The Historian (40 page)

―‗This is what Selim Aksoy wished to show us here this morning,‘ he said gravely. ‗I do not know, in truth, whether it has any bearing on our search. However, I will read it to you. This is a volume compiled in the early nineteenth century by some editors whose names I have not seen before, historians of Istanbul. They collected here all the accounts they could find of life in Istanbul in the first years of our city—that is, beginning in 1453, when Sultan Mehmed took the city for his own and proclaimed it the capital of his empire.‘

―He pointed to a page of beautiful Arabic, and I thought for the hundredth time how terrible it was that human languages and even alphabets were separated from one another by this frustrating Babel of differences, so that when I glanced at a page of Ottoman printing, my comprehension was immediately caught in a bramble of symbols as impenetrable to me as a hedge of magic briars. ‗This is a passage that Mr. Aksoy remembered from one of his researches here. The author is unknown, and it is an account of some events in the year 1477—yes, my friends, the year after Vlad Dracula was killed in battle in Wallachia. Here it tells how in that year there were cases of the plague in Istanbul, a plague that caused the imams to bury some of the corpses with stakes through their hearts. Then it tells about the entrance into the city of a party of monks from the Carpathians—this is what made Mr. Aksoy remember the volume—in a wagon pulled by mules. The monks begged for asylum in a monastery in Istanbul and resided there for nine days and nine nights. That is the whole account, and the connections within it are very unclear—it says nothing more about the monks or what became of them. It was this word
Carpathian
that my friend Selim wished us to know about here.‘

―Selim Aksoy nodded emphatically, but I could not help sighing. The passage had a weird resonance; it gave me a feeling of unquiet without shedding any light on our problems. The year 1477—that was indeed strange, but it could have been a coincidence.

Curiosity prompted me to ask Turgut a question, however. ‗If the city was already under the rule of the Ottomans, why was there a monastery for the monks to be lodged in?‘

―‗A good question, my friend,‘ Turgut observed soberly. ‗But I must tell you there were a number of churches and monasteries in Istanbul from the very beginning of the Ottoman rule. The sultan was most gracious in his permissions to them.‘

―Helen shook her head. ‗After he had allowed his army to destroy most of the churches in the city, or had taken them for mosques.‘

―‗It is true that when Sultan Mehmed conquered the city, he allowed his troops to pillage it for three days,‘ Turgut admitted. ‗But he would not have done this if the city had surrendered to him instead of resisting—in fact, he offered them a completely peaceful settlement. It is also written that when he entered Constantinople and saw the damage his soldiers had done—the buildings they had defaced, the churches they had defiled, and the citizens they had slain—he wept for the beautiful city. From this time he allowed a number of churches to function and gave many advantages to the Byzantine inhabitants.‘

―‗He also enslaved more than fifty thousand of them,‘ Helen put in dryly. ‗Don‘t forget about that.‘

―Turgut gave her an admiring smile. ‗Madam, you are too much for me. But I meant only to demonstrate that our sultans were not monsters. Once they had conquered an area, they were often rather lenient, for those times. It was just the conquering that was not so delightfully done.‘ He pointed to the far wall of the archive. ‗There is His Gloriousness Mehmed himself, if you would like to greet him.‘ I went to look, although Helen stood stubbornly where she was. The framed reproduction—apparently a cheap copy of a watercolor—showed a solid, seated man in a white-and-red turban. He was fair skinned and delicately bearded, with calligraphic eyebrows and hazel eyes. He held a single rose up to his great hooked nose, sniffing it and gazing off into the distance. He looked to me more like a Sufi mystic than a ruthless conqueror.

―‗It‘s a rather surprising image,‘ I said.

―‗Yes. He was a devoted patron of the arts and architecture, and he built many lovely buildings here.‘ Turgut tapped his chin with a large finger. ‗Well, my friends, what do you think of this account Selim Aksoy has discovered?‘

―‗It‘s interesting,‘ I said politely, ‗but I can‘t see how it helps us find the tomb.‘

―‗I can‘t see that either,‘ Turgut admitted. ‗However, I note a certain similarity here between this passage and the fragment of a letter I read to you this morning. The disturbances in the tomb at Snagov, whatever they were, occurred in the same year—

1477. We know already that that is the year after Vlad Dracula died, and that it was a group of monks who were so concerned about something at Snagov. Couldn‘t these have been the same monks, or some group connected with Snagov?‘

―‗Possibly,‘ I admitted, ‗but that is conjecture. This account says only that the monks were from the Carpathians. The Carpathians must have been full of monasteries in that era. How could we be sure they were from the monastery at Snagov? Helen, what do you think?‘

―I must have caught her by surprise, because I found she was looking directly at me with a kind of wistfulness I had never seen in her face before. The impression vanished immediately, however, and I thought I might have imagined it, or that perhaps she was remembering her mother and our imminent trip to Hungary. Wherever her thoughts had been, she rallied at once. ‗Yes, there were many monasteries in the Carpathians. Paul is right—we cannot connect the two groups without more information.‘

―I thought Turgut looked disappointed, and he began to say something, but just then we were interrupted by a wheezing gasp. It was Mr. Erozan, still resting on Turgut‘s jacket on the floor. ‗He‘s fainted!‘ Turgut cried. ‗Here we are chatting like magpies—‘ He held the garlic to his friend‘s nose again, and the man spluttered and revived a little. ‗Quick, we must take him home. Professor, madam, help me. We will call a taxicab and carry him to my apartment. My wife and I can care for him there. Selim will stay here with the archive—it must open very soon.‘ He gave Aksoy a few rapid orders in Turkish.

―Then Turgut and I lifted the pale, weak man from the floor, propped him between us, and carried him carefully through the back door. Helen followed with Turgut‘s jacket, we passed through the alley, and a moment later we were out in the morning sunlight. When it struck Mr. Erozan‘s face, he cringed, shrank against my shoulder, and held one hand up to his eyes as if warding off a blow.‖

The night I spent in that farmhouse in Boulois, with Barley on the other side of the room, was one of the most wakeful I had ever known. We settled down at nine or so, since there wasn‘t much to do there except listen to the chickens and watch the light fade over the sagging barns. To my amazement, there was no electricity on the farm—―Didn‘t you notice the lack of wires?‖ asked Barley—and the farmwife left us a lantern and two candles before wishing us a good night. By their light the shadows of the polished old furniture grew tall and loomed over us, and the needlework on the wall fluttered softly.

After a few yawns, Barley lay down in his clothes on one bed and promptly went to sleep. I didn‘t dare follow suit, but I was also afraid to leave the candles burning all night.

Finally I blew them out, leaving only the lantern lit, which deepened the shadows all around me terribly and made the dark outside our one window press in from the farmyard. Vines rustled against the pane, trees seemed to lean closer, and a soft noise that could have been owls or doves came eerily to me as I lay curled in my bed. Barley seemed very far away; earlier, I had been glad for those thoroughly separate beds, so that there could be no awkwardness about sleeping arrangements, but now I wished we‘d been forced to sleep back-to-back.

After I‘d lain there long enough to feel frozen in one position, I saw a mellow light gradually creep onto the floorboards from the window. The moon was rising, and with it I felt a certain lightening of my terror, as if an old friend had come to keep me company. I tried not to think of my father; on any other trip it might have been him lying in that other bed in his dignified pajamas, his book abandoned beside him. He would have been the first to notice this old farmhouse, would have known that the central part of it reached back to the days of Aquitaine, would have bought three bottles of wine from the pleasant hostess and discussed her vineyard with her.

Lying there, I wondered in spite of myself what I would do if my father did not survive his trip to Saint-Matthieu. I couldn‘t possibly return to Amsterdam, I thought, to rattle around in our house alone with Mrs. Clay; that would only make my heartbreak worse. In the European system, I had two years still until I would go to university somewhere. But who would take me in before that? Barley would return to his old life; I couldn‘t expect him to worry further about me. Master James crossed my mind, with his deep, sad smile and the kind lines around his eyes. Then I thought of Giulia and Massimo, in their Umbrian villa. I saw Massimo pouring wine for me—―And what are you studying, lovely daughter?‖—and Giulia saying I must have the best room. They had no children; they loved my father. If my world came undone, I would go to them.

I blew out the lantern, braver now, and tiptoed over to peer outside. I could just see the moon, halved in a sky full of torn clouds. Across it sailed a shape I knew too well—no, it was just for a moment, and it was only a cloud, wasn‘t it? The spread wings, the curling tail? It dissolved at once, but I went to Barley‘s bed instead, and lay shivering for hours against his oblivious back.

―The business of transporting Mr. Erozan and settling him in Turgut‘s Oriental parlor—

where he lay pale but composed on one of the long divans—took much of the morning.

We were still there when Mrs. Bora returned at noon from her school. She came in briskly, carrying a bag of produce in each little gloved hand. She was wearing a yellow dress and flowered hat today, so that she looked like a miniature daffodil. Her smile was fresh and sweet, too, even when she saw us all in her living room standing around a prostrate man. Nothing her husband did seemed to surprise her, I thought; perhaps that was one of the keys to a successful union.

―Turgut explained the situation to her in Turkish, and her cheerful expression was replaced first by obvious skepticism and then by a blossoming horror when he gently showed her the wound in her newest guest‘s throat. She gave Helen and me a look of mute dismay, as if this was for her the initial wave of an evil knowledge. Then she took the librarian‘s hand, which I knew from a moment before was not only white but cold.

She held it briefly, wiped her eyes, and went quickly across to the kitchen, where we heard the distant rattle of her pots and pans. Whatever else happened, the afflicted man would have a good meal. Turgut prevailed upon us to stay for it, and Helen, to my surprise, followed Mrs. Bora to help.

―When we had made sure Mr. Erozan was resting comfortably, Turgut took me into his eerie study for a few minutes. To my relief, the curtains over the portrait were firmly closed. We sat there a while discussing the situation. ‗Do you think it‘s safe for you and your wife to house this man here?‘ I couldn‘t help asking it.

―‗I will arrange every precaution. If he is better in a day or two, I will find a place for him to stay, with someone to watch him.‘ Turgut had drawn up a chair for me and settled himself behind his desk. It was almost, I thought, like being with Rossi again in his university office, except that Rossi‘s office was so determinedly cheerful, with its burgeoning plants and simmering coffee, and this one was so eccentrically somber. ‗I do not expect any further attack here, but if there is one, our American friend will face a formidable defense.‘ Looking at his solid bulk behind the desk, I could easily believe him.

―‗I‘m sorry,‘ I said. ‗We seem to have brought you a lot of trouble, Professor, right down to importing this menace to your door.‘ I outlined for him briefly our encounters with the corrupted librarian, including my sighting of him in front of the Hagia Sophia the night before.

―‗Extraordinary,‘ Turgut said. His eyes were alight with a grim interest, and he drummed his fingertips on the top of his desk.

―‗I have a question for you, too,‘ I confessed. ‗You said in the archive this morning that you‘d seen a face like his before. What did you mean by that?‘

―‗Ah.‘ My erudite friend folded his hands on his desk. ‗Yes, I will tell you about this. It has been many years since, but I remember it vividly. In fact, it happened a few days after I received the letter from Professor Rossi explaining to me that he knew nothing about the archive here. I had been at the collection in the late afternoon, after my classes—this was when it was housed in the old library buildings, before it was moved to its present location. I remember I was doing some research for an article on a lost work of Shakespeare,
The King of Tashkani
, which some believe was set in a fictional version of Istanbul. Perhaps you have heard of it?‘

―I shook my head.

―‗It is quoted in the work of several English historians. From them we know that in the original play, an evil ghost called Dracole appears to the monarch of a beautiful old city that he—the monarch—has taken by force. The ghost says he was once the monarch‘s enemy but that he now comes to congratulate him on his bloodthirstiness. Then he urges the monarch to drink deeply of the blood of the city‘s inhabitants, who are now the monarch‘s minions. It is a chilling passage. Some say it is not even Shakespeare, but I‘—