The Historian

The Historian Page 31

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 Emin?n¨¹. 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 before, 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.

"'It is very beautiful,' Helen said, turning to our host, and I remembered how lovely she could look when sincerity relaxed the hard lines around her mouth and eyes. 'It is like the Arabian Nights. '

"Turgut laughed and waved off the compliment with a large hand, but he was clearly pleased. 'That is my wife,' he said. 'She loves our old arts and crafts, and her family passed down to her many fine things. Perhaps there is even a little something from Sultan Mehmed's empire here.' He smiled at me. 'I do not make the coffee as well as she does - that is what she tells me - but I will give you my best effort.' He settled us on the low furniture, close together, and I thought with contentment about all those time-honored objects signifying comfort: cushion, divan, and - after all - ottoman.

"Turgut's best effort turned out to be lunch, which he brought in from a small kitchen across the hall, refusing our earnest offers of help. How he had rustled up a meal in such a short time eluded my imagination - it must have been waiting for him there. He brought in trays of sauces and salads, a bowl of melon, a stew of meat and vegetables, skewers of chicken, the ubiquitous cucumber-and-yogurt mixture, coffee, and an avalanche of sweets rolled in almonds and honey. We ate heartily, and Turgut urged food on us until we were groaning. 'Well,' he said, 'I cannot let my wife think I have starved you.' All this was followed by a glass of water with something white and sweet sitting on a plate next to it. 'Attar of roses,' Helen said, tasting it. 'Very nice. They have this in Romania, too.' She dropped a little of the white paste into her glass and drank it, and I followed suit. I wasn't sure what the water might do to my digestion later, but it was not the moment for such worries.

"When we were nearly bursting, we leaned back against the low divans - I now understood their use, recovery after a large meal - and Turgut looked at us with satisfaction. 'You are sure you have had enough?' Helen laughed and I moaned a little, but Turgut refilled our glasses and coffee cups anyway. 'Very good. Now, let us talk of the things we have not yet been able to discuss. First of all, I am astounded to think that you know Professor Rossi, too, but I do not yet understand your connection. He is your adviser, young man?' And he sat down on an ottoman, leaning toward us with an expectant air.

"I glanced at Helen and she nodded slightly. I wondered if the attar of roses had softened her suspicions. 'Well, Professor Bora, I'm afraid we have not been completely open with you up to this point,' I confessed. 'But, you see, we are on a peculiar mission and we have not known whom to trust.'

"'I see.' He smiled. 'Perhaps you are wiser than you know.'

"That gave me pause, but Helen nodded again, and I continued. 'Professor Rossi is of special interest to us, too, not only because he is my adviser but because of some information he communicated to us - to me - and because he has - well, he has disappeared.'

"Turgut's gaze was piercing. 'Disappeared, my friend?'

"'Yes.' Haltingly, I told him about my bond with Rossi, my work with him on my dissertation, and the strange book I'd found in my library carrel. When I began to describe the book, Turgut started up in his seat and struck his hands together but said nothing, only listening more intently. I went on to relate how I'd brought the book to Rossi, and the story he'd told me about finding a book of his own. Three books, I thought, pausing for breath. We knew of three of these strange books, now - a magic number. But exactly how were they related to one another, as they must be? I reported what Rossi had told me about his research in Istanbul - here Turgut shook his head as if baffled - and his discovery in the archive that the dragon image matched the outlines of the old maps.

"I told Turgut how Rossi had vanished, and about the grotesque shadow I had seen pass over his office window the evening he had disappeared, and how I'd begun the search for him on my own, at first only half believing his story. Here I paused again, this time to see what Helen would say, because I didn't want to reveal her story without her permission. She stirred and looked quietly at me from the depths of the divan, and then to my surprise she picked up the tale herself and related to Turgut everything she had already told me, speaking in her low, sometimes harsh voice - the tale of her birth, her personal vendetta against Rossi, the intensity of her research on Dracula's history, and her intention to search for his legend eventually in this very city. Turgut's eyebrows rose to the edge of his pomaded hair. Her words, her deep, clear articulation, the obvious magnificence of her mind, and perhaps also the flush in her cheeks above the pale blue collar all brought an answering hue of admiration to his face - or so I thought, and for the first time since we'd met Turgut, I felt a twinge of hostility toward him.

"When Helen had rounded out the story, we all sat in silence for a moment. The green sunlight filtering into that beautiful room seemed to deepen around us, and a sense of further unreality crept over me. At last Turgut spoke. 'Your experience is most remarkable, and I am grateful that you tell me it. And I am sorry to hear your family's sad story, Miss Rossi. I still wish I knew why Professor Rossi was compelled to write to me that he did not know about our archive here, which seems a lie, does it not? But it is terrible, the disappearance of such a fine scholar. Professor Rossi was punished for something - or he is being punished right now, as we sit here.'

"The languorous feeling cleared from my head in an instant, as if a cold breeze had swept it away. 'But what makes you so certain of this? And how on earth can we find him, if this is true?'

"'I am a rationalist, like you,' Turgut said quietly, 'but I believe by my instinct what you say Professor Rossi told you that evening. And we have proof of his words in what the old librarian of the archive told me - that a foreign researcher was frightened away there - and in my finding Professor Rossi's name in the registry. Not to mention the appearance of a fiend with blood - ' He stopped. 'And now there is this dreadful aberration, his name - the name of his article - added somehow to the bibliography in the archive. It confounds me, that addition! You have done the right thing, my colleagues, to come to Istanbul. If Professor Rossi is here, we will find him. I have long wondered, myself, if Dracula's tomb could be here in Istanbul. It seems to me that if someone has placed Rossi's name very recently in that bibliography, then there is a good chance Rossi himself is here. And you believe that Rossi will be found at Dracula's place of burial. I will devote myself entirely to your service in this matter. I feel - responsible to you in this.'

"'Now I have a question for you.' Helen narrowed her eyes at both of us. 'Professor Bora, how did you come to be in our restaurant last night? It seems to me too much of a coincidence that you appeared when we had just arrived in Istanbul, looking for the archive you have been so much interested in all these years.'

"Turgut had risen, and now he took a small brass box from a side table and opened it, offering us cigarettes. I refused, but Helen took one and let Turgut light it for her. He lit one for himself, too, and sat down again, and they regarded each other, so that for a moment I felt subtly excluded. The tobacco had a delicate scent and was obviously very fine; I wondered if this was the Turkish luxury so famous in the United States. Turgut exhaled gently and Helen kicked off her slippers and drew her legs up under her, as if used to lounging on Eastern cushions. This was a side of her I hadn't seen before, this easy grace under the spell of hospitality.

"At last Turgut spoke. 'How did I come to meet you in the restaurant? I have asked myself this question several times, because I do not have an answer to it, either. But I can tell you in all honesty, my friends, that I did not know who you were or what you were doing in Istanbul when I sat down near your table.

In fact, I often go to that place because it is my favorite in the old quarter, and I take a walk there sometimes between my classes. That day I went in almost without thinking about it, and when I saw no one but two strangers there, I felt lonely and did not want to sit by myself in the corner. My wife says I am a hopeless case of friend making.'

"He smiled and tapped the ash from his cigarette into a copper plate, which he pushed toward Helen. 'But that is not such a bad habit, is it? In any case, when I saw your interest in my archive, I was surprised and moved, and now that I hear your more-than-remarkable story, I feel that somehow I am to be your assistance here in Istanbul. After all, why did you come to my favorite restaurant? Why did I go in there with my book for dinner? I see you are suspicious, madam, but I have no answer for you, except to say that the coincidence gives me hope. "There are more things in heaven and earth - "' He looked reflectively at both of us, and his face was open and sincere, and more than a little sad.

"Helen blew a cloud of Turkish smoke into the hazy sunlight. 'All right, then,' she said. 'We shall hope. And now, what shall we do with our hope? We have seen the originals of the maps, and we have seen the bibliography of the Order of the Dragon, which Paul wanted so much to look at. But where does that put us?'

"'Come with me,' Turgut said abruptly. He rose to his feet, and the last languor of the afternoon vanished. Helen stubbed out her cigarette and rose, too, her sleeve brushing my hand. I followed. 'Please come into my study for a moment.' Turgut opened a door among the folds of antique wool and silk and stood politely aside."