The Historian

by Elizabeth Kostova

  “Please don’t make any phone calls. I mean, please, Barley, don’t betray me. I’m going south from here, no matter what. You can see I can’t go home without knowing where my father is and what’s happening to him, can’t you?”

  He sipped gravely. “I can see that.”

  “Please, Barley.”

  “What do you take me for?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, bewildered. “I thought you were angry about my running away and might still feel you had to report me.”

  “Just think,” said Barley. “If I were really upstanding, I could be on my way back to tomorrow’s lectures—and a good sound scolding from James—right now, with you in tow. Instead, here I am, forced by gallantry—and curiosity—to accompany a lady to the south of France at the drop of a hat. You think I’d miss out on that?”

  “I don’t know,” I repeated, but more gratefully.

  “We’d better ask about the next train to Perpignan,” Barley said, folding up his sandwich paper decisively.

  “How did you know?” I said, astonished.

  “Oh, you think you’re so mysterious.” Barley was looking exasperated again. “Didn’t I translate all that business in the vampire collection for you? Where could you be going if not to that monastery in the Pyrénées-Orientales? Don’t I know my map of France? Come on, don’t start scowling. It makes your face so much less piquant.” And we went to the bureau de change arm in arm, after all.

  “When Turgut uttered Rossi’s name in that unmistakable tone of familiarity, I had the sudden sense of a world shifting, of bits of color and shape knocked out of place into a vision of intricate absurdity. It was as if I’d been watching a familiar movie and suddenly a character who had never been part of it before had strolled onto the screen, joining the action seamlessly but without explanation.

  “‘Do you know Professor Rossi?’ Turgut repeated in the same tone.

  “I was still speechless, but Helen had apparently made a decision. ‘Professor Rossi is Paul’s adviser in the history department of our university.’

  “‘But that is incredible,’ Turgut said slowly.

  “‘You knew of him?’ I asked.

  “‘I have never met him,’ Turgut said. ‘But I heard of him in a most unusual way. Please, this is a story I must tell you, I think. Sit down, my fellows.’ He gestured hospitably, even in the midst of his amazement. Helen and I had leaped to our feet, but now we settled near him. ‘There is something here too extraordinary —’ He broke off, and then seemed to force himself to explain to us. ‘Years ago, when I became enamored of this archive, I asked the librarian for all possible information about it. He told me that in his memory no one else had ever examined it, but that he thought his ancestor—I mean, the librarian before him—knew something about it. I went to see the old librarian.’

  “‘Is he alive now?’ I gasped.

  “‘Oh, no, my friend. I am sorry. He was terribly old then, and he died a year after I talked with him, I believe. But his memory was excellent, and he told me that he had locked up the collection because he had a bad feeling about it. He said a foreign professor had looked at it once and then become very—how do you say?—upset and almost crazy, and run out of the building suddenly. The old librarian said that a few days after this happened, he was sitting alone in the library one day with some work, and he looked up and suddenly noticed a large man examining the same documents. No one had come in, and the door to the street was locked because it was evening, after the public hours for the library. He could not understand how the man had got in. He thought perhaps he had not locked the door after all, and had not heard the man come up the stairs, although this hardly seemed possible. Then he told me’—Turgut leaned forward and lowered his voice further—‘he told me that when he went close to the man to ask him what he was doing, the man looked up and—you see—there was a little bit of blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.’

  “I felt a wave of revulsion, and Helen raised her shoulders as if to ward off a shudder. ‘The old librarian did not want to tell me about it, at first. I believe he was afraid I would think he was losing his mind. He told me the sight made him feel faint, and when he looked again the man was gone. But the documents were still scattered on the table, and the next day he bought this holy box in the antiques market and put the documents into it. He kept them locked up, and he said no one troubled them again while he was librarian here. He never saw the strange man again.’

  “‘And what about Rossi?’ I demanded.

  “‘Well, you see, I was determined to trace every little path of this story, so I asked him for the foreign researcher’s name, but he could not remember anything except that he thought it was Italian. He told me to look in the register for 1930, if I wanted to, and my friend here allowed me to do so. I found Professor Rossi’s name, after some searching, and discovered he was from England, from Oxford. Then I wrote him a letter in Oxford.’

  “‘Did he reply?’ Helen was almost glaring at Turgut.

  “‘Yes, but he was no longer at Oxford. He had gone to an American university—yours, although I didn’t connect the name when we first talked—and the letter found him there after a long time, and then he wrote back. He told me that he was sorry but he did not know anything about the archive to which I referred and could not help me. I will show you the letter at my apartment when you come for dinner with me. It arrived shortly before the war.’

  “‘This is very strange,’ I muttered. ‘I just can’t understand it.’

  “‘Well, this is not the strangest thing,’ Turgut said urgently. He turned to the parchment on the table, the bibliography, and his finger traced Rossi’s name at the bottom. Looking at it, I noticed again the words after the name. They were Latin, I was sure, although my Latin, dating back to my first two years of college, had never been impressive and was now rusty, to boot.

  “‘What does that say? Do you read Latin?’

  “To my relief, Turgut nodded. ‘It says, “Bartolomeo Rossi, ‘The Spirit—the Ghost—in the Amphora.’”’

  “My thoughts whirled. ‘But I know that phrase. I think—I’m sure that’s the title of an article he’s been working on this spring.’ I stopped. ‘Was working on. He showed it to me about a month ago. It’s about Greek tragedy and the objects the Greek theaters sometimes used as props onstage.’ Helen was looking intently at me. ‘It’s—I’m sure that’s his current work.’

  “‘What is very, very strange,’ Turgut said, and now I heard the actual current of fear in his voice, ‘is that I have looked at this list many times, and I have never seen this entry on it. Someone has added Rossi’s name.’

  “I stared at him in amazement. ‘Find out who,’ I gasped. ‘We must find out who has been tampering with these documents. When were you last here?’

  “‘About three weeks ago,’ Turgut said grimly. ‘Wait, please, I will first go ask Mr. Erozan. Do not move.’ But as he got up, the attentive librarian saw him and came to meet him. They exchanged a few quick words.

  “‘What does he say?’ I asked.

  “‘Why did he not think to tell me this before?’ Turgut groaned. ‘A man came in yesterday and looked through this box.’ He questioned his friend further, and Mr. Erozan gestured at the door. ‘It was that man,’ Turgut said, pointing, too. ‘He says it was the man who came in a little while ago, to whom he was talking.’

  “We all turned, aghast, and the librarian gestured again, but it was too late. The little man in the white cap and gray beard was gone.”

  Barley was hunting through his wallet. “Well, we’re going to have to change everything I have,” he said glumly. “I’ve got the money from Master James, and a few pounds more from my allowance.”

  “I brought some,” I said. “From Amsterdam, I mean. I’ll buy the train tickets south, and I think I can pay for our meals and lodging, at least for a few days.” I was wondering, privately, if I would actually be able to pay for Barley’s appetite. It was strange that someone
so skinny could eat so much. I was still skinny, too, but I couldn’t imagine putting away two sandwiches at the rate Barley had just employed. I thought this concern with money was the nagging weight on my mind until we were actually at the exchange counter, and a young woman in a navy blazer was looking us over. Barley spoke with her about the exchange rates, and after a minute she picked up the phone, turning away to talk into the receiver. “Why’s she doing that?” I whispered nervously to Barley.

  He glanced at me in surprise. “She’s checking the rates, for some reason,” he said. “I don’t know. What did you think?”

  I couldn’t explain. Perhaps it was just the contagion of my father’s letters, but everything looked suspicious to me now. It was as if we were being followed by eyes I could not see.

  “Turgut, who seemed to have more presence of mind than I did, hurried to the door and disappeared into the little foyer. He was back a second later, shaking his head. ‘He is gone,’ he told us heavily. ‘I saw no signal of him in the street. He vanished into the throngs.’

  “Mr. Erozan seemed to be apologizing, and Turgut spoke with him for a few seconds. Then he turned to us again. ‘Do you have any reason to think you have been pursued here, in your research?’

  “‘Pursued?’ I had every reason to think so, but by whom, exactly, I had no idea.

  “Turgut looked sharply at me, and I remembered the appearance of the Gypsy at our table the night before. ‘My friend the librarian says this man wanted to see the documents we have been examining, and he was angry when he found they were already being used. He says the man spoke Turkish but with an accent, and he thinks he is a foreigner. That is why I ask if someone is following you here. My fellows, let us go out of here, but keep a close watch. I am telling my friend to guard the documents and take notes of this man or anyone else who comes to look at them. He will try to find out who he is if he returns. Perhaps if we leave he will return sooner.’

  “‘But the maps!’ It worried me to leave these precious items in their box. Besides, what had we learned? We had not even begun to solve the puzzle of the three maps, even as we had stood there looking at their miraculous reality on the library table.

  “Turgut turned to Mr. Erozan again, and a smile, a signal of mutual understanding, seemed to pass between them. ‘Do not worry, Professor,’ Turgut told me. ‘I have made copies of all these things in my own hand, and the copies are safely in my apartment. Besides, my friend will not permit anything to happen to the originals. You can believe me.’

  “I wanted to. Helen was looking searchingly at both our new acquaintances, and I wondered what she made of all this. ‘All right,’ I said.

  “‘Come, my fellows.’ Turgut began to put away the documents, handling them with a tenderness I could not have equaled myself. ‘It seems to me we have much to discuss in private. I will take you to my apartment and we will talk there. I can also show you there some other materials on this topic I have collected. Let us not speak of these matters in the street. We will depart as visibly as possible and’—he nodded at the librarian— ‘we will leave our finest general in the breach.’ Mr. Erozan shook hands with each of us, locked the box with great care, and carried it away, disappearing with it among the bookshelves at the back of the hall. I watched until he was completely out of sight, and then I sighed out loud in spite of myself. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Rossi’s fate was still hidden in that box—almost, God forbid, that Rossi himself was entombed there—and that we had been unable to rescue him from it.

  “Then we left the building, standing conspicuously on the steps for a few minutes, pretending to converse. My nerves felt shattered and Helen looked pale, but Turgut was composed. ‘If he is loitering around here somewhere,’ he said in a low voice, ‘the little sneak will know we are departing.’ He offered his arm to Helen, who took it with less reluctance than I would have predicted, and we set off together through the crowded streets. It was lunchtime, and the smells of roasting meat and baking bread rose everywhere around us, mingling with a dank smell that could have been coal smoke or diesel fuel, a smell I still remember sometimes without warning, and one that means for me the edge of the Eastern world. Whatever came next, I thought, it would be another riddle, as this whole place—I looked around me at the faces of the Turkish crowds, the slender spires of minarets on the horizon of every street, the ancient domes among the fig trees, the shops full of mysterious goods—was a riddle. The greatest riddle of all pulled at my heart again and made it ache: Where was Rossi? Was he here, in this city, or far away? Alive or dead, or something in between?”

  Chapter 30

  At 4:02, Barley and I boarded the southern express to Perpignan.

  Barley swung his bag up the steep steps and reached out a hand to pull me up after him. There were fewer passengers on this train, and the compartment we found stayed empty even after the train pulled out. I was getting tired; if I’d been at home at this hour, Mrs. Clay would have been settling me at the kitchen table with a glass of milk and a slice of yellow cake. For a second I almost missed her annoying ministrations. Barley sat down next to me, although he had four other seats to choose from, and I tucked my hand under his sweatered arm. “I ought to study,” he said, but he didn’t open his book right away; there was too much to see as we picked up speed through the city. I thought of all the times I’d been here with my father—climbing Montmartre, or gazing in at the depressed camel in the Jardin des Plantes. It seemed now like a city I’d never seen before.

  Watching Barley moving his lips over Milton made me sleepy, and when he said he wanted to go to the dining car for tea, I shook my head, drowsing. “You’re a wreck,” he told me, smiling. “You stay here and sleep, then, and I’ll take my book. We can always go back for dinner when you get hungry.”

  My eyes closed almost as soon as he left the car, and when I opened them again I found I was curled up on the empty seat like a child, with my long cotton skirt pulled over my ankles. Someone was sitting on the opposite bench reading a newspaper, and it was not Barley. I sat up quickly. The man was reading Le Monde, and the spread of the paper hid the rest of him—I couldn’t see anything of his upper body or face. A black leather briefcase rested on the seat next to him.

  For a split second I imagined it was my father, and a wave of gratitude and confusion went through me. Then I saw the man’s shoes, which were also black leather and very shiny, the toes perforated with elegant patterns, the leather laces ending in black tassels. The man’s legs were crossed, and he wore immaculate black suit trousers and fine black silk socks. Those were not my father’s shoes; in fact, there was something wrong with those shoes, or with the feet they contained, although I couldn’t understand what made me feel this. I thought that a strange man shouldn’t have come in while I was sleeping—there was something unpleasant about that, too, and I hoped he had not been watching me sleep. I wondered in my discomfort if I might be able to get up and open the door to the compartment without his noticing me. Suddenly I saw that he had drawn the curtains to the aisle. No one walking through the train could see us. Or had Barley drawn them before leaving, to let me sleep?

  I snuck a glance at my watch. It was almost five o’clock. Outside, a tremendous landscape rolled by; we were entering the South. The man behind the newspaper was so still that I began to tremble in spite of myself. After a while I realized what was frightening me. I had been awake for many long minutes by now, but during all the time I had been watching and listening, he had not turned a single page of his newspaper.

  “Turgut’s apartment was located in another part of Istanbul, on the Sea of Marmara, and we took a ferry there from the busy port called Eminönü. Helen stood at the rail, watching the seagulls that followed the boat, and looking back at the tremendous silhouette of the old city. I went to stand next to her, and Turgut pointed out spires and domes for us, his voice booming above the rumble of the engines. His neighborhood, we discovered when we disembarked, was more modern than what we’d seen befor
e, but modern in this case meant nineteenth century. As we walked along increasingly quiet streets, heading away from the ferry landing, I saw a second Istanbul, new to me: stately, drooping trees, fine stone and wooden houses, apartment buildings that could have been lifted from a Parisian neighborhood, neat sidewalks, pots of flowers, ornamented cornices. Here and there the old Islamic empire erupted in the form of a ruined arch or an isolated mosque, a Turkish house with an overhanging second story. But on Turgut’s street, the West had made a genteel and thorough sweep. Later I saw its counterparts in other cities—Prague and Sofia, Budapest and Moscow, Belgrade and Beirut. That borrowed elegance had been borrowed all over the East.

  “‘Please to enter.’ Turgut stopped in front of a row of old houses, ushered us up the double front stair, and checked inside a little mailbox—apparently empty—that carried the name PROFESOR BORA. He opened the door and stepped aside. ‘Please, welcome to my abode, where everything is yours. I am sorry that my wife is out—she teaches at the nursery school.’

  “We came first into a hall with a polished wooden floor and walls, where we followed Turgut in taking off our shoes and putting on the embroidered slippers he gave us. Then he showed us into a sitting room, and Helen sounded a low note of admiration, which I could not help echoing. The room was filled with a pleasant greenish light, mixed with soft pink and yellow. I realized after a moment that this was sunlight filtering through a blend of trees outside two large windows with hazy curtains of an old white lace. The room was lined with extraordinary furniture, very low, carved of dark wood, and cushioned in rich fabrics. Around three walls ran a bench heaped with lace-covered pillows. Above this, the whitewashed walls were lined with prints and paintings of Istanbul, a portrait of an old man in a fez and one of a younger man in a black suit, a framed parchment covered with fine Arabic calligraphy. There were fading sepia photographs of the city and cabinets lined with brass coffee services. The corners were filled with colorfully glazed vases brimming with roses. Underfoot lay deep rugs in crimson, rose, and soft green. In the very center of the room, a great round tray on legs stood empty, highly polished, as if waiting for the next meal.