Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

“Before I could write down even a note on this theory, which might involve tests beyond my own powers, the door on the other side of the stacks flew open, and a tall, well-built man came in, hurrying wildly past the books and stopping on the other side of the table where I worked. He had the air of a conscious intruder, and I felt sure he wasn’t one of the librarians. I also felt for some reason that I should rise to my feet, but out of a certain pride I couldn’t bring myself to; it might have seemed deferential, when the interruption had been sudden and rather rude.

“We looked each other in the face, and I was more startled than ever. The man was distinctly out of place in that esoteric setting, handsome and well-groomed in a swarthy Turkish or South Slavic way, with a drooping, heavy mustache and tailored dark clothes like a Western businessman’s. His eyes met mine belligerently, and their long lashes looked somehow disgusting in that stern face. His skin was sallow but beautifully unblemished, and his lips very red. ‘Sir,’ he said in a low, hostile voice, almost a growl of Turk-accented English. ‘I do not think you have proper permissions for this.’

“‘For what?’ My academic hackles rose at once.

“‘For this work of research. You are involved in material the Turkish government considers private Turkish archive. May I see your papers, please?’

“‘Who are you?’ I asked with equal coolness. ‘May I see yours?’

“He pulled a wallet out of his interior jacket pocket, slapped it open on the table in front of me, and snapped it shut again. I had just time to see an ivory card with a jumble of Turkish titles on it. The man’s hand was unpleasantly waxen and long-nailed, with a ridge of dark hair on the back. ‘Ministry of Cultural Resources,’ he said coldly. ‘I understand you do not have actual exchange arrangement with Turkish government to examine these materials. Is this true?’

“‘It most certainly is not.’ I produced for him a letter from the National Library, stating that I was to be permitted research rights in any of its divisions in Istanbul.

“‘Not good enough,’ he said, tossing it down on my papers. ‘Maybe you will need to come with me.’

“‘Where?’ I stood up, feeling safer on my feet now, but hoping he would not take my rising as compliance.

“‘To police, if necessary.’

“‘This is outrageous.’ When in bureaucratic doubt, I had learned, raise your voice. ‘I am a doctoral candidate at Oxford University and a citizen of the United Kingdom. I registered with the university here the day I arrived and received this letter as proof of my status. I will not be questioned by the police-or by you.’

“‘I see.’ He smiled in a way that curled my stomach into a knot. I had read a little about Turkish prisons and their occasionally Western inmates, and my situation struck me as precarious, although I didn’t understand what kind of trouble I could possibly be in. I hoped one of the shuffling librarians had heard me and would come in to quiet us down. Then I realized that they would certainly have been responsible for admitting this character, with his intimidating business card, into my presence. Perhaps he was actually someone important. He leaned forward. ‘Let me see what you are doing here. Move, please.’

“I stepped aside, reluctantly, and he bent over my work, slapping shut my dictionaries to read their covers, still with that disquieting smile. He was a massive presence across the table, and I noticed he had an odd smell, like a cologne used not quite successfully to cover something disagreeable. At last he picked up the map I had been working over, his hands suddenly gentle, handling it almost tenderly. He looked at it as if he didn’t need to examine it long to know what it was, although I thought that must be a bluff. ‘This is your archival material, yes?’

“‘Yes,’ I said angrily.

“‘This is very valuable possession of Turkish state. I do not believe that you will be needing it for foreign purposes. And this piece of paper, this little map, brings you whole way from your English university to Istanbul?’

“I considered retorting that I had other business as well, to throw him off my scholar’s track, but realized at once that this might invite further questioning. ‘Yes, in a nutshell.’

“‘Nutshell?’ he said, more mildly. ‘Well, I think you will find this temporarily confiscated. What a shame for foreign researcher.’

“I boiled, standing there, so close to my solution, and felt thankful that I hadn’t brought with me that morning any of my own careful copies of old maps of the Carpathians, which I’d meant to start comparing to this map the next day. They were hidden in my suitcase at the hotel. ‘You have absolutely no right to confiscate material I’ve already been given permission to work on,’ I said, gritting my teeth. ‘I will certainly take this up with the National Library immediately. And with the British embassy. Anyway, what possible objection can you have to my studying these documents? They are obscure pieces of medieval history. They have nothing to do with the interests of the Turkish government, I’m sure.’

“The bureaucrat stood looking away from me, as if the spires of Hagia Sophia presented an interesting new angle he’d never had occasion to see before. ‘It is for your own good,’ he said dispassionately. ‘Much better to let someone else work on that. Some other time.’ He remained quite still there, head turned toward the window, almost as if he wanted me to follow his gaze to something. I had a childish feeling that I shouldn’t, because it might be a trick, so I looked at him, instead, waiting. And then I saw, as if he meant the greasy daylight to fall on it, his neck above his expensive shirt collar. On the side of it, in the deepest flesh of a muscular throat, were two brown-scabbed puncture marks, not fresh but not fully healed, as if he had been stabbed by twin thorns, or mutilated at knifepoint.

“I stepped back, away from the table, thinking I’d lost my mind with all my morbid readings, that I’d actually come unhinged. But the daylight was quite ordinary, the man in his dark wool suit perfectly real, down to the smell of unwash and perspiration and something else under his cologne. Nothing disappeared or changed. I couldn’t drag my eyes from those two half-healed little wounds. After a few seconds he turned back from the absorbing view, as if satisfied with what he had seen-or what I had-and smiled again. ‘For your own good, Professor.’

“I stood there wordlessly while he left the room with the map rolled up in his hand, and listened to his steps dying away on the stairs. A few minutes later one of the elderly librarians came in, a man with bushy gray hair, carrying two old folios, which he began to put away on a low shelf. ‘Excuse me,’ I said to him, my voice almost stuck in my throat. ‘Excuse me, but this is perfectly outrageous.’ He looked up at me, puzzled. ‘Who was that man? That bureaucrat?’

“‘Bureaucrat?’ The librarian faltered over my word.

“‘I must have an official letter from you at once about my right to work in this archive.’

“‘But you have all the right to work here,’ he said soothingly. ‘I have registered you here myself.’

“‘I know, I know. So you must catch him and make him return the map.’

“‘Catch who?’

“‘The man from the Ministry of-the man who just came up here. Didn’t you let him in?’

“He looked at me curiously from under his gray thatch. ‘Someone came in now? No one has come in for the last three hours. I am down at the entrance myself. Unfortunately we have few who do research here.’

“‘The man -’ I said, and stopped. I saw myself, suddenly, a crazy gesturing foreigner. ‘He took my map. I mean the archive’s map.’