Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

Helen Rossi

June 1962

My beloved daughter:

Today was one of the bad days. (I will never send this card. If I ever send any of them, it will not be this one.) Today was one of the days when I cannot remember if I am seeking this devil or simply running from him. I stand before the mirror, an old mirror in my room at the Hotel d’Este; the glass has spots like moss, creeping up its curved surface. I pull off my scarf, I stand here and finger the scar on my neck, a redness that never fully heals. I wonder if you will find me before I can find him. I wonder if he will find me before I can find him. I wonder why he has not found me already. I wonder if I will ever see you again.

Your loving mother,

Helen Rossi

August 1962

My beloved daughter:

When you were born, your hair was black and stuck to your slimy head in curls. After they washed and dried you, it became a soft down around your face, dark hair like mine, but also coppery like your father’s. I lay in a pool of morphine, and held you and watched the lights in your newborn hair change from Gypsy dark to bright, and then back to dark. Everything about you was polished and shone; I had shaped and polished you inside me without knowing what I was doing. Your fingers were golden, your cheek was rose, your eyelashes and eyebrows were the feathers of the baby crow. My happiness overflowed even the morphine.

Your loving mother,

Helen Rossi

“Iwoke early in my cot in the men’s dormitory at Rila; sunshine was just beginning to come through the small windows, which looked out on the courtyard, and some of the other tourists were still sound asleep on the other cots. I’d heard the earliest call of the church bell, in the dark, and now that bell was tolling again. My first thought on waking this time was that Helen had said she would marry me. I wanted to see her again, to see her as soon as possible, to find a moment to ask her if yesterday had been a dream. The sunshine that filled the courtyard outside was an echo of my sudden happiness, and the morning air seemed to me unbelievably fresh, full of centuries of freshness.

“But Helen was not at breakfast. Ranov was there, sullen as ever, smoking, until a monk asked him gently to go outside with his cigarette. As soon as the meal was over, I went along the corridor to the women’s row, where Helen and I had parted the night before, and found the door standing open. The other women, the Czechs and Germans, had gone, leaving their beds neatly made. Helen was still asleep, apparently; I could see her form in the cot nearest the window. She was turned toward the wall, and I stepped in, silently, reasoning that she was my fiancée now, and I had the right to kiss her good morning, even in a monastery. I closed the door behind me, hoping no monks would happen by.

“Helen lay with her back to the room, on a cot near the window. When I drew closer, she rolled slightly in my direction, as if sensing my presence. Her head was tipped back, her eyes closed, her dark curls spread over the pillow. She was deeply asleep and an audible, almost stertorous breathing came from her lips. I thought she must have been tired after our travels and our walk of the day before, but something about the very abandon of her attitude made me step closer, uneasy. I bent over her, thinking I would kiss her even before she awoke, and then in a single terrible moment I saw the greenish pallor of her face and the fresh blood on her throat. Where the nearly healed wound had been, in the deepest part of her neck, two small gashes oozed, red and open. There was a little blood on the edge of the white sheet, too, and more on the sleeve of her cheap-looking white gown, where she’d thrown one arm back in her sleep. The front of her gown was pulled askance and slightly torn, and one of her breasts was bare almost to the dark nipple. I saw all this in a frozen instant, and my heart seemed to stop beating inside me. Then I reached down and drew the sheet gently over her nakedness, as if covering a child for sleep. I couldn’t think of any other motion, at that moment. A thick sob filled my throat, a rage I didn’t yet quite feel.

“‘Helen!’ I shook her shoulder gently, but her face did not change. I saw now how haggard she looked, as if she were in pain even in her sleep. Where was the crucifix? I remembered it suddenly, and looked all around. I found it by my foot; the narrow chain was broken. Had someone torn it off, or had she broken it herself in sleep? I shook her again. ‘Helen, wake up!’

“This time she stirred, but fretfully, and I wondered if I might somehow harm her by bringing her to consciousness too quickly. After a second, however, she opened her eyes, frowning. Her movements were very feeble. How much blood had she lost during this night, this night when I’d been sleeping soundly in the next corridor? Why had I left her alone, then or on any night?

“‘Paul,’ she said, as if puzzled. ‘What are you doing here?’ Then she seemed to struggle to sit up and discovered the disarray of her gown. She put her hand to her throat, while I watched in a speechless anguish, and drew it slowly away. There was sticky, drying blood on her fingers. She stared at them, and at me. ‘Oh, God,’ she said. She sat upright and I felt a first hint of relief, despite the horror in her face; if she’d lost a lot of blood, she would’ve been too weak for even that much action. ‘Oh, Paul,’ she whispered. I sat down on the edge of the bed and took her other hand in mine and gripped it hard.

“‘Are you completely awake?’ I said.

“She nodded.

“‘And you know where you are?’

“‘Yes,’ she said, but then she put her head down over her bloody hand and broke into harsh low sobs, a horrifying sound. I had never before heard her cry out loud. The sound went through my body like a wave of bitter cold.

“‘I’m here.’ I kissed her clean hand.

“She squeezed my fingers, weeping, then tried to gather herself. ‘We must think what-is that my crucifix?’

“‘Yes.’ I held it up, watching her carefully, but to my infinite relief there was no sign of recoil in her face. ‘Did you remove it?’

“‘No, of course not.’ She shook her head and a leftover tear rolled down her cheek. ‘And I don’t remember breaking it. I don’t think they-he-would dare to, if the legend is accurate.’ She was wiping her face now, keeping her hand carefully clear of the wound on her throat. ‘I must have broken it while I slept.’

“‘I think so, judging from where I found it.’ I showed her the spot on the floor. ‘And it doesn’t make you feel-uncomfortable-to have it near you?’

“‘No,’ she said wonderingly. ‘At least, notyet. ’ The cold little word made me catch my breath.

She reached out and touched the crucifix, at first hesitantly, and then took it in her hand. I let out my breath. Helen sighed, too. ‘I fell asleep thinking about my mother, and about an article I would like to write on the figures in Transylvanian embroidery-they are famous, you know-and then I didn’t wake until now.’ She frowned. ‘I had a bad dream, but my mother was mixed all through it, and she was-shooing away a great black bird. When she had frightened it away, she bent over and kissed my forehead, as she used to when I was a little girl going to sleep, and I saw the mark’-she paused, as if thinking pained her a little-‘I saw the mark of the dragon on her bare shoulder, but it seemed to me just a part of her, not something terrible. And when I received her kiss on my forehead, I was not so afraid.’

“I felt the prickle of a strange awe, remembering the night I had apparently kept my cat’s destroyer at bay in my apartment by reading through midnight about the lives of the Dutch merchants I had come to love. Something had protected Helen, too, at least to some degree; she had been cruelly injured but not drained of blood. We looked silently at each other.