Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

“Unexpectedly, Helen smiled. ‘There is no reason to be so bad tempered, Paul,’ she said. ‘We have a proverb in Hungarian: ”If a thing is impossible, it can be done.“’

“I had to laugh. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘What’s your plan? I’ve noticed you always have one.’

“‘Yes, I have.’ She smoothed out her gloves. ‘Actually, I am hoping my aunt will have a plan.’

“‘Your aunt?’

“Helen glanced out the window, toward the mellowed stucco of the old houses across the street. It was nearly evening, and the Mediterranean light I had already come to love was deepening to gold on every surface of the city outside. ‘My aunt has worked in the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior since 1948, and she is a rather important lady. I got my scholarships because of her. In my country, you do not accomplish anything without an aunt or an uncle. She is my mother’s older sister, and she and her husband helped my mother flee from Romania to Hungary, where she-my aunt-was already living, just before I was born. We are very close, my aunt and I, and she will do whatever I ask her. Unlike my mother, she has a telephone, and I think I will call her.’

“‘You mean, she could bring your mother to the phone somehow to talk with us?’

“Helen groaned. ‘Oh, Lord, do you think that we can talk with them on the phone about anything private or controversial?’

“‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

“‘No. We will go there in person. My aunt will arrange it. That way we can talk face-to-face with my mother. Besides’-something gentler crept into her voice-‘they will be so glad to see me. It is not very far from here, and I have not seen them for two years.’

“‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m willing to try almost anything for Rossi, although it’s hard for me to imagine just waltzing into communist Hungary.’

“‘Ah,’ said Helen. ‘Then it will be even harder for you to imagine waltzing, as you say, into communist Romania?’

“This time I was silent for a moment. ‘I know,’ I said at last. ‘I’ve been thinking about it, too. If Dracula’s tomb turns out not to be in Istanbul, where else could it be?’

“We sat for a minute, each of us lost in thought and impossibly far from the other, and then Helen stirred. ‘I will see if the landlady can let us call from downstairs,’ she said. ‘My aunt will be home from work soon, and I would like to talk with her immediately.’

“‘May I come with you?’ I inquired. ‘After all, this concerns me, too.’

“‘Certainly.’ Helen pulled on her gloves, and we went down to corner the landlady in her parlor. It took us ten minutes to explain our intentions, but the production of a few extra Turkish liras, with the promise of payment in full for the phone call, smoothed the way. Helen sat on a chair in the parlor and dialed through a maze of numbers. At last I saw her face brighten. ‘It’s ringing.’ She smiled at me, her beautiful, frank smile. ‘My aunt is going to hate this,’ she said. Then her face changed again, to alertness. ‘Éva?’ she said. ‘Elena!’

“Listening carefully, I realized that she must be speaking Hungarian; I knew at least that Romanian was a Romance language, so I thought I might have understood a few words. But what Helen was speaking sounded like the galloping of horses, a Finno-Ugric stampede that I could not arrest with my ear for even a second. I wondered if she ever spoke Romanian with her family, or if perhaps that part of their lives had died long before, under the pressure to assimilate. Her tones rose and fell, interrupted sometimes by a smile and sometimes by a small frown. Her aunt Éva, on the other end, seemed to have a great deal to say, and sometimes Helen listened deeply, then broke in with those strange syllabic hoofbeats again.

“Helen seemed to have forgotten my presence, but she suddenly raised her glance to me again and gave a wry little smile and a triumphant nod, as if the outcome of her conversation was favorable. She smiled into the receiver and hung up. Immediately our concierge was upon us, apparently worried about her phone bill, and I quickly counted out the agreed-upon amount, added a little, and deposited it in her outstretched hands. Helen was already on her way back to her room, beckoning to me to follow; I thought her secrecy unnecessary, but what did I know, after all?

“‘Quick, Helen,’ I groaned, settling into the armchair again. ‘The suspense is killing me.’

“‘It’s good news,’ she said calmly. ‘I knew my aunt would try to help in the end.’

“‘What on earth did you tell her?’

“She grinned. ‘Well, there’s only so much I could say on the telephone, and I had to be quite formal about it. But I told her I am in Istanbul on academic research with a colleague and that we need five days in Budapest to conclude our research. I explained that you are an American professor and that we are writing a joint article.’

“‘On what?’ I asked with some apprehension.

“‘On labor relations in Europe under the Ottoman occupation.’

“‘Not bad. But I don’t know a thing about that.’

“‘It’s all right.’ Helen brushed some lint from the knee of her neat black skirt. ‘I’ll tell you a little about it.’

“‘You do take after your father.’ Her casual erudition had reminded me suddenly of Rossi, and the comment was out of my mouth before I’d thought about it. I glanced quickly at her, afraid I had somehow offended. It struck me that this was the first time I’d found myself thinking of her quite naturally as Rossi’s daughter, as if at some point unknown even to myself I’d accepted the idea.

“Helen surprised me by looking sad. ‘It is a good argument for genetics over environment’ was all she said. ‘Anyway, Éva sounded annoyed, especially when I told her that you are an American. I knew she would be, because she always thinks I am impulsive and that I take too many risks. Of course, I do. And, of course, she needed to sound annoyed at first, to make it all right on the telephone.’

“‘To make it all right?’

“‘She has to think of her job and status. But she said she would fix something up for us, and I’m supposed to call her again tomorrow night. So that is that. She is very clever, my aunt, so I have no doubt she will find a way. We will get some round-trip tickets to Budapest from Istanbul, maybe the airplane, when we hear more.’

“I sighed inwardly, thinking of the probable expense and wondering how long my funds would hold out in this chase, but I said only, ‘It seems to me she’ll have to be a miracle worker to get me into Hungary and keep us out of trouble along the way.’

“Helen laughed. ‘Sheis a miracle worker. That is why I am not at home working in the cultural center in my mother’s village.’

“We went downstairs again and, as if by mutual consent, drifted out to the street. ‘There’s not much to do just now,’ I mused. ‘We’ve got to wait until tomorrow for results from Turgut and your aunt. I have to say that I find all this waiting difficult. What shall we do, in the meantime?’

“Helen thought a minute, standing in the deepening gold light of the street. She had her gloves and hat firmly on again, but the low rays of sunlight picked out a little red in her black hair. ‘I would like to see more of this city,’ she said finally. ‘After all, I may never come here again. Shall we go back to Hagia Sophia? We could walk around that area a little before dinner.’

“‘Yes, I’d like that too.’ We did not speak again during our walk to the great building, but as we drew near it and I saw its domes and minarets filling the streetscape again, I felt our silence deepen, as if we were walking closer together. I wondered whether Helen felt it, too, and whether it was the spell of the enormous church reaching out to us in our smallness. I was still pondering what Turgut had told us the day before-his belief that Dracula had somehow left a curse of vampirism in the great city. ‘Helen,’ I said, although I was half loath to break the quiet between us. ‘Don’t you think he could have been buried here-here in Istanbul? That would explain Sultan Mehmed’s anxiety about him after his death, wouldn’t it?’