Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

“‘My speciality is Shakespeare,’ said our new friend, helping himself carefully to the salad in front of him. ‘I teach English literature to the most advanced of our graduate students. They are valiant students, I must tell you.’

“‘How wonderful,’ I managed to say. ‘I am a graduate student myself, but in history, in the United States.’

“‘A very fine field,’ he said gravely. ‘You will find much to interest you in Istanbul. What is the name of your university?’

“I told him, while Helen sawed grimly away at her dinner.

“‘An excellent university. I have heard of it,’ observed the professor. He sipped from his vase and tapped the book by his plate. ‘I say!’ he exclaimed finally. ‘Why don’t you come to see our university while you are in Istanbul? It is a venerable institution also, and I would be pleased to show you and your lovely wife around.’

“I registered a faint snort from Helen and hurried to cover for her. ‘My sister-my sister.’

“‘Oh, I beg your pardon.’ The Shakespeare scholar bowed to Helen over the table. ‘I am Dr. Turgut Bora, at your service.’ We introduced ourselves-or I introduced us, because Helen kept obstinately silent. I could tell she didn’t like my using my real name, so I quickly gave hers as Smith, a piece of dull-wittedness that drew an even deeper frown from her. We shook hands all around, and there was nothing for us to do but to invite him to join us at our table.

“He protested politely, but only for a moment, and then sat down with us, bringing along his salad and his glass vase, which he immediately raised on high. ‘A toast to you and welcome to our fair city,’ he intoned. ‘Cheerio!’ Even Helen smiled slightly, although she still said nothing. ‘You must forgive my lack of discretion,’ Turgut told her apologetically, as if sensing her wariness. ‘It is very rare that I have the opportunity to practice my English with native speakers.’ He had not yet noticed that she wasn’t a native speaker-although he might never notice that in Helen, I thought, because she might never utter a word to him.

“‘How did you come to specialize in Shakespeare?’ I asked him as we began to eat our dinners again.

“‘Ah!’ Turgut said softly. ‘That is a strange story. My mother was a very unusual woman-brilliant-a great lover of languages, as well as a diminutive engineer’-Distinguished?I wondered-‘and she studied at the University of Rome, where she met my father. He, the delectable man, was a scholar of the Italian Renaissance, with a particular lust for -’

“At this very interesting point, we were suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a young woman peering in the arched window from the street. Although I’d never seen one, except in pictures, I took her for a Gypsy; she was dark skinned and sharp featured, dressed in tatty bright colors, black hair raggedly cut around penetrating dark eyes. She could have been fifteen or forty; it was impossible to read age on her thin face. In her arms she carried bunches of red and yellow flowers, which she apparently wanted us to buy. She thrust some of them at me over the table and began a shrill chant I couldn’t understand. Helen looked disgusted and Turgut annoyed, but the woman was insistent. I was just getting out my wallet with the idea of presenting Helen-in jest, of course-with a Turkish bouquet, when the Gypsy suddenly wheeled on her, pointing and hissing. Turgut started and Helen, usually fearless, shrank back.

“This seemed to bring Turgut to life; he half stood and with a scowl of indignation began to berate the Gypsy. It was not difficult to understand his tone and gestures, which invited her in no uncertain terms to take herself off. She glared at all of us and withdrew as suddenly as she’d appeared, vanishing among the other pedestrians. Turgut sat down again, looking wide-eyed at Helen, and after a moment he rummaged in his jacket pocket and drew out a small object, which he placed next to her plate. It was a flat blue stone about an inch long, set with white and paler blue, like a crude eye. Helen blanched when she saw it and reached as if by instinct to touch it with her forefinger.

“‘What on earth is going on here?’ I couldn’t help feeling the fretfulness of the culturally excluded.

“‘What did she say?’ Helen spoke to Turgut for the first time. ‘Was she speaking Turkish or the Gypsy language? I could not understand her.’

“Our new friend hesitated, as if he did not want to repeat the woman’s words. ‘Turkish,’ he murmured. ‘Maybe it is not the better part of valor that I tell you. It is very rude what she said. And strange.’ He was looking at Helen with interest but also with something like a flicker of fear, I thought, in his genial eyes. ‘She used a word I will not translate,’ he explained slowly. ‘And then she said, ”Get out of here, Romanian daughter of wolves. You and your friend bring the curse of the vampire to our city.“’

“Helen was white to the lips, and I fought the impulse to take her hand. ‘It’s a coincidence,’ I told her soothingly, at which she glared; I was saying too much in front of the professor.

“Turgut looked from me to Helen and back. ‘This is very odd indeed, gentle companions,’ he said. ‘I think we must talk further without ado.’”

Ihad almost dozed in my train seat, despite the extreme interest my father’s story held for me; reading all this the first time, during the night, had kept me up late, and I was weary. A feeling of unreality settled over me in the sunny compartment, and I turned to look out the window at the orderly Dutch farmlands slipping by. As we approached and departed from each town, the train clicked past a series of small vegetable gardens, growing green again under a cloudy sky, the rear gardens of thousands of people minding their own business, the backs of their houses turned toward the railway. The fields were wonderfully green, a green that begins, in Holland, in early spring and lasts almost until the snow falls again, fed by the moisture of air and land and by the water that glints in every direction you look. We had already left behind a broad region of canals and bridges and were out among cows in their neatly delineated pastures. A dignified old couple on bicycles rolled along on a road next to us, swallowed the next minute by more pastures. Soon we’d be in Belgium, which I knew from experience one could miss entirely on this trip in the course of a short nap.

I held the letters in my lap tightly, but my eyelids were beginning to droop. The pleasant-faced woman in the seat opposite was already dozing off, magazine in hand. My eyes had closed for just a second when the door to our compartment flew open. An exasperated voice broke in and a lanky figure inserted itself between me and my daydream. “Well, of all the nerve! I thought so. I’ve been searching every carriage for you.” It was Barley, mopping his forehead and scowling at me.

Barley was angry. I couldn’t blame him, but this was a most inconvenient turn of events for me, and I was a little mad, too. It made me all the angrier that my first twinge of annoyance was followed by a secret swelling of relief; I hadn’t realized before seeing him how thoroughly alone I’d felt on that train, headed toward the unknown, headed perhaps toward the larger loneliness of being unable to find my father or even toward the galactic loneliness of losing him forever. Barley had been a stranger to me only a few days before, and now his face was my vision of familiarity.

At this moment, however, it was still scowling. “Where in bloody hell do you think you’re going? You’ve given me a pretty chase-what are you up to, anyhow?”

I evaded the last question for now. “I didn’t mean to worry you, Barley. I thought you’d gone on the ferry and would never know.”