The Historian

The Historian Page 5

As I've told you, my father said, clearing his throat once or twice, Professor Rossi was a fine scholar and a true friend. I wouldn't want you to think anything different of him. I know that what I made the mistake, perhaps, of telling you earlier makes him sound - crazy. You remember that he'd described to me something terribly difficult to believe. And I was deeply shocked, and filled with doubt about him, although I saw sincerity and acceptance in his face. When he finished speaking he glanced at me with those keen eyes.

"What on earth do you mean?" I must have been stammering.

"I repeat," Rossi said emphatically, "I discovered in Istanbul that Dracula lives among us today. Or did then, at least."

I stared at him."I know you must think I'm insane," he said, relenting visibly. "And I grant you that anyone who pokes around in history long enough may well go mad."

He sighed. "In Istanbul there is a little-known repository of materials, founded by Sultan Mehmed II, who took the city from the Byzantines in 1453. This archive is mostly odds and ends collected later by the Turks as they were gradually beaten back from the edges of their empire. But it also contains documents from the late fifteenth century, and among them I found some maps that purported to give directions to the Unholy Tomb of a Turk-slayer, who I thought might be Vlad Dracula. There were three maps, actually, graduated in scale to show the same region in greater and greater detail. There was nothing on these maps that I recognized or could tie to any area I knew of. They were labeled mainly in Arabic, and they dated from the late fifteenth century, according to the archive's librarians." He tapped the strange little volume that I told you resembled my own find so closely. "The information in the center of the third map was in a very old Slavic dialect. Only a scholar with multiple linguistic resources at his command could have made head or tail of them. I did my best, but it was uncertain work."

At this point, Rossi shook his head, as if still regretting his limits. "The effort I poured into this discovery drew me unreasonably far from my official summer research on the ancient trade of Crete. But I was beyond the reach of reason, I think, sitting in that hot, sticky library in Istanbul. I remember I could see the minarets of the Hagia Sophia through the grimy windows. I worked there, with those clues to the Turkish view of Vlad's kingdom resting on the desk in front of me, toiling over my dictionaries, taking copious notes, and copying the maps by hand.

"To make a long research story short, there came an afternoon when I found myself closing in on the carefully marked spot of the Unholy Tomb, on the third and most puzzling map. You remember that Vlad Tepes is supposed to have been buried at the island monastery on Lake Snagov, in Romania. This map, like the others, didn't show any lake with an island in it - although it did show a river running through the area, widening in the middle. I had translated everything around the borders already, with the help of a professor of Arabic and Ottoman language at Istanbul University - cryptic proverbs about the nature of evil, many of them from the Qur'an. Here and there on the map, nestled among roughly sketched mountains, was some writing that at first glance appeared to be place-names in a Slavic dialect but that translated as riddles, probably a code for real locations: the Valley of Eight Oaks, Pig-Stealing Village, and so forth - strange peasant names that meant nothing to me.

"Well, in the center of the map, above the site of the Unholy Tomb, wherever it was supposed to be located, was a rough sketch of a dragon, wearing a castle as a sort of crown on its head. The dragon looked nothing like the one in my -  our - old books, but I conjectured it must have come down to the Turks with the legend of Dracula. Below the dragon someone had inked tiny words, which I thought at first were Arabic, like the proverbs in the map's borders. Looking at them through a magnifying glass, I suddenly realized that these markings were actually Greek, and I translated aloud before I had thought about courtesy - although of course the library room was empty except for myself and occasionally a bored librarian who came in and out, apparently to make sure I didn't steal anything. At this moment I was completely alone. The infinitesimal letters danced under my eyes as I sounded them out: 'In this spot, he is housed in evil. Reader, unbury him with a word.'

"At that moment, I heard a door slam in the downstairs foyer. Heavy footsteps came up the stairwell. I was still occupied with a flash of thought, however: the magnifying glass had just told me that this map, unlike the first two more general ones, had been labeled by three different people, in their three different languages. The handwritings as well as the languages were dissimilar. So were the colors of the old, old inks. Then I had a sudden vision  - you know, that intuition that a scholar can almost trust when it's backed by weeks of careful work.

"It seemed to me that the map had originally consisted of this central sketch, and the mountains that surrounded it, with the Greek command in the center. It had probably only later been labeled in that Slavic dialect to identify the places it referred to - in code, at least. Then it had somehow fallen into Ottoman hands and been surrounded by Qur'anic material, which appeared to house or imprison that ominous message at the center, or to encircle it with talismans against the dark. If this were true, who, knowing Greek, had marked the map first, perhaps even drawn it? I knew that Greek was used by Byzantine scholars of Dracula's time, not by most scholars in the Ottoman world.

"Before I could write down even a note on this theory, which might involve tests beyond my own powers, the door on the other side of the stacks flew open, and a tall, well-built man came in, hurrying wildly past the books and stopping on the other side of the table where I worked. He had the air of a conscious intruder, and I felt sure he wasn't one of the librarians. I also felt for some reason that I should rise to my feet, but out of a certain pride I couldn't bring myself to; it might have seemed deferential, when the interruption had been sudden and rather rude.

"We looked each other in the face, and I was more startled than ever. The man was distinctly out of place in that esoteric setting, handsome and well-groomed in a swarthy Turkish or South Slavic way, with a drooping, heavy mustache and tailored dark clothes like a Western businessman's. His eyes met mine belligerently, and their long lashes looked somehow disgusting in that stern face. His skin was sallow but beautifully unblemished, and his lips very red. 'Sir,' he said in a low, hostile voice, almost a growl of Turk-accented English. 'I do not think you have proper permissions for this.'

"'For what?' My academic hackles rose at once.

"'For this work of research. You are involved in material the Turkish government considers private Turkish archive. May I see your papers, please?'

"'Who are you?' I asked with equal coolness. 'May I see yours?'

"He pulled a wallet out of his interior jacket pocket, slapped it open on the table in front of me, and snapped it shut again. I had just time to see an ivory card with a jumble of Turkish titles on it. The man's hand was unpleasantly waxen and long-nailed, with a ridge of dark hair on the back. 'Ministry of Cultural Resources,' he said coldly. 'I understand you do not have actual exchange arrangement with Turkish government to examine these materials. Is this true?'

"'It most certainly is not.' I produced for him a letter from the National Library, stating that I was to be permitted research rights in any of its divisions in Istanbul.

"'Not good enough,' he said, tossing it down on my papers. 'Maybe you will need to come with me.'

"'Where?' I stood up, feeling safer on my feet now, but hoping he would not take my rising as compliance.

"'To police, if necessary.'

"'This is outrageous.' When in bureaucratic doubt, I had learned, raise your voice. 'I am a doctoral candidate at Oxford University and a citizen of the United Kingdom. I registered with the university here the day I arrived and received this letter as proof of my status. I will not be questioned by the police - or by you.'

"'I see.' He smiled in a way that curled my stomach into a knot. I had read a little about Turkish prisons and their occasionally Western inmates, and my situation struck me as precarious, although I didn't understand what kind of trouble I could possibly be in. I hoped one of the shuffling librarians had heard me and would come in to quiet us down. Then I realized that they would certainly have been responsible for admitting this character, with his intimidating business card, into my presence. Perhaps he was actually someone important. He leaned forward. 'Let me see what you are doing here. Move, please.'

"I stepped aside, reluctantly, and he bent over my work, slapping shut my dictionaries to read their covers, still with that disquieting smile. He was a massive presence across the table, and I noticed he had an odd smell, like a cologne used not quite successfully to cover something disagreeable. At last he picked up the map I had been working over, his hands suddenly gentle, handling it almost tenderly. He looked at it as if he didn't need to examine it long to know what it was, although I thought that must be a bluff. 'This is your archival material, yes?'

"'Yes,' I said angrily.

"'This is very valuable possession of Turkish state. I do not believe that you will be needing it for foreign purposes. And this piece of paper, this little map, brings you whole way from your English university to Istanbul?'"I considered retorting that I had other business as well, to throw him off my scholar's track, but realized at once that this might invite further questioning.

'Yes, in a nutshell.'

"'Nutshell?' he said, more mildly. 'Well, I think you will find this temporarily confiscated. What a shame for foreign researcher.'

"I boiled, standing there, so close to my solution, and felt thankful that I hadn't brought with me that morning any of my own careful copies of old maps of the Carpathians, which I'd meant to start comparing to this map the next day. They were hidden in my suitcase at the hotel. 'You have absolutely no right to confiscate material I've already been given permission to work on,' I said, gritting my teeth. 'I will certainly take this up with the National Library immediately. And with the British embassy. Anyway, what possible objection can you have to my studying these documents? They are obscure pieces of medieval history. They have nothing to do with the interests of the Turkish government, I'm sure.'

"The bureaucrat stood looking away from me, as if the spires of Hagia Sophia presented an interesting new angle he'd never had occasion to see before. 'It is for your own good,' he said dispassionately. 'Much better to let someone else work on that. Some other time.' He remained quite still there, head turned toward the window, almost as if he wanted me to follow his gaze to something. I had a childish feeling that I shouldn't, because it might be a trick, so I looked at him, instead, waiting. And then I saw, as if he meant the greasy daylight to fall on it, his neck above his expensive shirt collar. On the side of it, in the deepest flesh of a muscular throat, were two brown-scabbed puncture marks, not fresh but not fully healed, as if he had been stabbed by twin thorns, or mutilated at knifepoint.

"I stepped back, away from the table, thinking I'd lost my mind with all my morbid readings, that I'd actually come unhinged. But the daylight was quite ordinary, the man in his dark wool suit perfectly real, down to the smell of unwash and perspiration and something else under his cologne. Nothing disappeared or changed. I couldn't drag my eyes from those two half-healed little wounds. After a few seconds he turned back from the absorbing view, as if satisfied with what he had seen - or what I had - and smiled again. 'For your own good, Professor.'

"I stood there wordlessly while he left the room with the map rolled up in his hand, and listened to his steps dying away on the stairs. A few minutes later one of the elderly librarians came in, a man with bushy gray hair, carrying two old folios, which he began to put away on a low shelf. 'Excuse me,' I said to him, my voice almost stuck in my throat. 'Excuse me, but this is perfectly outrageous.' He looked up at me, puzzled. 'Who was that man? That bureaucrat?'

"'Bureaucrat?' The librarian faltered over my word.

"'I must have an official letter from you at once about my right to work in this archive.'

"'But you have all the right to work here,' he said soothingly. 'I have registered you here myself.'

"'I know, I know. So you must catch him and make him return the map.'

"'Catch who?'

"'The man from the Ministry of - the man who just came up here. Didn't you let him in?'

"He looked at me curiously from under his gray thatch. 'Someone came in now? No one has come in for the last three hours. I am down at the entrance myself. Unfortunately we have few who do research here.'

"'The man - ' I said, and stopped. I saw myself, suddenly, a crazy gesturing foreigner. 'He took my map. I mean the archive's map.'

"'Map, Herr Professor?'

"'I was working on a map. I signed it out this morning, at the desk.'

"'Not that map?' He pointed to my worktable. In the middle of it lay an ordinary road map of the Balkans that I had never seen in my life. It certainly hadn't been there five minutes before. The librarian was putting away his second folio.

"'Never mind.' I gathered my books as quickly as I could and left the library. In the busy, traffic-filled street there was no sign of the bureaucrat, although several men of his build and height in similar suits hurried past me carrying briefcases. When I reached the room where I was staying, I found that my belongings had been moved, owing to some practical problems with the room. My first sketches of the old maps, as well as the completed notes I hadn't needed that day, were gone. My suitcase had been perfectly repacked. The hotel staff said they knew nothing about it. I lay awake all night listening to every sound outside. The next morning I gathered up my unwashed clothes and my dictionaries and took the boat back to Greece."

Professor Rossi folded his hands again and looked at me, as if waiting patiently for my disbelief. But I was suddenly shaken by belief, not doubt. "You went back to Greece?"

"Yes, and I spent the rest of the summer ignoring the memory of my adventure in Istanbul, although I couldn't ignore its implications."

"You left because you were - frightened?"

"Terrified."

"But later you did all that research - or had it done - on your strange book?"

"Yes, mainly the chemical analysis at the Smithsonian. But when it was inconclusive - and under some other influences - I dropped the whole thing and put the book on my shelf. Up there, eventually." He nodded to the highest roost in his cage. "It's odd - I think about these events occasionally, and I seem to remember them very clearly sometimes and then only in fragments at other times. I suppose familiarity erodes even the most awful memories, though. And there are certainly periods - years at a time - when I don't want to think about this at all."

"But do you really believe - this man with the wounds on his neck - "

"What would you have thought, if he'd been standing in front of you and you'd known yourself to be sane?" He stood leaning against the shelves, and for a moment his tone was fierce.I took a last sip of cold coffee; it was very bitter, the dregs. "And you never tried again to figure out what the map meant, or where it had come from?"

"Never." He seemed to pause for a moment. "No. One of the few pieces of research I'm sure I'll never finish. I have a theory, however, that this ghastly trail of scholarship, like so many less awful ones, is merely something one person makes a little progress on, then another, each contributing a bit in his own lifetime. Perhaps three such people, centuries ago, did just that in drawing up those maps and adding to them, although I admit that all those talismanic sayings from the Qur'an probably didn't further anyone's knowledge about the whereabouts of Vlad Tepes's real tomb. And of course it could all be nonsense. He could perfectly well have been buried in his island monastery, as reported by Romanian tradition, and stayed there peacefully like a good soul - which he wasn't."

"But you don't think so."

Again he hesitated. "Scholarship must go on. For good or for evil, but inevitably, in every field."

"Did you ever go to Snagov to see for yourself, somehow?"

He shook his head. "No. I gave up the search."

I put down my icy cup, watching his face. "But you kept some information," I guessed slowly.

He reached up among the books on his top shelf again, pulling down a sealed brown envelope. "Of course. Who destroys any research completely? I copied from memory what I could of the three maps and saved my other notes, the ones I had with me that day in the archive."

He laid the unopened packet on his desk, between us, and touched it with a tenderness that didn't seem to me to match his horror of its contents. Maybe it was that disjunction, or the deepening of the spring evening into night outside, that made me even more nervous. "Don't you think this might be a dangerous sort of legacy?"

"I wish to God I could say no. But perhaps dangerous only in a psychological sense. Life's better, sounder, when we don't brood unnecessarily on horrors. As you know, human history is full of evil deeds, and maybe we ought to think of them with tears, not fascination. It's been so many years that I can't even be certain of my memories of Istanbul anymore, and I've never cared to go back there. Besides, I have the feeling I took away with me all I could have needed to know."

"To go further, you mean?"

"Yes."

"But you still don't know who could have concocted a map that showed where this tomb is? Or was?"

"No."

I put my hand out toward the brown envelope. "Don't I need a rosary to go with this, or something, some charm?"

"I'm sure you carry your own goodness, moral sense, whatever you want to call it, with you - I like to think most of us are capable of that, anyway. I wouldn't go around with garlic in my pocket, no."

"But with some strong mental antidote."

"Yes. I've tried to." His face was deeply sad, almost grim. "Perhaps I've been wrong not to make use of those ancient superstitions, but I'm a rationalist, I suppose, and I'll stick to that."

I closed my fingers over the package.

"Here's your book. It's an interesting one and I wish you luck in identifying its source." He handed me my vellum-covered volume, and I thought the sorrow in his face belied the lightness of his words. "Come two weeks from now and we'll get back to trade in Utrecht."

I must have blinked; even my dissertation sounded unreal to me. "Yes, all right."

Rossi cleared away the coffee cups and I packed my briefcase, stiff fingered.

"One last thing," he said gravely, as I turned back to him.

"Yes?"

"We won't talk about this again."

"You don't want to know how I get on?" It left me aghast, lonely.

"You could put it that way. I don't want to know. Unless, of course, you find yourself in trouble." He took my hand in his usual affectionate grip. His face wore a look of actual grief that was new to me, and then he seemed to make himself smile.

"All right," I said.

"Two weeks from now," he called almost cheerfully as I went out. "Bring me a finished chapter, or else." My father stopped. To my astonished embarrassment, I saw that there were tears in his eyes. That gleam of emotion would have halted my questions even if he hadn't spoken. "You see, writing a dissertation's the really grisly thing," he said lightly. "Anyway, we probably shouldn't have gotten into all this. It's such a convoluted old story, and obviously everything turned out fine, because here I am, not even a ghostly professor anymore, and here you are." He blinked; he was recovering. "That's a happy ending, as endings go." "But maybe there's a lot in between," I managed to say. The sun reached only through my skin, not to my bones, which had picked up some cold breeze coming off the sea. We stretched and turned this way and that to look at the town below. The latest group of milling tourists had wandered past us along the wall and were standing in a distant alcove, pointing out the islands or posing for one another's cameras. I glanced at my father, but he was gazing out to sea. Behind the other tourists, and already far ahead of us, was a man I hadn't noticed before, walking slowly but inexorably out of reach, tall and broad shouldered in a dark wool suit. We had seen other tall men in dark suits in that city, but for some reason I couldn't stop staring after this one.