Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

“‘It looks fine to me,’ I ventured.

“‘Oh, it is not bad. You will especially enjoy the choice of cold or cold water, and the factory food.’ Helen was paying the driver from a selection of large silver and copper coins.

“‘I thought Hungarian food was wonderful,’ I said consolingly. ‘I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere. Goulash and paprika, and so on.’

“Helen rolled her eyes. ‘Everyone always mentions goulash if you sayHungary. Just as everyone mentions Dracula if you sayTransylvania. ’ She laughed. ‘But you can ignore the hotel food. Wait until we eat at my aunt’s house, or my mother’s, and then we will discuss Hungarian cooking.’

“‘I thought your mother and aunt were Romanian,’ I objected, and was immediately sorry; her face froze.

“‘You may think whatever you like, Yankee,’ she told me peremptorily, and picked up her own suitcase before I could take it for her.

“The hotel lobby was quiet and cool, lined with marble and gilt from a more prosperous age. I found it pleasant and saw nothing for Helen to be ashamed of in it. A moment later I realized that I was in my first communist country-on the wall behind the front desk were photographs of government officials, and the dark blue uniform of all the hotel personnel had something self-consciously proletarian about it. Helen checked us in and handed me my room key. ‘My aunt has arranged things very well,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘And there is a telephone message from her to say that she will meet us here at seven o’clock this evening to take us out to dinner. We will go to register at the conference first, and attend a reception there at five o’clock.’

“I was disappointed by the news that the aunt would not be taking us home for her own Hungarian food and a glimpse of the life of the bureaucratic elite, but I reminded myself hurriedly that I was, after all, an American and should not expect every door to fly open to me here. I might be a risk, a liability, or at the least an embarrassment. In fact, I thought, I would do well to keep a low profile and make as little trouble as possible for my hosts. I was lucky to be here at all, and the last thing I wanted was any problem for Helen or her family.

“My room upstairs was plain and clean, with incongruous touches of former grandeur in the fat bodies of gilded cherubs in the upper corners and a marble basin in the shape of a great mollusk shell. As I washed my hands there and combed my hair in the mirror above it, I looked from the simperingputti to the narrow, tightly made bed, which could have been an army cot, and grinned. My room was on a different floor from Helen’s this time-the aunt’s foresight?-but at least I would have those outdated cherubs and their Austro-Hungarian wreaths for company.

“Helen was waiting for me in the lobby, and she led me silently through the grand doors of the hotel into the grand street. She was wearing her pale blue blouse again-in the course of our travels, I had gradually become rather rumpled while she managed still to look washed and ironed, which I took for some kind of East European talent-and she had pinned her hair up in a soft roll in the back. She was lost in thought as we strolled toward the university. I didn’t dare ask what she was thinking, but after a while she told me of her own volition. ‘It is so odd to come back here very suddenly like this,’ she said, glancing at me.

“‘And with a strange American?’

“‘And with a strange American,’ she murmured, which didn’t sound like a compliment.

“The university was made up of impressive buildings, some of them echoes of the fine library we’d seen earlier, and I began to feel some trepidation when Helen gestured toward our destination, a large classical hall bordered around the second story with statues. I stopped to crane up at them and was able to read some of their names, spelled in their Magyar versions: Plato, Descartes, Dante, all of them crowned with laurels and draped in classical robes. The other figures were less familiar to me: Szent István, Mátyás Corvinus, János Hunyadi. They brandished scepters or bore mighty crowns aloft.

“‘Who are they?’ I asked Helen.

“‘I’ll tell you tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Come on-it’s after five now.’

“We entered the hall with several animated young people I took to be students and made our way to a huge room on the second floor. My stomach lurched a little; the place was full of professors in black or gray or tweed suits and crooked ties-they had to be professors-eating from little plates of red peppers and white cheese and drinking something that smelled like a strong medication. They were all historians, I thought with a groan, and although I was supposed to be one of them, my heart was sinking fast. Helen was immediately surrounded by a knot of colleagues, and I caught a glimpse of her shaking hands in a comradely way with a man whose white pompadour reminded me of some kind of dog. I had almost decided to go pretend to look out the window at the magnificent church facade opposite when Helen’s hand grasped my elbow for a split second-was that wise of her?-and steered me into the crowd.

“‘This is Professor Sándor, the chairman of the history department at the University of Budapest and our greatest medievalist,’ she told me, indicating the white dog, and I hurried to introduce myself. My hand was crushed in a grip of iron, and Professor Sándor expressed his great honor at having me join the conference. I wondered briefly if he was the friend of the mysterious aunt. To my surprise, he spoke a clear, if slow, English. ‘The pleasure is all ours,’ he told me warmly. ‘We expect happily your lecture tomorrow.’

“I expressed my reciprocal feeling of honor at being allowed to address the conference and was very careful not to catch Helen’s eye as I spoke.

“‘Excellent,’ Professor Sándor boomed. ‘We have a big respect for the universities of your country. May our two countries live in peace and friendship for every year.’ He saluted me with his glass of the medicinal clear stuff I’d been smelling, and I hastened to return the salute, since a glass of it had magically appeared in my hand. ‘And now, if there is something we can do to make your stay in our beloved Budapest more happier, you must say it.’ His great dark eyes, bright in an aging face and contrasting weirdly with his white mane, reminded me for a moment of Helen’s, and I took a sudden liking to him.

“‘Thank you, Professor,’ I told him sincerely, and he slapped my back with a big paw.

“‘Please, come, eat, drink, and we will talk.’ Right after this, however, he vanished to other duties, and I found myself in the midst of eager questions from the other members of the faculty and visiting scholars, some of whom looked even younger than I. They clustered around me and Helen, and gradually I heard among their voices a babble of French and German, and some other language that might have been Russian. It was a lively group, a charming group, actually, and I began to forget my nervousness. Helen introduced me with a distant graciousness that struck me as just the right note for the occasion, explaining smoothly the nature of our work together and the article we would soon be publishing in an American journal. The eager faces crowded around her, too, with quick questions in Magyar, and a little flush came to her face as she shook hands and even kissed the cheeks of a few of her old acquaintances. They had not forgotten her, clearly-but then how could they? I thought. I noticed that she was one of several women in the room, some older than she and a few quite young, but she eclipsed all of them. She was taller, more vivid, more poised, with her broad shoulders, her beautifully shaped head and heavy curls, her look of animated irony. I turned to one of the Hungarian faculty members so that I would not stare at her; the fiery drink was starting to course through my veins.