Bram Stoker’s Cure for Biting

Suarez bit

Suarez’ bites Italy’s Chiellini

Sports Saturday

What a memorable World Cup this has been! There have been unexpected winners (Costa Rica, U.S.), fabulous saves, and lots of goals, a number of them of the last second variety (Switzerland, Argentina, Portugal). On the negative side, the tournament will also be remembered for Luis Suarez’s bite.

The Uruguayan scoring sensation was caught biting for the third time in his career and has now received a stiff four-month sentence. One ESPN commentator said that the player must be in need of help, which prompted me to check out the solution proposed in the ultimate book about those with biting problems. I have in mind, of course, Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

In the novel, vampire hunter Van Helsing explains why certain people bite:

Before we do anything, let me tell you this; it is out of the lore and experience of the ancients and of all those who have studied the powers of the Un-Dead. When they become such, there comes with the change the curse of immortality; they cannot die, but must go on age after age adding new victims and multiplying the evils of the world; for all that die from the preying of the Un-Dead becomes themselves Un-Dead, and prey on their kind. And so the circle goes on ever widening, like as the ripples from a stone thrown in the water.

I guess this means we should keep a close eye on Italian player Giorgio Chiellini, the victim of Suarez’s chomp.

Special treatment is required if a vampire is ever to find peace again. In this case, Van Helsing informs Arthur Holmwood that he must take drastic action to save the soul of his fiancé-turned-vampire Lucy. Think of Arthur as a member of FIFA, soccer’s governing board that handed down the Suarez punishment:

Brave lad! A moment’s courage, and it is done. This stake must be driven through her. It will be a fearful ordeal—be not deceived in that—but it will be only a short time, and you will then rejoice more than your pain was great; from this grim tomb you will emerge as though you tread on air. But you must not falter when once you have begun. Only think that we, your true friends, are round you, and that we pray for you all the time.”

“Go on,” said Arthur hoarsely. “Tell me what I am to do.”

“Take this stake in your left hand, ready to place the point over the heart, and the hammer in your right. Then when we begin our prayer for the dead—I shall read him, I have here the book, and the others shall follow—strike in God’s name, that so all may be well with the dead that we love and that the Un-Dead pass away.”

Arthur took the stake and the hammer, and when once his mind was set on action his hands never trembled nor even quivered. Van Helsing opened his missal and began to read, and Quincey and I followed as well as we could. Arthur placed the point over the heart, and as I looked I could see its dint in the white flesh. Then he struck with all his might.

The Thing in the coffin writhed, and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. But Arthur never faltered. He looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper the mercy-bearing stake, whilst the blood from the pierced heart welled and spurted up around it. His face was set, and high duty seemed to shine through it; the sight of it gave us courage so that our voices seemed to ring through the little vault.

And then the writhing and quivering of the body became less, and the teeth seemed to champ, and the face to quiver. Finally it lay still. The terrible task was over. 

The intervention proves successful:

There, in the coffin lay no longer the foul Thing that we had so dreaded and grown to hate that the work of her destruction was yielded as a privilege to the one best entitled to it, but Lucy as we had seen her in her life, with her face of unequalled sweetness and purity. True that there were there, as we had seen them in life, the traces of care and pain and waste; but these were all dear to us, for they marked her truth to what we knew. One and all we felt that the holy calm that lay like sunshine over the wasted face and form was only an earthly token and symbol of the calm that was to reign forever.

And then there is one final procedure:

Arthur bent and kissed her, and then we sent him and Quincey out of the tomb; the Professor and I sawed the top off the stake, leaving the point of it in the body. Then we cut off the head and filled the mouth with garlic. We soldered up the leaden coffin, screwed on the coffin-lid, and gathering up our belongings, came away.

Is this equivalent to a four-month, nine-game suspension with a heavy fine? Has FIFA, by putting a metaphorical stake in Suarez’s heart, exorcised the biter within so that the player can emerge cleansed and at peace? Given that the suspension begins with Uruguay’s match in the knockout rounds with Columbia, FIFA has certainly cut off the head of the Uruguayan team, which must feel that that everything is coming up garlic rather than roses.

But if it saves a great soccer player, it’s worth it, right?

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