Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

It was signed with affectionate warmth, but I could see that he had written it hastily. My heart was pounding. I quickly fastened the chain around my neck and divided the garlic to put in the pockets of my dress. It was like my father, I thought, looking around the empty room, to make the bed so neatly in the middle of a silent hurry to leave the college. But why this haste? Whatever his errand was, it could not be a simple diplomatic mission, or he would have told me as much. He’d often had to respond to professional emergencies; I had known him to leave with little warning to attend a crisis on the other side of Europe, but he always told me where he was going. This time, my racing heart told me, he hadn’t departed on business. Besides, he was supposed to be here in Oxford this week, giving lectures and attending meetings. He was not one to break an obligation lightly.

No. His disappearance must have some connection with the strain he’d been showing lately-I realized now that I’d feared something like this all along. Then there was that scene yesterday in the Radcliffe Camera, my father deep in-what had he been reading, exactly? And where, oh where, had he gone? Where, without me? For the first time in all the years I remembered, all the years in which my father had sheltered me from the loneliness of life with no mother, no siblings, no home country, all the years of his being both father and mother-for the first time, I felt like an orphan.

The master was very kind when I appeared with my suitcase packed and my raincoat over my arm. I explained to him that I was fully ready to travel by myself. I assured him I was grateful for his offer of a student to see me home-across the whole Channel-and that I would never forget his kindness. I felt a twinge at that, a small but distinct twang of disappointment-how pleasant it could have been to travel for a day with Stephen Barley smiling at me from the opposite train seat! But it had to be said. I would be safely home within hours, I repeated, pressing down my sudden mental picture of a red marble basin filled with melodic water, afraid this kindly smiling man might divine it in me, might see it on my face, even. I would be safely home soon and could call him if he needed extra reassurance. And then, of course, I added with still greater duplicity, my father would be home in a few days himself.

Master James was certain I was capable of traveling alone; I looked like an independent lass, to be sure. It was just that he couldn’t-he turned an even gentler smile on me-he simply couldn’t go back on his word to my father, an old friend. I was my father’s most priceless treasure, and he couldn’t ship me off without proper protection. It wouldn’t be for my sake, exactly, I must realize that, but for my father’s-we had to indulge him a bit. Stephen Barley materialized before I could argue more, or even fully register the idea that the master was my father’s old friend when I’d believed they’d met just two days ago. But I had no time for this irregularity; Stephen was standing there looking like my old friend, in his turn, his own jacket and bag in hand, and I couldn’t be completely sorry to see him. I regretted the detour it would cost me, but not as thoroughly as I should have. It was impossible for me not to welcome his practical grin, or his “Got me out of a little work, you did!”

Master James was more sober. “You’re on the job yet, my lad,” he told him. “I want a call from Amsterdam as soon as you’re there, and I want to talk with the housekeeper. Here’s money for your tickets and some meals, and you’ll bring me back your receipts.” His hazel eyes twinkled then. “That’s not to say you can’t get a little Dutch chocolate for yourself at the station. Fetch me a bar, too. It’s not as good as Belgian, but it’ll do. Off with you now, and use your head.” Next he gave me a grave handshake and his card. “Good-bye, my dear. Come again and see us when you’re thinking of university for yourself.”

Outside the office, Stephen grabbed my bag for me. “Let’s go, then. We’ve tickets for the ten-thirty, but we might as well get a head start.”

The master and my father had taken care of every detail, I noted, and I wondered what extra chains I’d have to slip at home. I had other business for now, however. “Stephen?” I began.

“Oh, call me Barley.” He laughed. “Everyone else calls me that, and I’m so used to it now that it gives me the creeps to hear my real name.”

“All right.” His smile was just as contagious today-easily as contagious. “Barley, I-could I ask you a favor before we leave?” He nodded. “I’d just like to go into the Camera one more time. It was so beautiful, I-and I’d like to see the vampire collection. I didn’t really get to look at it.”

He groaned. “I could tell you like grisly stuff. Seems to run in your family.”

“I know.” I felt myself flushing.

“All right. Let’s take a quick look again, but then we’ve got to run. Master James will put a stake throughmy heart if we miss the train.”

The Camera was quiet this morning, nearly empty, and we hurried up a polished staircase to the macabre niche where we’d surprised my father the day before. I swallowed a threat of tears as we entered the tiny room; hours ago, my father had been sitting here, that strangely distant look veiling his eyes, and now I didn’t even know where he was.

I remembered where he’d shelved the book, though, replaced it so casually as we talked. It would be below the case with the skull, to the left. I ran a finger along the edge of the shelf. Barley stood near me (it was impossible for us not to stand close together in that tiny space, and I wished he would wander out to the balcony instead), watching with frank curiosity. Where the book should have been was a gap like a missing tooth. I froze: surely my father would never, ever steal a book, so who could have taken it? But a second later I recognized the volume a hand’s length away. Someone had certainly moved it since I’d been there last. Had my father returned for a second look? Or had someone else taken it off the shelf? I glanced suspiciously at the skull in the glass case, but it gave back a bland, anatomical gaze. Then I lifted the book down, very carefully-there was the tall, bone-colored binding with a black silk ribbon protruding from the top. I laid it on the table and found the title page:Vampires du Moyen Age, Baron de Hejduke, Bucarest, 1886.

“What do you want with this morbid rubbish?” Barley was gazing over my shoulder.

“School paper,” I mumbled. The book was divided into chapters, as I remembered:“Vampires de la Toscane,” “Vampires de la Normandie,” and so on. I found the right one at last:“Vampires de Provence et des Pyrénées.” Oh, Lord, was my French up to this? Barley was starting to look at his watch. I ran a quick finger above the page, careful not to touch the magnificent type or ivory paper.“Vampires dans les villages de Provence -” What had my father been looking for here? He’d been poring over this first page of the chapter.“‘Il y a aussi une legende…’” I leaned closer.

Since that moment, I have known many times what I first experienced then. Until then, my forays into written French had been purely utilitarian, the completion of almost mathematical exercises. When I comprehended a new phrase it was merely a bridge to the next exercise. Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light. Since then I have known this moment of truth with other companions: German, Russian, Latin, Greek, and-for a brief hour-Sanskrit.