The Historian

by Elisabeth Kostova

  “‘I suppose,’ I said doubtfully, ‘but I wish we had more to go on. How old do you think this song is?’

  “‘That’s always very hard to judge in the case of folk lyrics.’ Helen looked thoughtful. ‘This volume was printed in 1790, as you can see, but there is no publisher’s name or place-name in it. Folk songs can survive two or three or four hundred years easily, so these could be centuries older than the book. The song could date back to the late fifteenth century, or it could be even older, which would defeat our purposes.’

  “‘The woodcut is curious,’ I said, looking more closely.

  “‘This book is full of them,’ Helen murmured. ‘I remember being struck by them when I first looked through it. This one seems to have nothing to do with the poem-you’d think it would have been illustrated by a praying monk or a high-walled city, something like that.’

  “‘Yes,’ I said slowly, ‘but look at it up close.’ We bent over the tiny illustration, our heads nearly touching above it. ‘I wish we had a magnifying glass,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t it look to you as if this forest-or thicket, whatever it is-has things hidden in it? There’s no great city, but if you look carefully here you can see a building like a church, with a cross on top of a dome, and next to it -’

  “‘Some little animal.’ She narrowed her eyes. Then, ‘My God,’ she said. ‘It’s a dragon.’

  “I nodded, and we hung over it, hardly breathing. The tiny rough shape was dreadfully familiar-outspread wings, tail curling in a minute loop. I didn’t need to get out for comparison the book stored in my briefcase. ‘What does this mean?’ The sight of it, even in miniature, made my heart pound uncomfortably.

  “‘Wait.’ Helen was peering at the woodcut, her face an inch from the page. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘I can hardly see it, but there is a word here, I think, spaced out among the trees, one letter at a time. They’re very small, but I’m sure these are letters.’

  “‘Drakulya?’ I said, as quietly as I could.

  “She shook her head. ‘No. It could be a name, though-Ivi-Ivireanu. I don’t know what that is. It is not a word I have ever seen, but ”u“ is a common ending for Romanian names. What on earth is this about?’

  “I sighed. ‘I don’t know, but I think your instinct is right-this page has some connection with Dracula, otherwise the dragon wouldn’t be there. Not that dragon, anyway.’

  “We glanced helplessly at each other. The room, so pleasant and inviting half an hour before, looked dismal to me now, a mausoleum of forgotten knowledge.

  “‘The librarians know nothing about this book,’ Helen said. ‘I remember asking them about it, because it is such a rarity.’

  “‘Well, we can’t solve this either, then,’ I said at last. ‘Let’s at least take a translation with us, so we know what we’ve seen.’ I took down her dictation on a sheet of notebook paper and made a hasty sketch of the woodcut. Helen was looking at her watch.

  “‘I must return to the hotel,’ she said.

  “‘Me, too, or I’ll miss Hugh James.’ We gathered our belongings and replaced the book on its shelf with all the reverence due a relic.

  “Perhaps it was the turmoil of imagination into which the poem and its illustration had thrown me, or perhaps I was more tired than I’d realized from travel, staying up late at Aunt Éva’s restaurant, and lecturing to a crowd of strangers. When I entered my room, it took me a long moment to register what I saw there, and a longer one to conclude that Helen might be seeing the same sight in her own quarters two floors above. Then I suddenly feared for her safety and took flight for the stairs without stopping to examine anything. My room had been searched, nook and cranny, drawer and closet and bedclothes, and every article I possessed had been tossed about, damaged, even torn by hands not merely hasty but malicious.”

  Chapter 42

  “But can’t you get the police to help? This place is overflowing with them, it seems.‘ Hugh James broke a piece of bread in half and took a hearty bite. ’What a dreadful thing to have happen in a foreign hotel.‘

  “‘We’ve called the police,’ I assured him. ‘At least I think we have, because the hotel clerk did it for us. He said no one could come until late tonight or early tomorrow morning, and not to touch anything. He’s put us in new rooms.’

  “‘What? Do you mean Miss Rossi’s room was ransacked, too?’ Hugh’s great eyes grew rounder. ‘Was anyone else in the hotel hit?’

  “‘I doubt it,’ I said grimly.

  “We were seated at an outdoor restaurant in Buda, not far from Castle Hill, where we could look out over the Danube toward the Parliament House on the Pest side. It was still very light and the evening sky had set up a blue-and-rose shimmer on the water. Hugh had picked out the spot-it was one of his favorites, he said. Budapestians of all ages strolled the street in front of us, many of them pausing at the balustrades above the river to look at the lovely scene, as if they, too, could never get enough of it. Hugh had ordered several national dishes for me to try, and we had just settled in with the ubiquitous golden-crusted bread and a bottle of Tokay, a famous wine from the northeastern corner of Hungary, as he explained. We’d already dispensed with the preliminaries-our universities, my erstwhile dissertation (he chuckled when I told him the scope of Professor Sándor’s misconceptions about my work), Hugh’s research on Balkan history and his forthcoming book on Ottoman cities in Europe.

  “‘Was anything stolen?’ Hugh filled my glass.

  “‘Nothing,’ I said glumly. ‘Of course, I hadn’t left my money there, or any of my-valuables-and the passports are at the front desk, or maybe at the police station, for all I know.’

  “‘What were they looking for, then?’ Hugh toasted me briefly and took a sip.

  “‘It’s a very, very long story.’ I sighed. ‘But it fits in pretty nicely with some other things we need to talk about.’

  “He nodded. ‘All right. Unto the breach, then.’

  “‘If you’ll take your turn, as well.’

  “‘Of course.’

  “I drank half my glass for fortification and began at the beginning. I wouldn’t have needed the wine to erase any doubts about telling Hugh James all of Rossi’s story; if I didn’t tell him everything, I might not learn everything he knew himself. He listened in silence, with obvious absorption, except when I mentioned Rossi’s decision to conduct research in Istanbul, when he jumped. ‘By Jove,’ he said. ‘I’d thought of going there myself. Going back, I mean-I’ve been there twice, but never to look for Dracula.’

  “‘Let me save you some trouble.’ I refilled his glass this time and told him about Rossi’s adventures in Istanbul and then about his disappearance, at which Hugh’s eyes bulged, although he said nothing. Finally I described my meeting with Helen, leaving out nothing about her claim to Rossi, and all of our travels and research to date, including our encounters with Turgut. ‘You see,’ I concluded, ‘at this point it hardly surprises me to have my hotel room turned upside down.’

  “‘Yes, exactly.’ He seemed to brood for a moment. We had made our way through a multitude of stews and pickles by this time, and he put his fork down rather sadly, as if regretting to see the last of them. ‘It’s most remarkable, our meeting like this. But I’m distressed to hear about Professor Rossi’s disappearance-very distressed. That’s dreadfully strange. I wouldn’t have sworn before hearing your story that there was more involved in researching Dracula than the usual stuff. Except that I have had an odd feeling, you know, about my own book, this whole time. One doesn’t want to go just on odd feelings, but there it is.’

  “‘I can see I haven’t stretched your credulity as much as I feared I might.’

  “‘And these books,’ he mused. ‘I count four of them-mine, yours, Professor Rossi’s, and the one belonging to that professor in Istanbul. It’s damned strange that there should be four such alike.’

  “‘Have you ever met Turgut Bora?’ I asked. ‘You said you’ve been to Istanbul a few times.’

 
“He shook his head. ‘No, I’ve never even heard the name. But then he’s in literature, and I wouldn’t have come across him in the history department there, or at any conferences. I’d appreciate your helping me get in touch with him someday, if you would. I’ve never been to the archive you describe, but I read about it in England and was thinking of giving it a try. You’ve saved me the trouble, though, as you say. You know, I’d never thought of the thing as a map-the dragon in my book. That’s an extraordinary idea.’

  “‘Yes, and possibly a matter of life or death for Rossi,’ I said. ‘But now it’s your turn. How did you come across your book?’

  “He looked grave. ‘As you’ve described in your case-and the other two-I didn’t so much come across my book as receive it, although from where or from whom I couldn’t tell you. Perhaps I should give you a little background.’ He was silent a moment, and I had the sense that this was a difficult subject for him. ‘You see, I took my degree at Oxford nine years ago, and then went to teach at the University of London. My family lives in Cumbria, in the Lake District, and they are not wealthy. They struggled-and I did, too-so that I could have the best of educations. I always felt a bit on the outside, you know, particularly at my public school-my uncle helped put me through there. I suppose I studied harder than most, trying to excel. History was my great love, from the beginning.’

  “Hugh patted his lips with his napkin and shook his head, as if remembering youthful folly. ‘I knew by the end of my second year of university that I was going to do rather well, and this goaded me further. Then the war came and interrupted everything. I’d finished almost three years at Oxford. I first heard of Rossi there, by the way, although I never met him. He must have left for America several years before I came to the university.’

  “He stroked his chin with a large, rather chapped hand. ‘I couldn’t have loved my studies more, but I loved my country, too, and I enlisted right away, in the navy. I was shipped out to Italy and then home again a year later with wounds in my arms and legs.’

  “He touched his white cotton shirtsleeve gingerly, just above the cuff, as if feeling the surprise of blood there again. ‘I recovered rather quickly and wanted to go back out, but they wouldn’t take me-one eye had been affected when the ship blew up. So I returned to Oxford and tried to ignore the sirens, and I finished my degree just after the war ended. The last weeks I was there were some of the happiest of my life, I think, in spite of all the shortages-this terrible curse had been lifted from the world, I was almost done with my delayed studies, and a girl back home I’d loved most of my life had finally agreed to marry me. I had no money, and there was no food anyway, but I ate sardines in my room and wrote love letters home-I guess you don’t mind my telling you all this-and I studied like a demon for my examinations. I got myself into a great state of fatigue, of course.’

  “He picked up the bottle of Tokay, which was empty, and set it down again with a sigh. ‘I was nearly done with the whole ordeal, and we’d set a wedding date for the end of June. The night before my last examination, I stayed up until the wee hours looking over my notes. I knew I’d covered everything I needed to already, but I simply couldn’t stop myself. I was working in a corner of the library in my college, sort of tucked away behind some bookshelves where I didn’t have to watch the other few madmen in there looking through their own notes.

  “‘There are some awfully nice books in those little libraries, and I let myself get distracted for a moment or two by a volume of Dryden’s sonnets just a hand’s reach away. Then I made myself put it back, thinking I’d better go out and have a cigarette and try to concentrate again afterward. I tucked the book back into the shelf and went to the courtyard. It was a lovely spring night, and I stood there thinking about Elspeth and the cottage she was fixing up for us, and about my best friend-would have been my best man-who’d died over the Ploiesti oil fields with the Americans, and then I went back up to the library. To my surprise, Dryden was lying there on my desk as if I’d never put it away, and I thought I must be getting pretty noddleheaded with all the work. So I turned to put it up, but I saw there was no space for it. It had been right next to Dante, I was sure, but now there was a different book there, a book that had a very old-looking spine with a little creature engraved on it. I pulled it out and it fell open in my hands to-well, you know.’

  “His friendly face was pale now, and he searched first his shirt and then his pants pockets until he found a package of cigarettes. ‘You don’t smoke?’ He lit one and drew heavily on it. ‘I was caught by the appearance of the book, its apparent age, the menacing look of the dragon-everything that struck you, too, about yours. There were no librarians there at three in the morning, so I went down to the catalog and dug around a bit by myself, but I learned only Vlad Tepes’s name and lineage. Since there was no library stamp in the book, I took it home with me.

  “‘I slept poorly and couldn’t concentrate in the least on my examination the next morning; all I could think of was getting to the other libraries and perhaps to London to see what I could find out. But I didn’t have time, and when I went up for my wedding, I took the little book and kept looking at it at odd moments. Elspeth caught me with it, and when I explained she didn’t like it, not a bit. That was five days to our wedding and yet I couldn’t stop thinking about the book, and talking to her about it, too, until she told me not to.

  “‘Then one morning-it was two days to the wedding-I had a sudden inspiration. You see, there’s a great house not too far from my parents’ village, a Jacobean pile people come to see on bus tours. I’d always thought it sort of a bore on our school trips, but I remembered that the nobleman who’d built it had been a book collector and had things from all over the world. Since I couldn’t go to London until after the wedding, I thought I’d get myself into the house library, which is famous, and poke around, perhaps even find something on Transylvania. I told my parents I was going for a walk, and I knew they’d assume I was going to see Elsie.

  “‘It was a rainy morning-foggy, too, and cold. The housekeeper at the great house said they weren’t open for tours that day, but she let me come in to look at the library. She’d heard about the wedding in the village, knew my grandmother, and brewed me a cup of tea. By the time I had my mackintosh off and had found twenty shelves of books from that old Jacobean’s Grand Tour, which had reached rather farther east than most, I’d forgotten everything else.

  “‘I turned through all these wonders, and others he had collected in England, perhaps after his tour, until I came across a history of Hungary and Transylvania, and in it I found a mention of Vlad Tepes, and then another, and finally, to my joy and astonishment, I came across an account of Vlad’s burial at Lake Snagov, before the altar of a church he had refurbished there. This account was a legend taken down by an English adventurer to the region-he called himself simply ”A Traveller“ on the title page, and he was a contemporary of the Jacobean collector. This would have been about 130 years after Vlad’s death, you see.

  “‘”A Traveller“ had visited the monastery in Snagov in 1605. He had talked a good deal with the monks there, and they had told him that according to legend a great book, a treasure of the monastery, had been placed on the altar during Vlad’s funeral, and the monks present at the ceremony had signed their names in it, and those who could not write had drawn a dragon in honor of the Order of the Dragon. No mention, unfortunately, of what had happened to the book after that. But I found this most remarkable. Then the Traveller said that he asked to look at the tomb, and the monks showed him a flat stone in the floor before the altar. It had a portrait of Vlad Drakulya painted on it, and Latin words across it-perhaps painted also, since the Traveller didn’t mention engraving and was struck by the lack of the usual cross to mark the gravestone. The epitaph, which I copied down with care-out of what instinct I didn’t know-was in Latin.’ Hugh dropped his voice, glanced behind him, and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on our table.

  “‘After I�
��d written it down and struggled with it a while, I read my translation aloud: ”Reader, unbury him with a -“ You know how it goes. The rain was still coming down hard outside, and a window that had got loose somewhere in the library slammed open and shut, so I felt a breath of damp air nearby. I must have been jumpy, because I knocked over my teacup and a drop of tea spilled on the book. While I was wiping this up and feeling dreadful about my clumsiness, I noticed my watch-it was already one o’clock and I knew I ought to get home to dinner. There didn’t seem to be anything else relevant to look at there, so I put away the books, thanked the housekeeper, and went back down the lanes between all those June roses.

  “‘When I got to my parents’ house, expecting to see them and perhaps Elsie gathering at the table, I found things in an uproar. Several friends and neighbors were there, and my mother was weeping. My father looked very upset.’ Here Hugh lit another cigarette, and the match shook in the gathering darkness. ‘He put a hand on my shoulder and told me there had been an automobile accident on the main road as Elsie was driving a borrowed car back from some shopping in a nearby town. It had been raining hard, and they thought she’d seen something and swerved. She was not dead, thank the Lord, but badly injured. Her parents had gone at once to the hospital and mine had been waiting at home for me, to tell me.

  “‘I found a car and drove there so fast I almost had an accident myself. You don’t want to hear all this, I’m sure, but-she was lying with her head bandaged and her eyes wide-open. That’s how she looked. She lives at a sort of home now, where she’s very well treated, but she doesn’t speak or understand much, or feed herself. The awful thing about this is…’ His voice began to tremble. ‘The awful thing is, I’ve always assumed it was an accident, really an accident, and now that I’ve heard your stories-Rossi’s friend Hedges, and your-your cat-I don’t know what to think.’ He smoked hard.

  “I let out a deep breath. ‘I’m very, very sorry. I wish I knew what to say. What a terrible thing for you.’