I nodded, trying not to look at him.
“Yes, my own father left me to the father of Mehmed, as a pledge that we would not wage war against the Empire. Imagine, Dracula a pawn in the hands of the infidel. I wasted no time there—I learned everything I could about them, so that I might surpass them all. That was when I vowed to make history, not to be its victim.” His voice was so fierce that I glanced at him in spite of myself and saw the terrible blaze in his face, the hatred, the sharp upwards curl of the mouth under its long mustache. Then he did laugh, and the sound was equally horrifying. “I have triumphed and they are gone.” He put his hand on a finely tooled leather binding. “The sultan was so much afraid of me that he founded an order of their knights to pursue me. There are still a few of them, somewhere in Tsarigrad—a nuisance. But they are fewer and fewer, their ranks are dwindling to nothing, while my servants multiply around the globe.” He straightened his powerful body. “Come. I will show you my other treasures, and you must tell me how you propose to catalogue them all.”
He led me from one section to another, pointing out particular rarities, and I saw that my surmise about the patterns of his collecting were correct. Here was a large cabinet full of manuals of torture, some of them dating to the ancient world. They ranged through the prisons of mediaeval England, to the torture chambers of the Inquisition, to the experiments of the Third Reich. Some of the Renaissance volumes contained woodcuts of implements of torture, others diagrams of the human body. Another section of the room chronicled the church heresies for which many of those manuals of torture had been employed. Another corner was dedicated to alchemy, another to witchcraft, another to philosophy of the most disturbing sort.
Dracula paused in front of a great bookshelf and laid his hand on it affectionately. “This is of special interest to me, and will be to you, as well, I think. These works are biographies of me.” Each volume there was connected in some way to his life. There were works by Byzantine and Ottoman historians—some of them very rare originals—and their many reprints through the ages. There were pamphlets from mediaeval Germany, Russia, Hungary, Constantinople, all documenting his crimes. Many of them I’d neither seen nor heard of in my research, and I felt an unreasonable flare of curiosity before I remembered that I had no reason, now, to complete that research. There were also numerous volumes of folklore, from the seventeenth century on, ranging over the legend of the vampire—it struck me as strange and terrible that he included these so frankly among his own biographies. He brought his great hand to rest on an early edition of Bram Stoker’s novel and smiled, but said nothing. Then he moved quietly away into another section.
“This is of special interest to you as well,” he said. “These are works of history about your century, the twentieth. A fine century—I look forward to the rest of it. In my day, a prince was able to eliminate troublesome elements only one person at a time. You do this with an infinitely greater sweep. Think, for example, of the improvement from the accursed cannon that broke the walls of Constantinople to the divine fire your adoptive country dropped onto the Japanese cities some years ago.” He gave me the trace of a bow, courtly, congratulatory. “You will have read many of these works already, Professor, but perhaps you will glance through them with a new perspective.”
At last he bade me settle by the fire again, and I found more of the steaming tea waiting at my elbow. When we were both resting in our chairs, he turned to me. “Soon, I must take my own refreshment,” he said quietly. “But first, I will ask you a question.” My hands began to tremble in spite of myself. I had tried until now to speak to him as little as possible without incurring his rage. “You have enjoyed my hospitality, such as I can offer here, and my boundless faith in your gifts. You shall enjoy the eternal life that only a few beings can claim. You have the free run of what is certainly the finest archive of its kind on the face of the earth. Rare works are open to you that, indeed, cannot now be seen anywhere else. All this is yours.” He stirred in his chair, as if it was difficult for him to keep his great, undead body completely still for long. “Furthermore, you are a man of unparalleled sense and imagination, of keen accuracy and profound judgment. I have much to learn from your methods of research, your synthesis of sources, your imagination. For all these qualities, as well as the great scholarship they feed, I have brought you here, to my treasure-house.”
Again he paused. I watched his face, unable to look away. He gazed at the fire. “With your unflinching honesty, you can see the lesson of history,” he said. “History has taught us that the nature of man is evil, sublimely so. Good is not perfectible, but evil is. Why should you not use your great mind in service of what is perfectible? I ask you, my friend, to join me of your own accord in my research. If you do so, you will save yourself great anguish, and you will save me considerable trouble. Together we will advance the historian’s work beyond anything the world has ever seen. There is no purity like the purity of the sufferings of history. You will have what every historian wants: history will be reality to you. We will wash our minds clean with blood.”
He turned the full flood of his gaze on me then, the eyes with their ancient knowledge blazing up and the red lips parted. It would have been a face of the most exquisite intelligence, I suddenly thought, if it had not been shaped by so much hatred. I struggled not to faint, not to go to him on the instant and throw myself on my knees before him, not to put myself under his hand. He was a leader, a prince. He brooked no trespasses. I summoned my love of all I had had in my life, and I formed the word as firmly as I could. “Never.”
His face kindled, pale, the nostrils and lips twitching. “You will certainly die here, Professor Rossi,” he said, as if trying to control his voice. “You will never leave these chambers alive, although you will go out from them in a new life. Why not have some choice in the matter?”
“No,” I said as softly as I could.
He stood, menacingly, and smiled. “Then you shall work for me against your will,” he said. A darkness began to pool before my eyes, and I held internally to my small reserve of—what? My skin began to tingle and stars came out in front of me, against the dim walls of the chamber. When he stepped closer I saw his face unmasked, a sight so terrible that I cannot remember it now—I have tried. Then I did not know anything else for a long time.
I woke in my sarcophagus, in the dark, and I thought it was once again the first day, my first awakening there, until I realized that I’d known immediately where I was. I was very weak, much weaker this time, and the wound in my neck oozed and throbbed. I had lost blood, but not so much as to incapacitate me completely. After some time I managed to move around, to climb trembling out of my imprisonment. I remembered the moment I had lost consciousness. I saw by the glow of the remaining candles that Dracula slept again in his great tomb. His eyes were open, glassy, his lips red, his hand closed over his dagger—I turned away in the deepest horror of body and soul and went to crouch by the fire and to try to eat the meal I found there.
Apparently he means to destroy me gradually, perhaps to leave open to me until the last minute the choice he presented last night, so that I might still bring him all the power of a willing mind. I have only one purpose now—no, two: to die with as much of myself intact as I can, in the hope that it may later be some small restraint on the terrible deeds I will do once I am undead, and to stay alive long enough to write all I can in this record, although it will probably crumble to dust unread. These ambitions are my only sustenance now. It is a fate beyond anything I could weep for.
Third Day
I am no longer completely certain of the day; I begin to feel that some other days may have passed, or that I have dreamed several weeks, or that my abduction occurred a month ago. In any case, this is my third writing. I spent the day examining the library, not in order to fulfill Dracula’s wishes that I catalogue it for him but to learn whatever I could from it that might be of benefit to anyone—but it is hopeless. I shall just record that I discovered tod
ay that Napoleon had two of his own generals assassinated during his first year as emperor, deaths I have never seen chronicled elsewhere. I also examined a brief work by Anna Comnena, the Byzantine historian, entitled “The Torture Commissioned by the Emperor for the Good of the People”—if my Greek serves me. I found a fabulously illustrated volume of cabala, perhaps from Persia, in the section on alchemy. Among the shelves of the collection on heresies, I came across a Byzantine Saint John, but there is something wrong with the beginning of the text—it is about dark, not light. I will have to look carefully at it. I also found an English volume from 1521—it is dated—called Philosophie of the Aweful, a work about the Carpathians I have read about but believed existed no longer.
I am too tired and battered to study these texts as I might—as I should—but wherever I see something new and strange I pick it up with an urgency out of proportion to my complete helplessness here. Now I must sleep again, a little, while Dracula does, so that I can face my next ordeal somewhat rested, whatever happens.
Fourth Day?
My mind itself begins to crumble, I feel; try as I may, I can’t keep proper track of time or of my efforts to look through the library. I do not simply feel weak but ill, and today I had a sensation that sent fresh misery through what remains of my heart. I was looking at a work in Dracula’s unparalleled archive on torture, and I saw in a fine French quarto there the design for a new machine that would cleave heads instantaneously from their bodies. There was an engraving to illustrate this—the parts of the machine, the man in elegant dress whose theoretical head had just been separated from its theoretical body. As I looked at this design, I felt not only disgust at its purpose, not only wonder at the wonderful condition of the book, but also a sudden longing to see the real scene, to hear the shouts of the crowd and see the spurt of blood over that lace jabot and velvet jacket. Every historian knows the thirst to see the reality of the past, but this was something new, a different sort of hunger. I flung the book aside, put my throbbing head down on the table, and wept for the first time since my imprisonment began. I had not wept in years, in fact, not since my mother’s funeral. The salt of my own tears comforted me a little—it was so ordinary.
Day
The monster sleeps, but he did not speak to me all of yesterday, except to ask me how the catalogue is coming along, and to examine my work on it for a few minutes. I am too tired to continue the task just now, or even to type much. I will sit in front of the fire and try to collect a little of my old self there.
Day
Last night he sat me before the fire again, as if we were still holding civilized discourse, and told me that he will move the library soon, sooner than he had originally intended, because some threat to it is drawing closer. “This will be your last night, and then I will leave you here a little,” he said, “but you will come to me when I call for you. Then you may resume your work in a new and safer place. Later we shall see about sending you out into the world. Think all you can about whom you will bring to me, to help us in our task. For now, I shall leave you where you will not be found, in any case.” He smiled, which made my vision blur, and I tried to watch the fire instead. “You have been most obstinate. Perhaps we will disguise you as a holy relic.” I had no desire to ask him what he meant by this.
So it is only a matter of a short time before he finishes my mortal life. Now all my energy goes to strengthening myself for the last moments. I am careful not to think of the people I have loved, in the hope that I will be less likely to think of them in my next, damned state. I will hide this record in the most beautiful book I have found here—one of the few works in the library that does not now give me a horrified pleasure—and then I will hide that book as well, so that it will cease to belong to this archive. If only I could consign myself to dust with it. I feel sunset approaching, somewhere out in the world where light and dark still exist, and I will use all my waning energy to remain myself to the last moment. If there is any good in life, in history, in my own past, I invoke it now. I invoke it with all the passion with which I have lived.
Chapter 74
“Helen touched her father’s forehead with two fingers, as if conferring a blessing. She was fighting sobs now. ‘How can we move him out of here? I want to bury him.’
“‘There’s no time,’ I said bitterly. ‘He’d rather we got out alive, I’m sure.’
“I took my jacket off and spread it gently over him, covering his face. The stone lid was too heavy to put back on. Helen picked up her little pistol, carefully checking it even in the midst of her emotion. ‘The library,’ she whispered. ‘We must find it immediately. And did you hear something a moment ago?’
“I nodded. ‘I think I did, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.’ We stood listening hard. The silence hung unbroken above us. Helen was trying the walls now, feeling along them with her pistol in one hand. The candlelight was frustratingly dim. We went around and around, pressing and tapping. There were no niches, no oddly protruding rocks, no possible openings, nothing that looked suspicious.
“‘It must be almost dark outside,’ Helen muttered.
“‘I know,’ I said. ‘We’ve probably got ten minutes and then we shouldn’t be here, I’m sure of that.’ We went around the little room again, checking every inch. The air was chill, especially now that I wasn’t wearing my jacket, but sweat began to trail down my back. ‘Maybe the library is in another part of the church, or in the foundation.’
“‘It has to be completely hidden, probably underground,’ Helen whispered. ‘Otherwise someone would have known of it long ago. Also, if my father is in this grave —’ She didn’t finish, but it was the question that had tormented me even in the first moment of shock, seeing Rossi there: where was Dracula?
“‘Isn’t there anything unusual here?’ Helen was looking at the low, vaulted ceiling now, trying to reach it with her fingertips.
“‘I don’t see anything.’ Then a sudden thought made me snatch a candle from the stand and crouch down. Helen followed me swiftly.
“‘Yes,’ she breathed. I was touching the carved dragon on the vertical of the lowest step. I had stroked it with my finger during our first visit to the crypt; now I pushed it hard, put my weight into it. It was firm in the wall. But Helen’s sensitive hands were already feeling the stones around it, and she suddenly found a loose one; it simply came out in her hand, like a tooth, from where it was embedded next to the dragon carving. A small dark hole gaped where it had been; I put my hand in and waved it around, but encountered only space. Helen slipped hers in, however, and brought it back toward the dragon, behind the carving. ‘Paul!’ she cried softly.
“I followed her grasp into the dark. There was certainly a handle there, a large handle of cold iron, and when I pushed on it the dragon lifted easily out of its space under the step without disturbing any of the other stones around it or the step above it. It was a finely chiseled piece of work, we saw now, with an iron handle in the shape of a horned beast drilled into it, presumably so you could pull it shut behind you when you went down the narrow stone steps opening before us. Helen took a second candle and I grabbed the matches. We entered on hands and knees—I remembered suddenly Rossi’s bruised and scraped appearance, his torn clothes, and wondered if he’d been dragged more than once through this opening—but we were soon able to stand upright on the steps.
“The air that came up to meet us was cold and dank in the extreme, and I fought to control a trembling deep inside and to keep a firm hold on Helen, who was also trembling, during the steep descent. At the bottom of fifteen steps was a passage, infernally dark, although our candlelight showed iron sconces pinned high on the walls, as if it had once been illuminated. At the end of the passageway—again, it seemed to me about fifteen steps forward, and I was careful to count them—was a door of heavy and clearly very old wood, wearing into splinters near the bottom, and again that eerie door handle, a long-horned creature wrought in iron. I felt more than saw Helen rais
e her pistol. The door was wedged firm, but on examining it closely I found it bolted from the side we were on. I put all my weight under the heavy latch, and then I pulled the door open with a slow fear that nearly melted my bones.
“Inside, the light of our candles, feeble as it was, fell on a great chamber. There were tables near the door, long tables of an ancient solidity, and empty bookshelves. The air of the room was surprisingly dry after the chill of the passage, as if it had some secret ventilation or was dug into a protected depth of earth. We stood clinging to each other, and listened hard, but there was no sound in the room. I wished devoutly that we could see beyond the darkness. The next thing our light picked up was a branching candelabrum filled with half-burned candles, and this I lit all over. It illuminated high cabinets now, and I looked cautiously inside one of them. It was empty. ‘Is this the library?’ I said. ‘There’s nothing here.’
“We stood still again, listening, and Helen’s pistol glinted in the increased light. I thought that I should have offered to carry it, to use it if necessary, but I had never handled a gun, and she, I knew very well, was a crack shot. ‘Look, Paul.’ She pointed with her free hand, and I saw what had caught her gaze.
“‘Helen,’ I said, but she was moving forward. After a second my light reached a table that had not been illuminated before, a great stone table. It was not a table, I saw an instant later, but an altar—no, not an altar, but a sarcophagus. There was another nearby—had this been a continuation of the monastery’s crypt, a place where its abbots could rest in peace, away from Byzantine torches and Ottoman catapults? Then we saw beyond them the largest sarcophagus of all. Along the side ran one word, cut into the stone: DRACULA. Helen raised her gun, and I gripped my stake. She took a step forward and I kept close to her.
“At that moment we heard a commotion behind us, at a distance, and the crash of footsteps and scrambling bodies, which almost obscured the faint sound in the darkness beyond the tomb, a trickling of dry earth. We leaped forward like one being and looked in—the largest sarcophagus had no covering slab and it was empty, as were the other two. And that sound: somewhere in the darkness, some small creature was making its way up through the tree roots.
The Historian Page 66