Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

We’re slowing for a town, with a chance to buy breakfast-I’ll desist for the moment and come back to this later.

Afternoon-Bucarest

I’m down for what would be a siesta if my mind weren’t in such a state of unrest and excitement. It’s accursedly hot here-I thought this would be a land of cool mountains, but if it is I haven’t reached any yet. Nice hotel, Bucarest is a sort of tiny Paris of the East, grand and small and a little faded, all at the same time. It must have been dashing in the Eighties and Nineties. It took me forever to find a cab, and then a hotel, but my rooms are fairly comfortable and I can rest and wash and think about what to do. I’m half inclined not to set down here what I’m about, but you’ll be so very perplexed by my ravings if I don’t that I think I must. To make it short and shocking, I’m on a quest of sorts, an historian’s hunt for Dracula-not Count Dracula of the romantic stage, but a real Dracula-Drakulya-Vlad III, a fifteenth-century tyrant who lived in Transylvania and Wallachia and dedicated himself to keeping the Ottoman Empire out of his lands as long as possible. I stopped in Istanbul the better part of a week to see an archive there that contains some documents about him collected by the Turks, and while there I found a most remarkable set of maps that I believe to be clues to the whereabouts of his tomb. I’ll explain to you at greater length when I’m home what sent me on this chase, and I simply have to beg your indulgence in the meantime. You can chalk it up to youth, you old sage, my setting out on this chase at all.

In any case, my stay in Istanbul turned dark at the end and has rather frightened me, although that will surely sound foolish at a distance. But I’m not easily put off a quest once I’ve begun, as you know, and I couldn’t help coming on here with copies I’ve made of those maps, to look for more information about Drakulya’s tomb. I should explain to you, at the very least, that he is supposed to have been buried in an island monastery in Lake Snagov, in western Roumania- Wallachia, the region is called. The maps I found in Istanbul, with his tomb clearly marked on them, show no island, no lake, and nothing that looks like western Roumania, as far as I can tell. It always seems to me a good idea to check the obvious first, since the obvious is sometimes the right answer. I’ve resolved, therefore-but here I’m sure you’re shaking your head over what you will call foolish stubbornness-to make my way to Lake Snagov with the maps and ascertain for myself that the tomb is not there. How I will go about that, I don’t yet know, but I can’t begin to be satisfied hunting elsewhere until I have ruled out this possibility. And, perhaps, after all, my maps are some kind of ancient hoax and I will find ample proof that the tyrant sleeps there and always has.

I must be in Greece by the fifth, so I have precious little time for this whole excursion. I only want to know if my maps fit anything at the site of the tomb. Why I need to know this, I cannot tell even you, dear man-I wish I knew, myself. I intend to conclude my Roumanian journey by visiting as much as I can of Wallachia and Transylvania. What comes to your mind when you think of the wordTransylvania,if you ponder it at all? Yes, as I thought-wisely, you don’t. But what comes tomymind are mountains of savage beauty, ancient castles, werewolves, and witches-a land of magical obscurity. How, in short, am I to believe I will still be in Europe, on entering such a realm? I shall let you know if it’s Europe or fairyland when I get there. First, Snagov-I set out tomorrow.

Your devoted friend,

Bartholomew Rossi

June 22

Lake Snagov

My dear friend,

I haven’t yet seen any place to post my first letter-to post it with the confidence, that is, that it will ever reach your hands-but I’ll go hopefully on here despite that, since a great deal has happened. I spent all day yesterday in Bucarest trying to locate good maps-I now have at least some road maps of Wallachia and Transylvania-and talking with everyone I could find at the university who might have some interest in the history of Vlad Tepes. No one here seems to want to discuss the subject, and I have the sense of their inwardly, if not outwardly, crossing themselves when I mention Dracula’s name. After my experiences in Istanbul, this makes me a little nervous, I confess, but I will press on for now.

In any case, yesterday I found a young professor of archaeology at the university who was kind enough to inform me that one of his colleagues, a Mr. Georgescu, has made a speciality of the history of Snagov and is digging out there this summer. Of course, I was tremendously excited to learn this and have decided to put myself, maps and bags and all, into the hands of a driver who can take me out there today; it is only some hours’ drive from Bucarest, he says, and we leave at one o’clock. I must go now to lunch somewhere-the little restaurants here are uncommonly nice, with glimpses of an Oriental luxury in their cuisine-before we depart.

Evening

My dear friend,

I can’t help continuing this spurious correspondence of ours-may it unfold itself under your eyes eventually-because it’s been such a remarkable day that I simply must talk with someone. I left Bucarest in a neat little taxicab of sorts, driven by an equally neat little man with whom I could barely exchange two words (Snagovbeing one of them). After a brief session with my road maps, and many reassuring pats on the shoulder (my shoulder, that is), we set off. It took us all of the afternoon. We puttered along roads mainly paved but very dusty, and through a lovely landscape mainly agrarian but occasionally forested, to reach Lake Snagov.

My first intimation of the place was the driver’s waving an excited hand, on which I looked out and saw only forest. This was just an introduction, however. I don’t quite know what I’d expected; I suppose I’d been so wrapped up in my historian’s curiosity that I hadn’t stopped to expect anything in particular. I was jolted out of my obsession by the first sight of the lake. It is an exceptionally lovely place, my friend, bucolic and otherworldly. Imagine, if you will, a sparkling long water, which you catch glimpses of from the road between dense groves of trees. Nestled here and there in the woods are fine villas-often you can see only an elegant chimney, or a curving wall-many of which appear to date from early in the last century, or earlier.

When you get to an opening in the forest-we parked near a little restaurant of sorts with three boats drawn up behind it-you look out across the lake to the island where the monastery lies, and there-there at last-you get a panorama that has surely changed little over centuries. The island is a short boat ride from shore and is wooded like the banks of the lake. Above its trees rise the splendid Byzantine cupolas of the monastery church, and across the water comes the sound of bells-struck (I later learned) by a monk’s wooden mallet. That sound of bells floating across the water made my heart turn over; it seemed to me exactly one of those messages from the past that cry out to be read, even if one cannot be sure what they say. My driver and I, standing there in the late-afternoon light reflected off the water, might have been spies for the Turkish army, peering out at this bastion of an alien faith, instead of two rather dusty modern men leaning against an automobile.

I could have stood looking and listening far longer without growing restless, but my determination to find the archaeologist before nightfall sent me into the restaurant. I used a little sign language and my best pidgin Latin to get us a boat to the island. Yes, yes, there was a man from Bucarest digging with a shovel over there, the owner managed to convey to me-and twenty minutes later we were disembarking on the shore of the island. The monastery was even lovelier up close, and rather forbidding, with its ancient walls and high cupolas, each crowned with an ornate seven-pointed cross. The boatman led us up steep steps to it, and I would have entered the great wooden doors at once, but the fellow pointed us around the back.