Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

It was a short list, a casual graffito, an ancient doodle on the reverse of Sarajevo and Skopje ’s official paperwork for the sultan. I read it curiously. It appeared to be a record of expenses-the objects purchased had been noted down on the left and the cost, in an unspecified currency, noted neatly down on the right. “Five young mountain lions for his Gloriousness the Sultan, 45,” I read with interest. “Two golden belts with precious stones for the Sultan, 290. Two hundred sheepskins for the Sultan, 89.” And then the final entry, which made the hair rise along my arm as I held that aging parchment up: “Maps and military records from the Order of the Dragon, 12.”

How, you ask, could I take all this in at a glance, when my knowledge of Arabic is as crude as I’ve already confessed? My quick-minded reader, you are staying awake for me, following my lucubrations with care, and I bless you for it. This scrawl, this mediaeval memorandum, was written out in Latin. Below it, a faintly scratched date seared the thing into my brain: 1490.

In 1490, I recalled, the Order of the Dragon lay in ruins, crushed by Ottoman might; Vlad Dracula was fourteen years’ dead and buried, according to legend, in the monastery at Lake Snagov. The Order’s maps, records, secrets-whatever this elusive phrase referred to-had been bought cheap, very cheap, compared to the bejewelled belts and the loads of stinking sheep wool. Perhaps they’d been thrown into this merchant’s purchase at the last minute, as a curiosity, a sample of the bureaucracy of conquest to flatter and amuse an erudite sultan whose father or grandfather had expressed grudging admiration for the barbaric Order of the Dragon that harassed him at the edge of the Empire. Was my merchant a Balkan traveller, Latin writing, speaking some Slav or Latinate dialect? Certainly he was highly educated, since he could write at all, perhaps a Jewish merchant with three or four languages at his command. Whoever he was, I blessed his dust for jotting down those expenses. If he had sent off the caravan of spoils without incident, and if it had reached the sultan safely, and if-least likely of all-it had survived in the sultan’s treasure-house of jewels, beaten copper, Byzantine glass, barbarous church relics, works of Persian poetry, books of cabala, atlases, astronomical charts -

I went to the desk, where the librarian was checking through a drawer. “Excuse me,” I said. “Do you have a listing of historical archives by country? Archives in-in Turkey, for example?”

“I know what you’re looking for, sir. There is such a listing, for universities and museums, although it’s by no means complete. We don’t have it here-the central library desk can show it to you. They open tomorrow at nine o’clock in the morning.”

My train to London, I remembered, didn’t leave until 10:14. It would take only ten minutes or so to glance through the possibilities. And if Sultan Mehmed II’s name, or the names of his immediate successors, appeared among any of the possibilities-well, I hadn’t wanted to see Rhodes so very badly after all.

Yours in profoundest grief, Bartholomew Rossi

Time seemed to have stopped in the high-vaulted library hall, despite the activity all around me. I had read one whole letter, but there were at least four more in the pile beneath it. I noticed, looking up, that a blue depth had opened behind the upper windows: twilight. I would have to walk home in it alone, I thought like a frightened child. Again I felt the urge to rush to Rossi’s office door and knock briskly on it. Surely I’d find him sitting there turning over pages of manuscript in the pool of yellow light on his desk. I was perplexed, all over again, the way one is after a friend’s death, by the unreality of the situation, the impossibility it presented to the mind. In fact, I was as much puzzled as I was afraid, and my bewilderment increased my fear because I couldn’t recognize my usual self in that state.

As I pondered this, I glanced down at the neat piles of papers on my table. I had taken up a great deal of the surface with this spread. As a consequence, probably, no one had tried to sit down opposite me or to occupy any of the other chairs at the table. I was just wondering if I should gather up all of this work and walk home to continue there later when a young woman approached and seated herself at one end of the table. I saw, looking around, that the surrounding catalog tables were full to capacity and strewn with other people’s books, typescripts, card-catalog drawers, and notepads. She had no other place to sit, I realized, but I felt suddenly protective of Rossi’s documents; I dreaded the involuntary glance of a stranger’s eye on them. Did they look obviously mad? Or did I?

I was just about to gather the papers together, carefully, preserving their original order, and pack them away, just about to make those slow and polite movements with which you try falsely to assure the other person who has just sat down apologetically at the cafeteria table that you really were leaving anyway-when I suddenly noticed the book the young woman had propped up in front of her. She was already flipping through the center section of it, a notebook and pen lying ready at her elbow. I glanced from the book’s title to her face, in astonishment, and then at the other book she had set down nearby. Then I looked back at her face.

It was a young face but already aging very slightly and handsomely, with the light crinkling of skin I recognized around my own eyes in the mirror every morning, a barely veiled fatigue, so I knew she must be a graduate student. It was also an elegant, angular face that wouldn’t have been out of place in a medieval altar painting, saved from a pinched look by the delicate widening of cheekbones. Her complexion was pale but could have turned olive after a week in the sun. Her lashes were lowered toward the book, her firm mouth and spreading eyebrows somehow made alert by whatever her eyes followed on the page. Her dark, almost sooty hair sprang away from her forehead with more vigor than was fashionable in those tightly groomed days. The title of her reading, in this place of myriad inquiry-I looked again, again astonished-wasThe Carpathians. Under her dark-sweatered elbow rested Bram Stoker’sDracula.

At that moment, the young woman glanced up and met my gaze, and I realized I’d been staring directly at her, which must have been offensive. In fact, the dark, deep stare I got back-although her eyes also had a curious amber in their depths, like honey-was extremely hostile. I wasn’t what people still called then a ladies’ man; in fact I was something of a recluse. But I knew enough to feel ashamed, and I hurried to explain. Later I realized that her hostility was the defense of the striking-looking woman who is stared at again and again. “Excuse me,” I said quickly. “I couldn’t help noticing your books-I mean, what you’re reading.”

She stared unhelpfully back at me, keeping her book open in front of her, and raised the dark sweep of her eyebrows.

“You see, I’m actually studying the same subject,” I persisted. Her eyebrows rose a little higher, but I indicated the papers in front of me. “No, really. I’ve just been reading about -” I looked at the piles of Rossi’s documents in front of me and stopped abruptly. The contemptuous slant of her eyelids made my face grow warm.

“Dracula?” she said sarcastically. “Those appear to be primary sources you have got there.” She had a rich accent I couldn’t place, and her voice was soft, but library soft, as if it could spring into real strength when uncoiled.

I tried a different tactic. “Are you reading those for fun? I mean, for enjoyment? Or are you doing research?”

“Fun?” She kept the book open, still, maybe to discourage me with every possible weapon.