Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

“He picked up the bottle of Tokay, which was empty, and set it down again with a sigh. ‘I was nearly done with the whole ordeal, and we’d set a wedding date for the end of June. The night before my last examination, I stayed up until the wee hours looking over my notes. I knew I’d covered everything I needed to already, but I simply couldn’t stop myself. I was working in a corner of the library in my college, sort of tucked away behind some bookshelves where I didn’t have to watch the other few madmen in there looking through their own notes.

“‘There are some awfully nice books in those little libraries, and I let myself get distracted for a moment or two by a volume of Dryden’s sonnets just a hand’s reach away. Then I made myself put it back, thinking I’d better go out and have a cigarette and try to concentrate again afterward. I tucked the book back into the shelf and went to the courtyard. It was a lovely spring night, and I stood there thinking about Elspeth and the cottage she was fixing up for us, and about my best friend-would have been my best man-who’d died over the Ploiesti oil fields with the Americans, and then I went back up to the library. To my surprise, Dryden was lying there on my desk as if I’d never put it away, and I thought I must be getting pretty noddleheaded with all the work. So I turned to put it up, but I saw there was no space for it. It had been right next to Dante, I was sure, but now there was a different book there, a book that had a very old-looking spine with a little creature engraved on it. I pulled it out and it fell open in my hands to-well, you know.’

“His friendly face was pale now, and he searched first his shirt and then his pants pockets until he found a package of cigarettes. ‘You don’t smoke?’ He lit one and drew heavily on it. ‘I was caught by the appearance of the book, its apparent age, the menacing look of the dragon-everything that struck you, too, about yours. There were no librarians there at three in the morning, so I went down to the catalog and dug around a bit by myself, but I learned only Vlad Tepes’s name and lineage. Since there was no library stamp in the book, I took it home with me.

“‘I slept poorly and couldn’t concentrate in the least on my examination the next morning; all I could think of was getting to the other libraries and perhaps to London to see what I could find out. But I didn’t have time, and when I went up for my wedding, I took the little book and kept looking at it at odd moments. Elspeth caught me with it, and when I explained she didn’t like it, not a bit. That was five days to our wedding and yet I couldn’t stop thinking about the book, and talking to her about it, too, until she told me not to.

“‘Then one morning-it was two days to the wedding-I had a sudden inspiration. You see, there’s a great house not too far from my parents’ village, a Jacobean pile people come to see on bus tours. I’d always thought it sort of a bore on our school trips, but I remembered that the nobleman who’d built it had been a book collector and had things from all over the world. Since I couldn’t go to London until after the wedding, I thought I’d get myself into the house library, which is famous, and poke around, perhaps even find something on Transylvania. I told my parents I was going for a walk, and I knew they’d assume I was going to see Elsie.

“‘It was a rainy morning-foggy, too, and cold. The housekeeper at the great house said they weren’t open for tours that day, but she let me come in to look at the library. She’d heard about the wedding in the village, knew my grandmother, and brewed me a cup of tea. By the time I had my mackintosh off and had found twenty shelves of books from that old Jacobean’s Grand Tour, which had reached rather farther east than most, I’d forgotten everything else.

“‘I turned through all these wonders, and others he had collected in England, perhaps after his tour, until I came across a history of Hungary and Transylvania, and in it I found a mention of Vlad Tepes, and then another, and finally, to my joy and astonishment, I came across an account of Vlad’s burial at Lake Snagov, before the altar of a church he had refurbished there. This account was a legend taken down by an English adventurer to the region-he called himself simply ”A Traveller“ on the title page, and he was a contemporary of the Jacobean collector. This would have been about 130 years after Vlad’s death, you see.

“‘”A Traveller“ had visited the monastery in Snagov in 1605. He had talked a good deal with the monks there, and they had told him that according to legend a great book, a treasure of the monastery, had been placed on the altar during Vlad’s funeral, and the monks present at the ceremony had signed their names in it, and those who could not write had drawn a dragon in honor of the Order of the Dragon. No mention, unfortunately, of what had happened to the book after that. But I found this most remarkable. Then the Traveller said that he asked to look at the tomb, and the monks showed him a flat stone in the floor before the altar. It had a portrait of Vlad Drakulya painted on it, and Latin words across it-perhaps painted also, since the Traveller didn’t mention engraving and was struck by the lack of the usual cross to mark the gravestone. The epitaph, which I copied down with care-out of what instinct I didn’t know-was in Latin.’ Hugh dropped his voice, glanced behind him, and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on our table.

“‘After I’d written it down and struggled with it a while, I read my translation aloud: ”Reader, unbury him with a -“ You know how it goes. The rain was still coming down hard outside, and a window that had got loose somewhere in the library slammed open and shut, so I felt a breath of damp air nearby. I must have been jumpy, because I knocked over my teacup and a drop of tea spilled on the book. While I was wiping this up and feeling dreadful about my clumsiness, I noticed my watch-it was already one o’clock and I knew I ought to get home to dinner. There didn’t seem to be anything else relevant to look at there, so I put away the books, thanked the housekeeper, and went back down the lanes between all those June roses.

“‘When I got to my parents’ house, expecting to see them and perhaps Elsie gathering at the table, I found things in an uproar. Several friends and neighbors were there, and my mother was weeping. My father looked very upset.’ Here Hugh lit another cigarette, and the match shook in the gathering darkness. ‘He put a hand on my shoulder and told me there had been an automobile accident on the main road as Elsie was driving a borrowed car back from some shopping in a nearby town. It had been raining hard, and they thought she’d seen something and swerved. She was not dead, thank the Lord, but badly injured. Her parents had gone at once to the hospital and mine had been waiting at home for me, to tell me.

“‘I found a car and drove there so fast I almost had an accident myself. You don’t want to hear all this, I’m sure, but-she was lying with her head bandaged and her eyes wide-open. That’s how she looked. She lives at a sort of home now, where she’s very well treated, but she doesn’t speak or understand much, or feed herself. The awful thing about this is…’ His voice began to tremble. ‘The awful thing is, I’ve always assumed it was an accident, really an accident, and now that I’ve heard your stories-Rossi’s friend Hedges, and your-your cat-I don’t know what to think.’ He smoked hard.

“I let out a deep breath. ‘I’m very, very sorry. I wish I knew what to say. What a terrible thing for you.’

“‘Thank you.’ He seemed to be trying to recover some of his usual demeanor. ‘It’s been some years now, you know, and time helps. It’s simply that -’