Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

“I began at once to gather up the scattered documents, and my worst fears were immediately confirmed. ‘The original maps are gone,’ I reported gloomily. We searched the stacks, but the maps of that strange region that looked like a long-tailed dragon had vanished. We could only conclude that the vampire had hidden them on his person even before we’d arrived. It was a dreary thought. We had copies, of course, in both Rossi’s hand and Turgut’s, but the originals represented to me a key to Rossi’s whereabouts, a closer link than any other I’d handled so far.

“In addition to the discouragement of losing this treasure, there came to me the thought that the evil librarian might unlock its secrets before we did. If Rossi was at Dracula’s tomb, wherever it lay, the evil librarian now had a fair chance of beating us there. I felt more than ever the twin urgency and impossibility of finding my beloved adviser. At least-it came to me again, strangely-Helen was now solidly on my side.

“Turgut and Selim had been conferring beside the sick man, and now they turned to ask him a question, it seemed, for he tried to raise himself and pointed feebly to the back of the stacks. Selim vanished, returning after a few minutes with a small book. It was bound in red leather, rather worn, with a gold inscription in Arabic on the front. He set it on a nearby table and searched through it for some time before beckoning to Turgut, who was folding his jacket to make a pillow for his friend’s head. The man seemed a little more comfortable now. It was on the tip of my tongue to suggest we call an ambulance, but I felt Turgut must know what he was doing. He had risen to join Selim, and they conferred earnestly for a few minutes while Helen and I avoided each other’s eyes, both of us hoping for some discovery, and both fearing further disappointment. Finally, Turgut called us over.

“‘This is what Selim Aksoy wished to show us here this morning,’ he said gravely. ‘I do not know, in truth, whether it has any bearing on our search. However, I will read it to you. This is a volume compiled in the early nineteenth century by some editors whose names I have not seen before, historians of Istanbul. They collected here all the accounts they could find of life in Istanbul in the first years of our city-that is, beginning in 1453, when Sultan Mehmed took the city for his own and proclaimed it the capital of his empire.’

“He pointed to a page of beautiful Arabic, and I thought for the hundredth time how terrible it was that human languages and even alphabets were separated from one another by this frustrating Babel of differences, so that when I glanced at a page of Ottoman printing, my comprehension was immediately caught in a bramble of symbols as impenetrable to me as a hedge of magic briars. ‘This is a passage that Mr. Aksoy remembered from one of his researches here. The author is unknown, and it is an account of some events in the year 1477-yes, my friends, the year after Vlad Dracula was killed in battle in Wallachia. Here it tells how in that year there were cases of the plague in Istanbul, a plague that caused the imams to bury some of the corpses with stakes through their hearts. Then it tells about the entrance into the city of a party of monks from the Carpathians-this is what made Mr. Aksoy remember the volume-in a wagon pulled by mules. The monks begged for asylum in a monastery in Istanbul and resided there for nine days and nine nights. That is the whole account, and the connections within it are very unclear-it says nothing more about the monks or what became of them. It was this wordCarpathian that my friend Selim wished us to know about here.’

“Selim Aksoy nodded emphatically, but I could not help sighing. The passage had a weird resonance; it gave me a feeling of unquiet without shedding any light on our problems. The year 1477-that was indeed strange, but it could have been a coincidence. Curiosity prompted me to ask Turgut a question, however. ‘If the city was already under the rule of the Ottomans, why was there a monastery for the monks to be lodged in?’

“‘A good question, my friend,’ Turgut observed soberly. ‘But I must tell you there were a number of churches and monasteries in Istanbul from the very beginning of the Ottoman rule. The sultan was most gracious in his permissions to them.’

“Helen shook her head. ‘After he had allowed his army to destroy most of the churches in the city, or had taken them for mosques.’

“‘It is true that when Sultan Mehmed conquered the city, he allowed his troops to pillage it for three days,’ Turgut admitted. ‘But he would not have done this if the city had surrendered to him instead of resisting-in fact, he offered them a completely peaceful settlement. It is also written that when he entered Constantinople and saw the damage his soldiers had done-the buildings they had defaced, the churches they had defiled, and the citizens they had slain-he wept for the beautiful city. From this time he allowed a number of churches to function and gave many advantages to the Byzantine inhabitants.’

“‘He also enslaved more than fifty thousand of them,’ Helen put in dryly. ‘Don’t forget about that.’

“Turgut gave her an admiring smile. ‘Madam, you are too much for me. But I meant only to demonstrate that our sultans were not monsters. Once they had conquered an area, they were often rather lenient, for those times. It was just the conquering that was not so delightfully done.’ He pointed to the far wall of the archive. ‘There is His Gloriousness Mehmed himself, if you would like to greet him.’ I went to look, although Helen stood stubbornly where she was. The framed reproduction-apparently a cheap copy of a watercolor-showed a solid, seated man in a white-and-red turban. He was fair skinned and delicately bearded, with calligraphic eyebrows and hazel eyes. He held a single rose up to his great hooked nose, sniffing it and gazing off into the distance. He looked to me more like a Sufi mystic than a ruthless conqueror.

“‘It’s a rather surprising image,’ I said.

“‘Yes. He was a devoted patron of the arts and architecture, and he built many lovely buildings here.’ Turgut tapped his chin with a large finger. ‘Well, my friends, what do you think of this account Selim Aksoy has discovered?’

“‘It’s interesting,’ I said politely, ‘but I can’t see how it helps us find the tomb.’

“‘I can’t see that either,’ Turgut admitted. ‘However, I note a certain similarity here between this passage and the fragment of a letter I read to you this morning. The disturbances in the tomb at Snagov, whatever they were, occurred in the same year-1477. We know already that that is the year after Vlad Dracula died, and that it was a group of monks who were so concerned about something at Snagov. Couldn’t these have been the same monks, or some group connected with Snagov?’

“‘Possibly,’ I admitted, ‘but that is conjecture. This account says only that the monks were from the Carpathians. The Carpathians must have been full of monasteries in that era. How could we be sure they were from the monastery at Snagov? Helen, what do you think?’

“I must have caught her by surprise, because I found she was looking directly at me with a kind of wistfulness I had never seen in her face before. The impression vanished immediately, however, and I thought I might have imagined it, or that perhaps she was remembering her mother and our imminent trip to Hungary. Wherever her thoughts had been, she rallied at once. ‘Yes, there were many monasteries in the Carpathians. Paul is right-we cannot connect the two groups without more information.’

“I thought Turgut looked disappointed, and he began to say something, but just then we were interrupted by a wheezing gasp. It was Mr. Erozan, still resting on Turgut’s jacket on the floor. ‘He’s fainted!’ Turgut cried. ‘Here we are chatting like magpies -’ He held the garlic to his friend’s nose again, and the man spluttered and revived a little. ‘Quick, we must take him home. Professor, madam, help me. We will call a taxicab and carry him to my apartment. My wife and I can care for him there. Selim will stay here with the archive-it must open very soon.’ He gave Aksoy a few rapid orders in Turkish.