Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

I thought my father might weep again, but he was quiet, his eyes never leaving hers.

“I went out into the world. It was not so hard to do. I had brought my purse with me-out of habit, I suppose, and because I had my gun and my silver bullets in it. I remember almost laughing when I found the purse still on my arm, on the precipice. I had money in it, too, a lot of money in the lining, and I used it carefully. My mother always carried all her money, too. I suppose it was the way the peasants in her village did things. She never trusted banks. Much later, when I needed more, I drew from our account in New York and put some in a Swiss bank. Then I left Switzerland as quickly as I could, in case you should try to trace me, Paul. Ah, forgive me!” she cried out suddenly, tightening her grip on my fingers, and I knew she meant her absence, not the money.

My father clenched his hands together. “That withdrawal gave me hope for a few months, or at least put a question into my mind, but my bank could not trace it. I got the money back.” But not you, he could have added, and didn’t. His face shone, weary and glad.

Helen dropped her eyes. “In any case, I found a place to stay for a few days, away from Les Bains, until my cuts could heal. I hid myself until I could go out into the world.”

Her fingers strayed to her throat and I saw the small white scar I had already noticed many times. “I knew in my bones that Dracula had not forgotten about me, and that he might search for me again. I filled my pockets with garlic and my mind with strength. I kept my gun with me, my dagger, my crucifix. Everywhere I went I stopped in the village churches and asked for a blessing, although sometimes even entering their doors made my old wound throb. I was careful to keep my neck covered. Eventually I cut my hair short and colored it, changed my clothes, wore dark glasses. For a long time I stayed away from cities, and then I began little by little to go to the archives where I had always wanted to do my research.

“I was thorough. I found him everywhere I went-in Rome in the 1620s, in Florence under the Medici, in Madrid, in Paris during the Revolution. Sometimes it was the report of a strange plague, sometimes an outbreak of vampirism in a great cemetery-Père Lachaise, for example. He seemed always to have liked scribes, archivists, librarians, historians-anyone who handled the past through books. I tried to deduce from his movements where his new tomb was, where he had hidden himself after we opened his tomb at Sveti Georgi, but I couldn’t discover any pattern. I thought that once I found him, once I killed him, I would come back and tell you how safe the world had become. I would earn you. I lived in fear that he would find me before I could find him. And everywhere I went I missed you-oh, I was so lonely.”

She picked up my hand again and caressed it like a fortune-teller, and I felt, in spite of myself, a surge of anger-all those years without her. “Finally I thought that even if I was not worthy, I wanted to have just a glimpse of you. Both of you. I had read about your foundation in the papers, Paul, and I knew you were in Amsterdam. It was not hard to find you, or to sit in a café near your office, or to follow you on a trip or two-very carefully-very, very carefully. I never let myself see either of you face-to-face, for fear you would see me. I came and went. If my research was going well, I allowed myself a visit to Amsterdam and followed you from there. Then one day-in Italy, at Monteperduto-I saw him on the piazza. He was following you, too, watching you. That was when I realized he had become strong enough to go out in broad daylight sometimes. I knew that you were in danger, but I thought that if I went to you, to warn you, I might bring the danger closer. After all, he might be looking for me, not you, or he might be trying to make me lead him to you. It was an agony. I knew that you must be doing some kind of research again-that you must be interested in him again, Paul-to attract his notice. I could not decide what to do.”

“It was me-my fault,” I murmured, squeezing her plain, lined hand. “I found the book.”

She looked at me for a moment, her head to one side. “You are a historian,” she said after a moment. It wasn’t a question. Then she sighed. “For several years, I had been writing postcards to you, my daughter-without sending them, of course. One day, I thought that I could communicate with the two of you from a distance, to let you know I was alive without letting anyone else see me. I sent them to Amsterdam, to your house, in a package addressed to Paul.”

This time I turned to my father in amazement and anger. “Yes,” he told me sadly. “I felt I could not show them to you, could not upset you without being able to find your mother for you. You can imagine what that period was like for me.” I could. I remembered suddenly his terrible fatigue in Athens, the evening I’d seen him looking half dead at the desk in his room. But he smiled at us, and I realized that he might now smile every day.

“Ah.” She smiled too. There were deep lines around her mouth, I saw, and the corners of her eyes were creased.

“And I began looking for you-and for him.” His smile grew grave.

She was gazing at him. “And then I saw I must give up my research and simply follow him following you. I saw you sometimes, and saw you doing your own research again-watched you going into libraries, Paul, or coming out of them, and how I wished I could tell you all I had learned myself. Then you went to Oxford. I hadn’t been to Oxford before in the course of my search, although I’d read that they had an outbreak of vampirism there in the late medieval period. And in Oxford you left a book open -”

“He shut it when he saw me,” I put in.

“And me,” said Barley with his lightning grin. It was the first time he’d spoken, and I was relieved to see that he could still look cheerful.

“Well, the first time he looked at it, he forgot to close it.” Helen almost winked at us.

“You’re right,” said my father. “Come to think of it, I did forget.”

Helen turned to him with her lovely smile. “Do you know I had never seen that book before?Vampires du Moyen Age? ”

“A classic,” my father said. “But a very rare one.”

“I think Master James must have seen it, too,” Barley put in slowly. “You know, I saw him in there just after we surprised you at your research, sir.” My father looked perplexed. “Yes,” Barley said. “I’d left my mackintosh on the main floor of the library, and I went back for it less than an hour later. And I saw Master James coming out of the niche in the balcony, but he didn’t see me. I thought he looked awfully worried, sort of cross and distracted. I thought about that when I decided to call him, too.”

“You called Master James?” I was surprised, but past feeling indignant. “When? Why did you do that?”

“I called him from Paris because I remembered something,” Barley said simply, stretching his legs. I wanted to go over and twine my arm around his neck, but not in front of my parents. He looked at me. “I told you I was trying to remember something, on the train, something about Master James, and when we got to Paris I remembered it. I’d seen a letter on his desk once when he was putting away some papers-an envelope, actually, and I liked the stamp on it, so I looked a little more closely.

“It was from Turkey, and it was old-that’s what made me look at the stamp-well, it was postmarked twenty years ago, from a Professor Bora, and I thought to myself that I wanted to have a big desk someday, and get letters from all over the world. The nameBora stuck with me, even at the time-it sounded so exotic. I didn’t open it or read the letter, of course,” Barley added hastily. “I wouldn’t have done that.”