Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

“We stared at him, speechless. It occurred to me that, according to legend, only the dead became vampires. Did this mean that Vlad Dracula had actually been killed in Asia Minor and become undead then, as a very young man, or that he’d simply had a taste for unholy libations very early in his life and had inspired it in others? I filed this away to ask Turgut in case I ever knew him well enough. ‘Oh, this is my eccentric hobby, you know.’ Turgut lapsed into a genial smile again. ‘Well, excuse me for climbing up onto my soap dish. My wife says I am intolerable.’ He toasted us with a subtle, courtly gesture before sipping from his little vase again. ‘But, by heaven, I have proof of one thing! I have proof that the sultans feared him as a vampire!’ He gestured toward the ceiling.

“‘Proof?’ I echoed.

“‘Yes! I discovered it some few years ago. The sultan was so much interested in Vlad Dracula that he collected some of his documents and possessions here after Dracula died in Wallachia. Dracula killed many Turkish soldiers in his own country, and our sultan hated him for this, but that was not why he founded this archive. No! The sultan even wrote a letter to the pasha of Wallachia in 1478 asking him for any writings he knew of about Vlad Dracula. Why? Because-he said-he was creating a library that would fight the evil that Dracula had spread in his city after his death. You see-why would the sultan still fear Dracula when Dracula was dead, if he did not believe Dracula could return? I have found a copy of the letter the pasha wrote to him in response.’ He thumped a fist on the table and smiled at us. ‘I have even found the library he created to fight evil.’

“Helen and I sat motionless. The coincidence was almost unbearably strange. Finally I ventured a question. ‘Professor, was this collection by any chance created by Sultan Mehmed II?’

“This time he stared at us. ‘By my boots, you are a fine historian indeed. You are interested in this period in our history?’

“‘Ah-very much so,’ I said. ‘And we would be-I’d be very much interested in seeing this archive you found.’

“‘Of course,’ he said. ‘With great pleasure. I will show you. My wife will be astounded that anyone wants to see.’ He chuckled. ‘But, alack, the beautiful building in which it was once housed has been torn down to make way for an office of the Ministry of Roads-oh, eight years ago. It was a lovely little building near the Blue Mosque. Such a shame.’

“I felt the blood draining from my face. So that was why we had had such difficulty locating Rossi’s archive. ‘But the documents -?’

“‘Do not worry, kind sir. I myself ensured them to become part of the National Library. Even if no one else adores them as I do, they must be preserved.’ Something dark crossed his face for the first time since he had scolded the Gypsy woman. ‘There is still evil to fight in our city, as there is everywhere.’ He looked from one of us to the other. ‘If you like old curiosities, I will most joyfully take you there tomorrow. It is closed this evening, of course. I know well the librarian who can allow you to peruse the collection.’

“‘Thank you very much.’ I didn’t dare look at Helen. ‘And how-how did you come to be interested in this unusual topic?’

“‘Oh, it is a long story,’ Turgut countered seriously. ‘I cannot be allowed to bore you so much.’

“‘We’re not bored at all,’ I insisted.

“‘You are very kind.’ He sat silent for some minutes, polishing his fork between thumb and forefinger. Outside our brick alcove, honking cars dodged bicycles in the crowded streets and pedestrians came and went like characters across a stage-women in flowing patterned skirts, scarves, and dangling gold earrings, or black dresses and reddish hair, men in Western suits and ties and white shirts. The breath of a mild, salty air reached us there at our table, and I imagined ships from all over Eurasia bringing their bounty to the heart of an empire-first Christian, then Muslim-and docking at a city whose walls stretched down into the very sea. Vlad Dracula’s forested stronghold, with its barbaric rituals of violence, seemed far indeed from this ancient, cosmopolitan world. No wonder he had hated the Turks, and they him, I thought. And yet the Turks of Istanbul, with their crafts of gold and brass and silk, their bazaars and bookshops and myriad houses of worship, must have had much more in common with the Christian Byzantines they had conquered here than did Vlad, defying them from his frontier. Viewed from this center of culture, he looked like a backwoods thug, a provincial ogre, a medieval redneck. I remembered the picture I’d seen of him in an encyclopedia at home-that woodcut of an elegant, mustached face framed by courtly dress. It was a paradox.

“I was lost in this image when Turgut spoke again. ‘Tell me, my fellows, what makes you to be interested in this topic of Dracula?’ He had turned the table on us, with a gentlemanly-or suspicious?-smile.

“I glanced at Helen. ‘Well, I’m studying the fifteenth century in Europe as background for my dissertation,’ I said, and was immediately punished for my lack of candor by a sense that this lie might already be true. God knew when I’d be working on my dissertation again, I thought, and the last thing I needed was a broader topic. ‘And you,’ I pressed again. ‘How did you jump from Shakespeare to vampires?’

“Turgut smiled-sadly, it seemed to me, and his quiet honesty punished me further. ‘Ah, it is a very strange thing, a long time ago. You see, I was working on my second book about Shakespeare-the tragedies. I sat to work every day in a little-how do you say?-niche in our English room at the university. Then one day I found a book I never saw there before.’ He turned to me with that sad smile again. My blood had already run cold in every extremity. ‘This book was like no other, an empty book, very old, with a dragon in the middle and a word-DRAKULYA. I had never heard about Dracula before. But the picture was very strange and strong. And then I thought, I must know what this is. So I tried to learn everything.’

“Helen had frozen across from me, but now she stirred, as if with eagerness. ‘Everything?’ she echoed softly.”

Barley and I had almost reached Brussels. It had taken me a long time-although it seemed like a few minutes-to tell Barley as simply and clearly as I could what my father had related of his experiences in graduate school. Barley stared past me out the window at the little Belgian houses and gardens, which looked sad under a curtain of clouds. We could see the occasional shaft of sunlight picking out a church spire or an old industrial chimney as we drew close to Brussels. The Dutch woman snored quietly, her magazine on the floor by her feet.

I was about to embark on a description of my father’s recent restlessness, his unhealthy pallor and strange behavior, when Barley suddenly turned to face me. “This is awfully peculiar,” he said. “I don’t know why I should believe this wild tale, but I do. I want to, anyway.” It struck me that I’d never before seen him look serious-only humorous or, briefly, annoyed. His eyes, blue as chips of sky, narrowed further. “The funny thing is that it all reminds me of something.”

“What?” I was almost faint with relief at his apparent acceptance of my story.

“Well, that’s the odd thing. I can’t think what. Something to do with Master James. But what was it?”

Barley sat musing in our train compartment, chin in his long-fingered hands, trying in vain to remember something about Master James. Finally he looked at me, and I was struck by the beauty of his narrow, rosy face when it was serious. Without that unnerving jollity, it could have been the face of an angel, or maybe a monk in a Northumbrian cloister. I perceived these comparisons dimly; they bloomed for me only later.