Stoker's Manuscript

by Royce Prouty

  A second e-mail relayed that he received a buyer’s call for a hardcover first edition of A Separate Peace by John Knowles. I had two of them, a 1960 Macmillan and a more valuable 1959 Secker & Warburg London international edition I found in an estate sale for ten dollars. I wondered if he remembered when we had found that first one—high school days. I found the crackling first edition for a dollar in the liquidation stack at a closing Carnegie Library in the north suburb of Waukegan. I’d long kept it in my personal favorites stash, a shelf of books that I never intended to sell, but I told Berns to consider the sale of both books as part of the collection plate for the nuns. The Macmillan was worth about a thousand dollars. The International, however, was signed (I had done the authentication myself), and it should fetch at least four thousand dollars.

  It was the least I could do for the nuns. As in most convents, they taught Catholic schoolchildren, prayed volumes, and did a lot of chores. The days of the American orphanages had passed a decade before, yet they took us in, just the two of us. I never knew why. But whereas my brother gave back in the form of his vows, I had never really given anything back. They were aging and needed help, the kind I might be able to provide. I resolved to give them a home now, a permanent one.

  The last e-mail had Mara’s name on it, coupled with a return-receipt-requested message. It simply asked if I found what I was looking for. I hesitated to reply, so I hoped that by hitting Yes to the received request she would know it was an affirmative reply. Before I could log off, another message arrived from Mara, saying, Your journey begins now. Remember that your Mother taught you not to speak with strangers.

  Two days after relaying to Mr. Ardelean that I had indeed found the notes and two missing chapters, a notice arrived from the UPS Treasures Division that I was to pick up a package and bring two positive forms of identification. While there, I shipped the Knowles international edition my brother had successfully sold for $5,500. After fingerprinting and photographs at the UPS warehouse, I left with my package. Inside was my travel itinerary. I was to fly the very next day to Bucharest, where I would be met by a guide who would accompany me to the castle in Bran. There I would meet with Arthur Ardelean to discuss what I had found during authentication, and if the terms were acceptable, my fee contract would be finalized.

  Also enclosed was a bank account signature card with a return envelope to a Swiss bank and a wooden box secured in bubble wrap. Carefully I removed the container, roughly the size of a cigar box. It was heavy, handmade of black walnut, with a carving on top that looked like a dragon standing behind a crucifix with its tail partially wrapping the bottom of the cross. I opened the box carefully to find a silk bag with a drawstring. Lifting it I could tell it was a crucifix, and carefully I removed it from its bag.

  It was a six-inch tall Saint Olga cross, the type a Westerner might never see or appreciate. Made of solid silver and Slavic in design, its four ends were carved to the shape of three-leaf clovers, inlaid with an image of the Eastern Orthodox cross. The three bars were accurately placed, the lower bar angled properly left up and right down. IC and XC, the written symbols for Christ, were inscribed on the cross member, and an image of the sun shone the light of Christ above the inlay.

  One additional inlaid item I did not recognize—a stunning ruby placed in the middle of the cross where Jesus’s heart would be. I turned it over, and on the back was written the Slavic phrase Spasi i Sokhrani. Save and protect. At the bottom was inscribed a pair of dragon’s feet.

  The neck chain, fashioned in the same silver, was sized to allow the crucifix to suspend directly over my heart. This was the relic I was to wear at all times during my trip.

  To understand Romania is to accept that its history is driven by its position on the globe. Assuming the head-shaped country faces west, the Carpathian Mountains are the brow and mutton-chop-style sideburns sweeping south and then west at the country’s midpoint. That mountainous land is Transylvania, and it takes its name by combining two Latin words, trans and silva, meaning land beyond the forest. Descending the Carpathian foothills, one finds the Moldavian Plain pointed east toward Asia and the Wallachian Plain south toward the Balkans. My destination was where the range makes its turn west, to a castle in a mountain pass near the town of .

  Transylvania, together with the Moldavian and Wallachian Plains, formed the three principalities that ultimately united to become Romania. The Danube River forms its border with Bulgaria to the south, and the Black Sea touches a piece of its eastern border.

  Latin was our connection to home. The Carpathians were the northeast corner of the Roman Empire, and its language became the foundation of the Romanian tongue. The Roman Empire, whittled away over a thousand years of skirmishes from a long roster of invaders, slowly turned the Mediterranean over to the conquering Muslims. But as the Ottoman Empire expanded north through Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, and the rest of the Balkan Peninsula (which Mara so aptly called the “corridor of war”), they were turned back on the Wallachian Plain and failed to annex above the Danube River. Hence Romania could claim to be the land where Christianity held off the Ottoman Turks.

  I cross-referenced the lineage tree in Stoker’s notes, the one written by the left-handed assistant, against two history books from my shelf in an effort to understand his story’s lore. With annotations of battles and dates of rule, the tree did not appear to be Stoker’s work. More likely, it seemed the author looked at the chart, picked the most ruthless of the bunch, and selected him as his villain.

  Dracula’s family started with Vlad I, to whom the Hungarian emperor bestowed the Crusader’s title of Dracul, from drac, meaning dragon, or Order of the Dragon. He ruled the Wallachian principality with one interruption for a dozen years ending in 1447. His job as prince was to keep the Ottomans on the south side of the Danube. Vlad I had at least three known sons, in age order: Mircea, Vlad, and Radu. At that time, principalities weakened when princes died, leaving thrones open to challenge and rearrangement. Vlad I aligned himself with the Ottoman sultans when his neighbors weakened, and vice versa. Discovery of his mixed allegiances ultimately led to Vlad’s imprisonment by his sultan neighbor, who held sons Vlad and Radu hostage in an attempt to sideline Vlad I. Not one to stand idle, Vlad I returned to the warpath, alienating the two sons left as captives, and finished out his rule until he was reportedly executed, along with eldest son Mircea, for double-crossing those who had bestowed upon him the prince’s title.

  Vlad I’s second son, the Vlad who was left as a hostage, once freed, added the customary a to the end of his father’s name, becoming Dracula, and ruled under the name Vlad III, the interim ruler unrelated to the family. Vlad III reigned ruthlessly over the Wallachian principality that extended from the southern Carpathian Mountain passes down to the Danube. Impalement was his preferred manner of execution, and allegedly one of his forms of domestic entertainment. Known to have carried into battle the poled severed heads of his enemies, he became Vlad (or Vlad the Impaler), a name that invoked terror all along the Ottoman frontier.

  His reign lasted a relatively short six years, with his remaining known life spent between battlefields and prisons. It was originally written that Vlad the Impaler died in battle the same year that his brother Radu assumed the throne, in 1476.

  Why such blood skirmishes between brothers? Money and power, of course, for Slavic law does not dictate that a father’s position and wealth passes either to the eldest son or even to his sons in birth order. Rather, it was open to challenge by any and all sons, legitimate or illegitimate. Allegiances thus formed between the voivodes, counts, and boyars, who fought for spoils while losers were imprisoned, killed, or left the area to regroup.

  Stoker’s lineage chart simply ended with the word Plague. The year 1476 marked its return, this time spread up through Italy.

  My flight left Chicago Wednesday afternoon, and following a plane change in Munich, I landed Thursday afternoon at Otopeni. I purchase
d a Romanian dictionary and phrase book at O’Hare and found the language strangely familiar. I spent time reading the section about dealing with Customs, but in the end thought it safer to just speak English and keep an ear open.

  In all honesty, my preconceived notions of indifference were wrong, as I was not ready for the rush of feelings I encountered looking out of the plane’s window at my homeland. I thought it would be all business—a face-to-face with the buyer, a look at the new museum spot, an agreement about my fee and involvement with the purchase, and perhaps a little sightseeing. I knew visiting my mother’s grave would be emotional, so I slotted it after the conclusion of business and on the way home. Instead, what I felt upon approach was how I feared I might feel in the cemetery, a certain sense of return to a prison from which I’d narrowly escaped and the secret hope that no one noticed. The comforting image of my brother’s face popped into my head, and I wished for his company.

  Upon landing, my watch and internal clock were eight hours off. About the size of Phoenix, Bucharest is the country’s capital and biggest city, and rests comfortably on both sides of the River in the Wallachian Plain, an hour north of the Danube.

  I picked up my luggage and headed toward Customs. There I realized I had arrived at the world’s smoking section. Everything smelled of cigarettes: the wood, the conveyor, my shoes. Among the pre-1989 Communist remnants was the acceptance of long lines and the refusal to budge an inch, so people lined up touching one another. The man behind me pushed his luggage against the back of my leg and lit a cigarette, while a uniformed man stood by inspecting the seemingly endless queue. As I looked up from my phrase book, the customs officer made eye contact and approached. “.”

  Unzipping my jacket to produce my passport, my crucifix came into his view. Immediately he motioned me toward the front of the line, stamped my passport, and apologized for the time I had spent in queue.

  Thank you, Mr. Ardelean.

  I stepped outside to weather identical to that which I had left in Chicago—cool, breezy, humid. A young man hurriedly walked my way, extending his right hand. “Mr. Joseph Barkeley.” Yoseph.

  “Yes.”

  He introduced himself: “Lucian Blaga.”

  “Like the poet,” I said.

  He pointed toward the open cab door and lifted my luggage into the trunk. “You know of him.”

  “The tragedy of the intellectuals.”

  “You know your history, Mr. Barkeley. Both postwar periods were unkind to the Romanian people.”

  “Call me Joseph.”

  “Call me Luc.”

  I was told I would have a guide, but did not expect one until reaching the hotel. He was a thoroughly Americanized young man, down to the swoosh-brand shoes, with the kind of fair, delicate features that women favored and his English tilted slightly with accent. He claimed to be a doctoral student at the University of Tennessee on summer break and, once lettered, would return to Romania to teach English at a local university.

  I decided to test his knowledge of our most famous Tennesseean. “‘I ask for a warrior, they send me a poet.’”

  It took a moment, but Luc smiled. “Andrew Jackson.”

  En route to the Continental Hotel we drove south on Kiseleff, a wide tree-lined boulevard that passed for a good imitation of Paris as we approached a traffic circle that navigated around the Arch of Triumph before heading toward the more dense cluster of downtown buildings, a combination of old Eastern European architecture and post–World War II buildings. Luc identified the museums, government buildings, churches, and schools. “Communism demolished more buildings than the war.”

  I thought it wise to keep silent my gratitude for growing up where I did, and not here.

  Outside was another casualty of prolonged communism—street people. They dotted the sidewalks in all ages and both genders with cupped hands and distant stares, eyebrows down. Surely many of my fellow orphans resided among them. My emotional descent continued. An orphanage is not someplace you leave or graduate from; it is something you try to wash off yourself and hope no one notices the stain. I looked down a shopping street and saw the chief American influence, golden arches on a red background. And in a place where Christian Orthodoxy dominates, the electronic billboard landscape featured plenty of scantily clad women selling improved lifestyles to the conservatively dressed walking the streets. I thought it better to look down.

  After I checked in at the hotel, Luc continued his tour guide duties as we took early dinner before a show at the Romanian Athenaeum Concert Hall, and I ended the night with a leisurely stroll through the tree-lined sidewalks in Park. The time change, plus my natural nocturnal routine, found me looking out the hotel window at a church older than America—the Kretzulescu Church—when its bells chimed three A.M.

  Jet-lagged, I was not my sharpest when Luc met me for breakfast and took me to the train station. Leaving Bucharest from Gara de Nord train station, the Rapid train did not live up to its name. It was roughly the same speed as the Northwestern commuter line out of Chicago, stopping in each town.

  Unlike in most major American cities, where leaving the city limits means entering the suburbs, here in Bucharest you left civilization behind, one block urban, the next rural. Agricultural land sits beside unspoiled, untilled land, and both rise and fall over gentle hillocks patched with random clumps of trees, mostly oaks. The rail line cut its own path, as golden and green hills grew taller with travel northbound.

  There is a color pattern to Eastern Europe that the American eye will find different. Faded blue- and red-plastered buildings stand topped with faded red-tiled roofs. Gray wooden fences loosely mark territories around tiny farms, some wrapped in the old-world basket-weave pattern. Hay stands not stacked in bundles, but twisted into steeple shapes the size of outhouses. Tiny barns with witch’s-hat thatched roofs serve as storage sheds. Everywhere horse-drawn carts are piled with every transportable good, including families. Roads are really just paths loosely covered, no need for overdrive, and vehicles in four-wheel drive or low gear vie for space with horse-drawn carts.

  Two hours north, the landscape on either side of the train deepened to wide verdant valleys, framed with forest-covered hills and rock outcroppings. I had reached the Carpathian foothills. None of this end of the range rises above the alpine tree line, the oaks and beech and sycamores crowding the hilltops, much like the American Blue Ridge Mountains. I was not ready for such beauty, as my youth had cast a pall over what little recollection remained of childhood. None of it felt like the home I remembered. To my adult mind, Michigan Avenue was home, the smell of Garrett’s Popcorn on a cold night the ultimate sensual memory.

  Three and a half hours north perched the glorious old fortified city of in a mountain pass saddle, our point of disembarkation. This was the common placement of fortresses and castles in Europe, with river-fed valleys on either side of the pass. In a typical layout, the medieval town had large churches at its zero intersections, plus a fortified monastery where citizens retreated while under attack. These great buildings had function first, fashion second. It was only after the Crusades that royal families made castles their stylish residences.

  Luc guided me through the city’s arched entryway into the town square, centered on a huge old Lutheran church with its four-sided clock tower supporting a tall steeple, fortified walls protecting the city entrance, the monastery in walking distance.

  The square looked ancient, most places needing paint or stucco work, usually both, and it appeared that vinyl windows had not penetrated the local weathered-wood market. All around swirled the clomping of foot and hoof traffic, people talking, the sounds of commerce, and the smell of inviting food. Underfoot lay cobblestone and brick, grouted with dirt.

  This place was old long before our Constitution was conceived, I realized. What’s another century or two between paint jobs? We stopped at one of the many outdoor cafés and rested under
an umbrella. I enjoyed the dark coffee and Luc’s silence. He seemed to understand that I was there for more than just the commerce.

  Romania is the true cauldron of European bloodlines. From around the Mediterranean, people migrated over the centuries, along with visitors from India and the Middle East. From the Hungarian west the round-headed Magyars arrived, and from the Germanic north the light-featured Saxons, my relatives. There are the pointed features of Russian descent, the heavy beards from Asia Minor, and the dark skin of the Mediterraneans, usually seen in the Gypsies, or Roma. Women of all ages wore head scarves in this remote part of the country, usually not coordinated with the rest of their clothing, and unlike in Bucharest, here the attire suggested work over stylish leisure.

  It was common to hear conversation held at unacceptably high volume. Patrons sat gesturing heatedly at the café tables, and though I expected a row, none followed. The round heads tended to sit in quietude and disregard their neighbors, and Luc took to flirting with our waitress, a young lady who looked to be his age. While I tried to look disinterested, they exchanged numbers. In the States, a young couple might point cell phones at each other and punch in numbers; here they still exchanged handwritten notes.

  A small bus arrived. In its window, a sign read BRAN PLATFORM. Luc, after a final exchange with his newfound friend, motioned that it was time to go. We boarded and shared a bench seat behind the driver while the bus filled its twelve seats. Leaving , we traveled a narrow path of a road and bounced and swayed for more than an hour. This took us twenty miles west to the town of Bran, where we dismounted into the old market on the valley floor.

  Market is a generous term for the wood slat structures in an outdoor bazaar that gave scant cover to all things agrarian. The language sounded familiar, and there were several words and phrases that I understood. The pace seemed lugubrious, and the average face was grim.