Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

“‘And this is why someone sits guard on him?’ I asked wildly.

“The abbot shrugged. ‘That is simply our tradition, to honor his memory.’

“I turned to the old monk, stifling a desire to throttle him and see his gentle face turn blue. ‘Is this the story you told my wife?’

“‘She asked me about our history, monsieur. I did not see anything wrong with answering her questions.’

“‘And what did she say to you in response?’

“He smiled. ‘She thanked me in her sweet voice and asked me my name, and I told her, Frère Kiril.’ He folded his hands over his waist.

“It took me a moment to make sense of these sounds, the name made unfamiliar by a Francophone stress on the second syllable, by that innocentfrère. Then I tightened my arms around you so I wouldn’t drop you. ‘Did you say your name is Kiril? Is that what you said? Spell it.’

“The astonished monk obliged.

“‘Where did this name come from?’ I demanded. I couldn’t keep my voice from shaking. ‘Is it your real name? Who are you?’

“The abbot stepped in, perhaps because the old man seemed genuinely perplexed. ‘It is not his given name,’ he explained. ‘We all take names when we take our vows. There has always been a Kiril-someone always has this name-and a Frère Michel-this one, here -’

“‘Do you mean to tell me,’ I said, holding you fast, ‘that there was a Brother Kiril before this one, and one before him?’

“‘Oh, yes,’ said the abbot, clearly puzzled now by my fierce questioning. ‘As long in our history as anyone knows. We are proud of our traditions here-we do not like the new ways.’

“‘Where did this tradition come from?’ I was nearly shouting now.

“‘We don’t know that, monsieur,’ the abbot said patiently. ‘It has always been our way here.’

“I stepped close to him and put my nose almost against his. ‘I want you to open the sarcophagus in the crypt,’ I said.

“He stepped back, aghast. ‘What are you saying? We can’t do that.’

“‘Come with me. Here -’ I gave you quickly to the young monk who’d shown us around the day before. ‘Please hold my daughter.’ He took you, not as awkwardly as one might have expected, and held you in his arms. You began to cry. ‘Come,’ I said to the abbot. I drew him toward the crypt and he gestured for the other monks to stay behind. We went quickly down the steps. In the chill hole, where Brother Kiril had left two candles burning, I turned to the abbot. ‘You don’t have to tell anyone about this, but I must see inside that sarcophagus.’ I paused for emphasis. ‘If you don’t help me I will bring the whole weight of the law down on your monastery.’

“He flashed me a look-fear? resentment? pity?-and went without speaking to one end of the sarcophagus. Together, we slid aside the heavy cover, just far enough to see inside. I held up one of the candles. The sarcophagus was empty. The abbot’s eyes were huge, and he slid the lid back with a mighty shove. We regarded each other. He had a fine, shrewd, Gallic face that I might have liked immensely in another situation. ‘Please do not tell the brothers about this,’ he said in a low voice, and then he turned and climbed out of the crypt.

“I followed him, struggling to think what I should do next. I would take you and go back to Les Bains immediately, I decided, and make sure the police had actually been alerted. Maybe Helen had decided to return to Paris ahead of us-why, I couldn’t imagine-or even to fly home. I could feel a terrible pounding in my ears, my heart in my throat, blood rising in my mouth.

“By the time I stepped into the cloisters again, where the sun was now flooding the fountain and the birds were singing and lighting on the ancient paving, I knew what had happened. I had tried hard for an hour not to think it, but now I almost didn’t need the news, the sight of two monks running toward the abbot, calling out. I remembered that these two had been dispatched to search outside the monastery walls, in the orchard, the vegetable gardens, the groves of dry trees, the outcroppings of rock. They had just come from the steep side-one of them pointed to the edge of the cloister where Helen and I had sat with you between us on a bench the day before, looking down into that measureless chasm. ‘Lord Abbot!’ one of them cried, as if he could not even begin to address me directly. ‘Lord Abbot, there is blood on the rocks! Down there, below!’

“There are no words for such moments. I ran to the edge of the cloisters, clinging to you, feeling your petal-smooth cheek against my neck. The first of my tears was welling in my eyes, and it was hot and bitter beyond anything I’d ever known. I looked over the low wall. On an outcropping of rock fifteen feet below, there was a scarlet splash-not large, but distinct in the morning sun. Below that the gulf yawned, the mists rose, the eagles hunted, the mountains fell to their very roots. I ran for the main gate, stumbled around the outer walls. The precipice was so steep that even if I hadn’t been holding you I could not have climbed down safely to that first outcropping. I stood watching a wave of loss come through the celestial air toward me, through that beautiful morning. Then my grief reached me, an unspeakable fire.”

“Istayed there three weeks, at Les Bains and the monastery, searching the cliffs and forests with the local police and with a team called in from Paris. My mother and father flew to France and spent hours playing with you, feeding you, pushing your carriage around the town-I think that was what they were doing. I filled out forms in slow little offices. I made useless phone calls, searching for French words to express the urgency of my loss. Day after day I scoured the woods at the foot of the cliff, sometimes in the company of a cold-faced detective and his team, sometimes alone with my tears.

“At first I wanted only to see Helen alive, walking toward me with her customary dry smile, but eventually I was reduced to a bitter half longing for her broken form, hoping to stumble on it somewhere in the rocks and brush. If I could take her body home-or to Hungary, I sometimes thought, although how I would get into Soviet-controlled Hungary was a conundrum-I would have something of her to honor, to bury, some way to finish this and be alone with my grief. I almost couldn’t admit to myself that I wanted her body for another purpose, as well-to ascertain whether her death had been completely natural, or if she needed me to fulfill the bitter duty I had carried out for Rossi. Why could I not find her body? Sometimes, especially in the mornings, I felt she had simply fallen, that she would never have left us on purpose. I could believe then that she had an innocent, elemental grave somewhere in the woods, even if I would never find it. But by afternoon I was remembering only her depressions, her strange moods.

“I knew that I would grieve for the rest of my life, but this utter lack of even her body tormented me. The local doctor gave me a sedative, which I took at night so that I could sleep and build up strength to search the woods again the next day. When the police grew busy with other matters, I searched alone. Sometimes I turned up other relics in the underbrush: stones, crumbling chimneys, and once part of a shattered gargoyle-had it fallen as far as Helen? There were few gargoyles on the monastery walls now.

“At last my mother and father persuaded me that I could not do this forever, that I should take you back to New York for a while, that I could always come back and look again. Police all over Europe had been alerted, through the French network; if Helen were alive-they said it soothingly-someone would find her. In the end, I gave up not because of these reassurances but because of the forest itself, the meteoric steepness of the cliffs, the denseness of the undergrowth, which tore my trousers and jacket as I pushed through it, the terrible size and height of the trees, the silence that surrounded me there whenever I stopped moving and groping and stood still for a few minutes.