The Historian (15 page)

He looked up and gave me his casual, good-natured smile, weird in that wasted face, and I perceived simultaneously two things that made my marrow go cold as I sat there.

The first was that I had never told him anything about writing a history of mediaeval Europe; I had said I wanted information on my volume to help me complete a bibliography of materials related to the life of Vlad the Impaler, known in legend as Dracula. Howard Martin was as precise a man, in his curatorial way, as I was in my scholarly one, and he would never unknowingly have committed such an error. His memory had previously struck me as nearly photographic in its capacity for detail, something I notice and appreciate heartily whenever I meet it in other people.

The second thing I perceived at this moment was that, perhaps due to whatever illness he was suffering—the poor man, I almost made myself say, internally—his lips had a decayed, flaccid look when he smiled and his upper canine teeth were bared and somehow prominent in a way that gave his whole face an unpleasant appearance. I remembered all too well the bureaucrat in Istanbul, although there was nothing wrong with Howard Martin‘s neck, as far as I could see. I had just quelled my tremor and taken book and notes from his hand when he spoke up again.

―That map, by the way, is remarkable.‖

―Map?‖ I froze. Only one map I knew of—three, actually, in graduated scale—had anything to do with my present intentions, and I was sure I had never so much as mentioned their existence to this stranger.

―Did you sketch it yourself? It‘s not old, obviously, but I wouldn‘t have put you down as an artist. And certainly not a morbid type, anyway, if you don‘t mind my saying that.‖

I stared at him, unable to decipher his words and afraid to give something away by asking what he meant. Had I left one of my sketches in the book? How utterly stupid, if I had.

But I was sure I‘d checked the book carefully for loose leaves before handing it over to him.

―Well, I tucked it back in the book, so it‘s there,‖ he said comfortingly. ―Now, Dr. Rossi, I can show you down to our accounting department if you‘d like, or I can arrange for you to be billed at home.‖ He opened the door for me and smiled his professional grimace again. I had the presence of mind not to hunt through the volume in my hand then and there, and I saw in the light of the corridor that I must have imagined Martin‘s peculiar smile, and perhaps even his illness; he was normal-skinned, just a little stooped from decades of work among the leaves of the past, nothing more. He stood by the door with one hand thrust out in a hearty Washingtonian good-bye, and I shook it, muttering that I should like the bill sent to my university address.

I made my way warily out of sight of his door, then out of that hall and finally away from the great red castle that housed all his labours and those of his colleagues. Out in the fresh air of the Mall, I strolled across the bright green grass to a bench and sat down, trying both to appear and to feel unconcerned.

The volume fell open in my hand, with its usual sinister obligingness, and I looked in vain for a loose sheet of something to surprise me there. Only turning back through the pages did I find it—a very fine tracing on carbon paper, as if someone had had the third and most intimate of my secret maps actually in front of him, and had copied all its mysterious lineaments for me. The place-names in Slavic dialect were exactly those I knew from my own map—Pig-Stealing Village, Valley of Eight Oaks. In fact, this sketch was unfamiliar to me in only one particular. Below the appellation of the Unholy Tomb, there was some neat Latin lettering in an ink that seemed to match that of the other titles.

Over the apparent location of the tomb, arched around it as if to prove its absolute association with that spot, I read the words BARTOLOMEO ROSSI.

Reader, judge me a coward if you must, but I desisted from that moment. I am a young professor and I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I lecture, dine out with my new friends, and write home to my aging parents every week. I don‘t wear garlic, or crucifixes, or cross myself at the sound of a step in the hall. I have a better protection than that—I have stopped digging at that dreadful crossroads of history. Something must be satisfied to see me quiet, because I have been untroubled by further tragedy.

Now, if you yourself had to choose your sanity, your remembered life, over true instability, which would you select, as the proper way for a scholar to live out his days?

Hedges would not, I know, have required of me a headlong plunge into darkness. And yet, if you are reading this at all, it means that harm has finally come to me. You must choose, too. I have given you every shard of knowledge that I possess, where these horrors are concerned. Knowing my story, can you refuse me succor?

Yours in grief, Bartholomew Rossi

The shadows beneath the trees had lengthened to yawning proportions, and my father kicked at a chestnut burr under his good shoes. I had the sudden sense that if he had been a cruder man, he would have spat on the ground at this moment, to expel some appalling taste. Instead, he seemed to swallow hard and gather himself to smile. ―Lord! What‘ve we been talking about? How grim we seem to be this afternoon.‖ He tried to smile, but he also threw me a glance that spoke of worry, as if some shadow might come down over me, me in particular, and remove me without warning from the scene.

I uncurled my cold hand from the edge of the bench and made the effort to be lighthearted now, too. When had it become effort? I wondered, but it was too late. I was doing his work for him, distracting him as he had once tried to distract me. I took refuge in a slight petulance—not too much or he would suspect it. ―I have to say I‘m hungry again, for real food.‖

He smiled a little more naturally, and his good shoes thumped on the ground as he gave me a gallant hand off the bench and set about packing our bag with empty Naranca bottles and the other relics of our picnic. I gathered up my share with a will, relieved now because this meant he would stride away with me toward town instead of turning to linger over our view of the castle‘s facade. I had turned once already, near the end of the story, and seen that upper window, where a dark and stately shape had replaced the housecleaning old woman. I talked, rapidly, of anything else that came into my head. As long as my father didn‘t see it, too, there could be no confrontation. We might both be safe.

Ihad stayed away from the university library for some time, partly because I‘d been feeling strangely nervous about my research there, and partly because I had the sense that Mrs. Clay was suspicious about my absences after school. I had always called her, as I‘d promised to, but something increasingly shy in her voice on the phone had made me picture her holding uncomfortable discussions with my father. I couldn‘t imagine her knowing enough about vice to guess anything specific, but my father might have embarrassing surmises of his own—pot? Boys? And he looked so anxiously at me sometimes, already, that I was unwilling to trouble him further.

Finally, however, the temptation was too great, and I decided in spite of my uneasiness to go back to the library. This time I feigned an evening movie with a dull girl from my class—I knew that Johan Binnerts worked in the medieval section on Wednesday nights and that my father was at a meeting at the Center—and I went out in my new coat before Mrs. Clay could say much.

It was odd, going to the library at night, especially since I found the main hall as full as ever of weary-looking university students. The medieval reading room was empty, however. I made my way quietly to Mr. Binnerts‘s desk and found him turning through a pile of new books—nothing that would interest me, he reported with his sweet smile, since I liked only horrible things. But he did have a volume set aside for me—why hadn‘t I come in sooner for it? I apologized weakly and he chuckled. ―I was afraid something must have happened to you, or that you had taken my advice and found a nicer topic for a young lady. But you have got me interested, too, so I looked this up for you.‖

I took the book gratefully, and Mr. Binnerts said he was going into his workroom and would be back soon to see if I needed anything. He had shown me the workroom once, a little stall with windows, at the back of the reading room, where the librarians repaired wonderful old books and glued cards into new ones. The reading room was quieter than ever when he had gone, but I eagerly opened the volume he‘d given me.

It was a remarkable find, I thought then, although I know now what a basic source it is for fifteenth-century Byzantine history—a translation of Michael Doukas‘s
Istoria Turco-Bizantina
. Doukas has quite a bit to say about the conflict between Vlad Dracula and Mehmed II, and it was at that table that I first read the famous description of the sight that met Mehmed‘s eyes when he invaded Wallachia in 1462 and made his way to Târgoviste, Dracula‘s deserted capital. Outside the city, Doukas asserted, Mehmed was greeted by

―thousands and thousands of stakes bearing dead people instead of fruit.‖ At the center of this garden of death was Dracula‘s pièce de résistance: Mehmed‘s favorite general, Hamza, impaled among the others in his ―thin garment of purple.‖

I remembered Sultan Mehmed‘s archive, the one Rossi had gone to Istanbul to explore.

The prince of Wallachia had been a thorn in the sultan‘s side—that was clear. I thought it would be a good idea for me to read something about Mehmed; perhaps there were sources about him that explained his relationship with Dracula. I didn‘t know where to start, but Mr. Binnerts had said he would return soon to check on me.

I had turned, impatiently, with the idea of going to see where he was, when I heard a noise from the back of the room. It was a kind of thump, more a vibration through the floor than an actual sound, like the feel of a bird hitting a polished window in full flight.

Something made me start up in the direction of the impact, whatever it was, and I found myself dashing into the workroom at the back of the hall. I could not see Mr. Binnerts through the windows, which was for one moment a reassurance, but when I opened the wooden door, there was a leg on the floor, a gray-trousered leg attached to a twisted body, the blue sweater askew on the wrenched torso, the pale-gray hair matted with blood, the face—mercifully half hidden—crushed, a bit of it still on the corner of the desk. A book had apparently just fallen from Mr. Binnerts‘s grasp; it lay sprawled, like him. On the wall above the desk, there was a smear of blood with a large, fine handprint in it, like a child‘s finger painting. I tried so hard not to make a sound that my scream, when it came, seemed to belong to someone else.

I spent a couple of nights at the hospital—my father insisted, and the attending doctor was an old friend. My father was gentle and grave, sitting on the edge of the bed, or standing by the window with his arms crossed as the police officer questioned me for the third time. I had seen no one come into the library room. I had been reading quiet ly at the table. I had heard a thump. I had not known the librarian personally, but I had been fond of him. The officer assured my father that I was not under suspicion; I was simply the closest thing they had to a witness. But I had witnessed nothing, nobody had come into the reading room—I was certain about that—and Mr. Binnerts had not cried out. There had been no wounds to any other part of the body; someone had simply dashed the poor man‘s brain out against the corner of the desk. It would have taken prodigious strength.

The officer shook his head, perplexed. The handprint on the wall had not been made by the librarian himself; there hadn‘t been blood on his hands. Besides, the print did not match his, and it was a strange print, the whorls of the fingers unusually worn. It would have been easy to match—the officer waxed talkative with my father—except that they‘d never recorded one like it. A bad case. Amsterdam was not the city he had grown up in—

now people threw bicycles into the canals, and what about that terrible incident last year with the prostitute who—my father stopped him with a look.

When the officer was gone, my father sat on the edge of my bed again and asked me for the first time what I‘d been doing in the library. I explained that I‘d been studying, that I‘d liked to go there after school to do my homework because the reading room was quiet and comfortable. I was afraid he might be on the verge of asking me why I had chosen the medieval section, but to my relief he lapsed into silence.

I did not tell him that in the eruption of the library after my scream, I had instinctively shoved into my bag the volume Mr. Binnerts had been holding when he died. The police had searched my bag, of course, when they‘d entered the room, but they had said nothing about the book—and why would they have noticed it at all? There had been no blood on it. It was a nineteenth-century French volume on Romanian churches and it had fallen open to a page on the church at Lake Snagov, endowed with magnificence by Vlad III of Wallachia. His grave was traditionally located there, in front of the altar, according to a little text below a plan of the apse. The author noted, however, that villagers near Snagov had their own stories. What stories? I wondered, but there was nothing more on that particular church. The sketch of the apse showed nothing unusual, either.

Sitting gingerly on the edge of my hospital bed, my father shook his head. ―I want you to study at home from now on,‖ he said quietly. I wished he hadn‘t said it; I would never have entered that library again anyway. ―Mrs. Clay can sleep in your room for a while if you feel upset, and we can see the doctor again, whenever you want to. Just let me know.‖ I nodded, although I thought I would almost rather be alone with the description of the church at Snagov than with Mrs. Clay. I pondered the idea of dropping the volume into our canal—the fate of the bicycles the policeman had mentioned—but I knew that I would want eventually to reopen it, in daylight, to read it again. I might want to do this not only for my own sake but also for that of grandfatherly Mr. Binnerts, who now lay somewhere in a city morgue.