Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

“Finally one young monk-he was the favorite student of the monk who had died-he went down into the crypt and dug up his teacher, against the wishes of the abbot, who was very frightened. And they found the teacher alive, but not really alive, if you know what I mean. A living death. He was rising at night to take the lives of his fellow monks. In order to send the poor man’s soul up to the right place, they brought holy water from a shrine in the mountains and got a very sharp stake -” He made a dramatic shape in the air, so I would understand the sharpness of the object. I had been fixed on him and his strange French, putting his story together in my mind with the greatest effort of concentration. My father had stopped translating for me, and at that moment his fork clinked against his plate. When I looked up, I suddenly saw that he was as white as the tablecloth, staring at our new friend.

“Could we -” He cleared his throat and wiped his mouth with his napkin once or twice. “Could we have coffee?”

“But you have not had thesalade. ” Our host looked distressed. “It is exceptional. And then we havepoires belles-Hélène this evening, and some nice cheese, also agâteaufor the young lady.”

“Certainly, certainly,” my father said hurriedly. “Let’s have all those things, yes.”

The lowest of the dusty squares was full of thrumming loudspeaker music when we emerged; some kind of local show was in progress in the form of ten or twelve children in costumes that reminded me ofCarmen. The small girls quivered in place, rustling their yellow taffeta flounces from hip to ankles, their heads swaying gracefully under lace mantillas. The little boys stamped and knelt, or circled the girls disdainfully. Each boy was dressed in a short black jacket and tight trousers and carried a velvet hat. We could hear the music flaring up now and then, accompanied by a sound like the crack of whips, which grew louder as we came close. A few other tourists were standing around watching the dancers, and a row of parents and grandparents sat on folding chairs by the empty fountain, applauding whenever the music or the boys’ stamping reached a crescendo.

We lingered only a few minutes before turning onto the road upward, the one that led so clearly out of the square to the church at the top. My father said nothing about the rapidly sinking sun, but I felt our pace was set by the day’s sudden death, and I wasn’t surprised when all the light in that wild country plunged away from it suddenly. The rim of the blue-black Pyrénées on the horizon stood out starkly as we climbed. Then it melted into blue-black sky. The view from the foot of the church wall was enormous-not dizzying like the views we’d caught in those Italian towns I still dreamed about, but vast: plains and hills gathering themselves into foothills, and foothills rearing up into dark peaks that blocked out whole portions of the distant world. Just below us the town’s lights were coming on, people were walking up the streets or along alleys, talking and laughing, and a smell like the scent of carnations came from the narrow walled gardens. Swallows flew in and out of the church tower, wheeling as if outlining something invisible with filaments of air. I noticed one that cartwheeled drunkenly among the rest, weightless and awkward instead of swift, and realized it was a single bat, just visible against the faltering light.

My father sighed, leaning against the wall, and put one foot up on a block of stone-a hitching post, something to climb onto a donkey from? He wondered this aloud, for my benefit. Whatever it was, it had seen centuries of this view, the countless similar sunsets, the relatively recent change from candle glow to electric lights in the high-walled streets and cafés. My father looked relaxed again, propped there after a fine meal and a stroll in the absolutely clear air, but it seemed to me that he was relaxed on purpose. I hadn’t dared to ask him about his strange reaction to the story the restaurant maître d‘ had told us, but it had opened up to me a sense that there might be stories more horrifying to my father even than the one he’d begun telling me. This time, I didn’t have to ask him to go on with our story; it was as if he preferred it, for now, to something worse.

December 13, 1930

Trinity College, Oxford

My dear and unfortunate successor:

I take some comfort today in the fact that this date is dedicated in the church calendar to Lucia, saint of light, a holy presence carted home by Viking traders from southern Italy. What could offer better protection against the forces of darkness-internal, external, eternal-than light and warmth, as one approaches the shortest, coldest day of the year? And I am still here, after another sleepless night. Would you be less puzzled if I told you that I now slumber with a wreath of garlic under my pillow, or that I keep a little gold crucifix on a chain around my atheist neck? I don’t, of course, but I will leave you to imagine those forms of protection, if you like; they have their intellectual, their psychological, equivalents. To these latter, at least, I cling night and day.

To resume my account of my research: yes, I changed my travel plans last summer to include Istanbul, and I changed them under the influence of one small piece of parchment. I had examined every source I could find at Oxford and in London that might pertain to theDrakulyaof my mysterious blank book. I had taken a sheaf of notes on the subject, which you, unquiet reader of the future, will find with these letters. I have expanded them a little since then, as you shall hear later, and I hope they will protect as well as guide you.

I had every intention of dropping this pointless research, this chase after a random sign in a randomly discovered book, on the eve of my departure for Greece. I knew perfectly well that I had taken it up as a challenge dealt me by fate, in whom, after all, I didn’t even believe, and that I was probably pursuing the elusive and evil wordDrakulyaback into history out of a sort of scholarly bravado, to prove I could find the historical traces of anything, anything at all. In fact, I had so nearly lapsed into a chastened frame of mind, packing my clean shirts and my weather-beaten sun hat, that I almost forsook the whole thing, that last afternoon.

But, as usual, I had prepared too diligently for my travels, I was ahead of myself, I had a little time before my last sleep and the morning train. Either I could go down to the Golden Wolf to order a pint of stout and see if my good friend Hedges was there or-here I made an unfortunate detour, in spite of myself-I could stop one last time in the Rare Book Room, which would be open until nine. There was a file I had intended to try there (although I doubted it would bring anything to light), an entry underOttomanthat had struck me as pertaining to precisely the period of Vlad Dracula’s life, since the documents listed in it were, I’d noticed, mainly from the mid- to late fifteenth century.

Of course, I reasoned with myself, I couldn’t go hunting through every source from that period for all of Europe and Asia; it would take years-lifetimes-and I didn’t foresee getting even an article out of this bloody goose chase. But I turned my feet away from the cheering pub-a mistake that has been the downfall of many a poor scholar-and towards Rare Books.

The boxed file, which I found without difficulty, contained four or five flattened short scrolls of Ottoman workmanship, all part of an eighteenth-century gift to the University. Each scroll was covered with Arabic calligraphy. An English description at the front of the file assured me that this was no treasure trove, as far as I was concerned. (I referred immediately to the English because my Arabic is depressingly rudimentary, as I’m afraid it will probably remain. One has time for only a handful of the great languages unless one gives up everything else in favor of linguistics.) Three of the scrolls were inventories of taxes levied on the peoples of Anatolia by Sultan Mehmed II. The last of them listed taxes collected from the cities of Sarajevo and Skopje, a little closer to home, if home for me just now was Dracula’s abode in Wallachia, but still a distant part of empire from his, in that day and time. I reassembled them with a sigh and considered the short but satisfying visit I might still pay to the Golden Wolf. As I gathered the parchments to return them to their cardboard file, however, a bit of writing on the back of that last one caught my eye.