The Historian

by Elisabeth Kostova

  “But the first impression I had of Turgut’s study was not one of the preeminence of English literature; I had instead the immediate sense of a darker presence, an obsession that had gradually overcome the milder influence of the English works he wrote about. This presence leaped out at me suddenly as a face, a face that was everywhere, meeting my gaze with arrogance from a print behind the desk, from a stand on the table, from an odd piece of embroidery on one wall, from the cover of a portfolio, from a sketch near the window. It was the same face in every case, caught in different poses and different media, but always the same gaunt-cheeked, mustached, medieval visage.

  “Turgut was watching me. ‘Ah, you know who this is,’ he said grimly. ‘I have collected him in many forms, as you can see.’ We stood side by side looking at the framed print on the wall behind the desk. It was a reproduction of a woodcut like the one I’d seen at home, but the face was fully frontal, so that the ink-dark eyes seemed to bore into ours.

  “‘Where did you find all these different images?’ I asked.

  “‘Anywhere I could.’ Turgut gestured toward the folio on the table. ‘Sometimes I had them sketched from old books, and sometimes I found them in antique shops, or at auctions. It is extraordinary how many pictures of his face still float loose in our city, once you are watching out for them. I felt that if I could gather them all, I might be able to read the secret of my strange empty book in his eyes.’ He sighed. ‘But these woodcuts are so crude, so-black and white. I could not be satisfied with them, and finally I asked a friend of mine who is an artist to blend them all into one for me.’

  “He led us to a niche by one window, where short curtains, also black velvet, were drawn closed over something. I felt a kind of dread even before he put his hand up to pull the cord, and when the cleverly made drapery parted under his grasp, my heart seemed to turn over. The velvet opened to reveal a life-size and radiantly lifelike painting in oils, the head and shoulders of a young, thick-necked, virile man. His hair was long; heavy black curls tumbled around his shoulders. The face was handsome and cruel in the extreme, with luminously pale skin, unnaturally bright green eyes, a long straight nose with flaring nostrils. His red lips were curved and sensual under a drooping dark mustache, but also tightly compressed as if to control a twitching of the chin. He had sharp cheekbones and heavy black eyebrows below a peaked cap of dark green velvet, with a brown-and-white feather threaded into the front. It was a face full of life but completely devoid of compassion, brimming with strength and alertness but without stability of character. The eyes were the most unnerving feature of the painting; they fixed us with a penetration almost alive in its intensity, and after a second I looked away for relief. Helen, standing next to me, moved a little closer to my shoulder, more as if to offer solidarity than to comfort herself.

  “‘My friend is a very fine artist,’ Turgut said softly. ‘You can see why I keep this painting behind a curtain. I do not like to look at it while I work.’ He might have said instead that he didn’t like the painting to look at him, I thought. ‘This is an idea of how Vlad Dracula appeared around 1456, when he began his longest rule of Wallachia. He was twenty-five years old and well-educated by the standard of his culture, and he was a very good horseman. In the next twenty years, he killed perhaps fifteen thousand of his own people-sometimes for political reasons, often for the pleasure of watching them die.’

  “Turgut closed the curtain, and I was glad to see those terrible bright eyes extinguished. ‘I have some other curiosities here to show you,’ he said, indicating a wooden cabinet on the wall. ‘This is a seal from the Order of the Dragon, which I found in an antiques market down near the old city port. And this is a dagger, made of silver, that comes from the early Ottoman era of Istanbul. It is my belief that it was used to hunt vampires, because there are words on the sheath that indicate something like this. These chains and spikes’-he showed us another cabinet-‘were instruments of torture, I’m afraid, maybe from Wallachia itself. And here, my fellows, is a prize.’ From the edge of his desk he took a beautifully inlaid wooden box and unhooked the clasp. Inside, among folds of rusty black satin, lay several sharp tools that looked like surgical instruments, as well as a tiny silver pistol and a silver knife.

  “‘What is that?’ Helen reached a tentative hand toward the box, then drew it back.

  “‘It is an authentic vampire-hunting kit, one hundred years old,’ Turgut reported proudly. ‘I believe it to be from Bucharest. A friend of mine who is a collector of antiques found it for me several years ago. There were many of these-they were sold to travelers in Eastern Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It originally had garlic in it, here in this space, but I hang mine up.’ He pointed, and I saw with a new chill the long braids of dried garlic on either side of the doorway, facing his desk. It occurred to me, as it had with Rossi only a week earlier, that perhaps Professor Bora was not merely thorough but also mad.

  “Years later I understood better this first reaction in myself, the wariness I felt when I saw Turgut’s study, which might have been a room in Dracula’s castle, a medieval closet complete with instruments of torture. It is a fact that we historians are interested in what is partly a reflection of ourselves, perhaps a part of ourselves we would rather not examine except through the medium of scholarship; it is also true that as we steep ourselves in our interests, they become more and more a part of us. Visiting an American university-not mine-several years after this, I was introduced to one of the first of the great American historians of Nazi Germany. He lived in a comfortable house at the edge of the campus, where he collected not only books on his topic but also the official china of the Third Reich. His dogs, two enormous German shepherds, patrolled the front yard day and night. Over drinks with other faculty members in his living room, he told me in no uncertain terms how he despised Hitler’s crimes and wanted to expose them in the greatest possible detail to the civilized world. I left the party early, walking carefully past those big dogs, unable to shake my revulsion.

  “‘Maybe you think this is too much,’ Turgut said a little apologetically, as if he had caught sight of my expression. He was still pointing at the garlic. ‘It is just that I do not like to sit here surrounded by these evil thoughts of the past without protections, you know? And now, let me show you what I have brought you in here to see.’

  “He invited us to sit down on some rickety chairs upholstered in damask. The back of mine seemed to be inlaid with a piece of-was it bone? I didn’t lean against it. Turgut pulled a heavy file from one of the bookcases. Out of it he took hand-drawn copies of the documents we had been examining in the archives-sketches similar to Rossi’s except that these had been made with greater care-and then drew out a letter, which he handed to me. It was typed on university letterhead and signed by Rossi-there could be no doubt of the signature, I thought; its coiling B and R were perfectly familiar to me. And Rossi had certainly been teaching in the United States by the time it had been penned. The few lines of the letter ran as Turgut had described; he, Rossi, knew nothing about Sultan Mehmed’s archive. He was sorry to disappoint and hoped Professor Bora’s work would prosper. It was truly a puzzling letter.

  “Next Turgut brought out a small book bound in ancient leather. It was difficult for me not to reach for it at once, but I waited in a fever of self-control while Turgut gently opened it and showed us first the blank leaves in front and back and then the woodcut in the center-that already familiar outline, the crowned dragon with its wickedly spread wings, its claws holding the banner with that one, threatening word. I opened my briefcase, which I had brought in with me, and took out my own book. Turgut put the two volumes side by side on the desk. Each of us compared his treasure with the other’s evil gift, and we saw together that the two dragons were the same, his filling the pages to their edges, the image darker, mine more faded, but the same, the same. There was even a similar smudge near the tip of the dragon’s tail, as if the woodcut had had a rough place there that ha
d smeared the ink a little with each printing. Helen brooded over them, silently.

  “‘It is remarkable,’ Turgut breathed at last. ‘I never dreamed of such a day, when I would see a second book like this.’

  “‘And hear of a third,’ I reminded him. ‘This is the third book like this I’ve seen with my own eyes, remember. The woodcut in Rossi’s was the same, too.’

  “He nodded. ‘And what, my fellows, can this mean?’ But he was already spreading his copies of the maps next to our books and comparing with a large finger the outlines of dragons and river and mountains. ‘Amazing,’ he murmured. ‘To think I never saw this myself. It is indeed similar. A dragon that is a map. But a map of what?’ His eyes gleamed.

  “‘That is what Rossi was trying to figure out in the archives here,’ I said with a sigh. ‘If only he had taken more steps, later, to find out its significance.’

  “‘Perhaps he did.’ Helen’s voice was thoughtful, and I turned to her to ask what she meant. At that moment, the door between the weird braids of garlic swung further open and we both jumped. Instead of some horrible apparition, however, a small, smiling lady in a green dress stood in the doorway. It was Turgut’s wife, and we all rose to meet her.

  “‘Good afternoon, my dear.’ Turgut drew her quickly in. ‘These are my friends, the professors from the United States, as I told you.’

  “He made gallant introductions all around, and Mrs. Bora shook our hands with an affable smile. She was exactly half Turgut’s size, with long-lashed green eyes, a delicately hooked nose, and a swirl of reddish curls. ‘I am very sorry I do not meet you here before.’ Her English was slowly and carefully pronounced. ‘Probably my husband does not give you any food, no?’

  “We protested that we had been beautifully fed, but she shook her head. ‘Mr. Bora is never giving our guests the good dinner. I will-scold him!’ She shook a tiny fist at her husband, who looked pleased.

  “‘I am dreadfully frightened of my wife,’ he told us complacently. ‘She is as fierce as an Amazon.’ Helen, who towered over Mrs. Bora, smiled at both of them; they were indeed irresistible.

  “‘And now,’ Mrs. Bora said, ‘he bores you with his terrible collections. I am sorry.’ Within minutes we were settled on the rich divans again, and Mrs. Bora was pouring coffee. I saw that she was quite beautiful, in a birdlike, delicate way, a woman of quiet manners, perhaps forty years old. Her English was limited, but she deployed it with graceful good humor, as if her husband frequently dragged home English-speaking visitors. Her dress was simple and elegant and her gestures exquisite. I imagined the nursery-school children she taught clustering around her-they must surely come up to her chin, I thought. I wondered if she and Turgut had children of their own; there were no photographs of children in the room, or any other evidence of them, and I did not like to ask.

  “‘Did my husband give you a good tour of our city?’ Mrs. Bora was asking Helen.

  “‘Yes, some of it,’ Helen answered. ‘I’m afraid we have taken a lot of his time today.’

  “‘No-it is I who have taken much of yours.’ Turgut sipped his coffee with obvious pleasure. ‘But we still have a great deal of work to do. My dear’-to his wife-‘we are going to look for a missing professor, so I shall be busy for a few days.’

  “‘A missing professor?’ Mrs. Bora smiled calmly at him. ‘All right. But we must eat dinner first. I hope that you will eat dinner?’ She turned to us.

  “The thought of more food was impossible, and I was careful not to meet Helen’s eye. Helen, however, seemed to find all this normal. ‘Thank you, Mrs. Bora. You are very kind, but we should return to our hotel, I think, because we have an appointment there at five o’clock.’

  “We did? This was perplexing, but I played along. ‘That’s right. Some other Americans are coming for a drink. But we hope to see you both again right away.’

  “Turgut nodded. ‘I shall immediately look through everything in my library here that might be of help to us. We must think about the possibility that Dracula’s tomb is in Istanbul -whether these maps perhaps refer to an area of the city. I have a few old books about the city here, and friends who have fine collections about Istanbul. I will search everything for you tonight.’

  “‘Dracula.’ Mrs. Bora shook her head. ‘I like Shakespeare better than Dracula. A more healthier interest. Also’-she gave us a mischievous glance-‘Shakespeare pays our bills.’

  “They saw us out with great ceremony, and Turgut made us promise to meet him at our pension the next morning at nine o’clock. He would bring new information, if he could, and we would visit the archive again to see if there were any developments there. In the meantime, he warned, we should exercise the greatest caution, watching everywhere for signs of pursuit or other danger. Turgut wanted to accompany us all the way back to our lodgings, but we assured him that we could take the ferry back by ourselves-it left in twenty minutes, he said. The Boras showed us out the front door of the building and stood together on the steps, hand in hand, calling out good-byes. I glanced back once or twice as we made our way along the street’s tunnel of figs and lindens. ‘That’s a happy marriage, I think,’ I commented to Helen, and was immediately sorry, because she gave her characteristic snort.

  “‘Come on, Yankee,’ she said. ‘We have some new business to attend to.’

  “Normally I would have smiled at her epithet for me, but this time something made me turn and look at her with a deep shudder. There was another thought that belonged to this strange afternoon visit, one I had suppressed until the last possible moment. Looking at Helen as she turned to me with her level gaze, I was unavoidably struck by the similarity between her strong yet fine features and that luminous, appalling image behind Turgut’s curtain.”

  Chapter 33

  When the Perpignan express had disappeared completely beyond the silvery trees and village roofs, Barley shook himself. “Well, he’s on that train, and we’re not.”

  “Yes,” I said, “and he knows exactly where we are.”

  “Not for very long.” Barley marched over to the ticket window-where one old man seemed to be falling asleep on his feet-but soon came back looking chastened. “The next train to Perpignan isn’t until tomorrow morning,” he reported. “And there’s no bus service to a major town until tomorrow afternoon. There’s only one boarding room at a farm about half a kilometer outside the village. We can sleep there and walk back for the morning train.”

  Either I could get angry or I was going to cry. “Barley, I can’t wait till tomorrow morning to take a train to Perpignan! We’ll lose too much time.”

  “Well, there’s nothing else,” Barley told me irritably. “I asked about cabs, cars, farm trucks, donkey carts, hitchhiking-what else do you want me to do?”

  We walked through the village in silence. It was late afternoon, a sleepy, warm day, and everyone we saw in doorways or gardens seemed half stupefied, as if he or she had fallen under a spell. The farmhouse, when we reached it, had a hand-painted sign outside and a sale table with eggs, cheese, and wine. The woman who came out-wiping her hands on her proverbial apron-looked unsurprised to see us. When Barley introduced me as his sister, she smiled pleasantly and didn’t ask questions, even though we had no luggage with us. Barley asked if she had room for two and she said,“Oui, oui,”on the in-breath, as if she were talking to herself. The farmyard was hard-packed dirt, with a few flowers, scratching hens, and a row of plastic buckets under the eaves, and the stone barns and house huddled around it in a friendly, haphazard way. We could have our dinner in the garden behind the house, the farmwife explained, and our room would be next to the garden, in the oldest part of the building.

  We followed our hostess silently through the low-beamed farm kitchen and into a little wing where the cooking help might once have slept. The bedroom was fitted up with two little beds on opposite walls, I was relieved to see, and a great wooden clothes chest. The washroom next door had a painted toilet and sink. Everything was immaculately clean,
the curtains starchy, the ancient needlework on one wall bleached with sunlight. I went into the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water while Barley paid the woman.

  When I came out, Barley suggested a walk; it would be an hour before she could have our dinner ready. I didn’t like to leave the sheltering arms of the farmyard at first, but outside the lane was cool under spreading trees, and we walked by the ruins of what must have been a very fine house. Barley pulled himself over the fence and I followed. The stones had tumbled down, making a map of the original walls, and one remaining dilapidated tower gave the place a look of past grandeur. There was some hay in the half-open barn, as if that building was still used for storage. A great beam had fallen in among the stalls.

  Barley sat down in the ruins and looked at me. “Well, I see you’re furious,” he said provokingly. “You don’t mind my saving you from immediate danger, but not if it’s going to inconvenience you afterward.”

  His nastiness took my breath away for a moment. “How dare you,” I said finally, and walked away among the stones. I heard Barley get up and follow me.

  “Would you have wanted to stay on that train?” he asked in a slightly more civil voice.

  “Of course not.” I kept my face turned from him. “But you know as well as I do that my father may already be at Saint-Matthieu.”

  “But Dracula, or whoever he is, isn’t there yet.”

  “He’s a day ahead of us now,” I retorted, looking across the fields. The village church showed above a distant row of poplars; it was all as serene as a painting, missing only the goats or cows.

  “In the first place,” Barley said (and I hated him for his didactic tone), “we don’t know who that was on the train. Maybe it wasn’t the villain himself. He has his minions, according to your father’s letters, right?”