The Historian

by Elizabeth Kostova

  “I wanted to know what this meant exactly, but Helen’s mother had already begun to dish up our meal with a hand that trembled. The warmth of the oven and the smell of meat and bread filled the small house, and we all ate heartily, if in silence. Now and then Helen’s mother gave me more bread, patting my arm, or poured out fresh tea for me. The food was simple but delicious and abundant, and sunlight came in the front windows to ornament our meal.

  “When it was done Helen went outside with a cigarette, and her mother beckoned to me to follow her around the side of the house. In the back there was a shed with a few chickens scratching around it, and a hutch with two long-eared rabbits. Helen’s mother took one of the rabbits out, and we stood together in a companionable dumb show, scratching its soft head while it blinked and struggled a little. I could hear Helen through one of the windows now, washing up the dishes inside. The sun was warm on my head, and beyond the house the green fields hummed and wavered with an inexhaustible optimism.

  “Then it was time for us to leave, to walk back to the bus, and I put Rossi’s letters into my briefcase. As we went out again, Helen’s mother stopped in the doorway; she seemed to have no thought of walking through the village to see us onto the bus. She took both my hands in hers and shook them warmly, looking into my face. ‘She says she wishes only safe journeys for you, and that you will find what you are longing for,’ Helen explained. I looked into the darkness in the older woman’s eyes and thanked her with all my heart. She embraced Helen, holding her face sadly between her hands for a moment, and then let us go.

  “At the edge of the road, I turned back to see her again. She was standing in the doorway, one hand against the frame, as if our visit had weakened her. I put my briefcase down in the dust and went back to her so quickly that I didn’t know for a moment I had moved at all. Then, remembering Rossi, I took her in my arms and kissed her soft, lined cheek. She clung to me, a head shorter than I, and buried her face in my shoulder. Suddenly she pulled away and vanished into the house. I thought she wanted to be alone with her emotions and I turned away, too, but in a second she was back. To my astonishment, she grasped my hand and closed it over something small and hard.

  “When I opened my fingers I saw a silver ring with a tiny coat of arms on it. I understood at once that it was Rossi’s, which she was returning to him through me. Her face shone above it; her eyes glowed lustrously dark. I bent and kissed her again, but this time on the mouth. Her lips were warm and sweet. As I released her, turning swiftly back to my briefcase and to Helen, I saw on the older woman’s face the gleam of a single tear. I’ve read there is no such thing as a single tear, that old poetic trope. And perhaps there isn’t, since hers was simply companion to my own.

  “As soon as we were settled in the bus, I got out Rossi’s letters and carefully opened the first one. In recording it here, I will honor Rossi’s desire to protect his friend’s privacy with a nom de plume—a nom de guerre, he’d called it. It was very strange to see Rossi’s handwriting again—that same younger, less cramped version of it—on the yellowing pages.

  “‘You’re going to read them here?’ Helen, leaning almost against my shoulder, looked startled.

  “‘What, can you wait?’

  “‘No,’ she said.”

  Chapter 45

  June 20, 1930

  My dear friend,

  I haven’t a soul in the world to talk to at this moment, and I find myself with pen in hand wishing for your company, in particular—you would be full of your usual mild amazement at the scene I’m enjoying just now. I’ve been in a state of disbelief myself today—as you would be if you could see where I am—on a train, although that’s hardly a clue in itself. But the train is puffing towards Bucarest. Good God, man, I hear you say through its whistle. But it is true. I hadn’t planned to come here, but something quite remarkable has brought me. I was in Istanbul until just a few days ago, on a bit of research I’ve been keeping under my hat, and I found something there that made me want to come here. Not want to, actually; it would be more accurate to say I’m terrified to, and yet feel compelled. You are such an old rationalist—you aren’t going to care for all this a bit, but I wish like the devil I had your brains along on my jaunt; I’m going to need every scrap of mine and more to find what I’m looking for.

  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 word Transylvania, if you ponder it at all? Yes, as I thought—wisely, you don’t. But what comes to my mind 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 despi
te 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 (Snagov being 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.

  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 monaste
ry 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.” Was Vlad 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.”