The Historian (79 page)

No wonder the government let trees grow out of its roofs.

―The librarian took us into a corner room. ‗The infirmary,‘ Ranov explained. This cooperative version of Ranov was making me more nervous by the hour. The librarian opened a rickety wooden door, and inside we saw a scene of such pathos that I don‘t really like to remember it. Two old monks were housed there. The room was furnished only with their cots, a single wooden chair, and an iron stove; even with that stove the place must have been bitterly cold during the mountain winters. The floor was stone, the walls bare whitewash except for a shrine in one corner: hanging lamp, elaborately carved shelf, tarnished icon of the Virgin.

―One of the old men was lying on his cot and did not look at us as we entered. I saw after a moment that his eyes were permanently closed, swollen and red, and that he turned his chin from time to time as if trying to see with it. He was mostly covered with a white sheet, and one of his hands fumbled with the edge of the cot, as if to find the limit of space, the point where he might roll off if he wasn‘t careful, while his other hand fumbled with the loose flesh of his own neck.

―The more functional resident of the room was upright in the only chair, a staff leaning against the wall near him as if his journey from the cot to the seat had been a long one.

He was dressed in black robes, which hung unbelted over a protruding belly. His eyes were open, and hugely blue, and they turned on us with uncanny seeing as we entered.

His whiskers and hair stuck out like white weeds all around him, and his head was bare.

Somehow this made him look more ill and anomalous than anything else did, this uncovered head in a world in which all monks wore their tall black hats constantly. This bareheaded monk could have been an illustration for a prophet in some nineteenth-century Bible, except that his expression was anything but visionary. He wrinkled his big nose upward as if we smelled bad, and chewed the corners of his mouth, and narrowed and widened his eyes every few minutes. I couldn‘t have said whether he looked fearful, or sneering, or diabolically amused, because his expression shifted constantly. His body and hands reposed in the shabby chair, as if all the motions they might have made had been sucked upward into his twitching face. I looked away.

―Ranov was talking with the librarian, who gestured around the room. ‗This man in the chair is Pondev,‘ Ranov said flatly. ‗The librarian warns us that we will receive very little normal speech from him.‘ Ranov approached the man cautiously, as if he thought Brother Angel might bite, and looked into his face. Brother Angel—Pondev—swung his head around to look at him, the imitative gesture of an animal in a zoo cage. Ranov seemed to be making a stab at introductions, and after a second Brother Angel‘s surreally blue eyes wandered to our faces. His own face wrinkled and twitched. Then he spoke, and the words came in a rush, followed by a grinding tangle, a growl. One of his hands went up into the air and made a sign that could have been half a cross or an attempt to keep us away.

―‗What‘s he saying?‘ I asked Ranov in a low voice.

―‗Only nonsense,‘ said Ranov with interest. ‗I have never heard anything like it. It seems to be partly prayers—something superstitious from their liturgy—and partly about the Sofia trolley system.‘

―‗Can you try asking him a question? Tell him we are historians like him and we want to know if a group of pilgrims came here from Wallachia by way of Constantinople in the late fifteenth century, carrying a holy relic.‘

―Ranov shrugged but made the attempt, and Brother Angel responded with a snarl of syllables, shaking his head. Did that mean yes or no? I wondered. ‗More nonsense,‘

Ranov noted. ‗This time it sounds like something about the invasion of Constantinople by the Turks, so at least he understood that much.‘

―Suddenly the old man‘s eyes seemed to clear, as if their crystalline focus had really taken us in for the first time. In the midst of his strange flow of sounds—language, was it?—I distinctly heard the name
Atanas Angelov
.

―‗Angelov!‘ I cried, speaking directly to the old monk. ‗Did you know Atanas Angelov?

Do you remember working with him?‘

―Ranov listened with care. ‗It is still mostly nonsense, but I will try to tell you what he is saying. Listen carefully.‘ He began to translate, quickly and dispassionately; much as I disliked him, I had to admire his skill. ‖I worked with Atanas Angelov. Years ago, maybe centuries. He was crazy. Turn off that light over there—it hurts my legs. He wanted to know everything about the past, but the past does not want you to know her. She says no no no. She springs up and injures you. I wanted to take the number eleven, but that does not go to our neighborhood anymore. In any case, Comrade Dimitrov canceled the pay we were going to receive, for the good of the people. Good people.―‗

―Ranov took a breath, during which he must have missed something, since Brother Angel‘s flow of words continued. The old monk was still motionless in his chair from the neck down, but his head wagged and his face contracted. ‗‖Angelov found a dangerous place, he found a place called Sveti Georgi, he heard the singing. That is where they buried a saint and danced on his grave. I can offer you some coffee, but it is only ground wheat, wheat and dirt. We don‘t even have any bread.―‘

―I knelt in front of the old monk and took his hand, although Helen seemed to want to hold me back. His hand was as limp as a dead fish, white and puffy, the nails yellow and weirdly long. ‗Where is Sveti Georgi?‘ I pleaded. I felt that in another minute I might begin to cry, in front of Ranov and Helen and these two desiccated creatures in their prison.

―Ranov crouched next to me, trying to catch the monk‘s wandering eyes.
‘K’de e Sveti
Georgi?’
But Brother Angel had followed his own gaze into a faraway world again.

‗‖Angelov went to Athos and saw the
typikon
, he went into the mountains and found the terrible place. I took the number eleven to his apartment. He said, ‘Come quickly I have found out something. I am going back there to dig in the past.‗ I would give you some coffee, but it is only dirt. Oh, oh, he was dead in his room, and then his body was not in the morgue.―‘ Brother Angel broke into a smile that made me back away. He had two teeth and his gums were ragged. The breath that spilled from his mouth would have killed the devil himself. He began to sing in a high, trembling voice.

The dragon came down our valley.

He burned the crops and took the maidens.

He frightened the Turkish infidel and protected our villages.

His breath dried up the rivers and we walked across them.

―As Ranov finished translating, Brother Ivan, the librarian, spoke up with some animation. He still had his hands in his sleeves, but his face was bright and interested.

‗What‘s he saying?‘ I asked quickly.

―Ranov shook his head. ‗He says he has heard this song before. He collected it from an old woman in the village of Dimovo, Baba Yanka, who is a great singer there, where the river dried up long ago. They have several festivals there where they sing these old songs, and she is the leader of the singers. One of these will be in two days, the festival of Saint Petko, and you may wish to hear her.‘

―‗More folk songs,‘ I groaned. ‗Please ask Mr. Pondev—Brother Angel—if he knows what this song means.‘

―Ranov put the question with considerable patience, but Brother Ivan sat grimacing and twitching and said nothing. After a moment, the silence drove me to the very edge of my feelings. ‗Ask him if he knows anything about Vlad Dracula!‘ I shouted. ‗Vlad Tepes! Is he buried in this region? Has he ever heard that name? The name
Dracula
? ‘ Helen had seized my arm, but I was beside myself. The librarian stared at me, although he seemed to feel no alarm, and Ranov gave me what I might have called a pitying look if I‘d wanted to pay closer attention.

―But the effect on Pondev was horrifying. He turned very pale and his eyes rolled back in his head like great blue marbles. Brother Ivan leaped forward and grabbed him as he slumped from the chair, and he and Ranov managed to get him onto the cot. He was a clumsy mass, swollen white feet protruding from the bedclothes, arms dangling around their necks. When they had him safely prone, the librarian fetched water from a pitcher and trickled some on the poor man‘s face. I stood aghast; I hadn‘t meant to cause such anguish, and perhaps now I‘d killed one of our only remaining sources of information.

After an endless moment, Brother Angel stirred and opened his eyes, but now they were wild eyes, wary as a hunted beast‘s, and they flickered in terror around the room as if he couldn‘t see us at all. The librarian patted his chest and tried to make him more comfortable on the cot, but the old monk pushed his hands away, trembling. ‗Let us leave him,‘ Ranov said somberly. ‗He is not going to die—of this, at least.‘ We followed the librarian out of the room, all of us silent and chastened.

―‗I‘m sorry,‘ I said, in the reassuring brightness of the courtyard.

―Helen turned to Ranov. ‗Could you ask the librarian if he knows anything more about that song, or what valley it came from?‘

―Ranov and the librarian conferred, the librarian glancing at us. ‗He says it comes from Krasna Polyana, the valley on the other side of those mountains, to the northeast. You may come with him to the saint‘s festival in two days if you wish to stay here. This old singer might know something about it—she will at least be able to tell you where she learned it.‘

―‗Do you think that would be helpful?‘ I murmured to Helen.

―She gave me a sober look. ‗I don‘t know, but it is all we have. Since it mentions a dragon, we should pursue it. In the meantime, we can explore Bachkovo thoroughly, and perhaps use the library if this librarian will help us.‘

―I sat wearily down on a stone bench at the edge of the galleries. ‗All right,‘ I said.‖

My beloved daughter:

Damn this English! But when I try to write to you in Hungarian, a few lines, I know at once that you are not listening. You are growing up in English. Your father, who believes that I am dead, speaks to you in English as he swings you up onto his shoulder. He speaks to you in English as he puts your shoes on—you have been wearing real shoes for years now—and in English as he holds your hand in a park. But if I speak to you in English, I feel that you cannot hear me. I didn‘t write to you at all for a long time, because I could not hear you listening in any language. I know your father believes I am dead, because he has never tried to find me. If he had tried to, he would have succeeded. But he cannot hear me in any language.

Your loving mother,

Helen

May 1963

My beloved daughter:

I do not know how many times I have silently explained to you that in the first few months you and I were very happy together. The sight of you waking from your nap, your hands moving before any other part of you stirred, your dark lashes fluttering next, and then your stretching, your smiling, filled me completely. Then something happened. It was not something outside of me, not an external threat to you. It was something inside me. I began to search your perfect body over and over for some sign of injury. But the injury was to me, even before this puncture on my neck, and it would not quite heal. I became afraid to touch you, my perfect angel.

Your loving mother,

Helen

July 1963

My beloved daughter:

I seem to be missing you more than ever today. I am in the university archives in Rome. I have been here six times in the last two years. The guards know me, the archivists know me, the waiter at the café across the street from the archive knows me and would like to know me better if I didn‘t turn away coldly, pretending I don‘t see his interest. This archive contains records of a plague in 1517, whose victims developed only one sore, a red wound on the neck. The pope ordered them to be buried with stakes through their hearts and garlic in their mouths. In 1517. I am trying to make a map through time of his movements or—since it is impossible to tell the difference—the movements of his servants. This map, really a list in my notebook, already fills many pages. But what use I can put it to I do not know yet. While I work I am waiting to discover this.

Your loving mother,

Helen

September 1963

My beloved daughter:

I am ready, almost, to give up and return to you. Your birthday is this month. How can I miss another birthday? I would return to you immediately, but I know that if I do, the same thing will happen. I will feel my uncleanness, as I first did six years ago—I will feel the horror of it, I will see your perfection. How can I be near you knowing that I am tainted? What right do I have to touch your smooth cheek?

Your loving mother,

Helen

October 1963

My beloved daughter:

I am in Assisi. These astounding churches and chapels, climbing their hill, fill me with a sense of despair. We might have come here, you in your little dress and hat, and I, and your father, all of us holding hands, as tourists. Instead, I am working in the dust of a monastic library, reading a document from 1603. Two monks died here in December of that year. They were found in the snow with their throats only a little mutilated. My Latin has lasted very well, and my money buys any help I might need with interpreting, translating, laundering my dresses. As it does visas, passports, train tickets, a false identity card. I never had money when I was growing up. My mother, in the village, barely knew what it looked like. Now I am learning that it buys everything. No, not everything. Not everything I want.