The Historian (87 page)

Second Day

After I wrote my first entry above, I folded the pages I‘d written and inserted them behind a nearby cabinet, where I could reach them again but where they were not visible from any angle. Then I took a fresh candle and made my way slowly among the tables.

There were tens of thousands of books in the great room, I estimated—perhaps hundreds of thousands counting all the scrolls and other manuscripts. They lay not only on the tables but in piles inside the heavy old cabinets and along the walls on rough shelves.

Mediaeval books seemed to be mixed with fine Renaissance folios and modern printing. I found an early Shakespeare quarto—histories—next to a volume of Thomas Aquinas.

There were massive works on alchemy from the sixteenth century next to an entire cabinet of illuminated Arabic scrolls—Ottoman, I surmised. There were Puritan sermons on witchcraft and small volumes of nineteenth-century poetry and long works of philosophy and criminology from our own century. No, there was no pattern in time, but I saw another pattern emerging clearly enough.

Arranging the books as they would have been stored in the history collection of a normal library would take weeks or months, but since Dracula considered them sorted, according to his own interests, I would leave them as they were and merely try to distinguish one type of collection here from another. I thought the first collection began at the wall of the chamber near the immovable door and ranged through three cabinets and across two large tables: statesmanship and military strategy, I might call it.

Here I found more Machiavelli, in exquisite folios from Padua and Florence. I found a biography of Hannibal by an eighteenth-century Englishman and a curling Greek manuscript, dating back perhaps to the library of Alexandria: Herodotus on the Athenian wars. I began to feel a new chill as I turned through book after manuscript, each one more startling than the last. There was a dog-eared first edition of
Mein Kampf
and a diary in French—handwritten, spotted here and there with brown mould—that appeared from its opening dates and accounts to chronicle the Reign of Terror from the point of view of a government official. I would have to look at it more closely later—the diarist seemed not to have named himself anywhere. I found a large volume on the tactics of Napoleon‘s first military campaigns, printed while he was on Elba, I calculated. In a box on one of the tables I found a yellowing typescript in the Cyrillic alphabet; my Russian is rudimentary, but I was certain from the headings that it was an internal memo from Stalin to someone in the Russian military. I couldn‘t read much of it, but it contained a long list of Russian and Polish names.

These were some of the items I could identify at all; there were also many books and manuscripts whose authors or subjects were completely new to me. I had just begun a list of everything I could identify, dividing it roughly by century, when I felt a deepened cold, like a breeze where there was no breeze, and I looked up to see that strange figure standing ten feet away, on the other side of one of the tables.

He was dressed in the red-and-violet finery I‘d seen in the sarcophagus, and he was larger and more solid than I seemed to remember from the night before. I waited, speechless, to see if he would attack me at once—did he remember my attempt to take his dagger? But he inclined his head slightly, as if in greeting. ―I see you have begun your work. You will, no doubt, have questions for me. First, let us breakfast, and then we will talk of my collections.‖ I saw a glint in his face, through the dimness of the hall, perhaps a flash of gleaming eye. He led the way with that inhuman but imperious stride back to our fireside, and there I found hot food and drink again, including a steaming tea that brought some relief to my chilled limbs. Dracula sat watching the smokeless fire, his head erect on his great shoulders. Without wishing to, I thought about the decapitation of his corpse—on that point, all the accounts of his death agreed. How did he retain his head now, or was this all illusion? The collar of his fine tunic rose high under his chin, and his dark curls tumbled around it and fell to his shoulders.

―Now,‖ he said, ―let us take a brief tour.‖ He lit all the candles again, and I followed him from table to table while he lit the lanterns there. ―We shall have something to read by.‖ I did not like the way the light played on his face as he bent over each new flame, and I tried to look instead at more of the book titles. He came to my side as I stood before the rows of scrolls and books in Arabic I‘d noticed before. To my relief, he was still five feet away, but an acrid smell rose from his presence and I fought off a little faintness. I must keep my wits about me, I thought; there was no telling what this night would bring. ―I see you have found one of my prizes,‖ he was saying. There was a rumble of satisfaction in his cold voice. ―These are my Ottoman holdings. Some of them are very old, from the first days of their diabolical empire, and this shelf here contains volumes from their last decade.‖ He smiled in the flickering light. ―You cannot imagine what a satisfaction it was for me to see their civilization die. Their faith is not dead, of course, but their sultans are gone forever, and I have outlived them.‖ I thought for a moment that he might laugh, but his next words were grave. ―Here are great books made for the sultan about his many lands. Here‖—he touched the edge of a scroll—―is the history of Mehmed, may he rot in hell, by a Christian historian turned flatterer. May he rot in hell also. I tried to find him myself, that historian, but he died before I could reach him. Here are the accounts of Mehmed‘s campaigns, by his own flatterers, and of the fall of the Great City. You do not read Arabic?‖

―Very little,‖ I confessed.

―Ah.‖ He seemed amused. ―I had the opportunity to learn their language and their writing while I was their prisoner. You know that I was in bondage to them?‖

I nodded, trying not to look at him.

―Yes, my own father left me to the father of Mehmed, as a pledge that we would not wage war against the Empire. Imagine, Dracula a pawn in the hands of the infidel. I wasted no time there—I learned everything I could about them, so that I might surpass them all. That was when I vowed to make history, not to be its victim.‖ His voice was so fierce that I glanced at him in spite of myself and saw the terrible blaze in his face, the hatred, the sharp upwards curl of the mouth under its long mustache. Then he did laugh, and the sound was equally horrifying. ―I have triumphed and they are gone.‖ He put his hand on a finely tooled leather binding. ―The sultan was so much afraid of me that he founded an order of their knights to pursue me. There are still a few of them, somewhere in
Tsarigrad
—a nuisance. But they are fewer and fewer, their ranks are dwindling to nothing, while my servants multiply around the globe.‖ He straightened his powerful body. ―Come. I will show you my other treasures, and you must tell me how you propose to catalogue them all.‖

He led me from one section to another, pointing out particular rarities, and I saw that my surmise about the patterns of his collecting were correct. Here was a large cabinet full of manuals of torture, some of them dating to the ancient world. They ranged through the prisons of mediaeval England, to the torture chambers of the Inquisition, to the experiments of the Third Reich. Some of the Renaissance volumes contained woodcuts of implements of torture, others diagrams of the human body. Another section of the room chronicled the church heresies for which many of those manuals of torture had been employed. Another corner was dedicated to alchemy, another to witchcraft, another to philosophy of the most disturbing sort.

Dracula paused in front of a great bookshelf and laid his hand on it affectionately. ―This is of special interest to me, and will be to you, as well, I think. These works are biographies of me.‖ Each volume there was connected in some way to his life. There were works by Byzantine and Ottoman historians—some of them very rare originals—

and their many reprints through the ages. There were pamphlets from mediaeval Germany, Russia, Hungary, Constantinople, all documenting his crimes. Many of them I‘d neither seen nor heard of in my research, and I felt an unreasonable flare of curiosity before I remembered that I had no reason, now, to complete that research. There were also numerous volumes of folklore, from the seventeenth century on, ranging over the legend of the vampire—it struck me as strange and terrible that he included these so frankly among his own biographies. He brought his great hand to rest on an early edition of Bram Stoker‘s novel and smiled, but said nothing. Then he moved quietly away into another section.

―This is of special interest to you as well,‖ he said. ―These are works of history about your century, the twentieth. A fine century—I look forward to the rest of it. In my day, a prince was able to eliminate troublesome elements only one person at a time. You do this with an infinitely greater sweep. Think, for example, of the improvement from the accursed cannon that broke the walls of Constantinople to the divine fire your adoptive country dropped onto the Japanese cities some years ago.‖ He gave me the trace of a bow, courtly, congratulatory. ―You will have read many of these works already, Professor, but perhaps you will glance through them with a new perspective.‖

At last he bade me settle by the fire again, and I found more of the steaming tea waiting at my elbow. When we were both resting in our chairs, he turned to me. ―Soon, I must take my own refreshment,‖ he said quietly. ―But first, I will ask you a question.‖ My hands began to tremble in spite of myself. I had tried until now to speak to him as little as possible without incurring his rage. ―You have enjoyed my hospitality, such as I can offer here, and my boundless faith in your gifts. You shall enjoy the eternal life that only a few beings can claim. You have the free run of what is certainly the finest archive of its kind on the face of the earth. Rare works are open to you that, indeed, cannot now be seen anywhere else. All this is yours.‖ He stirred in his chair, as if it was difficult for him to keep his great, undead body completely still for long. ―Furthermore, you are a man of unparalleled sense and imagination, of keen accuracy and profound judgment. I have much to learn from your methods of research, your synthesis of sources, your imagination. For all these qualities, as well as the great scholarship they feed, I have brought you here, to my treasure-house.‖

Again he paused. I watched his face, unable to look away. He gazed at the fire. ―With your unflinching honesty, you can see the lesson of history,‖ he said. ―History has taught us that the nature of man is evil, sublimely so. Good is not perfectible, but evil is. Why should you not use your great mind in service of what is perfectible? I ask you, my friend, to join me of your own accord in my research. If you do so, you will save yourself great anguish, and you will save me considerable trouble. Together we will advance the historian‘s work beyond anything the world has ever seen. There is no purity like the purity of the sufferings of history. You will have what every historian wants: history will be reality to you. We will wash our minds clean with blood.‖

He turned the full flood of his gaze on me then, the eyes with their ancient knowledge blazing up and the red lips parted. It would have been a face of the most exquisite intelligence, I suddenly thought, if it had not been shaped by so much hatred. I struggled not to faint, not to go to him on the instant and throw myself on my knees before him, not to put myself under his hand. He was a leader, a prince. He brooked no trespasses. I summoned my love of all I had had in my life, and I formed the word as firmly as I could.

―Never.‖

His face kindled, pale, the nostrils and lips twitching. ―You will certainly die here, Professor Rossi,‖ he said, as if trying to control his voice. ―You will never leave these chambers alive, although you will go out from them in a new life. Why not have some choice in the matter?‖

―No,‖ I said as softly as I could.

He stood, menacingly, and smiled. ―Then you shall work for me against your will,‖ he said. A darkness began to pool before my eyes, and I held internally to my small reserve of—what? My skin began to tingle and stars came out in front of me, against the dim walls of the chamber. When he stepped closer I saw his face unmasked, a sight so terrible that I cannot remember it now—I have tried. Then I did not know anything else for a long time.

I woke in my sarcophagus, in the dark, and I thought it was once again the first day, my first awakening there, until I realized that I‘d known immediately where I was. I was very weak, much weaker this time, and the wound in my neck oozed and throbbed. I had lost blood, but not so much as to incapacitate me completely. After some time I managed to move around, to climb trembling out of my imprisonment. I remembered the moment I had lost consciousness. I saw by the glow of the remaining candles that Dracula slept again in his great tomb. His eyes were open, glassy, his lips red, his hand closed over his dagger—I turned away in the deepest horror of body and soul and went to crouch by the fire and to try to eat the meal I found there.

Apparently he means to destroy me gradually, perhaps to leave open to me until the last minute the choice he presented last night, so that I might still bring him all the power of a willing mind. I have only one purpose now—no, two: to die with as much of myself intact as I can, in the hope that it may later be some small restraint on the terrible deeds I will do once I am undead, and to stay alive long enough to write all I can in this record, although it will probably crumble to dust unread. These ambitions are my only sustenance now. It is a fate beyond anything I could weep for.