How to dispel her lonliness? By filling the halls with girls of noble birth who, in return for their lively companionship, would be fully instructed in etiquette and all the social graces. In a fortnight only two fo the twenty-five pupils who had rushed to learn the ways fo the nobility were still alive; one died shortly after, exsanguinated, and the other managed to commit suicide.