Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

“‘The next evening he was there in the same place, as if he had never moved from the spot where I had left him. I ran to him and he opened his arms to me and caught me. When we could not kiss each other anymore, he spread his jacket on the ground and we lay down together. In that hour, I learned about love, one moment at a time. Up close, his eyes were as blue as the sky. He put flowers in my braids and kissed my fingers. I was surprised by many things he did, and things I did, and I knew it was wrong, a sin, but I felt the joy of heaven opening around us.

“‘After that there were three nights until he left. We met earlier each evening. I told my mother and father any excuse I could think of, and I always came home with herbs from the woods as if I had gone there to gather them. Every night Bartolomeo told me he loved me and begged me to come with him when he left the village. I wanted to, but I was afraid of the large world he came from, and I could not imagine how I would escape my father. Every night I asked him why he couldn’t stay with me in the village, and he shook his head and said he had to return to his home and his work.

“‘On the last night before he left the village, I began to cry as soon as we touched each other. He held me and kissed my hair. I had never met any man so gentle and kind. When I had stopped crying, he drew from his finger a little silver ring with a seal on it. I don’t know for certain, but I think now it was the seal of his university. He wore it on the smallest finger of his left hand. He took it off and put it on my ring finger. Then he asked me to marry him. He must have been studying his dictionary, because I understood him right away.

“‘At first it seemed so impossible an idea that I simply began to cry again-I was very young-but then I agreed. He made me understand that he would return for me in four weeks. He would go to Greece to take care of something there-what, I could not understand. Then he would come back for me and would give my father some money to make him happy. I tried to explain that I had no dowry, but he would not listen. Smiling, he showed me the dagger and coin I had given him, and then made a circle of his hands around my face and kissed me.

“‘I should have felt happy, but I had a sense that evil spirits were present, and I was afraid something might happen to keep him from returning. Every moment we spent together that evening was very sweet, because I thought each was the last. He was so confident, so sure that we would see each other again soon. I could not say good-bye until it was almost dark in the woods, but I began to fear my father’s anger and at last I kissed Bartolomeo one more time, made sure the garlic flowers were in his pocket, and left him. I turned back again and again. Each time I looked back, I saw him standing in the woods, holding his hat in his hand. He looked very lonely.

“‘I cried as I walked along, and I took the little ring off my finger, kissing it, and knotted it in my kerchief. When I reached home my father was angry and wanted to know where I had been after dark without permission. I told him that my friend Maria had lost a goat and I had been helping her search for it. I went to bed with a heavy heart, feeling sometimes hopeful and then sad again.

“‘The next morning I heard that Bartolomeo had left the village, traveling with a farmer in his cart toward Târgoviste. The day was very long and sad for me, and in the evening I went to our meeting place in the woods, to be alone there. Seeing it made me weep again. I sat on our rocks and finally lay down where we had lain every evening. I put my face against the earth and sobbed. Then I felt my hand brush against something among the ferns, and to my surprise I found there a package of letters in envelopes. I could not read the handwriting on them, where they were addressed to someone, but on the flap of each his beautiful name was printed, as in a book. I opened some of them and kissed his writing, although I could see that they were not addressed to me. I wondered for a moment if they could have been written to another woman, but I put this thought out of my mind as soon as it came. I realized the letters must have fallen out of his knapsack when he had opened it to show me he had the dagger and coin I’d given him.

“‘I thought of trying to mail them to Oxford in the island of England, but I could not think of any way to send them unnoticed. Also, I didn’t know how I could pay to send something. It would cost money to mail a package to his faraway island, and I had never owned any money apart from the little coin I had given to Bartolomeo. I decided to save the letters to give him when he returned for me.

“‘Four weeks passed very, very slowly. I made notches on a tree near our secret place, so that I could keep track of the days. I worked in the field, helped my mother, spun and wove for our next winter’s clothing, went to church, and listened wherever I could for news of Bartolomeo. At first the old men talked about him a little, and shook their heads over his interest in vampires. ”No good can come of that,“ one of them would say, and the rest would agree. It gave me a terrible mixture of happiness and pain to hear this. I was glad to listen to someone else talking about him, since I could never speak a word to anyone, but it also sent a chill through me to think that he might be attracting the attention ofpricolici.

“‘I wondered constantly what would happen when he came back. Would he walk up to my father’s door, knock on it, and ask my father for my hand in marriage? I imagined how surprised my family would be. They would all gather at the door and stare while Bartolomeo gave them gifts and I kissed them good-bye. Then he would lead me away to a waiting wagon, maybe even to an automobile. We would ride out of the village and across lands I could not imagine, beyond the mountains, beyond the great city where my sister Éva lived. I hoped we would stop to see Éva, because I had always loved her best. Bartolomeo would love her, too, because she was strong and brave, a traveler like him.

“‘I passed four weeks in this way, and by end of the fourth week I was tired and could not eat or sleep very much. When I had cut almost four weeks of notches in my tree, I began to wait and watch for a sign of his return. Whenever a wagon came into the village, the sound of its wheels made my heart jump. I went for water three times a day, watching and listening for news. I told myself that he probably would not come after exactly four weeks, and that I should wait a week more. After the fifth week, I felt ill and I was certain that the prince of thepricolici had killed him. Once I even had the thought that my beloved might return to me in the form of a vampire himself. I ran to the church in the middle of the day and prayed in front of the icon of the blessed Virgin to take away this horrible idea.

“‘In the sixth and seventh weeks I began to give up hope. In the eighth week I knew suddenly by many signs I had heard about among the married women that I would have a child. Then I cried silently in my sisters’ bed at night and I felt the whole world, even God and the Holy Mother, had forgotten about me. I did not know what had happened to Bartolomeo, but I believed it must have been something terrible, because I knew he had truly loved me. In secret I gathered the herbs and roots that were said to prevent a child from coming into the world, but it was no use. My child was strong inside me, stronger than I was, and I began to love that strength in spite of myself. When I secretly placed my hand on my belly, I felt Bartolomeo’s love and I believed he could not have forgotten about me.

“‘I knew I had to leave the village before I brought shame on my family and my father’s anger on myself. I thought of trying to find the old woman who had given me the coin. Perhaps she would take me in and let me cook and clean for her. She had come from one of the villages above the Arges, near the castle of thepricolic, but I did not know which village, or whether she was still alive. There were bears and wolves in the mountains, and many evil spirits, and I did not dare wander through the forest all alone.