Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

“‘Hugh said as much,’ I muttered.

“‘What?’

“‘I’ll explain later. Go on.’

“‘Well, I didn’t want to leave any stone unturned here, so I read through a huge mass of material on the history of Wallachia and Transylvania. It took me several months. I made myself read even what was in Romanian. Of course, a lot of documents and histories about Transylvania are in Hungarian, from Hungary ’s centuries of domination, but there are some Romanian sources as well. This is a collection of texts of folk songs from Transylvania and Wallachia, published by an anonymous collector. Some of them are much more than folk songs-they are epic poems.’

“I felt a little disappointed; I had been expecting some kind of rare historical document, something about Dracula. ‘Do any of them mention our friend?’

“‘No, I’m afraid not. But there was one song in here that stayed in my mind, and I thought of it again when you told me about what Selim Aksoy wanted us to see in the archive in Istanbul-you know, that passage about the monks from the Carpathians entering the city of Istanbul with their wagon and mules, remember? I wish now that we had asked Turgut to write down a translation for us.’ She began to turn through the folio very carefully. Some of the long texts were illustrated at the top with woodcuts, mostly ornaments with a look of folk embroideries, but also a few crude trees, houses, and animals. The type was neatly printed, but the book itself had a rough, homemade quality. Helen ran her finger along the first lines of the poems, her lips moving slowly, and shook her head. ‘Some of these are so sad,’ she said. ‘You know, we Romanians are different, at heart, from Hungarians.’

“‘How is that?’

“‘Well, there is a Hungarian proverb that says, ”The Magyar takes his pleasures sadly.“ And it is true- Hungary is full of sad songs, too, and the villages are full of violence, drinking, suicide. But Romanians are even sadder, even sadder. We are sad not from life but by nature, I think.’ She bent her head over the old book, her eyelashes heavy on her cheek. ‘Listen to this-this is typical of these songs.’ She translated haltingly, and the result was something like this, although this particular song is a different one and comes from a little volume of nineteenth-century translations that is now in my personal library:

The child that is dead was ever sweet and fair.

Now younger sister the same smile doth wear.

She saith to their mother: “Oh, Mother, dear,

My good dead sister told me not to fear.

The life she might not live she gives to me,

That I might bring fresh happiness to thee.“

But, nay, the mother could not raise her head,

And sat a-weeping for the one now dead.

“‘Good God,’ I said with a shudder. ‘It’s easy to see how a culture that could create a song like that believed in vampires-produced them, even.’

“‘Yes,’ Helen said, shaking her head, but she was already searching further through the volume. ‘Wait.’ She paused suddenly. ‘This could have been it.’ She was pointing to a short verse with an ornate woodcut above it that seemed to depict buildings and animals enmeshed in a prickly forest.

“I sat in suspense for a few long minutes while Helen read in silence, and at last she looked up. There was a spark of excitement in her face; her eyes shone. ‘Listen to this-as well as I can translate.’ And here, I reproduce for you an exact translation, which I have kept these twenty years in my papers:

They rode to the gates, up to the great city.

They rode to the great city from the land of death.

“We are men of God, men from the Carpathians.

We are monks and holy men, but we bring only evil news.

We bring news of a plague to the great city.

Serving our master, we come weeping for his death.“

They rode up to the gates and the city wept with them

When they came in.

“A shudder went through me at this weird verse, but I had to object. ‘This is very general. The Carpathians are mentioned, but they must show up in dozens or even hundreds of old texts. And ”the great city“ could mean anything. Maybe it means the City of God, the kingdom of heaven.’

“Helen shook her head. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘For the people of the Balkans and Central Europe-Christian and Muslim-the great city has always been Constantinople, unless you count the people who made pilgrimages to Jerusalem or Mecca over the centuries. And the mention of a plague and monks-it seems to me somehow connected to the story in Selim Aksoy’s passage. Couldn’t the master they mentioned be Vlad Tepes himself?’

“‘I suppose,’ I said doubtfully, ‘but I wish we had more to go on. How old do you think this song is?’

“‘That’s always very hard to judge in the case of folk lyrics.’ Helen looked thoughtful. ‘This volume was printed in 1790, as you can see, but there is no publisher’s name or place-name in it. Folk songs can survive two or three or four hundred years easily, so these could be centuries older than the book. The song could date back to the late fifteenth century, or it could be even older, which would defeat our purposes.’

“‘The woodcut is curious,’ I said, looking more closely.

“‘This book is full of them,’ Helen murmured. ‘I remember being struck by them when I first looked through it. This one seems to have nothing to do with the poem-you’d think it would have been illustrated by a praying monk or a high-walled city, something like that.’

“‘Yes,’ I said slowly, ‘but look at it up close.’ We bent over the tiny illustration, our heads nearly touching above it. ‘I wish we had a magnifying glass,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t it look to you as if this forest-or thicket, whatever it is-has things hidden in it? There’s no great city, but if you look carefully here you can see a building like a church, with a cross on top of a dome, and next to it -’

“‘Some little animal.’ She narrowed her eyes. Then, ‘My God,’ she said. ‘It’s a dragon.’

“I nodded, and we hung over it, hardly breathing. The tiny rough shape was dreadfully familiar-outspread wings, tail curling in a minute loop. I didn’t need to get out for comparison the book stored in my briefcase. ‘What does this mean?’ The sight of it, even in miniature, made my heart pound uncomfortably.

“‘Wait.’ Helen was peering at the woodcut, her face an inch from the page. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said. ‘I can hardly see it, but there is a word here, I think, spaced out among the trees, one letter at a time. They’re very small, but I’m sure these are letters.’

“‘Drakulya?’ I said, as quietly as I could.

“She shook her head. ‘No. It could be a name, though-Ivi-Ivireanu. I don’t know what that is. It is not a word I have ever seen, but ”u“ is a common ending for Romanian names. What on earth is this about?’

“I sighed. ‘I don’t know, but I think your instinct is right-this page has some connection with Dracula, otherwise the dragon wouldn’t be there. Not that dragon, anyway.’

“We glanced helplessly at each other. The room, so pleasant and inviting half an hour before, looked dismal to me now, a mausoleum of forgotten knowledge.

“‘The librarians know nothing about this book,’ Helen said. ‘I remember asking them about it, because it is such a rarity.’

“‘Well, we can’t solve this either, then,’ I said at last. ‘Let’s at least take a translation with us, so we know what we’ve seen.’ I took down her dictation on a sheet of notebook paper and made a hasty sketch of the woodcut. Helen was looking at her watch.

“‘I must return to the hotel,’ she said.

“‘Me, too, or I’ll miss Hugh James.’ We gathered our belongings and replaced the book on its shelf with all the reverence due a relic.