The Historian

The Historian Page 74

May 1954

I have no one to whom to write this, and no hope that it will ever be found, but it seems to me a crime not to attempt to record my knowledge while I am still able to, and God only knows how long that will be.

I was taken from my university office some days ago - I am not sure how many, but I surmise that this is still the month of May. On that night I said good-bye to my beloved student and friend, who had shown me his copy of the demonic book I had tried for years to forget. I saw him walk away with all the help I could possibly give him. Then I shut my office door and sat for a few moments in great regret and fear. I knew that I was culpable. I had renewed in secret my research into the history of vampires and I fully intended to come around by degrees to an expansion of my knowledge of the legend of Dracula, and perhaps even to solve at last the mystery of the whereabouts of his tomb. I had let time, rationality, and pride lull me into believing there would be no consequences to renewing my research. I admitted my guilt to myself even in that first moment of solitude.

It had cost me a terrible pang to give Paul my research notes and the letters I'd written about my experiences, not because I wanted them for myself any longer  - all desire to continue my research had vanished in me the second he had shown me his book. I simply, deeply regretted having to put this gruesome knowledge into his hand, although I was sure that the more he understood the better he would be able to protect himself. I could only hope that if any punishment followed, I would be the sufferer and not Paul, with his youthful optimism, his light step, his untried brilliance. Paul cannot be more than twenty-seven; I have had decades of life and much undeserved happiness. This was my first thought. My next thoughts were practical. Even if I wished to protect myself, I had no way to do so immediately, except my own faith in the rational. I had kept my notes but not any traditional means of warding off evil  - no crucifixes or silver bullets, no braids of garlic. I had never resorted to those, even at the height of my research, but now I began to regret that I had advised Paul to use only the resources of his own mind.

These thoughts required the space of a minute or two, and as it turned out, I had only a minute or two at my disposal. Then, with a sudden rush of foul, cold air, an immense presence was upon me, so that I could hardly see, and my entire body seemed to rise out of its chair with fear. I was enveloped, blinded in an instant, and I felt I must be dying, though from what I couldn't tell. In the midst of it I had the strangest vision of youth and loveliness, a feeling more than a vision, a sense of myself much younger and full of love for something or someone. Perhaps that is the way one dies. If so, when my time comes - and it will come soon, whatever terrible form it takes - I hope this vision will be with me again in the last moment.

After this I remember nothing, but a nothing that lasted for a period I could not and still cannot measure. When I came slowly to myself again, I was amazed to find myself alive. I could not see or hear, in the first seconds. It was like emerging from a brutal surgery, and my awakening was immediately followed by a comprehension that I was in pain, that my whole body was terribly weak and ached profoundly, that there was a burning in my right leg and in my throat and head. The air was cold and dank, and whatever I lay on was cold, so that I felt chilled all over. This sensation was followed by light - a dim light but enough to convince me that I was not blind and that my eyes were open.

This light, and the pain, more than anything else, confirmed to me that I was alive. I began to remember what I thought at first must have been the evening before - Paul coming to my office with his shocking discovery. Then I understood with a sudden plunging of my heart that I must be in the custody of evil; that was why my body had been brutalized and why I seemed surrounded by the very smell of evil.

I moved my limbs as cautiously as I could and managed through my great weakness to turn my head, and then to lift it. My sight was blocked by a dim wall not four inches away, but the feeble light I'd already perceived came in from above it. I sighed and heard my own sigh; this made me believe I could still hear, as well, and that I was simply in so silent a place that it had given me the illusion of deafness. I listened harder than ever, and, hearing nothing, I raised myself cautiously to a sitting position. The action sent miserable pain and weakness through all my limbs, and I felt my head throbbing. In the sitting position I regained more of my tactile sense and found I was lying on stone, and the low wall on each side of me helped me prop myself up. There was a terrible buzzing in my head, which seemed to fill the space all around me. It was a dim space, as I've said, silent and dwindling to darkness in the corners. I felt around with my hands. I was sitting up in an open sarcophagus.

This discovery sent a wave of nausea through me, but at the same moment I noted that I still wore the garments I'd had on in the office, although my shirt and jacket were torn in one sleeve and my tie was gone. The fact that I had my own clothes, however, gave me some reassurance; this was not death, not mere insanity, and I had not awakened in another era, unless I'd transported my clothes there with me. I felt my clothes and found my wallet in the front pocket of my pants. It was a shock to feel this familiar item under my hands. My watch, I found to my sorrow, was gone from my wrist, and my good pen from my inside jacket pocket.

Then I brought my hand up to my throat and face. My face seemed unchanged, apart from a very tender bruise on the forehead, but in the muscle of my throat I found a wicked puncture, sticky under my fingers. When I moved my head too far or swallowed hard, the wound made a sucking sound, appalling to me beyond all rationality. The punctured area was swollen, too, and throbbed with pain under my touch. I felt I might faint again from horror and hopelessness, and then I recalled that I had the strength to sit upright. Perhaps I had not lost as much blood as I'd at first feared, and perhaps that meant I had been bitten only once. I felt like myself, not like a demon; I felt no longing for blood, no wickedness of heart. Then a great misery swept over me. What did it matter whether I felt no bloodthirst yet? Wherever I was, it would surely be only a matter of time before I was fully corrupted. Unless, of course, I could escape.

I moved my head slowly, looking around, trying to make my eyes clear, and then I was able to discern the source of the light. It was a reddish glow far away in the darkness - but how far I could not tell - and between me and that glow loomed dark heavy shapes. I ran my hands down the outside of my house of stone. The sarcophagus seemed to be close to the ground, or to a stone floor, and I felt around until I'd determined that I could climb out into the dimness without falling any great distance. It was a long step out onto the floor, and my legs shook terribly, so that I stumbled to my knees as soon as I'd got out of the sarcophagus. Now I could see a little better, too. I made my way towards the source of soft reddish light with my hands in front of me, in the process bumping into what seemed to be another sarcophagus, which I found empty, and into a piece of wooden furniture. When I collided with the wood I heard something soft fall, but couldn't see what it was.

This groping in the dimness was terrifying, and I expected at any second to be pounced on by the Thing that had brought me there. I wondered again if I might not actually be dead - if this was some terrible version of death, which I had momentarily mistaken for a continuation of life. But nothing pounced on me, the pain in my legs was convincing enough, and I was getting closer to the light, which danced and flickered at one end of the long chamber. Before this glow, I could see now, loomed a motionless dark bulk. When I was within a few yards of it I saw a fire on a hearth, burning low and red. It was framed by an arched stone fireplace, and it gave enough light to play off several massive old pieces of furniture - a great desk littered with papers, a carved chest, a tall angular chair or two. In one of the chairs, which had its back to me and its front to the fire, someone was sitting very still - I saw a dark shape just above the chair back. I wished now that I had felt my way in the opposite direction, away from the light and towards some possible escape, but I was terribly drawn by my glimpse of that dark shape and the regal chair below it, and by the soft red of the fire. On the one hand, it took all my willpower to walk towards it, and on the other I could not have turned away if I had tried.

I came slowly into the firelight on my bruised legs, and as I rounded the great chair a figure slowly rose and turned to me. Because his back was now to the fire, and because there was so little light around us, I could not see his face, although I thought in the first second that I caught a glimpse of bone-white cheek and glittering eye. He had long, curling, dark hair, which fell around his shoulders in a short mantle. There was something about his movement that was indescribably different from that of a living man, but whether it was swifter or slower I couldn't have said. He was only a little taller than I, but gave a sense of height and bulk, and I could see the spread of his broad shoulders against the firelight. Then he reached for something, bending to the fire. I wondered if he was about to kill me and I stayed very quiet, hoping to die with some dignity, however it happened. But he was merely touching a long taper to the fire, and when it caught he lit other tapers in a candelabrum near his chair and turned again to face me.

Now I could see him better, although his face was still in shadow. He wore a peaked cap of gold and green with a heavy jewelled brooch pinned above his brow, and a massive-shouldered tunic of gold velvet with a green collar laced high under his large chin. The jewel on his brow and the gold threads in his collar glittered in the firelight. A cape of white fur was drawn around his shoulders and pinned with the silver symbol of a dragon. His clothing was extraordinary; I felt almost as frightened of it as I did of his strange undead presence. It was real clothing, living, fresh clothing, not the faded pieces of a museum exhibition. He wore it with extraordinary richness and grace, too, standing silently before me, so that the cape fell down around him like the swirl of snow. The candlelight revealed a blunt-fingered, scarred hand on a dagger hilt, and farther down a powerful leg in green hose and a booted foot. He shifted a little, turning in the light, but still silent. I could see his face better now, and the cruel strength of it made me shrink back - the great dark eyes under knitted brows, the long straight nose, the broad bonelike cheeks. His mouth, I saw now, was closed in a hard smile, ruby and curving under his wiry, dark mustache. At one corner of his lips I saw a stain of drying blood -  oh, God, how that made me recoil. The sight of it was terrible enough, but the immediate realization that it was probably mine, my own blood, made my head swim.

He drew himself up even more proudly and looked me full in the face across the dimness that separated us. "I am Dracula," he said. The words came out cold and clear. I had the sense that they were in a language I did not know, although I understood them perfectly. I was unable to speak and stood staring at him in a horrified paralysis. His body was only ten feet from me, and it was undeniably real and powerful, whether it was actually dead or alive. "Come," he said in that same cold, pure tone. "You are tired and hungry after our journey. I have set out a supper for you." His gesture was graceful, even courtly, with a flash of jewels on his big white fingers.

I saw a table near the fire, laden with covered dishes. I could smell food now, too - good, real, human food - and the aroma made me feel faint. Dracula moved quietly to the table and poured out a glass of something red from a decanter there, something I thought for a moment must be blood. "Come," he said again, more softly. He moved away and sat down in his chair, as if he thought I might be more likely to approach if he stayed at a little distance. I went haltingly towards the empty chair by the table, my legs trembling under me from sheer weakness as well as fear. I sat down among the dark cushions there, a collapse, and looked at the dishes. Why, I wondered, did I long to eat when I might die any moment? It was a mystery only my body understood. Dracula was gazing into the fire now; I could see the ferocious profile, the long nose and strong chin, the dark curl of hair over his shoulder. He had pressed his hands thoughtfully together, so that his mantle and embroidered sleeves fell away, showing wrists of green velvet and a great scar across the back of his near hand. His attitude was quiet and pensive; I began to feel I was dreaming rather than menaced, and I dared to lift the lids of some of the dishes.

Suddenly I was so hungry that I could hardly restrain myself from eating wildly with both hands, but I managed to lift the metal fork and bone knife on the table and carve up first a roasted chicken and then a piece of some gamey dark meat. There were ceramic bowls of potatoes and gruel, a hard bread, a hot soup full of greens. I ate ravenously, trying to slow myself enough to keep my stomach from cramping. The silver goblet at my elbow was brimming with strong red wine, not blood, and I drank it all. Dracula did not stir during my meal, although I couldn't help glancing at him every few seconds. When I was done I felt almost ready to die, content for a long minute. So this was why a person about to be executed was given a last meal, I thought. It was my first clear thought since I had awakened in the sarcophagus. I slowly covered the empty dishes, trying to make as little noise as possible, and sat back, waiting.

After a long while, my companion turned in his chair. "You have finished your dinner," he said quietly. "Then perhaps we can converse a little, and I will tell you why I have brought you here." His voice was clear and cold again, but this time I noticed a faint rattle in its depths, as if the mechanism that produced it was infinitely old and worn. He sat looking thoughtfully at me, and I felt myself shrinking under his gaze. "Do you have any idea where you are?"

I had hoped not to have to speak to him, but I felt that there was little point in my keeping silent, which might enrage him, although he seemed calm enough at the moment. It had also suddenly occurred to me that by answering, by engaging him somehow, I might buy a little time in which to test my surroundings for possible escape, or for some means to destroy him, if I could work up the nerve, or both. This must be night, or he would not be awake, if the legend was accurate. Eventually morning must come, and if I was alive to see it he would have to sleep while I stayed awake.

"Do you have any idea where you are?" he repeated, almost patiently.

"Yes," I said. I could not bring myself to address him by any title. "At least, I think so. This is your tomb."

"One of them." He smiled. "My favorite one, in any case."

"Are we in Wallachia?" I could not help asking it.

He shook his head so that the firelight moved in his dark hair and over his bright eyes. There was something inhuman about the gesture that made my stomach twist inside me. He did not move like a living person, and yet - again - I couldn't have said exactly what the difference was. "Wallachia became too dangerous. I should have been allowed to rest there forever, but there was no possibility of that. Imagine - after fighting so hard for my throne, for our freedom, I could not even lay my bones there."

"Where are we, then?" I tried, again in vain, to feel this was an ordinary conversation. Then I realized that I didn't simply want to make the night pass swiftly or safely, if there was any chance of that. I wanted, too, to learn something about Dracula. Whatever he was, this creature, he had lived five hundred years. His answers would die with me, of course, but this fact did not prevent me from feeling a twinge of curiosity.

"Ah, where are we," Dracula repeated. "It does not matter, I think. We are not in Wallachia, which is still ruled by fools."I stared at him. "Do you - do you know about the modern world?"

He looked at me with a surprised amusement that set his terrible face curling.

For the first time I saw the long teeth, the receding gums, which gave him the look of an old dog when he smiled. The vision was gone as quickly as it had come - no, his mouth was normal, apart from that small stain of my blood - or someone's - below the dark mustache. "Yes," he said, and I was afraid for a second that I would have to hear him laugh. "I know the modern world. It is my prize, my favorite work."

I felt that some kind of frontal attack might be in my interest, if it engaged him. "Then what do you want with me? I have avoided the modern for many years - unlike you, I live in the past."

"Oh, the past." He put his fingertips together again in the firelight. "The past is very useful, but only for what it can teach us about the present. The present is the rich thing. But I am very fond of the past. Come. Why not show you now, since you have eaten and rested?" He rose, again with that movement that seemed determined by some force other than the limbs of his body, and I rose quickly with him, afraid that this might be a trick, that he might lunge for me now. But he turned slowly and lifted a candle out of the stand near his chair and held it up. "Take a light with you," he said, moving away from the hearth and into the dark of the great chamber. I took a second candle and followed him, staying clear of his strange clothing and chilling movements. I hoped he was not going to lead me back to my sarcophagus.

By the sparse light of our candles I began to see things I had not been able to see before - wonderful things. I could now make out long tables before me, tables of an ancient solidity. And on these lay piles and piles of books - crumbling leather-bound volumes and gilt covers that picked up the glimmer of my candle flame. There were other objects, too - never had I seen such an inkstand, or such strange quills and pens. There was a stack of parchment, glimmering in the candlelight, and an old typewriter supplied with thin paper. I saw the gleam of jewelled bindings and boxes, the curl of manuscripts in brass trays. There were great folios and quartos bound in smooth leather, and rows of more modern volumes on long shelves. In fact, we were surrounded; every wall seemed to be lined with books. Holding up my candle, I began to make out titles here and there, sometimes an elegant bloom of Arabic in the center of a red-leather binding, sometimes a Western language I could read. Most of the volumes were too old to have titles, however. It was a storehouse beyond compare, and I began to itch in spite of myself to open some of those books, to touch the manuscripts in their wooden trays.

Dracula turned, holding his candle aloft, and the light picked out the glow of jewels on his cap - topaz, emerald, pearl. His eyes were very bright. "What do you think of my library?"

"It looks like a - a remarkable collection. A treasure-house," I said. A kind of pleasure went over his terrible face. "You are correct," he said softly. "This library is the finest of its kind in the world. It is the result of centuries of careful selection. But you will have plenty of time to explore the wonders I have assembled here. Now let me show you something else." He led the way towards a wall we had not yet approached, and there I saw a very old printing press, such as one comes across in late-mediaeval illustrations  - a heavy contraption of black metal and dark wood with a great screw on top. The round plate was obsidian with the polish of ink; it picked up our light like a demonic mirror. There was a sheet of thick paper lying on the shelf of the press. Leaning closer I saw that it was partly printed, a discarded attempt, and that it was in English. "The Ghost in the Amphora," ran the title. "Vampires from Greek Tragedy to Modern Tragedy." And the byline:

"Bartholomew Rossi."

Dracula must have been waiting for my gasp of astonishment, and I did not disappoint him. "You see, I keep up with the finest modern research - up to the minute, as they say. When I cannot get a published work, or I want it at once, I sometimes print it myself. But here is something that will interest you easily as much." He pointed at a table behind the press. It held a row of woodcuts. The largest of them, propped up to view, was the dragon of our books - mine and Paul's - in reverse, of course. With difficulty, I kept myself from exclaiming aloud. "You are surprised," Dracula said, holding his light near the dragon. Its lines were so familiar to me that I could have cut them with my own hand. "You know this image very well, I think."

"Yes." I held my candle tightly. "Did you print the books yourself? And how many of them are there?"

"My monks printed some of them, and I have continued their work," he said quietly, looking down at the woodcut. "I have nearly fulfilled my ambition of printing fourteen hundred and fifty three of them, but slowly, so that I have time to distribute them as I work. Does that number mean anything to you?"

"Yes," I said after a moment. "It is the year of the fall of Constantinople."

"I thought you would see it," he said with his bitter smile. "It is the worst date in history."

"It seems to me there are many contenders for that honor," I said, but he was shaking his great head above his great shoulders.

"No," he said. He lifted his candle high and in its light I saw his eyes blaze up, red in their depths like a wolf's, and full of hatred. It was like seeing a dead gaze suddenly rustle to life; I had thought his eyes bright before, but now they were savage with light. I could not speak; I could not look away. After a second he turned and contemplated the dragon again. "He has been a good messenger," he said thoughtfully.

"Did you leave mine for me? My book?"

"Let us say that I arranged it." He reached his battle-scarred fingers out to touch the carved block. "I am very careful about how they are distributed. They go only to the most promising scholars, and to those I think may be persistent enough to follow the dragon to his lair. And you are the first who has actually done it. I congratulate you. My other assistants I leave out in the world, to do my research."

"I did not follow you," I ventured to say. "You brought me here."

"Ah - " Again that curve of the ruby lips, the twitch of the long mustache.

"You would not be here if you had not wanted to come. No one else has ever disregarded my warning twice in a lifetime. You have brought yourself."

I looked at the old, old press and the woodcut of the dragon. "Why do you want me here?" I did not wish to rouse his anger with my questions; tomorrow night he could kill me, if he liked, if I'd found no escape during the daytime hours. But I could not help asking him this.

"I have been waiting a long time for someone to catalogue my library," he said simply. "Tomorrow you shall look at all of it in freedom. Tonight we shall talk." He led the way back to our chairs with his powerful, slow step. His words gave me a great deal of hope - apparently he really did not mean to kill me tonight, and besides, my curiosity was rising high in me. I was not dreaming, it seemed; I was speaking with one who had lived through more history than any historian can presume to study in even a rudimentary way in a single career. I followed him, at a careful distance, and we sat down before the fire again. As I settled myself, I noticed that the table with my empty supper dishes was gone, and in its place was a comfortable ottoman, on which I cautiously propped my feet. Dracula sat magnificently upright in his great chair. Although his chair was tall, wooden, and mediaeval, mine was comfortably upholstered, like my ottoman, as if he had thought to provide his guest with something suited to modern weakness.

We sat in silence for long minutes, and I'd just begun to wonder if he meant us to sit this way all night when he began to speak again. "In life, I loved books," he said. He turned to me a little, so that I could see the glint of his eyes and the lustre of his shaggy hair. "Perhaps you do not know that I was something of a scholar. This seems not widely known." He spoke dispassionately. "You do know that the books of my day were very limited in scope. In my mortal life, I saw mainly those texts that the church sanctioned - the gospels and the Orthodox commentary on them, for example. These works were of no use to me, in the end. And by the time I first took my rightful throne, the great libraries of Constantinople had been destroyed. What remained of them, in the monasteries, I could never enter to see with my own eyes." He was looking deeply into the fire. "But I had other resources. Merchants brought me strange and wonderful books from many places - Egypt and the Holy Land, and the great monasteries of the West. From these I learned about the ancient occult. As I knew I could not attain a heavenly paradise" - again that dispassionate tone - "I became an historian in order to preserve my own history forever."

He fell silent for some time, and I was afraid to ask more. At last, he seemed to rouse himself, tapping his great hand on the arm of his chair. "That was the beginning of my library."

I was too curious to keep silent, although I found the question bitterly hard to frame. "But after your - death, you continued to collect these books?" "Oh, yes." He turned to look at me now, perhaps because I had asked this of my own volition, and smiled grimly. His eyes, hooded in the firelight, were terrible to meet. "I have told you, I am a scholar at heart, as well as a warrior, and these books have kept me company through my long years. There is much of a practical nature to be learned from books, also - statesmanship, for example, and the battle tactics of great generals. But I have many kinds of books. You shall see tomorrow."

"And what is it you wish me to do for your library?"

"As I said, to catalogue it. I have never made a full record of my holdings, of their origins and condition. This will be your first task, and you will accomplish it more swiftly and brilliantly than anyone else would be able to, with your many languages and the breadth of your knowledge. In the course of this task, you will handle some of the most beautiful books - and the most powerful - ever produced. Many of them do not exist anywhere else anymore. Perhaps you know, Professor, that only about one one-thousandth of the literature ever published is still in existence? I have set myself the task of raising that fraction, over the centuries." As he spoke, I noticed again the peculiar clarity and coldness of his voice, and that rattling in the depths of it - like the rattle of the snake, or cold water running over stones.

"Your second task will be much larger. In fact, it will last forever. When you know my library and its purposes as intimately as I do, you will go out into the world, under my command, and search for new acquisitions - and old ones, too, for I shall never stop collecting from the works of the past. I will