Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

I’m off now to walk in the woods a bit; I have so much to think about here that I feel I need to clear my head a bit.

My dear friend, my only confidant,

Two days have passed, and I hardly know how to write to you about them, or if I shall ever show this to anyone. These two days have made for me the difference of a lifetime. They have filled me with equal portions of hope and fear. I feel that in their course I have stepped across a line into a new life. What it will mean, ultimately, I cannot tell. I am both the happiest man in creation and the most anxious.

Two nights ago, after I last wrote to you, I met again the angelic young woman I have been describing, and our conversations this time led to a sudden change-a kiss, in fact-before she fled. I was sleepless all night, and when the morning came I left my room in the village and wandered into the woodland. There I walked a while, sitting down now and then on a rock or stump in the shifting, delicate green of the early morning, seeing her face among the trees or in the light itself. I wondered many times if I should leave the village immediately, as I might already have offended her.

The whole day passed in this way, as I walked here and there, returning to the village only for a midday meal, where I was afraid I would encounter her any second and yet hoped I would. But there was no sign of her, and in the evening I made my way back to our meeting place, thinking that if she came there again I would tell her as well as I could manage that I owed her an apology and would trouble her no more. Just as I was giving up the hope of seeing her, and was deciding that I had offended her deeply and should leave the village the next morning, she appeared among the trees. I saw her for a second in her heavy skirts and black vest, her bare head dark as polished wood, her braid hanging over her shoulder. Her eyes were dark, too, and frightened, but the radiant intelligence of her face leapt out at me.

I opened my mouth to speak to her, and at that moment she flew across the gap that separated us and threw herself into my arms. To my astonishment, she seemed to have given herself completely to me, and our feelings soon brought us to a full intimacy as tender and pure as it was unplanned. I found we could speak to each other freely-in which of our languages I am no longer sure-and I could read the world and perhaps all my own future in the darkness of her eyes, with their thick lashes and the delicate Asiatic fold at the inner corner.

When she had gone, and I was left alone with my trembling emotion, I tried to consider what I had done, what we had done, but my sense of completion and happiness interfered at every mental turn. Today I will go to wait for her again, because I cannot help it, because my whole being seems now to be bound up in the being of one so different from myself and yet so exquisitely familiar that I can scarcely understand what has happened.

My dear friend (if it is still you to whom I write),

I have lived four days in paradise now, and my love for the angel who presides over it seems to be exactly that-love. Never before have I felt for any woman what I feel now, in this alien place. With only a few more days to think, I have, of course, been considering this from every angle. The idea of leaving her and never seeing her again seems to me as impossible as that I should never see my home again. On the other hand, I have struggled with what bringing her with me would mean-how, in the first place, I could cruelly detach her from her own home and family, and what the consequences would be were she to come with me to Oxford. This last thought is complicated in the extreme, but the starkness of the situation is clear to me: if I departed without her it would break both our hearts, and it would also be an act of cowardice and villainy, after what I have taken from her.

I have now resolved to make her my wife as soon as possible. Our lives will no doubt be a strange path, but I am certain her natural grace and acuity of mind will carry her through whatever we encounter together. I cannot leave her here and wonder all my life what might have been, nor can I desert her in such a situation. I have all but decided that I will ask her tonight to marry me a month from now. I think I shall return first to Greece, where I can borrow from my colleagues-or have wired-enough money to present her father with compensation for taking her away; I have little left here, and I don’t dare undertake this otherwise. In addition, I feel I must attend the dig to which I’ve been invited there-a nobleman’s grave near Knossos. My future work may rest with these colleagues, and with it I shall support her and myself in the life we build together.

After this I will come back for her-and how long four weeks of separation will be! It is my wish to see if the priests at Snagov might marry us there, so that Georgescu could be our witness. Of course, if her parents insist that we marry before leaving the village, I am willing to do that instead. She shall travel with me as my wife, in any case. I shall send a telegram to my parents from Greece, I think, and then take her to them for a stay when we reach England. And you, dear friend, if you are reading this already, could you look a little into the matter of rooms outside the college-very discreetly-cost, of course, being of importance? I would also like for her to study English as soon as possible; I am certain she will excel in it. Perhaps autumn will find you at our fireside, my friend, and then you, too, will see the reason in my madness. Until then, you are the only one to whom I feel free to turn in this matter, as soon as I can send this to you, and I pray you will judge kindly of me, out of the largeness of your heart.

Yours in joy and anxiety,

Rossi

“That was the last of Rossi’s letters, probably the last he had written his friend. Sitting beside Helen on the bus back to Budapest, I refolded the pages with care and took her hand for just a second. ‘Helen,’ I said hesitantly, because I felt one of us, at least, must say it aloud. ‘You are descended from Vlad Dracula.’ She looked at me, and then out the bus window, and I thought I saw on her face that she herself did not know how to feel about this, but that it made all the blood in her veins suddenly writhe and coil.”

“When Helen and I stepped off the bus in Budapest, it was nearly evening already, but I realized with a feeling of shock that we had left this bus station the same day, that very morning. I felt I had lived a couple of years since that moment. Rossi’s letters rested safely in my briefcase and their contents filled my head with poignant images; I could see a reflection of them in Helen’s eyes, too. She kept one hand tucked around my arm, as if the revelations of the day had shaken her confidence. I wanted to put my whole arm around her, to embrace and kiss her in the street, to tell her I would never leave her and that Rossi never should have-never should have left her mother, that is. I contented myself with pressing her hand firmly to my side, and letting her guide us back to the hotel.

“At the moment we reached the lobby, I had again the feeling that we’d been away a long time-how strange it was that these unfamiliar places were starting to seem familiar to me within a couple of days, I thought. There was a note for Helen from her aunt, which she read eagerly. ‘I thought so. She wants us to have dinner with her this evening, here in the hotel. She will tell us her good-byes then, I suppose.’

“‘Will you tell her?’

“‘About the letters? Probably. I always tell Éva everything, sooner or later.’ I wondered if she had told her anything about me that I did not know, and suppressed the idea.

“We had scant time to wash and dress in our rooms before supper-I changed into the cleaner of two dirty shirts and shaved over the elaborate basin-and when I came downstairs again Éva was already there, although Helen was not. Éva stood at the front window, her back to me, her face toward the street and the fading evening light. Seen this way she had less of the formidable alertness and intensity of her public demeanor; her back in its dark green jacket was relaxed, even a little stooped. Turning suddenly, she saved me the trouble of deciding whether or not to call out to her, and I saw worry in her face before her wonderful smile dawned in my direction. She hurried forward to shake my hand, I to kiss hers. We did not exchange a word, but for all that we could have been old friends meeting after a separation of months or years.