by James Lyon
‘Katarina is just beginning her freshman year at the university and will probably be majoring in either anthropology or biochemistry. She is from Novi Sad in Yugoslavia’s northern province of Vojvodina.’ They all stood nodding silently. He looked around at them. ‘Gentlemen, protocol states that we remain standing until such time as the lady has taken a seat, and I do not wish to stand all evening. Steven, would you be so kind as to offer Katarina a seat.’ Steven rushed over and pulled out a chair and Slatina motioned for Steven to sit next to her.
When they had sat, Slatina continued: ‘Katarina, you will be interested to know that after Christmas, Steven will travel to Serbia to conduct ethnographic research. Just this afternoon I learned that he received a one-year fellowship from the Balkan Ethnographic Trust that will permit him to conduct research in Novi Sad and Belgrade.’
Steven sat in silence, stunned at the speed and efficiency with which Slatina had arranged the fellowship: often it took nine months to get a grant. The other graduate students congratulated him warmly and asked questions about his plans and the fellowship, none of which he had even the slightest idea how to answer.
‘Katarina, perhaps you can take some time away from your busy schedule this semester and acquaint Steven with Novi Sad,’ Slatina added. ‘He also needs help practicing Serbo-Croatian.’ She nodded silently and the other students looked at him jealously as he attempted to hide the slight blush that rose in his cheeks.
‘Professor, is there any way we can apply for this scholarship?’ asked one student.
‘I am sorry Joshua, but the grants are available only for Balkan studies and places are limited. I fear your concentration on the Italian city states will not qualify you.’
‘Professor,’ said another. ‘I heard some students from your 240 class talking about the lecture you gave today. You really left them curious…they just couldn’t stop talking about it.’
‘Well, Jeffrey, Diocletian is an interesting Emperor. You should go some day to Split and see the seaside palace he built. After he divided the Roman Empire in two parts and abdicated, he retired to his palace. As the empire began to experience difficulties, the Roman Senate sent a delegation to ask him to return and become Caesar once more. When they arrived at the palace, they found him in the garden on his hands and knees, weeding the cabbage plants. They made their presentation and asked him to return. Without standing he picked up a cabbage, looked at them, and said: “why would I want to be emperor when I can grow cabbages like this"? So he stayed in retirement. May we all have such wisdom.’
‘No Professor, not Diocletian,’ said Jeffrey. ‘They were talking about vampires. They said you offered them extra credit if they could answer certain questions about vampires.’
‘Ah, so I did,’ he sighed.
Katarina and the graduate students were listening attentively. ‘It is a long, complex question. But since you are students of medieval history, you should know that legends of vampires are an old phenomenon. There are ample accounts of vampirism in the folklore and legends of the Balkans, going back to before recorded history. I merely wished to pique the students’ interest in history by using a popular topic. Now of course there are no such things as vampires, but as the students research the folklore surrounding vampires, they will learn much about medieval history. But enough of that. Let us discuss more pleasant matters, such as your fleeting youth and this beautiful sunset. The melody the waves are playing on the sand…I believe I have heard it somewhere before.’
* * *
Interlude I : The Labyrinth: Friday, 28 February 1733
‘Careful…slowly now…you don’t want to drop the Emperor’s new pets.’ The Captain’s voice rang loud, yet calm as he sniffed and caught the smell of newly-fired brick and damp air. Behind him eleven coffins floated down the tunnel, borne on the shoulders of Imperial Grenadiers in grey-green greatcoats that rendered them nearly invisible in the darkness, eight men to each coffin as they trudged in disciplined silence, grunting occasionally, sweating under their heavy loads in the chilled humidity. Between each coffin a Grenadier carried a lantern and a bundle of thorny branches.
‘Don’t straggle…stay together. If you get lost in the Labyrinth we may never find you.’ The Captain spoke authoritatively in German with a slight Italian accent. ‘You will probably die of starvation, or perhaps if you are unlucky the Emperor’s pets will escape and have you for lunch.’ He walked ahead of the column in his high-collared greatcoat, his oil lantern held aloft on a stick.
Flickering lanterns cast shadows over the Latin crosses carved in relief on the lids and sides of each coffin. Each man loathed the burden, yet each knew what was inside, and that knowledge enabled them to carry the heavy loads all the further. They came first to one tunnel junction, then to another, then yet another. At each the yellowish lantern light rushed faintly down the side passages until darkness swallowed it. The Captain examined markings painted on the wall in Gothic script and led the way. After 15 minutes he called a rest and the Grenadiers put down their loads and sat on top of the coffins.
The Captain removed his three-cornered officer’s hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘Be patient, we’re almost there,’ he called, a severe expression on his unshaven face. His eyes betrayed his worry.
‘Just a little farther. Then we shall forget everything we have seen these past years.’ The troops looked at him silently, steam issuing from their mouths and nostrils. ‘Now, let us finish,’ he said as he tucked his ponytail up under his hat.
Once more the Grenadiers hefted their grim loads and followed their Captain down the tunnel. After several more turns he came to a marble slab painted with Gothic letters that read IV/500 Kom. Gall. The Captain studied it intently and ordered the men to rest their loads again. ‘You will wait here,’ he ordered, as the Grenadiers sat obediently on the coffins. Shouts and pounding emanated from inside several.
The Captain turned into a small corridor that came to a dead end. Turning to the wall on his right he faced the lock and pressed his hand firmly against it and then crossed himself in the Latin manner – first the forehead, then the stomach, then the left breast, then the right. He heard the muffled sound of a latch being sprung, and saw that the brick wall at the end of the tunnel had swung open a crack. He walked to the wall and pushed it open to reveal more darkness. He entered and descended broad brick stairs that curved down and away to the right, looking with satisfaction at the bricklayers’ workmanship and the near seamlessness of the joints.
After forty feet he stopped, his path blocked by an underground stream that cut across the foot of the stairs, a brick wall on the far side. The Captain waded across the stream and illuminated another lock with his lantern. He pressed it, now crossing himself after the Eastern Orthodox fashion and listened as another latch sprung open. He nodded with approval as he pushed the wall and watched it silently swing inward.
He stepped inside, his lantern held aloft. Its light was too dim to fill the void, but it reflected faintly off a host of luminescent white crosses floating in the air, some closer, others distant. Latin crosses, Rosy crosses, Celtic crosses, Orthodox crosses, Russian crosses, Georgian crosses: every type of cross imaginable glimmered, suspended in the darkness. As the Captain’s eyes grew accustomed to the emptiness he saw that he stood at the entrance of a large vaulted chamber with a high domed ceiling covered in red plaster with luminescent white limestone crosses in relief, making them appear as though suspended in the air. He crossed the white limestone floor and examined the red granite paving stone that radiated from the chamber’s center to form a large Maltese cross. He continued to a large red stone cross that rose nearly ten feet in height from the center of the chamber. He sniffed the air, unable to smell any mold or damp. ‘Very good,’ he smiled as he examined the masonry. ‘There is nothing like German workmanship.’
Returning to his troops he led them into the chamber, where they placed the eleven coffins in a circle around the center of the upright cross. He knel
t before the cross, looked in a large wooden chest at its foot filled with eleven folded sheets, crossed himself and closed the lid. He ordered the Grenadiers to place thorns over the chest, in a circle around the coffins and in front of the doorway, then turned to face his men.
‘You have two hours to clean up. Then present yourself at the St. George monastery church. I have paid the Abbot to say a Te Deum mass. You will be sober when you come to the church. God save the Emperor.’
‘God save the Emperor,’ they answered in tired unison.
As the Grenadiers filed from the chamber, the Captain counted the coffins. ‘Only eleven,’ he thought to himself. ‘We still need to find the twelfth.’
He waited until their boots faded through the door, across the stream and up the stairs. When he was alone the Captain sniffed the air uncertainly, turned and crossed himself once more, uttering a silent prayer under his breath. He withdrew a waxed oil-skin package from his pouch and placed it in an alcove high in the back of the upright stone cross.
He then walked to one of the coffins, placed his fingers on it and stood silently, trembling. A bone-chilling shriek came from inside, followed by cursing, pounding, scratching and finally a heart-wrenching wail. He whispered under his breath as his fingers transmitted his words through the thick wood.
‘Please forgive me, Natalija.’
CHAPTER TWO
THE ORDER OF THE DRAGON
San Diego, Budapest, Belgrade: Fall and Winter 1991-1992
The unrelenting thumpity-thump of the railroad car was making Steven drowsy. The hazy early afternoon light of a Central European winter cast uncertain shadows across the filthy train compartment, bleaching already dull colors into shades of grey that made everything appear dirty. He had never realized that grey came in so many different hues. He gazed out the dirt-streaked window at the snow-covered fields, interrupted every so often by the pastel Habsburg towns and villages that dot the Pannonian Plain, clustered around tall church steeples, wood and coal smoke pouring from the chimneys. As he watched the monotonous scenery he thought back over the events that had marked the previous four months. Slatina’s surprise announcement of a research fellowship, the extra reading assignments in preparation for the trip, his graduate studies, his language tutorials with Katarina and his work as a TA for Slatina.
He recalled watching CNN in anger and disbelief as the Yugoslav Army – known by its initials as the JNA – shelled the medieval walled port city of Dubrovnik until smoke billowed over the white walls across the Adriatic Sea. Vukovar also haunted him, as the JNA shelled that Danubian city into rubble. And then there were the late night discussions with Slatina and Katarina about the ongoing breakup and war in Yugoslavia as they watched that country’s blood pour out onto the world’s television screens…everything blurred together now in a mass of convoluted memories.
But the memories that were most distinct were the times he had spent with Katarina, practicing Serbo-Croatian. They had met regularly in the library after Slatina’s class and she never called him Stevie, as did his mother, or Steven, as did Professor Slatina, or Steve, as did his friends in High School and College, but always Stefan, after the Serbian fashion. He had always thought of himself as Steven, and when people called him Steven, he felt he behaved differently, more responsibly and mature. And now Stefan? He responded differently and felt that it somehow brought an intimacy to their relationship that otherwise would not have existed. What was in a name? Did what we call someone change who they were, how they behaved and how we perceived them?
Speaking a foreign language frustrated him and locked his normally outgoing character into a linguistic prison whose rules and nuances he understood only with difficulty. Sometimes, even the simplest thoughts proved impossible to express. When he spoke Serbo-Croatian he behaved with more reserve than when he spoke English, something he hoped would change as his fluency increased. He was embarrassed by his accent and the way he butchered the language’s seven grammatical cases. Yet Katarina was always patient, laughed sweetly at his many mistakes, corrected his errors, and helped him with pronunciation. Still, no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t grasp the subtle difference between čandć and pronounced both as ch in cheese. Although he tried to concentrate on his studies, with each session he felt an emotional bond developing between them, something for which he was unprepared.
Watching the drab winter landscape from the train, he let his mind wander over the previous four months.
* * *
Three months earlier on a sunny late September morning, Slatina had walked him to the hill at the base of the university library, a silver-grey saucer that hovered over the Eucalyptus groves. ‘Here we have an allegory of life’s choices, of the struggle between good and evil.’ Slatina pointed to a paving-stone sculpture of a serpent that wound its way through a lush garden, crisscrossing the sidewalk leading up the hill to the base of the library, wrapping itself finally around the base of a Pomegranate tree set in a lush semi-tropical garden.
‘Notice this serpent. How it coils up the hill towards the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is a symbol, something that is important in your study of the medieval period, where allegories were common, and symbolism meant everything. It will also be important in your study of ethnography. Watch for types and symbols. God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree because it would cause them to die. The serpent told Eve otherwise, saying it would open her eyes and make her as the Gods, knowing good and evil. It appears the serpent had more persuasive marketing than God. The clear message is that to attain knowledge of good and evil, and to become like the Gods, we must cross paths with the serpent. And the more knowledge we acquire, the greater responsibility we have to do good. New responsibilities are thrust upon us as we acquire greater knowledge. Remember this as you conduct your research, for the things you discover may require you to take action you otherwise never would have contemplated.’ They continued further up the hill, past a stone inscribed with a quote from Milton’s Paradise Lost.
‘Watch closely for the serpent in your work. Throughout history it has represented two opposite ideas. On the one hand it is associated with the devil. When God asked Eve why she ate of the fruit of the tree, Eve said ‘the serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.’ Saint George slew the fiery serpent, what we would call a dragon. The serpent or dragon is frequently a personification of the Devil himself, particularly in medieval literature. On the other hand the serpent is also a symbol of Jahweh, the God of the Hebrews in the Old Testament whom we call Jehovah. When Jahweh sent fiery serpents to chasten the disobedient children of Israel in the wilderness, he told Moses to create a brazen fiery serpent and place it on top of a pole. All those who looked on Moses’ serpent would be healed of the bites of the fiery serpents. On many ancient graves – Christian and Pagan alike – you will find a snake with its tail in its mouth, representing eternal life. Unfortunately most people forget that the serpent is also a symbol of God.’
‘What you must pay close attention to in your research are references to the serpent as the personification of Satan,’ Slatina faced Steven and looked directly in his eyes. ‘If you come into contact with them you may well be facing the Adversary himself.’
The Professor’s impromptu lecture troubled Steven. Why was Slatina explaining the knowledge of good and evil and the symbolism of the serpent? Steven felt the professor was trying to tell him something indirectly, but was uncertain just what, unable to put his finger on what troubled him.
Later that day Steven stumbled upon Katarina, sitting alone under a tree in a Eucalyptus grove, its branches alive with a shimmering orange and black shroud of Monarch butterflies. She stared at the sky, pale clouds reflected greenly in the moisture of her tears.
‘Katarina, what’s wrong?’ he asked, crouching beside her. ‘Did someone hurt you?’
She held up her hand, motioned for him to stop talking and waited. After a few moments she took a deep breath, then spoke in a quivering v
oice: ‘Today marks one hundred days from the death of my father. I should go with my mother to visit his grave. Instead I’m thousands of kilometers away. It’s wrong. It’s all wrong. I feel so empty without him,’ she sobbed.
Steven placed an arm around her and hugged her. ‘I’m truly sorry for your loss.’
She reached up and placed her hand over his, softly: ‘At least he has someone to take care of his grave. But who will take care of their graves when my mother dies and I’m here?’
‘I know what it means to lose someone close,’ he said softly, strongly. ‘I understand.’ His hand tingled at her touch and goose bumps appeared along his arm. The softness of her shoulder and scent of her perfume heightened his senses to her closeness. His hormones and instincts told him to take advantage of her vulnerability and draw closer to her, while his conscience argued for virtue. Although his conscience won, guilt gnawed at him for permitting baser desires to enter his mind at a time when she needed compassion. Memories of his own loss also flooded in to cloud his mind. ‘Has it been almost two years?’ he thought to himself. It still seemed like only yesterday.
Steven sat silently with her for another half hour, and when he said he had to leave for class she said ‘thank you for sitting with me. It means much to me,’ and then kissed him on one cheek.
He blushed as he strode away through the Eucalyptus groves, his thoughts confused.