Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

The Radcliffe Camera, as every Anglophile knows, is one of the great charms of English architecture, beautiful and odd, a huge barrel of books. One edge of it stands almost in the street, but with a large lawn around the rest of the building. We made our way in very quietly, although a talkative tour group filled the center of the glorious round interior. Stephen pointed out various aspects of the building’s design, studied in every course on English architecture, written up in every guidebook. It was a lovely and moving place, and I kept looking around thinking what a strange repository this was for evil lore. At last he led me toward a staircase, and we climbed up to the balcony. “Over here.” He motioned toward a doorway in the wall, cut, as it were, into a sheer cliff face of books. “There’s a little reading room in there. I’ve been up here just once, but I think that’s where they keep the vampire collection.”

The dim room was indeed tiny, and hushed, too, set far back from the voices of tourists below. August volumes crowded the shelves, their bindings caramel colored and brittle as old bone. Among them, a human skull in a little gilded glass case attested to the collection’s morbid nature. The chamber was so small, in fact, that there was just space in the center for one reading desk, which we almost stumbled against as we stepped in. That meant that we were suddenly face-to-face with the scholar who sat there turning over the leaves of a folio and making rapid notes on a pad of paper. He was a pale, rather gaunt man. His eyes were dark hollows, startled and urgent but also full of absorption as he glanced up from his work. It was my father.

In the confusion of ambulances, police cars, and spectators that accompanied the dead librarian’s removal from the street in front of the university library, I stood frozen for a minute. It was horrible, unthinkable, that even the most unpleasant man’s life should have ended so suddenly there, but my next concern was for Helen. A crowd was gathering fast, and I pushed here and there looking for her. I was infinitely relieved when she found me first, tapping me on the shoulder from behind with her gloved hand. She looked pale but composed. She had wrapped her scarf tightly around her throat, and the sight of it on her smooth neck made me shiver. “I waited a few minutes and then followed you down the stairs,” she said under the noise of the crowd. “I want to thank you for coming to my assistance. This man was a brute. You were truly brave.”

I was surprised to find how kind her face could look, after all. “Actually, you were the brave one. And he hurt you,” I said in a low voice. I tried not to gesture publicly at her neck. “Did he -?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. Instinctively, we’d drawn close together, so that no one else could hear our conversation. “When he flew at me up there, he bit me on the throat.” For a minute her lips seemed to tremble, as if she might cry. “He did not draw much blood-there was no time. And it hurts very little.”

“But you -” I was stammering, unbelieving.

“I do not think there will be any infection,” she said. “It bled very little and I have closed it up as well as I can.”

“Should we go to the hospital?” I regretted it as soon as I’d said it, only partly because of the withering look she gave me. “Or can we treat it somehow?” I think I was half imagining we could remove the venom, as with a snakebite. The pain in her face suddenly made my heart twist within me. Then I remembered her betrayal of the secret of the map. “But why did you -”

“I know what you are wondering,” she interrupted hurriedly, her accent thickening. “But I could not think of any other bait for the creature, and I wanted to see his reaction. I would not have given him the map or any more information. I promise you that.”

I studied her suspiciously. Her face was serious, her mouth drawn down into a grim curve. “No?”

“I give you my word,” she said simply. “Besides”-her sarcastic smile reversed the grimace-“I’m not necessarily in the habit of sharing what I can use for myself, are you?”

I had to let that pass, but something in her face did calm my fears. “His reaction was extremely interesting, wasn’t it?”

She nodded. “He said he should have been allowed to go to the tomb, and that Rossi was taken there by someone. It is very strange, but he did seem to know something about the whereabouts of my-your adviser. I cannot believe in this Drakulya business, exactly, but perhaps some weird occult group has kidnapped Professor Rossi, something of that sort.”

It was my turn to nod, although I was obviously closer to believing than she was.

“What will you do now?” she asked, with curious detachment.

I hadn’t quite planned my answer before it came out. “Go to Istanbul. I’m convinced there’s at least one document there that Rossi never had the chance to examine, and that it might contain information about a tomb, perhaps Dracula’s tomb at Lake Snagov.”

She laughed. “Why not take a little vacation to my lovely native Romania? You could go to Dracula’s castle with a silver stake in your hand, or visit him yourself at Snagov. I’ve heard it is a pretty place for a picnic.”

“Look,” I said irritably. “I know this is all very peculiar, but I absolutely must follow any trace I can of Rossi’s disappearance. And you know perfectly well an American citizen can’t just penetrate the Iron Curtain to look for someone.” My loyalty must have shamed her a little, because she did not answer. “I do want to ask you something. You said as we were leaving the church that your mother might have some information about Rossi’s hunt for Dracula. What did you mean by that?”

“I simply meant that when they met, he told her he was in Romania to study the legend of Dracula, and that she herself believes in the legend. Maybe she knows more about his research there than I have ever heard from her-I’m not sure. She does not talk easily about this, and I have been pursuing this little interest of the dear old paterfamilias through scholarly channels, not in the bosom of the family. I should have asked her more about her own experience.”

“An odd oversight for an anthropologist,” I retorted crankily. Now that I believed again that she was on my side, I felt all the annoyance of relief. Her face lit up with amusement.

“Touché, Sherlock. I’ll ask her all about it next time I see her.”

“When will that be?”

“In a couple of years, I suppose. My precious visa doesn’t allow me to bounce easily back and forth between East and West.”

“Don’t you ever call or write her?”

She stared. “Oh, the West is such an innocent place,” she said finally. “Do you think she has a telephone? Do you think my letters are not opened and read every time?”

I was silent, chastened.

“What is this document you are so eager to look for, Sherlock?” she asked. “Is it that bibliography, something about the Order of the Dragon? I saw that on the last list in his papers. It was the only thing he did not describe fully. Is that what you want to find?”

She’d guessed right, naturally. I was getting an uncanny sense of her intellectual powers, and I thought a little wistfully of the conversations we might have had under better circumstances. On the other hand, I didn’t completely like her guessing so much. “Why do you want to know?” I countered. “For your research?”

“Of course,” she said sternly. “Will you get in touch with me again when you come back?”

I felt suddenly very weary. “Come back? I have no idea what I’m getting into, let alone when I’ll be back. Maybe I’ll be struck down by the vampire myself when I get wherever it is I’m going.”