for her and partly for my perfidious mentor. 'I thought about doing that, but from his letter I understood that he had changed his mind completely. I decided it would make no difference for me to send him these letters, except to bring me more pain, and then I would have lost some of the few pieces of him that I could keep.' She extended her hand as if to touch his handwriting, then withdrew it. 'I only regretted not returning to him what was really his. But he had kept so much of me - perhaps it was not wrong for me to keep these for myself?' She glanced from Helen to me, her eyes suddenly a little less tranquil. It was not defiance I saw there, I thought, but the flare of some old, old devotion. I looked away. "Helen was defiant, even if her mother was not. 'Then why didn't she at least give these letters to me long ago?' Her question was fierce, and she turned it on her mother the next second. The older woman shook her head. 'She says,' Helen reported, her face hardening, 'that she knew I hated my father and she was waiting for someone who loved him.' As she still does herself, I could have added, for my own heart was so full that it seemed to give me an extra perception of the love buried for years in this bare little house.
"My feelings were not for Rossi alone. Sitting there at the table, I took Helen's hand in one of mine, and her mother's work-worn hand in the other, and held them tightly. At that moment, the world in which I had grown up, its reserve and silences, its mores and manners, the world in which I had studied and achieved and occasionally attempted to love, seemed as far off as the Milky Way. I couldn't have spoken if I'd wanted to, but if my throat had cleared I might have found some way to tell these two women, with their so different but equally intense attachments to Rossi, that I felt his presence among us.
"After a moment Helen quietly withdrew her hand from my grasp, but her mother held on to me as she had before, asking something in her gentle voice. 'She wants to know how she can help you find Rossi.'
"'Tell her she has helped me already, and that I will read these letters as soon as we leave to see if they can guide us further. Tell her we will let her know when we find him.'
"Helen's mother inclined her head humbly at this, and rose to check the stew in the oven. A wonderful smell drifted from it and even Helen smiled, as if this return to a home not her own had its compensations. The peace of the moment emboldened me. 'Please ask her if she knows anything about vampires that might help us in our search.'
"When Helen translated this, I saw I had shattered our fragile calm. Her mother looked away and crossed herself, but after a moment she seemed to muster her forces to speak. Helen listened intently and nodded. 'She says you must remember that the vampire can change his shape. He can come to you in many forms.'
"I wanted to know what this meant exactly, but Helen's mother had already begun to dish up our meal with a hand that trembled. The warmth of the oven and the smell of meat and bread filled the small house, and we all ate heartily, if in silence. Now and then Helen's mother gave me more bread, patting my arm, or poured out fresh tea for me. The food was simple but delicious and abundant, and sunlight came in the front windows to ornament our meal.
"When it was done Helen went outside with a cigarette, and her mother beckoned to me to follow her around the side of the house. In the back there was a shed with a few chickens scratching around it, and a hutch with two long-eared rabbits. Helen's mother took one of the rabbits out, and we stood together in a companionable dumb show, scratching its soft head while it blinked and struggled a little. I could hear Helen through one of the windows now, washing up the dishes inside. The sun was warm on my head, and beyond the house the green fields hummed and wavered with an inexhaustible optimism.
"Then it was time for us to leave, to