Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

“Valuable?” He could not possibly know its value to me, I thought, not with all the chemical analyses in the world. It was my key to revenge.

“Yes. It’s a rare example of Central European mediaeval printing, a very interesting and unusual thing, and I’m pretty well satisfied now that it was probably printed about 1512, perhaps in Buda or perhaps in Wallachia. That date would place it safely after the Corvinus Saint Luke but before the Hungarian New Testament of 1520, which would probably have had an influence on such a work if it had already existed.” He shifted in his creaking chair. “It’s even possible that the woodcut in your book actually influenced the New Testament of 1520, which has a similar illustration, a winged Satan. But there’s no way to prove that. Anyway, it would be a funny influence, wouldn’t it? I mean, to see part of the Bible decorated with illustrations anything like this diabolical one.”

“Diabolical?” I relished the sound of the condemnation on someone else’s lips.

“Sure. You filled me in on the Dracula legend, but do you think I stopped there?”

Mr. Martin’s tone was so flat and bright, so American, that it took me a moment to react. Never had I heard that sinister depth in a voice so perfectly ordinary. I stared at him, puzzled, but the tone was gone and his face smooth. He was looking through a pile of papers he had taken out of a folder.

“Here are the results of our tests,” he said. “I’ve made clean copies of them for you, along with my write-up, and I think you’ll find them interesting. They don’t say much more than I’ve just told you-oh, there are two interesting additional facts. It appears from the chemical analysis that this book was stored, probably for a long time, in an atmosphere heavily laden with stone dust, and that that occurred before 1700. Also, the back section of it was stained at some point with salt water-perhaps from exposure to an ocean voyage. I suppose it could have been the Black Sea, if our guesses about production location are correct, but there are a lot of other possibilities, of course. I’m afraid we haven’t set you farther on your quest than that-didn’t you say you’re writing a history of mediaeval Europe?”

He looked up and gave me his casual, good-natured smile, weird in that wasted face, and I perceived simultaneously two things that made my marrow go cold as I sat there.

The first was that I had never told him anything about writing a history of mediaeval Europe; I had said I wanted information on my volume to help me complete a bibliography of materials related to the life of Vlad the Impaler, known in legend as Dracula. Howard Martin was as precise a man, in his curatorial way, as I was in my scholarly one, and he would never unknowingly have committed such an error. His memory had previously struck me as nearly photographic in its capacity for detail, something I notice and appreciate heartily whenever I meet it in other people.

The second thing I perceived at this moment was that, perhaps due to whatever illness he was suffering-the poor man, I almost made myself say, internally-his lips had a decayed, flaccid look when he smiled and his upper canine teeth were bared and somehow prominent in a way that gave his whole face an unpleasant appearance. I remembered all too well the bureaucrat in Istanbul, although there was nothing wrong with Howard Martin’s neck, as far as I could see. I had just quelled my tremor and taken book and notes from his hand when he spoke up again.

“That map, by the way, is remarkable.”

“Map?” I froze. Only one map I knew of-three, actually, in graduated scale-had anything to do with my present intentions, and I was sure I had never so much as mentioned their existence to this stranger.

“Did you sketch it yourself? It’s not old, obviously, but I wouldn’t have put you down as an artist. And certainly not a morbid type, anyway, if you don’t mind my saying that.”

I stared at him, unable to decipher his words and afraid to give something away by asking what he meant. Had I left one of my sketches in the book? How utterly stupid, if I had. But I was sure I’d checked the book carefully for loose leaves before handing it over to him.

“Well, I tucked it back in the book, so it’s there,” he said comfortingly. “Now, Dr. Rossi, I can show you down to our accounting department if you’d like, or I can arrange for you to be billed at home.” He opened the door for me and smiled his professional grimace again. I had the presence of mind not to hunt through the volume in my hand then and there, and I saw in the light of the corridor that I must have imagined Martin’s peculiar smile, and perhaps even his illness; he was normal-skinned, just a little stooped from decades of work among the leaves of the past, nothing more. He stood by the door with one hand thrust out in a hearty Washingtonian good-bye, and I shook it, muttering that I should like the bill sent to my university address.

I made my way warily out of sight of his door, then out of that hall and finally away from the great red castle that housed all his labours and those of his colleagues. Out in the fresh air of the Mall, I strolled across the bright green grass to a bench and sat down, trying both to appear and to feel unconcerned.

The volume fell open in my hand, with its usual sinister obligingness, and I looked in vain for a loose sheet of something to surprise me there. Only turning back through the pages did I find it-a very fine tracing on carbon paper, as if someone had had the third and most intimate of my secret maps actually in front of him, and had copied all its mysterious lineaments for me. The place-names in Slavic dialect were exactly those I knew from my own map-Pig-Stealing Village, Valley of Eight Oaks. In fact, this sketch was unfamiliar to me in only one particular. Below the appellation of the Unholy Tomb, there was some neat Latin lettering in an ink that seemed to match that of the other titles. Over the apparent location of the tomb, arched around it as if to prove its absolute association with that spot, I read the wordsBARTOLOMEO ROSSI.

Reader, judge me a coward if you must, but I desisted from that moment. I am a young professor and I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I lecture, dine out with my new friends, and write home to my aging parents every week. I don’t wear garlic, or crucifixes, or cross myself at the sound of a step in the hall. I have a better protection than that-I have stopped digging at that dreadful crossroads of history. Something must be satisfied to see me quiet, because I have been untroubled by further tragedy.

Now, if you yourself had to choose your sanity, your remembered life, over true instability, which would you select, as the proper way for a scholar to live out his days? Hedges would not, I know, have required of me a headlong plunge into darkness. And yet, if you are reading this at all, it means that harm has finally come to me. You must choose, too. I have given you every shard of knowledge that I possess, where these horrors are concerned. Knowing my story, can you refuse me succor?

Yours in grief, Bartholomew Rossi

The shadows beneath the trees had lengthened to yawning proportions, and my father kicked at a chestnut burr under his good shoes. I had the sudden sense that if he had been a cruder man, he would have spat on the ground at this moment, to expel some appalling taste. Instead, he seemed to swallow hard and gather himself to smile. “Lord! What’ve we been talking about? How grim we seem to be this afternoon.” He tried to smile, but he also threw me a glance that spoke of worry, as if some shadow might come down over me, me in particular, and remove me without warning from the scene.

I uncurled my cold hand from the edge of the bench and made the effort to be lighthearted now, too. When had it become effort? I wondered, but it was too late. I was doing his work for him, distracting him as he had once tried to distract me. I took refuge in a slight petulance-not too much or he would suspect it. “I have to say I’m hungry again, for real food.”