Elisabeth Kostova - The Historian

Skirting those beautiful old walls, I realized suddenly that for the first time I was actually walking in Dracula’s footsteps. Until then, I had been following his trail through a maze of documents, but now I stood on ground that his feet-in what sort of shoes? Leather boots, with a cruel spur buckled to them?-had probably trodden. If I had been one for crossing myself, I would have done it at that moment; as it was, I had the sudden urge to tap the boatman on his rough woollen shoulder and ask him to row us safely to shore again. But I didn’t, as you can imagine, and I hope I shall not ultimately regret having stayed my hand.

Behind the church, in the midst of a large ruin, we did indeed find a man with a shovel. He was a hearty-looking, middle-aged man with curly black hair, his white shirt untucked, sleeves rolled to the elbow. Two boys worked beside him, turning carefully through the soil by hand, and from time to time he set down his shovel and did the same. They were concentrated around a very small area, as if they had found something of interest there, and only when our boatman shouted a greeting did they all look up.

The man in the white shirt came forwards, scanning all of us with very sharp dark eyes, and the boatman made some sort of introduction, helped along by the driver. I held out my hand and tried one of my few Roumanian phrases before lapsing into English:“Ma numesc Bartolomeo Rossi. Nu va suparati…”I learned this delightful phrase, with which one interrupts strangers with a request for information, from the concierge at my hotel in Bucarest. It means, literally, “Don’t be angry”-can you imagine an everyday utterance more redolent of history? “Don’t pull out your dagger, friend-I’m simply lost in this wood and need directions out of it.” I don’t know whether it was my use of the phrase, or my probably atrocious accent, but the archaeologist burst into laughter as he gripped my hand.

Up close, he was a sturdy, deeply tanned fellow with a network of lines around his eyes and mouth. Two top teeth were missing from his smile, and most of the remaining ones glinted with gold. His hand was prodigiously strong, dry and rough as a farmer’s. “Bartolomeo Rossi,” he said in a rich voice, still laughing.“Ma numesc Velior Georgescu.How doo you doo? How can I help you?” For a moment I was transported to our walking trip last year; he might have been any one of those weather-beaten highlanders of whom we were constantly asking directions, only with dark hair instead of sandy.

“You speak English?” I puzzled stupidly.

“A wee bit,” said Mr. Georgescu. “It has been a long time since I have had the chance to practice, but it will come back to my toongue yet.” His speech was fluent and rich, with the burr of a rolled “r.”

“I beg your pardon,” I said hastily. “I understand you have a special interest in Vlad III and I would very much like to talk with you. I’m an historian from Oxford University.”

He nodded. “I’m glad to hear of your interest. Have you coome so far just to see his grave?”

“Well, I had hoped -”

“Ah, you hooped, you hooped,” said Mr. Georgescu, clapping me on the shoulder not unkindly. “But I shall have to bring down your hoopes a bit, my lad.” My heart leapt-was it possible that this man, too, thought Vlad was not buried here? But I decided to bide my time and listen carefully before asking any more questions. He was studying me quizzically, and now he smiled again. “Coome, I’ll take you for the walking toour.” He gave his assistants a few quick instructions, which appeared to be an invitation to stop working, for they brushed off their hands and flopped down under a tree. Leaning his shovel against a half-excavated wall, he beckoned to me. In my turn, I let the driver and boatman know I was taken care of and crossed the boatman’s palm with silver. He touched his hat and disappeared, and the driver sat down against the ruin and took out a pocket flask.

“Very good. We will go around the outside first.” Mr. Georgescu waved a broad hand about him. “You know the history of this island? A little? There was a church here in the fourteenth century, and the monastery was built a wee bit later, also in that century. The first church was wooden, and the second was stoone, but the stoone church sank right into the lake in 1453. Remarkable, doon’t you think? Dracula came to power in Wallachia for the second time in 1462, and he had his own ideas. I believe he liked this monastery because an island is easy to protect-he was always looking for places he could fortify against the Turks. This is a good one, doon’t you think?”

I agreed, trying not to stare at him. The man’s English was so fascinating that I was finding it hard to concentrate on what he said, but his last point had sunk in. It took only a glance around to picture even a few monks defending this stronghold from invaders. Velior Georgescu was gazing about us with approval, too. “Therefoore, Vlad made a fortress of the existing monastery. He built fortified walls around it, and a prison and a toorture chamber. Also an escape tunnel and a bridge to the shore. He was a canny lad, Vlad was. The bridge is long gone, of course, and I am excavating the rest. This, where we are digging now, was the prison. We have found several skeletons in it already.” He smiled broadly and his gold teeth gleamed in the sun.

“And this is Vlad’s church, then?” I pointed at the lovely building nearby, with its soaring cupolas and the dark trees rustling around its walls.

“Noo, I’m afraid not,” said Georgescu. “The monastery was partly burned by the Turks in 1462, when Vlad’s brother Radu, an Ottoman puppet, was on the throone of Wallachia. And just after Vlad was buried here, a terrible storm blew his church into the lake.”WasVlad buried here? I longed to ask it, but I kept my mouth firmly closed. “The peasants must have thought it was God’s punishment for his sins. The church was rebuilt in 1517-it took three years, and you see here the results. The outside walls of the monastery are a restoration, only about thirty years auld.”

We had strolled to the edge of the church, and he patted the mellowed masonry as if slapping the rump of a favorite horse. As we stood there, a man suddenly rounded the corner of the church and came towards us-a white-bearded, bent old man in black robes and black pillbox hat with long flaps that descended to his shoulders. He walked with the aid of a stick, and his robe was tied with a narrow rope from which hung a ring of keys. Around his neck on a chain dangled a very fine old cross of the type I’d seen on the church cupolas.

I was so astonished by this apparition that I nearly fell over; I can’t describe the effect it had on me, except to say that it was very much as if Georgescu had successfully conjured a ghost. But my new acquaintance went forwards, smiling at the monk and bowing over his gnarled hand, on which sparkled a gold ring that Georgescu respectfully kissed. The old man seemed fond of him, too, for he placed his fingers on the archaeologist’s head for a moment and smiled, a wan, sere smile that involved even fewer teeth than Georgescu’s. I caught my name in the introductions and bowed to the monk as gracefully as I could, though I couldn’t bring myself to kiss his ring.

“This is the abboot,” Georgescu explained to me. “He is the last one here and he has only three other monks living with him now. He has been here since he was a yooung man and he knows the island much better than I ever will. He welcomes you and gives you his blessing. If you have any questions for him, he says, he will try to answer them.” I bowed my thanks, and the old man moved slowly on. A few minutes later I saw him sitting quietly on the edge of the ruined wall behind us, like a crow resting in the afternoon sunlight.